Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [97]
With luck (a commodity in which Holmes placed no trust whatsoever) today's outing would settle at least one of those questions.
And in the meantime, he would hold up for consideration four points.
First, those burnt scraps they had salvaged from the fireplace, from a document written on the machine in Charles Russell's study. The surviving words made it clear that the document had concerned matters of some import: “Army . . . looters . . . stolen . . . executed”—these were not from the draught of a chatty family letter.
Two: That they were burnt, and so close to the source of their writing, indicated a certain urgency, or at the very least an emphatic quality, in the act of destruction. A more sanguine individual would merely have carried them off rather than risk discovery through lighting a fire in the fireplace of a vacant house.
Two points did not an hypothesis make, but taken with the third—that persons unknown had broken into the Russell house with, to all appearances, the sole purpose of destroying that document—they formed a shape. And the shape was one that Holmes had studied closely the whole of his professional life: blackmail.
Point four: Although the victims of blackmail often turned on their tormentors, he could not recall a single incident when a blackmailer had deliberately killed his victim.
This was the most troubling of all, for in the midst of those four salient points lived the growing and awful possibility that the blackmailer had been none other than Charles Russell himself.
Holmes had always despised the sly and verminous quality of the blackmailer, and his every instinct shouted that the stalwart young man in the photograph was no extortionist. However, that was emotion talking. Certainly he would say nothing to Russell—not yet, perhaps not ever, if no further evidence came to light. And perhaps, under certain circumstances, if Charles Russell had been given no choice, if he had been driven to the detestable weapon by the needs of his family, if one could accept that blackmail was a weapon like any other . . .
He hoped very much it did not come to that.
On the other hand, there remained the question of the relationship between Charles and Judith Russell: Two months after the fire, husband and wife have a furious argument; that very day she packs up the children to leave for England; for the next six years he sees them only periodically, in England, for slightly less than half the year. According to Russell, her parents were easy and affectionate with each other when they were together, but the fact remained that the family was divided for much of the year from June of 1906 until the summer of 1912.
If Judith Russell had discovered that her husband was a blackmailer, that could have driven her away. But if her outrage against his morals had caused her to flee, why then welcome the man when he came to her in England? And why return to San Francisco after six years?
That was more the behaviour of a woman protecting her children from threat than a woman disillusioned with her husband.
He shook his head and, noticing that the pipe had burnt itself out, he slid it into a pocket. Too many questions, not enough data.
The remainder of the journey he spent divided between a study of the maps and watching the landscape go past.
Eventually, the motorcar's bonnet shifted west, and soon the grey Pacific stretched out into the distance. Holmes folded the map away and set both feet on the floor, intent now. He'd read the newspaper report that suggested where the crash had happened, and he had studied the maps closely until he had narrowed down the possibilities to one.
“Drop your speed somewhat,” he said to the boy in the front. “Not as if you're watching for something or about to stop, but as if you're under direction from a nervous passenger.”
“Got it.” The car's progress became more stately, and Holmes resumed his hat and sat back. It would take very sharp eyes indeed to see the vehicle as anything but the means of an elderly gentleman's progress.