The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(96)

Mr. Hall, who had finally been forced by his wife’s nagging to approach the two men, cleared his throat timidly.

“Gentlemen . . . forgive me for interrupting, but . . .” When the men looked up at him, Mr. Hall felt that terrible emptiness inside, which made him recoil. “Er, will you be wanting another drink?”

Before either of them could reply, the inn door swung open, and a small figure stumbled in, coming to a halt in the middle of the room. He stood motionless for a few seconds, gasping for air and casting his glazed eyes around the room. He was shivering from head to toe, and beads of sweat mixed with tears rolled down his face. Mrs. Hall went over to the boy and gently placed her hand on his bony shoulder.

“Whatever’s the matter, lad?” she whispered

And at that point, little Tommy Dawkins began to scream.





18


DOYLE SET SAIL FOR SOUTH AFRICA on the Oriental surrounded by flowers. Jean Leckie, who did not wish to see him off at the Port of Tilbury, had filled his cabin with roses, hibiscus, and lilies, so that Doyle and his valet, sitting on their bunks and besieged by that riot of color, undertook the voyage like a couple of lovebirds in a floating greenhouse. If Doyle had been given the choice, he would have preferred to see Jean in person, but she had made it very clear she did not wish to be part of the joyous crowd that would see off the ship, as if the man who every year on the fifteenth of March sent her an edelweiss, that flower whose whiteness rivaled that of snow, were going on a picnic and not to a war from which he might return in a box after receiving a Boer bullet in his stomach. Fortunately, Doyle would return six months later on his own two feet, if enveloped in quite a different odor than on the outward journey. The long weeks he had spent as a doctor in his friend’s hospital, sewing up the guts of dying soldiers and amputating their limbs, including those of Jim Dawkins, who would never ride his bicycle again, had impregnated him with the indelible perfume of death—a death devoid of heroism or glamour, foul and dirty, covered in flies and noxious odors, a death that belonged more to the Middle Ages than to the new century dawning.

But as he climbed the stairs at Undershaw, all of that seemed like a dream. He had scarcely been home a week, and already the peaceful idyll had begun to make him doubt he had ever been in the war in Africa—that was, until he visited the bathroom, for his guts had still not recovered from the bouts of dysentery he had suffered. He paused in front of the door to the room with the best views in the house. Stanley Ball, the architect with whom he had once practiced telepathy, had built it on the three and a half acres of land Doyle had purchased in Hindhead, which was referred to as Little Switzerland because of its clean air and spectacular hills. However, Ball hadn’t needed to rack his brains to get some idea of what he wanted, as Doyle had made a sketch for him on a piece of paper. He had a very clear idea of how he wanted Undershaw to be: an imposing mansion worthy of an author of his stature, but also a cozy family home, practical for an invalid.

After considering whether to knock or not, Doyle decided to open the door without a sound. Lately, his wife would have a snooze when she went upstairs to read, and that morning was no exception: Louise, whom Doyle had affectionately nicknamed Touie back in the far-off days when they first knew each other in Portsmouth, was reclining in an armchair, her head tilted to one side, her eyes closed. She had been proving Sir Richard Douglas Powell, one of the country’s leading TB specialists, wrong for many years now, so it was no wonder she felt exhausted. From their trip to Switzerland, Doyle had brought back the idea of how to finish off Holmes, whereas Touie had brought back in her lungs Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The doctors had given her no more than three months to live, and yet eight years had passed since that unfavorable prognosis and Touie was still alive, thanks undoubtedly to the ministrations of Doyle, who no sooner did he receive the news than he whisked her away on a therapeutic pilgrimage to Davos, Caux, and Cairo, and finally he built the house in Hindhead with all the comforts an invalid such as she could possibly need. However, although his ministrations appeared to have kept the gentle Touie’s condition stable, everyone knew that it was only a matter of time before Death, which Doyle had so long kept at bay, finally took his wife, without his being able to prevent it.

However, as if Touie’s tragic lot were not enough, in a flourish of inventiveness, fate had arranged matters so that Doyle would wish for her demise to come as soon as possible. And to that end, three years after the doctors had declared his wife terminally ill, it had placed in his path Jean Leckie, whom Doyle would not hesitate to describe as the woman of his life from their very first conversation, and whom you, dear readers, had the pleasure of meeting during the excursion to Dartmoor. Thus Doyle had been forced to live on the horns of a painful dilemma: on the one hand he longed for Touie to die so that he could express his love for Jean; on the other he strove more than ever to take care of his wife lest his feelings of guilt lead him to view any slackness in his ministrations as a desire to hasten her death. In the meantime, the love professed by Doyle and Jean, who were incapable of any shameful act that might stain Touie’s honor, had earned them the respect of their closest friends and even their respective families. The couple maintained a friendship as platonic as it was tragic, repressing their burning passion for each other, and behaving as discreetly as possible so as not to threaten Touie’s blissful ignorance. They had no choice but to wait, with a mixture of yearning and sorrow, for the sick woman to lose her life so that her husband could recover his.