A Letter of Mary - Laurie R. King [112]
"Ah," said Holmes, "but there you would be wrong. What Erica Rogers was looking for was very much in her, as you say, 'style.' The day Miss Ruskin was here, she happened to mention that in their childhood she and her sister— the daughters of a minister, remember— used to play a game of hiding coded messages in a place they called 'Apocalypse,' because the top came off. The verb apocalyptein, I believe Russell could tell you, is Greek for 'uncover,' " he added helpfully. "It's very likely that the 'code' was simple English written in the Greek alphabet. I recall doing just that myself, with Mycroft. Did you play that game with your brother, Russell?"
"Yes, though we used Hebrew, which was a bit trickier."
"Remember, too, that Erica Rogers was an enthusiast of Watson's thrilling nonsense. When she heard that her sister was coming to see me, her suspicions must have positively erupted. It was indeed very much in her 'style' to believe that her sister would write an encoded will, or a will written in one of the several foreign languages she spoke, and then lodge it with the Great Detective for safekeeping."
"But that's absurd— beg pardon, Mr Holmes."
"Elaborate and ridiculous and utterly unlike something Dorothy Ruskin might do," he agreed. "But very much in Erica Ruskin's style. A woman who would arrange an elaborate murder involving a beggar disguise and an automobile, who would anticipate the possibility that the death might not be accepted as a road accident and move to cloud any investigation by arranging to make it appear that she had remained at home, and then even think to plant a letter to her sister implicating an imaginary but plausible group of Arabs named Mud— a woman with a mind like that would not hesitate to believe that her sister could write a will in Serbo-Croatian and lodge it on the top of Nelson's Column. Real penny-dreadful stuff, and not, I think, completely sane. Scotland Yard is going to have to look into the influence art has on true crime one of these days, Lestrade, mark my words."
Lestrade wavered, decided to take the remark as a joke, and laughed politely.
"Inspector," I asked, "have you an idea of the value of the Ruskin estate yet?"
He told us, and Holmes and I glanced at each other.
"Yes," said Lestrade, "more than you'd have thought, and taken as a whole, an amount worth fighting for. When Dorothy Ruskin came back here from Palestine, she must have told her sister, either directly or by something she said, that she had decided to make a new will and put the money into her archaeological projects. Erica Rogers might have put up with seeing the third part of their father's money that had already been divided up poured into a lot of holes in the ground, but she drew the line at having half of old Mrs Ruskin's money follow it. If the old lady died first, Dorothy Ruskin would inherit her share and it would be gone. Therefore Dorothy Ruskin had to die before their mother. I imagine Mrs Rogers said something to that effect to her grandson Jason, and he then brought in a friend who was experienced at this sort of thing. And," he added thoughtfully, "they then decided to retrieve the money Dorothy Ruskin already had, by finding and destroying the new will. If they'd been satisfied with just the old lady's money, we'd never have got on to them."
"Greed feeds on itself," commented Holmes.
"I'm not sure, though, why the three of them thought the will was here."
"Miss Ruskin probably hinted that it would be," I said. "According to her hidden letter, that is what she planned to do to us, bring us the box and drop hints that it had a secret. I expect she did the same thing to her sister, trailing her garment to tempt her and point her at Sussex. Had Erica Rogers been honest, she'd have ignored it completely."