Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [101]
Mary Russell, married to Sherlock Holmes, gave him a smile meant to be reassuring. “That looked a rather dangerous climb.”
“Not something I'd do for fun, no.”
“So why were you doing it? If you don't mind my asking,” she added.
“What's it to you?” he said bluntly, putting the cigarette back to his lips.
After a moment, she said, “I know someone who was killed on that piece of hillside. It was odd, seeing you at the same exact place.”
“Yeah, well, as I understand it, there's a number of people that corner's killed. But my company's only interested in two deaths that happened last December. That the same accident as yours?”
“No.”
“Then I can't help you.”
“What's your company?”
“Mutual of Fresno,” he replied, reaching for his wallet and drawing out a business card with a salesman's automatic habit. “Somebody phoned in a tip to say we might've paid death benefits on an empty car. Always a problem, you see, when there's no body.”
“I see,” she said, looking at the card.
“Well,” he said, sucking the last draw from his cigarette and tossing it out onto the sand, “I'm afraid I didn't. Risked my neck and a case of pneumonia for absolutely nothing. And now, if there's nothing more I can do for you, I need a drink and a fire and a pair of dry socks.” He stood, tipped his hat, and threaded his long body into the back of the van.
Smooth, thought Holmes admiringly as he studied the scene through the lens. Not once had Hammett given away the presence of the object he had retrieved from the cliffside—even Russell had taken no notice of the man's surreptitious motions as he slid the thing from the back of his belt to the floor of the van.
Holmes would have liked to hear the conversation, but his lip-reading abilities were lamentably rusty, and in any case best suited to closer work. He had only been able to follow scraps of it—almost none of Hammett's words, since the man's face had been in profile much of the time, but what he had perceived of Russell's side of the brief exchange had reassured him oddly.
With his unlikely passenger stowed away, the bow-legged driver raised his own hat a fraction off his scalp, then slammed the cargo door and trotted around to the driver's side. The bread van started with a violent cloud of blue smoke, causing Flo and her young man to back hastily away, but Russell just stood and watched the vehicle back-and-fill into a turn before it accelerated up the steep hill north.
The three young people did not immediately climb back into their own vehicle. Instead, there was a discussion, during which Flo gestured towards the road ahead, Russell stared at the wake of the bread van, and Donny sat on his running board smoking a cigarette and watching the waves. Eventually, consensus appeared to be reached. Flo straightened and dug something from her pocket, offering it to Russell. At first Holmes thought it was a cigarette, but after Russell had shaken her head and turned away, the other young woman worked at the object for a moment, put something into her mouth, and followed Russell towards the gaudy car. Holmes risked one last glance at Russell's face as she sat down in the back, then swept the machinery away and tugged the curtains down to a crack.
“Mr Tyson, please remain where you are. Slump back into your seat and look bored with your lot in life, and watch the blue motor go past as if it was the most interesting thing that has happened in an hour.”
The sound of a starter and an engine catching reached them, then the car was in gear and accelerating onto the road. It roared past, and away, until the beat of waves against the shore was the only sound. Holmes pulled the velvet curtains aside a fraction with one finger to peer out, not entirely certain that Russell wouldn't have chosen to solve the disagreement by staying behind, but the road and the hillside behind it were empty of humanity.
He settled himself onto the green leather, sliding the pistol back into the Gladstone. As he began to unfasten the telescope from its tripod base, he said