A Letter of Mary

from the floor, found a kettle, though no lid, and four mostly unbroken cups. By the time I had found the bread under a saucepan and trimmed the grimy outside from a piece of cheese, the situation was beginning to amuse me. I hunted for an unbroken jar of relish or pickle, discovered triumphantly a large bottle of pickled onions, and thus assembled a rather strange but quite edible meal.

'Holmes?' I called.

'Yes, Russell.'

'I'd like to get this cleared up before Mrs Hudson returns. She'll be back tomorrow, you said?'

'Yes.'

'Shall I ring Tillie and see if she can send over a pair of her girls to help? Or would you prefer to keep this out of the mouths of the village gossips?'

'I'd rather, if you think we can do it ourselves.'

'Probably a good idea. I could ask Patrick to come over with Tillie tonight for a while. That might help, and they wouldn't talk.'

I poured the boiling water over the leaves, ignoring a few stray sultanas that clung to the tea, and took the tray into the sitting room. I didn't like the look on Lestrade's face, and I glanced quickly at Holmes for confirmation.

'Yes, Russell, the good inspector has his doubts.'

'Now, Mr Holmes, that's not entirely true. If you say there's something in this, I'll believe you. What I said was that I'm going to have trouble convincing my superiors that there's a case here. An old lady has an accident and your house is turned upside down, but deliberate murder? It's a damned awkward— pardon me, Miss Russell— it's an awkward way of committing murder, with a car. Takes some explaining to do.'

'I say, Lestrade, you are coming along nicely. That's twice in the past half hour,' Holmes began, but I smothered his words with anger.

'Somebody killed her, you can't deny that, and drove off.'

'Oh yes, no doubt about that, and that's where it'll lie unless I can take it further. Look, it's like this. We're badly overstretched at the moment, and we've had no fewer than three cases in the last year that have cost us the earth in time and money, with nothing to show— one turned out to be suicide, one an accident, and the third we finally just had to let go for lack of any hard evidence. There's been no little criticism about the Yard, and from up high, too. We're all walking about on tiptoes down there.'

'You will go talk with her sister, though?'

'Now, that's another thing. Why all this bother about her sister? It's not right, my delaying her being notified like this. Normally, one of the Cambridge force'd go and tell her. And aside from that, how'd you know the letter was from her? There was only her address on the envelope. Opening letters, now, Mr Holmes, that's an offence. Interfering with the post.'

'Why, Lestrade, who else could it have been from but the sister she'd been staying with? We weren't interfering with it; on the contrary, we were making absolutely certain that you received it. In fact, you owe us a favour for bringing it to your attention so promptly.'

The younger man fell on this red herring, led astray by Holmes' deliberate air of bland innocence. His narrow face pulled in suspiciously.

'What sort of a favour?'

'I want you to take Russell with you when you go to see Erica Ruskin.'

I was surprised but said nothing.

'I can't do that, Mr Holmes.'

'Of course you can. Besides, you should have a woman there. Women are so much better at comforting the bereaved, don't you find?' He shot me a warning look, and I closed my mouth so hard, my teeth hurt. 'Lestrade, you know you'd have to take another person with you anyway. Russell's not strictly to the rules, but call her a consultant.'

Lestrade looked as if he'd rather call me something less polite, and I could see that he was not impressed with my father's smudged shirt and the rat's nest of hair atop my grimy face. He was momentarily forgetting that he had seen me in a number of guises, ranging from a lady of the evening to a blind beggar and a chic young heiress, and once as Dr Watson. No, come to think of it, he had come in later on that particular case. Nonetheless, surely he should trust me to dress the part.

'I will change my clothes and look presentable, Inspector, if you will give me twenty minutes,' I said mildly.

'Better get started, Russell,' said Holmes. 'The good gentlemen are nearly finished here.'

'Now just one minute. I haven't said I'd go to see the woman, now have I? I've got work up to my ears already. Why should I jaunt on up to the wilds of Cambridgeshire and fight the hay wagons just so your wife can watch me give an old lady some bad news about her sister? Be reasonable, Mr Holmes.'

'She was murdered, Lestrade,' Holmes said evenly.

'So you say.'

'Precisely. So I say.' The two men measured each other over the gouged tabletop, until finally Lestrade let out an explosive breath.

'Oh, very well, Mr Holmes. For you, I'll go, and I'll take her with me. But I don't have time to come back down to this godforsaken wilderness. She'll have to get back on her own.'

'I believe I can manage the train, Inspector. Twenty minutes.'

Precisely nineteen minutes later, I walked into the sitting room in what Holmes calls my 'young lady' guise. The blouse was a bit crumpled, but the unfashionable skirt looked as dowdy as ever and my hair was wrapped