The Mary Russell Series Books 1-4

by Laurie R. King

  “Dogs eat a lot of bones, don’t they?” I wondered what this was all leading up to, but it appeared that he had what he was after.

  “Well, thank you again, Mrs. Woods, and don’t forget that Miss Russell wants that recipe.”

  She waved us merrily out the kitchen door. The dogs were there, lying about on a struggling patch of much-dug-up lawn, and ignored us completely. We circled the house and strode off down the road.

  “Holmes, what was that about the cakes? You know I don’t know a thing about baking. Or do you think the poisonous things are the cause of Mr. Barker’s illness?”

  “Merely a ruse, Russell. Is it not nice of the government to arrange this telephone line for the use of the Barkers and myself? To say nothing of the birds.” The line overhead was dotted with singing black bodies, and a pointillist line of white defined one edge of the road. I looked at the face of my companion and read satisfaction and not a little mischief.

  “I’m sorry, Holmes, but what are we looking for? Did you see something on the roof?”

  “Oh, Russell, it is I who should apologise. Of course, you did not see the roof. Had you, you would have found this,” he said, holding out a tiny splinter of black wood, “and half a dozen cigarette ends, which we shall analyse when we get back to the cottage.”

  I examined the tiny sliver of wood, but it said nothing. “May I have a hint, please, Holmes?”

  “Russell, I am most disappointed. It is really quite simple.”

  “Elementary, in fact?”

  “Precisely. Consider, then, the following: a chip of treated wood atop an unused tower; market day; bones; Sepik River art; an absence of poison; and the woods that the road cuts through up ahead.”

  I stopped dead, my mind working furiously while Holmes leant on his stick and watched with interest. A chip of wood…someone on the tower…we knew that, why should…market day…a set market day…with bones to feed the dogs while the telephone line that lay along the road—I looked up, affronted.

  “Are you telling me the butler did it?”

  “I’m afraid it does happen. Shall we search the woods for the débris?”

  It took us about ten minutes to find a small clearing strewn with bones. The butcher had been contributing to the dogs’ diet for some months, judging by the age of some of the dry brown knuckle-bones.

  “Do you feel like a spot of climbing, Russell? Or shall I?”

  “If I might borrow your belt for safety, I should be happy to.” We examined the nearby telephone poles until Holmes gave a low exclamation.

  “This one, Russell.” I went over to where he stood and saw the unmistakable signs of frequent, and recent, climbing spikes.

  “I saw no sign of spikes or climbing on his shoes, did you?” I asked as I bent to unlace my own heavy boots.

  “No, but I am certain that a search through his room would give us a pair with suggestive scuffs and scratches.”

  “Right, I’m ready. Catch me if I fall.” Leaning back against the circle of our combined belts I planted my bare feet firmly onto the rough wood and began slowly to inch my way up: step, step, shift the belt; step, step, shift. I made the top without mishap, hooked myself into greater security, and set to an examination of the wires that were attached to the pole. The marks were clear.

  “There are signs of a line being tapped in here,” I called down to Holmes. “Someone has been here within the last few days, from the lack of dust at the contact point. Shall we come back with a fingerprint kit?” I climbed down and returned to Holmes his belt. He looked dubiously at the bent buckle. “Perhaps a stronger climbing tether would be advised,” I added.

  “I think, if the weather holds, we will be able to catch the fingers themselves in action, if not tonight, then certainly tomorrow. Remind me to telephone our good hostess when we get back, to thank her and to enquire as to her husband’s state of health.”

  The sun was low when we walked into the cottage, where the air was sweeter now than it had been at midday. Holmes went off to the laboratory with the cigarette ends while I found the cold food Mrs. Hudson had left for us and made coffee. We ate hunched over microscopes, though our greasy fingerprints on the slides helped not at all. Finally, Holmes sat back.

  “The cigarettes are from a small tobacconist in Portsmouth. I trust the police there could make a few enquiries for us. First, however, Mrs. Barker.”

  The telephone was answered by the lady herself. Holmes thanked her again for her hospitality, and I could tell by his subtle reaction to her words that she was not alone.

