made dutiful note of what few pertinent details they contained (“last Thursday”; the name of a play; a restaurant) and folded them up with hands that felt dirty. They did, however, serve to explain Margery’s oddly fervent references to self-abnegation and discipline.
It was now 5:37, and I made haste to tidy up. I put everything back as it had been, wiped my fingerprints from the safe, on the remote chance I had disturbed something without noticing, replaced the chair, and placed her pen back in its holder. I needed to be gone, but the opening of the safe had restored a small degree of life to my brain, and another question had presented itself: How had Margery entered this room, bleeding and disheveled, without being seen on the street?
On earlier thought, I had tentatively decided that it must be the wall of bookshelves that gave way to a hidden opening, but on closer examination, there was no seam. I looked at the cornice that hid the safe.
Marie’s room. I stood up quickly and stared at the adjoining wall on the side of the fireplace opposite the safe. Only Marie would say nothing, were she to notice an odd chunk out of the floor space between the rooms.
Beside the fireplace was a series of shallow fitted shelves, holding an assortment of photographs and bric-a- brac. On the stray chance that the man who had fitted the secret compartments was as symmetrical as his fireplace surround, I prodded at the decorative bit that matched the safe’s covering. There was a low click, and the wall moved.
As I stood looking proudly at my handiwork, there came another noise down the corridor. I reacted instantly. I dove for the door, undid the lock, slapped the light switch off, ripped the shawl from the floor, yanked my handkerchief from the keyhole, tossed the shawl over the back of the sofa, ran silently to the secret door and pulled it open, stepped in, and then leapt out again and retrieved my notes from Margery’s desk, turned off the desk light, and groped my way back to the door. Once through it, I pulled it closed on its well-oiled hinges, and it clicked shut just as the light went on in the room. A pinpoint beam cut a path through and split onto my shoulder. I put my eye to the peephole.
Margery came in the study door, tousled and puffy with sleep. The way she moved inside the shimmering dressing gown confirmed her forty years; nonetheless, she was, if anything, more beautiful than her formal self. Feeling like a
I was safe, for the moment at any rate: Margery was not about to follow me into the passageway (for the breath of air on the backs of my legs informed me it was not merely a hole), nor was she about to begin work at her desk, where the heat of the light could hardly fail to alert her that it had recently been on.
She sat and stared blankly into the fire. I could hear movement behind me in the room Marie occupied: water running, a door closing. In a few minutes, she came in, combed and starched in her grey uniform dress, carrying her tray. She greeted Margery formally, then laid out the tea things, built up the fire properly, and left Margery to her thoughts, and me to my dilemma.
I had originally thought to go downstairs and slip past the night guard through the front door, trusting that the mystery of an unbolted door, without signs of burglary, would soon be dismissed. Now, however, I was trapped.
Unless…
No. I’d had quite enough of dark places. I was happy to wait.
Until Holmes tires of watching for me and comes in? Oh, curse the man. Why choose now to become a solicitous male? He would rescue me, if I wished it or not.
No. No, thank you, there would be cobwebs and steps and hidden latches at the other end, and me with one small box of vestas.
One thing, though: I’d learnt skills in the dark.
Absolutely not. I will wait here until she goes to dress, and then I will sneak out. The place will be nearly deserted, of a Sunday morning.
How long? Two hours, three? Your bladder will burst, thanks to the refuge’s tea.
That, unfortunately, was true, and truth to tell, the fear of having to do something about it in the passageway, all too reminiscent of my time in the cellar, drove me down into the dark more than anything else.
It was a long, long passage, tortuous and utterly unrelieved by light. The vestas I clutched as talismans against the night. I lit each one with care, scurried along until it began to burn my finger, then groped my way down the passage for a few more feet, considerably more disorientated than if I had remained in the dark. I knew that if I gave my senses a chance, they would guide me, but in craven cowardice I clung to my feeble lights, and I still had three in the box when I reached the end.
There was a door, a narrow one, and it opened easily onto an equally narrow passageway that was, glory of glories, open to the sky. I sidled between two buildings, stepped out onto a street, and stood breathing in the early-morning air.
The street seemed to me a foretaste of paradise—the morning mist was the breath of God; the early pedestrians, angels. I had come straight through the block of buildings onto the next street up from the hall, so with a wary eye for constables and Temple members, I made my way around the two corners until I found Holmes (Buttercup long discarded for the costume of an indeterminate labourer). I seized his hand, which surprised me as much as it did him. What is more, I did not release it until we reached my flat.
TWENTY-ONE
Sunday, 6 February
—William Shakespeare
« ^
That silly demonstration seemed to convince Holmes that I was at the ragged edge, either physically or mentally. On reaching my flat, he insisted that I undress, bath, and take Mrs Q’s breakfast in bed, where he sat scowling horribly at me until I had pushed the last of it down. I was taken aback, as Holmes normally treated my infirmities as his own—that is, he ignored them. Perhaps, as Q had hinted, the previous days had been as hard on him as they had been on me, if for different reasons. I looked at him over the rim of my cup and dutifully recited all I had done and found within the Temple buildings. He sat on a pink satin boudoir chair, his labourer’s boots propped on the foot of my Brobdingnagian bed, his fingers steepled, his eyes shut. I reached an end, then waited, but there was no response. I suspected he was asleep. I put the cup noisily on the tray, and his eyelids flashed open.
“I never asked you, Holmes. How did you find me… in that house in Essex?”
