Part 11 (1/2)

”Was an arrest made?”

”Not that I've heard.”

”Do you know the officer in charge of the investigation?”

”I met him, but years ago. His name slips my mind.”

”Perhaps your secretary could look that up as well?”

”If you like. Although as you are not family, I don't suppose he'd have much to tell you.”

”We'll see,” I told him, a trifle grimly. Although Holmes tended to travel under an a.s.sumed name-currently he was using a favourite, Sherrinford Holmes-if necessity called I would not hesitate to send him in under his own name. There wasn't a policeman in the world who would turn down a conversation with Sherlock Holmes. ”Well, thank you, Mister, er . . .”

”Braithwaite,” he provided.

”Of course.” I pushed myself out of the chair, obscurely pleased that I did not fall on my face. My feet seemed remarkably far away.

”Miss Russell, let me arrange a car for you.”

”That won't be necessary; I have a taxicab waiting for me. I think.”

Still, his sense of responsibility demanded that he arrange for an escort, who proved to be the secretary occupying the desk outside of his office door. The woman was at least sixty and so thin she might have snapped in two had I leant on her firmly, but fortunately that did not prove necessary: The tonic of leaving the confines of the hospital restored me to a degree of normalcy. Once outside of the doors, I thanked her, and even remembered to give her my various addresses for the information she would be unearthing for me.

The taxi pulled up, and as I climbed in, I told my faithful driver that I wished to return to the hotel.

I believe he chatted at me the whole way back; I heard not a word.

And it never occurred to me to look around for a gunman.

In front of the St Francis, I got out, and was a good way up the entranceway when I realised that he was calling me-I had forgotten to pay him. I returned, thrust some money at him, and turned away, but his voice persisted, to be joined just inside the entrance by his person as he tried to press some dollar bills into my hand. My fingers closed over them automatically-anything to be rid of the man-but I did not pause in my path to the lift.

Inside the humming enclosure, I gave the attendant my floor number and stood staring down at the change for my fare. The bills were quivering slightly. I could feel the boy, looking out of the side of his eyes at me. The upward thrust slowed, the door slid open, and I walked to the room. The key even turned the lock, an event I found mildly amazing, considering the uncertain state of the rest of the universe.

Granite pillars, in the general course of events, did not simply crumble and fall. Trollies did not leave their tracks and set off down the side streets. Lightning did not strike out of a cloudless sky.

Psychiatrists who made for the only secure hold in a time of catastrophe did not bleed to death on their office floors.

I stepped out of my shoes, ripped off hat, gloves, and coat, and burrowed deep among the bed-clothes.

Which was where Holmes found me, five hours later.

BOOK TWO.

Holmes

Chapter Ten.

It is a singularly disconcerting experience to discover a supremely competent individual brought to her knees; even more so when that person is one's wife.

In the course of his long career, however, Sherlock Holmes had with some regularity been faced with a client or witness in a state of shock, and long ago recognised the benefits of the traditional remedies: either a stiff brandy or large quant.i.ties of hot, sweet tea to soothe the nerves; some readily digestible food-stuff to set the blood to flowing; and at the properly judged moment, a sharp counteractive shock to restore the patient to useful coherence.

So when he came into his hotel room and found his young wife huddled inertly beneath the bed-clothes, he picked up the telephone to summon tea and biscuits, administered a quick dose of contraband brandy, and then proceeded to an alternative not generally permitted a consulting detective when faced with a distressed client: He bundled Russell into the bath, undergarments and all, and turned the taps on hot and full.

The tea came, the water rose, and he spent the next quarter of an hour bent over the steaming porcelain tub forcing liquid and sweet morsels of cream-filled cakes into the silent woman. Slowly, her eyes returned to a focus. He went into the next room to look for her spectacles, stripping off his coat and rolling up his wet s.h.i.+rt-sleeves as he studied the room for any indication of what had put her into that state. No out-spread newspapers on the table, no crumpled telegrams in the waste-basket, nothing but the trail of discarded possessions and garments from door to bed.

He found her hand-bag just inside the door and turned it upside-down on the bed: money purse, handkerchief, note-book, pen-knife, pistol, and investigative tool-kit-all the usual paraphernalia and nothing out of the ordinary.

He abandoned the hand-bag, eventually found the spectacles under the bed, and took them into the steam-filled room, setting them in a corner of the soap-dish for her. He then poured himself a cup of tea, refilled hers (just one sugar this time instead of two, although usually she took none) and settled onto the vanity stool to wait for her to speak.

Which she did before his cup had reached its dregs.

”She's dead, Holmes.”

He went still, surveying the possible meanings of the p.r.o.noun: The death of one of the Greenfield women would explain the shock, but not the despair beneath it. That left one likely candidate. ”Your doctor friend?”

”Murdered in her office by someone looking for money, the police say.”

”I am sorry,” he offered, and he was, although it was habit more than anything that caused him to mouth the phrase-generally meaningless, yet its recitation often prompted valuable reminiscence.

”She's the end. There's no-one left now. All these years-I never wrote to her, you know? I always thought I would see her one day, stand in front of her and tell her that it had all worked out. And all these years she's been gone.”

Holmes stifled his impatience at this unhelpful production of data, and said merely, ”She died some time ago, then?”

”Even before I met you. Just weeks after I left here. Gone, all this time.”

”How did you find out?”

At last, Russell's eyes came to his. She blinked, spotted her gla.s.ses, and put them on; under their influence she pulled together some degree of rational thought. It was a considerable relief.

The story of her afternoon's search for information had more gaps in it than substance, but it did provide a place to begin. As she arrived at the portion of the tale that took her to the hospital, she seemed to become aware of her surroundings and, without pausing in her narrative, stood up from the bath and wrapped herself in a towelling bath-robe. He followed her into the sitting room and turned up the radiators to keep her warm.

”She'd left everything to the hospital for their mental patients, you see,” Russell said, absently running one bath-robe sleeve across her wet, lamentably butchered hair. She looked like a child when her hand came away, hair tousled, pink-faced, and wrapped in an oversized robe-again Holmes was struck by how thin she was looking, and pushed away the urge to retrieve the tea tray with its sticky sweets.

”You believe the hospital administrator knew nothing other than what he told you?”

”I don't think he did. His secretary was going to find the name of the investigator for me. And something else as well, what was it? Oh, yes, the precise date of her death. I wonder why she hasn't 'phoned yet? Maybe I ought to-”

”Sit, Russell. Have another cup of tea and one of those cream cakes.”

”Holmes, I'm fine. What time is it, anyway? Good heavens, I've slept the day away, what a ridiculous thing to do.”