A Letter of Mary (30 page)

"I don't mind. It would make me feel good to be doing something to help that woman. I mean to say, I know it's too late to help her, but—"

"Fine, then. Is there a telephone?"

"Down the hallway to the right."

I slumped against the wall as I waited for the connexion to Mycroft's number. Holmes answered it at the first ring, and I tried to keep the exhaustion from my voice.

"Hello, husband. Would you please ring Lestrade and tell him to bring his photographs along? I'll wait for him, then get a taxi back to Mycroft's when they're through with me."

"You got it?"

"As you say, I got it."

"It was hard?"

"In my humble opinion, psychiatrists are not paid enough. I'll be back as soon as I can."

But Holmes arrived even before Lestrade, and we left them to it, and I stumbled off to Mycroft's guest-room bed without even waiting to see which of Lestrade's sheaf of portraits Sarah Chessman picked out.

TWENTY-TWO

chi

It was light in the room, despite the curtains, when a small noise woke me. After a moment, I spoke into my pillow.

"It occurs to me that I am condemned rarely to awaken normally under this roof. I am usually disturbed by loud and urgent voices from the sitting room, occasionally by a particularly horrendous alarm clock at some ungodly hour, and once by a gunshot. However," I added, and turned over, "of all the unnatural noises which serve to pull me from slumber, the rattle of a cup and saucer is the least unwelcome." I paused. "On the other hand, my nose tells me to beware a detective bearing coffee, rather than the more congenial beverage of tea. May I take this as a wordless message that my presence is required, in a wide-awake state?" I reached for the cup.

"You may. Lestrade is sending a car for us. He has made an arrest. Two arrests."

"The Rogers grandsons?"

"One Rogers grandson, and one friend of a Rogers grandson. A friend who has been known to carry a long and unfriendly knife, whose taste in clothing is towards the extreme, and who has in the past had contact with the long arm of the law over such varied disagreements as stolen property, driving a car in which a pair of unsuccessful bank robbers attempted to make their escape, and an argument over a lady in which blood was shed, but no life lost, at the end of the aforementioned knife."

"And Erica Rogers?"

"She has been brought down from Cambridgeshire for questioning. It took some time to arrange a nursemaid for the mother."

"Why, what time is it?"

"Five minutes before eleven o'clock." I'd slept for twelve hours.

"Good Lord, the colonel will think I've walked out on him. I told him I'd stay until Friday."

"I took the liberty of telephoning him at eight o'clock, to tell him you would not be to work today. He wished you well."

"Yes. I have some explanations to make there, I fear. But why the coffee?"

"Your presence is requested by Mrs Erica Rogers."

"Mrs Rogers? But why?"

"She told Lestrade that she would not make a statement without you present. My presence, though not required, is to be permitted."

I shook my head in a futile attempt to clear it.

"Does she know who you are, then? That her gardener and the hero of 'Thor Bridge' are one and the same?"

"It would seem so, although I could have sworn she did not know while I was there."

"But why me?"

"She did not tell Lestrade why, just that you must be there."

"How extraordinary. And Lestrade didn't object?"

"If it persuades her to make a statement, no. She's a stubborn old lady, is Mrs Erica Rogers."

"So I gathered. Here, take my cup. I must bath if I'm to deal with her."

* * *

Inspector Lestrade's office was not the largest of rooms, and with seven people seated there on that warm morning, all of whom were to some degree anxious, it became a claustrophobe's nightmare and stifling besides. Not everyone present had bathed that morning, and the windows were totally inadequate.

On closer inspection, two people presented a front of cool composure. One was Holmes, inevitably; the other was Mrs Rogers, who shot us a glance that would have stripped the leaves from an oak tree before turning back to face Lestrade. Her solicitor was red-faced and damp-looking, and I thought that his heart was probably not in the best of condition. Lestrade was without expression, but the furtiveness of his eyes and the nervous way his small hands shuffled his papers made me think that he was apprehensive about the coming interview. The young uniformed policeman to his side held his notebook tightly and clasped a pencil as if it were an unfamiliar weapon— recent graduate of a stenographer's course, I diagnosed, and fished my own pad out of my bag to hold it up unobtrusively, raising an eyebrow at Lestrade. He nodded slightly, looking marginally relieved. Holmes and I took the last two chairs, next to a stiff police matron who looked anywhere in the room except at Mrs Rogers. When we had seated ourselves, Lestrade began.