  “Mrs. Barker, I wanted to thank your husband as well. Is he there? No? Oh, I am sorry to hear that, but you know, he didn’t seem well this afternoon. Tell me, does your husband smoke cigarettes? No, I thought not. Oh, it’s nothing. Mrs. Barker, listen to me. I believe your husband will be fine, do you understand? Just fine. Yes. Good night, Madam, and thank you again.”

  His eyes positively glowed as he hung up.

  “It’s tonight then, Holmes?”

  “So it appears. Mr. Barker has retreated to his room, to the gentle ministrations of his manservant. Why don’t you have a rest, Russell? I will make a telephone call to the people in charge of this sort of thing, but I am certain we have at least two hours before anything will happen.”

  I did as he suggested, and despite my excitement I drifted off to the mutter of his voice in the next room. I was awakened some time later by wheels in the drive and came down to find Holmes in the sitting room with two men.

  “Good, Russell, get yourself ready. Your warmest coat, now, we may be some time. Russell, this is Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith, who have come from London for our little affair. Gentlemen, Miss Russell, my right hand. Shall we go?” Holmes shouldered a small knapsack and shoved his cloth cap on his head, and we crunched off down the drive.

  The manor house was three miles away by road, and we walked silently along the grass verge. Where the trees came up we left the road, following the woods down to the base of the main gardens. There we stood together and whispered quietly. A slight breeze had come up, covering our noises and carrying our scent away from the noses of the pack that inhabited the house.

  “We can see the top of the tower from here, I believe. Your colleagues should be in place by now at the hill gap and the sea?”

  “Yes, Mr. Holmes. We agreed to be settled in by eleven o’clock. It’s ten past now. We’re ready.”

  The lights went off one by one in the house above us, and we entered that particular state of boredom and excitement that accompanies a long wait. And long it was. At one o’clock I bent to whisper in Holmes’ ear.

  “Surely it was not so late when Mrs. Barker saw the lights from the garden? Perhaps it will not be tonight.”

  Holmes sat silent and unseen beside me, tense with thought.

  “Russell, do your eyes pick up anything from that tower?”

  I looked so hard at the black tower rising against the black night that my eyes began to quiver. I looked away slightly, and my eyes caught the faintest of changes in the air above the darkness. I let out a soft exclamation, and Holmes was up at once.

  “Quick, Russell, up in the tree. Here we sit, blind as moles, while he’s so far back from the edge we can’t see him. Up, Russell. What do you see?”

  As I climbed in the dark I watched the tower, and fifteen feet up the beam suddenly appeared—an intermittent flash from the back corner of the folly, pointing over our heads at the low hills and the sea beyond.

  “It’s there!” I scrambled down the branches, losing flesh. “He’s up there with a light—” but they were already off up the hill, their hand torches waving wildly in the darkness. I went after them, plunging across flower beds and around a fountain, and suddenly ahead of me the night exploded. Seventeen throats opened at the invaders, yaps and bays and blood-chilling snarls split the air, and the shouts of men, and then a tinkle of glass. I heard Holmes shouting to his companions, dogs began to yelp and howl, two voices coughed and cursed,
a larger breakage of glass, and the sound of a door flung open. Electrical lights began to go on in the house, and I could see dogs fleeing in every direction. The first whiff of stink made me hold my breath until I got inside the door. Inside was all lights now, the main kitchen switches all on, the tower next to me blazing with light. I ran in that direction, hearing heavy feet above me on the stairs. They and the voices faded suddenly, and I pictured them on the roof.

  A sudden thought occurred to me. There had been a good twenty seconds between the first alarm of the dogs and the time Holmes hit the steps. What if—? On the first-floor landing I ducked silently under the open stairway and waited, just in case. Suddenly a noise came from above, hushed, silent footsteps, hurrying down. I put my hand ready between the treads, caught sight of an unfamiliar shoe, and, praying it did not belong to Smith, Jones, or Barker, grabbed at it. A scream and a crashing fall that continued down the next flight of stairs were followed by shouts and steps from above. I unfolded myself slowly from my hiding place and went to see what I had done.

