“If you truly feel that you cannot do this, then I shall accept that decision. I will not consider it a failure on your part. It will merely mean that you join Watson while I enlist Mycroft’s help. It would be inferior, I admit—inelegant, and I think long, but not hopeless. It is, however, your choice entirely.”
His words were placid, but what lay beneath them shook me breathless, for what he was proposing would in another man be sheer recklessness. Holmes the painstaking, Holmes the thoughtful, calculating thinker, Holmes the solitary operator who never so much as consulted another for advice, this Holmes I thought I knew was now proposing to launch himself into the abyss, trusting absolutely in my ability to catch him.
And more even than that: This self-contained individual, this man who had rarely allowed even his sturdy, ex-Army companion Watson to confront real risk, who had habitually over the past four years held back, been cautious, kept an eye out, and otherwise protected me; this man who was a Victorian gentleman down to his boots; this man was now proposing to place not only his life and limb into my untested, inexperienced, and above all female hands, but my own life as well. This was the change I had noticed in him and puzzled about, the intensity and relish with which he was facing the coming combat: There was no hesitation left. He had let go all doubt, and was telling me in crystal-clear terms that he was prepared to treat me as his complete, full, and unequivocal equal, if that was what I wished. He was giving me not only his life, but my own.
I had long known the intellect of this man, been aware for nearly as long of his humanity and the greatness of his heart, but I had never had demonstrated to me so clearly that the size of his spirit was equal to his mind. The knowledge rumbled through me like an earthquake, and in its wake a small voice echoed, wondering if I had just pronounced his epitaph.
I don’t know how long it was before I looked up from the small carved queen into the carved-looking features of the man across from me, but when I did, it seemed that his eyebrows were waiting for something. I had to think for a moment before I realised that he had actually asked a question. But there was no decision to be made.
“When faced with the unthinkable,” I said shakily, “one chooses the merely impossible.” He smiled approvingly, warmly.
And then a miracle happened.
Holmes reached out his long arms to me and, like a frightened child, I went inside them, and he held me, awkwardly at first, then more easily, until my trembling faded. I sat, safe, listening to the steady beat of his heart until the oil lamp guttered out and left us in darkness.
TWO DAYS LATER the Crusader walls of Acre closed in on us, as unlike the sun-swept stones of Jerusalem, eighty miles away, as could be imagined. Jerusalem’s golden walls had sparkled and shone, and the city vibrated with an inaudible song of joy and pain, but Acre’s walls were heavy and thick, and its song was a multilingual dirge of ignorance and death. The long shadows seemed like spectres to be avoided, and I noticed Holmes glancing about him sharply. Ali and Mahmoud, in their customary place four strides ahead of us, seemed as unaware of the gloom as they were of anything outside themselves, but even they edged towards the middle of the streets as if the walls were unclean. I tried to push away the mood, but it crept back stubbornly.
“I wonder if these stones would speak with such a bleak voice if I didn’t know what the place stood for,” I said to Holmes irritably.
“To a mind attuned to observation and deduction, the product reveals the mind of its creator.” He squinted up at the great, ponderous blocks that loomed up to hide the sky, and rubbed his hands together slowly. “Take Mozart—frenzied gaiety and weeping put to music. The agony of the man is at times unbearable. Let us go.”
We made our way through the streets down to the water, and when we turned a final corner, Ali and Mahmoud had disappeared. I felt shockingly naked without those two swathed backs billowing along in front of me, heads together, but Holmes just smiled and nudged me ahead. As we went past a wooden door set into a wall he spoke into the air.
“Marhaba,” he said, and to my surprise added, “cAlla-M’a–q.”
I echoed his thanks, and the blessing, and we went on to the edge of the water, and we sat drinking mint tea from a nearby stall and watched the waves rub at the remnants of the Crusader pier until dark, when we were found by the crew member who had taken us ashore at Jaffa the month before. Our backs were to the fortress as he rowed us noiselessly towards the waiting boat, our faces turned to England.
We stood on the deck and watched the last lights of Palestine fade. Jerusalem was hidden from sight, but to my eyes there was a faint glow in the southeast, as of stored sunlight. I recited under my breath,
“cAl naharoth babel sham yashavnu gam-bakinu…
Im eshkahek Yerushalaim tishkah y’mini….”
“You sang that the other night, did you not?” asked Holmes. “What is it?”
“A psalm, one of the more powerful Hebrew songs, full of sibilants and gutturals.” I translated it for him.
“By the waters of Babylon, where we lay down and wept when we remembered Zion…We hung up our lyres,
for our captors required songs of us, and our tormentors demanded mirth.
How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand wither,
May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you.”
“Amen,” he murmured, surprising me again.
The land receded to a smear of lights against greater darkness, and we went below.
Book Four
Mastery
Battle Is Joined
14
The Act Begins
Isolate her, and however abundant the food or favourable the temperature, she will expire in a few days not of hunger or cold, but of loneliness.
