Chapter Seven
On Train Stations and Hotel Rooms
We had to change trains in London, a harrowing affair under the best of circumstances. As we tried to weave through the mob of commuters, Holmes was waylaid by one of the Irregulars. We heard the boy before we saw him, calling out Holmes' name above the general noise. The scruffy street urchin stumbled out from between the legs of the crowd and nearly cannoned into Holmes.
"Hallo guv'nor. Missus." He added, tipping the brim of his cap at me and grinning cheekily, revealing the two missing front teeth. A healing split lip suggested that he'd lost them in a street brawl rather than the more usual way. It took a moment before I realized the reason for his amused look. I was dressed as a woman of the lower classes. No doubt the boy was leaping to all sorts of conclusions that he should have been too young to know about.
"Stiggins," Holmes said sharply, "what is so important that you have set watch on the train stations?" The boy drew himself to attention to give his report. He directed his eyes upwards while he recited, as if reading the words off the rafters.
"Mister Doctor Watson sent me sir. 'e said that Mon-sewer Sau-va-ge-on wanted to see you right away about th' case. 'e said that you'd know what 'e meant." Holmes frowned and Stiggins' face fell.
"Is that all?" Holmes asked.
"Well… 'e also said that I should watch the trains from Sussex an' if that's where you really went he'd eat his cane. I probably weren't meant to 'ear that last bit." Stiggins admitted. I hid my grin. Holmes looked sharply at me.
A case had come up, and it was important enough for Watson to dispatch the Irregulars in search of Holmes. Holmes was intrigued enough by my bizarre story to travel to Oxford for closer investigation, but paying clients came first. He couldn't turn me loose and risk having me disappear again, but he certainly couldn't leave me at Baker Street or drag me along on this new case. I was an unknown quantity.
Holmes hesitated for only the briefest of moments.
"Miss Russell, I'm afraid I am going to have to take my leave of you momentarily. I am aware of your situation here in town," he continued, ploughing over any objections I might have, "so please allow me to show you to one of the City's hotels."
The man could be charmingly devious sometimes. I opened my mouth to object, but reconsidered. After all, where else did I have to go?
"Thank you, Mr. Holmes. That is very kind of you." I said, in dulcet tones that would have made my husband deeply suspicious. This Holmes cast me a surprised glance, but thought no more of it.
The hotel was not far from the train station. I had never been inside this particular establishment in my own time, since it catered mostly to foreign travellers. But such areas change little with the passage of time, and the façade looked much the same as it did in the Twenties.
The desk clerk had long ago developed a carefully neutral expression to deal with the vagaries of the patrons. He hardly batted an eye when Holmes, dressed as the quintessential gentleman of leisure, engaged a hotel room for a young woman looking as if she had just left work at the factory. If I was going to be here much longer, I was going to have to succumb to the dictates of fashion and wedge myself into those impossibly restricting Victorian garments.
Holmes apologized again, rather distractedly, and strode out the front door, leaving me alone in the wrong time and wrong place. I very nearly called after him, to beg him not to abandon me here. I controlled myself with an effort and turned to the clerk, asking if someone could show me up to the room.
I closed the hotel room door and shot the bolt with a sigh of relief. Since I had no bags to unpack, I made a search of the room, not expecting anything out of the ordinary and not finding anything either. It was a two room suite with a table, desk and chairs in the sitting room and a forest landscape hanging on one wall. All of the furniture was tastefully bland and impersonal. In short, it was exactly what one would expect from a tourist hotel.
I should say that I do not deal well with enforced idleness. When coupled with enforced helplessness, I felt like screaming. I was alone in a city that was at once foreign and familiar, dependent on the help of a man whom I would one day marry, though he didn't know it yet. The only man who could shed any light on my situation was Professor Jansen, and God alone knew where he had gotten to.
My window overlooked the street in front of the hotel and I watched the traffic pass as I considered my predicament. I was nearly ready to walk out and make my own way to Oxford, and Holmes be damned, when I caught sight of Stiggins the Irregular sheltering in the lee of a building.
I couldn't help but smile. Holmes still didn't trust me not to bolt, or perhaps he hoped that I would try and contact someone and thus reveal my true identity. As I watched the boy watching me, an idea popped into my head.
I left the hotel and stepped out onto the street. The lunchtime crowd coupled with the comings and going of the hotel patrons made for very busy sidewalks. The boy didn't realize I was headed in his direction until it was too late to bolt.
"Hallo missus." He said nervously.
"Hello. Stiggins, wasn't it?"
"Yes missus."
