Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [112]
Looking back over the previous two days, I had to be grateful to Holmes for having pulled me out of Friday's deep funk, first by dumping me into a hot bath and then force-feeding me tea and conversation.
However, there is a drawback to allowing Holmes to involve himself in a project, particularly when he is bored to begin with—for example, following a long and tedious ocean crossing: The machinery of his mind cannot bear to run without engaging, so that he tends to adopt hobbyhorses.
Even before my emotional collapse on Friday, the minor conundra surrounding the house and the death of my parents had shown every sign of becoming his latest project, into which he had thrown himself with all the intensity that he would have given to a crucial case of international relations. There was no point whatsoever in telling him that the mystery of the house-breaking was of less import to me than the eternal mystery of why a woman cannot buy a pair of shoes that fit: His teeth had seized the bit, and he would run with his chosen investigation until it was either solved or had reached an insoluble dead-end.
It was, at times, trying, to live with a man constitutionally incapable of relaxation. Despite the emptiness within, I was more than a little relieved to get away from him for a couple of days.
Then it occurred to me, a mile or so south of where we had met the insurance man, that my embarrassing display of weakness on Friday might possibly have unexpected benefits, in setting Holmes another problem at which to worry. Dr Ginzberg's nine-year-old murder might not be of a complexity worthy of Holmes' efforts, but it was a case I would like to see solved, if he could do so in the few days left to us here. And if it turned his attentions away from the pointless and uncomfortable mysteries of the house and my past, so much the better. He hadn't seemed terribly interested in it this morning, headed to the ferry on one of his odd scholarly pursuits, but in any event, it would be difficult to ferret out any official sources of information before Monday.
I smiled: Sundays were often a vexation of spirit to Holmes.
My companion in the front seat must have been keeping a surreptitious eye on me and seen a degree of relaxation on my features, because my distant thoughts were interrupted by a solicitous question directed at me.
“Feeling a bit warmer, Mary?”
“Sorry? Oh, yes, I'm fine. It's very beautiful, isn't it?”
Satisfied, either with my answer or that I could make one, Flo gave me a smile meant to be encouraging and left me to my thoughts.
Watching the back of her glossy black hair dancing in the breeze, I realised that I liked her, and her friends, more than I had expected.
Our beginnings on Friday had not been auspicious: Flo Greenfield and her entourage were late. I was in the lobby by nine, more than ready to put the day's shocks behind me; by nine-thirty, I was pacing and considering a return upstairs. Three minutes later, gathering myself up to go, I became aware of a riot approaching rapidly down the street, a cacophony of horns and shouts. The Rolls-Royce that squealed to a halt before the doors was the colour of a cloudless sky in June, and throbbed with power from within its elegant bonnet. As the man behind the wheel attempted to perform the contortionist manoeuvre of threading himself out from behind wheel, brake, and shift levers, the passenger by-passed the entire issue of male chivalry by flinging open her door before either driver or hotel staff could reach it. A slim figure in a dress that complemented the colour of the motor stepped unescorted onto the pavement, and I realised belatedly that Flo had arrived.
She was dressed in a costume every bit as extreme as that in which she'd come home the previous morning, although this one was still in