La vie de Saint Lazare
„Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy" Paradise Lost
We met according to appointment on the following day. He had brought the keys, left to his good care by the Metropolitan Police, and together we entered the flat.
Devastation was rife, as I could see turning around on the tips of my toes, mouth hanging wide open I am afraid. Madame Zhao's beautiful porcelain wall décor had been smashed to pieces on the floor, her stone figurines were scattered over the work tables and there were books with pages ripped out everywhere. I felt like crying. What a swine can man become, to bring destruction over such an oasis of harmony?
Passing my hand over the rails where she used to array her neat small brushes and spatulas, I spied them lying on the floor, mostly mangled or broken. Mechanically, I squatted to pick them up, and restored the intact ones to their places. It was only on the periphery of awareness that I realized Holmes was trying to address me.
„Frances?"
I turned around, still in my stupor and with the shard of a very small file in my hand.
Holmes had closed up on me across the room, sternly peering down into my face. „You see? This is why I need your help. You are looking at the work of Madame Zhao's abductors. Better do not try to imagine what they might do to her, if we don't step between her and them."
I allowed that to settle before I replied. I did not want to seem too deep in shock, it would not do to demonstrate weakness with the fellow. „But wha' can be done?" was my careful answer.
„I am not sure…" He frowned, whipped out his magnifying lens and dropped to his haunches to have a look at the table surfaces. Hesitatingly, I wandered through the studio.
Was it possible Madame had hidden the treasure somewhere here, somewhere the brutes had been unable to find, so they had to take her away instead? The place appeared to have been searched pretty thoroughly. It hurt to enter the kitchen, whence a strongly aromatic scent emanated, and find all the spices from her cabinet spilt on the tiles, where they combined into a strangely marvelous tableau of reds, browns and yellows. No, no. These people, whoever they were, had done their job properly.
I returned to the studio. Holmes, meanwhile, had stepped onto one of the tables, subjecting the lantern-like lamp suspended from the ceiling to a cursory search. His long hands slipped into the hollow body, feeling their way down to the light bulb.
„Anyfink?" I asked, fainthearted.
He turned his face toward me, shaking his head mutely. I cast down my eyes. Hands folded on my back, I continued my ramble among the tables.
There was, in one of the four corners, a round lacquered table that was not meant for work. Madame and I had passed many happy hours here - it was her tea table. But the fine tea things now were, like everything else, cluttered on the chairs and on the parquet. Getting down on my knees, I reassembled everything, broken or unbroken, into my lap….fragments of cups and almond biscuits, silver spoons, the tea strainer. The paraphernalia of her last repast.
I violently fought back tears, my back rounding over the small heap in my lap. No crying. It was bad enough as it was, but no crying in front of Holmes. No way.
One by one, I picked up the things and set them down on the table top. Somewhere in the background, Holmes was rumbling and shifting around furniture. I ignored him, and got up to sit on one of the chairs, drumming my fingertips on the surface of the table. There was nothing else for me to do. Why had I come? Everything else set aside, Holmes was as capable a detective as there was to be had. My presence here was quite superfluous.
There was a round, lacquered disk centered on the table which could be spun around its axis. As always when I was idling in this place, my fingers extended toward it to spin it playfully. However, it was not going - something was stuck underneath, as happened not infrequently thanks to Madame's love of putting things on the table for her guests to look at.
It was a book - the upper half stuck out from underneath, as though someone had picked it up and tossed it back onto the table impatiently. I withdrew it to unblock the disk, and cast a brief glance at the cover.
Only for the fraction of a second, my motion froze. The stiff, black cover showed the medieval picture of a man with regular features, a halo around his head and a white stole around his shoulder with red crosses on it. Above the picture, bold white letters said:
La Vie de St. Lazare
With trembling fingers, I opened it and leafed through it. Nothing worth note presented itself to sight, but I refrained from searching it further. Half-turning around my head, I peeped over my shoulder. Holmes' back was turned at me, so I quickly opened my bag and slipped the volume into it. Then I got up and strolled towards him, as if tired of the inspection.
„Still nofink?" I inquired, and feigned a suppressed yawn.
„Less then nothing", he replied, sounding a little discouraged. „This has proven rather a dead end."
„It was worth trying. Still, we should go now - I have yet some work to do, and I want to be on time fer me dinna appointment."
His eyebrows twitched. „Your - ?"
I frowned. „Why, what's it to you?"
„Why, nothing…" He relaxed into an, as he might think, inoffensive attitude. „Only, I suppose Watson might want to be informed if you are going out on dinners and such."
Rage threatened to build up inside me again. You might think we were in 1830 for all that he was saying. The man was so out of touch with the times!
„He is not my father, Mr. ´olmes", I returned icily. „And by the way, neither are you. In fact, I could not think of anybody less suitable fer the position - not even my biological father."
„And good riddance to us all", he gibed. „I see, you are very much your own person, grown-up, responsible, and independent. No, pray do not bother to light a cigarette to prove the point. According to your fingertips' testimony, you privately dislike it."
Taken aback, I involuntarily glanced at my hands, white and free from the blemishes caused by regular tobacco consumption.
„One last thing", he added, as he locked the door of the apartment behind us. „If I have not succeeded impressing on you the precarious situation of madame Zhao, I hope the wreckage in this place has. So if you have any piece to contribute to the puzzle, you ought to feel morally bound to do so."
His last words were accompanied by a severity of mien that made me flush.
„I will do all that is in me power ter find `er, of course. On`y I don't know how ter go about it…how ter begin".
