“What do you mean, ‘yes'?”
His grey eyes, inches away, drilled into mine, his expression—his entire body—radiating an intensity I could not understand. He did not answer, just waited.
I shook my head wearily. “Holmes, you apparently believe you see something I am missing entirely. If you want me to react to it, you're just going to have to tell me.”
“Your parents died in October 1914.”
“And my brother, yes.”
“And you were either in hospital or under your doctor's supervision until you came to England in the early weeks of 1915.”
“Yes.”
“Your parents' cook and gardener—ex-gardener—were murdered in February 1915.”
“According to Mr Long.”
“Your house sits vacant for ten years, then is broken into in late March, approximately the time you would have been here had we not stopped in Japan. And within forty-eight hours of your return to San Francisco, someone is shooting at you.”
“Or at Mr Long. Or simply at a Chinese man who dared to venture from his assigned territory.”
I might not have been speaking, for all the impression my voice made on his inexorable push towards his ultimate point. “And during the earthquake and fire of 1906, some experience troubled a brave and loyal servant into a change of heart towards his employer.”
“Holmes, please, I really am too tired for this.”
“Within two months of that event, your father's will was given an addendum to ensure that the house be left untouched by anyone other than family members for a minimum of twenty years.”
“So?” I demanded, driven to rudeness.
“And finally, your emotional turmoil over the unfinished nature of your family's death has led to a series of disturbing dreams.”
“Damn it, Holmes, I'm going to bed.”
“The evidence is clear, yet you refuse to see it,” he mused. “Fascinating.”
“See what?” I finally couldn't bear it another moment, and blew up at him. “Holmes, for Christ sake, I'm absolutely exhausted, I have bruises coming up all along my shoulders and skull, and my head is pounding so hard I'm going to have trouble seeing my face in the bath-room looking-glass, and you persist in playing guessing games with me. Well, you'll just have to do it in my absence.” I stood up and stalked into the bath-room, where I ran a high, hot bath and immersed myself in it for a very long time. Holmes was asleep when I came out; at any rate, he did not stir.
For the brief, dull, businesslike venture that I had expected of our trip to San Francisco, it had already proved remarkably eventful. Even before we arrived, dreams had been pounding at the door of my mind; in the three days since the ship had docked on Monday morning, I had been arrested, confronted with a bucket-load of oddities, seen the evidence of a house-breaking, met a large slice of my past, been attacked on the street, and had a serious argument with my husband.
But the deadly ambush laid for us Thursday as we walked in all innocence across the hotel lobby reduced the rest to little more than specks of dust on our way.
We'd had a pleasant breakfast—or Holmes had, while I drank coffee and ate a piece of toast while reading the newspapers. Holmes had the
All in all, a satisfying day's headlines.
We drained our cups, dropped our table napkins beside our plates, and made our way towards the lift.
The first volley of the ambush rang out across the dignified lobby, startling every inhabitant and sending Holmes and me into immediate defensive posture. The next shot fired hit home and froze me where I stood.
“Mary! It's Mary Russell, I'd never be wrong about that, you're the spitting image of your father. When I read you were in town I—”
I straightened: The previous night's argument notwithstanding, I had no wish to inflict on Holmes a bullet aimed at me. I fixed him with one of those glances married people develop in lieu of verbal communication—in this case, the urgent glare and slight tip of the head that said (to give its current American colloquial), “Scram!”
Holmes faded away as no man over six feet tall ought to be able to do, leaving me alone to face my attacker.
The top of her hat might have tucked under my chin, had I been foolish enough to allow her that close. Its waving feathers and bristling bits of starched ribbon were ferociously up-to-date, her well-corseted figure was wrapped in an incongruously youthful dress whose designer would have been outraged at the sight (although it testified well to the tensile strength of the thread), and her hair might at one time have been nearly the intense black it now was. Her fingers sparkled with a miscellany of stones, and the mauve colour of her sealskin coat came from no animal known to Nature. She was making for me with both arms outstretched, and although she looked more likely to devour me than to embrace me, I did the English thing and resisted mightily the impulse to place the outstretched heel of one hand against her approaching forehead to keep her at arm's length. Instead, I allowed her to seize my forearms and smack her painted lips in the general direction of my jaw.
It appeared that I had a dear friend in San Francisco.
“Mary, Mary, why on earth did you never write? My, you've become so grown-up, and so tall! Taller than your mother, even, and I thought she was a giraffe! Oh, dear, you poor thing, whisked away from your friends and your home like that—I said to Florence—you remember little Flo, your good friend?—that someone should just get on a train and go fetch you back. Imagine! Nothing but a child, and all alone in the world.”
“Er,” I managed.
“And you've kept your blonde hair, like your dear father—it never did darken like your mother said it would, now did it? Do you rinse it in lemon, like I told you to when you were twelve years old? It looks a nice thick head of hair, too, although this fashion for men's haircuts is so unfortunate.”
“I'm terribly sorry,” I pushed out into the storm of words. “I'm not sure I know who you are.”
The sound she emitted—laughter, I suppose—was a string of seven notes descending from a soprano's high shriek to a low sort of chortle. The gaiety of it was somewhat undermined by the hurt expression in her eyes, but it was hard to know how I might have posed the question any less bluntly.
“I'm Auntie Dee, dear child. Your mother's very best friend in all the world. She used to bring you over to my house so you could play dollies with my Flo. Although you usually ended up in a tree or down the street with her brother Frankie's friends,” she added reluctantly, as if the memory was a somewhat shameful one.
I had to admit, in a tree with the boys sounded more like me than dollies with Flo. Although what my quiet, intelligent mother would have seen in this woman was beyond me.
Still, I did what was required of me. “Auntie Dee, of course, how ever are you, and dear Flo?”
During the course of the monologue that followed, I glimpsed Holmes coming out of the lift, dressed for the day. Give him credit, he did raise a questioning eyebrow in my direction. But there was little point in inflicting this female person on him, so I gave him an imperceptible shake of the head and lowered my eyes until I was gazing soulfully into my companion's face. The motion, or perhaps the fact of her audience actually turning attention onto her, silenced her for a moment, a gap I took advantage of.
“Er, Auntie Dee, I haven't had breakfast yet. Would you care to join me?” A lie, but casual interrogation of this woman might prove informative.
Again came the wince-making seven descending notes of laughter, and she reached out to slap my hand playfully. “How silly of me, of course you're standing here starving to death, when all the while I came to your hotel to whisk you away to breakfast at your old Auntie Dee's own table. If you're free, that is, of course.” She looked vaguely around, showing that she had registered something of Holmes' presence before he had faded into the palm trees. But before she could spot him, I took her hand in an imitation of childish glee.
“Of course I'd love to come. Shall we get a cab, or do you have a car?”
