Locked Rooms

by Laurie R. King

  As Holmes watched the thin figure pick his way from one precarious hand-hold to the next, he felt precisely as he had whenever he had placed Watson in danger—a thing he’d generally done as inadvertently as he had this man. Scarcely breathing, he watched the man on the cliff, expecting at any moment to see those long arms flail and the body crash down into the foam: one assistant shot, another smashed; this case was proving hard on the Irregulars.

  Ten minutes later, the young man in the driver’s seat shifted and the hillside scene leapt and danced through the lens.

  Holmes said coldly, “Mr Tyson, you may feel free to get out and watch the sea-birds.”

  After a minute, the door opened and the abashed lad got out, shutting it with care. Holmes settled again to the eyepiece.

  Taking into account his poor physical condition, Hammett was making a remarkably thorough job of his investigation of the cliffside. With an intervening decade of high waves and Pacific rain, there could be little evidence left among the rocks, but twice now Holmes had seen the man pick his way cautiously towards some invisible object. The first time, hanging like a three-legged spider, he had worked some object loose with his fingers, examined it (to all appearances completely unconscious of the precariousness of his stance) and tossed it away. The second time he had pulled something from his back trouser pocket and gouged at a crack in the rocks, retrieving some long, narrow object; that, too, he held close to examine, only this time he kept it, lifting his coat to secure it through the back of his belt.

  His greying hair and coat-tails tossed wildly in the wind as he continued to scan the rocks, and Holmes found himself muttering under his breath: “Hammett, it must be damned cold out on that exposed rock; this won’t be doing your lungs a bit of good. The tide’s on its way in and in another ten minutes you’ll get wet. Look, man, I’m not your father; you’ve nothing to prove to me.”

  It took another twenty-five agonising minutes, during which time Hammett had found one other item of interest, nearly fallen down the cliff twice, and shifted upwards on the cliff three times to keep free of the wave splashes, before he finally threw back his head to study the return route.

  From where he stood, the cliff must have appeared nearly vertical, because he then pulled back to survey the terrain to his right. He appeared to stare straight into Holmes’ lens for a moment before it became clear that he was merely estimating the possibilities of the beach route. The horizontal must have appeared preferable, because in a minute he waved widely at the bow-legged man who had been pacing to and fro on the cliff-top road all this time, and pointed towards the sand.

  Immediately, the other man waved his response and turned away to the bread van—only to leap back at the unexpected approach of another motor.

  A sleek blue motorcar driven by a fair-headed boy, with two young women passengers. He’d been right: Russell had insisted on coming by this route. He’d also been right that she wouldn’t succeed in getting that car-proud young man to relinquish the wheel.

  Holmes raised his face from the instrument and lifted the curtains to one side so as to see unimpaired. The gaunt man was beginning to work his way along the cliff above the line of wetness, his entire being concentrating on the effort. Above him on the roadway, the bow-legged man gave him a glance before turning to face the three young people emerging from the motorcar. The slick-haired driver tumbled over the side with the practiced agility of a monkey, trotting around to open the passenger door for the black-haired girl; the other young woman, the one with the absurdly short blonde hair, was standing up so as to follow. Holmes put his head back to the eyepiece.

  Russell moved stiffly, as if she were in pain, or fear, climbing out of the car and onto the surface. She wrapped her heavy coat around her against the wind. Flo Greenfield said something, then reached out as if to take her arm, but Russell had stepped away from her in the direction of the precipitous edge. Holmes risked a quick glance down at the man near the water, but Hammett was still intent on his spider-act along the rocks.

  Russell stood at the very lip of the cliff, leaning over the inadequate railing as she’d leant over the ship’s rail the week before. Flo Greenfield picked her way near, but the shoes she wore were inadequate for the terrain, and she wobbled dangerously until her beau’s arm flashed out to steady her. The two young people stood on secure ground, apparently pleading with their English companion, but Russell did not respond. She seemed hypnotised by the breaking waves, but Holmes could see the moment when her attention was caught by the figure far below: Her mouth came open in surprise and her hand came out, but to Holmes’ immense relief, the bow-legged man stepped forward and took her arm, urging her back from the cliff. Holmes began to breathe again.

