Chapter Twenty-four
The letter was written and sent to France the third week of August, just after the war began,” Holmes remarked. “And the accident that killed your family occurred the third of October. Even in the first month of war, mail was getting through, particularly to Paris. ‘Good Friend' would have got the letter within a week. He could have made it back here from Paris with time to spare.”
“His friend,” I said bitterly. “A man he helped out of a tough place, a man with whom he shared a wild . . .” My voice shifted tone as my mind tore itself from the immediacy of my father's presence and began to process the information it had been given, now and in recent days. I finished “. . . wild youth.”
“Petit Ami, or ‘PA,' could only be Micah Long,” Holmes observed, too taken up with his own thoughts to notice my distraction, “considering the references to hiding things in the garden and the fellow's protective ‘mumbo jumbo' of feng shui. And as Charles Russell himself says, it shouldn't be too difficult to come up with a name for the other. Particularly after one has had a close look at the household records, in which is noted a cheque for seven thousand five hundred dollars, written just days after the earthquake. Your father seems to have held the charmingly innocent notion that changing the amount of the cheque in the letter would mislead anyone investigating the evidence of the accounts book.”
I stood up abruptly. “I have to go. I'll meet you back at the hotel.”
I was out of there before he could stop me, striding down the streets with neither hat nor coat. I pulled the ornate bell, then banged on the door when it did not open instantly. When Jeeves appeared in the opening I pushed my way inside.
“Where's Flo?” I demanded. “Miss Greenfield? Is she still in bed?”
The abruptness of my entrance and the lack of delicacy in my question reduced him to jerky little protests, which I overrode ruthlessly. “I need to talk to Flo this instant. Where is her room? Oh, never mind, I'll find it myself.”
The house-maid he summoned sprinted up to me after the sixth door I had opened, and said breathlessly, “This way, miss, er, ma'am.”
I'd have found the room eventually, but I did not bother to thank the little maid, just marched past her towards the formless shape on the bed. “I'll bring coffee!” the poor girl squeaked, and slammed the door.
“Flo!” I said loudly, shaking where I thought her shoulder would be. “Flo, wake up, right now. I don't have time for your morning dithers. Flo!”
My shout brought her bolt upright, staring around in a panic. She dashed her hands across her eyes as if doubting their evidence. “Mary? What on earth—”
“Flo, do you know a man with a scarred face?”
“What?” It came out more like, Wha? With an effort, I resisted the impulse to slap her awake.
“A man with scars on his face, burn scars.”
“What of it?”
“God damn it, Flo, who is he?”
“My father,” she said, her pretty face screwing up in confusion. “What about him? Mary, what a state you're in! You look like you've been rolling in the garden!”
I sat down abruptly on the bed, ignoring her fastidious protestations. “Your father had a scarred face?”
“Yes, it was sort of puckered, like. He got burned rescuing people in the great fire. Mary, what are you doing here? What time is it? Oh, golly,” she said, squinting at the clock on her table, “it's not even noon. Do you know what time I hit the hay?”
“Flo, I really don't care if you haven't slept in a week. What did your father look like?”
“He used to be handsome once,” she replied, and settled her back against the head-board in resignation, although I watched her closely to make sure she didn't fade into sleep again. “At least, that's what Mummy says, and the picture she has of him is kind of dreamy, in an old-fashioned kind of a way.”
“How tall was he?”
“Oh, yes, his height. Poor Daddy, he was so sensitive about it. Used to wear shoes to make him taller. Oh, thank God!” she exclaimed as the house-maid backed in with a tray of coffee. “This feels like one of those horrible dreams you keep trying to wake up from and it drags you back.”
“Just a little more and I'll let you go back to sleep,” I said ruthlessly. “What about a ring?”
“A ring?” she said uncertainly, her cup paused in front of her mouth.
“A pinkie ring with a stone.”
She took a gulp, gasped a little with the heat of it, then wheezed out, “How did you know that? He never used to, but when I saw him later, he had it. I always figured it meant he'd made it big after the divorce. Although it was a little flashy.”
“You mean, he didn't wear the ring when you were small and they were still married, but he did later on? When did you see him, later?”
Her face took on a look of childish shiftiness and she glanced at the door, where the maid had just gone out. “I didn't.”
“Flo, I know you saw him. When was it?”
“Mummy didn't like it.”
“I won't tell her. When?”
She let out a gusty breath. “Just every so often. After the fire, I didn't see him for a long time, and when he came back he sort of scared me, his face I mean. But then I could see that it was him, and he told me that he'd gotten it rescuing people, so it was all right, sort of. Sad, I mean, and not nice to look at, but he was so brave and that mattered. But not to Mummy.”
“Your mother wouldn't let you see him?”
“She didn't like it. They had a bad divorce, you know, and later on he kept asking her for money. But I didn't see why that should mean I couldn't see him. He was fun, you know?”
“Do you remember what years you saw him?”
“No.”
“Flo, please. Try.”
She screwed up her face again, thinking hard. “He was here for a couple of my birthdays—that's in September,” she added, “the twenty-fifth. He was here for my tenth, and I think my twelfth—yes, it was pretty much every other year.”
She was the same age as I, born in 1900. “And your fourteenth?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, he brought me a very pretty pearl necklace from Paris that year,” she said happily. “I told Mummy they were good fakes that a friend had gotten tired of and gave me, but they're real, and they were from him.”
I rubbed my face, suddenly tired. Flo's father, who had been my own father's close friend in his youth, whose crimes during the fire had driven the final wedge between them, had been here immediately before the accident.
“Tell me,” I said, “do you know a woman, she might have been an acquaintance of your father's, who is taller than he is by several inches, and younger, with brown hair she wears up on her head?”
As descriptions went, it did not go very far, Flo's quizzical expression seemed to say. I began to tell her it was all right, but she surprised me.
“Not a friend, but his sister used to have long brown hair she wore up.”
“Sister? The one who owns a night-club in Paris?”
“I don't know about that, but last I heard, she lived in Paris. She was actually his half-sister, that's what he told me, a lot younger than him. Didn't look a bit like him, and Daddy kind of flirted with her, which was a bit strange. Still, she was nice enough to me, sent me pretty things to wear. When Mummy didn't catch them and take them from me,” she said, and yawned. She added, “Although she must be some kind of old maid, to be so devoted
