Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [65]
“Into your family.”
One bright blue eye opened to look at him sideways. “Really? What aspect of my family interests you?”
“All manner of aspects.”
“Pray tell,” she said, although her voice told him not to.
He ignored her tone, let out a thoughtful cloud of smoke, and said, “Your parents met in the spring of 1895, when your father did the Grand Tour and met your mother at the British Museum.”
“Over the display of Roman antiquities, yes.”
“They married, despite the objections of both sides, little more than a year later, in the summer of 1896.”
“His parents objecting to Mother being a Jew, hers outraged by his being a Christian. Holmes, I've told you all this.”
“And came here, to San Francisco, although his parents had long ago returned to Boston, the Russell family centre. California being, like the Colonies, a place one sent younger sons to try themselves, and with luck to add something to the family fortunes before they came back home to the castle.”
“I thought they'd first come here in 1900, after I was born.”
“Not at all. According to the account books in your father's study, they lived here from 1897 to 1899, before returning to England for your birth. They returned in May 1901. As we heard, they met the Longs eighteen months later, and as your honorary aunt told you, lived here, apart from the period of your brother's birth, until the summer after the earthquake.”
“At which time my mother got nervous about the house falling down around her and took my brother and me back to England. I know.”
“Whatever your mother was nervous about, it did not include houses falling down.”
“What do you mean?”
“According to two of your neighbours, your family moved back into the house ten days after the fire, at which time your mother seemed remarkably light-hearted about the damage, and sanguine about any future catastrophes.”
“Then why would she leave?”
“Precisely what they wondered. And why leave so precipitately, taking only a few bags, and following a loud argument?”
“An argument? My parents?”
“The postman heard it. He said it was unusual. Said, too, that to find your father's motorcar in the drive in the morning was most unusual. You do not remember any degree of discord between your parents?”
“I don't remember them fighting, no.”
“Yet they separated for large parts of the years between 1906 and 1912. What would have caused that if not marital discord? A child's health? Some threat here in California?”
“Threat from what?”
“In June 1906 your father also wrote the codicil to the will specifying that the house be closed to outsiders. Two months following the fire.”
“I imagine a catastrophe of those proportions would have caused many people to add codicils to their wills.”
“And two months following some incident that caused a shift in the relationship between your father and Micah Long.”
“Again, the experience of the fire itself could have done that. Or even Long's guilt and resentment that he had been seeing to the safety of my family when his own family was driven from their home and nearly killed.”
“That is true enough,” he conceded. He thought for a minute then asked, “And over the following years, whenever your father came to England, how did your parents seem?”
Russell looked uncomfortable at this autopsy of a marriage. “They seemed . . . normal. Well, when he first arrived we would all be somewhat stiff and formal. But within a few days everything would be fine. And Mother was always very sad when he left again.”
“So why leave, and so suddenly?” Holmes asked, but he was only musing aloud, not asking her.
“I was at school,” Russell said suddenly, as if a memory had been startled from her. “I came home from school one afternoon and found her throwing things into bags and telling me we had to go. I'd finished my exams, but I didn't even have a chance to say good-bye to my friends. I had to write home to Father from New York and ask him to send certain books I'd forgotten in the rush. I always assumed it was because they'd discovered the house wasn't safe to live in.”
“There was damage, but less than