  The driver of the delivery van seemed to be explaining Hammett’s presence, and Holmes would have paid a great deal to be able to hear what he had to say. Whatever the explanation was, it did not immediately strike Russell as impossible; she looked at the man doubtfully, but her head did not go back into that intensely familiar posture of disbelief that allowed her to look down her nose at the offender. She just listened to the man, craned forward to see how far the grey-haired climber had got, then said something over her shoulder.

  The three young people got into their motorcar and the bow-legged man into his, driving in procession down the long curve to where the cliff gave way to the beach. Holmes lifted his face from the eyepiece for a moment to rub the tension out of his muscles. When he pulled his hands away, Greg Tyson was walking quickly towards the car, brushing the sand from his trouser-legs. He jumped in behind the wheel and slammed the door.

  “Do you want to scoot?” he asked.

  “No, I believe the two motors will stop at the other end of the beach. No need to flee unless they continue down here—you are welcome to resume your reading material. However, be ready to move quickly.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Both men in the closed car sat tensely until the two other vehicles had come to a stop far up the road, Tyson’s hand hovering near the starter button. Holmes unfolded his legs and rearranged the tripod holding the telescope, pulling the curtains together until they brushed the very edges of his field of vision. He also reached into the Gladstone bag and took out a pistol, surreptitiously laying it beside his leg: He had no reason to believe that Hammett and his bread-truck assistant were on any side but that of the angels, but he had not lived this long by depending on trust. If either man made the slightest move against Russell, he wouldn’t hesitate to make a dramatic entrance with engine roaring and gun blazing. He fervently hoped, for many reasons, that it would not come to that.

  It took Hammett a quarter of an hour to sidle his way off of the rocks. He stumbled when his feet sank into the sand, then set off, hunched against the cold, staggering with the soft surface and his own exhaustion. His hair was awry and his light grey suit had suffered from the treatment, and he looked a far cry from the dapper man Holmes had met.

  At the bread truck, Hammett accepted his hat and a flask from the driver, propping his back against the vehicle and ignoring the approaching newcomers. Eyes shut, he took a deep draught from the flask, then another, shuddering slightly in reaction. He handed the flask back to the bow-legged man, then peeled himself off the wall of the truck, wrenching open its cargo door to drop onto the floor where he sat, head bowed and feet resting on the ground, clearly gathering his energies. After a minute, his right arm reached surreptitiously around his back, as if scratching an itch at the belt-line, then he straightened. His hands came up to run through his hair, returning it to a semblance of order, then adjusted his neck-tie, dashed ineffectually at the stained knee of one trouser-leg, and finally shifted to his inner chest pocket to pull out his pouch of Bull Durham.

  Hammett’s fingers shaped the cigarette with an exaggeration of their normal care, and eventually lifted the object to his tongue to seal it. He was fumbling for his matches when the young blond swell who’d been driving the other car stepped forward an
d stuck out a hand with a lighter in it.

  The lighter was sleek and gold, of a piece with the coat and the car; the blond man was maybe a year or two younger than Hammett himself, but he looked like a kid—family money and no responsibilities will do that for you. But Hammett bent to accept the light and sat there, eyes half shut, for the length of three or four steadying puffs. Then he moved the cigarette to his left hand, pushed his hat-brim up with the forefinger of his right hand, and at last looked up into the face of the tall blonde girl whom his new employer had been watching from the speakeasy on Friday night.

  Mary Russell, married to Sherlock Holmes, gave him a smile meant to be reassuring. “That looked a rather dangerous climb.”

  “Not something I’d do for fun, no.”

  “So why were you doing it? If you don’t mind my asking,” she added.

  “What’s it to you?” he said bluntly, putting the cigarette back to his lips.