THE SHIP’S ENGINES picked up in pitch even before we reached the common cabin, and the powerful movement beneath our feet told of some speed. I made for the bath and gratefully shed my dust-thick, sweat-stiff, pungent, threadbare clothing. One hour and three changes of water later I arose transformed: my nails pink and white, my hair freed at last from its concealing wraps, my skin tingling and alive. I slipped on the long, embroidered kaftan I had bought in the suq in Nablus and, feeling positively sensuous as I glided across the floor, a female again in my loose clothing after weeks of squatting, striding, and scratching, I went to make a large pot of English tea. Holmes had bathed elsewhere and sat reading The Times, dressed in a clean shirt and dressing gown as if he had never gone unshaven, never slept wrapped in goatskins, never concerned himself with the local fauna taking up residence in his scalp. I picked up a delicate bone china cup and laughed silently in sheer delight.
There came a knock at the door, and the captain’s voice.
“Good evening, Mr. Holmes,” I heard. “Permission to enter?”
“Come in, Jones, come in.”
“I trust you had a satisfactory stay in Palestine, sir?” the captain said.
“Simple pleasures for simple minds,” Holmes murmured. His words actually startled the good captain into a reaction, causing him to run an experienced eye over the fading green-yellow bruises on Holmes’ face and glance for a moment at the neat bandage peeking out from the sleeve of my kaftan. He even went so far as to open his mouth on a comment, but before he could lose control so completely he made a visible effort, snapped his jaws shut, and then turned to close the door. Holmes glanced at me with an expression that looked suspiciously like mischief.
“And you, Captain Jones,” he said. “I hope you have had a successful January, though I see you haven’t spent too much of it aboard ship. How was France? Rebuilding already, I see.” Silence fell, and as I came out of the galley I saw a familiar look of wary perplexity on the captain’s face.
“How do you know where I’ve been? Oh, sorry: Evenin’, Miss.” He touched his cap.
“No major mystery, Jones. Your skin tells me that you’ve spent no
great time in the sun since you left us, and your new hair pomade and the watch on your wrist tell me you have spent a day in Paris. Don’t worry,” he said with a chuckle, “I haven’t had spies on you. Just my own eyes.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Mr. Holmes. If I thought you’d been nosing about I’d be forced to have some gentlemen ask you a few hard questions. Not to offend, sir, it’d just be my job.”
“I understand, Jones, and I am careful to see only those things that tell me of unimportant activities.”
“That’s probably for the best, sir. Oh yes, this packet is for you. It was sent by a courier from London last week, into my own hands—in Paris, in fact.” I was standing close to him and reached out for it, but Holmes’ voice cut in, sharp, scathing, and utterly authoritative.
“Not to Miss Russell, Jones. This and any future official conveyances will be delivered personally to me, and to me alone. Do you understand, Captain Jones?”
In the cabin’s shocked silence Holmes rose and walked forward, coldly took the packet from the captain’s hand, and went to open it by the window. Jones stared at his back for a moment, then looked at me in open amazement. A flush of shame crept into my face, and I turned abruptly and went into my cabin, slamming the door. A minute later I heard the outer door close behind the captain. We had begun our play.
In a few minutes I heard two light taps on my door. I stood and went to the window before responding. “Come in, Holmes.”
“Russell, this packet is most—ah. I see. The mind was willing but the heart taken aback, I take it?” How he could discern my distress from looking at my spine, I cannot think.
“No, no, it was just the suddenness of it, it took me unawares.” I turned to face him. “I was not expecting to begin the act so quickly. However, perhaps it is for the best. The captain is now aware that something is amiss, and I doubt that I could have acted that particular scene. I’m not exactly Sarah Bernhardt.” My smile was a bit forced.
“It was indeed most convincing. I fear there will be any number of painful moments before this act is over.”
“The lines are written; we must speak them,” I said dismissively. “Now, what were you saying about Mycroft’s packet?”
“Here, look for yourself. Our adversary has been most prudent. I am filled with admiration for her technique. Were it not that she presses so close in on me, I should relish this case greatly, for I cannot remember one in which such a large number of clues led absolutely nowhere. I think I shall go and fill my pipe.”
The packet was a thick one. I put aside for later reading the five fat envelopes with Mrs. Hudson’s writing and stamps from various ports of call, and looked at Mycroft’s offering. Numerous pages from the laboratories at Scotland Yard described the prints on the cab, the button with its attached bit of tweed, and the analysis of the three bombs, one in grisly detail. It was the description of the hive bomb that illuminated the most, and in fact changed the entire picture. The investigation had found that the charge was ignited, not by Holmes’ clumsiness, but by a hair-thin wire that ran from the hive he had been checking, hidden beneath the grass, to the bomb in the next hive. Mycroft’s men had found it in the wreckage.
“She never meant to kill you, then!”
“I was glad to see that. The problem had troubled me. Oh, not her murder attempt, but that mine was the first. The whole point of killing you and Watson, as I read it, was to hurt me, but how could I be hurt by your deaths if I were already dead? I was very pleased to see that explained by the trigger. It also confirms that you shall be safe if we appear alienated. I shall have to arrange for a discreet guard for Mrs. Hudson when she returns from Australia, but Watson’s protection we shall continue to leave to Mycroft.”
