Locked Rooms

by Laurie R. King

  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 quantities 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 shirt-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 pronoun: 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 glasses, 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.”

  “Russell, the only reason for you to be on your feet is to accompany me to the restaurant for a meal.”

  “Holmes, I’ve just consumed half a pound of butter-cream. I’ll wait until dinner-time, if you don’t mind.”

  “I do mind. Russell, you have lost nearly a stone in recent weeks, and haven’t eaten a proper meal since we left Japan. If you don’t feed yourself, I swear on Mrs Hudson’s rolling-pin that I shall call for a doctor.”

  It was something of a turn-around, to have Holmes encouraging someone else to take nourishment—for most of the past forty-some years it had been Dr Watson or Mrs Hudson cajoling, bribing, or berating Holmes not to starve himself. In fact, so extraordinary was this approach that Russell subsided without protest, and if she did not take a large meal, it was nonetheless meat and bread—or in any case, an omelette and toast. Her colour was better at the end of it, and Holmes’ features had relaxed a fraction.

  After the meal, they took a turn through Union Square, settling onto a bench in the far corner that caught a stray late ray of sunlight. Holmes pulled out his tobacco pouch; Russell closed her eyes and raised her face. A nanny hurried past with her charge in a pram; two boot-boys sauntered through, glancing with professional disdain at the toes of passers-by; a pair of police constables strode the other way, their gazes probing faces, watching for signs of shiftiness.

  Finally, Russell stirred. “So, what have you been doing today, Holmes?”

  “I have been conducting my own research.”

  “Into what?”

  “Into your family.”

  One bright blue eye opened to look at him sideways. “Really? What aspect of my family interests you?”

  “All manner of aspec
ts.”

  “Pray tell,” she said, although her voice told him not to.

  He ignored her tone, let out a thoughtful cloud of smoke, and said, “Your parents met in the spring of 1895, when your father did the Grand Tour and met your mother at the British Museum.”

  “Over the display of Roman antiquities, yes.”

  “They married, despite the objections of both sides, little more than a year later, in the summer of 1896.”

  “His parents objecting to Mother being a Jew, hers outraged by his being a Christian. Holmes, I’ve told you all this.”

  “And came here, to San Francisco, although his parents had long ago returned to Boston, the Russell family centre. California being, like the Colonies, a place one sent younger sons to try themselves, and with luck to add something to the family fortunes before they came back home to the castle.”

  “I thought they’d first come here in 1900, after I was born.”

  “Not at all. According to the account books in your father’s study, they lived here from 1897 to 1899, before returning to England for your birth. They returned in May 1901. As we heard, they met the Longs eighteen months later, and as your honorary aunt told you, lived here, apart from the period of your brother’s birth, until the summer after the earthquake.”

  “At which time my mother got nervous about the house falling down around her and took my brother and me back to England. I know.”

  “Whatever your mother was nervous about, it did not include houses falling down.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “According to two of your neighbours, your family moved back into the house ten days after the fire, at which time your mother seemed remarkably light-hearted about the damage, and sanguine about any future catastrophes.”

  “Then why would she leave?”

  “Precisely what they wondered. And why leave so precipitately, taking only a few bags, and following a loud argument?”

  “An argument? My parents?”

  “The postman heard it. He said it was unusual. Said, too, that to find your father’s motorcar in the drive in the morning was most unusual. You do not remember any degree of discord between your parents?”

  “I don’t remember them fighting, no.”

  “Yet they separated for large parts of the years between 1906 and 1912. What would have caused that if not marital discord? A child’s health? Some threat here in California?”

  “Threat from what?”

  “In June 1906 your father also wrote the codicil to the will specifying that the house be closed to outsiders. Two months following the fire.”

  “I imagine a catastrophe of those proportions would have caused many people to add codicils to their wills.”

  “And two months following some incident that caused a shift in the relationship between your father and Micah Long.”

  “Again, the experience of the fire itself could have done that. Or even Long’s guilt and resentment that he had been seeing to the safety of my family when his own family was driven from their home and nearly killed.”

  “That is true enough,” he conceded. He thought for a minute then asked, “And over the following years, whenever your father came to England, how did your parents seem?”

  Russell looked uncomfortable at this autopsy of a marriage. “They seemed . . . normal. Well, when he first arrived we would all be somewhat stiff and formal. But within a few days everything would be fine. And Mother was always very sad when he left again.”

  “So why leave, and so suddenly?” Holmes asked, but he was only musing aloud, not asking her.

  “I was at school,” Russell said suddenly, as if a memory had been startled from her. “I came home from school one afternoon and found her throwing things into bags and telling me we had to go. I’d finished my exams, but I didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye to my friends. I had to write home to Father from New York and ask him to send certain books I’d forgotten in the rush. I always assumed it was because they’d discovered the house wasn’t safe to live in.”

  “There was damage, but less than some of the neighbouring houses withstood. I think it more likely that the cause lay in some threat. Possibly linked to the happenings in the fire.”

  “‘Possibly’ this, ‘theoretically’ that—you keep harping on some mysterious event of a criminal nature, Holmes. What sort of a crime are you imagining?”

