As Mrs Greenfield unloaded her gloves, handbag, and the extraordinary mauve coat into the white-gloved hands of Mr Jeeves, she babbled without pause. “Isn’t this room just the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen? I shouldn’t say so myself, I know, but we just finished it last Christmas and it still gives me a little thrill whenever I walk into it. We had a dress ball to celebrate, and oh, you should have seen it with all the candles glowing and an eighteen-foot Christmas tree in the corner there! Every guest here oohed and aahed like they were children, it was so lovely. Oh, do run along, Jeeves, Miss Russell is utterly famished. Tell Mrs La Tour we’ll start with coffee in the conservatory.”
Although I was prepared for nearly anything in the realm of the spectacular, the conservatory had apparently resisted the efforts of Mrs Greenfield’s modern-minded decorator, and sat, Victorian and defiant, attached to the back of the house. It was a pleasant room, white-painted wood and basket chairs, although the plant life showed an unfortunate preference for orchids so ornate they appeared artificial.
The coffee arrived, blessedly strong and served in eggshell-thin bone china, a combination that soothed the spirit. Mrs Greenfield rambled on, regaling me with elaborate tales of people whose names she seemed to think I should know. I began to suspect that her mind might be none too firmly rooted in the here and now, that perhaps she imagined that I was my mother, but then I decided that no, it was more a matter of her self-absorption being so profound, she simply assumed that the rest of the world saw through her eyes.
A person like this is the easiest of all to interrogate, as they never look beyond the opportunity to talk about themselves to question why their audience might be asking along certain lines. It is mildly exhausting, to be sure, as it requires close attention to tumbling streams of nonsense in order to pluck out the occasional nugget being washed one’s way. And since it would hardly do for me to take notes, I had to hold in my mind all the glimmering bits, gold and pyrite alike.
If this woman knew my mother, then she would know when my family had lived in this city, and when they had not. It took many circuitous loops and back-tracks, and a number of the reference points she used would take some research on my part to pin down as to their date—for example, that we had arrived back in San Francisco, baby brother in tow, the very week that that exclusive French couturier on Post Street had opened.
The cook also very evidently dated from before the modernisation of the house. Mrs La Tour presented us with a breakfast that was solidly Edwardian in its sensibilities, and although I was not in the least hungry, I had begun by telling my “auntie” that I was on my way to breakfast, so I could scarcely claim to have eaten already. I pushed my eggs, grilled tomatoes, and various fried objects around on the plate until she noticed, and then forced down a quantity of the congealed food before she could pick up my fork and feed me. The meal left me feeling as if I ought to set off for a brisk march around the circumference of the city, and it was with gratitude that I pushed away from the table.
This time she led me into a morning room from which the sun had already retreated. But a fire had been laid and more coffee stood ready on the low table between two comfortable chairs. I was handed a cup without being asked if I wished it, and before I had done more than blow across the top of the cup, we were interrupted by a person whose presence went far to explain the vast and recent changes in the household.
A bustle in the hall-way and an exchange of words at the door warned of an impending invasion, and indeed, seconds later the door was flung open and in whirled a petite, black-haired, absolutely perfect specimen of the species Flapper Americanus. She was quite obviously just coming in from the night’s entertainments, although it was well past nine o’clock in the morning, and her clothing and makeup were very much the worse for wear. Both of her silk stockings were out at the knees—stockings that I knew from my earlier bout of shopping cost nearly five dollars—an English pound for a pair of stockings! The hem of her abbreviated skirt cried out for the attention of an expert seamstress, her collar was smudged with face-powder, and unless wearing a single earring was the fashion here, she’d lost one of her diamond pendants.
What I found most shocking, however, was the lack of reaction on the part of her mother, who merely shook an affectionate head at the bedraggled state of the newcomer.
“Mummy, darling,” the jazz-baby was exclaiming before she had cleared the door-way, “Jeeves says you have a guest—what on earth are you doing bringing a guest home at this hour, I thought that kind of goings-on was reserved for the younger generation? And even I only drag friends in for breakfast after we’ve been out all night, I don’t begin the day with abductions. Oh! I’ve been with Trudy for the past three hours, stuck on the other side of Market Street with that pig of a parade the children are putting on—twenty thousand boys, they say, God, what a nightmare thought, all of them banging away on instruments and marching and pulling floats, so that even if you weren’t drunk beforehand you’d need to be by the time you’d got past it—and she’s just given up smoking and I’m dying, just dying for a smoke, tell me you don’t mind, Mummy dearest, and if your friend objects I’ll just have to skulk away into the conservatory and puff away among the orchids.”
In the course of this speech, the girl had made her way across the room in that languid, loose-limbed shuffle characteristic of her species, moving as if her shoes were too large and threatened to fall off, or to trip her up. Neither mishap occurred, however, before she reached a swooping sort of octopus-armoire whose many arms were each topped by a small Benares-ware tray, seven in all. Drawing a brightly enamelled cigarette holder a good eight inches long from somewhere about her person, she flipped open the lacquered box that sat on one of the trays and pulled out a cigarette, sliding it into the holder with a frown of concentration. She lit it with a grenade-sized cigarette lighter that matched the enamel of her holder, drawing in a dramatic lungful of smoke and emitting a small cloud along with a sound of satisfaction. She then hurled herself onto the chaise beside the fireplace, crossed her knees in a manner that would have had her grandmother swooning, and looked at me brightly.
