The key, I have been told, is to a safety-deposit box. There is absolutely no way of knowing where that box is.
—Laurie R. King
…I would terrify you by letters.
—THE SECOND LETTER OF PAUL TO THE CORINTHIANS 10:9
PART ONE
TUESDAY, 14 AUGUST 1923–FRIDAY, 24 AUGUST 1923
A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man’s attention and to inflame his ambition.
—JOHN ADAMS
ONE
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THE ENVELOPE SLAPPED down onto the desk ten inches from my much-abused eyes, instantly obscuring the black lines of Hebrew letters that had begun to quiver an hour before. With the shock of the sudden change, my vision stuttered, attempted a valiant rally, then slid into complete rebellion and would not focus at all.
I leant back in my chair with an ill-stifled groan, peeled my wire-rimmed spectacles from my ears and dropped them onto the stack of notes, and sat for a long minute with the heels of both hands pressed into my eye sockets. The person who had so unceremoniously delivered this grubby interruption moved off across the room, where I heard him sort a series of envelopes chuk-chuk-chuk into the wastepaper basket, then stepped into the front hallway to drop a heavy envelope onto the table there (Mrs Hudson’s monthly letter from her son in Australia, I noted, two days early) before coming back to take up a position beside my desk, one shoulder dug into the bookshelf, eyes gazing, no doubt, out the window at the Downs rolling down to the Channel. I replaced the heels of my hands with the backs of my fingers, cool against the hectic flesh, and addressed my husband.
“Do you know, Holmes, I had a great-uncle in Chicago whose promising medical career was cut short when he began to go blind over his books. It must be extremely frustrating to have one’s future betrayed by a tiny web of optical muscles. Though he did go on to make a fortune selling eggs and trousers to the gold miners,” I added. “Whom is it from?”
“Shall I read it to you, Russell, so as to save your optic muscles for the metheg and your beloved furtive patach?” His solicitous words were spoilt by the sardonic, almost querulous edge to his voice. “Alas, I have become a mere secretary to my wife’s ambitions. Kindly do not snort, Russell. It is an unbecoming sound. Let me see.” I felt his arm come across my desk, and I heard the letter whisper as it was plucked up. “The envelope is from the Hôtel Imperial in Paris, a name which contains distinct overtones of sagging mattresses and ominous nocturnal rustling noises in the wardrobe. It is addressed simply to Mary Russell, no title whatsoever. The hand is worthy of some attention. A woman’s writing, surely, though almost masculine in the way the fingers grasp the pen. The writer is obviously highly educated, a ‘professional woman,’ to use the somewhat misleading modern phrase; I venture to say that this particular lady does not depend on her womanliness for a livelihood. Her t’s reveal her to be an impatient person, and there is passion in the sweeps of her uprights, yet her s’s and a’s speak of precision and the lower edge of each line is as exact as it is authoritative. She also either has great faith in the French and English postal systems or else is so self-assured as to consider the insurance of placing her name or room number on the envelope unnecessary. I lean toward the latter theory.”
As this analysis progressed, I recovered my glasses, the better to study my companion where he stood in the bright window, bent over the envelope like a jeweller with some rare uncut stone, and I was hit by one of those odd moments of analytical apartness, when one looks with a stranger’s eyes on something infinitely familiar. Physically, Sherlock Holmes had changed little since we had first met on these same Sussex Downs a bit more than eight years before. His hair was slightly thinner, certainly greyer, and his grey eyes had become even more deeply hooded, so that the resemblance to some far-seeing, sharp-beaked raptor was more marked than ever. No, his body had only exaggerated itself; the greatest changes were internal. The fierce passions that had driven him in his early years, years before I was even born, had subsided, and the agonies of frustration he had felt when without a challenge, frustration that had led him to needles filled with cocaine and morphia, were now in abeyance. Or so I had thought.
I watched him as his long fingers caressed the much-travelled envelope and his eyes drew significance from every smudge, every characteristic of paper and ink and stamp, and it occurred to me suddenly that Sherlock Holmes was bored.
