A Letter of Mary

my question. 'She came back here on Wednesday evening, but I don't know for how long. Did the room look as though she had been here for long?'

This appeal to her professional expertise had its effect. She stood up and surveyed the room.

'On Wednesday, now, I made the bed, dusted, straightened the wardrobe. Put out fresh towels. There was a cup on the dressing table. I took that away. The papers were all over the table, so I tidied them, put the pencils in the drawer. That was about all. Then yesterday— let me think. Did the bed. It looked like she'd made it up herself, but it wasn't smooth like I likes to see it, so I tightened it up. I replaced one towel that was next to the washbasin in the corner. Closed the wardrobe— it was standing open. Picked up the magnifying glass— it had fallen under the desk. That was about all.'

'The papers and books weren't moved?'

'No, they were right here on Wednesday.' She glanced at them, then looked more closely. 'That's funny. Oh, I suppose she must have read them and put them back herself. There was a page on the top with some funny drawings— of this little, like a statue of a fat woman, with no clothes. I remember it had big, you know.' She sketched a gesture of abundance at her front and blushed. 'And I looked at the page under it, too, just curious, you know. You won't tell Mr Lockhart? The manager?'

'Of course not. What was under the drawing of the figurine?'

'Another drawing, of a horse and a kind of cart.'

I looked at the papers, but the top four sheets were all typescript. I thumbed through the stack carefully and halfway down the pile found the page with three drawings of a fertility figure, and several pages further on the drawing of the war chariot. I held them thoughtfully.

'In the same place, you say? But she had looked through them and put them back straight.'

'Funny, isn't it? She wasn't that tidy with them Tuesday and Wednesday.'

'Yes, well, perhaps she was embarrassed when she realised what a mess she'd left.'

'Maybe,' she said dubiously. Working as a maid in an hotel no doubt made one sceptical of the human generosity of spirit.

'Well, thank you, Miss ...'

'I'm Sally, madam, Sally Wells.'

'And if her family want to reach you again, what days do you work?'

'I have Saturday afternoon and all Sunday free, madam. Oh, madam, that's not necessary. No, I couldn't take that. Well, maybe part of it. Thank you, madam.'

'It's I who thank you, Miss Wells. For the family, that is. You've been most helpful. No, I don't think you need clean in here for the next two or three days, until we can remove her things. And it would be best if you could remain ... discreet, until then. It wouldn't do to have people trooping in and out of here. I knew you'd understand. Thank you again, Miss Wells.'

Downstairs, I dropped the key on the desk and asked how long Miss Ruskin had paid for the room.

'I believe she was planning on leaving us this afternoon, madam.'

'The room will be needed until Sunday,' I said firmly, and took a bank note from my bag. 'Will that cover it?'

'Yes, indeed it will, madam, but—'

'Good, then I'd like the room left as it is until then, please. No one is to enter it.'

'Very good, madam,' he said dubiously. 'May I ask, did madam find her aunt?'

'Oh yes, I found her, I'm afraid. Now there's the problem of what to do about her.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Nothing. Good day.'

I ignored his uncertain protests and questions, turned, and walked quickly out onto the street. As I approached the corner where Dorothy Ruskin had died, I saw the spare figure of Holmes, leaning against the ugly yellow wall from which he had extracted the wool fibres. He was reading a newspaper, the Morning Post by the look of it. At the sight of his shoulders, my heart lifted— he, too, had been successful. I waited for a gap in the traffic and stepped briskly down from the pavement.

Halfway across, my momentum faltered. Within the space of two steps, I came to a frozen halt, mesmerised by the sight before my eyes. The vertical edge of the approaching kerb was splattered by what looked like a glaze of reddish brown paint but which I knew with utter certainty most horribly was not. The street and the paving stones had been scrubbed down, but the edge had been overlooked, and the sun caught with nauseating clarity the thick blobs of colour, broken in the middle by lines where the sluicing water had made runnels, fading after a few feet to smears and splashes and drips. The strip of stained paving loomed up huge across my vision, and for a brief instant I seemed to glimpse white hair falling in a circle of streetlight, starting to rise, a flare of headlamps and a dimly seen figure crouched against the wall, heard a roar of sudden acceleration and the squeal of tires and the heavy wet sound of metal meeting flesh, and the roar built into a dizzying, pounding noise in my ears that took over all sight, thought, awareness.

I have never fainted in my life, but I would have done so on that street corner had it not been for the abrupt pain of an iron grasp on my arm and Holmes speaking fiercely in my ear.

'Good Lord, Russell, are you trying to reenact the accident? Come, you need to sit down. There's a cafe down the street.'

Movement, faces peering, a deep and shaky breath and the roaring sound fading, Holmes' grip on my upper arm.

'Now sit down. I'll return in a minute.'

Seated. Seeing the intricacy of white threads, interwoven, over, under, over in the cloth; two small perfect