A Letter of Mary - Laurie R. King [37]
He drew the lump from his pocket and removed the piece of oiled paper with which he had wrapped the box. Traces of wax showed where the industrious creatures had begun to incorporate this foreign object into their hive, but the box itself was untouched. He gave it to Lestrade, who turned it around in his hands, following with delight the parade of animals, birds, and exotic vegetation. I let him enjoy it for a while before I reached over to pull up the top and show him the papyrus.
"I'll work on finishing the translation and then see if I can find any sort of a code or marks on it. It's very unlikely, but I'll try."
Lestrade reached out and ran a thumb over the inviting surfaces, then glanced at the papyrus curiously.
"I can see why you said it wouldn't fit easily into a book. Good luck with it, Miss Russell. Glad it's you and not me. I'd like a photograph of it and a couple of the box as well, if you would."
"Did the camera appear, Holmes?"
"It did, but in rather too many pieces to be of any use. Patrick's should be good enough for the purpose, though."
"That reminds me, Mr Holmes, can you give me a list of everything they took? We can send it around to the stolen-goods people, have the shops look out for the things. Probably hopeless, but still."
"Quite. I made a list last night, Lestrade. It's on the table by the door. Be careful not to bump the table," he added. "One leg is loose."
"Right." Lestrade handed me the box and glanced at his watch. "Good Lord, I must run. I'm meeting someone at one o'clock. I'll be in touch tomorrow."
"I'll be interested to know what you uncover about Mrs Rogers's background. And I want to see if your print man finds anything in the hotel room."
"In this case, Mr Holmes, it's a print lady," he said primly, and with a tip of his hat to me, he closed the door.
Holmes and I regarded each other, and the noise and the tumult of the last two days gradually settled into the quiet house like dust from a shaken rug.
"So, Holmes."
"So, Russell."
He nodded once, as if in agreement, and we returned to our dreary task, in this case the laboratory, where, by great good fortune, none of the broken beakers and jars had combined to form explosives, corrosives, or poisons. We used heavy gloves, but we still had blood on our hands when the afternoon came and Holmes tipped the last dustpan load into the bin. We pulled off our gloves, inspected the damage, and threw gloves, brush, and the pan itself into the bin and slammed down the lid.
"Lunch al fresco, Russell, is definitely called for. Fresh air and sensible conversation in a place free of broken test tubes, white-haired eccentric ladies, and Scotland Yard inspectors."
We removed ourselves from the cottage to a spot notable only for its lack of scenery and difficulty of approach, then applied ourselves to my thick sandwiches (Mrs Hudson had despaired of teaching me to slice bread and meat thinly) and glasses of honey wine. The summer had been a good one, warm enough to dry hay, wet enough to water the fields. In a month, I should return to Oxford for half of each week. We hadn't much time.
I lay back and watched one thin cloud hang unmoving in the firmament while Holmes put the things back into his rucksack. Dorothy Ruskin, a strong woman who would find it easy to make enemies. Her sister, a widow, left to care for an old woman in a decrepit house. A retired colonel, his absent son, and whomever else she may have met in London. Then there were the two Arabs and their driver in the black saloon car, and whoever had searched our house. I shifted to avoid the sharp edges of a rock beneath my shoulder blade and was jabbed by one corner of the box, which I had thrust into a capacious trouser