The thought was not a happy one. No person, certainly no woman, likes to think that her marriage has lessened the happiness of her partner. I thrust the troublesome idea from me, reached up to rub a twinge from my right shoulder, and spoke with a shade more irritation than was called for.
“My dear Holmes, this verges on deductio ad absurdum. Were you to open the envelope and identify the writer, it just might simplify matters.”
“All in good time, Russell. I further note a partial set of grimy fingerprints along the back of the envelope, with a matching thumbprint on the front. However, I believe we can discount them, as they have the familiar look of the hands of our very own postal-delivery boy, whose bicycle chain is in constant need of repair.”
“Holmes, my furtive patachs await me. The letter?”
“Patience is a necessary attribute of the detective’s makeup, Russell. And, I should have thought, the scholar’s. However, as you say.” He turned away, and the sharp zip of a knife through cheap paper was followed by a dull thud as the knife was reintroduced into the frayed wood of the mantelpiece. There was a thin rustle. His voice sounded amused as he began to read. “‘Dear Miss Russell,’ it begins, dated four days ago.
Dear Miss Russell,
I trust you will not be offended by my form of address. I am aware that you have married, but I cannot bring myself to assign a woman her husband’s name unless I have been told that such is her desire. If you are offended, please forgive my unintentional faux pas.
You will perhaps remember me, Dorothy Ruskin, from your visit to Palestine several years ago. I have remained in that land since then, assisting at three preliminary digs until such time as I can arrange funding for my own excavations. I have been called back home for an interview by my potential sponsors, as well as to see my mother, who seems to be on her deathbed. There is a matter of some interest which I wish to lay before you while I am in England, and I would appreciate it if you would allow me to come and disturb your peace for a few hours. It would have to be on the twenty-second or twenty-third, as I return to Palestine directly my business is completed. Please confirm the day and time by telegram at the address below.
I believe the matter to be of some interest and potentially considerable importance to your chosen field of study, or I would not be bothering you and your husband.
I remain,
Most affectionately yours,
Dorothy Ruskin
“The address below is that of the Hôtel Imperial,” Holmes added.
I took the letter from Holmes and quickly skimmed the singular hand that strode across the flimsy hotel paper. “A decent pen, though,” I noted absently. “Shall we see her?”
“We? My dear Russell, I am the husband of an emancipated woman who, although she may not yet vote in an election, is at least allowed to see her own friends without male chaperonage.”
“Don’t be an ass, Holmes. She obviously wants to see both of us, or she would not have written that last sentence. We’ll have her for tea, then. Wednesday or Thursday?”
“Wednesday is Mrs Hudson’s half day. Miss Ruskin might have a better tea if she came Thursday.”
“Thank you, Holmes,” I said with asperity. I admit that cooking is not my strong point, but I object to having my nose rubbed in the fact. “I’ll write to let her know either day is fine but that Thursday is slightly better. I wonder what she wants.”
“Funding for an all-woman archaeological dig, I shouldn’t wonder. That would be popular with the British authorities and the Zionists, would it not? And think of the attraction it would have for th
e pilgrims and the tourists. It’s a wonder the Americans haven’t thought of it.”
“Holmes, enough! Begone! I have work to do.”
“Come for a walk.”
“Not just now. Perhaps this evening I could take an hour off.”
“By this evening, you will be bogged down to the axles in the prophet Isaiah’s mud and too irritable to make a decent walking companion. You’ve been rubbing your bad shoulder for the last forty minutes although it is a warm afternoon, which means you need to get out and breathe some fresh air. Come.”
He held out one long hand to me. I looked down at the cramped lines marching across the page, capped my pen, and allowed him to pull me to my feet.
WE WALKED ALONG the cliffs rather than descending the precipitous beach path, and listened to the gulls cry and the waves surge on the shingle below. The good salt air filled my lungs, cleared my head, and took the ache from my collarbone, and eventually my thoughts turned, not to the intricacies of Hebrew grammar but to the implications of the letter that lay on my desk.