"Mrs Rogers, I asked you to come down here today so I could take a statement from you concerning your movements on Wednesday the twenty-second of August, the night your sister, Dorothy Ruskin, was killed by an automobile, and on the night of the twenty-fourth, when the house belonging to Mr Holmes and his wife was broken into and certain objects were stolen."

"Inspector Lestrade." The corpulent solicitor's voice informed us that he was a busy man and found this unnecessary intrusion on his time rather annoying. "Am I to understand that you are charging my client with murder and theft?"

"Suspected murder and burglary are being investigated, Mr Coogan, and we have reason to believe that your client may be able to assist us in this investigation." Lestrade was cautious in his choice of words, but he would make a poor poker player. Everyone in the room knew what a sparse hand he held. Erica Rogers, on the other hand, was completely inscrutable.

"Inspector, my client has no objection to helping in a criminal investigation, so long as she is not the subject being investigated. As far as I can see, you have little to connect her with Miss Ruskin's death, save their blood relationship. Is that not the case?"

"Not entirely, no."

"Then what evidence have you, Inspector? I believe my client has the right to know that, don't you?"

"I'll tell you what evidence they have, Timothy: They have nothing, nothing at all." Mrs Rogers's voice was as hard and as scornful as her old vocal cords could make it, and I saw the young constable go white and drop his pencil, while my hand scribbled automatically on. "They have a box of wrecked parts from the front of some motorcar that was brought into my grandson Jason's shop for repair, and they have the story of a woman who was drunk at the time but miraculously recovered her memory after being mesmerised, who described a person fitting Jason's general description. That is nothing, Chief Inspector. I had no reason to kill my sister, now did I? Yes, I thought her digging holes in the Holy Land was a waste of time, but I can't see you taking that in front of a judge and jury as some kind of a motive for murder. And as for the two of you"— she swung around to where Holmes and I sat and stabbed at us with her eyes—"I wanted you here so you could see just what your prying and nosing about get you: nothing. You, young lady, though I don't know that
lady
is the right word for you, you come poking your nose into my sitting room, pretending to be all sympathetic and helpful. You should be home scrubbing your floors or doing something useful.

"And as for you, Mr Basil, or Sherlock Holmes, or whoever you are, I hope you're proud of yourself, the way you wheedled your way in my door, ate my food, slept in my shed, took my money, and then used my generosity to spy on me. Can you imagine how I felt when Mr Coogan here shows me a photograph of Mr Sherlock Holmes and I see it's old Mr Basil, who's been working in my potato patch? Inside my house? It made me feel dirty, it did, and I have half a mind to have you arrested for it."

"I beg your pardon, madam," broke in Holmes, in his most supercilious manner, "but with what do you imagine I could be charged? Impersonating an officer, in my ancient tweeds? Hardly. Fraud? With what did I defraud you? You hired me to do work; I did the work, at, I might say, considerably lower wages than I generally pay my own workers and in considerably poorer conditions. No, madam, I broke no laws, and had you consulted your expensive legal counsellor before threatening me, he would have told you that."His voice turned cold. "Now, madam, I suggest that you stop wasting the time of these officers of the law and continue with your statement."

Her eyes narrowed as she realised what she had been harbouring in the unshaven person of Mr Basil. She glanced at Lestrade and Mr Coogan, then down at her hands, which held no knitting.

"I have nothing to say," she said sullenly.

"I'm afraid I shall have to insist, Mrs Rogers," said Lestrade.

"Then I want them out of here," and she jerked her head at us.

"Mrs Rogers, you asked for them to be here," protested Lestrade. "You insisted on it."

"Yes, well, I've had my say, and now I want them gone."

Lestrade looked at us helplessly, and I folded my notebook and stood up.

"Don't worry about it, Chief Inspector," I said. "You can't be held responsible for the whims of other people. Or for their lack of manners," I added sweetly. "Good day, Mrs Rogers, Mr Coogan. I shall be down the hall, Chief Inspector, borrowing a typewriter."

