A brief look of uncertainty crossed her face, but then the corners of her mouth curled in a coquettish smile. “That would be delightful.”
He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, snatched free a calling card, and presented it to her. “Here is my card. Please let me know of a convenient time we might meet again.”
“I look forward most anxiously,” she said, plucking the card from his grip. And then, in an unambiguous sign of affection, touched a hand to his forearm. The press of her slender fingers, elegant in elbow-length gloves, lingered a moment longer than necessary.
“Until then,” she said, smiling sweetly, “au revoir.”
Crinoline rustled as she swept up her skirts and climbed into the hansom. Before the cab door folded over her legs, Conan Doyle checked to ensure that none of her skirts were trapped, then called up to the driver, “Blackheath, Jim, and drive carefully. The fog is worsening and you convey a most precious cargo.”
The cabbie nodded. “The worst I seen this year, Doctor Doyle. But don’t you worry none, she’ll be safe as houses with Iron Jim.”
Conan Doyle handed up a sovereign coin, scandalously overpaying. The cabbie tugged the brim of his rumpled bowler in salute, then shook the reins and clucked for the horse to pull away. Coach lights blazing, the hansom plunged into the murk and vanished from sight before it had gone thirty feet, but the image of her smile hovered eidetically on the roiling gray fog.
And then, gallingly, Conan Doyle remembered he had forgotten to ask for Miss Leckie’s calling card in return. Apart from the fact that she lived with her parents in the London suburb of Blackheath, he had no clue as to her address.
The hansom’s departure revealed another carriage waiting at the curbside: a Black Mariah, a hulking, four-wheeled coffin used by the Metropolitan police to haul criminals to jail and condemned prisoners to the gallows — evidently the means by which Detective Blenkinsop had arrived. Two uniformed constables hunkered on the seat, mouths and noses muffled with thick woolen scarves to filter the choking air. Even though two large coach lights burned bright on either side of the Mariah, the blinding fog also obliged two additional officers brandishing flaming torches to lead the horses and light the way.
A convulsive shiver shook Conan Doyle’s large frame as the fog ran an icy finger down his spine. The November night was too bitterly cold to tarry long without a coat, and so he slipped quickly back inside the restaurant.
In the welcome warmth of the Palm Room, Conan Doyle dropped into his dinner companion’s vacated seat and waited patiently until Detective Blenkinsop finished sipping his brandy, the color flushed back into his face, and the spark of intellect burned once again in his eyes.
“Obviously it’s a murder,” Conan Doyle ventured. “An extremely bloody one judging by the state of your raincoat.”
The hand holding the brandy snifter tremored visibly. “It’s a murder all right, sir. But not like nothing I ever seen before.”
“It must be something truly dire to have distressed a detective used to witnessing the worst of humanity’s deeds.”
Blenkinsop shook his head. At just twenty-six, he was alarmingly boyish-looking. He had been promoted to detective just six months previously, in recognition of a feat of bravery: a deranged gunman walked into the crowd gathered outside the gates of Buckingham Palace and began firing his pistol at random. Two people had been shot dead as other constables looked on helplessly. Blenkinsop single-handedly tackled the madman to the ground and disarmed him. In recognition of his valor, he had been promoted to detective, the youngest ever on the force. Although he had grown the wispy suggestion of a moustache in an attempt to look older, he still more closely resembled a fresh-faced schoolboy summoned to the headmaster’s office to receive a caning.
“I’d rather say as little as possible,” Blenkinsop said. “I figured to fetch you so you can see for yourself.” He tossed back the dregs of his liquor, nostrils flaring as he exhaled brandy fumes. “You might have a stiff ’un yourself, afore we go. I reckon even a doctor’s nerves will need steadying.”
Stepping into the chill night was like an open-handed slap across the face. For days, a pestilential fog, known in the popular vernacular as a “London Particular,” had suffocated the capital city beneath a yellow-green blanket. Appearing each evening at the mouth of the Thames, the fog oozed up the river and spilled over onto the surrounding streets, submerging all but the tallest church spires. Fogs were common at this time of year, but rather than abating after a few days as most fogs did, the mephitic cloud seemed to worsen with each evening. After a full week of such fogs, the night air was cold and abrasive, a gritty cloud of pumice swirling with ash, soot, and firefly-like embers that burned the lungs and needled tears to the eyes. The fog muffled sound and shrank the sprawling metropolis to a murky circle of visibility, scarcely twenty feet in any direction.
Detective Blenkinsop snatched wide the battle-scarred rear door of the Mariah and gestured for the Scottish author to step aboard. “Forgive the means of transport, sir. Uncomfortable, I admit, but she’ll get us there, no bother.”
As Conan Doyle climbed into the boxy carriage, a strangely familiar smell assailed his senses — Turkish tobacco smoke — and he was surprised to find that the Mariah already had an occupant.
“Ah,” spoke an urbane voice, “it appears I am not the only prisoner tonight. I bid you welcome, fellow riffraff.”
It was only then Conan Doyle realized that the shadowy shape he had at first mistaken for a small bear was in fact a large Irishman.
“Oscar!”
Oscar Wilde wore a gorgeous fur overcoat with an enormous fur collar and cuffs. Atop his head perched a muskrat hat — a trophy fetched from his North American travels. Conan Doyle had ridden in Black Mariahs before, which invariably bore an aura of abject despair and reeked like public urinals in the worse part of London, but Wilde’s expensive cologne and piquant tobacco smoke bullied the air of its malodorous stink while his insouciant gravitas commandeered the space and made it his own. A small oil lantern swung from a hook in the ceiling, and in the wan pulse of amber light the Irish wit resembled the sultan of some exotic country being carried to his coronation in an enclosed sedan chair.
Conan Doyle slid in beside his friend, and Detective Blenkinsop dropped onto the bench opposite. The door of the Mariah banged shut and a constable standing outside locked them in. The horses were gee’d up and the Mariah rumbled away on wobbly axles squealing for a lick of grease.
“I am always happy to see you, Oscar,” Conan Doyle said. “But I confess you are the last person I would expect to meet in a Black Mariah.”
The hot coal of Wilde’s cigarette flared red as he drew in a lungful and jetted smoke out both nostrils. “Scotland Yard’s best have been combing the city for you. Detective Blenkinsop recruited me to assist in the search. We stopped at The Savoy, Claridge’s, and then your club. When you were discovered at none of them, given the hour, I plumped for the Tivoli and am gratified to see my guess was correct.” Wilde swept Conan Doyle’s dress with an appraising gaze and his full lips curled in a supercilious smile. “And now I understand why you were avoiding your usual haunts.”
Conan Doyle stiffened in his seat. “I, ah… I was supping with a friend. A fellow member of the Society for Psychical Research.”
“A fellow member, but not a fellow, per se?” Wilde remarked in a deeply incriminating voice. “You are quite the dog, Arthur. I suspect you were entertaining a lady!”
Conan Doyle blanched as Wilde pierced the bull’s-eye with his first arrow.
“I… how on earth did you know that?”