A Letter of Mary (26 page)

"Finally, the ibn Ahmadi family and their grudge against Miss Ruskin. Preliminary reports—"

I interrupted him. "Who?"

"Ibn Ahmadi," he repeated, doing his best with the strange pronunciation. "Oh, sorry, I forgot what a solid week it's been. That's the family Mr Mycroft Holmes mentioned, who were done out of a piece of land in Palestine."

"Muddy," I offered, to his momentary confusion, the homophone suggested by Erica Rogers in the letter to her sister— a name foreign, multisyllabic, and sounding like
mud.
Before I could go further, he was nodding.

"Yes, muddy, like she said in her letter. There are no less than twenty-four members of the clan, if I may call it that, here in Britain at present, all but four of them male, every one of them, I'd wager, having black hair, with the possible exception of one old auntie of sixty-three years who was thoroughly draped and hidden. Questions are being asked concerning whereabouts, but it will be slow, I'm afraid, and less likely to be fruitful as each day passes."

"I fail to see any connection between the Ahmadi family and the ransacking of the cottage," growled Holmes. "Her death, perhaps, but could she have had something they wanted? Mycroft?" He seemed curiously uninterested in the question, merely as it were playing out a part written down for him.

The large figure of his brother stirred and leant forward in his armchair, his grey eyes on the balloon glass of brandy cradled in his enormous hand.

"I fear that I shall have to throw yet another scent in our paths by answering that in the affirmative." Holmes made a sharp, impatient motion that amounted to a derisive snort. His brother ignored him. "One of my ... colleagues succeeded in identifying the taxi driver who picked Miss Ruskin up from her hotel that Tuesday morning."

"No easy matter, that, in this city," I commented. His fat face took on a satisfied look, like a cat full of warm milk.

"I was pleased with that piece of work, true. Very fortunately, Miss Ruskin was not taken to a railway station or to the underground, but to a specific address here in London— a house. I had become interested in this case, so I went there myself, only to find that the family who lived in that house had no knowledge of such a woman. Nor did the four houses on either side. I was even more interested by now, and I took a leisurely stroll up and down, until I came across a house on the next street over that had all the signs of being other than a family dwelling: curtains tightly shut, signs of somewhat greater foot and bicycle traffic than the other houses, no wear on the front door at child level— all those small indications— you know them as well as I. The address was one which I recalled from a report that came across my desk a few months ago, minor organisations in London that in themselves seem harmless but which might nonetheless become linked with difficulties in the future. I knocked on the door and asked the man who answered if I might speak to whomever had been seen by Miss Dorothy Ruskin that Tuesday.

"He was, shall I say, hesitant about letting me in, and I was forced to make a few unfriendly and authoritative noises at him. After much dancing about, he went off and returned with the gentleman who seems to be in charge of the house, which is, as you might have foreseen, a unit of Weizmann's Zionist organisation. I will not trouble you with the whole of the following lengthy and highly interesting conversation. I will merely say as a précis that we found ourselves to have a number of mutual friends, and when eventually we returned delicately to the topic of Miss Ruskin, my new friend the rabbi was happy to admit that she had indeed been there, had brought with her a thick manila envelope containing a number of letters and papers from Palestine, and had, among other things, told the rabbi that the business of the ibn Ahmadi family's land was far from over and that she foresaw an escalation of hostilities, both within Palestine and without. She was concerned that this might become a ready rallying cause for a variety of unrelated grievances, and she wanted to warn her friends to be, as the saying goes, on the lookout."

"Inconclusive, but suggestive," commented Holmes grudgingly. "How long was she there?"

"Approximately two and one half hours. One of their men was going into town, and they shared a cab as far as Paddington, where she left him just before noon."

"Oxford," I cried at the name of the train station. "I told you she went to Oxford. Did you have any results with those names, Inspector?"

"None at all. The old man at the library was gone part of that day, and he didn't see her."

"Jedediah out sick? The place will collapse— he's been there practically since Thomas Bodley married Mrs Ball."

"His mother's funeral, I believe. She was one hundred and two."

"Ah, good. For a minute, you had me worried."

