The Mary Russell Series Books 1-4

by Laurie R. King

  “However, as I said, I don’t mean to intrude on your privacy. It was necessary to have the past as it contributes to the present. You are here to escape the disagreeable sensation of being surrounded by inferior minds, minds that can never understand because they are just not built that way. You took a remarkably early retirement twelve years ago, apparently in order to study the perfection and unity of bees and to work on your magnum opus on detection. I see from the bookshelf near your writing desk that you have completed seven volumes to date, and I presume, from the boxes of notes under the completed books, that there are at least an equal number yet to be written up.” He nodded and poured us both more wine. The bottle was nearly empty.

  “Between yourself and Dr. Watson, however, you have left me with little to deduce. I could hardly assume that you would leave behind your chemical experiments, for example, though the state of your cuffs does indicate that you have been active recently—those acid burns are too fresh to have frayed much in the wash. You no longer smoke cigarettes, your fingers show, though obviously your pipe is used often, and the calluses on your fingertips indicate that you have kept up with the violin. You seem to be as unconcerned about bee stings as you are about finances and gardening, for your skin shows the marks of stings both old and new, and your suppleness indicates that the theories about bee stings as a therapy for rheumatism have some basis. Or is it arthritis?”

  “Rheumatism, in my case.”

  “Also, I think it possible that you have not entirely given up your former life, or perhaps it has not entirely given you up. I see a vague area of pale skin on your chin, which shows that some time last summer you had a goatee, since shaven off. There hasn’t been enough sun yet to erase the line completely. As you don’t normally wear a beard, and would, in my opinion, look unpleasant with one, I can assume it was for the purpose of a disguise, in a rôle which lasted some months. Probably it had to do with the early stages of the war. Spying against the Kaiser, I should venture to say.”

  His face went blank, and he studied me without any trace of expression for a long minute. I squelched a self-conscious smile. At last he spoke.

  “I did ask for it, did I not? Are you familiar with the work of Dr. Sigmund Freud?”

  “Yes, although I find the work of the next, as it were, generation more helpful. Freud is overly obsessed with exceptional behavior: an aid to your line of work, perhaps, but not as useful for a generalist.”

  There was a sudden commotion in the flower bed. Two orange cats shot out and raced along the lawn and disappeared through the opening in the garden wall. His eyes followed them, and he sat squinting into the low sun.

  “Twenty years ago,” he murmured. “Even ten. But here? Now?” He shook his head and focussed again on me. “What will you read at University?”

  I smiled. I couldn’t help it; I knew just how he was going to react, and I smiled, anticipating his dismay.

  “Theology.”

  His reaction was as violent as I had known it would be, but if I was sure of anything in my life, it was that. We took a walk through the gloaming to the cliffs, and I had my look at the sea while he wrestled with the idea, and by the time we returned he had decided that it was no worse than anything else, though he considered it a waste, and said so. I did not respond.

  The automobile arrived shortly thereafter, and Mrs. Hudson came out to pay for it. Holmes explained our agreement, to her amusement, and she promised to make a note of it.

  “I have an experiment to finish tonight, so you must pardon me,” he said, though it did not take many visits before I knew that he disliked saying good-bye. I put out my hand and nearly snatched it back when he raised it to his lips rather than shaking it as he had before. He held on to it, brushed it with his cool lips, and let it go.

  “Please come to see us anytime you wish. We are on the telephone, by the way. Ask the exchange for Mrs. Hudson, though; the good ladies sometimes decide to protect me by pretending ignorance, but they will usually permit calls to go through to her.” With a nod he began to turn away, but I interrupted his exit.

  “Mr. Holmes,” I said, feeling myself go pink, “may I ask you a question?”

  “Certainly, Miss Russell.”

  “How does The Valley of Fear end?” I blurted out.

  “The what?” He sounded astonished.

  “Valley of Fear. In The Strand. I hate these serials, and next month is the end of it, but I just wondered if you could tell me, well, how it turned out.”

  “This is one of Watson’s tales, I take it?”

