John Hartwell was at his post at the front door of the Langham Hotel when Jess and I arrived. Jess stayed several steps behind me and was dressed in reputably clean clothes and shoes with socks. She was able to slip into the hotel unnoticed while I engaged him in conversation.
“Congratulations on your reinstatement,” I said in a casual tone, as though the doorman and I were old friends.
“Thank ye. The coppers got a letter from a prominent citizen sayin’ the man who fingered me for the crime had disappeared, so there was none to testify against me. With no evidence, they had to let me go, and I don’t mind tellin’ ye, makin’ even one mistake can follow a man for the rest of ‘is life.”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “Good luck to you, Mr. Hartwell. I’m glad things worked out.” I took note of a fine carriage approaching the hotel and stepped toward the door. “Might you be able to point me to the bellhop’s desk?”
“Of course, sir.” He directed me to a discreetly placed desk just inside the entrance. Behind the desk was a closet in which I was reasonably sure bellhop uniforms were stored. The bellman at the desk was an ambitious fellow if his watch and shoe shine were to be believed, with a magnificent mustache and a discerning eye for men’s fashion. I nodded to the glass doors, through which a footman could be seen lowering the carriage steps.
“Hartwell will be needing your help with the Marchioness’s bags. I understand she’s an excellent tipper.” I had dropped my voice to the level of a confidence and winked at the bellman. His eyes darted to the view of a grand lady descending the steps, and he twirled his waxed mustache grandly.
“Won’t you excuse me just a moment, sir,” he said, barely glancing at me in his haste to get outside, and taking no note of Jess at all as she emerged from behind a potted plant and tucked herself into the closet.
Less than thirty seconds later she came out wearing a bellboy’s cap and a too-large jacket.
“Wait,” I said quietly, pulling her into the shadows behind the doors. I rolled the sleeves of the jacket under at her wrists and buttoned it closed.
“Just deliver the order for the countess’s tea service and stand clear so they forget you’re there,” I said quietly. “Make sure it’s her own service though.” It was common for the aristocracy to keep a set of their own china in the butler’s pantry of a fine hotel such as the Langham, so that meals served to them from the hotel kitchens had all the elegance of their private home.
Jess nodded impatiently and twisted out of my hands. She didn’t need me to remind her of details we’d thoroughly discussed, but I was afraid for her nonetheless. It was a sensation that sat uncomfortably in my stomach like gelatinous soup.
I watched her stride confidently into the kitchen, and then glanced around the hotel lobby for something on which to focus my attention while I waited. A man and his wife had just arrived at the Langham from a shopping trip to Paris, as evidenced by the tie of his cravat, the startling Parisian pink of the feathers in her hat, and the number of trunks the bellhops struggled to carry. A university student, just back from Cambridge, strolled across the room to greet his parents. The father’s impatience and the mother’s recent illness went unnoticed by the young man in his trepidation – most likely about his performance at school, if the slovenly condition of his coat and the swollen look of too much drink were any indication.
A glimpse of startlingly red hair down the back of a young woman of modest means and recent bereavement nearly distracted my attention from the kitchen door. A waiter in a room service uniform had emerged, carrying a platter with a teapot and two upturned cups on saucers. I stepped closer and focused on the faint sound of something rattling in the empty pot. I worried it was loud enough to draw the waiter’s attention when I saw the redheaded woman turn toward the waiter with a start of surprise, but Jess’s reappearance from the kitchen minus the bellhop’s uniform, no doubt left discreetly on a baker’s rack, refocused my attention on the mission at hand. Jess’s stealth as she trailed after the waiter up the staircase gave me the confidence that the countess’s carbuncle would be returned to her in her own teapot without incident.
“Ringo! There you are,” boomed the unmistakable voice of Oscar Wilde from the door to the restaurant. “We’ve been waiting for hours,” he complained dramatically.
