Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [94]
He had also succumbed to a growing urge and laid out the beginnings for a line of enquiry into some unfinished business. This had begun with a trip to the P. & O. Line's offices. With considerable difficulty, he had finally determined that the ship on which he and Russell had sailed to Bombay in January, the Marguerite, was currently on its way back across the Mediterranean and due to dock in Marseilles late on Saturday. Immediately he left the steamship offices, he had sent a telegram home to Sussex, asking Mrs Hudson to find the whereabouts of his old comrade-in-arms, Dr Watson. After a bit of thought, he had also sent one to his brother, Mycroft, requesting that he find out if anyone had been enquiring in early January about the absence, and whereabouts, of one Sherlock Holmes.
That damnable incident in Aden bothered him mightily. He wanted to be quite certain that the falling balcony was just an accident.
He still was not sure what had driven him to appeal to those two for assistance—an ill Mycroft and an arthritic Watson. No doubt it was at least in part due to the unexpected and highly disconcerting absence of his partner-wife's usual competence; in her mental absence, he had turned to her predecessor.
In any case, turned to Watson and Mycroft he had; there was little point in agonising over the why of it.
With past events cared for as best he could, he turned to present concerns, and cast out for information regarding Russell's city, family, and history. With a visit to the offices of the Chronicle, he'd come up with an obituary for the Russell family—Charles (age 46, born in Boston), wife Judith (age 39, from London), son Levi (age 9), survived by daughter Mary (age 14)—and the article about the crash, from which he gleaned a description of the actual location.
Most of Wednesday had been spent at the house, first in a quick survey of the house records—the financial accounts he found shelved in the library, a set of garden journals from Mrs Russell's morning room. Then he had taken out the graph paper and measuring tape Auberon had provided for him, going over the house inch by inch until he was satisfied that no rooms hid between the walls. His knees had suffered and his lungs filled with dust, and he had scarcely finished before the sound of a gun-shot had drawn him inexorably to the front door where he'd stood, his blood running cold as he strained for the sound of another shot or of wailing, only breathing again when his wife and her new acquaintance had appeared at the gate. He'd enjoyed meeting Mr Long, although he rather wished the means of their introduction had been somewhat less dramatic.
Thursday morning he had continued to unearth the family's past, examining the social registers for the early years, interviewing neighbours and post office employees. In the afternoon he had finally got those burnt scraps between glass, although he'd had to put off scouring the newspapers for the pertinent articles until the following day. That night being free, they had passed up the cinema offering of Harold Lloyd and the advertised “SF Musical Club High Jinks” at the Palace Hotel in favour of a small, private recital of lieder by a visiting coloratura soprano to which Auberon had arranged an invitation. It had brought him pleasure and given Russell an hour's sleep, and served as a reminder of culture after long months in the wilds of the Far East.
Friday morning had been spent digging through mountains of old newspapers, at the Chronicle building, City Hall, and the public library. Now in his possession were Photostat copies of the pages that had been burnt in the morning room fireplace: The bold, heavily leaded “URNS!!” had indeed been a headline about the city burning, from a newspaper outside the area of damage whose presses were still functioning. Nothing in it seemed to explain its presence among the papers burnt, other than its possible value as a souvenir, for the page was primarily concerned