As we went through the door, Mrs Rogers fired her final peevish shot at Holmes.

"And you made a rotten job of the wallpaper, too!"

* * *

It took only a few minutes to type a transcription of my shorthand, and it took Lestrade only slightly longer to receive Mrs Rogers's statement. He was sitting slumped at his desk, staring at it morosely, when we returned to his office. He straightened abruptly, glanced at Holmes and away, and fumbled with unnecessary attention at lighting a cigarette.

"How could she have known our evidence? Or lack of it?" He said finally.

"Did you leave her alone with that young constable who was taking notes?" enquired Holmes.

"He sat with her on the way down from Cambridgeshire, but— Good Lord, he told her? But how could he be so stupid?"

"With Mrs Erica Rogers, I shouldn't wager that you wouldn't have told her yourself, if she started in on you. She's a very clever woman. Don't be too hard on him."

"I'll have him back on the streets, I will." He seized his anger like a shield and would not look at us.

"What of the two men?" I interrupted impatiently. "Holmes said you had arrested them. What were their statements like?"

"Actually, we, er, we've decided not to arrest them just yet. Yes, I know, I thought we would, but we've let them go for the time being. Maybe they'll get cocky and hang themselves. There was nothing in those statements, nothing at all. The two of them were out both those nights, testing the engines on two cars. No alibis whatsoever, but they shut their jaws like a pair of clams after they recited their story, and they'll say nothing more."

"That doesn't sound like the Jason Rogers I met," commented Holmes.

"It's the old granny's doing, I'm sure of it. She's a cunning old witch, is that one, and she's put the fear of God into him to shut his trap. She was right about the need for a clear motive, though how she figured it out, I cannot think. Must have been her— Coogan didn't seem to have brains enough to pound sand down a rat hole. Without either a motive or harder evidence than buttons in a burn pile, five hairs that bear a passing resemblance to theirs, some smashed auto parts with a tiny bit of dried blood, and the fact that she got rid of a shelf full of murder mysteries, we'd be fools to give it a try. The only thing that's the least bit firm is the mud on your ladder, which matches the wet patch outside her potting shed, but even Coogan wouldn't have much trouble making a jury laugh at that. I'd rather go for Miss Russell's colonel, or Mr Mycroft's Arabs. I won't make an arrest yet, but we'll keep a very close eye on those boys. They may try to sell the stuff they took from you. If granny keeps an eye on them, they won't, but we can always hope. We'll get them, Mr Holmes, eventually. We know they did it, and we'll get them. Just, well, not yet." He ran out of words, then looked up from the intent study of his hands like a schoolboy before the headmaster, mingled apology and dread on his face, and shrugged his shoulders. "Without a motive, we'd be fools to make an arrest, and we've been over the inheritance with a nit comb— no insurance, no big expenses to make anyone need cash now. Wouldn't seem to make any difference if Dorothy Ruskin died now or twenty years from now. Her stuff from Palestine should arrive in the next week; we'll go through that. May find a new will or a handful of diamonds in there." His attempt at laughter trailed off, and Holmes stood up and clapped him on the shoulder with an uncharacteristic bonhomie.

"Of course we see that, Lestrade. Never mind, you'll get them eventually. Patience is a necessary virtue. Keep us informed, would you?"

We collected our possessions from Mycroft, and we slunk home.

PART SIX

Wednesday, 5 September 1923-

Saturday, 8 September 1923

The letter kills, but the spirit gives life.

— The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians 3:6

TWENTY-THREE

psi

It was a sorry pair of detectives who rode the train south towards Eastbourne. I felt dreary and drained and utterly without interest in matters criminal or academic. Holmes, controlled as ever, looked merely determined, but there lay about him the distinct odour of brutally quenched campfire.

With an effort, I pulled myself out of this stupor. Oh goodness, Russell, I expostulated, it's hardly the end of the world, or even the end of the case. A temporary check in the hunt, no more. Lestrade will surely ...

I had not realised I was speaking aloud until Holmes shot me a frigid glance.

"Yes, Russell? Lestrade will surely what? Oh yes, he will surely keep his ear to the ground, but he will also certainly be caught up in these other cases of his, and time will pass, and if he does lay hands on the link of evidence he so desires, it will be only through sheer luck."