de la Reynière,” continued Holmes, noticeably embarrassed. “It’s a long story, I’ll tell it to you one of these days. But I am here regarding a more important matter. Would it be possible to discuss it while not standing on one foot?”
“Forgive me,” said Canterel. “I will find us a more suitable place. Miss Sherrington,” he called, guiding them toward an adjoining room, “tea for me, and a Longmorn 72 for our guests, please.” He turned to Grimod. “I know Shylock’s tastes, but you may also have tea, if you prefer . . .”
“Not to worry, the Longmorn will be perfectly fine,” said Grimod with the smile of a connoisseur.
They took a seat in a parlor that overlooked the Atlantic through three bay windows, through which they could see nothing but the dividing line between the blue of the sky and the blue of the ocean, as if the chateau were at the back of a frigate.
“So,” said Canterel, “what brings you to Biarritz?”
Before letting Holmes respond, it would be well for us to dispel any misunderstandings about the man. Although he bore the name of the illustrious detective, John Shylock Holmes had inherited nothing from that line besides a questionable sense of humor and a strong confidence in his own expertise. Former curator of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, he worked at Christie’s in Art Restitution Services; his talents and contacts sometimes enabled him to assist Lloyd’s in negotiating certain delicate cases. Gifted with a prodigious memory, he was a man of sixty, and neither his excessive portliness nor his devotion to aged malts prevented him from traveling the world in search of rare objects. A habit that explained, without excusing, his propensity for wearing suits that he ought to have thrown out long ago. A receding hairline; a crown of curls that were too jet-black, in all honesty, to be anything but dyed; grizzled side-whiskers that descended to his chin; round, thin-rimmed glasses with smoked lenses that pinched the end of his nose; and a hint of rosacea on his cheekbones: all these features combined to give him an ever so slightly grotesque appearance.
As to the man who has been presented to us under the name of Grimod, it will suffice, for the moment, to say that he stood two heads above either of them. A tall, strapping man the color of burnished metal, whose muscles strained against the seams of his clothing without detracting from their elegance: an eggshell suit and silk shirt made by the hands of Cavanagh, the Irish tailor at 26, Champs-Élysées. It took Canterel only a glance to identify their maker. Two things were discordant, however: the deep scar that ran across half his forehead to his hairline, and the fact that he had not seen fit to take off his right glove.
“Have you read this weekend’s New Herald?” asked Holmes, pulling a notebook from his jacket pocket.
“You know very well that I never read the papers . . .”
“Anyone can change, even you. But let’s move along. That means you did not come across this astonishing bit of news. I’ll read it to you: ‘Last Monday, a hiker on a beach on the Isle of Skye, in Scotland, was surprised to discover a human foot cut off at mid-calf; mummified by the salt, this appendage was still shod in a sneaker. Two days later, thirty kilometers to the east, at the source of the loch at Glen Shiel, the sea washed up a second, quite similar foot. And, yesterday, to the south of Kyle of Lochalsh—that is, at the tip of an equilateral triangle formed by the two previous points—Mrs. Glenfidich’s dog brought his mistress a third foot, hewn off in a similar manner and also wearing the same kind of shoe. These gruesome discoveries are rare in a county where there are neither sharks nor crocodiles; moreover, the police have not had report of a single disappearance in two years.’” Holmes paused for a moment and lifted one finger, drawing Canterel’s attention to the end of the story: “‘The plot thickens: regarding what the locals are already calling the “mystery of the three feet,” it should be noted that these are three right feet of different sizes, but shod in the same type of shoe.’”
“What is the make?” Canterel demanded.
“Ananke . . .”
“I hope you haven’t come all this way just to tell me that?”
He placed a ladyfinger in a cookie-dunking device that Miss Sherrington had brought in and left near his cup, and used it to soak the cookie in his tea for several seconds.
“Ananke, you say?” he resumed, bringing the moistened cookie to his lips.
“Yes,” said Holmes. “‘Destiny,’ the Greeks’ unalterable ‘necessity’ . . .”
“Except that this make does not exist,” continued Grimod, sniffing his glass of scotch.
“However,” added Holmes, “it is the name of the jewel that was stolen this week from the heart of that same triangle, Eilean Donan Castle . . .”
“To the point, Shylock, get to the point!” exclaimed Canterel.
“The Ananke,” Holmes continued without losing his composure, “is the largest diamond ever excavated from an earthly mine: eight hundred carats once cut, appraised at over fifteen million florins! This marvel belonged to Lady MacRae, widow of Lord Duncan MacRae of Kintail, in other words a certain Madame Chauchat who should not be completely erased from your memory, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Chauchat, Clawdia Chauchat?” Canterel murmured.
“The same,” said Holmes, pulling a cigar from his waistcoat pocket. “It is she—and the insurance company that offers my services at an exorbitant price—who has recruited me to retrieve this magnificent stone.”
Canterel’s face had darkened suddenly.
“Obviously, this changes everything,” he said, massaging his temples with two fingers. “Miss Sherrington, I beg you, I am going to need some more of my medicine . . .”
Breathtaking View of a Worker’s Backside
At this point in the story, the voice stops, immediately replaced by the kind of background music that increases cows’ milk production. Monsieur Wang looks at his watch and shakes his head at the punctuality of the performance. Five o’clock on the dot, good work. Not a bad idea to bring this guy on, he reflects, adjusting his cufflinks. Once more, the proverbial wisdom has proven true: without going into the tiger’s den, how can one hope to lay a hand on its cubs?
Wang-li Wong, “Monsieur Wang” as he makes everyone call him to keep all the natives from mangling his name, is the Chinese manager of B@bil Books, an assembly plant for e-readers in La Roque-Gageac, in Périgord Noir. An adolescent’s peach-fuzz mustache, in spite of his forty years, his hair slicked back in short, gelled waves, a three-piece suit with a tie and a white-buttoned collar. The Asian aspects of his features are faint. He looks more like a Japanese modernist from the sixties than a Chinese man. Perhaps this is the result of the outdated shape of his horn-rimmed glasses.
He is sitting at his desk, in a modern, industrial space improved by several Asian antiques, including a gilt nautilus shell adorned with mer-people, its feet shaped like eagle talons.
On the adjoining terrace, a small, deluxe pigeon loft holds several nests made of precious woods. Monsieur Wang is a pigeon-fancier; he owns six pairs of carrier pigeons, including one star—Free Legs Diamond—for which he paid a hundred thousand euros, putting him ahead of most of