  I stood at the top of the flight, looking down at the crumpled figure of Terrence Howell and feeling my stomach wanting to rise up out of my throat. Then Holmes stood beside me, and I turned to him, and his arm went around my shoulders as the two men pushed past us. I was shaking.

  “Oh God, Holmes, I killed him. I didn’t think he’d fall that hard, oh God, how could I have done it?” I could feel the texture of the shoe leather impressed on my fingertips and see the tumble of limbs glimpsed through the steps. A voice came up to us.

  “Ring for a doctor, would you please, Mrs. Barker? He’s got a bad bang on his head and a few broken bones, but he’s alive.”

  Sweet, sweet relief flooded in, and my head suddenly felt light.

  “I need to sit down for a minute, Holmes.”

  He pushed me onto the top step and shoved my head down to my knees. His rucksack plopped down next to me, and I vaguely saw him pull a little bottle out of it. There was the pop of a small cork, and the concentrated reek of the morning’s experiment exploded into my nasal passages. I jerked back, and my head smacked hard onto the stone wall. Tears came to my eyes and my vision swam. When it cleared I saw Holmes, a stricken expression on his face.

  “Are you all right, Russell?”

  I felt my head delicately.

  “Yes, no thanks to your smelling salts, Holmes. I can’t see much point in reviving someone quite so dramatically, though it does make a fine weapon against a pack of dogs.” Relief edged into his eyes, and his normal sardonic expression reappeared.

  “When you’re up to it, Russell, we should see to Mr. Barker.”

  I reached for his hand and pulled myself up, and we walked slowly up to the old man’s room. A fug of sweat and illness met us at his door, and the light revealed the pale, wet skin and unfocussed eyes of high fever.

  “You sponge his face for a bit, Russell, until Mrs. Barker comes. I’m going to see what I can find in Howell’s room. Ah, there you are, Mrs. Barker. Your husband needs you. Come, Russell.” He swept past her anxious questions.

  “What are we looking for?” I asked in his wake.

  “A packet of powder or a bottle of liquid, one or the other. I’ll start with the wardrobe, you take the bathroom.” The bedroom was soon filled with mutters and flying articles of clothing, and the bathroom was awash with odours as I opened one after another of the multitude of scents, after-shave lotions, and bath soaps I found in the drawers. My poor nose was a bit numb, but I eventually found a bottle that did not smell right. I took it into the next room, where Holmes stood calf-deep in clothing, upended drawers, and bedclothes.

  “Have you found anything, Holmes?”

  “Cigarettes from Fraser’s of Portsmouth, boots with scratches over the arches. What have you there?”

  “I don’t know, I can’t smell a thing anymore. Does this smell like Eau d’Arabe to you?” A quick sniff and he waded out of the room, the bottle held high.

  “You’ve found it, Russell. Now to figure how much to give him.” He went to the stairs and poked his head over. “I say, Jones, is he awake yet?”

  “Not a chance. It’ll be hours.”

  “Ah well,” he said to me, “we’ll just have to experiment. Mrs. Barker.” She looked up as we came into the room, wet cloth in her hand. “Mrs. Barker, have you a small spoon? Yes, that will do. Russell, you pour, your hands are steady. Two drops to begin with. We’ll repeat it every twenty minutes until we see some results. Just slip it in between his teeth, that’s right. Will he take some water? Good. Now we wait.”

  “Mr. Holmes, what was that?”

  “It was the antidote to the poison which is affecting your husband, Madam. It is sure to be quite concentrated, and I don’t want to harm him by giving too much, too fast. He will have to take it for the rest of his life, but with it he will never be ill like this again.”

  “But, I told you he’s not being poisoned. I should be ill too, if he were.”

  “Oh no, he’s not received any poison for over a year. He receives the antidote regularly, as do you, without harm. You told me that his manservant had been with him for many years. Did that include his time in New Guinea?”

  “Yes, I believe so. Why do you ask?”

