Materialising out of nowhere was a traditional part of the Sherlock Holmes mystique. However, I knew his methods all too well, and it did not take long to put the pieces together. My telegrams had not summoned him into a mad aeroplane dash from out of a distant Roumanian mountain. Nor had his spymaster brother been keeping tabs on me. Holmes had not noted the distinctive soil on a passing shoe and matched it with the hair from a Gibraltar ape and a flower known only in Monaco…

None of those things had been required—because he was already here. I’d told him three weeks ago in Venice roughly where the Stella Maris was going, and approximately how long it would take. He knew back in May that his long-time housekeeper was thinking of heading to Monte Carlo. It was no great leap to know that I would, finding myself on the Riviera, seek her out. All he had to do was wait in a place near the well-beaten path. Although that did leave the question of why.

But I started with his cuff-links.

“Really, Holmes—diamonds?”

He raised one wrist to give the garish object an approving look. “Hideous, aren’t they?”

“The suit is nice, though. Italian?”

“I had it made as I passed through Rome.”

One did not “pass through” Rome on the way from Roumania to Monaco, or even from Venice, but I ignored the blatant red herring. “I see you decided to keep the moustache.”

“I did shave it, upon leaving Venice, but I let it grow again before I came here. It seemed to go with the diamonds.” His fingers came up to smooth the narrow line on his upper lip.

“A most precise decoration,” I said. “Though not as carefully engineered as one I saw last night near Antibes.”

“Ah: you have met Count Vasilev.”

God, the man’s omniscience could be irritating. I gave up and went for straight interrogation.

“How long have you been here, Holmes?”

“Only a day or so.”

“How many?”

“Two,” he admitted. “And a half.”

“Have you found Mrs Hudson?”

“I have seen her.”

“But you don’t know where she’s living?” I was surprised—after two days, I’d have thought Holmes would not only have located her house, but her maid, her hair-dresser, and her bank-manager as well. Perhaps things worked differently in Monaco. And perhaps asking at the local police station wouldn’t have led me to her, after all.

“Not yet. Either she has been remarkably inconspicuous, or the Monégasques I have spoken with have been singularly close-mouthed. She is definitely here—I have seen her three times, although each time she has been going somewhere other than home. And before you ask—no, we have not spoken. I do not believe she has spotted me.”

“You’re spying on her?”

“I would not put it that way, precisely.”

“How would you put it?”

“I am attempting to confirm that the agreement I reached with her, long ago, still stands.”

That agreement had amounted to a sort of lifetime parole: she could remain in England, but only under his roof, living a life of obedience and morality.

“You honestly don’t trust her?”

“Should I?”

“Holmes, this is Mrs Hudson!”

“A woman linked to the deaths of two men. A person who was once Clarissa Hudson, a gifted swindler and natural-born confidence trickster, who spent her most lucrative years working the casinos of Europe. Who only gave up that life when I narrowed her choice to leaving England, or remaining under my eye in Baker Street. Who ‘coincidentally’ chose to retire to a place heavily populated by those sheltering fortunes both legal and otherwise.”

“Holmes, neither of the deaths was murder, and her…swindling was a lifetime ago. As a young woman. Under her father’s influence.”

“A father who left behind a huge question mark at his death. A question of some quarter million pounds.”

“Oh, Holmes, we’re not back in that pipe-dream, are we?”

“The Prendergast case has never been closed to my satisfaction.”

A glass of wine had appeared before me. The air took on the odour of Holmes’ cigarettes. I sat, unseeing. Or rather, I sat seeing two paths open before me.

In May, I had learned that my beloved Mrs Hudson possessed a History that was scandalous, adventurous, and criminal.

Mrs Hudson, who had looked across her kitchen at a truculent fifteen-year-old girl—a girl who set out one morning from her dead mother’s house, dressed in her dead father’s jacket and her dead brother’s cap—and perceived not the ink-stains of education and the accents of an upbringing, as Sherlock Holmes had seen, but the clear signs of pain and hunger and emptiness.

Everything I assumed about Mrs Hudson—everything I knew—had been tipped on its head this past May. I had killed a human being myself, during that same time, and yet my thoughts dwelled less on my act than on what I had learned about her. That indicates how deeply the revelations had shaken me.

I wasn’t even given time to absorb the news before she was gone, fleeing from the law (yet another impossibility to wrap my head around). Soon after, Holmes and I were caught up in the search for a missing woman, the case that had taken us to Venice. All of which meant that my time on board the Stella Maris had been my first opportunity to merely sit, out on the deck in the dead of night, and contemplate the moon’s, and my own, reflections.

It seems a touch absurd to say that I had grown up during that summer. At the age of twenty-five, most women have long entered into adult responsibilities. But the orphaned and the displaced often cling to the remnants of childhood, and during those deck-top meditations, I realised that such had been the case with me.

I resented Mrs Hudson’s lies, the false face she had deceived me with. And I resented Holmes, for keeping it from me, his wife and partner. As if I had any right to require a full confession from her—from either of them—for a thing that happened long before I was born. But I was very young when I lost my family. The loss of Mrs Hudson felt like a second abandonment.

That summer, as I began to step back from childish resentments, I also began to see that young Clarissa Hudson did what she did in order to survive. Would I not have done the same, had I been raised by criminals? She had changed when she needed to, and she had kept her dignity even at the harshest of accusations. Including accusations from one who loved her, yet felt betrayed by surprise.

I realised, during those silent nights on the Stella Maris, that what I wanted most was not to tell her that I forgave her. What I wanted was for her to forgive me, for having judged her.

And now here was my husband suggesting I was wrong.

No.

“No,” I said. My eyes came at last into focus. His cigarette was nearly burned down, his glass empty. Mine appeared untouched, so I reached out and took a swallow, grimacing at its temperature, before I met his even gaze. “You’re wrong. She was little more than a child when she started, with a sister to support and a career criminal for a father, and she did what she had to. She is no longer that person. Whatever brought her to Monte Carlo, it was not to rob the rich.”

He smiled, as he crushed out his cigarette. And it was a true smile, not a patronising expression—I knew those well enough, God knows. “I hope,” he said, “that you are right. In the meantime, shall we carry on with this performance of our own?”

“Sorry, what performance is that?”

“The one you are dressed for.”

“I dressed for the Casino, in case I needed to go in.”

“Exactly. A place I have seen Mrs Hudson enter twice.”

“She’s not in there now, is she?” I was alarmed at the idea of appearing to be tracking her down.

“Not that I have seen.”

“I don’t know, Holmes. Can’t we just go have dinner instead?”

“Afterwards. It may not prove necessary, to provide ourselves with the masks of English fools, but you will find the Casino an interesting experience. Although—I don’t suppose you brought your passport?”

“I always have my passport when there’s a chance of meeting up with you, Holmes. One never knows when we’ll be bolting for the nearest border.”

“I trust that bolting will not be on the agenda for this evening.” He returned his slim cigarette case to an inner pocket. “But since you have your papers, my good wife, and since it will not only permit us to establish ourselves here, but grant you a view of what keeps Monaco afloat, I propose that we spend the evening in the Monte Carlo Casino.”

I opened my pocket-book to retrieve the emeralds I had brought, just in case, and bent so Holmes could fasten them around my neck. I then stood, slipping my arm through his.

“Proposal accepted, husband mine. Let us go and lose some money.”