I was hard put to keep my hands from applauding.
“But this is Mary, my dear,” Mrs Greenfield explained. “You remember Mary, your best friend when you were a little thing? She used to play dollies with you.”
This was, as I had suspected, my former play-mate, Flo.
“I remember she used to play a vicious game of kick-the-can with Frank’s friends, and one time climbed up to the top of that tree that Billy Murrow broke both legs falling out of.” The flapper’s tired face creased in amusement, and she gave me a languid wave of her cigarette holder by way of greeting. “Hi.”
“Hullo.”
She tipped her head a fraction, and asked, “Do you have an English accent now?”
“Didn’t I before?”
“I suppose you did, and I’d forgotten. You live in England, then? So what are you doing here?”
“She’s touring the world,” Mrs Greenfield broke in. “I opened the paper this morning to the society page and what should jump out at me from under the ‘gossip from hotel lobbies’ section but the name Miss Mary Russell, and I just knew it had to be her, had to be. So I had Jeeves send for a car and went right down to welcome her home. We’ve just had breakfast, although we’d have waited if I’d known you were on your way.”
Flo grimaced, making me suspect that there might be a link between the red of her eyes and her lack of enthusiasm over Mrs La Tour’s cooking. “Thanks but no thanks,” she said. “So, Mary—shall I call you Mary?”
“Of course.”
“What are you doing in the City?”
“There’s some business to take care of here; my father’s holdings need attention. As I was sailing the Pacific, it was easy enough to stop here for a few days.”
“But is that all?” Mrs Greenfield cried. “You must stay longer and see your old friends. Flo, tell her she must sta
y on.”
“I’d be happy to show you something of the night life, such as it is,” Flo drawled, and stifled a yawn.
“Oh, what a good idea!” exclaimed her mother. “I was going to invite some of her mother’s friends over for a morning tea and perhaps treat her to a night at the theatre, but you young things might have a better time dancing and having fun.”
Neither jazz-dancing nor provincial theatre was high on my list of passions, particularly while inhabiting a skull that still gave twinges of protest at the previous day’s crack on the pavement, but it was difficult to say so in the face of the mother’s enthusiasm. Or of the daughter’s flagging attention. Flo yawned again hugely, not bothering to pardon herself, then stood up to grind her cigarette out in an ash-tray.
“There’s a party on for tomorrow night that doesn’t sound too frightful. Shall we pick you up at nine, then?” she asked me. “That’s early, I know, but we could have a bite to eat first.”
Nine o’clock as the opening hour of a night’s adventures sounded ominous, but I was trapped for the moment. Well, I thought, I could always telephone to the house and say I had developed a sudden rash from oysters or something. “That would be grand,” I told her.
She merely nodded, and directed her steps towards the door-way, already half asleep on her feet.
Mrs Greenfield shot me an apologetic smile. “She’s a good girl, just going through a silly phase. She worked so hard with the decorator, when it was finished she was at something of a loss what to do. Blowing off steam, you know?”
I nodded to say I knew, although it seemed to me the girl might find a manner of release less destructive to both body and possessions. But Flo’s involvement in the renovations wrought on the house did explain the style better than if Mrs Greenfield had been supervising them. And I thought that, once a person got used to the vigorous style, there was an appeal in Deco. In small doses, preferably.
Flo’s departure gave an excuse for my own, although it took many promises and an acceptance of the Greenfield telephone number to free me from the establishment. Mrs Greenfield told Jeeves to have the motor brought up, but I countermanded the order.
“No, really, I’d rather walk a bit. It’s a lovely morning, and I could use the exercise.”
“Oh, you young girls,” she gushed, “it’s all faddishness with you, isn’t it? Exercise and education—why, next thing you’ll be running for public office and joining the Army!”
The descending seven notes of her laugh followed me down the steps to the drive.
Running for office; what a mad idea.
I suppose Mrs Greenfield thought I was strolling the five streets over to my house, but in fact, I had an appointment with Mr Norbert and two managers at ten o’clock. I stood at the gates to the house, searching up and down the street for waiting figures. I had more or less decided that whoever took a shot at me had been a random madman, but I wasn’t about to be foolish enough to ignore another explanation. And I admit, the possibility made my spine crawl. To put off making a decision, I settled onto a section of low wall in the shelter of the gate, and spent a minute scribbling notes in my little book. I might have done it in any event, since I did not wish to forget any of what Mrs Greenfield had told me. And when I was finished, I closed the note-book, hopped down from the wall, and without hesitation turned towards the solicitor’s office.
