Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [163]
I have had no word from the man I called GF, nor from his half-sister, although considering the disruption France is currently undergoing, I do not suppose that is surprising. Well, I have done my best by him, and can only hope that his life since we last met has been lived in a manner to recompense his sins.
As for my own, we shall soon see.
Signed,
Charles Russell
BOOK FIVE
Russell
Chapter Twenty-four
The letter was written and sent to France the third week of August, just after the war began,” Holmes remarked. “And the accident that killed your family occurred the third of October. Even in the first month of war, mail was getting through, particularly to Paris. ‘Good Friend' would have got the letter within a week. He could have made it back here from Paris with time to spare.”
“His friend,” I said bitterly. “A man he helped out of a tough place, a man with whom he shared a wild . . .” My voice shifted tone as my mind tore itself from the immediacy of my father's presence and began to process the information it had been given, now and in recent days. I finished “. . . wild youth.”
“Petit Ami, or ‘PA,' could only be Micah Long,” Holmes observed, too taken up with his own thoughts to notice my distraction, “considering the references to hiding things in the garden and the fellow's protective ‘mumbo jumbo' of feng shui. And as Charles Russell himself says, it shouldn't be too difficult to come up with a name for the other. Particularly after one has had a close look at the household records, in which is noted a cheque for seven thousand five hundred dollars, written just days after the earthquake. Your father seems to have held the charmingly innocent notion that changing the amount of the cheque in the letter would mislead anyone investigating the evidence of the accounts book.”
I stood up abruptly. “I have to go. I'll meet you back at the hotel.”
I was out of there before he could stop me, striding down the streets with neither hat nor coat. I pulled the ornate bell, then banged on the door when it did not open instantly. When Jeeves appeared in the opening I pushed my way inside.
“Where's Flo?” I demanded. “Miss Greenfield? Is she still in bed?”
The abruptness of my entrance and the lack of delicacy in my question reduced him to jerky little protests, which I overrode ruthlessly. “I need to talk to Flo this instant. Where is her room? Oh, never mind, I'll find it myself.”
The house-maid he summoned sprinted up to me after the sixth door I had opened, and said breathlessly, “This way, miss, er, ma'am.”
I'd have found the room eventually, but I did not bother to thank the little maid, just marched past her towards the formless shape on the bed. “I'll bring coffee!” the poor girl squeaked, and slammed the door.
“Flo!” I said loudly, shaking where I thought her shoulder would be. “Flo, wake up, right now. I don't have time for your morning dithers. Flo!”
My shout brought her bolt upright, staring around in a panic. She dashed her hands across her eyes as if doubting their evidence. “Mary? What on earth—”
“Flo, do you know a man with a scarred face?”
“What?” It came out more like, Wha? With an effort, I resisted the impulse to slap her awake.
“A man with scars on his face, burn scars.”
“What of it?”
“God damn it, Flo, who is he?”
“My father,” she said, her pretty face screwing up in confusion. “What about him? Mary, what a state you're in! You look like you've been rolling in the garden!”
I sat down abruptly on the bed, ignoring her fastidious protestations. “Your father had a scarred face?”
“Yes, it was sort of puckered, like. He got burned rescuing people in