The rest of the pages were interesting, but not as important as the fact of the wire trigger. The prints on the intact Oxford bomb were those of the deceased man, and his alone. The cab’s prints included those of Holmes, myself, and Billy, its owner and another driver (both of whom Lestrade had interviewed and released), and two others, one of whom had a thumbprint matching the one on the button. This gentleman was well-known to the police record books and was soon apprehended. His colleague made an escape out the back window of his house and was rumoured to have fled to America. The large man in custody was being charged with all the injuries done to Billy and to the cab, but Lestrade was of the opinion that the man would not be threatened into revealing anything concerning his employer. “He does not appear frightened of retribution,” wrote Lestrade, “simply very firm in his refusal, despite threats of a long prison term for the assault. It should be noted that his wife and their two teenaged sons have recently moved into a new house and seem to have an income from outside. Their bank account does not reflect any great change, but they have significant quantities of cash to spend. Thus far enquiries have been without result.”
I looked up at Holmes through his cloud of grey smoke.
“We have another family man in our group, I see.”
“Read on, the plot thickens quickly.”
The Yard’s next document concerned the dead man, John Dickson, who had bombed Dr. Watson’s house. He had indeed been apparently reformed, living happily, to all appearances, with his wife and children and working in his father-in-law’s music business. About six weeks before the trio of bombs, he had come into a comfortable inheritance, from a distant relative who had died in New York. According to his widow, he had told her that the inheritance was to be in two parts, of equal size, the second to be received within four or five months. He began talking about University for the young children, and the surgery one of them needed on a crippled leg, and they planned a trip to France the following summer. However, shortly after the first sum of money arrived, he began to become secretive. He put a lock on a back shed and spent hours in there. (The investigation revealed traces of the explosive powder used and clipped ends of wire such as the Oxford bomb had preserved.) He disappeared occasionally for one or two days, returning travel-stained and weary, but oddly excited. He had left the house on a Saturday night in the middle of December, saying that he should be away for several days, but that after this trip he should not have to leave again. The wife and her father tried to persuade him not to go, it being a very busy time of year for the shop, but he was adamant.
In the early hours of Thursday morning he was killed by the bomb, apparently a result of the timing mechanism having been tampered with. One week later a bank draught was received in the wife’s name, drawn from a bank in New York. Police there found that the account had been opened some weeks before by a woman who had brought in cash for the purpose. An odd afternote was that the amount of the second payment was exactly twice what the first had been, rather than an equal amount as Dickson had anticipated. The two draughts depleted the account, which was closed. Lestrade concluded by noting that although it was irregular, there was no way to prove that the money was connected to the bombing; therefore, it looked as though the widow would be allowed to keep it.
“What do you make of that second payment, Holmes? Guilt pangs?”
“Cleanliness has affected your brain, Russell. Clearly the murder was premeditated.”
“Yes, of course. The original amount was what had been planned for. But possibly not by Dickson.”
“Make a note, Russell, to ask Lestrade about Dickson’s state of mind at the time of death.”
“You are thinking that it might have been suicide? In exchange for a payment to the family?”
“Whatever it is, it adds an interesting facet to our foe’s personality. She is a person with international connexions, or so the large quantity of American currency would tend to indicate, yet she carries through on her agreement with a dead man. On top of everything else we know about her, she’s a murderer with a sense of honour. Most subtle.”
I returned to the packet, which included a faint carbon copy of the bomb report, highly technical and couched in police English, several large, glossy photographs of the cab an
d the Ladies’, and a letter from Mycroft. I glanced at the first, set aside the photographs, and began to read Mycroft’s cramped but remarkably impersonal handwriting. The first part of the letter was concerned with the bomb: He agreed that it had been Dickson’s work, adding that although the toggle detonator had been manufactured in America before 1909, it had apparently been exposed to London’s corrosive air for some many months. He went on to address the problem of the marksman who had shot at us in Scotland Yard, who may or may not have been the same gentleman whom the mother pushing her pram across the bridge had witnessed bundling an elaborate contraption like a street photographer’s camera, complete with hood and, in this case, wheels, into the backseat of a waiting taxi-cab and squealing off. Concerning this he wrote:
I perceive a distinct odour of red herring, as with the fleeing steam-launch, which we discovered was hired—anonymously, with cash—to make off at all speed immediately the captain heard a sound “like a shot.”
Concerning the identity of your lady pursuer (continued Mycroft) very little has appeared, but for the following: Three days ago on my way to the Club, an unbelievably unsavoury character with the physiognomy of a toad—and something of the colour—sidled up to me in a manner meant, no doubt, to appear casual, and muttered out of the corner of his flat lips that he had a message for my brother. (I do wish that you might arrange for these persons to send letters. I suppose they are illiterate. Might they be instructed in the use of the telephone?) The sum total of his message was, and I quote: Lefty says there’s Glasgow Rangers with buckets of bees in town, the pitch and toss is somebody’s Trouble. End quote.
The Mary Russell Series Books 1-4 Page 27
