will?”
Miss Rand duly appeared with the bound document, handing it to Norbert, who passed it over to me. He sat back while I undid the ties and settled in to read it.
It proved to be one of the odder such that I had ever read. I went through the document closely, wondering why I had not seen it before—I was certain that it had not been among the stack of papers I had gone through when I had taken over my father's estate at the age of twenty-one. My eyes lingered on the two signatures at the bottom, my father's strong and unruly, my mother's neat as copperplate, and then went back to an earlier page.
“What does this mean, ‘to ensure that no one unaccompanied by a member of the immediate family be granted access to the house for a period of twenty years after the date of this signing'?”
“Just that. It's actually quite straightforward, as these things go: If your father died, your mother inherited. If they both died, as sadly happened, you and your brother would inherit the house, however, no one else other than you, your spouses, and your children would be allowed to set foot in it except in your presence for twenty years after the—what was the date of signing?—yes, the fifth of June, 1906. It goes on to say that the house is exempt from the remainder of the disbursements until, as I said, the fifth of June, 1926—a little over two years from now. Now you're here, you and your husband are welcome to do what you like to the house. Except permit others inside without your being physically present, or to sell it before the given date.”
“But why?”
“My father, who of course drew up this will, did not see fit to tell me the reasoning behind its details before he died,” he replied, with the bemused attitude of one who had himself written so many odd wills that he no longer questioned them. “However, the requirement of the codicil is crystal clear, although it leaves to the discretion of this legal firm the means of ensuring that the house remain undisturbed. Within days of your father's unfortunate demise, my father, as head of the firm, arranged for a single lady relative of his to take the house across the street, Agatha Grimly is her name—she's my great step-cousin or something of the sort. Miss Grimly was later joined by her unmarried nephew. She was a schoolteacher most of her life, so she's got eyes in the back of her head. The nephew is a little dim-witted, but quite clear as to his job. They receive a bonus each time they run strangers off the property, which happens two or three times a year—the first time was within a few days of her taking over, the most recent—apart from last night's, of course—was a couple of months ago. And they live under the threat of losing their comfortable position were they to let an intruder slip past them. Frankly, it's a little game we play—I occasionally hire someone to try to break in, to see if he can get by them. They probably assumed you and your husband were such.”
I supposed it was sometimes necessary that a solicitor not be too curious about his client's purposes. Clearly, my father had intended that no one get into that house but family. The why of that intent did not enter into Norbert's realm, merely the how. I gave a mental shrug and closed up the will.
“You may keep that, if you like,” he said. “I have two other copies, one of those in a vault down the Peninsula. The lessons of 1906,” he explained with a grimace. “We're still struggling with the consequences of City Hall burning.”
He then reached into his desk's central drawer and drew out a lumpy, palm-sized brown-paper envelope, its flap glued down and signed across by my father's distinctive hand. Its contents gave off a slight metallic tick as he laid it onto the glossy wood of the desk.
“If you need assistance with cleaning ladies,” he went on, “gardening services, anything, I hope you'll call on me. We do have a gardener come in once a year, to keep the front from becoming an offence to the neighbours— although as that is questionable under the will, I go down and stand watch while they work, always, to ensure that none of them approach the house itself. In the same way, my father supervised the cleaners who came in the week after the accident, when it became apparent that you . . . that the house would have to be closed up. He was never absolutely certain, because strictly speaking the codicil indicated that he should have allowed the milk in the ice-box to go bad and the moths to get into the carpets, but he decided that protecting the client's assets allowed for a degree of flexibility. He may even have consulted with a judge on the matter, I don't remember. However, that is neither here nor there. I'll 'phone Miss Grimly, and let her know that you're coming—wouldn't want you to be arrested again.”
I stood up, tucking the folder under my left arm and putting out my right hand.
“Thank you, Mr Norbert. Although as I indicated, I have no intention of doing anything other than preparing the house for sale as soon as possible.”
“Whatever you choose, I am at your service,” he answered, shaking my hand. He retrieved the lumpy brown envelope and handed it to me with a small laugh. “Don't forget this—you'll be climbing over the walls again.”
“Certainly not,” I agreed, and slipped the envelope into my pocket. As we made our way to the door, I asked him, “Do you by any chance know how far the fire reached, in 1906?”
“I remember it vividly—I was seventeen then, and spent the whole time digging through rubble and helping people rescue their possessions from its path. The entire downtown burned. The only things left standing were the U.S. Mint down on Mission Street, a few houses on the peak of Russian Hill, and a handful more on Telegraph— everything else was gone, churches, saloons, Chinatown, and as I said, City Hall with all its records. But if you mean your house, the flames were stopped at Van Ness when the Army dynamited the entire length of it. Three blocks down from yours.”
“I see. Thank you.” I paused at the door, and reluctantly asked the question that had been hovering over me the entire time in his office.
“Mr Norbert, this may sound odd, but do you know if I was here during the earthquake? Actually during it, I mean?”
“Sure you were. My father took me to check on your family the day the fire died down. That would have been the Saturday. Took most of the day to track you all down to the park where you were staying, but I remember your mother, making us coffee on an open fire as if she'd done it that way her whole life.” His face took on a faraway look, and he smiled slightly. “She was in trousers and a pair of men's boots, but she wore the most extraordinary hat, with an enormous orange flower pinned to one side. It was as if she was thumbing her nose at the discomfort and fear all around her. She was an impressive lady, completely undaunted.”
The pale hat with the orange flower dominated my vision as I took my leave of the lawyer and wandered towards the busy thoroughfare of Market Street. Trolleys and traffic were thick there, and the other streets met it at odd angles. Idly, my mind still taken up with the vision of the hat, I watched an ex-soldier with one leg negotiate his crutches through a flurry of female office workers in bright frocks.
Why would my father have written that codicil into his will?
When I put the question to Holmes some time later, he tossed the will onto the room's desk and shook his head. “There is no knowing at this point. But I agree that it is an oddity worth looking into.”
Holmes had spent the morning getting the lay of the city, returning to the hotel with a sheaf of maps and scraps of paper scribbled with telephone numbers and addresses. He dug through the sheets now until he had found the detailed map; a green pencil had traced the streets to form an uneven outline around a large chunk of the Peninsula's eastern half, including all of the downtown. When I saw the straight line running more than a mile along Van Ness, I knew instantly what the pencil mark meant.
“This is the part that burned?”
“Wooden buildings, spilt cook-fires, broken water lines,” he listed succinctly. “The city burned for three days, and almost nothing was left standing inside the line.”
“Must have been absolute hell.”
“You truly don't remember?”
“Oh, Lord, Holmes. I don't remember anything but my mother cooking over a camp-fire. Surely a child of six years would recall an event like the city burning?” I was beginning to feel as if someone had just pointed out to me that I was missing a leg. “Even a person with amnesia must be aware of some . . . gap.”
“I don't know that I should term it amnesia, precisely—that condition is extremely rare outside of ladies' fiction, and generally stems from a severe head injury. In your case I venture that it is the mind choosing to draw a curtain across the memories of your early childhood, for any number of reasons.”
That I liked even less, the idea that my traitorous mind chose the cowardly option of hiding from unpleasant memories. “Holmes,” I said abruptly, “last night you said that the process of discovery may be the reason we came here. What did you mean by that?”
