A Letter of Mary - Laurie R. King [25]
"He was unhappy and sceptical, but he said he would not give it to Cambridgeshire until he'd seen the body and heard what I had to say."
The body. Life achieving a distance from the ugly fact of violent death. The thought must have shown on my face.
"Best to keep the mind clear, Russell. Emotion can confuse matters all too easily."
"I know." I pushed it away and waved my sandwich at the room. "How could Lestrade be sceptical with this?"
"Unfortunately, it looks like simple burglary with a touch of vandalism thrown in."
"Burglary? Oh God, what did they take? Not your violin? And the safe?" The violin was a Stradivarius, bought ages before from an ignorant junkman at a ridiculously low price. The safe, well hidden, held a number of small valuables and appallingly toxic substances.
"No, the violin they took from its case and threw down, before ripping out the lining of the case. A scratch is all. They missed the safe. They did get your mother's silver, Mrs Hudson's jewellery, and some treasury notes that were in a drawer. Fortunately, the vandalism was not too vicious, mostly throwing things about."
I brushed off the crumbs and swallowed the last of my coffee from a cracked cup.
"To work, then. Shall I take a few photographs before I start putting things away?"
"Lestrade might appreciate it. You'll have to give them to him to develop, though. Not much has survived of the darkroom."
Seventy-five minutes later, I had restored a quarter of the books to their places, dragged two disembowelled chairs out into the garden, nailed up a piece of wood across the broken kitchen window, and was starting on the baseboards when the inspector's car drove up.
"Where do all these flipping hay wagons come from?" he shouted jovially from the open door, and then: "My, my, my, what have we here? Making yourself unpopular with the village toughs, Mr Holmes?"
"Hello, Lestrade. Good to see you again." Holmes climbed down from the ladder and dusted off his hands. I said nothing, as I had a mouthful of nails, but nodded and went back to plying my hammer on the baseboard.
"Mr Holmes, you said you had evidence of a murder for me to look at. Have you a dead body under that pile of rubbish?"
"Not here, Lestrade, this is purely secondary. If you'd like to have your man set to in the kitchen, when he's through we can offer you a cup of tea. I've marked the few possible prints, though I think we'll find that our visitors last night wore gloves. Here, Lestrade, take this chair; it still has four legs." He did not see, or ignored, the look of patient humour that passed between the two men and the photographer's shrug before he took his bulky equipment into Mrs Hudson's normally spotless kitchen.
Lestrade settled gingerly into the chair and pulled out a notebook. Holmes returned to his armfuls of papers, I to my nails.
"Right, then, Mr Holmes. Would you care to tell me what this mess of yours has to do with Miss Dorothy Ruskin, and what the deuces a 'demeter archaeopteryx' is?"
Holmes looked at Lestrade as if the man had begun to spout Hamlet's soliloquy, and then suddenly his face cleared.
"Ah yes, the telephone connexion was a bit rough, wasn't it? No, the phrase was 'amateur archaeologist,' Lestrade. Miss Ruskin's passion, the archaeology of the Holy Land."
"I see," said Lestrade, who quite obviously did not. He went on, with the air of licking a pencil. "And Miss Ruskin was a friend of yours?"
"More of Russell's, I should say. She came to see us Wednesday, gave Russell a box and a manuscript, stayed to tea. She then returned to London and got herself killed." His voice drifted off as he studied one of the pages in his hand. Lestrade waited with growing impatience.
"And then?" he finally prompted.
"Eh? Oh, yes. We know only the outlines of 'what then.' She returned to her hotel room, exchanged her bag for her briefcase and went to dinner with a man who didn't know her, left the restaurant, walked into a simple but effective trap, and died. Her briefcase was stolen and