A Study in Sable Read online

  And, of course, their interviewer could not possibly overlook the birds perched on their chairs, who were eyeing him with great interest.

  As for Nan . . . well, she found herself facing a man no one could call “handsome”—but no one would ever forget, either. It was not his costume that made him unforgettable. Men, of course, could wear the same suits for decades—perhaps even wear the suits their fathers passed down to them—and so long as they were not visibly worn or shabby, they would pass muster virtually anywhere. So there was not much to be learned by studying his suit except that he was as neat and clean as a well-cared-for housecat, in surprising counterpoint to the untidiness of his sitting room. Then again, a man who makes his living by examining the clues other men leave behind or carry about on their persons was unlikely to leave many clues on his.

  He was very tall, and very thin, so thin he seemed taller than he was. The neatly cut hair was very black, as were his bushy eyebrows. Sharp, piercing gray eyes gave the correct impression that he was taking note of absolutely everything. His thin, hawklike nose was of a piece with his thin face. He had very fine, graceful hands—the hands of a musician, which he was, although not professionally.

  Observation was merely putting the cap on what he had already learned. Nan was perfectly sure that he had uncovered all sorts of information about them before they ever arrived here, though she was also fairly certain he had dismissed a good half of what he’d learned about them as “superstition” and “twaddle.”

  This interview was for one reason only, and it was up to Nan and Sarah to pull off a coup. To prove to him that his assumptions were wrong.

  She lowered those mental shields that Karamjit had taught her so well how to put in place, and allowed herself to reach out to the gentleman’s mind.

  It was as tidy and orderly as his sitting room was untidy and chaotic, and as busy as one of the great factories where mills whirred and clattered and produced goods at a dizzying rate.

  “You’re thinking that I have managed to conquer my background as a street urchin to an astonishing degree. You’re marveling at how there is no trace of the guttersnipe in my speech, and you wonder if I’ve lost the East End brat entirely, or just learned the Queen’s English as if I was learning a second language.” Her mouth quirked a little. “Oil roight, guv’nor, wat’cher thinkin’ naow?” She continued as his eyes widened for just a fraction of a second. “Now you are thinking the world lost a talented actress when I declined to try the stage. Thank you for that flattery, but an ear for language is not the same as a talent for acting. I shall continue, with your permission.” She didn’t wait for it. “The last item you smoked before we arrived was your cherrywood pipe, your usual shag tobacco, although you had been considering a cigar, and now you are thinking I must have the same nose for tobacco products that you have; I assure you that I do not. To me they all smell alike. You were rereading some unsatisfactory letters from would-be clients as you were waiting for us. One was a tedious whinge from a gentleman who is certain his wife has taken a lover. One was a man who wants you to find his lost watch, another who wants you to find his lost hat, a third who wants you to find his lost dog and an attorney who wants you to find an heir. The only one that showed any signs of being interesting was the letter from the parents and fiancé of a missing girl; it is interesting to you largely because the young lady’s sister is the operatic diva, Magdelena von Dietersdorf, and the missing girl had accompanied her sister to London, then apparently vanished. There are aspects of this case that were initially intriguing, but you are wondering now if it is worth your while; you have made some slight enquiries at the opera house to gather gossip, and Fraulein von Dietersdorf asserts that her sister ran off with a young man to Canada, not having the courage to dismiss her affianced to his face, and that seems more likely to you than a mysterious disappearance.”

  Now I have your attention!

  She saw his right hand twitch a little, and she added, “Don’t bother to look at the papers again. There is nothing in them that I could have gleaned about this case. Fraulein does not want a scandal to spoil her operatic debut here in London, and it seems she rules her parents, rather than the other way around. Nothing of this has been released to the press, and the parents have come to you rather than the police in order to keep things as quiet as possible. You have seen them in person once, since you first received their letter.”

  She glanced over at Neville, who was observing the gentleman with narrowed eyes. “Neville thinks you should take the case. He believes that the parents’ instincts are correct.”

  The raven nodded gravely. So did the sylph who suddenly showed her dainty self just over the gentleman’s shoulder, hovering in midair, wings vibrating so fast they were a blur. Nan ignored the sylph. The gentleman did not believe in them, and it was not in her best interest right now to mention the Air Elemental.

  The gentleman had recovered his composure so quickly only someone like Nan would have known he had ever lost it in the first place. “These are clever conjuring tricks, Miss Killian,” he said dismissively. “I get dozens of letters from tedious people with equally tedious problems they wish me to solve, most of them are alike, and it takes no great effort to imagine what those problems might be. And as for the Von Dietersdorfs—you could easily have read the first page of the letter from where you sit, as it is pinned to the mantelpiece with my pocketknife.”