“What do you know of the archaeology of Palestine, Holmes?”
“Other than what we discovered when we were there four and a half years ago—which trip, as I recall, was dominated by an extraordinary number of damp and hazardous underground chambers—almost nothing. I suspect that I shall know a great deal more before too much longer.”
“You think there is something to Miss Ruskin’s letter, then?”
“My dear Russell, I have not been a consulting detective for more than forty years for nothing. I can spot a case sniffing around my door even before it knows itself to be one. Despite what I said about allowing you to see her alone, your Miss Ruskin—yes, I know she is not yours, but she thinks she is—your Miss Ruskin wishes to present a puzzle to the partnership of Holmes and Russell, not merely to Mary Russell, a brilliant young star on the horizon of academic theology. Unless you think my standard degree of megalomania is becoming compounded by senility,” he added politely.
“Megalomania, perhaps; senility, never.” I stood and watched a small fishing boat lying off shore, and I wondered what to do. The work was going slowly, and I could ill afford to take even half a day away from it. On the other hand, it would be a joy to spend some time with that peculiar old lady, whom I indeed remembered very well. Also, Holmes seemed interested. It would at least provide a distraction until I could decide what needed doing for him. “All right, we’ll have her here a day sooner, then, on the Wednesday. I’ll suggest the noon train. I’m certain Mrs Hudson can be persuaded to leave something for our tea, so we need not risk our visitor’s health. I also think I’ll go to Town tomorrow and drop by the British Museum for a while. Will you come?”
“Only if we can stay for the evening. They’re playing Tchaikovsky’s D at Covent Garden.”
“And dinner at Simpson’s?” I said lightly, ruthlessly ignoring the internal wail at the waste of time.
“But of course.”
“Will you go to the BM with me?”
“Briefly, perhaps. I had a note from the owner of a rather bijou little gallery up the street, inviting me to view the canvas of that Spaniard, Picasso, that I retrieved for them last month. I should be interested to see it in its natural habitat, as it were, to determine if it makes any more sense there than it did in that warehouse on the docks where I found it. Although, frankly, I have my doubts.”
“That’s fine, then,” I said politely. Suddenly, Holmes was not at my side but blocking my way, his hands on my shoulders and his face inches from mine.
“Admit it, Russell. You’ve been bored.”
His words so echoed my own analysis of his mental state that I could only gape at him.
“You’ve been tucked into your books for a solid year now, ever since we came back from France. You might be able to convince yourself that you’re nothing but a scholar, Russell, but you can’t fool me. You’re as hungry as I am for something to do.”
Damn the man, he was right. He was wrong, too, of course—men have a powerful drive to simplify matters, and it would be convenient for him to dismiss the side of my life that did not involve him—but as soon as he said it, I could feel the hunger he was talking about, waking in me. I had in the past discovered the immense appeal of a life on the edge of things—walking a precipice, pitting oneself against a dangerous enemy, throwing one’s mind against an impenetrable puzzle.
The waking was brief, as I ruthlessly knocked the phantasy back into its hole. If Dorothy Ruskin had a puzzle, it was not likely to be anything but mild and elderly. I sighed, and then, realising that Holmes was still staring into my face, I had to laugh.
“Holmes, we’re a pair of hopeless romantics,” I said, and we turned and walked back to the cottage.
TWO
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SHORTLY BEFORE MIDDAY on the appointed Wednesday, I drove my faithful Morris to the station to meet Miss Ruskin’s train. It was four and a half years since we had met near Jericho, and though I would have known her anywhere, she had changed. Her chopped-off hair was now completely white. She wore a pair of glasses, the lenses of which were so black as to seem opaque, and she favoured her right leg as she stepped down from the train. She did not see me at first, but stood peering about her, a large khaki canvas bag clutched in one hand. I crossed the platform towards her and corrected myself—some things had changed not at all. Her face was still burnt to brown leather by the desert sun, her posture still that of a soldier on parade, her clothing the same idiosyncratic variation on the early suffragist uniform of loose pantaloons, tailored shirt, jacket, and high boots that I had seen her wear in Palestine. The boots and clothing looked new, and somehow ineffably French, despite their lack of anything resembling fashion.
