Inspector Lestrade looked embarrassed. "Now you put it like that," he said, "It seems so obvious."
My friend pushed his plate away from him. "Of course it does," he said, slightly testily.
We rode to the East End in a cab. Inspector Lestrade had walked up to the Marylebone Road to find his brougham, and left us alone.
"So you are truly a consulting detective?" I said.
"The only one in London, or perhaps, the world," said my friend. "I do not take cases. Instead, I consult. Others bring me their insoluble problems, they describe them, and, sometimes, I solve them."
"Then those people who come to you…"
"Are, in the main, police officers, or are detectives themselves, yes."
It was a fine morning, but we were now jolting about the edges of the rookery of St Giles, that warren of thieves and cutthroats which sits on London like a cancer on the face of a pretty flower-seller, and the only light to enter the cab was dim and faint. "Are you sure that you wish me along with you?"
In reply my friend stared ai me without blinking. "I have a feeling/* he said. "I have a feeling that we were meant to be together. That we have fought the good fight, side by side, in the past or in the future, I do not know. I am a rational man, but I have learned the value of a good companion, and from the moment I clapped eyes on you, I knew I trusted you as well as I do myself. Yes. I want you with me."
I blushed, or said something meaningless. For the first tiine since Afghanistan, I felt that I had worth in the world.
2. The Room.
VICTOR'S VITAE
Victor's "Vitae"! An electrical fluid! Do you look back on the days of your youth with envy? Are the pleasures of the flesh now buried and forgot? Victor's "Vitae" will bring life where life has long been lost: even the oldest warhorse can be a proud stallion once more! Bringing Life to the Dead: from an old family recipe and the best of modern science. To receive signed attestations of the efficacy of Victor's "Vitae" write to the V. von F. Company, lb Cheap Street, London.
It was a cheap rooming house in Shoreditch, There was a policeman at the front door. Lestrade greeted him by name, and made to usher us in, and I was ready to enter, but my friend squatted on the doorstep, and pulled a magnifying glass from his coat pocket. He examined the mud on the wrought iron boot-scraper, prodding at it with his forefinger. Only when he was satisfied would he let us go inside. We walked upstairs. The room in which the crime had been committed was obvious: it was flanked by two burly constables.
Lestrade nodded to the men, and they stood aside. We walked in.
I am not, as I said, a writer by profession, and I hesitate to describe that place, knowing that my words cannot do it justice. Still, I have begun this narrative, and I fear I must continue. A murder had been committed in that little bedsit. The body, what was left of it, was still there, on the floor. I saw it, but, at first, somehow, I did not see it. What I saw instead was what had sprayed and gushed from the throat and chest of the victim: in colour it ranged from bile-green to grass-green. It had soaked into the threadbare carpet and spattered the wallpaper. I imagined it for one moment the work of some hellish artist, who had decided to create a study in emerald.
After what seemed like a hundred years I looked down at the body, opened like a rabbit on a butcher's slab, and tried to make sense of what I saw. I removed my hat, and my friend did the same.
He knelt and inspected the body, inspecting the cuts and gashes. Then he pulled out his magnifying glass, and walked over to the wall, examining the gouts of drying ichor.
"We've already done that," said Inspector Lestrade.
"Indeed?" said my friend. "Then what did you make of this, then? I do believe it is a word."
Lestrade walked to the place my friend was standing, and looked up. There was a word, written in capitals, in green blood, on the faded yellow wallpaper, some little way above Lestrade's head. "Rache…?" said Lestrade, spelling it out. "Obviously he was going to write Rachel, but he was interrupted. So—we must look for a woman…"
My friend said nothing. He walked back to the corpse, and picked up its hands, one after the other. The fingertips were clean of ichor. "I think we have established that the word was not written by his Royal Highness—"
"What the Devil makes you say?"
"My dear Lestrade. Please give me some credit for having a brain. The corpse is obviously not that of a man—the colour of his blood, the number of limbs, the eyes, the position of the face, aM these things bespeak the blood royal. While I cannot say which royal line, I would hazard that he is an heir, perhaps… no, second to the throne… in one of the German principalities."
"That is amazing," Lestrade hesitated, then he said, "This is Prince Franz Drago of Bohemia. He was here in Albion as a guest of Her Majesty Victoria. Here for a holiday and a change of air…"
"For the theatres, the whores and the gaming tables, you mean."
"If you say so." Lestrade looked put out. "Anyway, you've given us a fine lead with this Rachel woman. Although I don't doubt we would have found her on our own."
"Doubtless," said my friend.
He inspected the room further, commenting acidly several times that the police, with their boots had obscured footprints, and moved things that might have been of use to anyone attempting to reconstruct the events of the previous night.
Still, he seemed interested in a small patch of mud he found behind the door.
Beside the fireplace he found what appeared to be some ash or dirt.
"Did you see this?" he asked Lestrade.
"Her majesty's police," replied Lcstrade, "tend not to be excited by ash in a fireplace. It's where ash tends to be found." And he chuckled at that.
My friend took a pinch of the jsh and rubbed between his fingers, then sniffed the remains, Finally, he scooped up what was left of the material and tipped it into a glass vial, which he stoppered and placed in an inner pocket of his coat.
He stood up. "And the body?"
Lestrade said, "The palace will send their own people." My friend nodded at me, and together we walked to the door. My friend sighed. "Inspector. Your quest for Miss Rachel may prove fruitless. Among other things, Rache is a German word. It means revenge. Check your dictionary. There are other meanings."
We reached the bottom of the stair, and walked out onto the street. "You have never seen royalty before this morning, have you?" he asked. I shook my head. "Well, the sight can be unnerving, if you're unprepared. Why my good fellow—you are trembling!"
"Forgive me. I shall be fine in moments."
"Would it do you good to walk?" he asked, and I assented, certain that if I did not walk then I would begin to scream.
"West, then," said my friend, pointing to the dark tower of the Palace. And we commenced to walk.
"So," said my friend, after some time. "You have never had any personal encounters with any of the crowned heads of Europe?"
"No," I said.
"I believe I can confidently state that you shall," he told me. "And not with a corpse this time Very soon."
"My dear fellow, whatever makes you believe—?"
In reply he pointed to a carriage, black-painted, that had pulled up fifty yards ahead of us. A man in a black top-hat and a greatcoat stood by the door, holding it open, waiting, silently. A coat of arms familiar to every child in Albion was painted in gold upon the carnage door.
"There are invitations one does not refuse," said my friend. He doffed his own hat to the footman, and I do believe that he was smiling as he climbed into the box-like space, and relaxed back into the soft leathery cushions.