The Mary Russell Series Books 1-4: The Beekeeper's Apprentice; A Monstrous Regiment of Women; A Letter of Mary; The Moor (56 page)

“Margery, if you’re awake, please answer. You’re worrying Marie and Veronica. If you don’t answer, we’re going to have to break down the door or call the police.”

Nearly ten seconds passed before an answer came, her voice slow and low, but clear.

“No. Leave me.”

I knelt down and put my eye to the keyhole, which, to my surprise, had no key in it. I looked, and stared straight into one of the most peculiar, dramatic, and inexplicable episodes I have ever witnessed.

What I saw and did next might easily have been rewritten by memory over the years. However, I have before me as I write these memoirs the letter I sent to Holmes the following day describing the events. So, in order to preserve the stark facts of what may or may not have happened, I shall copy directly from that letter:

I saw the back of her head at the end of the room, before an altar. The rest of her was hidden by chairs, and her hair was in complete disarray, but its colour was clear and distinctive.

“What room is this?” I asked Veronica.

“The small chapel. Is she there?”

“Yes.” I stood up. “Stay here with Marie. I’ll see if I can get in that other door, and if so, I’ll come and unlock this one.” I gave her no time to argue, but turned to the two doors that form the end of the corridor. The right one was unlocked, and when I looked in, I saw a connecting door. It, too, was unlocked, but when it came to the door into the chapel, I had to use my picklocks. I shot the bolt behind me, made my way around the edges of the chapel to the hallway door, and dropped my hat onto the doorknob so as to obscure the view from outside. There was an exclamation from the other side, which I ignored, and went up to Margery where she knelt on the floor.

Holmes, she looked as if she’d been run down by a motor lorry. Her left eye was swollen nearly shut and the skin over the cheekbone had split, smearing blood down into her neck and back into her hair. Her mouth on that same side was thick and there were traces of blood on the lip, probably cut on the inside against a tooth. The rest of her was hidden beneath a woolen overcoat. She did not respond to my voice in any way, just stared unblinking at the Celtic-style cross on the altar.

I thought it best to determine the extent of her injuries before deciding what to do, and when I began to ease the coat from her shoulders, she made no more objection than a sleeping child. The coat was undamaged and clean but for some blood at the collar, but beneath it, her dress, in addition to the bloodstains from her face, was torn slightly at the neck and the right sleeve, and a line of lace along the front had been ripped free of its stitching. I unbuttoned the front of her dress—still no response—and found beneath it great red welts surrounded by areas of lesser bruising. From the shallowness of her breathing and the way she held her torso, I judged that her ribs were at least cracked.

She had been beaten, Holmes, by a man (or a powerfully built woman accustomed to using her fists) several inches taller than she,
right-handed, wearing a heavy ring on his right hand. And no stranger, either, unless she had been walking down the street in January wearing only a thin woollen dress.

“Who did this to you, Margery?” I asked, but she was far away. I refastened the buttons, then took off my own coat and carried it over to drape across the second keyhole. I walked back to Margery and dropped to my knees directly in front of her.

“Margery,” I said loudly, and repeated it several times. “Margery, you must answer me. You must see a doctor. I think you can walk, but if you don’t respond, I’ll have to carry you to your bed.” The eyes in the ravaged face began slowly to return, and when they had focused on mine, I was relieved to see that the pupils were of an equal and normal size.

“No,” she whispered.

“Margery, you’ve been injured. If you don’t have your ribs strapped, every breath will continue to hurt you, and without stitches, that cut on your face will leave a scar. I’m going to open the door and let Marie help you to bed, and Veronica will have someone put out a notice cancelling tonight’s service.”

“No,” she said again, more clearly but from a great distance, and it suddenly occurred to me that she sounded like someone speaking though the blanket of a hypnotic trance. I continued to look into her eyes, thinking. Unless her head injuries concealed deeper damage, the hurts she suffered were debilitating, but not life-threatening. (You will admit that I know something of injuries, personally and through my work at the hospital during the War.) No blows had landed lower than her rib cage, and the lack of cuts or swelling on her skull agreed with the evidence of her clear eyes. The hypnotic state, or whatever you wish to call it, was blocking the pain, and she wished strongly to be left alone. I nodded.

