A Letter of Mary - Laurie R. King [110]
It was a letter, tiny, crowded words on half a dozen small sheets of nearly transparent onionskin paper, and I had a sudden image of Dorothy Ruskin bent over her hotel table with the magnifying glass. I read her words aloud to Holmes.
"Dear Miss Russell,
Were I not blessed with the ability to appreciate the humour in any trying situation, this one would verge on the macabre. I sit here at my shaky desk in a distinctly third-rate Parisian hotel, writing to a young woman whom I met but once— and that several years previously— in the hopes that she and her husband will choose to make enquiries should I die a suspicious death whilst in my homeland, despite the fact that I will have given them no hints, no clues, no reason to believe that someone wants my death. Indeed, I am not at all sure that I do have reason to believe it.
A peculiarly amusing situation.
I have spent several days trying to imagine the circumstances under which you will read this, if indeed you ever do. Are you investigating my death? What a queer sensation comes with writing those words! And if your answer is in the affirmative, how might I respond? 'I'm pleased to hear that' seems inappropriate, somehow. And yet, if that is what you are doing, if that has led you to this letter, it would give me the— surely satisfaction is not the right word?— of knowing that my inchoate, illogical fears were entirely justified.
Again, a most peculiar situation.
But, enough meandering. I intend to visit you in your Sussex home and leave with you this box, the manuscript, and, incidentally, these contents of the secret compartment. I shall have to find a means of planting in your mind the possibility that the box can be opened and do so casually enough to be natural, yet firmly enough that you remember it later if the need should arise. If I have failed in the first instance, and your curiosity has led you to open the box while I am still alive, then I beg you, please, to replace the following document in the box and have a good laugh over the imagination of an old woman. If I fail in the second instance and you do not remember my dropped hints, well, then, I am writing this for the chance, future amusement of a total stranger, and my precautions have been for naught.
It is ridiculous. It is foolish of me, and I am not accustomed to doing foolish things. I have no evidence that I will die, no signs or portents or threatening letters in the post. And yet ... I am filled with a strange dread when I think of crossing the Channel, and I want to turn for home, to Palestine. I cannot do that, of course, but I also cannot ignore this odd, compelling feeling of menace and finality. It is not death that I fear, Miss Russell. Death is a person with whom I have some passing acquaintance, and if anything, it is a motherly figure who holds out forgiving, welcoming arms. I do, however, dread the thought that my work, my life, will die with me. If I return to Palestine, I intend to work out more fully the details of how my estate, minor as it may be, might best be put to support the archaeological effort there. This letter is merely insurance. I have no time to have a proper will drawn up, so I have written and signed a holograph will, witnessed by two of my fellow guests in this hotel. It clearly states my wishes and intentions regarding the disbursement of my estate. You will please take it to the appropriate authorities, whom, no doubt, you know better than I.
As I said, I have no evidence whatsoever that anyone seeks my death, other than this persistent,