  “But the second, third, and fourth pages, sir?” Nan retorted. “I think not. I got that information from your own mind. The Von Dietersdorfs wrote you from Berlin before arriving in London. The father’s written English is excellent, and his spoken English nearly as good. You know Herr von Dietersdorf wrote this himself rather than employing a professional translator because he occasionally made the mistake of putting the verb at the end of his sentence, which no professional translator would ever do. The letter was written on stationery from the Hotel Berghof, which you yourself have stayed in, and know to be an establishment that caters to the wealthy merchant class. When you stayed at the Berghof last, which was about a year and a half ago, your room was on the west side of the fourth floor; you engaged it because it had an excellent view of a room directly across from it so that you could follow every movement of a man you were tracking, for purposes of your own which you did not divulge to anyone. Shall I go on?”

  The slight dilation of the gentleman’s pupils showed she had hit the mark squarely; no one, not even his closest friends, knew he had been in Berlin at that time, much less what hotel and what room he had stayed in, or for what purpose. He had, indeed, not told anyone why he had been there—or half a dozen other places that year.

  “Either you are the most remarkable agent I have ever met, Miss Killian,” he said, slowly, “Or—”

  “I am not an agent of the gentleman you were concerned with, as you should know, since your brother sent us.” She shrugged. “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” she said, daring to quote him. “Improbable as it may be, the simple truth is that I have the psychical Talent for reading thoughts, and I have performed my part of our audition for you by reading yours.”

  She sensed a veritable torrent of questions cascading through his mind, then. Chiefest among them was the dreadful worry—how many more like her are there? That was paired with an even deeper concern—and are any employed by my enemies? Especially—him?

  “You, sir, are uniquely gifted to prevent anyone from learning thoughts you do not wish them to know,” she continued, answering the question that he had not asked, even to himself, yet. “Your will is uncommonly strong, disciplined, and well ordered. If you are in a position where you fear your thoughts may be overlooked, all you need do is concentrate your mind on something trivial and appropriate; a complicated calculation, perhaps, or a chemical formulation, or the complete route you took to arrive at your destination. Keep your mind focused on that
, and that alone, and it will be as if you are shouting the information. It would take another Talent with a mind as sharp as yours to be able to discern any of your thoughts past that barrier.”

  Instantly, the gentleman’s mind filled with a chess problem. She smiled. “Exactly like that, sir. Chess problems are ideal. Even when you are disguised, chess is a hobby that transcends class, race, and wealth. Oh,” she added, “Do not concern yourself about performing these mental gymnastics at all times. A psychical receiver cannot easily discern the thoughts of an individual at any distance. It is not unlike trying to pick out a single voice in a theater audience. Even if you know the voice, even if you know the ‘words’ to listen for, once you are more than a few yards distant, the voice is lost in the general hubbub.”

  “But if one was alone—out on the moors, say?” he hazarded.

  “Ah. Then you would have to take some care. But except between people who are both psychical and related by bonds of blood or affection, it is still intolerably difficult to sense thoughts at a distance of greater than half a mile.” She nodded at the flash of relief in his eyes. “Also . . . while it is not unheard of, in general, anyone who is Talented in the way I am is either too empathic to function as a criminal or utterly mad. Not that the utterly mad could not be criminals,” she added thoughtfully, “But they generally betray themselves in their madness.”

  He blinked a little at that. “Well then,” he said, turning to Sarah. “Have you a similar demonstration to make?”

  She shook her head slightly. “Not in the way you expect,” she said candidly. “I am mediumistic, and there are no departed spirits hanging about you with whom I could converse.”

  A flash of humor lit his eyes, and his mouth quirked in a little smile. “Then you would be the first so-called medium I have ever encountered that has made that confession to me. Most of them seem to think that spirits are flocking about everyone like pigeons in pursuit of crumbs.”

  “Spirits have very little interest in the living,” Sarah laughed. “Which is just as well. However, you do have a bit of a guardian. A ‘watchdog’ is more what I would call it. Besides being mediumistic, Nan and I are also able to see what your friend the doctor has tried to convince you actually exist—creatures we call Elementals.”

  Nan gave a ladylike snort. “I hadn’t wanted to mention that, since I couldn’t prove it to him.”

  “Well, I would be remiss if I didn’t say something about it.” Sarah shrugged. “Sadly, as an Air Elemental, it’s not the most . . . reliable of watchdogs. It’s a sylph, and they do tend to be rather flighty.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Nan saw the sylph, a winged, half-naked little female about a foot tall, dart into clear view, stand up in midair with her wings beating furiously, stamp her tiny foot, put her fists on her hips in a gesture of offense, and then stick her tongue out at Sarah.

  The grey parrot—named Grey—laughed. “She’s angry!” Grey chortled. “Sarah! Be nice!”

  “You can talk!” the gentleman exclaimed, far more interested in that fact than that there was an Elemental guarding him.

  “So can I,” Neville the raven croaked. “We can talk, can you fly?”

  The gentleman sat straight up at that, and looked sharply from Neville to Grey and back again. Finally, he threw his hands in the air. “All right!” he growled, although he sounded as amused as irritated. “You can come out, John. The wretched girl is right. I have eliminated the impossible, and the improbable remains. Evidently my brother has not had wool pulled over his eyes by these young women. Consider them vetted.”

