Island of the Mad (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes #15)
Laurie R. King
The world is but a great Bedlam,
where those that are more mad lock up those that are less.
—THOMAS TRYON, 1689
Chapter One
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND I STOOD shoulder to shoulder, gazing down sadly at the tiny charred corpse.
“She should never have left us alone,” I told him.
“She had no great choice in the matter.”
“There’s always a choice.”
“Strictly speaking, perhaps. But it’s best that she disappear, at least for a time. Even putting aside the death penalty, I cannot see her thriving in prison.”
I had to agree. “She is probably better off in Monte Carlo.” And so saying, I snatched up the smouldering pan and tipped my attempt at a chicken dinner into the rubbish bin. Our long-time housekeeper, Mrs Hudson, had recently abandoned us, selfishly choosing freedom over being tried for murder—and thereby risking our lives to my poisonous culinary skills. “Cheese sandwiches, then? Or shall we walk up to the Tiger?”
He glanced at the kitchen clock. “Do you suppose Tillie might have a table, up at the Monk’s Tun?”
* * *
—
Three hours later, we were making our leisurely way towards the gate in the stone wall encircling our house. I had pocketed a torch as we left, but the midsummer sky held enough lingering brightness that we did not need it as we returned across the Sussex Downs. Tillie had outdone herself, with a perfection of cool dishes on a warm afternoon: subtle lettuces, an iced soup, cold meats, hot rolls, and a strawberry tart the likes of none in the land.
The one drawback was, the Monk’s Tun had begun to collect a reputation. Not that I begrudged Tillie her success—although I might wish we had not chosen to stop in the same night as a carload of Young Things on their way up from Dover.
Not that they were drunk, merely festive; nor were they loud, exactly, merely difficult to ignore. They were my age—in fact, two of them I dimly recognised: a young man with dark Byronic curls who had been the year before me at Oxford, and a girl whose face appeared in the illustrated Society pages of the newspapers. My eyes kept going to them, two sleek girls in Paris frocks, two clean, tanned lads in casually worn suits that would have cost Tillie’s bar-man a year of his salary.
The second time Holmes had needed to repeat something, he craned around to look at the table of merrymakers on the other side of the old room.
“Friends of yours?”
“Good heavens, no.”
“Then why are you watching them so closely?”
“I wasn’t. Not really. Just—they seem like an alien race, down here in Sussex. Don’t you think?”
His grey eyes fixed on me, but before he could speak, Tillie came up to greet us, and the next course arrived, and the moment was lost.
However, Holmes never forgot anything. When he pushed open the gate an hour later, he said, “Russell, do you regret the choices you made?”
Little point in pretending I didn’t understand. “Regret? Never. I might occasionally wonder what life would have been, had things been different, but it’s mere speculation. Like…like trying on a dress I’d never actually wear, just to see what it feels like.”
He closed the gate and worked the latch. We picked our way through the grassy orchard, hearing the faint texture of sound from the hives—drones cooling their homes from the day’s heat. Near the house, the sweet odour from the old-fashioned climbing rose drew us forward. Mrs Hudson had planted the flower, long before I knew her. Mrs Hudson, now gone away, to…But before yearning could overcome me, the night was broken by the jangle of the telephone bell.
Neither of us hurried to catch it.
And neither of us suggested, when the machine ceased its clamour before we were halfway through the kitchen, that we ask the Exchange to restore the connexion.
Instead, Holmes pulled a corkscrew from the drawer and a bottle of chilled honey wine from the cooler. I fetched a pair of glasses from the cupboard. We left the door open, to chase away the aroma of cremated chicken, and settled into our garden chairs. The night smelled of blossoms and honey. The low pulse of waves against the Sussex cliffs obscured the sound from the hives. The wine was cool, but faintly sad as its summer freshness faded, giving a hint of bitterness to come.
And the telephone rang again. At this time of night, the sound was ominous.
With a sigh, I put my half-empty glass onto the stones and went through the terrace doors.
I spoke our number by way of greeting, to be answered by a voice from the local Exchange. “Evening, Mrs Holmes, sorry to ring so late but the lady said it was an emergency, so I told her I’d keep trying you. And the girl at the Monk’s Tun said you’d left there. Do you want me to connect you again?”
Life in a rural area is rich in many things, but privacy is not one of them. “Hold on a moment, I’ll get Holmes.” The word emergency generally summoned Sherlock Holmes.
But to my surprise, she said the woman had asked for me.
“Did she leave a name?”
“She said to tell you it was Veronica Fitzwarren.”
Ronnie. Oh dear.
I pulled up the chair we kept near the telephone, and sat. “Yes, you’d better put me through.”
* * *
—
Ronnie Fitzwarren—she’d been Lady Veronica Anne Beaconsfield when we met in 1917—was my oldest friend on this side of the Atlantic. My very first morning at Oxford University she stepped into my rooms and took charge of my life, turning what might have been three years of solitary academic pursuit into a time of exploration, community, and occasionally fun.
On the surface, we had little in common: Ronnie was short, round, vivacious, an English aristocrat down to her Norman bones, not greatly interested in her books, and dedicated to a series of Good Works. I, on the other hand, was tall, thin, aloof, of mongrel blood, and far more interested in the academic elements of human beings than the personal.
Ronnie taught me the meaning of friendship: once she’d laid claim to me, we were bound together. After University, however, our lives had drifted apart—until, on the eve of my twenty-first birthday, we happened to meet. At the time, I had just begun to realise how torn I was between a life of independence and a life with Sherlock Holmes. The conundrum was brought into greater focus in the time that followed by Ronnie’s interest in a woman religious leader with some dubious connexions—and, by Ronnie’s attachment to a troubled young demobbed officer with a weakness for hard drugs.
I’d dragged Holmes into the case, a mutual involvement that brought us together in unforeseen ways, revealing a surprisingly generous side to the man who had been my informal tutor since I met him at the age of fifteen.*
Holmes coaxed, cajoled, and bullied Miles Fitzwarren into sobriety, turning him from a man so befuddled he’d mistaken Ronnie’s dead father for her sciatic uncle, to a man serving His Majesty’s government with honour and distinction.
Ronnie married Miles in 1921. Their son was born the following year. Two years after that, an Irish sniper’s bullet left her a young widow with a small child and a complicated financial situation—and yet, far from my stepping up to be a faithful friend in her time of need, the past year had found me mostly absent from England, and from her life.
Letters, quick visits, and presents to the child did not assuage my guilt: she’d rescued me; I’d abandoned her.
The word emergency in Ronnie’s situation could mean nothing good.
But my friend seemed in no hurry to tell me about it. Instead, the familiar voice launched into cheery exclamations over how long it had been and was it as warm in Sussex as in London. Then she asked, rather pointedly, if I thought the Exchange had left the line. Following the giveaway clicks, Ronnie’s voice went more sober.