A Letter of Mary - Laurie R. King [88]
"According to the restaurant's doorman, there was some disagreement outside the restaurant about just that, which ended with the lady simply walking off."
"Could you go over the maître d's story again?" I asked Lestrade.
"I was going to do that. He seems to have spent a couple of days thinking, and when I went back Thursday, he had a lot more to tell me. Remember, he told Mr Holmes there was some disagreement between Miss Ruskin and the colonel? Well, it occurred to me that for a headwaiter he was very unaware of what was going on in his restaurant, and I mentioned at our first interview that I might find it necessary to ask the local PC to patrol the area more closely, stick his head in occasionally."
"Coercion, Lestrade? Tut-tut," said Holmes in mock disapproval.
"Not coercion, just encouragement. It did serve to boost his memory, and he managed to give me a more detailed account of the three hours the colonel and Miss Ruskin were there, with certain gaps where he, the waiter, was off elsewhere, though it was not a busy night. The first half hour, he said, seemed pretty heavy going, long silences, much studying of menus. He got the impression that the colonel had been expecting her to be a man, remember, and that he was not at all happy about having to deal with Miss Ruskin. She, however, seemed to find it funny. Things did settle down, and they spent the next couple of hours going through a pile of papers she had with her. By this time, about eleven-forty, they'd both had a lot of wine and the colonel had drunk three g and t's besides. Unfortunately, this was one of the times when the waiter was out of the dining room, some kind of hubbub in the kitchen, apparently, and when he came back about ten minutes later, the two of them were staring each other down across the table, furious about something. He says he was worried because the colonel looked like a gentleman they'd had die in the restaurant four or five years ago, his face dark red and his eyes popping in his head. He was gesturing at some papers Miss Ruskin was holding, and was, in the waiter's words, 'considerably upset' over them. She seemed to be very sure of herself, and he heard her say a number of times something like 'Yes, it's possible.' A few minutes later, the colonel's chair fell over and the waiter looked up, to see him, I quote, 'standing over that old lady, looking for all the world like he was going to grab the papers away from her, or hit her, or something, but she just sat glaring up at him like a banty, and halfway to laughing. He stood there almost shaking, like he was about to explode with anger.'
"That's when he asked to use the telephone. He had the waiter bring him a double brandy in the manager's office and was closed up in there with the telephone for about ten minutes before he came back. He was calmer then, sat down and talked to her for another twenty minutes or so— uncomfortable talk, very stiff, and they seemed to be working themselves back up to the state they had been in before when all of a sudden, Miss Ruskin put her papers back into her briefcase, got to her feet, and left. Outside on the street, he offered to drive her to her hotel. Which offer she refused, and she died perhaps fifteen minutes later."
"Those words of hers—'Yes, it's possible'— are just what she told me that afternoon when I doubted the manuscript's authenticity," I said. "It sounds fairly conclusive that she showed him a copy of it."
"I agree," said Lestrade, then stifled a yawn that left his eyes watering. "Sorry. Haven't had a solid eight hours for two weeks."
"The Kent murders?" asked Mycroft with sympathy.
"That, yes, and yesterday I was down in Cornwall, where the child was killed. Nasty piece of work, that. Still, there was a witness, which should help. And as for your witnesses, Miss Chessman and Mr O'Rourke were no help at all. He had his back to it the whole time— climbing