Private Investigation Read Free

likely to start baying at the moon and chasing rabbits?”
    “No.” Then John’s face took on a hunted expression. “Well, probably not. In his defence he is a very gifted private detective. The Metropolitan Police consult him on a regular basis. His facility for deductive reasoning…”
    “Like Sherlock Holmes!” Lilly said gaily, and was surprised when Lucien sat up abruptly, fixed her with a jaundiced eye, and said, “Sherlock Holmes is a fool.”
    “Oh, but his thinking is so original!” Lilly protested. “What is it he says, now? Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
    Lucien snorted. “And that is precisely where he lacks imagination—in eliminating the impossible. One would think one could expect more from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as an author. He is supposed to be the champion of the spiritualist movement, yet in his stories he insists on the merely pedestrian as the solution to every problem.”
    He moved with an odd, long-limbed grace as he swivelled his legs off the settee and rose to his feet, gesticulating with his hands while he spoke. His fingers moved with intricate fluidity, as though he was playing an invisible musical instrument. “Séances, for example. Have you ever attended a séance, Miss James?”
    “Elizabeth,” John murmured.
    “Lilly to my friends,” she said, and they gave each other a conspiratorial look that gave her a warm sensation of fellow-feeling.
    “Yes, yes, Lilly,” continued Lucien. “A modern woman. First name terms. A graduate of the Metropolitan School for Shorthand.”
    Lilly felt a touch of surprise at this. She had thought him entirely self-absorbed—it seemed he had taken in more than she had given him credit for.
    “I’m sure you’re a fan of all the new technologies—stencillographic oscillators and inspectacles and all the other accoutrements of the rational age…”
    “Come now,” said Lilly. And she walked over and picked up the contraption he had been wearing when he’d come to the door, swinging it from her forefinger by one of its leather straps. “You wear inspectacles yourself.”
    “Yes, yes,” he said impatiently, “but John invented those, of course, no matter what the patent office might have to say on the subject.”
    He’d invented inspectacles? And was presumably responsible for the contraption in the armchair that had now started giving off occasional, alarming hisses and plumes of steam.
    Before she could do more than glance at John in surprise, Lucien continued, “But just because I value the advantages modern steam technology can bring me, it doesn’t mean I dismiss the inexplicable, the ineffable, out of hand. So tell me, Miss James, have you ever been to a séance?”
    She noticed he deliberately did not use the less formal method of address he had been granted, and decided that he clearly expected her to say that of course she had never been involved in any such nonsense. So she enjoyed the expression of surprise in his eyes—extraordinary eyes, she now noticed, pale grey, almost silver—when she said, “Of course. Twice.”
    He studied her carefully, then his expression twisted into one of disbelief and dismissal. “Of course. For six pounds a week, I expect you’ve seen fairies dancing in the garden. Tell me, Miss James, where were these séances held?”
    She knew he expected her make vague noises about some backroom table-rapping at an anonymous address to establish the story he believed to be patently false. So it was with some smugness that she said, “Doctor Moriarty Cain’s House of Spiritual Solace.”
    It was perfectly true. On the first occasion, Mrs Langley had invited her along in the hopes that Lilly might be a convert to the cause, and Lilly had sat politely through the performance. Doctor Cain’s young girl assistant had spoken in a growling voice, supposed to be that of the late, long-suffering Mr Langley, and told her landlady he was in