Son of Holmes

Paul had been the entertainment, or part of it, and he was well received. Afterward, though, when most of the younger set had paired off, I had seen him standing alone, looking rather at sea, and I took pity on him. His command of French then was not so good as it has become, and we spoke English, discovering to our mutual delight that we were neighbors. When he had returned to Valence several weeks later, he had called on me while Marcel had been visiting, and we’d had such a good time drinking beer and-significantly?-talking politics that we all decided to make a regular event of it.

So it had been Paul, Marcel, and me from the start. Seen from a certain perspective, and one that I had truthfully never considered until this moment, it had been, or could have been, a most fertile field for espionage. Back in the begi

I thought back. I had aired my disagreements over policy rather freely. Marcel had done the same. To the extent that Paul had been fascinated, hanging on our words, we had felt flattered, viewing him with friendly condescension. Those naive, neutral, isolationist Americans, we had thought. Now I bitterly recast the litany in my mind: we naive, romantic, gullible French!

Dark rain clouds scudded against the overcast sky. I had been wandering, lost in contemplation. Though Valence wasn’t a particularly large city, I found myself in an unknown neighborhood as a light drizzle began to fall. Ancient houses leaned threateningly over narrow stone streets. I considered turning around, trying to retrace my route, but since I’d been paying no attention whatever, I realized that I was truly lost. Turning back wouldn’t help. There was nothing to do but continue walking, hoping I would stumble upon some familiar landmark.

Everyone…

Henri had been the next. It had come about naturally enough, since I bought my beer-making supplies from his shop. I remember the first time we’d gotten into a discussion of technique. He had a particularly dependable supplier of excellent German hops. German hops! His interest was so genuine, his personality so forthright, that I had spontaneously decided to ask him around.

And he became the most regular of the guests. His attendance was never in doubt, which, now that I thought of it, was provocative. With a wife and a large family as well as a prospering business, he might have been expected to have the most demands on his time. Instead, our weekly gatherings were obviously a matter of great priority to him.

Why, just the past night he’d left his wife in the middle of a disagreement, as Lupa had pointed out. Were our beer meetings more important to him than his domestic harmony? And if they were, why?

Again I reflected on his bluff exterior-a happy, life-loving Greek. And the more I thought on it, the more incongruous were his business successes and his easy camaraderie with our varied and rather highbrow group.

A dead-end street brought me up short. I was just as content to be lost-the physical disorientation matched my mental turmoil. I was losing faith in the world I lived in-a world where my friends were not as they seemed, where love and trust might be bargaining chips, and duplicity the coin of the realm.

Everyone…

I could not have met Georges more i

And yet there were coincidences that a mind more suspicious than my own might not have overlooked. That first Wednesday meeting with Georges in attendance was also Marcel’s first day back in the area. In other words, it was within two weeks of our first operative’s death. And that of course meant that Georges’s arrival in Valence occurred within days of that “accident.” Further, of all of our number, he had the least history. I had known of, or had references to account for, each of my other friends, each of the other suspects.

Finally, and more subjectively, I have had a great deal of experience with members of my profession, and if there can be said to be a “type” of mind in the field, Georges’s most neatly fit that category-heavily reliant on facts, possessed of enough originality to deduce from those facts (Marcel’s glaring flaw and Lupa’s forte), plus a certain glibness, a way of getting by on the surface of events while chaos reigns on the operative level.

The psychological babble was fine in its place, and yet the fact remained that Georges had not even been in the same room when Marcel had taken his last draft. And no service in the world would hire a man with Georges’s limp-it was simply unheard of.

A recognizable square loomed ahead of me in the drizzle, and I found myself suddenly almost too dispirited to keep moving toward it. What was the point of going home? What, indeed, was home? Another hollow concept such as loyalty, duty, honor-all fine words to fight and die over, but nothing to take too seriously.

But the old discipline directed my footsteps just as my training led my thoughts back to the issue. The stakes here were nothing less than survival, and sentiment must be viewed only as a dangerous luxury, an enemy as deadly as any I would ever face.

Everyone…

How could Fritz have lived in my house for a year without causing me a moment of suspicion? And yet who was more ideally suited to keep tabs on my movements and report on them? No one had had a better opportunity to place poison in Marcel’s bottle, except of course Lupa, who had been sitting in that seat. But my trust in Lupa had proven itself well grounded. Or had it? Perhaps he’d kept me alive last night for another, future purpose. Perhaps in some other game, I was a bishop and Marcel a quickly expendable pawn-perhaps and maybe and again perhaps. My mind was begi

Everyone…

And even Tania…

No! Not Tania! Not the only woman I had ever loved. It was unthinkable. Even if it killed me, I would not suspect her. I shook my head, trying as best I could to purge the poisonous thought…… and looked up to find myself in the middle of the square, still confused and lonelier than I had ever felt before.

The rain became fierce, and again I found myself soaked. In no mood to continue an already disagreeable walk, I hired a carriage back to my home. Fritz greeted me at the door with undisguised concern, tempered with reproval.

“Are you well, sir?”

“Damn it, Fritz, no. No, I’m not well. I’m drenched, my clothes are ruined for the second time, I’m tired, and my oldest friend has been murdered in my house. No, I’m not well at all.”

He stood back and silently took my clothes.

“I’m sorry to snap,” I said, “but it has been a trying time.”

“Monsieur Lupa came by this morning and told me you were in good hands. Madame Chessal went home after breakfast. Would you like some tea or brandy?”

He handed me my robe, and I went into the front room to sit before the fire, where I brooded for a while about my age until Fritz came back with tea laced with brandy. After one cup I fell off to sleep.

Fritz woke me again when it was already dark, served me a small meal of coddled eggs with sherry and black butter, and suggested I retire, which I did.