„That", Holmes returned plainly, „is for me to agonize about."
oooOOOooo
And indeed, he had fairly little to go on. The rooms had yielded a pittance of information about their owner: A creative intelligence, inflammable temper, a strict aesthete, hysterectomy some ten years ago, deep-seated family resentments, affectionate but unforgiving nature, a secret desire to keep South American Blue Parrots. And about the intruders: Rash and unquestioned action according to order, paid subalterns, not above average intelligence but with systematic procedure and a quasi-professional discipline, a band of four to five men. One of them walked pigeon-toed.
A cool shower in the marble splendor of his Le Meurice bathroom did not bring further enlightenment. He would have to try a whole different approach, he thought, as he reclined his head to rinse his hair. This affair about the orb was ambivalent, as he had recognized from the beginning. It could point both ways: Meant to damage England, possibly even Her Majesty's person, or to do derogate the Third Republic in the eyes of the world.
A third possibility was a political scheme to cause discord between the two states, but he tended to dismiss that. A national heirloom had been damaged, a women had been abducted, her flat and belongings had been ruined. There was a personal touch in all of this, yes, all this outré violence smacked of hatred, not of cool calculation. And since he had come to France and found nothing here, maybe it was time to return to England and continue the search there.
He spied his pale, vague reflection in the clouded glass and hesitated. It was all too well possible that his desire to return home stemmed from ulterior motives. Pensively, he turned the faucets and stepped out of the stall, reaching for a flannel to wrap himself in. He was glad for the steam that had condensed on the mirrors. There were no reflecting surfaces in his bathroom in Sussex, nor in the one at Baker Street.
His time with Kitty had helped a great deal to come to terms with his body, but some things strike roots too deep for eradication. The corporeal horrors of transpiration, defecation, copulation et cetera were still apt to fill him with revulsion and make him take flight into the realms of clear, uncorrupted spirituality. It had grown worse again after her death, and age added more reasons to prefer not seeing himself in a state of deshabille. But perchance, it might cure him of foolish notions. His hand slowly extended towards the glass to wipe across it, hesitated and withdrew.
He lived to deteriorate and to finally grow old, while Kitty's youth was conserved in the living image of that girl, curse her! He objected to her personally: Her snippy, self-complacent demeanour, her obtrusive assurance of being competent and autonomous contrasted sharply with the soft femininity of her late relative. However, that did not change the fact that every glance he got of her was like a needle under his skin, every movement that defined her body beneath the thin materials she wore, produced sultry scenes in his mind, overexcited as it was by the pseudo-familiar stimulus.
He wished he could be done with her, never see her again. He might do so with a clear conscience if she had told him all she could. But she was a liar, and today, she had betrayed herself.
oooOOOooo
She had terminated the Cuulanhaasankhaya Sutra and speedily browsed her mind for other Sutras that destroyed craving. Her stomach felt shrunken to a third of its usual size, and in very short time, she would have to act on patent leather man's suggestion that she eat the vermin in her dark cell. Still, death was imminent, and she knew it. It was just a question of when.
Oh, she had hidden the gem well, in a place where only the girl could find it. If she had the sense to keep her mouth shut, all would be well. In time, it could be restored to its rightful owner. Anyhow, death was preferable to seeing this treasure in the hands of the demon she had faced.
Madame Zhao had seen his face once, and ever since had done her best to avoid looking at him. He was not in any way disfigured, or even ugly, but the way his eyes made her feel cold was enough not to repeat the experience. Her senses had been schooled well to detect what is beautiful not only on the outside, but also within, and with this mental equipment, she hardly felt up to confrontation with the utterly evil.
She wondered how much longer she could last before she lost her reason.
oooOOOooo
The night from Sunday to Monday was unnecessarily shortened by the jammed shade on my window that could not be lowered. The light of day brutally put an end to my slumbers, thirty minutes before I had to get up. I growled, and flung one arm across my face to cover my eyes. It really had to be fixed.
Calling to mind yesterday's dinner, I found that things had gone quite to my interest. We could take over twenty sewing machines, almost new, one dozen bales of taffeta and half a dozen bales each of mulberry silk and Dupion silk. Everything would change hands for three quarters of the market price. Besides, Monsieur - what was his name? - Monsieur Ghislaine had been rather charming.
The same could not be said of every man I had had to do with on Sunday, I thought angrily. Why had I allowed myself to be surprised by these clownish tricks I knew from my childhood days? Of course, nobody could hide anything from Holmes, I should have known when I had reached for my cigarette case. But if he thought I was holding back anything of importance, that was mere surmise, and he could not make me reveal anything. Not that there was much to reveal, anyway. I certainly could make neither head nor tail of what Madame had said the last time I had seen her. Why should I not talk to the police? What could I possibly tell them?
But then, there was the other thing. Thoughtfully, I reached for the book that was lying on my bedside table, to leaf through as I had done many times before going to bed on the previous night. La vie de Saint Lazare was a regular saint's vita, a topic I was not awfully interested in. Of course I knew all about the saints from Sunday school, Aunt Mary had seen to that. I knew St. Lazarus had been some bishop or other, that he effected a resurrection, was a patron of the lepers and founded an order of healers. Madame Zhao had been reared a Christian, but I knew that unlike most members of her family, she adhered to Buddha's teachings. So why would she have this book?
I saw no way to solve the puzzle. If I had trusted him, I might have talked to Holmes. He was not a policeman, and perhaps he would have been able to tell the meaning of all this. But he remained Holmes, the man who had provoked the suicide of my kin. An alliance with him was unthinkable.
The bells of the church in my quarter struck seven, and I dragged myself out of bed.
Hi guys!
As you can see, I'm still working on it! :-))
What do you think of the development, and is everybody taking a correct stance here? What can be done to improve the situation?
Lots of love, Mrs. F