  “That I have yet to discover,” Holmes said calmly.

  “Or even if there was one.” She rose and said coldly, “Holmes, I have things to do. I shall be out with Flo until late, so don’t wait up for me. And please, I beg you, find something to keep yourself busy. This stirring about in my past is becoming a vexation.”

  She walked away; he sat with his pipe, watching her retreat with hooded eyes.

  Chapter Eleven

  It was both a challenge and an irritation to follow an individual such as Russell without being seen. Had she been another person, Holmes would simply have trailed along in her wake, confident that a young woman in the hold of social impulse and illicit alcohol would be oblivious of a tail. Russell, however, even without her glasses, normally had eyes in the back of her head.

  Not that she’d noticed him following practically on her heels all those hours on Monday afternoon. Still, Holmes kept his distance. He had his taxi park down the street from the St Francis until Russell’s friend arrived, then followed behind, stopping a street down from where the gaudy, bright blue Rolls-Royce disgorged its passengers. He studied the motor’s driver closely, taking note of the noise he made and the speed with which he drove—outside of a city’s streets, the taxi would never have kept up with him—but noting also the way the apparently careless young man gave wide berth to a woman walking with her two children, and how he always kept both his hands on the wheel and spoke over his shoulder instead of turning his head to speak to the passengers in back.

  When the blue car had been driven away by the club’s valet, Holmes paid off his curious driver and took up surveillance in a more or less illicit dive across the way from the cabaret, a small and dingy space with air that looked as if the fog had moved in. He used his thumb-nail to scrape a patch of paint from the window-glass, which looked to have been applied half-heartedly at the descent of Prohibition five years before, absently cleaned the grime from underneath his nail with a pen-knife, then settled in to his surveillance with a glass of stale beer before him on the table.

  An hour passed. Motorcars came and went from the sparkling gin palace, music spilt out onto the street, the uniformed doorman chatted unconcernedly with two passing policemen (confirming Holmes’ suspicions that the police department in this town was not as free of graft as one might wish—a two-year-old would have known that the alcohol inside flowed like water). And slowly, he became aware that he was himself being watched.

  The man was good. Holmes had taken no particular note of him when he wandered in, other than noticing how tall, thin, and tidily dressed he was. He was simply one thirsty man among a dozen others—but when the man settled into the dimmest corner, when he nursed two whiskeys over the course of the hour and seemed uninterested in the company, and particularly when he seemed to relax into his corner and displace less air than a normal man, Holmes’ antennae twitched. He pondered his options: keep guard over the street and Russell, or pursue this new avenue?

  After an hour and a quarter, with a full glass on the table, Holmes rose and headed towards the back of the establishment, weaving slightly. He felt the other man come to attention in the dim corner, and smiled to himself as he heard the soft clink of coins being laid on the damp table: The man was preparing to follow if Holmes did not return in a reasonable time, but not immediately—he wouldn’t want to risk a face-to-face meeting in the hall-way.

  The noxious facilities were out-of-doors, in the delivery yard that was closed up for the night. Holmes slipped past them to the yard’s wooden gates. The lock was a joke, and he let himself out into the ill-lit alleyway beyon
d, leaving the gates ajar.

  Four minutes after he’d come through it, the back door to the speakeasy opened and closed. There came a stifled oath and the quick sound of a man hurrying across sloppy paving stones. The stranger shouldered his way out of the gate, took two steps—and came to an immediate halt at the clear sound of a trigger being pulled back, a dozen feet away.

  “Are you armed?” the stranger heard, in the drawl of an Englishman.

  After a minute, the American answered. “I’m not much of one for guns.”

  “Does that mean no?”

  “No, I don’t have a gun.”

  “Take off your coats and toss them over here,” came the command. The tall American unbuttoned his overcoat and tossed it in the direction of the other’s voice, then did the same with his jacket, standing motionless in the cold in his shirt-sleeves. “I trust you’ll pardon me if I don’t take your word on the matter. Would you be so good as to turn and place your hands against the wall?”

  The man hesitated, loath to turn his back to a gun, but he had little choice. He faced the wall and leant against it with his hands. The bricks were briefly illuminated by the flare of a pocket-torch, and in a moment a hand patted all the obvious places for a weapon, and one or two not so obvious. Then the light winked out and he stood in the dark, listening to the sound of his garments being gone through. The overcoat was a good one, and relatively new; he’d be sore to lose it.

  But after a minute the English voice said, “You may turn around again,” and in a moment, the two coats were flying out of the darkness at him. He put them on, grateful for the warmth, and coughed gently.

  “Now your notecase—wallet, if you will.”

  The American slid the leather object from his inner pocket and threw it across the alleyway, rather less concerned than at the loss of his coat. There wasn’t all that much in the wallet to lose.

  The torch flared again, dazzling him at the same time it showed the Englishman the contents of the wallet and its various business cards and identifications. All but two of the cards were inventions that placed him in the employ of agencies ranging from insurance to newspapers. The two valid cards were those the Englishman unerringly pulled out.