A Letter of Mary (10 page)

He looked at me sideways, evaluating the profound distaste in my voice.

"And you call her a friend?"

I had to smile. "Yes, I suppose I do. Not that she expected me to do anything with it— she made it quite clear that she did not mind if I sat on it. It's waited almost nineteen hundred years, after all. What's another fifty? She just wanted me to appreciate it and to keep it safe. That in and of itself seems enough of a problem, at the moment," I added to myself, but he picked it up immediately.

"So you think that your manuscript might be at the bottom of it after all? That someone is trying to get his hands on it?"

"I can easily envisage any number of people who might want to possess such a thing, but at this point, Chief Inspector Lestrade, I am keeping a very open mind," I said firmly. That kept him silent until we entered the village and asked directions of a woman pushing a pram.

NINE

iota

The house to which we were eventually directed was a small two-storey brick building with a front garden composed of weeds and unpruned roses, a broken front step, and sagging lace curtains at the windows. The bell seemed not to work, but loud knocks brought a shuffling in the hallway and an eye under the door chain.

"Who is that?" The accents were those of Miss Ruskin, but the voice was weak and sounded old.

"Pardon me, I'm looking for Miss Erica Ruskin."

"There's been no Miss Erica Ruskin for nearly forty years, young man. What do you want?"

Lestrade was not daunted.

"I am Chief Inspector Lestrade from Scotland Yard. I'd like to speak with the sister of Miss Dorothy Ruskin, and I was given this address."

Silence fell. The faded blue eye travelled over us, and then the gap narrowed, the chain was slipped, and the door opened.

Dorothy Ruskin had been short, but she would have towered above her sister in both stature and personality. This woman barely cleared five feet, and though she had her sister's erect spine, there was none of her authority and purpose. For an instant, the ghost of Dorothy Ruskin looked at me from the eyelids and nose before me; then it faded and there was only a stranger.

"I am Mrs Erica Rogers, Chief Inspector. Dorothy's sister. Is she in some sort of trouble?"

"May we come in, Mrs Rogers? This is Miss Russell, my assistant." We had agreed that I would take notes and use my eyes, as his "assistant."

"Come in?" She examined us suspiciously head to toe, and I smothered an impulse to check my buttons and pat my hairpins. However, we apparently met her standards and were admitted. "I suppose you can come in. In there, the first door."

The door opened into a small, crowded sitting room, thick with gewgaws and whatnots, sepia photographs, reproductions of popular trite Victorian paintings, porcelain figurines, and souvenirs of Brighton and Blackpool. The air was musty and stale, dim despite the window, and the once good Chinese carpet was worn thin and colourless. There was little dust, and the windows were clean, and it could not have been further from the dirty, mad, and infinitely appealing dwelling inhabited by the sister in distant Palestine.

Mrs Rogers followed us into the room and retrieved a knitting project from one of the pair of heavy leather armchairs, their arms and headrests draped incongruously with delicate lace antimacassers, that occupied either side of the tiny fireplace. She waved Lestrade into the other chair, then looked somewhat helplessly about, as if expecting a third armchair to materialise. I solved her dilemma by moving to a hard wooden stool that sat next to the window, out of her line of sight if she faced Lestrade, and took out my notebook with an air of efficiency. I uncapped my pen and prepared to take my unintelligible notes, the perfect silent partner. Mrs Rogers sank into her chair and looked expectant. Lestrade cleared his throat.

"Mrs Rogers," he began, "I'm afraid I have some unfortunate news for you concerning your sister. She was killed in London on Wednesday night, by an automobile. She had no identification on her, and it took us some time to determine her identity and to find your address."

To my astonishment, she did not react at all, other than a slight tensing of the fingers on her knitting. As if reminded of what her hands held, she withdrew a needle from the ball, pulled loose some yarn, and began absently to knit.

"Thank you for telling me, Chief Inspector," she said calmly.

Lestrade shot a startled glance at me and leant forward slightly in his chair.

"Mrs Rogers, did you hear me?"

"Yes, of course I heard you. I may be falling prey to the infirmities of age, but hardness of hearing is not one of them. You said that my sister was hit by an automobile on Wednesday night. I knew she was dead. I did not know how she died. Thank you for telling me." She looked up then from her work, though the rhythm of the needles remained unchanged. "Will you arrange to have the body sent here for the funeral? I'm afraid I don't know how that should be done."

