I did not wonder for long. My soft boots made chuffing sounds on the worn steps all the way to the top floor. I rapped on Holmes’ door, stepped inside—and immediately bowed and scraped my panic-stricken way backwards into the hallway.
“Effendi, ten thousand apologies, I fear I have the wrong room, I did not intend—” I closed the door, stood and stared at it for a long, puzzled moment, before realising that even if the sergeant had his suspicions about a hastily departing labourer, he could not have arranged for this both immediate and high-ranking a response. Besides which—I reached again for the worn iron door handle and put my head back inside. “Holmes?”
The sleek figure—shiny high boots, immaculate khaki uniform, polished belt, starched hat, perfect hair, trimmed moustache, and the swagger stick he had been slapping against his elegant leg— turned with a diabolical grin on his face.
“Good Lord, Holmes, what on earth are you doing in that get-up? You’ll be arrested!” I had seen the man in any number of disguises, from paternal gipsy to ageing roué to buxom flower-seller, but none more outlandish, given his personality, than this one.
He just stood there and laughed at me. “By God, Russell,” he finally choked out, ”it was worth the untold bother of this fancy dress uniform and ten thousand accursed salutes to see you cringe like that. I didn’t know you were capable of it. You were slinking, Russell. Positively slinking.”
I didn’t think it at all amusing, and told him so. “You nearly gave me heart failure, Holmes. I thought you were here to arrest me for stealing antiquities. I ought to turn you in for impersonating an officer.”
He wiped his eyes and blew his nose, and began to divest himself of hat, stick, and military belt. “I wear this uniform with the approval of the highest authorities—although it is a decidedly temporary commission,” he added. “What antiquities have you stolen?”
I took out the tiny handkerchief-wrapped object, dropped into a squat on the floor, and opened the cloth parcel out on the floorboards. I picked up the little glass vase to examine it, rubbing the encrustations cautiously away, but the neck had a crack in it, and part of it came away in my fingers. A pity.
Still, it had spoken its message to me, even in pieces.
“This is a Roman phial, Holmes. Probably third or fourth century.”
“Yes?”
“So what was it doing among the rubbish being cleared from a Mediaeval bazaar?”
He sat down on his low pallet, a difficult manoeuvre while wearing rigid knee-high boots. “You are the historian here, Russell. What would you suggest it was doing there?”
I set the two pieces on the scrap of dirty linen and made myself comfortable on the floor. “This poor little thing was jerked forwards in time sixteen hundred years or so, and I should say it happened no earlier than the last couple of nights. Someone is clearing out an underground chamber.”
“Good. Oh, very good, Russell.”
I opened my mouth to begin the analysis of the someone’s character that I had constructed while I was working, but before I could say anything he stood up and pulled on his hat and belt.
“I shall have a car call for you at seven o’clock. It is now”—he patted his various pockets until he found the one he wanted, dipped in with his fingers, and brought out a silver watch on a chain— “three forty-five. That may even allow you time for a brief nap, although I suggest that you plan to devote considerable attention to the state of your fingernails.”
I held up my hands and looked at them. The nails were in a lamentable state, it was true, but if anything they added to the verisimilitude of my disguise.
“Why?”
“Because we are dining, of course,” he said in surprise, snapping his stick briskly under one arm. “At the American Colony. Not formal dress, of course. After all, there has been a war on.”
“Oh, no, Holmes, you can’t mean—”
He opened the door. “I left a frock in your room. If there is any other thing I’ve forgotten, ask Suleiman the cook to arrange it. I shall see you at seven.”
I did seriously consider an outright refusal of his peremptory summons; I wanted nothing but to strip off my turban and collapse onto my gently rustling bed. However, curiosity got the better of me— that and the challenge, which had not been voiced but which I knew had been made.
My fingernails, however, defeated me. In the end, after a hasty consultation of my Arab-English dictionary, I went through the room shared by Ali, Mahmoud, and most of our baggage (the men were not there; the door was unlocked) and called down the outside stairs to Suleiman the cook that I needed a pair of women’s gloves, quickly, and to send a boy out into the bazaar for them.
My hair, too, was in a sorry state, but I eventually combed it back into a sleek knot and examined myself critically in the mottled glass Holmes had brought to my cubicle along with frock, stockings, shoes, hairpins, earrings, and all the accoutrements of female preparation. He knew the routine, give him that: he’d even thought to include a small bottle of expensive scent, which I used rather more liberally than was my wont. Cold water does not actually cleanse.
Still, I thought I might pass, if I did not forget myself and drop to my haunches or let loose with a florid Arabic curse. The frock was of an outdated fashion, perhaps more appropriate here than in London, with a high neck, long sleeves, and low hem. It was a nicely made garment, in a dark maroon fabric with touches of white that clung and moved and distracted the eye from the tint of my skin, which no amount of rice powder would lighten.
I examined my reflection and had to wonder uneasily if Holmes had intended for me to look quite so… exotic. The young woman looking back at me seemed, shall I say, sensuous—loose, even, like some Eurasian temptress in a bad novel. On the whole, I thought perhaps the effect was accidental; had he been deliberately aiming at the effect, he would probably have included a bottle of hair-rinse to make my blonde hair colour seem artificial.
A selection of gloves arrived, and shortly thereafter Ali and Mahmoud came up the stairs. They stood in the doorway, frankly staring at me, but I absolutely refused to blush. Instead, I turned to them for their opinion.
“What do you think, the white gloves or the lacy ones?”
Ali just gawped. Mahmoud examined the two choices, and his lips twitched. I chose the long lacy ones, which, as they were more difficult to get on and off, might excusably be retained during dinner.
With no more self-consciousness than a pair of cats the two men watched me complete my toilette, tug the gloves into place, and check my hairpins. Finally Ali said, “There is a motorcar in the road.”
“Why didn’t you say so earlier?” I asked in irritation, catching up the evening cloak and pushing past them to reach the external stairway—it was dark now, and outside there would be less chance of observers to remark on the inn’s bizarre guest. I was picking my cautious way down the stairs when I heard Mahmoud’s voice from above me.
“Is your hair the colour that is called ‘strawberry blonde’?” he asked.
I stopped. “I suppose so,” I answered. When no other enquiries followed, I shrugged my shoulders and continued down the stairs, but before I reached the cobbles, a strange noise filled the dirty little yard: a man’s voice, a tenor, singing. It took a moment for the words to register, by which time a second voice, a baritone, had joined in. “ ‘I danced with the girl with the strawberry curls,’ ” they sang, “ ‘and the band played on…’ ” The old tune followed me out the gates, and as I was being handed into the car by the driver the words dissolved into laughter. I shook my head. It was like living with a pair of adolescent boys. And Holmes was at times no better.