Chapter 7
I arrived at lunch out of breath and a few minutes late, but my father didn’t even notice. He said hello to me like I was some kind of distant relative, without even asking where I had been or who I had met.
I tried to start a conversation, but my father gave short answers. He ordered a roast with steamed vegetables on the side and ate in silence.
When my father was done eating, he placed his napkin on the table and politely asked the waiter to take away his plate. He had barely eaten any of his meat.
“Listen,” he began, with a long breath. “Your mother has not responded to the telegrams.”
“Are you worried?” I asked foolishly. Of course he was. Everyone was. The news coming from Paris and the Franco-Prussian War covered the front pages of every newspaper.
“I’m going to get her,” he said.
“And are you both going to come back here?” I asked quietly.
“Of course,” he answered, without looking into my eyes.
Then he shook his head as if to shake off his worry, and pulled out a red book from the pocket of his jacket. It had a hard cover and a fabric bookmark. He handed it to me with a tiny smile.
It was a small and elegant tourist guide of the city, with black and white pictures of London’s main attractions. On the page where the bookmark was lodged, Papa had written in small print by the text.
“These are the things you should see while you’re here,” he explained.
Only at that moment did he look straight at me, and I could tell by looking in his eyes that he had not slept well. “Will you promise me you’ll behave for Mr. Nelson? The idea of leaving you alone here . . . in a city you don’t know —”
“Papa,” I interrupted him, reaching my hand across the table to touch his. I felt his hand tense up under my grasp. After all, this serious businessman was not used to people being nice — and he certainly wasn’t used to physical contact. “I’m not alone.”
“I already explained to Horatio that —”
I kept my hand on his. “Mr. Nelson and I will be just fine. I mean it. Don’t worry about me.”
He nodded and looked away from me. Then he took his hand away and hid it under his napkin.
* * *
Compared to Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, the guide to London was boring to say the least. I realized it that afternoon, when, while flipping through its pages on my bed, I fell asleep.
I dreamed. I remember it perfectly. My dream seemed to be based on the few pages I had read on the Tower of London and the people who had been kept as prisoners there. I dreamed of the performance from the previous night. I dreamed about Miss Merridew. She wore a white gown, like an angel, and she was running on a dangerous wooden staircase. In my dream, I was sure that it was the staircase at the Tower of London, even though I had never seen it. I tossed and turned in bed, upset but unable to wake up. In my dream, Miss Merridew arrived at a closed door at the top of the stairs and started to knock, louder and louder.
Bang.
Bang!
BANG!
The door wouldn’t open. She kept looking behind her like she feared someone was coming after her. Then she saw him. She turned and saw someone who made her scream in fear.
I woke up. I was the one screaming. I had kicked the bedsheets all over the place and had fallen asleep with my clothes on. What time was it? Three? Four? I rubbed my face in confusion.
Bang! Bang!
That noise again, not far away from me. It was then that I realized that someone was knocking on my bedroom door. Without thinking, I ran to open it. And who was standing there but the curious Sherlock Holmes.
“Sherlock?” I asked, surprised.
“Were you screaming?” he asked.
“A dream,” I quickly answered.
I saw a strange look in my friend’s eyes, as if he had something important to tell me, and I was curious to find out what it was.
What was he doing here? And how did he find my room? At that point, I had not learned this yet . . . when you are dealing with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, it is pointless to ask questions.
Suddenly, I realized I was not at all presentable and, by instinct, I tried to brush my fingers through my hair and flatten out my wrinkled skirt.
But that was all Sherlock allowed me to do.
“Can I come in?” he asked me quite directly.
I let him in, glad to rebel against the etiquette my parents had taught me. “What’s happening?” I asked him, leaning my back against the closed door.
He stopped near the closet and did his signature halfway turn. I knew this move quite well — he used it to observe the details of his surroundings. Then he held out a brand-new copy of the Evening Mail, a London newspaper.
“You can’t even imagine,” he said. His tone was unusually serious; it immediately caused me to worry. I grabbed the paper from him and read the first page. Sherlock sat on the edge of the bed. As he looked around the room, he spotted the red guide to London.
“Good publication . . . if you’re looking for all the boring things that you must not see in London,” he said, smiling as he walked over to pick it up off my desk.
In the meantime, I read every headline in the Evening Mail, looking for something that would catch my attention. News of the Franco-Prussian War took up almost the whole paper, but I knew that was not what Sherlock wanted me to read.
“I don’t understand . . .” I said, looking up at him.
Sherlock had opened the London guide and was reading it. Without even looking at the newspaper, he pointed at an article on the bottom left-hand corner of the front page.
I began to read. Alfred Santi, personal assistant of Giuseppe Barzini, the famous composer, had been found murdered in his hotel room.
I looked at Sherlock, my mouth open in shock. “When?”
“Last night. At the Hotel Albion.”
I remembered the two young men from the previous night at the theater — Barzini’s two young assistants that I had seen bump heads as they both bowed. One of them was Alfred Santi. A victim of a front-page murder!
I felt shivers move down my spine. But while it was a significant piece of news, it did not explain the worried look on Sherlock’s face.
Sherlock considered murders exciting problems to solve. There had to be more to the story.
“And how did it happen?” I asked, suspicious.
Sherlock quickly flipped through the pages of the guide. “Finish reading the article,” he told me.
According to the journalist, they caught the murderer. And it was a French acrobat, whose name was . . . Théophraste Lupin!
I stopped breathing. I closed my eyes, swallowed, and then opened my eyes again. All the letters were still there in front of me, lined up to make that name.
Théophraste Lupin.
My friend Arsène’s father.