  After a moment, she said, “I know someone who was killed on that piece of hillside. It was odd, seeing you at the same exact place.”

  “Yeah, well, as I understand it, there’s a number of people that corner’s killed. But my company’s only interested in two deaths that happened last December. That the same accident as yours?”

  “No.”

  “Then I can’t help you.”

  “What’s your company?”

  “Mutual of Fresno,” he replied, reaching for his wallet and drawing out a business card with a salesman’s automatic habit. “Somebody phoned in a tip to say we might’ve paid death benefits on an empty car. Always a problem, you see, when there’s no body.”

  “I see,” she said, looking at the card.

  “Well,” he said, sucking the last draw from his cigarette and tossing it out onto the sand, “I’m afraid I didn’t. Risked my neck and a case of pneumonia for absolutely nothing. And now, if there’s nothing more I can do for you, I need a drink and a fire and a pair of dry socks.” He stood, tipped his hat, and threaded his long body into the back of the van.

  Smooth, thought Holmes admiringly as he studied the scene through the lens. Not once had Hammett given away the presence of the object he had retrieved from the cliffside—even Russell had taken no notice of the man’s surreptitious motions as he slid the thing from the back of his belt to the floor of the van.

  Holmes would have liked to hear the conversation, but his lip-reading abilities were lamentably rusty, and in any case best suited to closer work. He had only been able to follow scraps of it—almost none of Hammett’s words, since the man’s face had been in profile much of the time, but what he had perceived of Russell’s side of the brief exchange had reassured him oddly.

  With his unlikely passenger stowed away, the bow-legged driver raised his own hat a fraction off his scalp, then slammed the cargo door and trotted around to the driver’s side. The bread van started with a violent cloud of blue smoke, causing Flo and her young man to back hastily away, but Russell just stood and watched the vehicle back-and-fill into a turn before it accelerated up the steep hill north.

  The three young people did not immediately climb back into their own vehicle. Instead, there was a discussion, during which Flo gestured towards the road ahead, Russell stared at the wake of the bread van, and Donny sat on his running board smoking a cigarette and watching the waves. Eventually, consensus appeared to be reached. Flo straightened and dug something from her pocket, offering it to Russell. At first Holmes thought it was a cigarette, but after Russell had shaken her head and turned away, the other young woman worked at the object for a moment, put something into her mouth, and followed Russell towards the gaudy car. Holmes risked one last glance at Russell’s face as she sat down in the back, then swept the machinery away and tugged the curtains down to a crack.

  “Mr Tyson, please remain where you are. Slump back into your seat and look bored with your lot in life, and watch the blue motor go past as if it was the most interesting thing that has happened in an hour.”

  The sound of a starter and an engine catching reached them, then the car was in gear and accelerating onto the road. It roared past, and away, until the beat of waves against the shore was the only sound. Holmes pulled the velvet curtains aside a fraction with one finger to peer out, not entirely certain that Russell wouldn’t have chosen to solve the disagreement by staying behind, but the road and the hillside behind it were empty of humanity.

  He settled himself onto the green leather, sliding the pistol back into the Gladstone. As he began to unfasten the telescope from its tripod base, he said to the boy, “Now we return to the city.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  Greg Tyson radiated a palpable sense of outrage all the way back to the hotel, clashing gears in a way the big car had never before experienced and taking corners at speeds that made its tyres squeal in protest. His potentially thrilling outing had fizzled into anticlimax like a damp firecracker.

  And here he’d thought he had a real Philo Vance in his backseat.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sundays were invariably a source of frustration for Holmes: Why was the world so enamoured of its day of rest, rendering itself largely unavailable to a decent, hard-working detective?

  This Sunday was no exception. Once the car returned to the hotel and Holmes had paid the disgruntled young driver, it was still only the late afternoon, and long hours stretched out before him. He took the Gladstone to the room and changed his warm tweeds for a more formal City suit, then persuaded the restaurant to serve him a hot dinner despite the hour, but when he had finished it was still daylight outside.

