Read Online The Detective and the Woman by Amy Thomas - Free Book Online Page B

tested too acutely right away, for I intend us to mix with a segment of local society that families like the Edisons are hardly likely to meet on a regular basis.’
    Holmes noted that Irene’s eyes held excitement rather than fear and trust rather than suspicion. Her beautiful face was alive with the prospect of adventure. ‘Tell me what you wish me to do, and I will help in any way I can.’
    ‘First,’ he said quietly, ‘I must thank you for your cool head this evening. Without you, I would be in grave danger with no idea of my own peril. Second, it is obvious that both of us take a great risk by remaining here. I now believe, much more than at any previous point in this case, that the key to the mystery may be found here, but that very fact means harm is not far away. If you wish to extricate yourself, I will not deter you.’
    Irene put out a small hand and lightly touched the detective’s long fingers as they rested on his knee. ‘I agreed to help you,’ she said softly, ‘and I will continue to do so as long as I may be useful. I assure you, I am not afraid.’ Just then, out of nowhere, she smiled—a rare, wide, bracing smile. Holmes returned it with one of his own. They spent the rest of the night preparing to take on new characters.
    The next morning, Gloria Stillwell rose to find on her front hall table a generous sum of money and a note explaining that Mr and Mrs Bernard James had been forced to return to England at their earliest possible convenience to care for a sick friend. Meanwhile, a tall man and a short man dressed in cheap clothing visited the poorest section of Fort Myers and hired an elderly horse and nearly-defunct wagon, which they filled with tattered raiment and low-quality goods. Their afternoon enquiry into the rental of a tiny, empty shop with a dilapidated sign that had once read ‘Sloane’s General Store’ proved rewarding, and a few more cartfuls of goods meant that Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler were in business by evening, proud occupants of a small, square building with sandy floors, empty shelves, and nothing to recommend it except its location and the miniscule flat above it.
    The following morning, Holmes dressed himself after a long sleepless night spent in one of the spindly chairs the previous occupants had seen fit to leave in the tattered flat, his pipe forming a pleasant accompaniment to the slight coolness in the evening breeze. Irene had slept soundly, no doubt exhausted from the previous night’s sleeplessness and the previous day’s transactions. One day was hardly long enough to rent and stock a general store, but that name was generous in this case, and Holmes meant it to be. Forced to be unrecognisable in high society, he intended to work from within another strata of the infrastructure that kept the city moving, that of the migrant day labourers, of whom Alberto Sanchez employed three hundred in his citrus grove on the outskirts of town. If Holmes could not get at the man directly, he would work through his organization. The stakes were higher now. If Sanchez knew his face and knew that he lived, Holmes could not afford to rest.
    Once dressed in coarse brown slacks and a slightly ill-fitting grey shirt, Holmes darkened his skin and altered his face, making himself appear weathered and inelegant. He added wrinkles and rounded his sharp features. The cracked mirror on one of the walls revealed him as a middle-aged workman, which was exactly what he desired. He intended that that anyone entering the store should think him a manual labourer whose ambitions had acquired him a dingy store of his own.
    After finishing his own toilette, he woke Irene with a gentle shake to the shoulder before leaving the room to give her time to dress. She had been dressed as a male the previous day, but from now on she would portray the lady of the establishment, a woman slightly nearer gentility than her husband, but still coarse and weatherbeaten. Holmes re-entered the room upon