A Letter of Mary - Laurie R. King [52]
"So it would appear."
"Where, then, did she take the envelope on Tuesday?"
"Indeed. The other question being ..."
I paused for a brief moment in my abuse of another defenceless frock in order to think.
"Did she wish to protect the envelope and the box in general, or did she envisage some specific threat to them during her trip to Cambridgeshire?"
"Excellent," he said.
"Elementary," I replied, and ripped off another button.
* * *
Lestrade rang up as we sat down to tea, to say that he had no further information and that he was being called off to Shropshire. Did we want him to send another inspector to take his place? he asked. Holmes settled himself next to the telephone with his cup and told Lestrade how we intended to obtain information concerning Colonel Edwards and Mrs Rogers. Their conversation took up an excessive amount of time, but there was never really any doubt about the outcome. Lestrade's objections were finally worn down against the grit of Holmes' determination and the hard fact of his authority, unofficial though it might be, and he submitted to Holmes' suggestion that we meet again on Friday. The field was cleared for our hunt.
When I came into the dining room the next morning, following my lengthy toilette, Mycroft choked on his coffee and Holmes' face turned dark.
"I knew I should have left before you," he muttered. "Good Lord, Russell, is all that really necessary?"
"You told me what he was like, Holmes, so you have only yourself to blame."
He stood up abruptly and picked up the greasy rucksack that lay near the door. His unshaven cheeks and bleary eyes matched the clothes he wore, and I had absolutely no desire to embrace him with a demonstrative farewell. He paused at the door and looked me over, his expression unreadable even to me.
"I feel like father Abraham," he said, and my astonishment was such that it took nearly two seconds before the penny dropped. I began to laugh.
"If I am Sarah, I don't believe any Pharaoh on earth would mistake me for your sister. Good heavens, Holmes, shall I never get your limits? I didn't know you'd ever read the book."
"I was once snowed in with a group of missionaries near the Khyber Pass. It was either the Bible in my cubicle or their conversation in the common room. Good-bye, Russell. Take care of yourself."
"Until Friday, Holmes."
He left, and as I walked over to pour myself some coffee, the bemused expression on Mycroft's face caught my eye. I stirred the cup and said casually, "We said our fond good-byes earlier." He went blank for a moment, then flushed deeply, scarlet up into the reaches of his thinning hair, stood up, and bustled his way out the door, leaving the field to a thin young woman in a skimpy frock, laughing silently into her cup.
After breakfast, I went back and stood in front of the full-length mirror to study my reflection and to assume my rôle. The clothing, hair, and makeup went some long way towards the personality of Mary Small, but my normal stance and movements inside those clothes would create a glaring incongruity. The dress I wore was a light and frivolous summer frock, white cotton sprigged with blue flowers, a touch of lace at the Peter Pan collar and along the lower edge of the sleeves. The fabric and lace gave it an old-fashioned air, but the thin body-revealing drape and the length of the skirt (hemlines had dropped that year, and the shopkeeper had been irritated when I insisted that she raise mine to the extremes of the previous year) would have been considered inappropriate even for a child in Edwardian times. My arms looked thin and long beneath the short puffed sleeves, my legs even longer, and I reflected idly that my currently fashionable outline would no doubt have been someone's despair twenty years ago, when corsets and bustles filled in nature's wants. The heels on my shoes were higher than I was accustomed to and turned my stride into an indecisive wobble. I hoped I would not break an ankle. I bent around to examine the seams on my stockings. I