  He read the newspapers, pored over the city maps for a while, smoked a pipe and two cigarettes, and finally set out on a circuitous walk to the telegraphist’s, on the chance that a reply had come from Watson. But the man was ill pleased at having his Sunday evening interrupted, and told him brusquely that the shop was closed and no, he hadn’t had a telegram from Europe that day.

  At least it was dark by the time Holmes returned to the hotel.

  What was more, the desk man had a message for him from Hammett.

  He went out of the hotel and down the street until he came to a public telephone, where he rang the number given. It was picked up by a man who grunted “Yeah?” In the background he heard the sound of half a dozen male voices in conversation, and the ting of glass on glass: a bar.

  “Is Mr Hammett there?”

  “Yeah,” the voice said again, without the rising inflection, and thumped down. In a minute, the thin man’s cough could be heard approaching the earpiece.

  “That you?” Hammett’s voice asked.

  “I had a message from you to ring this number.”

  “You’re at the hotel?”

  “Down the street from it.”

  “Good idea. Can you find the place we had a drink at the other day?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a chop house two blocks up, same side of the street. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  They both rang off.

  In five minutes, Holmes arrived at the small restaurant on Ellis in time to see a plate of chops and grilled tomato set in front of Hammett. The thin man had gone home and changed his stained grey suit for one of a subtle brown check, and looked himself again. His eyes caught Holmes’ entrance, but he continued bantering with the pretty waitress, although it seemed to Holmes that the man was so fatigued that the flirtation was little more than habitual motion. Hammett picked up knife and fork with determination, addressing himself to the plate as if eating was just another job to be got through. Holmes waited in growing impatience while the man sawed, chewed, and swallowed, but before long Hammett allowed his utensils to come to a rest on his plate, drained the glass of orange juice he had been drinking, and searched his breast pockets, coming out with a small note-book.

  He flipped it open on the table and resumed his knife and fork, working now with a degree less intensity.

  “Saw
your lady this morning,” he said when he had swallowed.

  “Yes? Did you have conversation?”

  “Just an exchange. She saw me climbing the rocks where the accident took place, asked me if I was having fun. I said no, not really, and gave her some guff about an insurance company investigating a ‘fatal’ accident that might have been a set-up.”

  “Did she believe you?”

  “Seemed to.” Holmes thought this was probably the case: If Russell had been suspicious, she would have asked more questions than she had.

  “Why did you wait until today to go down there?”

  “I thought I’d get some answers about the car, first, and then snoop around the local garage down there, second. Couldn’t do either of those on a Sunday, but the cliff would be there anytime.”

  “But why did you find it necessary to climb down the cliffs?”

  The words were mild enough, but some vestige of anger in Holmes’ voice brought Hammett’s head up. After a moment, his eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute. You knew I was there today. Did you have me watched?”

  “I did not.”

  “You were there? Where—the old Pierce-Arrow with the velvet curtains, right?”

  “Correct.”

  Holmes waited to see if the man became angry, saw him consider it, then lay it aside with a shrug. “Your business, I guess.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “What, about why I climbed around on those cliffs? Because it needed to be done. From up at the top, it looked to me like the waves would push things in behind a couple of those rocks, and it seemed worth a look. I took a piece of wire from the truck and went to see. Or are you asking about whether I’m not too weak to be doing things like that?”

  “Clearly you were not. But I mistrust derring-do even more than I mistrust cowardice. With a coward, one at least knows where one stands. With a fool, anything can happen. And most frequently does.”

  “It’s not derring-do, just common sense.” Seeing Holmes’ sceptical eyebrow, the younger man sighed and picked up his fork, pushing the half-eaten chop around on the plate. “Look, this disease I have, it respects toughness. In the TB ward, it was the ones who babied themselves who died the fastest. The ones who got on with life had the best chance of shaking it. I sleep a lot, but I don’t baby myself.”