The Curse Of The Diogenes Club by Anna Lord

surprise.
“Is that true, Mycroft?”
    “Yes, the death was made to
look like suicide but it was murder. Please continue, Countess. You
may as well tell these gentlemen the rest.”
    “Everything?” she tested.
    “Yes, everything,” he confirmed
sombrely, pulling off his pearl earring and rubbing his inflamed
ear. “There can be no secrets kept back if we are to discover
whoever set those bombs. You can have this trinket back too. I
shan’t be needing it again.”
    After pocketing the earring she
perched herself on the arm of Dr Watson’s wing chair and made
herself comfortable. It suggested the confidential information she
was about to impart would not be confined to just one sentence.
    “The princess was found in her
bath. The bath had not been run by her lady’s maid. She was wearing
valuable jewels. It appeared as if she had consumed a goodly
quantity of laudanum. A bottle measuring three to four fluid ounces
was found at the side of the bath. However, as the bottle dropped
from her dead hand it did not roll but merely landed and stayed
put, giving rise to the impression it had been placed there after
death.
    The princess was recently
estranged from her husband and had moved into Clarges Hotel. She
had been living there for a week. There is word she had taken a
lover. Four names have been mooted: Viscount Cazenove, General de
Merville, Sir James Damery and the Prince of Wales.”
    The number of raised eyebrows
indicated the listeners suddenly comprehended the serious
implications of the princess’s demise. No one interrupted her so
she continued.
    “Prince Sergei had already
learned of the death of his wife before Scotland Yard had been
notified. How he became aware of it so quickly is open to
conjecture. He informed Mr Holmes this morning at Clarges that his
wife was with child and that the child was not his as he and his
wife had not shared conjugal relations for several years. It is
possible the father of the unborn child is one of the men
mentioned. Prince Sergei named the Prince of Wales as the father.
He left it to Mr Holmes to handle the news as he saw fit.”
    “Good grief!” exclaimed Dr
Watson, unable to contain his shock.
    “Is that it?” asked
Sherlock.
    “No,” she said. “There’s an
interesting detail. In the bath with the dead body was a Matryoshka
doll. It is also called a Russian nesting doll. They were designed
for this year’s Paris Fair. None have yet gone on sale. A
Matryoshka doll is a series of small wooden dolls, usually three,
four or five, brightly painted, and scaled in size so that one doll
fits neatly inside the other. This particular doll was made up of
five separate pieces. The doll was found wedged under the legs of
the princess. The fifth and smallest doll, no bigger than an acorn,
was found wedged in her vulva.”
    Dr Watson was speechless. The
other four men all suddenly found something fascinating in the
stitching of their shoes. Sherlock broke the embarrassed
silence.
    “Do you think she was using it
as a dildo?”
    “It’s possible,” replied the
Countess thoughtfully, “though I can think of several items in the
bedroom and bathroom which would have been more satisfying. I think
it was a hint to whoever found the body that she was with child. It
may have been placed there after death by the killer.”
    “That suggests the killer was
intimate with the princess,” observed Sherlock, flicking his eyes
from his implacable Buddha-like brother, still rubbing his red and
swollen lobe, back to the Countess. “It implicates both the
mysterious lover as well as the estranged husband. Was the bed made
or unmade?”
    “Unmade.”
    “And yet it was
mid-afternoon.”
    She nodded. “It was my
impression two people had recently occupied the bed. Both
duck-feather pillows had indentations which is not itself an
indication that two people shared the bed, but both sides of the
bed had the covers thrown back. Since a person can only ever get
out of one side of the bed it