A Spider's Web by Liz Hedgecock

Author:Liz Hedgecock [Hedgecock, Liz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B099FK4L4Q
Goodreads: 58566260
Publisher: White Rhino Books
Published: 2021-09-28T23:00:00+00:00

CHAP­TER 24

I scrubbed at my face with a cloth, ex­am­ined the re­sult in the bath­room mir­ror, and groaned. The rouge had been easy to re­move, but the thick dark eye­brows were a dif­fer­ent mat­ter. They had faded to a light-brown shadow of them­selves, but were still most def­i­nitely present. I ap­plied more cold cream and sat on the edge of the bath to give it time to work, mak­ing a men­tal note to my­self to avoid such a heavy dis­guise in fu­ture un­less it was ab­so­lutely nec­es­sary.

Five min­utes later, the eye­brows were at last gone. I washed my face and went back to the bed­room to tame my hair, which had re­belled from its con­fine­ment into a springy mass of waves.

‘I’m in the con­sult­ing room,’ Sher­lock called. ‘Join me when you’re ready.’

When I en­tered the con­sult­ing room, feel­ing more my­self, Sher­lock had pinned some sheets of pa­per to the wall. Roughly in the mid­dle he had writ­ten BOMBER, and on the far left he had writ­ten MO­RI­ARTY?

‘Are you think­ing about what My­croft said?’ I asked as I reached his side.

‘I am,’ said Sher­lock, ‘and he has a point. The more I con­sider it, the more pe­cu­liar it is that some­one is spend­ing all this time in en­cour­ag­ing me to thwart them.’

‘In­deed,’ I said. ‘You should write that down.’

Sher­lock stepped for­ward, drew an ar­row from BOMBER, and wrote at the end of it: Pro­vides clues. Then he wrote Na­tional Por­trait Gallery at the top left of the pa­per and Speak­ers’ Cor­ner fur­ther along, and un­der­lined both. Un­der Speak­ers’ Cor­ner he wrote EASY, and un­der the first head­ing he wrote IN­TER­ME­DI­ATE.

‘Hope­fully the next one will be eas­ier still,’ I said.

Sher­lock drew ar­rows from the name MO­RI­ARTY, and added the words terse, busi­nesslike, se­cre­tive. From the word BOMBER he added com­mu­nica­tive, en­cour­ag­ing, emo­tional. Af­ter the last word he added a ques­tion mark.

‘I know what you mean,’ I said, ‘but it is not quite that. It is as if some­thing is bub­bling be­neath the sur­face.’ I took the pen from Sher­lock and added dan­ger­ous and ac­cess to ex­plo­sives.

‘My­croft is right, isn’t he?’ Sher­lock sighed and his shoul­ders sagged. ‘There is no rea­son to be­lieve it is Mo­ri­arty.’

I turned to him. ‘So why do you think it is him?’

Sher­lock shrugged. ‘It is noth­ing more than a feel­ing … but My­croft does not deal in feel­ings.’ He con­tin­ued to study the wall.

I touched his arm and he looked down at me. ‘That does not make My­croft the bet­ter man.’

‘Per­haps.’ Sher­lock gri­maced. ‘But it means he will not lis­ten to any­thing that is not based in cold, hard fact.’ He jabbed at the pa­per with his fore­fin­ger. ‘And while I am try­ing to solve this, I am get­ting pre­cisely nowhere with the Mon­tagu case.’ He scowled at the wall. ‘I have a good mind to wire Lestrade and tell him I’m giv­ing Mon­tagu up as a bad job.’

‘Have you found noth­ing in­crim­i­nat­ing?’

‘No, nor even sus­pi­cious. Ei­ther Humphrey Mon­tagu ought to be on the Lon­don stage as the pre­mier ac­tor of his gen­er­a­tion, or he is as hon­est as you or me.

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