'I'll have him back on the streets, I will.' He seized his anger like a shield and would not look at us.
'What of the two men?' I interrupted impatiently. 'Holmes said you had arrested them. What were their statements like?'
'Actually, we, er, we've decided not to arrest them just yet. Yes, I know, I thought we would, but we've let them go for the time being. Maybe they'll get cocky and hang themselves. There was nothing in those statements, nothing at all. The two of them were out both those nights, testing the engines on two cars. No alibis whatsoever, but they shut their jaws like a pair of clams after they recited their story, and they'll say nothing more.'
'That doesn't sound like the Jason Rogers I met,' commented Holmes.
'It's the old granny's doing, I'm sure of it. She's a cunning old witch, is that one, and she's put the fear of God into him to shut his trap. She was right about the need for a clear motive, though how she figured it out, I cannot think. Must have been her— Coogan didn't seem to have brains enough to pound sand down a rat hole. Without either a motive or harder evidence than buttons in a burn pile, five hairs that bear a passing resemblance to theirs, some smashed auto parts with a tiny bit of dried blood, and the fact that she got rid of a shelf full of murder mysteries, we'd be fools to give it a try. The only thing that's the least bit firm is the mud on your ladder, which matches the wet patch outside her potting shed, but even Coogan wouldn't have much trouble making a jury laugh at that. I'd rather go for Miss Russell's colonel, or Mr Mycroft's Arabs. I won't make an arrest yet, but we'll keep a very close eye on those boys. They may try to sell the stuff they took from you. If granny keeps an eye on them, they won't, but we can always hope. We'll get them, Mr Holmes, eventually. We know they did it, and we'll get them. Just, well, not yet.' He ran out of words, then looked up from the intent study of his hands like a schoolboy before the headmaster, mingled apology and dread on his face, and shrugged his shoulders. 'Without a motive, we'd be fools to make an arrest, and we've been over the inheritance with a nit comb— no insurance, no big expenses to make anyone need cash now. Wouldn't seem to make any difference if Dorothy Ruskin died now or twenty years from now. Her stuff from Palestine should arrive in the next week; we'll go through that. May find a new will or a handful of diamonds in there.' His attempt at laughter trailed off, and Holmes stood up and clapped him on the shoulder with an uncharacteristic bonhomie.
'Of course we see that, Lestrade. Never mind, you'll get them eventually. Patience is a necessary virtue. Keep us informed, would you?'
We collected our possessions from Mycroft, and we slunk home.
PART SIX
Wednesday, 5 September 1923-
Saturday, 8 September 1923
— The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians 3:6
TWENTY-THREE
It was a sorry pair of detectives who rode the train south towards Eastbourne. I felt dreary and drained and utterly without interest in matters criminal or academic. Holmes, controlled as ever, looked merely determined, but there lay about him the distinct odour of brutally quenched campfire.
With an effort, I pulled myself out of this stupor. Oh goodness, Russell, I expostulated, it's hardly the end of the world, or even the end of the case. A temporary check in the hunt, no more. Lestrade will surely ...
I had not realised I was speaking aloud until Holmes shot me a frigid glance.
'Yes, Russell? Lestrade will surely what? Oh yes, he will surely keep his ear to the ground, but he will also certainly be caught up in these other cases of his, and time will pass, and if he does lay hands on the link of evidence he so desires, it will be only through sheer luck.'
'For heaven's sake, Holmes, she's just an old granny, not a Napoleon of crime.'
I should have known that the phrase would tip him over the edge into an icy rage.
'It's a damned good thing for Lestrade's lot that she's too much a middle-class English woman to turn her hands to crime. Napoleon went to war, but she's satisfied herself with one brief, self-righteous campaign, and now she's captured her goal— whatever the deuces it might have been— she's entrenched. The police will never prise her out on their own. No, I ought never to have listened to you and Mycroft. If we'd kept Scotland Yard out of it, I might have got to her without giving warning, but now it's going to mean weeks, months of delicate, painstaking, cold, and uncomfortable work, and I tell you honestly, Russell, I'm feeling too old and tired to relish the thought very much.'
His last bleak phrase deflated any reciprocal anger I might have summoned. I sat while he fished a crumpled packet of Gold Flakes from his pocket and lit one. He looked out the window; I looked at the cigarette.
'Since when have you taken to gaspers again?' I asked mildly, more mildly than I felt, seeing the sucks and puffs of nervous anger.
'Since I first laid eyes upon Erica Rogers. She's not the only one with premonitions.' That cut it. I took a deep breath.
'Holmes, look. We will get her. Give me a week to tie things up in Oxford, and then we can go after them. Or to Paris, or Palestine, if you think there's anything there.'
He snatched the cigarette from his lips and dashed it to the floor, ground it under his heel, and immediately took out the packet again.
'No, Russell, I'll do this myself. I can hardly expect you to sacrifice your firstborn for the cause.'
I was furious and crushed and obviously superfluous in the compartment, so rather than making matters worse, I left and walked up the train to stand staring out the window at the gathering clouds and sea drizzle.
This was by no means the first failure Holmes had had, but it rankled to be defeated by a woman of no great wits, her lumpish grandson, and a small-time crook. Holmes, too, had been touched by Dorothy Ruskin, and it was hard not to feel that we had let her down. The dead have a claim on us even heavier than that of the living, for they cannot hear our explanations, and we cannot ask their forgiveness.
I knew, however, that what disturbed him most was the thought that he had failed me. He knew the affection and respect I had had for Dorothy Ruskin, and it could only have been devastating to know that all his skills were not enough. I did not hold him to blame, and I had tried to make it clear that I did not, but nonetheless, for the first time he had on some level failed me.
However, I had to admit that he had been right, yet again, back there in the compartment: Were I to lay down my academic career, even temporarily, in order to expiate my guilt and bolster his ego, it could well prove damaging to the strange creature that was our marriage. On the other hand, were I to lay the books aside out of my own free choice— well, that was another matter entirely.
I had known Holmes for a third of my life and had long since accustomed myself to the almost instantaneous workings of his mental processes, but even after two years of the intimacy of marriage, I was able to feel surprise at the unerring accuracy of his emotional judgement. Holmes the cold, the reasoner, Holmes the perfect thinking machine, was, in fact, as burningly passionate as any religious fanatic. He had never been a man to accept the right action for the wrong reason, not from me, at any rate: He demanded absolute unity in thought and deed.
Oh, damn the man, I grumbled. Why couldn't he just be manipulated by pretty words the way other husbands were?
* * *
The train slowed. I climbed down and walked back along the platform to help Holmes with the bags. We got the car running, I drove back to the cottage, and we went about our separate tasks, with barely a word exchanged— not in anger, but in emptiness. He went out late in the afternoon. After an hour or so, I laced on my boots against the wet grass and followed. I found him on the cliff overlooking the ocean, one leg dangling free, the smell of a particularly rancid brand of tobacco trailing downwind. We sat in silence for some time, then walked home.
That evening, he picked at his dinner, drank four glasses of wine, and ignored the accumulation of newspapers spilling from the table near the door. Later, he sat staring into the fire, sucking at an empty pipe. He had aged since that fragrant August afternoon so long ago, when we had drunk tea and honey wine and walked the Downs with a woman who would be dead in a few hours.
'Have we overlooked anything?' I had not meant to speak, but the words lay in the room now.
For a long moment, he did not respond; then he sighed and tapped his teeth with the stem of the pipe.
'We may have done. I don't know yet. I begin to doubt my own judgement. Not overlooking things used to be
