dramatic entrance instead of something predictably unusual, you could astonish everyone by merely walking up the stairs, where and when you were expected. Oh, don't look so crestfallen. I'm glad to see you're having a good time.' I caught his eye in the mirror and watched as he began reluctantly to match my grin. 'Now tell me what you're doing in this cab. The last I heard, you were going to Bath. Did you finish with Mrs Rogers, then?'
He held up his left hand silently, and by the light of the streetlamps I could see the fading wounds of a lengthy battle with thorns and the extreme dryness of skin that comes from long hours of chafing and immersion in wet glue.
'Yes, I see. Did you do the entire house?'
'Two rooms. I told the good lady I would return Tuesday morning.'
'And is she a good lady?'
A long pause followed, only in part due to a surge of traffic around a cinema house. When we had negotiated the tangle, Holmes spoke again, musingly.
'I do not know, Russell. There are a number of oddities about this case, and not the least of them is Mrs Erica Rogers.'
When we arrived at Mycroft's, Holmes parked the car with neither incident not illegality and turned to look at me through the glass partition.
'No one on our tail?'
'None I could see, and I was watching carefully.'
'So I observed. Do you know, Russell, it is a distinct pleasure to look upon your features again. The floor of Mrs Rogers's shed was both hard and cold. Now,' he went on before I could answer, 'I just need to get something from the back.'
The something from the back was a wooden crate that rattled metallically. He volunteered no information, and I did not spoil the surprise by asking. The doorkeeper eyed us closely before admitting us, and Lestrade opened the door with a glass in his hand.
It was, as always under Mycroft's roof, a superb dinner with agreeable conversation. Holmes, more formally clad now in clothing he kept in his brother's guest room, entertained us with stories about a one-armed tattooist in the West End, a woman who had a counting horse up in Yorkshire, the craft of stained glass, and the distinctive familial patterns of Kashmiri rug makers. Mycroft, more phlegmatic but with a nice line in what the Americans call 'deadpan humour,' contributed a long and absurd story concerning a royal personage, a hen, and a ball of twine, which may even have been true. Even Lestrade kept up his end, laying out for us the latest escapade of his nephew— an episode which had convulsed the lad's boarding school for a week and left the headmaster with a red face even longer. His tale ended with him saying, 'Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. That lad'll make a fine detective.' When the laughter had subsided, Mycroft stood up.
'Shall we take our coffee and brandy in the next room? Mary, would you—'
'No, I do not mind if you smoke.'
'Thank you, but I was going to ask if you preferred something other than brandy. A glass of sherry, perhaps?'
'God no!' All three men looked at me in varying states of astonishment at my vehemence. 'I'm sorry, it's just that sherry seems to have played a somewhat excessive part in my life the last few days. I don't think I'll drink a glass of the stuff by choice for several weeks. Just the coffee, thanks.'
'I do understand,' said Mycroft. 'I'll just see to it. Sherlock, perhaps you would stir up the fire.' Lestrade followed him, leaving Holmes and me to choose chairs in front of the fireplace. Holmes threw some coal on the glowing remnants, then lowered himself into his armchair. With great deliberation, he stretched out first one long leg and then the other, and sighed deeply.
'Are you well?' I asked. His reply was to open one eye and look at me. 'You drank rather more wine at dinner than is your custom, and you seem in some discomfort.'
'I am getting old, Russell. Gone are the days when I could scramble about on the moors all day and curl up happily at night with a thin blanket and a stone for a pillow. Three nights on floorboards and one night without sleep following three days at strenuous labour make me aware that I am no longer a callow youth.'
'Have the results matched the effort?'
'I think so, Russell. I believe they have. But it is a fine thing to stretch to one's full height in a soft chair. As you would no doubt agree,' he added. My normal five feet eleven inches was intimidating for many people, so Mary Small stood a full two inches shorter. My back, too, had ached since Wednesday.
Brandy and coffee arrived, and with them a certain reticence, a hesitancy to cut into the festive mood with the hard edges of information and analysis. We each sipped our coffee with undue attention, then gathered ourselves, until finally I put down my cup with a shade more clatter than necessary and cleared my throat.
'Ladies first, I suppose, particularly as I was so remiss over the dinner table. Also, it will allow me to go through my material before my brain gets too fuzzy. Very well, then: Wednesday. You know where the colonel lives, and as you all know London better than I, you also no doubt are aware that it is one of those backwaters that remains a village within the city, complete with shops on the high street and small-town gossipmongers. Mycroft, you may not know that the colonel lives in a large turn-of-the-century— the last turn, that is— house slightly removed from the village centre, in the remnants of what were once lovely grounds. Although he seems to be unpopular with some of the chattier, and therefore more inquisitive, shopkeepers, he is very much the village squire, in his own mind at any rate. He drinks in the local pub with the workers and the shopkeepers, and that is where I arranged to meet him. Quite by accident, of course, but it just so happened that I possessed the qualifications for a personal secretary and knew he needed one.'
'A bit chancy, that, wasn't it,' Lestrade asked, 'depending on his needing a secretary?'
'With a big house and only two permanent staff, and considering the problem of hiring servants these days, I knew he'd be sure to need somebody. And Mary Small is versatile. If he had needed kitchen help or someone to scrub the floors, I would simply have lowered my accent a few notches and rubbed some dirt under my fingernails. I might have had some problem if he'd needed a valet, though,' I admitted.
'You'd have managed somehow,' Holmes commented dryly.
I continued with my narrative and told of the dinner, the work, the colonel, and his son. I found myself curiously hesitant to give specifics of the colonel's attitude towards me, and I gave the barest account of the son's attack (Holmes laughed when I described how I had retaliated; Lestrade and Mycroft winced), but I could see that Holmes read between the lines. I promised him wordlessly that I would go into greater detail when we were away from the others, and I could see that he received the message. The colonel's bedroom and its contents spurred considerable discussion, and by the time I finished with Gerald's traffic summons, it was after eleven o'clock. I dismissed the current day's events with two flat sentences, ignored a curious look from Holmes, and closed my mouth. After a moment, Lestrade looked up from his notes and broke the silence.
'You're saying, then, that you could see Colonel Edwards behind this?'
'I could, yes. I will admit that I rather like the man, though I detest a number of things about him, not the least his attitude towards women. He's appealing, somehow, and I can easily see him in charge of men who will do anything for him. Authoritative, yet slightly bumbling. Of course, it has to be at least in part an act— he was, after all, a soldier who spent the war years efficiently going about the business of getting his men to kill. In any case, yes, I can visualise him as the murderer of Dorothy Ruskin. Not just any woman, but that particular one, under those particular circumstances, yes.
'There is, I must say straight off, no evidence concrete enough to be called by the name. One might analyse the man's writing to the point of knowing what colour his necktie will be on a given day, but it counts for nothing before a jury. Here, in this room, however, I can say that there is a faint odour of brutality in his writing, a clear delineation of 'us' and 'them' and a subsequent disregard for 'their' rights and indeed 'their' very humanity. Particularly when 'they' are women. In more specific terms, though, points witnessed.' I ticked them off on my finger. 'First, there's his temper. He was not far from real violence with me, over a chance remark, and with Miss Ruskin he was faced not only with— point two— a woman who embodied everything he hates— independent, successful, intellectual, and with a sharp tongue she was willing to use— but, worse— point three— the knowledge that he had been tricked by a colleague, another man, who had deliberately put him in the humiliating position of being suddenly confronted by the fact of her gender, and knowing that there wasn't a thing he could do about it,