“I’ll just have Veronica arrange to cancel the service, then. The doctor can wait until you feel ready.”

“No doctor. No Veronica.”

“You don’t want the talk cancelled? Oh, come now, Margery. You’re certainly in no condition to—”

“Go away, Mary,” she said clearly. “Take them with you.”

There seemed nothing to say to that. She was rational, an adult woman, and in no immediate danger. More than that, there was an urgency and command in her eyes that I did not care to go against.

While I was with her, the voices of Marie and Veronica had moved from the door where I had left them and followed my route through Margery’s bedroom and dressing room, and Marie’s key had rattled briefly but ineffectually in the lock. With a final glance at the woman’s injuries, I left her, let myself out the hallway door—not a real lock, just a slim bolt on the inside—and called to the others. When I told them that Margery was not seriously hurt and that she wished to be alone, Marie immediately made to get past me to open the door. I stopped her, repeated her mistress’s words, and shepherded them both down to the adjoining sitting room.

I gave Veronica a drink, offered Marie a glass of something and received a look of blistering hate, and set to wait.

At 7:30, I asked Veronica if there was anyone competent to take the service, were Margery to prove not up to it. (I did not tell them that I doubted that Margery should be able to creep onto the stage, even in heavy makeup, much less draw in enough breath to make herself heard even in the front rows, particularly without the services of a doctor’s wraps and pain medications.)

“Ivy led it several times when Margery was away in December. Not preaching, of course, but hymns and readings.” That did not advance us much, as Ivy was quite beyond the reach of mortal hymns. I asked her if there was anyone else.

“Rachel Mallory might do it.” I sent her off to alert Rachel or whomever she might find of the possibility that her services might be called upon, then turned my warning gaze back on Marie, who subsided, muttering French curses that I wish I could have overheard more clearly, for the sake of my education.

The hall clock downstairs sounded the three-quarter hour.

“She will need me to dress her,” Marie burst out.

“If she has not appeared by eight, you and I will go and see to her.” The fury of her protests would have shrivelled a toad, but I cut them off with the curt remark to the effect that if Margery were to prove incapable of walking, Marie could hardly carry her without help.

The minutes ticked past. (Forgive the drama, Holmes, but I wish the account to be complete.) At six minutes before eight, I heard a door open and voices came to us, Veronica and another. Then they were at the door, both looking worried, and the other woman, Rachel, apprehensive and confused, as well. They stood in the doorway and Veronica started to ask me something, when her words were cut off by the sound of another door closing. Rachel turned to look, and she let out a short cry, and then Veronica, and Marie bolted past me, and to my utter confusion, the three of them were babbling a polyglot of relief and curiosity. Moreover, they were answered by Margery in a light, joking voice, and I still stood in the room when she came through the door with my hat and coat in her hands and held them out to me.

“You left these in the chapel, Mary,” she said. “You’ll need them later; it’s chilly out tonight.” And with that prosaic pronouncement, she turned and left, hurrying and apologising for being late. Before the door shut on them, I heard her laugh.

Holmes, there was not a mark on her. Her skin was whole and unbruised, the proud flesh subsided; she moved with her customary easy grace and had enough lung expansion to laugh. The only sign of what I had seen was the dampness of her hair on the left side of her face.

I searched her room, of course, and found no bloodied dress, but the collar of her coat had been scrubbed wet, and pressing the light brown fabric hard with a handkerchief produced a red-brown stain. From the coals in the fireplace, I sifted nine bone buttons and several
metal clasps, all that remained of her silk undergarments and the damaged dress.

Marie found me on my knees before the fire and came close to attacking me physically. She berated me, called me seven kinds of a fool, and was silenced only when I poured the still-hot buttons into her hand and left.

