“In that macabre and unearthly setting, something happened that involved your father and mine. And there my story falters, for I do not know its details, I could merely see the shape of the thing in the aftermath. I was fourteen at the time, no longer a child, not yet seen as a man. I was left with my mother as the fire grew near, to pack our goods and prepare to abandon the house. My father needed to go and see to the Russells, to make certain they—you—were alive and uninjured. A portion of the fire lay between us, so he did not know how long it would take him to work his way around it, but my mother urged him to go, insisted that we would be fine. He left at four o’clock on the Wednesday afternoon, and we did not see him until eight o’clock on Friday morning. In the forty hours he was gone, the fire reached and consumed Chinatown, driving us all to the edge of the sea. When he could finally return, he found all of Chinatown pressed between the docks and a wall of fire, the air thick with explosions and panic, everyone half suffocated from the smoke. I tell you these details to illustrate the urgency of the demands, to have kept him away from his responsibilities to us.
“He was near despair when he could not find us among the crowd, but a neighbour saw him and told him that we had already made our way to the Presidio, where the Army had permitted us an area to shelter, and provided food. He finally caught up with us there, and wept when he found us safe, saying over and over that he should never have left. He told us that your house was damaged but standing, that you were all living under canvas in a nearby park, that he had helped your father move some valuables. And that was essentially all he told us, that day or ever.
“But whatever it was he had done with, or for, your father, made him uneasy. One might almost say it haunted him.”
“What do you mean? Was he frightened?”
“Frightened,” Long repeated, considering the word. “It is difficult to imagine one’s father frightened. No, I don’t believe so. It was, rather, as if he had done something without considering the results, and reflection made him wonder if he had made the right choice. Or as if he had begun to suspect that what he had been asked to do actually concealed another purpose.”
“As if he no longer trusted my father?”
“Not your father, but as if some underlying question threatened to betray them both.” He shrugged, wincing at the motion. “It is difficult to put into words, a vague impression such as that.”
“But you can’t think what it was based upon? Was it something that happened to him, or that he saw, that he did?”
“Any of them. None.” His spectacles caught the light as he shook his head. “He would never talk about it.”
It was by now late, and I could see little sense in playing Twenty Questions with a man who could describe the object only by its outline. Holmes clearly felt the same, for he reached out to knock his pipe decisively into an ash-tray.
“Mr Long—” he began to say.
“There is one other thing,” Long interrupted, and Holmes obediently settled back. “Again I do not know what it means, but your father came to see mine in the middle of September 1914. Two weeks before he died. They talked for a long time, and when he left, my father was quiet, but somehow as if a burden had been lifted from him. And when they shook hands, they seemed friends again, as they had not for some time.”
“But you don’t know what they talked about.”
“They walked across to the park and sat on a bench, going silent whenever another person came near.”
“Well, thank you, Mr Long,” I said, wishing I did not feel so dissatisfied.
“If we think of any questions, Mr Long,” Holmes said, “may we call on you in your shop?”
“Either I will be there, or my assistant will know where I have gone.”
“Let me go downstairs with you and arrange a motor to take you back. It is late, and your arm clearly troubles you.”
Long protested that it was but a short walk, but Holmes would not be swayed. He retrieved our guest’s hat, standing at the ready should the man have any difficulty rising from his chair. He did not, although as Holmes had said, the wounded arm gave all indications of paining him. By way of support, Long gingerly worked his hand into the pocket of his jacket, but when he had done so, he paused, and drew the hand laboriously out again. In his fingers was a paper-wrapped object the shape of a very short cigar, secured in neatly tied twine, which he held out to me.
“In the turmoil of the past few hours, I forgot to give this to you. My father said that it was an object precious to your mother, and removed it for safe-keeping, lest vandals take it.”
I turned the object over in my hands and saw, in a precise, spidery hand:
Inside the paper lay the front door’s mezuzah.
Whatever Long saw in my face caused him to take a half-step forward as if to grasp my arm, but he wavered, and instead merely asked, “I hope my father’s actions did not create problems for you. He seemed to think it was a kind of household god, perhaps not literally but—”
“No,” I said, my hand closing tightly around the cool metal. “It’s fine. I’m very glad to find it safe. Thank you.”
I felt Holmes’ sharp gaze on me, but I did not look at him. He caught up his own hat and stick to accompany our guest out, so I was not surprised when he did not return for the better part of an hour, approximately the time it would take to make a slow and thoughtful foot trip back from Chinatown.
When he came in, he found me where he had left me, curled on the sofa with the mezuzah in my hand. When he had shed his outer garments at the door, he came and sat down beside me, taking my hand—not, as I thought at first, in a gesture of affection, but in order to prise my fingers away from the object. The palm of my hand was dented red with the shape of it, my fingers stiff. He examined it curiously before laying it on the low table before the sofa, then reached into his pocket to pull out a handkerchief.
I blew my nose noisily and drew an uneven breath. “I never had a chance to say good-bye to them. Not before they died, not even at their funerals, since they had to be buried before I got out of hospital. Dr Ginzberg took me to their grave site, but I was so full of drugs at the time, it made no impression on me.