  “Of course. It’s the case of Birlstone and the Scowrers and John McMurdo and Professor Moriarty and—”

  “Yes, I believe I can identify the case, although I have often wondered why, if Conan Doyle so likes pseudonyms, he couldn’t have given them to Watson and myself as well.”

  “So how did it end?”

  “I haven’t the faintest notion. You would have to ask Watson.”

  “But surely you know how the case ended,” I said, amazed.

  “The case, certainly. But what Watson has made of it, I couldn’t begin to guess, except that there is bound to be gore and passion and secret handshakes. Oh, and some sort of love interest. I deduce, Miss Russell; Watson transforms. Good day.” He went back into the cottage.

  Mrs. Hudson, who had stood listening to the exchange, did not comment, but pressed a package into my hands, “for the trip back,” although from the weight of it the eating would take longer than the driving, even if I were to find the interior space for it. However, if I could get it past my aunt’s eyes it would make a welcome supplement to my rations. I thanked her warmly.

  “Thank you for coming here, dear child,” she said. “There’s more life in him than I’ve seen for a good many months. Please come again, and soon?”

  I promised, and climbed into the car. The driver spun off in a rattle of gravel, and so began my long association with Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

  I FIND IT necessary to interrupt my narrative and say a few words concerning an individual whom I had wanted to omit entirely. I find, however, that her total absence grants her undue emphasis by the vacuum it creates. I speak of my aunt.

  For just under seven years, from the time my parents were killed until my twenty-first birthday, she lived in my house, spent my money, managed my life, limited my freedom, and tried her worst to control me. Twice during that time I had to appeal to the executors of my parents’ estate, and both times won both my case and her vindictive animosity. I do not know precisely how much of my parents’ money she took from me, but I do know that she purchased a terrace house in London after she left me, though she came to me nearly penniless. I let her know that I considered it payment for her years of service, and left it. I did not go to her funeral some years later and arranged for the house to go to a poor cousin.

  Mostly I ignored her while she lived with me, which maddened her further. She was, I think, gifted enough herself to recognise greatness in others, but instead of rejoicing generously she tried to bring her superior down to her own level. A twisted person, very sad, really, but my sympathy for her has been taken from me by her actions. I shall, therefore, continue to ignore her by leaving her out of my account whenever possible. It is my revenge.

  It was only in my association with Holmes that her interference troubled me. It became apparent in the following weeks that I had found something I valued and, what was worse in her eyes, it offered me a life and a freedom away from her. I freely used my loan privileges with Mrs. Hudson and had run up a considerable debt by the time I came into my majority. (Incidentally, my first act at the law offices was to draw up a cheque for the amount I owed the Holmes household, with five percent more for Mrs. Hudson. I don’t know if she gave it to charity or to the gardener, but she took it. Eventually.)

  My aunt’s chief weapon against my hours with Holmes was the threat to stir up talk and rumours in the community, which even I had to admit would have been inconvenient. About once a yea
r this would come up, subtle threats would give way to blatant ones, until finally I would have to counterattack, usually by blackmail or bribery. Once I was forced to ask Holmes to produce evidence that he was still too highly regarded, despite having been purportedly retired for over a decade, for any official to believe her low gossip. The letter that reached her, and particularly the address from which it had been written, silenced her for eighteen months. The entire campaign reached its head when I proposed to accompany Holmes to the Continent for six weeks. She would very likely have succeeded in, if not preventing my going, at least delaying me inconveniently. By that time, however, I had traced her bank account, and I had no further trouble from her before my twenty-first birthday.

  So much for my mother’s only sister. I shall leave her here, frustrated and unnamed, and hope she does not intrude further on my narrative.

  2

  The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

  One came hither, to the school of the bees, to be taught the preoccupations of all-powerful nature…and the lesson of ardent and disinterested work; and another lesson too…to enjoy the almost unspeakable delights of those immaculate days that revolved on themselves in the fields of space, forming merely a transparent globe, as void of memory as the happiness without alloy.