  “Madam, one of my hobbies is poisons. There is a small number of very rare poisons that, once administered, reside permanently in the nervous system. They are never got rid of, but can be effectively blocked by the regular ingestion of the antidote. One of these poisons is popular with a tribe in the Sepik River area of New Guinea. It is manufactured from a very odd variety of shellfish native to the area. In an interesting serendipity, the antidote comes from a plant which is also found only in that area. Obviously, while your husband was there, his servant conducted his own research on the side. I suppose he will tell us eventually why he chose to turn traitor, but turn traitor he did, and made use of the poison last year. Your husband made telephone calls generally on market day, did he not?”

  “Why, yes, how did you know? The Woodses were always driven to town by Ron, and I would either walk or go for a drive. And Howell—”

  “Howell would take the dogs for a walk, would he not?”

  “Why, yes. How—”

  “They would go down to the woods; he would climb up to the telephone line and listen in on your husband’s conversations while the dogs gnawed bones. On the next clear night he would fail to administer the antidote, cloister himself up with his master, and slip up to the roof to signal the results of his spying to a confederate on the coast. Ah, I think it is beginning to work already.”

  Two dazed eyes looked out of a pale face and fastened onto those of Mrs. Barker.

  “My dear,” he whispered, “what are these people doing here?”

  “Russell,” Holmes said quietly, “I believe we should see if we can help with moving Mr. Howell and leave these two good people. Mrs. Barker, I suggest that you guard this bottle most carefully until it can be analysed and duplicated. Good evening.”

  We found the ambulance attendants working their way awkwardly down the narrow steps. At the front door Jones waited to let them out. A familiar cacophony came from the other side. Holmes reached into his rucksack for the small bottle, but I laid a hand on his arm.

  “Let me try first,” I said. I cleared my throat, drew myself up to my full height (over six feet in those boots), and opened the door to face the pack. I put my hands on my hips and glared at them.

  “Shame on you!” Seventeen jaws slowly shut, thirty-four eyes were glued to my face. “Shame on you, all of you! Is this any way to treat agents of His Majesty? Whatever are you thinking?” Seventeen faces looked at each other, at me, at the men in the doorway. The wolfhound was the first to turn tail and skulk away into the dark, the Yorkie with the blue bow the last, but they all went.

  “Russell, there are unexplored depths to you,” murmured Holmes at my elbow. “Remind me to call you whenever there is a savage beast to be overcome.”
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br />   We saw the traitorous butler and his guards off through the gates and walked off down the dark road beneath the telephone line, and talked of various matters all the way home.

  4

  A Case of My Own

  What is petty and vile is better than that which is not at all.

  THE BARKER PROBLEM was the first time Holmes and I collaborated on a case (if one can consider it a collaboration when one person leads and the other follows instructions). The remaining days of the spring holiday went by uneventfully, and I returned to Oxford much invigorated by my hard labour under Patrick’s eye and by having bagged my first felon. (I ought perhaps to mention that the night’s work resulted in the capture of an even dozen of German spies, that Mr. Barker recovered his health, and that Mrs. Barker was quite generous in her payment for services rendered.)

  When I returned to my lodgings house Mr. Thomas seemed to approve of my appearance, and I know that I returned to maths, theological enquiry, and the career of Ratnakar Sanji with renewed enthusiasm. I made it a point also to take exercise more often, walking into the hills surrounding the city (with a book in hand, of course) and did not find myself quite so exhausted when the year ended in June.

  That spring and summer of 1918 was a time of intense emotions and momentous events for the country as well as for one female undergraduate. The Kaiser had begun his final, massive push, and the pinched and hungry faces around me began to look grim as well. We did not sleep well, behind our blackout curtains. And then, miraculously, the German offensive began to falter, while at the same time the Allied forces were taking on a constant flow of American transfusions, men and supplies. Even the huge and deadly May air raid on London did not change the increasing awareness that the German army was bleeding to death into the soil, and that after so many years of mere dogged existence, there was now a glimmer of future in the air.

  I strode home in midsummer eighteen and a half years old, strong and adult and with the world at my feet. That summer I began to take an active interest in the running of my farm, and began to ask Patrick the first questions about farming equipment and our plans for the post-war future.