"I know Mr. Holmes asked you to keep an eye on me." Stiggins looked determinedly at a point just over my left shoulder, refusing to meet my gaze. "I wanted to ask you a favour of you as well."
"A favour?"
"I want you to get me the past week's copies of any newspaper that would carry news from Oxford."
"Yeah?" Stiggins asked, finally looking me directly in the eyes. "And why should I want to do that?"
I hesitated. I had nothing that could be considered money. Only the notebook containing the chemical formulae and theological ramblings had made the journey with me, and even that was currently in the possession of Holmes. Stiggins saw my hesitation and smirked triumphantly.
"No cash, lady, no job. I got me poor ol' mam to think about." He added piously. Somehow I doubted filial responsibility had anything to do with it.
"I don't have any cash. Maybe there's something I could trade? I can read and write." I offered, knowing that these skills would be a rarity among the Irregulars. Although they tended to be of the more intelligent variety of street arab, the Irregulars still only had a passing acquaintance with formal learning. They could probably read street signs and sign their name, but that was all. Stiggins made a disgusted noise.
"I don't need no readin' or writin'." He scoffed and I winced. Stiggins resumed watching the traffic, but now he had a reflective look on his face.
"Perhaps you know someone who does need reading or writing." Stiggins shrugged, as if to indicate in a general way that there might be such a person. "Tell you what: I'll go back to my hotel room and when you get a chance you can find this someone and ask them."
I didn't give Stiggins a chance to argue. I turned on my heel and strode straight back into the hotel and up to my room. I went to the window and saw that Stiggins was still at his post. I took a book from the shelves provided by the hotel and pulled a chair up to the window, so Stiggins could see that I was not trying to trick him into abandoning his post.
The book was Dickens' Great Expectations. Despite being what my husband disparagingly called a "professional student", the English Canon of Literature was somewhat outside my area of expertise. The book seemed vaguely familiar though; no doubt I had been assigned it in school at some point. I had just gotten to the point where young Pip is introduced to Miss Haversham when I looked up to find Stiggins had disappeared. It took a few minutes of scanning the crowd before I saw his replacement, a boy wearing an unbelievable number of coats despite the hot weather.
It was well into the afternoon and I was wondering if I dared order tea in my room and charge it to Holmes when I saw the man himself headed up the street. The scout caught sight of him and dashed up to give his report under the guise of begging for pennies. He received a couple of coins and dodged a half-hearted blow for his trouble and Holmes entered the hotel.
I considered going down to meet him; a bachelor meeting an (ostensibly) unmarried woman in her rooms was scandalous enough, but either Holmes missed the implications or he simply didn't care. I suspected the latter, but perhaps the comings and goings of so many tourists meant the staff was too busy to notice and gossip.
"We will go to Oxford tomorrow and investigate the possibility of your professor being there." Holmes said as I let him into the sitting room of the hotel suite.
"And what of Mon-sewer Sau-va-ge-on's case?" I asked, mimicking Stiggins pronunciation.
"It will keep." Holmes said dismissively. "In the meantime I have decided to accept your story."
"You have?" I asked, frankly surprised.
"It covers all of the available facts."
"Innocent until proven guilty?"
"Something like that. In any case, you will need more than what you are wearing."
"Er, what?" I said, momentarily taken aback by the non sequitur.
"Perhaps they do things differently in the future, Miss Russell," You have no idea, I thought, "but here you will need different clothes in order to pass without notice."
"Ah. Meaning?"
"A tailor, Miss Russell. Unless you care to keep your current ensemble?" I glanced down at the oddly matched white blouse and brown skirt, both looking rather worn from their treatment over the past two days. Holmes had been digging through various pockets for his smoking paraphernalia and rolled himself a cigarette. He abruptly remembered my presence and shot a questioning glance in my direction. I gave a brief wave to indicate my permission and he lit the cigarette.
"I don't want to be a burden," I said, thinking of my lack of funds. Holmes started to dismiss my objection. "I don't want to be a pet project either." I added sharply.
"If what you say is true," Holmes said slowly, "and you are indeed from another era, you have nowhere else to go. But if what you say is false," I noted that he carefully avoided the phrase 'a lie', "Then you present a curious problem, something which I flatter myself in considering myself an expert in. In either case, I can help you. If you would prefer to try your luck alone, that is, of course, your choice."
I wouldn't and we both knew it, but I had to make at least a token resistance, if only to soothe my ego.
"I can't pay, you know."
"Consider it a part of my fees for taking on your case. I do arrange my rates on a variable scale."