Margery preached absolutely normally. She moved freely, projected her voice fully, seemed, if anything, more spirited and eloquent than she customarily was. She did not even end the evening any earlier.

I have seen people in an hypnotic trance ignore pain. I have even witnessed a hypnotised person hold his hand into flame and pass through undamaged, as the fire-walkers of the South Pacific are said to do. I have never heard of hypnosis used actually to remove existing injuries.

Your basic dictum in an investigation is, if faced by the impossible, choose the merely improbable. However, what does one do when faced with a choice between two impossibilities? I saw her face, Holmes, from a distance of less than a foot; I saw it afterwards up close, when she gave me my coat: There was not so much as a bruise, and she wore no more makeup than she had for previous performances: Furthermore, I am certain it was she, not a twin or double: She has two tiny flecks in the iris of her right eye, which cannot be duplicated. Either I have been the subject of a subtle, skilful, and powerful mental manipulation or I have been witness to what I should have said to be an impossibility: in short, a miracle.

I shall wait until tomorrow to post this, when I have seen Margery. Is it possible that she was moving under a deep hypnotic trance (prayer-induced?) which, when it breaks, will leave her with her cracked ribs and sore face? Will she show me a way to hide swollen flesh and cuts with invisible makeup? If so, I shall destroy this and feel exceedingly foolish. Still, I cannot help but wish that someone other than Marie had seen the damage, as well.

Yours, R

Postscript, Friday: I saw MC briefly this morning; by the mere fact that you have seen this, she is obviously in perfect health. Holmes, is this possible, or have you seen previous signs of madness in me and not mentioned them?

—MR

I was, as the letter reveals, badly shaken. I sent it to Holmes via his brother Mycroft, whose all-seeing eyes and octopus fingers would surely find him more quickly than the post office. Indeed, I received a reply the next day, a telegram that followed me from the Vicissitude to the Temple, where I was helping Veronica lay out shelves for her library. I opened the flimsy envelope with my dirty hands, read the brief note, then gave the boy a coin and told him that there would be no reply.

“What was it, Mary?”

I held it out for Veronica to make of it what she could.

“From Marseilles. ‘
Ab esse ad posse
.’ ‘From “it is” to “it is possible,”’” she deciphered, sounding none too sure of herself. “What on earth does that mean? Who sent it?”

“A wandering expert on early Rabbinic Judaism,” I extemporized. “Someone at the British Museum came across a first-century inscription that seems to indicate that a woman was head of a synagogue in Palestine. I wanted to know if it was possible. Not a terribly informative reply, though.”

“Odd,” she said, studying the paper for hidden meaning. I distracted her.

“A better translation might be, ‘If it happened, then it is possible.’ A good slogan for the feminist movement, don’t you think?”

“Surely not, Mary. The possibility must come first.”

I plucked the sheet from her hand and pushed it into the pocket of my trousers.

“History is littered with odd happenings that were allowed to fade away into nothing, instead of being seized on as a new beginning.”

The discussion moved away into Jean d’Arc, Queen Elizabeth, the women of the New Testament, George Sand, and on into the trackless wastes of theory.

T
HAT AFTERNOON, I
had a tutorial with Margery. Marie showed me in and then carried in the tea things, and without speaking or meeting my eyes, she managed to convey an attitude of scorn, superiority, and profound dislike. She had contrived to forget the state of her mistress’s face, remembering only that I had tricked her and maltreated her and made a fool of myself. I sat and studied my hands until she had unloaded the tray and the door clicked shut behind her. I then looked across at Margery.

“What happened, Margery? How did you heal yourself?”

Amazingly, she laughed.

“You, too? Marie seemed to think I was on death’s door the other night—why, I can’t think. I’d have thought you have more sense.”

“And you weren’t.”

“Of course not! I cut my finger on a broken glass and must somehow have rubbed it against my face.” She held out her left hand. There was a plaster around the middle finger.

“Your dress was torn,” I noted.

“Yes. I caught the lace on a rough spot on the bookshelf,” she said evenly.

“Why did you burn it?”