The Game (8 page)

I reared back to stare at the child, speechless. A Berlin night-club was not a thing I’d have thought Sunny’s mother would have allowed her daughter within a mile of.

“Er, yes.”

“Well, I haven’t seen one” (Thank goodness for small mercies, I thought.) “but Tommy told me about one girl who dances on stage with a big snake. And that made me think about the snake charmers in India, and, voilà!”

“Where are you going to get a snake?” I asked. Did snakes perhaps not come under the P. & O.’s pet-exclusion clause?

“Not a real snake, silly!” Sunny’s eyes danced. “I’m having the
durzi
make up a snake for me—
durzi
’s what they call tailors in India—and I’ll wear it around my shoulders. And I have a dress that matches its skin. Won’t that be fun?”

I thought that it might be more fun than she was prepared for, considering the number of young men on board. “It sounds . . . exotic. But, Sunny? Perhaps you shouldn’t mention Berlin in relation to the costume. Those night-clubs might be considered somewhat . . . risqué for a girl your age.”

“Okay. But what do you think of the snake idea?”

“I think you’ll have every young man on the ship slithering along the decks after you,” I said.

She giggled.

However, later that evening as we were dressing for dinner, Holmes astonished me as well. He chose a moment of weakness on my part, as he was brushing my long hair.

“Russell, I think it might be a good idea to go to this costume ball.”

“Holmes!”
I jerked away from his hands to look up at him. “Are you feverish?”

“Russell, I did not say that
I
intended to go.”

“Oh no. If I have to go, so do you.” I took the hair-brush from him and turned to the looking-glass. “But why on earth should either of us wish to dress up with a room of drunken first-class passengers wearing bizarre clothing?”

“Thomas Goodheart.”

Holmes had continued to cultivate the young man’s acquaintance—I cannot call it a friendship, precisely—and the two spent a part of every day either lounging on the deck or in the depths of the all-male enclave of the smoking room, playing billiards, whist, or occasionally poker. My husband’s uncharacteristic sociability with the supercilious young American might have puzzled me had I not overheard some of their conversations, and known that, more often than not, the Communist Party and the politics of India were the chief topics of Holmes’ casual enquiries. Still, to Mr Goodheart I was clearly beyond the pale. Educated, free-thinking women were not his cup of tea, and he made no attempt at concealing that fact.

“Is Goodheart going? I shouldn’t have thought his convictions would permit him the frivolity of a fancy-dress ball.”

“His mother assures me that he will be attending.”

To observe the enemy, or to convert the bourgeoisie to earnest Bolshevism? “But why should his presence or absence at a fancy-dress ball be of the least interest to you?”

“I have found the lad peculiarly . . . self-contained. Remarkably so—I’ve seldom seen a man who gives away as little as this one. I believe he knows more than he tells.”

I considered the statement for a moment, but failed to make a connexion. “Sorry, Holmes, what does self-containment have to do with fancy dress?”

“A costume ball is all about masks and the freedom they confer on the wearers. I wish to see what the fellow looks like when he imagines himself concealed.” Seeing that I had my hair wrapped into place, he handed me a pin.

“Ah,” I said. “You wish to get him drunk and see what he lets slip.”

“Sometimes the old methods are the best,” Holmes said, although he looked somewhat abashed at the admission.

“You think Goodheart is some kind of a villain?”

“I think it possible, although it is far from clear whether his particular brand of villainy need concern us. Still, it is the sort of thing Mycroft likes to hear about, to pass on to his fellows. Assuming,” he muttered, “anyone in the incoming government will be interested in stray Bolsheviks.”

“Oh, very well, I shall go if you wish. But I don’t know what sort of costume we might pull together at this late date—all the Cleopatra masks and chimney-sweeper’s coats are sure to have been taken. And I do not think it at all appropriate to dress as Lady Godiva,” I said, picking up an extra and unnecessary hair-pin and jamming it in for emphasis.

“I have an idea,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, stifling a sigh. “I was afraid you might.”

A sari is not
a carefree sort of garment. To a person accustomed to clothing that remains where it was put, the lack of any fastening more secure than gravity is, to say the least, disconcerting. A sari, I found when Holmes presented me with the thing, was little more than a remarkably skimpy blouse and an enormous length of impossibly slippery silk, which is arranged into intricate folds and tucked into what amounts to little more than a piece of string around one’s waist, after which the loose end (hah! It is all loose end.) is drawn gracefully up across one’s chest and over the opposite shoulder, where it then spends the entire evening yearning to slither to the floor, taking the rest of the garment with it. If the wearer were to suck in her stomach, many, many yards of silk would collapse into a lovely pool on the floor around her near-naked legs. And this was before I added the gossamer silk shawl over my head and shoulders.

The fourth time I tried the thing, standing before the glass afraid to breathe, I scowled at the reflection of Holmes behind me. “You had this planned back in Port Said and didn’t warn me.”

“Not planned, precisely. I merely thought it best to have the costumes, just in case.”

Holmes’ fancy dress, hanging in the wardrobe, looked by comparison a thing of Chanel-like comfort. He was attending as an Indian nobleman, with snug white trousers underneath a gold brocade jacket trimmed with chips of topaz. At the moment he was trying on the snowy white turban or
puggaree
(whose intricate folds, unlike those of the sari, had come pre-arranged on a hatmaker’s dummy). At its front was a spray of peacock feathers, which he eyed critically in the glass.