"Mrs Rogers—" Lestrade stopped. I reflected that it was probably quite rare for his face to be given the opportunity to form an expression of complete incredulity, if only for an instant. She faced him calmly. "Mrs Rogers, how did you know your sister was dead?"

"I knew. I woke up shortly after midnight, and I knew she was dead. I felt her go."

After a long moment, Lestrade snapped his mouth shut and sat back into his chair. He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "Mrs Rogers, there is some indication that your sister's death may not have been an accident."

I had my head bent over the notebook, but I watched her hands and the muscles of her face as my pen scratched over the paper. Her fingers faltered for a moment, then resumed their odd, disembodied movements. She said nothing.

"There are certain indications that someone wanted something that was in your sister's possession, Mrs Rogers. Have you any idea what that might have been?"

The old lips twitched and again Dorothy Ruskin passed through the face.

"No, Chief Inspector, I have no idea. I have had little contact with my sister for many years now, and I would have no way of knowing what of her possessions would interest another person."

"I understand that she was here several days ago. Did she say anything to you that might have referred to it, comments about something of value, for example, or a trip to a bank vault?"

"No."

"Did she receive any letters or visitors while she was here?"

"There was a letter from London, a Colonel something. She was planning to meet with him in order to discuss her proposals for an archaeological project, after returning from a meeting with Mr and Mrs Sherlock Holmes in Sussex. Dorothy was—" She stopped suddenly and drew a sharp breath, then whirled to look at me, accusation and— was it fear?— on her old face. "Russell? That's the name that was on a telegram she had."

"Yes, Mrs Rogers," I said, watching her politely. "I am assisting Chief Inspector Lestrade. He also thought my presence might be of use to you, that you perhaps would like to know how your sister had spent her last day."

Her eyes held mine for a long moment, then turned to Lestrade, and finally went back to her hands, which then resumed their work. Her mouth twitched angrily.

"Spying on me, that's what you were doing. Sneaking in here pretending to be sympathetic and asking questions."

"Why should we want to spy on you?" I asked innocently. Her fingers paused, and she went on as if I had not spoken.

"I don't know what Dorothy was doing there in the Holy Land. She never told me, just went off and left me to care for Mama, never a thought for helping out. I am sorry she's dead, but I'm not surprised, and I can't say I'll miss her all that much." She came to the end of the row, jabbed her needle into the ball of yarn, and pushed herself up from the chair. "Now, if it's all the same to you, I have to be checking up on my mother and getting her something to eat. Thank you for coming. I'm not on the telephone, but you know where to reach me when you want to send the body here."

The body.

"Mrs Rogers, I'm sorry, but I must ask you a few questions." She stayed on her feet, so Lestrade was forced reluctantly to stand, as well. I remained where I was. "About the two men who came here on the Wednesday. What time was that?"

"Tuesday. It was Tuesday, in the afternoon. Maybe five."

"She left here on Tuesday morning, then?"

"Monday night," she corrected him. "She took the seven-forty into London. Wanted to have a full day in town, she said. Not like some of us, who can only get free for a few hours."

"Er, yes. And the two men. What did they look like? How old were they?"

"Fiftyish," she said promptly. "They were Arabs, I suppose. Not that I've seen any up close, but Dorothy used to send photographs sometimes. Had funny names."

"Can you remember the names?"

"No, gone clear out of my head. Long, they were— the names."

"And the car they came in? Did you see the registration plate?"

"Not that I remember. It was parked along the side of the house, where your car is. All I could see was that it was long and black."

"And that it had a driver."

"I saw that when they pulled out, from upstairs. There were two heads in the back. Either that or the car was driving itself." She was telling us in no uncertain terms that she was fed up with our presence, and Lestrade gave up. I put my notebook and pen away and walked over to the chair she had occupied. The knitting lay in the chair again, an eight-inch length of fine dark blue wool, ribbing and cables, the bottom of what seemed to be a cardigan.

"You do lovely work, Mrs Rogers. Did you knit the cardigan you have on?" She pulled the front of it together across her thin chest as if to defend herself against my friendly voice.

"Yes. I knit a lot. Now please, I have work to do."

