“That’s true,” Holmes agreed emphatically, then drew his eyebrows together in exaggerated confusion. “What about?”

“The world,” Goodheart explained, pausing to belch lightly. Fortunately, he did not stop with the generalisation, but went on. “Look at them, prancing about like a bunch of aristo . . . , ’rishtocrats with the mob pounding on the gates. Like France, don’t you know? Haven’t a clue that there’s a mob out there.”

“With guillotines,” Holmes encouraged.

The tweed deerstalker wagged enthusiastically. “Right, you are so right.” His diction was sliding, the dental sounds long turned to mush, the “s” sounds now “sh.” Soon the labials would become difficult; in another half hour, he’d collapse with his head on the table.

“But look what’s happened in England,” Holmes urged. “The Red Flag is practically flying over Parliament.”

Goodheart’s eyes tried to track, with limited success. “Right,” he said, although he sounded somewhat dubious, as if unsure why Holmes had introduced politics into the discussion.

“Isn’t that a good thing? To have a Labour victory?”

“Of course,” he said, more stoutly now. “But they think it’s the end, when it’s only the beginnin’.” It sounded like a quote pulled from memory, and served to confuse him for a moment. Then he rallied, raised his glass, and shouted, “By s’prise, where it hurts!”

But the effort was too much—either that, or some vestige of self-preservation ordered him to be silent; in either case the effect was the same. He let his glass fall to the floor and slapped his palm across his mouth in the gesture of a child hushing itself, or in the more likely identical motion of a man whose stomach is on the verge of rebellion. I took a hasty step back while Holmes seized the man’s free arm and hustled him speedily out of the doors and to the railing, where the deerstalker caught the wind and sailed off into the night.

A gentleman in the P. & O. uniform came to tidy away the broken glass, and another appeared to help Holmes lead Goodheart away. So much for in vino veritas.

I traded my glass of sweet nothing on a table for one of the real thing from the first passing waiter, and went outside for air and thought. After a while a snake-dance of celebrants came shuffling out the door, Sunny Goodheart at their lead laughing gloriously at her long tail of admirers.

I put down my empty glass and went to bed.

Chapter Five