“You were a patient here?”
“After the accident, yes, in October and November 1914. After November, I moved to a convalescent home, and saw her in her private office until I went home to England.”
“And you saw Dr Ginzberg during that whole time?” I detected a note of apprehension in his voice, at his awareness that he was seated across from a former mental patient, and I tried to look reassuringly sane. However, this did at least indicate that he was familiar with Dr Ginzberg's practice; I gritted my teeth behind my friendly smile, and prepared to grovel.
“I did, yes. I was fourteen years old and had just lost my entire family. Dr Ginzberg was extremely helpful to me. I thought I should return her kindness by showing her how things turned out.” Was this the place to drop casual mention of a donation to the hospital, I considered? Perhaps not just yet.
“I see,” he said, reassured that I was not about to launch myself in a lunatic rage across the desk. He seemed to be wrestling with a decision; I was just opening my mouth to play the money card when his eyes came up to meet mine. “Well, Miss Russell, I'm very sorry to have to tell you this, but Dr Ginzberg died several years ago. It must have been shortly after you knew her, and she was . . .”
But the growing noise in my head obscured his words, although I could see that he was talking, could see too when he stopped talking and his eyebrows came together in an expression some part of me recognised as concern. Then his mouth moved again and his hand came out but I couldn't hear him, couldn't hear anything but the roaring of a great waterfall, and for a while it was hard to see anything as well.
With no helpful nurse around to press her cool hand against the back of my neck to force my head down, it was a wonder I didn't end up on the floor. I came back to myself to find that my body had assumed the head-down position under its own power, my forehead resting on the heels of my hands, lungs pulling in, slow and deep. It could only have been seconds that my awareness faltered, because two suited legs had scarcely had time to clear the desk on their way to the door.
“I'm all right,” I croaked.
He paused, out of sight, and I cleared my throat and repeated the assertion, with sufficient strength this time that he could understand me.
“Can I get you something?” he asked, sounding nervous. “A glass of water?”
“That would be good, thank you.”
By the time he returned, I was sitting upright, feeling the colour seeping back into my face. I drank the water, thinking somewhat nonsensically that Holmes would have given me brandy, and placed the glass on his desk. My hands were steady enough to reassure him.
“I'm terribly sorry,” he said. “I should have realised that the news would be a shock.”
“How did she die?”
His long pause made me think that perhaps he had already told me, while my ears were filled with the rush of receding blood, but by that time I was more concerned with the information than reassuring him as to my sanity. I looked at him sharply and said, “Please, how did Dr Ginzberg die?”
“She was hit on the head. The police thought . . .” and for the second time, his mouth moved while no sound reached me. I waited calmly until his face muscles were still before I asked him to repeat himself. His gaze flicked to the door and back, and I thought that if he got up to summon help, I would physically stop him and force the information from him. Fortunately, assault proved unnecessary.
“Someone broke into her office at home, where she met patients. Apparently he thought she was out, but she was not, and she disturbed him in the process of ransacking her desk for money. He hit her with a statue she had on the desk, and left her for dead. She wasn't found until morning. She never regained consciousness.”
There. I had it now, and hadn't fainted or gone deaf again. I could handle this. I heard myself speak, and sat wondering at my ability to appear rational.
“When was this, precisely?”
“Precisely, I don't remember. But it was in the early weeks of 1915.”
“That's not possible.”
“Er, well, I suppose I could be mistaken, although I think—”
“I'd appreciate the date, if that's available.” It could not have been so soon after I left for England, simply could not.
“I could have my secretary research it,” he said, clearly uncertain why it would matter.
“Thank you. Another question: Why is the hospital still receiving the mail addressed to her home?”
That question made his body relax into surer ground. “We administer Dr Ginzberg's estate. She left everything to the hospital, for the benefit of mental patients. Some of her holdings we sold, others we retained as income. The house is one of those.”
“Where do letters go?”
“She didn't have much family. We generally open letters, and if they are business we answer them, if personal—there are few of those anymore—we send them to a cousin of hers who lives near Philadelphia. I believe the cousin is getting on in years; her communication has become quite . . . eccentric.”
“Was an arrest made?”
“Not that I've heard.”
“Do you know the officer in charge of the investigation?”
“I met him, but years ago. His name slips my mind.”
“Perhaps your secretary could look that up as well?”
“If you like. Although as you are not family, I don't suppose he'd have much to tell you.”
“We'll see,” I told him, a trifle grimly. Although Holmes tended to travel under an assumed name—currently he was using a favourite, Sherrinford Holmes—if necessity called I would not hesitate to send him in under his own name. There wasn't a policeman in the world who would turn down a conversation with Sherlock Holmes. “Well, thank you, Mister, er . . .”
“Braithwaite,” he provided.
“Of course.” I pushed myself out of the chair, obscurely pleased that I did not fall on my face. My feet seemed remarkably far away.
“Miss Russell, let me arrange a car for you.”
“That won't be necessary; I have a taxicab waiting for me. I think.”
Still, his sense of responsibility demanded that he arrange for an escort, who proved to be the secretary occupying the desk outside of his office door. The woman was at least sixty and so thin she might have snapped in two had I leant on her firmly, but fortunately that did not prove necessary: The tonic of leaving the confines of the hospital restored me to a degree of normalcy. Once outside of the doors, I thanked her, and even remembered to give her my various addresses for the information she would be unearthing for me.
The taxi pulled up, and as I climbed in, I told my faithful driver that I wished to return to the hotel.
I believe he chatted at me the whole way back; I heard not a word.
And it never occurred to me to look around for a gunman.
In front of the St Francis, I got out, and was a good way up the entranceway when I realised that he was calling me—I had forgotten to pay him. I returned, thrust some money at him, and turned away, but his voice persisted, to be joined just inside the entrance by his person as he tried to press some dollar bills into my hand. My fingers closed over them automatically—anything to be rid of the man—but I did not pause in my path to the lift.
Inside the humming enclosure, I gave the attendant my floor number and stood staring down at the change for my fare. The bills were quivering slightly. I could feel the boy, looking out of the side of his eyes at me. The upward thrust slowed, the door slid open, and I walked to the room. The key even turned the lock, an event I found mildly amazing, considering the uncertain state of the rest of the universe.
Granite pillars, in the general course of events, did not simply crumble and fall. Trollies did not leave their tracks and set off down the side streets. Lightning did not strike out of a cloudless sky.
Psychiatrists who made for the only secure hold in a time of catastrophe did not bleed to death on their office floors.
I stepped out of my shoes, ripped off hat, gloves, and coat, and burrowed deep among the bed-clothes.
Which was where Holmes found me, five hours later.
