A Letter of Mary - Laurie R. King [35]
"Don't fall asleep, Russell. Tell me what you found, just an outline, and then I will allow you to retire."
I told him, and though it was hardly an outline, it took no more than half an hour to give a summary of my day. Holmes filled his pipe thoughtfully.
"She was not surprised or upset at the news of her sister's death?" he asked.
"No, just that odd statement that she had felt her sister go shortly after midnight. What do you make of that?"
"I wish I had been there. I find it difficult to work with secondhand information, even when it comes from you."
"So why didn't you go?" I said irritably.
"I am not criticising, Russell. There is nothing wrong with the way you gather information— far from it, in fact. It is only that I still find it difficult to accustom myself to being half of a creature with two brains and four eyes. A superior creature to a single detective, no doubt, but it takes some getting used to."
This easy and unexpected declaration shook me. For more than a third of my life, I had been under the tutelage and guidance of this man, and my existence as an adult had been shaped by him, yet here he was easily acknowledging that I, too, was shaping him. I did not know how to answer him. After a long moment, without looking at me, he went on.
"I found some interesting things here today, Russell, but that can wait until tomorrow. To answer your question, I do not know what to make of Mrs Rogers's claim to a revelatory experience. Once, I would have discounted it immediately, but now I can only file it away, as it were, under 'suspicious.' You said that she seemed nervous, rather than upset?"
"She dropped one stitch— not when Lestrade told her that her sister had died, but when he said that the death was not an accident— then another one after she realised who I was, and finally she turned a cable the wrong way round before telling us to leave. She'll have to pull it all out to return it to her normal standard of workmanship."
"Suggestive. Anything else?"
"Interesting little things. Trifles, as Sergeant Cuff would say. For one thing, the lady's a fan of yours. There were three copies of the Strand tucked into a basket next to her chair, two of them, I'm tolerably certain, were issues with Conan Doyle articles in them— one of the Thor Bridge case from last year, and the Presbury case from this spring. For another, I'd say she's had some sort of a maid until recently. Maybe just day help, but there was a fine layer of dust on top of the polished wood and metalwork. Perhaps two weeks' worth. Finally, her attitude toward her sister was not perhaps as affectionate as her letter might have indicated. There were whatnots on every surface, covering the mantelpiece, the tables, even the windowsills, but only four of them might have come from the Middle East, and those were all pushed behind something else. A very nice Turkish enamelled plate was under an aspidistra, for example, and I saw a lovely little Roman glass scent bottle behind the most disgustingly garish coronation cup I've ever laid eyes on."
"Indicates a certain lack of affection, I agree. Or a severe lapse in taste."
"And, of all the photographs and portraits— there must have been fifty, all in gnarly silver frames— there were only two which might have been of Miss Ruskin. One was a child of about six, and the other was one of those fuzzy romantic photographs of a girl of about eighteen. She was very pretty, by the way, if it was Miss Ruskin."
"I thought she might have been. However, disapproval of one's sister hardly indicts one for her murder."
"Particularly when the person is a frail woman in her sixties, I know. Nevertheless—"
"As you say. We shall set Lestrade on the trail in the morning, and set ourselves to casting about in an attempt to find another trail or flush out a few suspects."
"I believe you're mixing up two quite distinct methods of hunting, Holmes."
"I often do, Russell. It