  A screen had been put up over by one window, and a man shorter than the gentleman interviewing them came from behind it. He was midsized, strongly built, with a square jaw, sandy hair, and a moustache, wearing a well-fitted black suit of the sort doctors usually chose. He was, in Nan’s estimation, quite handsome, and his slight limp only added to the attraction. After all, she thought wryly, What red-blooded girl doesn’t like a fellow who needs just a touch of nursing, now and again?

  John was laughing. “When have you ever known Mycroft to have the wool pulled over his eyes about anything, Holmes?” he asked. “You’ve said more than once, he’s more intelligent than you are.”

  “Intelligence is one thing,” Sherlock Holmes grumbled, though still with a hint of amusement. “I’ve known highly intelligent men to be gammoned by little girls.”

  “And they have the blessing of Lord Alderscroft,” John Watson went on.

  “Who, for all I know, is as mad as a hatter.” Holmes shrugged. “But if you are going to persist in gadding about, taking on the ridiculous cases I refuse to, I see no reason why Miss Killian and Miss Lyon-White cannot assist you. At least the psychical Talents of these young ladies have some basis in science, unlike your Elemental nonsense!” He snorted. “The discipline of deductive reason—”

  “Adductive,” corrected Sarah, before he could finish.

  He was surprised enough at being interrupted that he stopped in midsentence and turned back to her. “Eh?” he got out.

  “Adductive reasoning,” Sarah said, quietly. “You gather all the facts in a case. You add them together. You do not deduct anything. You use adductive reasoning to deduce the answer, not deductive reasoning.”

  Nan held her breath, afraid for a moment that the famous detective would react poorly to being corrected. But instead, he slapped his knee and laughed aloud, then turned back to Watson. “There, you see! I keep telling you this, Watson, and you persist in making the same mistake over and over in your prose. It’s adductive reasoning, and a mere girl has shown you up!”

  Watson’s jaw firmed stubbornly. “But people like the phrase ‘deductive reasoning,’” he countered. “It rolls off the tongue. ‘Adductive’ sounds wrong, particularly when paired with ‘deducing’ and ‘detecting.’ You leave the wordsmithing to me and Doyle, and I’ll leave the clue-spotting to you.”

  But Holmes could not stop chuckling over something he obviously considered to be a major victory over his Boswell. “All right, all right. Miss Lyon-White, for that, if for no other reason, I give you two my blessing to go haring off after ghasties and ghoulies with John and his wife. Take them up to Mary, Watson. I shall make no further objections. You all have my approval, not that you’d have listened to me in the first place if I forbade this nonsense. If you four want to waste your time on airy nonsense, who am I to interfere?”

  “Have I ever listened to you when you told me my cases were airy nonsense?” John replied, with a laugh of his own. He gestured to the girls, and they both rose, their birds hopping to their shoulders as they did so. “Come along upstairs and meet my better half.”

  They left the flat by the same door they had entered, and climbed the stairs to 221 C Baker Street. “When I was still a bachelor, our upstairs neighbor was a—thankfully—deaf old gent who lived alone. I say thankfully, because Sherlock is inclined at times to indoor shooting practice, and while Mrs. Hudson puts up with it, I doubt anyone who wasn’t deaf would have. Nor with his violin playing at odd hours when he’s in a fever of thinking. Sherlock came into some money and bought the old fellow out just after my wedding, and presented the flat to Mary and me as a wedding present.”

  “But—the stories—” Sarah ventured, as they all paused on the landing.

  “It serves us very well to let others think we reside elsewhere,” John Watson said gravely. “As Sherlock has pointed out, Mary and I are ready targets for his enemies. If the cost of keeping our place of residence a secret is that I have to sneak out by the servants’ entrance to go to my practice and pretend to enter and leave a block of flats near it, so be it.”

  Personally, Nan thought that was a capital idea. It had occurred to her more than once that collecting enemies meant that those enemies would look for a weakness in your defenses—and being known to be fond of someone was a weakness.

  The
door to C was not marked by a nameplate; John inserted a key and opened it, waving the girls and the birds in before him. The sitting room that greeted them was as bright and tidy as Sherlock’s was dim and messy. The room was painted rather than papered, in a cheerful yellow with the trimwork in white enamel; the drapes were a deep gold, a color that would stand up to the London soot. The carpets were unfashionable and sturdy. Pictures were good prints rather than bad originals, mostly of rural scenes. There was a homely scent of toast and cinnamon in the air. Nan felt at home immediately, for it was not unlike the Harton School when it had been in London; old furniture, slightly out of fashion, reupholstered in durable material. None of the fussy lace and furbelows most fashionable wives seemed to think was necessary. Everything was of good quality and meant to last, but not new; made for comfort and use, not looks. There were books; most of the walls were taken up with bookcases stuffed with books. There were two desks, and beside one of them was the sort of heavy bag generally carried by doctors. The focal point of the sitting room was the hearth, which featured the only really new thing in the room, a modern fireplace stove. Presiding over a nicely laden tea table by the hearth was a petite blond woman, her hair in a French Roll like Nan’s. She was not pretty, but she had truly wonderful eyes. And when she smiled at them all in greeting, her face was quite transformed by the expression. She rose in greeting as they entered.