A Letter of Mary

What time was that?'

'Tuesday. It was Tuesday, in the afternoon. Maybe five.'

'She left here on Tuesday morning, then?'

'Monday night,' she corrected him. 'She took the seven-forty into London. Wanted to have a full day in town, she said. Not like some of us, who can only get free for a few hours.'

'Er, yes. And the two men. What did they look like? How old were they?'

'Fiftyish,' she said promptly. 'They were Arabs, I suppose. Not that I've seen any up close, but Dorothy used to send photographs sometimes. Had funny names.'

'Can you remember the names?'

'No, gone clear out of my head. Long, they were— the names.'

'And the car they came in? Did you see the registration plate?'

'Not that I remember. It was parked along the side of the house, where your car is. All I could see was that it was long and black.'

'And that it had a driver.'

'I saw that when they pulled out, from upstairs. There were two heads in the back. Either that or the car was driving itself.' She was telling us in no uncertain terms that she was fed up with our presence, and Lestrade gave up. I put my notebook and pen away and walked over to the chair she had occupied. The knitting lay in the chair again, an eight-inch length of fine dark blue wool, ribbing and cables, the bottom of what seemed to be a cardigan.

'You do lovely work, Mrs Rogers. Did you knit the cardigan you have on?' She pulled the front of it together across her thin chest as if to defend herself against my friendly voice.

'Yes. I knit a lot. Now please, I have work to do.'

'Of course,' said Lestrade. 'We will let you know when your sister's body will be released to you, Mrs Rogers. This is my card. If you think of anything more about the two men, or if you have any questions, my telephone number is on it.' He laid the white rectangle on the polished table in the hallway, retrieved his hat, and we walked slowly down the grey stones to the car.

'I suppose there must be a wide variety of reactions when a person is told of the death of someone close to them,' I suggested without much confidence.

'Oh yes. Tears, hysteria, silence, anger, I've seen all those. Never one quite like that, though.'

'An odd woman.'

'Very. Odd behaviour, at any rate. You hungry?'

'Not terribly. I could use something to drink, though.'

* * *

In the end, Lestrade drove back with me to Sussex and spent the night on the floor of our guest room. It was a quiet drive down. I sporadically produced topics of conversation to keep him from falling asleep, lapsing back between times into the contemplation of our visit to Mrs Rogers, the marks of the trip wire (the kerbstone had been washed since yesterday), and the hotel room (which Lestrade left sealed for his prints-and-evidence team).

Holmes was waiting for us, with hot drinks and a remarkably transformed room, tidier than it had been in perhaps ten years. He had even lit a small and not entirely necessary fire, which glowed cheerfully from the grate. Lestrade looked grey with fatigue, and he was given a hot brandy and rapidly dispatched to his rather bare quarters. I was pleased to find feathers contained and new beds in place and said as much to Holmes as I joined him in front of the fireplace.

'Yes, Patrick and Tillie were most helpful. He brought a load of essentials over from your house.'

'So I see. These chairs are certainly more comfortable than the seat of Lestrade's car. One of his springs is working its way loose, and I kept expecting to be impaled by it.' I sipped my drink, closed my eyes, and sighed in satisfaction. 'How can a day spent merely sitting be so tiring?' I mused.

'Don't fall asleep, Russell. Tell me what you found, just an outline, and then I will allow you to retire.'

I told him, and though it was hardly an outline, it took no more than half an hour to give a summary of my day. Holmes filled his pipe thoughtfully.

'She was not surprised or upset at the news of her sister's death?' he asked.

'No, just that odd statement that she had felt her sister go shortly after midnight. What do you make of that?'

'I wish I had been there. I find it difficult to work with secondhand information, even when it comes from you.'

'So why didn't you go?' I said irritably.

'I am not criticising, Russell. There is nothing wrong with the way you gather information— far from it, in fact. It is only that I still find it difficult to accustom myself to being half of a creature with two brains and four eyes. A superior creature to a single detective, no doubt, but it takes some getting used to.'

This easy and unexpected declaration shook me. For more than a third of my life, I had been under the tutelage and guidance of this man, and my existence as an adult had been shaped by him, yet here he was easily acknowledging that I, too, was shaping him. I did not know how to answer him. After a long moment, without looking at me, he went on.

'I found some interesting things here today, Russell, but that can wait until tomorrow. To answer your question, I do not know what to make of Mrs Rogers's claim to a revelatory experience. Once, I would have discounted it immediately, but now I can only file it away, as it were, under 'suspicious.' You said that she seemed nervous, rather than upset?'

'She dropped one stitch— not when Lestrade told her that her sister had died, but when he said that the death was not an accident— then another one after she realised who I was, and finally she turned a cable the wrong way round before telling us to leave. She'll have to pull it all out to return it to her normal standard of workmanship.'

'Suggestive. Anything else?'

'Interesting little things. Trifles, as Sergeant Cuff would say. For one thing, the lady's a fan of yours. There were three copies of the Strand tucked into a basket next to her chair, two of them, I'm tolerably certain, were issues with Conan Doyle articles in them— one of the Thor Bridge case from last year, and the Presbury case from this spring. For another, I'd say she's had some sort of a maid until recently. Maybe just day help, but there was a fine layer of dust on top of the polished wood and metalwork. Perhaps two weeks' worth. Finally, her attitude toward her sister was not perhaps as affectionate as her letter might have indicated. There were whatnots on every surface, covering the mantelpiece, the tables, even the windowsills, but only four of them might have come from the Middle East, and those were all pushed behind something else. A very nice Turkish enamelled plate was under an aspidistra, for example, and I saw a lovely little Roman glass scent bottle behind the most disgustingly garish coronation cup I've ever laid eyes on.'

'Indicates a certain lack of affection, I agree. Or a severe lapse in taste.'

'And, of all the photographs and portraits— there must have been fifty, all in gnarly silver frames— there were only two which might have been of Miss Ruskin. One was a child of about six, and the other was one of those fuzzy romantic photographs of a girl of about eighteen. She was very pretty, by the way, if it was Miss Ruskin.'

'I thought she might have been. However, disapproval of one's sister hardly indicts one for her murder.'

'Particularly when the person is a frail woman in her sixties, I know. Nevertheless—'

'As you say. We shall set Lestrade on the trail in the morning, and set ourselves to casting about in an attempt to find another trail or flush out a few suspects.'

'I believe you're mixing up two quite distinct methods of hunting, Holmes.'

'I often do, Russell. It doesn't do to restrict oneself until one is certain of the nature of the game. To bed with you now, before I have to carry you. I have some smoking to do.'

I rose wearily. His voice stopped me at the door.

'By the way, Russell, how do you come to know anything about dropped stitches and the method of turning a cable?'

'My dear Holmes, the good Mrs Hudson has instructed me in the rudiments of all the so-called womanly arts. The fact that I do not choose to exercise them does not mean I am in ignorance.'

I turned with dignity to my bed, smiling to myself at the soft laughter that followed me up the stairs.

TEN