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By Root 299 0

I inserted the sheaf of papers back into the envelope and took it with me down the hall to the bath. I didn’t actually think about what I had read, not with the top of my mind, at any rate. Instead I found myself thinking about Holmes as he had given me his brother’s information, about his mania for privacy and his penchant for disguise. I lay in the bath and visualised him scuttling into one of his bolt-holes as an elderly newsboy and popping out dressed as a nun, into another with a street pedlar’s tray of pencils and stationery and out again with mops and buckets, and I wondered, not for the first time, how one went about establishing even a single bolt-hole, where one might come and go, at odd hours and in odd attire, without exciting comment. One could hardly place an advertisement. In addition, a bolt-hole would lack a cook, and one could not expect to receive mail. The number of guests one could take in were also limited.

My mind wandered through the various and sundry drawbacks of the surreptitious life and, drowsing chin-high in the warm water, I became more and more bogged down in speculation about minor details: What if one needed a garment that was in another bolt-hole? If the building changed hands, did one arrive one evening like a rabbit finding its burrow dug up? And was there any way of rigging a telephone, and what if builders came through the wall in making improvements, or rerouted the electricity and cut one off? It was soporific and pleasant, and it was interrupted by a voice in my inner ear that came with the clarity of a divine pronouncement, the remembrance of the gentle remark made at parting by my solicitor, Mr Arbuthnot senior.

“You are now a very wealthy young lady, Miss Russell, who unfortunately has had little practical preparation for the experience. Please, if there is anything I or my partners can do to assist you, we should consider it an honour. We all had a great deal of respect for your parents.” He had added, with a less official tone to his voice, “I was very fond of my cousin, your mother.”

Precisely at ten o’clock, I was on the telephone to his offices. The haughty secretary immediately gave way to the senior partner.

“Miss Russell, how very good to hear from you,” he asked politely.

“Mr Arbuthnot, I hadn’t intended to disturb you with my enquiries, but you generously offered assistance the other day, and I need some help.”

“Yes, Miss Russell?”

“I need a flat and a maid, and I don’t want to spend days looking and interviewing. It occurred to me that someone in your offices—I shouldn’t want to disturb you personally, but a junior member, even a secretary?—might guide me to some responsible agents.”

“But of course,” he said, relieved that my demands were no more outlandish than this. “Perhaps I might research the matter a bit and telephone you shortly?”

I gave him the number of the telephone I was speaking from, thanked him, and rang off. In ten minutes, the instrument rang, and I was listening to Mr Arbuthnot’s smooth tones.

“Miss Russell, I believe I have just the man for you. His name is Mr Bell. Shall I put him on the line?”

I agreed, thanked him, and his voice gave way to a brisk young East End voice.

“Miss Russell?” he began. “The name’s Freddy Bell. You’re looking for a flat and a maid, Mr Arbuthnot said? Can you give me an idea of precisely what you’ll be wanting, where, and how much you want to spend on it, so I can help you?”

“Yes, certainly. I don’t need anything terribly large, five or six rooms. Plus quarters for servants, of course. The location is important, though. Not Bloomsbury necessarily, but not far away, if you take my meaning.”

He caught it immediately, and my opinion of Gibson, Arbuthnot, Meyer, and Perowne went up a notch.

“A place where you can take anyone, no matter their station, without them feeling out of place, that the thing?”

“Precisely. Impressive, but not depressing.”

“Right you are, miss. And the servants?”

“I had thought a maid who can cook the occasional poached egg.”

“A housekeeper who does hair,” he noted. “And a driver.”