A Letter of Mary

tightly around my head and covered with a cloche hat. I pushed a thin notebook and pencil into my ridiculous bag. Lestrade glanced at his watch and stood up.

'Right. Ellis should be finished with the toolshed.'

'Send me prints of the photographs, would you, Lestrade? Russell, did you give your films to Mr Ellis?'

'I did. See you later, Holmes. Watch out for the marmalade on the pantry floor.'

I turned to leave and nearly walked into Lestrade, who was bent over in a contortion, peering fiercely at the patch of boards Holmes had earlier indicated. He straightened hurriedly and left. I followed him to the door, then stopped to look back at the room. A swath of bare floor cut through the debris. Holmes stood amidst the ruins, rolling up the sleeves of his collarless shirt.

'Don't look so grim, Russell.'

'Ring Patrick, Holmes.'

'I'll have him meet you at the station.'

* * *

Tony Ellis had finished with the photography and was loading his equipment into the back of the car. Lestrade handed him a bag. I was surprised to see that he had no driver.

'I'll drive back, Tony. Miss Russell is coming with us.'

Mr Ellis glanced at me but said nothing as he went to the front of the car and cranked the starting handle for Lestrade. After several attempts, the elderly engine shuddered to life, and he came around and climbed into the narrow back seat. He looked absolutely exhausted, and I was not surprised when I heard snores erupting from the back before we had gained the main road.

'Your Mr Ellis seems to have made a night of it,' I commented, though, truth to tell, there was no sign of alcohol about him.

'He's been working for nearly thirty-six hours. We were over in Kent yesterday night when your message reached me. We'd started off with the car, so now we're stuck with it. Can't exactly tuck it into the overhead rack, can you? Ellis offered to come down with me— he doubles as a driver when we're shorthanded.'

'Generous of him to volunteer.'

'He wanted to meet Mr Holmes.'

'Ah. Have you also been on duty since yesterday morning?'

'Yes, but he drove last night. Don't worry, I won't fall asleep at the wheel.'

'I was not worried, though if you wish me to take over at any point, I'm quite a decent driver.' I made the offer, although he did not seem the sort who would care to be driven by a woman.

'Miss Russell— is that what I should call you, by the way?'

'Yes, that's fine.'

'I wonder if you'd mind telling me the whole story from your point of view, to cover the, er, gaps left by Mr Holmes?'

'Certainly. Where would you like me to begin? With her letter to me?'

'Tell me about her. What was she like, how did you meet her, what do you know of her work in Palestine? Anything along those lines.'

'Miss Ruskin was one of those odd women this country occasionally throws out, like Gertrude Bell or Mary Kingsley. Fascinated by the exotic, oblivious of comfort or convention, largely self-educated, an incongruous mixture of utter, inflexible certainty and immense insecurity around her peers, so that in normal social intercourse, she usually spoke in brief, brusque phrases. Left off pronouns. Loud voice. In writing or when she was involved in explaining her work, she could be very eloquent. Devastatingly observant. Dauntingly vital. Immensely intelligent, and wise, as well. It's hard to think of her as dead, even having seen her body. I shall miss her.'

Lestrade was a good listener, and his questions were apposite. I talked; he prompted. We stopped in Southwark to push Tony Ellis out at the terrace house he shared with his three brothers, then drove on to Scotland Yard, where Lestrade left the photographic film to be developed. He also made what seemed to me a feeble attempt to abandon the automobile, but when a consultation with the schedules revealed a nearly two-hour wait at King's Cross, he decided not to descend to forms of transport less demanding of constant attention, and despite the lack of a driver, he kept the car. A motorphile who cannot afford a machine of his own, I diagnosed with resignation.

There was a pause in conversation as he steered between the carts, drays, lorries, taxis, omnibuses, trams, and the thousand other forms of moving targets, but when eventually we had fought free, unscathed, of the greater concentration of traffic, he resumed as if without interruption.

'This manuscript, what did you call it?'

'It's called a papyrus. We should have shown it to you, but it's in a safe place and Holmes thought it best to leave it hidden. The manuscript itself is a little roll of papyrus, which is a kind of thick paper made from beaten reeds, very commonly used in ancient Egypt and the whole Middle East, apparently, though very little of it has survived. Miss Ruskin consulted authorities on it, but they decided it was not an authentic first-century document, partly because there's so little extant Palestinian papyrus. However, she thought that as it was sealed inside a glazed figurine, it could have resisted wear that long. I haven't had a chance to examine it closely, but there were definite signs of red pottery dust embedded in the fibres. It was put into the box quite recently, in the last twenty years.'

'Tell me about the box.'

I described it, the animals, inlay, date, and probable origin.

'I'd like to take it to the British Museum to have a friend look at it, but it's undoubtedly quite valuable. It's in excellent condition, though how it got to a Bedouin tribesman from Italy will take some figuring.'

'And the manuscript itself, what's it worth?'

'I have no way of knowing.'

'Guess.'

'Surely you know better than to ask that of a student of Sherlock Holmes,' I chided.

'Miss Russell, I am asking for a rough estimate of the thing's value, not a bid at auction. What is it worth?'

'Half a million guineas?'

'What?' he choked, and nearly had us in the ditch.

'The road, please, Inspector,' I said urgently, and then: 'You're certain you don't want me to drive? Very well. The thing could as easily be worth ten pounds, I have at present no means of evaluating it. But you asked two questions— one of its worth, and the other of its value. The two are related, although not the same. If it is not authentic, as merely a curiosity, the manuscript is nearly worthless and of little value. If, however— and it's a very large if— if it is authentically what it appears to be, whoever owned it could set the price. Only a handful of individuals in the world could afford it. And its value ... Its value as an agent of change? Good Lord, if the papyrus came to be generally accepted as a voice from the first century, the repercussions would be ... considerable.'