"Was there any more, Mycroft?" asked Holmes, as scrupulously polite as a concert pianist at a children's music recital.

"Just that I was allowed to examine the envelope of papers, and they were as they should have been, no personal documents, no will. That is all, Sherlock. The floor is yours."

Up to that point, I had immersed myself in the charade. I had stated my evidence factually, listened to Lestrade's contribution as if it were of some importance, and noted Mycroft's rumblings, but before Holmes opened his mouth, before he so much as sat upright, I knew what he was going to say. I could see all my hard-won efforts tumbling down, and I knew that it was an emptiness. I saw the body of the case against Colonel Edwards flash up and crumble away into a drift of ashes like the walls of a wooden house in a fire: Holmes had the case in his hands, and there was nothing for it. The rest of us— even Mycroft— were left scrambling on thin air, and I was suddenly furious, seized by a pulse of something disturbingly near hatred for this superior prig I had so irrevocably attached myself to. It lasted for only an instant, before common sense threw a bridge out across the morass of tiredness, resentment, and uncertainty, of the awareness of urgent work undone and the remnants of shame and confusion from the afternoon, and I stood again on firm ground. I only hoped that neither pair of all-knowing grey eyes had witnessed the moment's lapse. Holmes was completing the motion of sitting upright.

"Thank you," he said. "Lestrade, would you mind pulling that crate over from the corner? Just put it here, thank you." He leant forward, untied the grubby string, and removed the top with the flourish of a conjurer. Inside was a jumble of chromium-plated bits of metal, hunks of broken glass, a large slab of dented mud guard, and a sheaf of the inevitable evidence envelopes. My heart twisted at the sight, then started to beat heavily. I must have moved or made a sound, because Holmes looked at me.

"Yes, Russell, the murder weapon. Or rather, portions of it. I knew it would be there, once I knew that Miss Ruskin had been killed by a motorcar, and particularly when the machine was not found nearby, stolen, used, and abandoned. Why a motorcar, a method which took at least two persons to arrange and had all the attendant danger of the telltale damage? The person who thought of it had to have the vehicles both ready to mind and near to hand; plus, the means of repairing damage must be available to him. I knew I should find some such facility as a garage, and the only danger was how thoroughly they had covered their tracks. In this case, they were too sure of themselves— Jason Rogers had rid himself of the pertinent sections in a load of other scrap metal sold to a local dealer, from whom I retrieved them.

"Unfortunately, their carelessness went only so far. They did quite a thorough job of washing the wreck down before they set to repairing it. There are only three small deposits of what may be dried blood, the largest being here, inside the broken headlamp. Samples of black paint from the side of the mud guard are in the envelope— to be matched up against whatever you may find on the button and her hairpins in your evidence envelope— as well as several hairs and one tiny scrap of fabric that resembles closely Miss Ruskin's coat, all of which I found among the débris. Fingerprints were useless, all of them from people who work in the shop, and as Inspector Lestrade notes, most of the Rogers grandsons have black hair, including Jason and his younger brother Todd, who occasionally works in the shop. I did take samples from the back of Jason Rogers's chair, though, as you know, the most one can hope for is a probable match. I have been working on different tests for matching hairs, but I have yet to come up with the definitive one."

Four sets of eyes scowled down into the box of mechanical jumble, wishing with varying degrees of intensity for the evidence to be there. Finally, Lestrade folded up his notebook and took up the piece of string.

"I'll give it to my lab people, Mr Holmes, with thanks. I don't think I'll ask how you came to have the stuff, though."

"Oh, it's all quite legal and above board, Lestrade, I assure you, part of a shipment of scrap purchased by a newly formed company called Sigerson Limited. You shall receive the billing invoice in the morning. You may be less happy with my methods of obtaining a certain letter. Do you have it, Russell?"

I had worn the letter in my undergarments most of the day, but now I took it from my handbag and gave it to Lestrade, who raised his eyebrows at its gouged, ink-splattered appearance. His eyebrows nearly disappeared beneath his overly long hair as he read it, and he whistled softly and handed it to Mycroft.

