Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [27]
“Short grey on the one, long brown on the other.”
“How long?”
“As long as yours—as yours used to be,” he said, resigned to the necessity of my scant haircut, but not the fact.
“A woman? Good Lord.”
He closed the book on his knee. “Russell, what precisely do you intend to do?”
“I don't know, Holmes,” I said, taking off my spectacles to rub at my irritated eyes. “I really don't know.”
After a while, he opened his book again and I went into the kitchen, unlocking the back door to step out into the wilderness. As I stood there on the damp, subsiding bricks, my naïve determination to restore my family's home to its former glories faltered beneath the enormity of the task. What was I thinking? It would take weeks, months to bring the house and gardens to a state of liveability, and what then? I had no intention of moving back to California.
Restoring the house would not restore my family.
Better to sell it now, before the building wormed its way into my affections. Let someone else worry about the brambles and the mice. Let someone else love it.
And as if to lay an omen of blessing on the decision, a small piece of Nature's magic whirred past me, a flash of red more brilliant than a maharaja's rubies, moving so fast I could not easily focus until it paused, hovering to drink from the pendulous blossoms of a fuchsia: a humming-bird. I hadn't seen one since I was a child, and I gaped at it with a child's wonder. When it darted away, I was aware of a smile on my face.
I returned to the library, and spoke to Holmes' back. “As I see it, there are two separate problems here. One is the house itself and what to do with it. The other concerns the puzzles we've found here—not necessarily the break-in, as nothing seems to be missing other than the mezuzah, but I've decided that I wouldn't mind, after all, knowing something more about my family. About the years I spent here. It is, after all, my past. I'll give it a week, in between my appointments with Mr Norbert. And then we'll leave and I'll tell Norbert to sell it once the restrictions are lifted, two years from now.”
Holmes turned to look at me, and there it was again, that raised eyebrow of omniscience, asking me to reconsider some hasty judgement. I thought I knew what he was after this time, however, and sighed to myself. He'd been too long without intellectual challenge and itched to uncover more about the house's invasion.
“Holmes, they didn't take anything, they didn't damage anything but the lock on the desk.” The eyebrow remained arched, and I raised a hand in surrender. “But please, go right ahead and investigate, if that's what you want to do.”
“Very well,” he said, depositing the book on the small table and getting to his feet. “I shall begin by applying myself to the finger-prints on your father's dressing-table.”
“You brought your print kit?” I asked, surprised. His magnifying glass and evidence envelopes went everywhere with him, but the tin box containing powders, brush, and insufflator created unnecessary bulk in the pockets, unless he anticipated needing it. But his only response was yet another unreadable yet disapproving look as he went out of the door.
I was at something of a loss to know where to begin myself, so in default, I walked in the direction of the first room we had entered, my mother's morning room. I had my hand on the door-knob when Holmes' voice brought me up short.
“I shouldn't go in there while the kitchen door is standing open,” he commanded. “The draughts might prove destructive, and I haven't any glass plates.”
With that Delphic utterance, he continued climbing the stairs, leaving me with my hand on the knob and many questions on my lips. Draughts? Glass plates? What on earth was he on about?
Slowly, I put it together. Glass plates, used for the preservation of fragile documents. Documents, such as burnt papers. Burnt papers, such as a drift of trembling black ashes in an otherwise pristine fireplace.
Ah.
Was I being very stupid, or was he being unnecessarily