"Of course," said Lestrade. "We will let you know when your sister's body will be released to you, Mrs Rogers. This is my card. If you think of anything more about the two men, or if you have any questions, my telephone number is on it." He laid the white rectangle on the polished table in the hallway, retrieved his hat, and we walked slowly down the grey stones to the car.

"I suppose there must be a wide variety of reactions when a person is told of the death of someone close to them," I suggested without much confidence.

"Oh yes. Tears, hysteria, silence, anger, I've seen all those. Never one quite like that, though."

"An odd woman."

"Very. Odd behaviour, at any rate. You hungry?"

"Not terribly. I could use something to drink, though."

* * *

In the end, Lestrade drove back with me to Sussex and spent the night on the floor of our guest room. It was a quiet drive down. I sporadically produced topics of conversation to keep him from falling asleep, lapsing back between times into the contemplation of our visit to Mrs Rogers, the marks of the trip wire (the kerbstone had been washed since yesterday), and the hotel room (which Lestrade left sealed for his prints-and-evidence team).

Holmes was waiting for us, with hot drinks and a remarkably transformed room, tidier than it had been in perhaps ten years. He had even lit a small and not entirely necessary fire, which glowed cheerfully from the grate. Lestrade looked grey with fatigue, and he was given a hot brandy and rapidly dispatched to his rather bare quarters. I was pleased to find feathers contained and new beds in place and said as much to Holmes as I joined him in front of the fireplace.

"Yes, Patrick and Tillie were most helpful. He brought a load of essentials over from your house."

"So I see. These chairs are certainly more comfortable than the seat of Lestrade's car. One of his springs is working its way loose, and I kept expecting to be impaled by it." I sipped my drink, closed my eyes, and sighed in satisfaction. "How can a day spent merely sitting be so tiring?" I mused.

"Don't fall asleep, Russell. Tell me what you found, just an outline, and then I will allow you to retire."

I told him, and though it was hardly an outline, it took no more than half an hour to give a summary of my day. Holmes filled his pipe thoughtfully.

"She was not surprised or upset at the news of her sister's death?" he asked.

"No, just that odd statement that she had felt her sister go shortly after midnight. What do you make of that?"

"I wish I had been there. I find it difficult to work with secondhand information, even when it comes from you."

"So why didn't you go?" I said irritably.

"I am not criticising, Russell. There is nothing wrong with the way you gather information— far from it, in fact. It is only that I still find it difficult to accustom myself to being half of a creature with two brains and four eyes. A superior creature to a single detective, no doubt, but it takes some getting used to."

This easy and unexpected declaration shook me. For more than a third of my life, I had been under the tutelage and guidance of this man, and my existence as an adult had been shaped by him, yet here he was easily acknowledging that
I,
too, was shaping
him.
I did not know how to answer him. After a long moment, without looking at me, he went on.

"I found some interesting things here today, Russell, but that can wait until tomorrow. To answer your question, I do not know what to make of Mrs Rogers's claim to a revelatory experience. Once, I would have discounted it immediately, but now I can only file it away, as it were, under 'suspicious.' You said that she seemed nervous, rather than upset?"

"She dropped one stitch— not when Lestrade told her that her sister had died, but when he said that the death was not an accident— then another one after she realised who I was, and finally she turned a cable the wrong way round before telling us to leave. She'll have to pull it all out to return it to her normal standard of workmanship."

"Suggestive. Anything else?"

"Interesting little things. Trifles, as Sergeant Cuff would say. For one thing, the lady's a fan of yours. There were three copies of the
Strand
tucked into a basket next to her chair, two of them, I'm tolerably certain, were issues with Conan Doyle articles in them— one of the Thor Bridge case from last year, and the Presbury case from this spring. For another, I'd say she's had some sort of a maid until recently. Maybe just day help, but there was a fine layer of dust on top of the polished wood and metalwork. Perhaps two weeks' worth. Finally, her attitude toward her sister was not perhaps as affectionate as her letter might have indicated. There were whatnots on every surface, covering the mantelpiece, the tables, even the windowsills, but only four of them might have come from the Middle East, and those were all pushed behind something else. A very nice Turkish enamelled plate was under an aspidistra, for example, and I saw a lovely little Roman glass scent bottle behind the most disgustingly garish coronation cup I've ever laid eyes on."