Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [13]
I set the toe of my shoe into Holmes' hands, braced my hands on his shoulder and the wall, and scrambled over the top with stockings more or less intact. He followed a moment later, brushing invisible dust from his trousers.
The walkway was buried under a knee-high thicket of weeds; five feet from the gate, the path disappeared entirely behind the press of branches from the shrubs on either side. Still, the drive was open, and we sidled along the wall until we reached it, then picked our way up the weed-buckled cobbles to the house.
The street-lamps had come on, but so thick was the vegetation, their light made it to the house's façade in fits and starts, allowing us a glimpse of downspout here, a patch of peeling trim there, the lining on a set of drapes through a grimy downstairs window.
We followed, initially at any rate, the path of least resistance, and continued along the drive that ran down the side of the house. The windows here were similarly closed and uninformative, the once-trim roses that followed the wall between our house and the neighbours (the . . . Ramseys?) a thicket that reached thorny claws out to our clothing.
At the back of the house, the drive continued to a carriage house where my father had kept his motorcars. Holmes went on, standing on his toes to peer through the high windows, then came away. “Nothing there,” he said, but of course there was nothing inside; my father's last motor had gone off a cliff and exploded in a freshly filled tank of petrol.
We stood looking at the impenetrable garden in back of the house. “Do you want to push through that?” I asked him.
“As there's no particular urgency, perhaps we ought to play the Livingstone-in-blackest-Africa rôle when we've had a chance to don thorn-proof outer garments.”
“And snake-proof boots,” I added. As we turned back towards the front, I shook my head in disgust. “The garden must have received some rudimentary attention, but it doesn't appear as if anyone has been inside the house for years. I thought there was an arrangement to keep the place up.”
“I'd have thought it desirable, from a property manager's point of view. Undoubtedly your Mr Norbert will know why.”
“He's got some explaining to do; no house should be allowed to get into this condition. It's a wonder the neighbours haven't complained.”
“Perhaps they have,” Holmes commented—but not, as I first thought, about the shocking condition of the paint. A motorcar had pulled up in front of the gate, and now I heard two doors slam shut as a pair of powerful torches probed the drive.
“You there,” shouted a voice whose tones would carry the same authority the world around. “Come out here at once.”
“The constabulary have arrived,” Holmes said unnecessarily, and together we moved to obey the command.
Our dress, our demeanour, and our accents soon had the torch-light diverted from our faces into a kinder illumination, and our claim to be the house's concerned but keyless owners was not instantly discounted. One of the policemen even came up with an orange crate from somewhere, so I could climb with dignity back over the fence. The last shred of suspicion fluttered away after we had been taken to the hotel and been recognised by the doorman. We thanked the two policemen for their concern over the property, and then I put to them the question that Holmes had raised mere moments before they had arrived.
“Before you go, may I ask? Which of the neighbours reported our presence? I'd like to thank them for their concern, don't you know.”
The two burly men looked at each other; the older one shrugged. “It's the old dame across the street. She's kinda taken the house under her wing—'phones the station every so often to have us chase kids out before they can get into mischief.”
“I do understand. Sleepless old lady with nothing better to do. She'll be disappointed we weren't stealing the doorknobs.”
The two laughed and took their bulky blue selves away. Holmes and I made for the dining room, for our long-delayed