"The Adventure of the Time-Travelling Professor?" I asked sweetly and Holmes scowled. He was saved from responding by a knock on the door.
Holmes' vast and varied network of acquaintances never failed to amaze me. He had often complained that the rich and powerful have tediously ordinary problems; the truly unique and bizarre cases often involved those who could not afford a private detective. In these cases, instead of money he sometimes asked for future assistance, something which often turned out to be infinitely more valuable.
The tailor who entered the room, along with an assistant to carry his things, was probably one of those clients who had offered his talents instead of money for services rendered. He was a tall man, nearly the equal of Holmes, and bone thin. His movements were slow and slightly stiff, probably just recovering from an illness. His assistant was a lanky girl on the edge of puberty with a strong family resemblance.
"Since your wardrobe was lost on the journey from America, Mr. Gerali here will provide you with some suitable clothing." Holmes said, speaking to me but looking at Mr. Gerali. The tailor knew Holmes well enough to catch the unspoken message.
"Always a pleasure to work with you, Mr. Holmes." The tailor said with deliberation.
"Would you do me the honour of joining me for dinner, Miss Russell?" Holmes asked, moving towards the door. "I still have some trifling matters to attend to."
"Monsieur Sauvignon?" I asked.
"I shall see you tonight." Holmes said, choosing not to notice that I had not answered him.
The tailor and his daughter got to work with the quiet efficiency of an expert team. They had brought with them an assortment of loosely-tailored garments that needed only a bit of adjustment in order to fit me. I was much taller, and less shapely, than the average Victorian woman, but Gerali and his daughter managed to pin me into two acceptably modest day dresses and an evening gown.
The overall effect suggested a governess who was down on her luck; respectable enough to move through society, but nondescript enough to fade into a crowd. I wondered if the tailor was under specific orders from Holmes, or had made the decision of his own accord.
The tailor and his daughter left as the sun was going down, well pleased with their efforts. I tried not to squirm uncomfortably in the unfamiliar clothes and whispered a silent prayer of thanks that I had been born in an age with enough sense to do away with the corset.
Holmes returned as promised for dinner in the hotel restaurant, bringing with him the faint scent of the docks. The dinner itself, while adequate in a culinary sense, proved to be an intense battle of wits and wills. By the time the coffee arrived I was more than willing to make a strategic withdrawal.
Holmes kept up a constant barrage of questions regarding my life, which I did my best to answer without revealing too much while firing off my own questions about his current case. The name Sauvignon seemed vaguely familiar to me, but I could not remember where I had heard it before, or if I had even heard it from Holmes. After all, it was not a terribly uncommon French name.
Neither of us learned much during this verbal skirmish, being too busy keeping the other from discovering too much. It was an exhausting way to spend the evening. It was made even worse by the constant reminders that despite his appearance and mannerisms, this was not the man I had married. But he was the man I would marry. But I had already married him, so…
I shook myself out of the unproductive circle of reasoning. I would find the Professor, return home, and forget all this like a bad dream. Over coffee Holmes noticed my preoccupation.
"This professor of yours," Holmes began, getting out the ever-present tobacco.
"He's not my professor," I said absently, an automatic response to his choice of phrase.
"If all you say is true," Holmes continued, ignoring my interruption, "what makes you think he will be able to help?"
"It was his experiment. Campus rumour said he was looking for a replacement for tungsten, but he could have been working on something else and spread the rumour himself to avoid suspicion." I explained Professor Jansen's paranoia regarding his research and the reasons behind it.
"Like a method of time travel?" Holmes' sounded highly sceptical and I didn't blame him. I must have presented quite the paradox by acting perfectly reasonable and logical, but for my insistence on the impossible.
"Perhaps."
"You are trying to be difficult." He accused, with a puff of smoke.
"I'm not trying." I protested.
"You are concealing information from me."
"And you don't trust me. What's to stop you from sending me off to the madhouse?"
"I did give you my word." Holmes pointed out mildly. I sighed. A stranger he may be, but he was still Holmes, and to Holmes his word was as good as a legal contract.
"I've told you all I can." I said, standing up from the table. Holmes, interestingly enough and against established custom, stayed seated for a long moment before remembering his manners.
"Tomorrow then, Miss Russell."
I don't know how I managed to get back to my room. I was so lost in my thoughts that I nearly walked into the door before I saw it. I glanced out the window and saw that the boy watching the front door of the hotel had been joined by a couple of friends. I left the curtains open and the light on and threw myself into bed, instantly falling asleep.
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.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.