“It’s the . . . unfinished quality of their deaths that is hard to set aside.”
“Yes.” There was an odd intonation to the monosyllable, almost as if he had asked a question: Yes, and . . . ?
“What do you mean, ‘yes’?”
His grey eyes, inches away, drilled into mine, his expression—his entire body—radiating an intensity I could not understand. He did not answer, just waited.
I shook my head wearily. “Holmes, you apparently believe you see something I am missing entirely. If you want me to react to it, you’re just going to have to tell me.”
“Your parents died in October 1914.”
“And my brother, yes.”
“And you were either in hospital or under your doctor’s supervision until you came to England in the early weeks of 1915.”
“Yes.”
“Your parents’ cook and gardener—ex-gardener—were murdered in February 1915.”
“According to Mr Long.”
“Your house sits vacant for ten years, then is broken into in late March, approximately the time you would have been here had we not stopped in Japan. And within forty-eight hours of your return to San Francisco, someone is shooting at you.”
“Or at Mr Long. Or simply at a Chinese man who dared to venture from his assigned territory.”
I might not have been speaking, for all the impression my voice made on his inexorable push towards his ultimate point. “And during the earthquake and fire of 1906, some experience troubled a brave and loyal servant into a change of heart towards his employer.”
“Holmes, please, I really am too tired for this.”
“Within two months of that event, your father’s will was given an addendum to ensure that the house be left untouched by anyone other than family members for a minimum of twenty ye
ars.”
“So?” I demanded, driven to rudeness.
“And finally, your emotional turmoil over the unfinished nature of your family’s death has led to a series of disturbing dreams.”
“Damn it, Holmes, I’m going to bed.”
“The evidence is clear, yet you refuse to see it,” he mused. “Fascinating.”
“See what?” I finally couldn’t bear it another moment, and blew up at him. “Holmes, for Christ sake, I’m absolutely exhausted, I have bruises coming up all along my shoulders and skull, and my head is pounding so hard I’m going to have trouble seeing my face in the bath-room looking-glass, and you persist in playing guessing games with me. Well, you’ll just have to do it in my absence.” I stood up and stalked into the bath-room, where I ran a high, hot bath and immersed myself in it for a very long time. Holmes was asleep when I came out; at any rate, he did not stir.
For the brief, dull, businesslike venture that I had expected of our trip to San Francisco, it had already proved remarkably eventful. Even before we arrived, dreams had been pounding at the door of my mind; in the three days since the ship had docked on Monday morning, I had been arrested, confronted with a bucket-load of oddities, seen the evidence of a house-breaking, met a large slice of my past, been attacked on the street, and had a serious argument with my husband.
But the deadly ambush laid for us Thursday as we walked in all innocence across the hotel lobby reduced the rest to little more than specks of dust on our way.
We’d had a pleasant breakfast—or Holmes had, while I drank coffee and ate a piece of toast while reading the newspapers. Holmes had the Call, I had the Chronicle, working my way from NEW WOMAN IN POISON CASE and past an advert for MJB coffee with two finger-prints accompanied by the statement “No two are alike—People differ in their coffee tastes as well as their thumb prints.” I consulted Holmes, and we agreed that the prints in the advert were those of fingers, not thumbs, so I went on to GAY GATHERING ON YERBA BUENA FOR SWIM PARTY and RESCUED GIRL TELLS COURT BONDAGE STORY.
All in all, a satisfying day’s headlines.
We drained our cups, dropped our table napkins beside our plates, and made our way towards the lift.
The first volley of the ambush rang out across the dignified lobby, startling every inhabitant and sending Holmes and me into immediate defensive posture. The next shot fired hit home and froze me where I stood.
“Mary! It’s Mary Russell, I’d never be wrong about that, you’re the spitting image of your father. When I read you were in town I—”
I straightened: The previous night’s argument notwithstanding, I had no wish to inflict on Holmes a bullet aimed at me. I fixed him with one of those glances married people develop in lieu of verbal communication—in this case, the urgent glare and slight tip of the head that said (to give its current American colloquial), “Scram!”
Holmes faded away as no man over six feet tall ought to be able to do, leaving me alone to face my attacker.
The top of her hat might have tucked under my chin, had I been foolish enough to allow her that close. Its waving feathers and bristling bits of starched ribbon were ferociously up-to-date, her well-corseted figure was wrapped in an incongruously youthful dress whose designer would have been outraged at the sight (although it testified well to the tensile strength of the thread), and her hair might at one time have been nearly the intense black it now was. Her fingers sparkled with a miscellany of stones, and the mauve colour of her sealskin coat came from no animal known to Nature. She was making for me with both arms outstretched, and although she looked more likely to devour me than to embrace me, I did the English thing and resisted mightily the impulse to place the outstretched heel of one hand against her approaching forehead to keep her at arm’s length. Instead, I allowed her to seize my forearms and smack her painted lips in the general direction of my jaw.
It appeared that I had a dear friend in San Francisco.