  THREE MONTHS AFTER my fifteenth birthday Sherlock Holmes entered my life, to become my foremost friend, tutor, substitute father, and eventually confidant. Never a week passed when I did not spend at least one day in his house, and often I would be there three or four days running when I was helping him with some experiment or project. Looking back, I can admit to myself that even with my parents I had never been so happy, and not even with my father, who had been a most brilliant man, had my mind found so comfortable a fit, so smooth a mesh. By our second meeting we had dropped “Mr.” and “Miss.” After some years we came to end the other’s sentences, even to answer an unasked question—but I get ahead of myself.

  In those first weeks of spring I was like some tropical seed upon which was poured water and warmth. I blossomed, my body under the care of Mrs. Hudson and my mind under the care of this odd man, who had left behind the thrill of the chase in London and come to the quietest of country homes to raise bees, write his books, and, perhaps, to meet me. I do not know what fates put us less than ten miles from each other. I do know that I have never, in all my travels, met a mind like Holmes’. Nor has he, he says, met my equal. Had I not found him, had my aunt’s authority been uncontested, I could easily have become twisted like her. I am fairly certain that my own influence on Holmes was also not inconsiderable. He was stagnating—yes, even he—and would probably have bored or drugged himself into an early death. My presence, my—I will say it—my love, gave him a purpose in life from that first day.

  If Holmes slid into the niche my father had occupied, then I suppose one could say that dear Mrs. Hudson became my new mother. Not, of course, that there was anything between the two of them other than the strictest housekeeper-employer relationship, tempered by a long-standing camaraderie. Nonetheless, mother she was and I a daughter to her. She had a son in Australia who wrote dutifully every month, but I was her only daughter. She fed me until my frame filled out (I never did become voluptuous, but my shape was quite fashionable for the twenties.) and I went up another two inches that first year, one and one-half the second year, to a total of one inch short of six feet. I became comfortable with my height eventually, but for years I was incredibly clumsy and a real hazard around knickknacks. It was not until I went away to Oxford that Holmes arranged for lessons in an Oriental form of manual defence (most unladylike: at first only the teacher would work with me!), which brought my various limbs under control. Mrs. Hudson, needless to say, would have preferred ballet lessons.

  Mrs. Hudson’s presence in the house made possible my visits to the solitary man who lived there, but she was considerably more than a mere nod to propriety. From her I learnt to garden, to sew on a button, to cook a simple meal. She also taught me that being womanly was not necessarily incompatible with being a mind. It was she, rather than my aunt, who taught me the workings of the female body (in words other than the anatomy textbooks I had previously depended upon, which concealed and obfuscated rather than clarified). It was she who took me to the London dressmakers and hairdressers so that when I came home from Oxford on my eighteenth birthday I could inflict on Holmes a case of apoplexy with my appearance. I was very glad for the presence of Dr. Watson on that occasion. Had I killed Holmes with my dressing up I should surely have thrown myself into the Isis by the end of term.

  Which brings me to Watson, a sweet bumbly man whom I came to call, to his immense pleasure, Uncle John. I was quite prepared to detest him. How could anyone work so long with Holmes and learn so little? I thought. How could an apparently intelligent man so consistently fail to grasp the point? How could he be so stupid? my teenaged mind railed at him. Worst of all, he made it appear that Holmes, my Holmes, kept him near for one of two purposes: to carry a revolver (though Holmes himself was a crack shot) or to act dense and make the detective appear even more brilliant by contrast. What did Holmes see in this, this buffoon? Oh, yes, I was ready to hate him, to destroy him with my scathing tongue. Only it didn’t work out that way.