The brisk hike from Pacific Heights settled my nerves somewhat and cleared all manner of cobwebs from my mind, and the equally brisk and pleasantly efficient meeting with Norbert gave me the feeling that things were moving with admirable purpose. I signed papers; agreed to commissions for selling various stock; agreed, too, although with a degree more reluctance, to remain in nominal control of my father’s division of the company for a year, or at the most two, until the most opportune time to sell my interests came about. I was on my way shortly after noon, having declined to join the three men for a luncheon at their club (the ladies’ room, of course). I stood in the door-way, my hand on the heavy bulge in my hand-bag as I studied the adjoining street-corners and building entrances, but the most dangerous character I could see was a boy on roller-skates, zipping in the direction of the parade. I told myself that no-one was about to shoot at me on a crowded street. And during the time I was walking to the hotel, no-one did.
Holmes was not there, so I changed my formal business attire for clothing better suited to a dusty house, and left again. The cable-car passed by the front of the hotel, but instead of joining it I walked up to Post Street, studying the shops until I found the one Mrs Greenfield had mentioned. When I went in, the sales-girl looked at me with one plucked eyebrow raised past her hair-line, but she answered my question politely enough, and I thanked her. Only then did I hop onto a cable-car, and rattled up the hills with the working girls and the tourists.
Getting off at the same place I had disembarked the other night, this time I waited for the connecting line to carry me into Pacific Heights, and I reached the house without being shot at, tackled by Chinese men, or otherwise assaulted.
The padlock was off the gate, and when I rang the bell, the house responded with motion. In a minute, I could hear Holmes’ footsteps approaching, and the door popped open.
“Ah, Russell,” he said, stepping out rather than back. “Just in time. Glad to see you survived the affections of your adoptive aunt.”
“Wait ’til you see her daughter. Just in time for what?”
“Luncheon, of course,” said the man to whom meals and clocks were only faintly linked.
“Holmes, I’ve just eaten.”
“I, however, have not, and am in need of sustenance. Come, I passed a small Italian bistro whose morning odours were most promising.”
With the door securely locked in my face, there was little to do but follow him down the drive (he, too, peered sharply all around before he stepped out of the gates) in search of his fragrant Italian bistro. My lunch consisted of a glass of wine (which the waiter solemnly called “grape juice”) and a crisp bread-stick; Holmes, on the other hand, did the menu justice.
When he had mopped up the last of his tomato sauce and drained the inky coffee from his cup, we returned to the house, and spent the afternoon trying, with small success, to rescue any portion at all of the blackened papers in the fireplace. Holmes had taken a closer look at them the previous morning and, after having the first flake dissolve into dust, decided that four hands were better than two for the job. But even with both of us, Holmes to raise each remnant a fraction and me to slide the glass beneath it, they were still heart-breakingly fragile. No matter how gently we worked and despite all the art in Holmes’ hands, time after time they crumbled into flakes and dust.
At the end of it, we were left with sore knees, black hands, and seven fragments large enough to preserve words.
Five of them, rather to my surprise, were type-written, as far as we could tell on the Underwood in my father’s library, which had a marginally skewed lower-case “a” from when a curious child—me—had tried to commit surgery on it. Holmes judged it the letter’s original, rather than a copy, which is why it was so disappointingly preserved: Carbon would have survived the fire better than the ink had.
From the top sheet, three fragments survived:
tates Army.
y conscience of the
has chosen to
may not reveal
Good friend—GF —
felt that I owed
and his stalwart
From later pages, the two fragments we deciphered were:
shoot looters
the earthquake—
had himself stolen
those looters actu-
myself witnessed three
the least justified
ured it wouldn’t be healthy
full of money.
The newspaper cuttings appeared to be from the period immediately following the quake, for one had the bold headline “URNS!!” which was more likely, considering the siz
e of the font, to be an article concerning the destruction of the city than the archaeological discovery of some Greek jars.
The other appeared to be about a man and his new wife who had lost each other for days after the Fire, then discovered that they were half a mile apart in Golden Gate Park. With either of the newspaper bits, however, it could have been the opposite side that was of importance, and in both cases that obverse was illegible.
We left the plates arranged on my mother’s writing desk and went through the kitchen to sit on the stoop, where Holmes lit a pipe and I worked to find a comfortable niche for my kinked spine.
The jungle of the garden was oddly appealing, particularly in the quiet of late afternoon. I could hear the sound of children’s voices somewhere far away, and closer in, a woman singing softly.
“Do you make anything of those fragments, Holmes?” I asked.
“Very little. The words might be provocative, suggesting some act of violence during the earthquake, and money, but any conclusions built upon them would have foundations of air. If the fragments have any value, it may come to light later in the case. Clearly, the house was fairly thoroughly cleaned before your Mr Norbert turned the key and walked away—unless the fireplaces were scrubbed and the carpets rolled up before your parents actually left. I don’t suppose you remember?”
“Norbert senior arranged for the cleaners to come in and roll up the carpets, to ‘protect his clients’ assets’ as his son put it, put on the dust-covers, and clear out the ice-box. They may have scrubbed the fireplaces then, although September tends to be warm in San Francisco, warmer here than the actual summer. They could have been cleaned at any time.”
Locked Rooms Page 13