“Mary, Mary, why on earth did you never write? My, you’ve become so grown-up, and so tall! Taller than your mother, even, and I thought she was a giraffe! Oh, dear, you poor thing, whisked away from your friends and your home like that—I said to Florence—you remember little Flo, your good friend?—that someone should just get on a train and go fetch you back. Imagine! Nothing but a child, and all alone in the world.”
“Er,” I managed.
“And you’ve kept your blonde hair, like your dear father—it never did darken like your mother said it would, now did it? Do you rinse it in lemon, like I told you to when you were twelve years old? It looks a nice thick head of hair, too, although this fashion for men’s haircuts is so unfortunate.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” I pushed out into the storm of words. “I’m not sure I know who you are.”
The sound she emitted—laughter, I suppose—was a string of seven notes descending from a soprano’s high shriek to a low sort of chortle. The gaiety of it was somewhat undermined by the hurt expression in her eyes, but it was hard to know how I might have posed the question any less bluntly.
“I’m Auntie Dee, dear child. Your mother’s very best friend in all the world. She used to bring you over to my house so you could play dollies with my Flo. Although you usually ended up in a tree or down the street with her brother Frankie’s friends,” she added reluctantly, as if the memory was a somewhat shameful one.
I had to admit, in a tree with the boys sounded more like me than dollies with Flo. Although what my quiet, intelligent mother would have seen in this woman was beyond me.
Still, I did what was required of me. “Auntie Dee, of course, how ever are you, and dear Flo?”
During the course of the monologue that followed, I glimpsed Holmes coming out of the lift, dressed for the day. Give him credit, he did raise a questioning eyebrow in my direction. But there was little point in inflicting this female person on him, so I gave him an imperceptible shake of the head and lowered my eyes until I was gazing soulfully into my companion’s face. The motion, or perhaps the fact of her audience actually turning attention onto her, silenced her for a moment, a gap I took advantage of.
“Er, Auntie Dee, I haven’t had breakfast yet. Would you care to join me?” A lie, but casual interrogation of this woman might prove informative.
Again came the wince-making seven descending notes of laughter, and she reached out to slap my hand playfully. “How silly of me, of course you’re standing here starving to death, when all the while I came to your hotel to whisk you away to breakfast at your old Auntie Dee’s own table. If you’re free, that is, of course.” She looked vaguely around, showing that she had registered something of Holmes’ presence before he had faded into the palm trees. But before she could spot him, I took her hand in an imitation of childish glee.
“Of course I’d love to come. Shall we get a cab, or do you have a car?”
She looked at me askance, speech for once difficult to retrieve. But only for a moment. “Don’t you want to go and get your hat or something?” she asked.
I might have been proposing to walk into Union Square wrapped only in a bath-towel. However, I thought perhaps I wouldn’t take her to our rooms, even if Holmes had left.
“Oh, I’m only going to my old second home, aren’t I?” I asked. “No need for formality here, is there?”
Thus bereft of hat, coat, and gloves, I walked out of the hotel in my half-nude state towards the waiting car, only to pause at the sound of not-so-distant drums.
“What is that noise?”
“Oh, the Loyalty Parade down on Market Street,” she answered.
Now that I looked more carefully at the flow of traffic and pedestrians, it was obvious that some major disruption was going on a couple of streets down to my right.
“I hope we don’t have to get across it,” I said, climbing into the car, but fortunately she too lived in Pacific Heights, five streets up from the house I was slowly beginning to think of as mine. Aunt Dee’s, however—I could not call her otherwise for the m
oment, as she had yet to provide me with her full name—was higher up, far more ornate, and possessed a front garden no one would mistake for a jungle. The car rolled to a halt under the imposing Greek pillars of the portico and a man with a face like an ebony carving came out, surreptitiously tugging his white gloves into place. He held the door for my companion, allowing the driver to do the same for me.
“This is Miss Mary Russell,” she told her servant. “Tell Mrs La Tour that we require breakfast.”
“Yes, Mrs Greenfield,” the man murmured. I was grateful for the name, which rang not the faintest chime of familiarity. His, however, was another matter.
As Dee Greenfield turned to the door, she told me, “You won’t remember Jeeves, Mary; he’s only been with us for two years.”
Startled, I looked straight into the black eyes of the butler, seeing in their depths a well-concealed spark of humour. “Jeeves?”
It was she who answered, over her shoulder. “Yes, his name was Robert, but we could hardly have that, could we, it was my husband’s name. So I let him choose another and that’s what he came up with. Silly, but what can one do?”
My involuntary grin fanned the spark of humour for an instant, then he turned to open the ornate wooden door for us. As I went past, I said, “Carry on, Mr Jeeves.”
The smooth dark skin around the man’s mouth twitched briefly, but nothing more.
The inside of the house was as needlessly ornate as the outside, although it reflected a very different era. The exterior decoration dated to the house’s period of construction some forty years earlier, but the original Victorian interior had been transformed, and recently by the looks of it, into a showcase of modern design. The Deco movement contributed its whirling patterns of rich colours on the walls, a tangle of wire and glass around every lighting fixture, long and languid chest-high marble figures of standing women and seated greyhounds in every corner—it was like taking up residence in a box of chocolate crèmes, chokingly rich.
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