"Seems to me that Colonel Edwards is less and less likely, wouldn't you say, Mr Holmes?"

"It looks that way, I agree." His voice was bland, and he did not look at me. I felt another irrational and momentary surge of irritation, as if someone had dismissed my prize thoroughbred as being not quite up to the rest of the field.

"Mycroft's Arabs strike me the same way," I said, sounding regrettably peevish. Holmes glanced at me then, amused, and rose to his feet.

"I think that brings us up-to-date. When shall we four meet again?"

"If it's in thunder and in rain, I'm going to throw Miss Small's accursed shoes out the window and wear my Wellingtons," I grumbled. "Not tomorrow— I'll be back late. Tuesday?"

It was agreed, and we dispersed.

* * *

Holmes and I drove back with few words. He had to return the cab to its owner, and as it was still raining hard, he stopped in front of the boardinghouse to let me out. I looked out the window at the unwelcoming door, with my fingers on the car's door handle.

"You won't be long?" I asked. It would be just like him to disappear again for some days.

"Twenty minutes. If he's there, I'll have him drive me back."

I nodded and moved to open the door. His voice stopped my hand.

"You know, Russell, one of the damnable things about working in partnership is that one has to take the other person's proprietary feelings into account
— Russell proponit sed Holmes disponit.
It's not everyone who will put up with being run roughshod over in the course of the chase and then be willing to brush himself off and set to again as if nothing had happened. It was one of Watson's most valuable strengths as a partner, his doglike devotion. However," and here he turned his face towards me, though there was not enough light to reveal his expression, "you will no doubt have noticed that I did not consider this a strength when it came to a permanent partnership."

It was a generous apology, for Holmes, and I grinned at him.

"Woof," I said, and ducked out into the rain.

PART FIVE

Monday, 3 September 1923-

Wednesday, 5 September 1923

The poet's pen ... gives to airy nothings a local habitation and a name.

— Shakespeare

NINETEEN

tau

I never tire of Oxford. Cambridge is stunning, of course. Cambridge is sweet and ethereal, and the air in Cambridge bubbles in the mind like fine champagne, but I cannot imagine getting any work done there. Oxford is a walled city still, and within her black and golden, crumbling, scabrous, aged, dignified, and eternal walls lie pockets of rarefied air, places where, turning a corner or entering a conversation, the breath catches and for an instant one is taken up into ... if not the higher levels of heaven, at least into a place divine. And then, in the next moment, there comes an eddy of grit, and the ghostly echo of mediaeval oxcarts is heard rumbling down past Christopher Wren's bell tower on their way from Robert D'Oilley's castle to his grand bridge over the river. Even in Oxford University's holy of holies, the Bodleian Library, there comes an occasional grumble and whiff of the internal combustion engine.

The grit that morning was palpable, for the haze that softened the sunlight of what might otherwise have been a shimmering morning was the result of burning stubble in the surrounding countryside, and even at the early hour of my arrival, the black skeletal remains of the hard stalks rained gently onto the city, forming drifts that swirled up at the passing of motorcars. I saw no washing hung up to dry that Monday morning as I walked into town from the train station, along the sluggish canal, under the shadow of the otherworldly castle mound, looking in its vernal leaf more like a setting for Puck and Titania than it did a hillock for undergraduate picnics overlooking the prison, then past the decrepit slums of Greyfriars and out onto the deceptive everyday face of the most beautiful high street in any city I have seen, dodging carts, autos, trams, and bicycles, the town centre strikingly incomplete without its normal complement of fluttering black gowns, like a friend with a new and extreme haircut. Up the High towards the tantalising curve, but before entering it, at the very foot of St Mary's wise divinity, I made an abrupt turn north, and there, oddly satisfying in its scorn for a deliberate and formal perfection, was the quadrangle with the rotund earthiness of the Radcliffe Camera in its centre, bounded on its four sides by the tracery of All Souls on my right, the height of St Mary's at my back, Brasenose College on the left giving nothing away, and before me, where there should rightly have been trumpets and gilt, the unadorned backside of the Bodleian and the Divinity School. I was home.