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REPORTER, 1885
    It was not enough that one unexpected visitor had disturbed our bucolic retreat.
    When Godfrey returned from the city late that afternoon, he bore an unexpected message from another person I regarded with as little admiration as I extended to Sherlock Holmes.
    As soon as I heard the welcome clatter of his cane and hat being assigned to their domestic resting places in the entryway, I rushed to confirm his arrival.
    Seeing him where Sherlock Holmes had stood only hours before, I was struck again by the fact that two men could be much of an age and a height, and even of a coloring, and yet be entirely different. Dr. Watson had reported Sherlock Holmes describingGodfrey as “a remarkably handsome man, dark, aquiline and mustached” in the mercifully unpublished narrative of our first encounter with the London detective two years earlier. Sherlock Holmes himself was dark, hawk-nosed, and clean-shaven, in some ways similar and in most ways a world apart from Godfrey, for no one would call him “remarkably handsome.” The odd thing was that, from his dispassionate yet generous summation of Godfrey’s personal attractions, he didn’t seem to care a particle about whether anyone did or not. In that small way he resembled myself, who was quite content to be plain despite being publicly paired all my adult life with a great beauty like Irene. Handsome people could no more help their looks than ugly ones, and looks were no sensible reason to judge upon, either way.
    I welcomed Godfrey’s return not because of his pleasant visage, but for how he always soothed my easily ruffled spirits.
    “Godfrey! I was deathly afraid that awful man from London had forgotten his silly cap and was bedeviling our doorstep again.”
    “Ah, a pity I missed Sherlock Holmes’s visit. Apparently you had no such misfortune, Nell,” he teased, his light gray eyes glittering with camaraderie, for he was well aware that I regarded the detective as both nosy and annoying.
    He went into the parlor to salute Irene with a kiss on the cheek, but had to bend over the piano bench to do it, for she had been picking out the notes of her new chamber opera on the keys ever since The Man had left.
    “What is this?” Godfrey asked. “Some new lieder from Dvorák? He does favor you with the first glimpse of all his Bohemian folk songs.”
    “It is new, yes, but from quite a different composer. Sullivan has made a foray from operetta into chamber opera. This is a one-woman solo piece. I will sing the roles of six dead queens.”
    “That will be a change from consorting with live ones,” he observed.
    She turned away from the piano. “Oh, it is quite a toothsome sweet of a piece, with words by Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde. This is the sort of thing I can work up and present anywhere, with any sort of accompaniment.”
    “What of the wardrobe of six queens, in addition to your own?” Godfrey asked, exchanging a conspiring glance with me. “That does not sound like a very portable endeavor.”
    “I can make do with a change of headdress for each queen, at the minimum. I assure you, Godfrey, I could tour the wilds of America with this piece and still require only two trunks.”
    “Only two trunks. Impressive. As for touring the wilds of America, you may be interested in doing so sooner than you think.”
    This announcement caused Irene to utterly abandon the piano and spin around to face him, and it caused me to drop a stitch.
    “Godfrey,” Irene said, “the New World is the last place I wish to be at the moment. Nell and I are growing quite accustomed to a quiet life in the country after our recent gruesome hunt across Europe. And you have established an office in Paris that requires running. I thought you would be pleased that I am following your suggestion, and planning to revive my performing career in some manner, however small.”
    “I am pleased as Punchinello about your plans, Irene, to rephrase a truism, but I received a