Femme Fatale Read Online Free PDF Page B

straining for expression, and I felt it now, despite myself. I was unhappily reminded of the Gypsy violinists of our last grueling adventure, and of one not-Gypsy violinist.
    The piece ended at last, on a piano chord held until the final vibration faded, on a dying rasp of the violin strings that drifted into distance.
    I was struck, watching this impromptu recital, by how much physical and mental effort each instrument required, by the emotional vibrato the long-gone composer’s score exuded like incense into the room. I thought of dead gardens, and the inexorable march of autumn in the touch of brittle leaves and the reluctant withdrawal of warm sunlight into the cool shadow.
    The chamber was silent. The music gone.
    It was just Irene gazing sightlessly over the top of the piano, Mr. Holmes lowering the violin and bow together, as if shaking off a spell.
    They had collaborated, but separately from one another.
    Irene spoke first. “I have no use for it but memory. It is yours if you want it.”
    “I have a violin.”
    “Not a Guarneri?”
    “No, but what I have is more than sufficient for an amateur. Thank you for the duet, but I am not good enough for you there either.”
    “You play very well, and that is well enough for even a professional. Surely you can use an extra violin.”
    “I cannot accept so valuable a gift. On closer examination I have found the initials ‘I.H.S.’ and the signature of the greatGuiseppe del Gesú of the Guarneri family, an exceptionally devout man who was perhaps second only to Stradivari himself in the construction of exquisite violins.”
    Irene smiled, played a rivulet of notes. “Small price to pay for Nell’s life, which I am most grateful to you for saving. In fact, I am most grateful that you chose to meddle in my affairs in that instance.”
    “Playing an instrument such as this is reward enough. Who is this maestro you speak of?”
    “A person very dear to me, but only informally a ‘maestro.’ He is probably dead by now.”
    “What sort of ‘informal maestro’ would own, and give away, such a masterwork?”
    But Irene would say no more of that. “An unplayed instrument of this quality is a sad waste, as its former owner would be the first to tell me.”
    “No.” He laid the instrument and bow back in its shabby box as if interring an old friend only recently rediscovered. “Yet I thank you for the duet and pray you take better care of your Guarneri from now on.”
    “I owe you my life as well, surely I can spare a violin for it.”
    “I don’t like debts, whichever way they flow. In fact—”
    He moved into the hall with giant steps as Irene looked at me and shrugged. She had meant him to have the violin. She had meant to clear the debtor column in her personal ledger. He would have nothing of it.
    He returned from rummaging in the deep pockets of his country cloak.
    In his hand was a rolled scroll of documents.
    “I have, madam, an exchange of documents for you. For the courtesy of your difficult and no doubt costly unabridged translation, I have a small composition.”
    The word “unabridged” made a mockery of sincerity, but it was not the one that captured her attention.
    “Composition?” Irene straightened at the piano bench like a marionette whose strings have been abruptly pulled into a simulacrum of life.
    He had surprised her as much as she had surprised him. Irene did not like such parity.
    “Why, Mr. Holmes, what have you done?”
    “Actually, Bram Stoker and Sir Arthur Sullivan accomplished this.” He held out a beribboned bundle.
    Irene stepped back and plastered her spread fingers to her throat. “For me? I can’t imagine—”
    The sad part was, she couldn’t. Nor could I imagine what the scrolls contained, only that Irene prided herself on anticipating events, and here she had not a clue.
    She delicately eased the ribbon down the scroll’s length, then unrolled one sheet to read it, like a page boy in a Shakespearian play.
    “Why,