  I arrived unannounced at Holmes’ door one day in early September. The first storm of autumn had knocked out the telephone exchange in the village, so I could not ring ahead to say that I was coming, as I usually did. The road was a muddy mess, so rather than use the bicycle I had bought (with Mrs. Hudson’s loan account, of course) I put on my high boots and set off across the downs. The sun came out as I walked the sodden hills, and the heat soared. As a result I left my muddy boots outside the door and let myself in through the kitchen, spattered with mud and dripping with sweat from the humidity and the wrong clothing. Mrs. Hudson was not in the kitchen, a bit odd for that early in the day, but I heard low voices from the main room. Not Holmes, another man, rural tones heavily overlaid with London. A neighbour, perhaps, or a house guest.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Hudson,” I called out softly, figuring that Holmes was still asleep. He often was in the mornings, as he kept odd hours—sleep was a concern of the body and of convenience, he declared, not of the clock. I went into the scullery and pumped water into the sink to wash my sweaty face and dirty hands and arms, but when my fingers groped for the towel they found the rail empty. As I patted about in blind irritation I heard a movement in the scullery doorway and the missing towel was pressed into my hand. I seized it and put my face into it.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Hudson,” I said into the cloth. “I heard you talking with someone. Is this a bad time to come?” When no answer came I looked up and saw a portly, moustachioed figure in the doorway, smiling radiantly. Even without my spectacles I knew instantly who it was and concealed my wariness. “Dr. Watson, I perceive?” I dried my hands and we shook. He held on to mine for a moment, beaming into my face.

  “He was right. You are lovely.”

  This confused me to no end. Who on earth was “he”? Surely not Holmes. And “lovely”? Stinking of sweat, in mismatched wool stockings with holes in both toes, hair straggling and one leg mud to the knee—lovely?

  I extricated my hand, found my glasses on the sideboard, put them on, and his round face came into focus. He was looking at me with such complete, unaffected pleasure that I simply could not think what to do, so I just stood there. Stupidly.

  “Miss Russell, I am so very happy to meet you at last. I will speak quickly because I think Holmes is about to arise. I wanted to thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for what you have done for my friend in the last few months. Had I read it in a casebook I would not have believed it, but I see and believe.”

  “You see what?” I said. Stupidly. Like a buffoon.

  “I’m sure you knew that he was ill, though not perhaps how ill. I watched him and despaired, for I knew that at that rate he would not see a second summer, possibly not even the new year. But since May
he has put on half a stone, his heartbeat is strong, his colour good, and Mrs. Hudson says he sleeps—irregularly, as always, but he sleeps. He says he has even given up the cocaine to which he was rapidly becoming addicted—given it up. I believe him. And I thank you, with all my soul, for you have done what my skills could not, and brought back my truest friend from the grave.”

  I stood there struck dumb with confusion. Holmes, ill? He had looked thin and grey when we first met, but dying? A sardonic voice from the next room made us both start guiltily.

  “Oh come now, Watson, don’t frighten the child with your exaggerated worries.” Holmes came to the doorway in his mouse-coloured robe. “‘From the grave’ indeed. Overworked, perhaps, but one foot in the grave, hardly. I admit that Russell has helped me relax, and God knows I eat more when she is here, but it is little more than that. I’ll not have you worrying the child that she’s in any way responsible for me, do you hear, Watson?”

  The face that turned towards me was so stricken with guilt that I felt the last of my wish to dislike him dissolve, and I began to laugh.

  “But, I only wished to thank her—”

  “Very well, you’ve thanked her. Now let us have our tea while Mrs. Hudson finds some breakfast for us. Death and resurrection,” he snorted. “Ridiculous!”

  I enjoyed that day, although at times it gave me the feeling of opening a book halfway through and trying to reconstruct what had gone before. Previously unknown characters meandered in and out of the conversation, place-names referred in shorthand to whole adventures, and, overall, the long years of a constructed relationship stood before me, an intricate edifice previously unseen. It was the sort of situation in which a third party, namely myself, could have easily felt awkward and outdistanced, but oddly enough I did not. I think it was because I was so very secure in my knowledge of the building Holmes and I had already begun. Even in the few weeks I had known him we had come far, and I no longer had any fear of Watson and what he represented. Watson, for his part, never feared or resented me. Before that day I would have scornfully said he was too dim-witted to see me as a threat. By the afternoon I knew that it was because his heart was too large to exclude anything concerning Holmes.