“You’ve been waiting for less than five minutes,” I said, relaxing into a smile as I approached the table where Conan Doyle already sat. “Your tea is still steaming.” I had agreed to meet the gentlemen for tea as a cover for returning the carbuncle, and now that the deed was done, I felt free to enjoy their company.
Conan Doyle stood to grip my hand as Oscar shook his head in mock disgust.
“How does your spectacular wife allow you out of the house in such a boring cravat?” he asked, looking pointedly at my very reasonable, very constricting forest green silk.
Conan Doyle barked a laugh. “And what is the excuse for yours then?” He raised an eyebrow at the fanciful paisley coat Oscar had worn with an embroidered vest – a costume on anyone else, but it suited him perfectly.
Oscar made a grandly dismissive gesture. “If I am occasionally a little overdressed, I make up for it by being immensely over-educated.”
When laughter had died down, food had been ordered, and small talk dispensed with, Conan Doyle got to the business of the meeting.
“I did what you asked and made a call to Scotland Yard regarding Mr. Hartwell. Now what do you have for me?”
I looked beyond the dining room to the lobby where Jess again lurked behind the potted palm with which she’d become so familiar. She gave me a discreet nod, and I felt the last tension leave my body. The waiter Jess had followed hurried back to the kitchen, his tray empty and his expression bloodless and frantic. “Well, gentlemen, I believe there will soon be a small disturbance in the butler’s pantry.”
They both turned, despite being unable to see the door to the kitchens from our table. A moment later a man shouted, a woman shrieked, and the clatter of dishes filled the air. I didn’t bother to hide my smile as Conan Doyle and Oscar returned stunned gazes to me.
“What on earth was that all about?” Oscar exclaimed.
“The Countess of Morcar appears to have found her blue carbuncle in her own tea service, where it undoubtedly fell the last time she used it.”
Conan Doyle gaped at me, and Oscar whooped in triumph. “You did it!” he cheered. “Well done!”
Several patrons at other tables cast disapproving scowls in our direction, which the three of us roundly ignored. “Tell us how, and don’t leave anything out,” insisted Conan Doyle.
I did leave out one or two details, but nothing of any real importance to the story. When I had finished my tale and the excellent chocolate soufflé, Conan Doyle declared that Oscar may not steal my life for his work because he would be doing so. Oscar merely smiled, as if that had been his intention all along.
We stood to go, and Conan Doyle shook my hand heartily. “I do hope you’ll be good enough to meet with me the next time something interesting comes up. I find your powers of deduction to be quite fascinating indeed,” he said in his rolling Scottish burr.
I registered Oscar’s barely concealed smirk as another flash of red hair caught my eye. I turned to discover if I could see the face to which it belonged and glimpsed merely the swish of a long gray skirt turning a corner as the young woman vanished from sight. Even as I resolved to ask John Hartwell about the red-headed woman, I replied to Conan Doyle without thinking. “I’m sure there are more mysteries in London than just the missing blue carbuncle.”
Oscar walked out of the Langham with me, tipping his hat to the bemused Mr. Hartwell at the door. “Ringo, I already knew you had fascinating friends, but I had no idea you would turn out to be so very interesting yourself.”
I grinned and raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you?”
“Well,” he grinned, “come to think of it, perhaps I did. Your friend Saira was the beautiful girl who could travel through time, and Tom, the tortured soul who believed he was evil, yet it is Ringo, a reformed thief and man of my own time, who remains the greatest mystery of them all.”
I laughed. “Stick around, Oscar, there’s sure to be more to come.”
He and I parted ways at Portland Place, and I continued north toward Regent’s Park. A city block later, Jess fell into step beside me.
“Do ye want to run?” she asked.
“Not in this heat, with a too-tight coat and this cravat that is just tame enough that I’d rather not cover it in sweat stains.”
She held up my coin purse and dangled it carelessly from two fingers. “Not even for this?” she taunted, right before she took off at a full sprint down the street.
I huffed the sort of dramatic sigh that would have made Oscar proud, and then I took off running.