“Are you going to wear your emeralds?” he said suddenly.

Trying to avoid motion, I looked back at my reflection. The sari slid from my shoulder, and I snatched at it to avert the unwinding process, but too late. Half the tucks came crooked, and I cursed under my breath.

“I’ll trade you my necklace for your emerald stick-pin,” I told him grimly.

Ah, success! With the sari’s end secured to the under-blouse with Holmes’ tie pin, the danger of instant nudity retreated considerably. Then during the afternoon I hunted down the purser and, by dint of offering an enormous bribe, found a stray maid willing to come with a needle and thread to sew me into the folds and tucks.

And in truth, the emerald necklace looked magnificent nestled among the peacock feathers on the
puggaree
.

When the maid had scurried away with her needle and her payment, I sat down to arrange my hair. Indian women tend to wear theirs gathered into a heavy knot at the base of their necks, which was not a style I found easy to arrange without assistance. As I was struggling to contain my own hair, which was sufficiently long but lacked the malleability of black hair, Holmes came in. I glanced in the glass, and had to smile.

“You look regal, Holmes.”

He walked over to where I sat, and wordlessly removed the brush from my hand.

Where Holmes learnt to arrange a woman’s hair I never knew—never wished to ask—but he was remarkably proficient at it. It was, however, never easy to stifle the sensations caused by his strong hands in my hair, the palm smoothing the strands after the brush had passed through, the clever fingers working their way from one side to the other, gathering the heavy length in a controlling grip, tugging and smoothing and shaping. In this instance, lest something begin that put all our preparations to naught, I shut my eyes and thought of England, horrible and cold under the snow, wet and miserable and filled with political turmoil. His long fingers smoothed and twisted, sending delicious tingles down my spine, and cold England faded. But in a few minutes my hair was sleekly gathered in a secure but comfortable knot, and Holmes’ hands drew away, after a brief grasp on my shoulders and the salute of a kiss where the heavy bun now lay against my neck. I pushed away a shiver and reached firmly for my ear-rings, then draped the breath-fine silk scarf across my shoulders and slid my hand through the arm of my nobleman.

Dignity, I remembered as we drew near the ball-room, was not a necessary component of a dress ball. The ducal version we had attended just the month before had been bigger than this one, and more elaborate, but the passengers made up for numbers and style in sheer high spirits. I balked just inside the entrance, and Holmes spoke into my ear.

“I believe we shall both require a quantity of champagne to get through this. Wait here.”

Obedience occasionally has its place, particularly when it allows one’s husband to press through to the nearest tray-bearing waiter. Holmes took many admiring looks, from women for the most part, and amused me by appearing oblivious of all. He returned with two glasses of the fizzy stuff, which we lifted to each other, then poured down our throats.

One problem with fancy dress comes when one wishes to find a particular person whose disguise one does not know. I was quite certain that Sunny Goodheart was not yet here, since there was no sign of a snake, nor of the snake-dance line of males that was sure to follow as soon as she passed through the room. And although her brother’s height should have made him instantly recognisable, a number of tall hats and
puggaree
s protruded above the heads, concealing their wearers’ stature. Holmes and I waited, drinking our wine, turning down dance offers from individuals of both sexes and (apparently) neither.

Then a ripple ran through the room, and I turned, already smiling, to see the snake charmer. And my suspicions were correct, it was an extraordinary costume, which on a less naïve and charming individual would have been instantly engulfed in a travelling rug and ushered briskly outside. As it was, Sunny looked like a child dressed in a harem outfit, her wriggles for fun, not seduction, her innocence shining out under the sinuous creature that lay across her shoulders. The dress was not quite as form-fitting as the snake’s skin, but was not far off. What saved it were the multiple layers of scarf she wore over it, gauzy and shifting. The effect was that of a snake shedding its old and lacy skin for the bright, snug new one beneath. I tipped my head to the man at my side and murmured, “If they’re aiming her at their maharaja, all they have to do is make sure there’s a fancy-dress ball.”

“Pardon?” asked a strange voice.

Startled, I glanced up at the person beside me, whose ears were somewhat higher than those of my husband, and who might therefore have missed my hugely impertinent words. It was Thomas Goodheart, but to my enormous consternation, it was also Sherlock Holmes—not he of the Sussex cottage but the figure of stage and, recently, screen, complete with deerstalker, absurdly large calabash pipe, and tweed cloak.

I gaped at the figure,
my mind working furiously to understand the meaning of his costume. Tom Goodheart, in the meantime, allowed his glance to trail down my own length of silk. “You would look at home in Jimmy’s palace, Mrs Russell. Very, um, authentic.”

“I, er, thank you. You too. That is to say, not in the palace.”
You’re babbling, Russell,
I said to myself.
Stop it.
“Your sister’s costume is extraordinary.”

“Isn’t it just? I can’t imagine what my mother had in mind, allowing that. Still, it’s not as bad as it was before she added the scarfs and scrubbed off her rouge.”

“She’s a great girl,” I said.

“Yes, she’s all right. She’s very fond of you.”

What is it about the subtle signs between men and women? The words themselves were completely innocent and his eyes remained on my face, but some tiny pause before the word “fond,” some slight emphasis of voice or intensity of gaze, made it abundantly clear that Thomas was talking neither about his sister nor about mere fondness. For the first time, I became conscious of a streak of iron beneath the waffle, and caught a glimpse of someone older and considerably more determined under the rich boy’s bland features.