Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [28]
An hour or so later, during which Holmes had bumped about all over the upstairs, he came back in, brushing ineffectually at his sleeves with hands even grimier than mine. I looked up from my reading, blinked, and realised it was nearly dark. I reached for the lamp and switched its control, but without result. I closed the book and sat back.
“Any joy?” I asked him.
“They wore gloves.”
“All the best-dressed villains wear gloves,” I commented by way of commiseration.
“However, they remained in the house long enough to require sleep on the guest-room beds. Separate rooms, if you were wondering.”
That they had slept in the beds seemed to please him. “They took off their gloves to sleep?”
“Possibly. But for other activities as well.” With a smile, he took an oversized envelope from his pocket and held it for me to see. Inside lay the flowered porcelain pull-handle from a flush water-closet, detached from its chain.
“But surely there are layers of prints on it?” I asked.
“Oh, I'd say the maid your parents employed was a fine woman who took pride in her work. No short-cuts in her cleaning. Mrs Hudson would approve.” Purring with satisfaction, he looked down at his unlikely treasure. “One lovely hand-print, from palm to finger-tips, each one clear and precise.”
“Well done, Holmes.” Now all we had to do was ask the population of San Francisco to give us a comparison, I reflected—but no need to be churlish and say it aloud. “The man's or the woman's?”
“By the slim size of the fingers, hers. Her shoe size and length of stride suggest a height of slightly over five and a half feet, whereas her grey-haired companion is a short man, two or three inches under five and a half feet, whose broad feet suggest a broad hand. We shall have to make enquiries as to the weather over the past weeks,” he added, folding away the pull-handle. “Their shoes left soil on the floor beneath their beds, but not enough to indicate they walked through actual mud.”
“And if they came in through the kitchen, you're right, that ground would be a morass after a rain. Did you find any signs of lamps, candles, torches, anything of the sort?”
“The woman had a carpet-bag she set down several places, which could have held anything. But I saw no signs of dripped wax or any impression of a lamp's base. I think it probable they did their work during the daylight, so as not to alert the aged but sleepless watch-dog across the way.”
“Coming in before dawn and leaving after dusk? I'd have thought that risky. Unless—”
“Yes,” he said. “It would be satisfying to discover that the full moon coincided with a dry spell, would it not?”
And so it proved, in a pleasingly neat confirmation of how the intruders came and went unnoticed. When we repaired to the hotel an hour or two later, for supplies, soap, and sustenance, enquiries at the desk were followed within minutes by a simultaneous knock on our door and the ringing of the telephone. Holmes went to the door, holding it open for the man with the laden tea tray, while I received the information that February had been wet more or less throughout, but two weeks of dry weather in the middle of March had been broken by rain the morning of the twenty-fourth. The March full moon had been the twentieth.
I thanked the manager, then: “Oh, and Mr Auberon? Could you please have someone look into train reservations to New York, the middle of next week? That's right, two of us. Sorry?” I listened for a minute, then asked him to hold on, and covered the mouthpiece with my hand.
“Holmes, he says the hotel has another guest who is planning a cross-country aeroplane flight to leave the middle of next week, and wants two partners in the enterprise. Might we be interested?”
The vivid memory of our recent, nerve-fraying night-time flight over the Himalayan foothills winced across his face, but Holmes' upper lip was nothing if not stiff. “Up to you,” he replied mildly, and returned to pouring the tea. I addressed