“Good day, Miss Ruskin,” I called out. “Welcome to Sussex.”
Her head spun around and the deep voice, accustomed to wide spaces and the command of native diggers, boomed out across the rustic station.
“Miss Russell, is that you? Delighted to see you. Very good of you to have me at such short notice.” She grasped my hand in her heavily calloused one. The top of her squashed hat barely reached my chin, but she dominated the entire area. I led her to the car, helped her climb in, started the engine, and enquired about her leg.
“Oh, yes, most annoying. Fell into a trench when the props collapsed. Bad break, spent a month in Jerusalem flat on my back. Stupid luck. Right in the middle of the season, too. Wasted half the year’s dig. Use better wood now for the props.” She laughed, short coughs of humour that made me grin in response.
“I saw some of your finds in the British Museum recently,” I told her. “That Hittite slab was magnificent, and of course the mosaic floor. How on earth did they make those amazing blues?”
She was pleased, and she launched off on a highly technical explanation of the art and craft of mosaics that went far above my head and lasted until I pulled into the circular drive in front of the cottage. Holmes heard the car and came to meet us. Our guest climbed awkwardly out and marched over to greet him, hand extended and talking all the while as we moved inside and through the house.
“Mr Holmes, good to see you, as yourself this time, and in your own home. Though I do admit that you wear the djellaba better than most white men, and the skin dye was very good. You are looking remarkably well. How old are you? Rude question, I know, one of the advantages of getting old—people are forced to overlook rudeness. You are? Only a few years younger than I am, looks more like twenty. Maybe I should have married. A bit late now, don’t you think? Miss Russell—all right if I call you that? Or do you prefer Mrs Holmes? Miss Russell, then—d’you know, you’ve married one of the three sensible men I’ve ever met. Brains are wasted on most men—do nothing with their minds but play games and make money. Never see what’s in front of their noses, too busy making sweeping generalisations. What’s that? The other two? Oh, yes, one was a winemaker in Provence, tiny vineyard, a red wine to make you weep. The other’s dead now, an A
rab sheikh with seven wives. Couldn’t write his name, but his children all went to university. Girls, too. I made him. Ha! Ha!” The barking laugh bounced off the walls in the room and set the ears to ringing. We took our lunch outside, under the great copper beech.
During the meal, our guest regaled us with stories of archaeology in Palestine, which was just getting under way now in the postwar years. The British Mandate in Palestine was giving its approval to the beginnings of archaeology as a science and a discipline.
“Shocking, it was, before the war. No sense of the way to do things. Had people out there rummaging about, destroying more than they found, native diggers coming in with these magnificent finds, no way of dating them or knowing where they came from. All that could be done with ’em was to stick ’em in a museum, prop up a card saying SOURCE: UNKNOWN; DATE: UNKNOWN. Utter waste.”
“Didn’t Petrie say something about museums being morgues, or tombs?” I asked.
“Charnel houses,” she corrected me. “He calls them ‘ghastly charnel houses of murdered evidence.’ Isn’t that a fine phrase? Wish I’d written it.” She repeated it, relishing the shape of the words in her mouth. “And during the war, my God! I spent those years doing nothing but stopping soldiers from using walls and statues for target practice! Incredible stupidity. Found one encampment using a Bronze Age well as their privy and rubbish tip. Course, the idiots didn’t realise their own water supply was connected to it. Should’ve told ’em, I know, but who am I to interfere in divine justice? Ha! Ha!”
“Surely, though, most of the digs are more carefully run now,” I suggested. “Even before the war, Reisner’s stratigraphic techniques were becoming more widely used. And doesn’t the Department of Antiquities keep an eye on things?” My rapid tutorial at the hands of one of the British Museum’s more helpful experts at least enabled me to ask intelligent questions.
The Mary Russell Series Books 1-4 Page 63
