The Mary Russell Series Books 1-4

by Laurie R. King

  “Russell?”

  “Holmes, could the man we’re looking for be a woman?”

  12

  Flight

  She eludes us on every side; she repudiates most of our rules and breaks our standards to pieces.

  "RUSSELL, YOU HAVE struck the very question upon which I proposed to meditate with my pipe. You have also saved me from the worst sin a detective can commit: overlooking the obvious. Show me what you have found.” His eyes gleamed fiercely in the lamplight. More lamps were sent for, and soon the little stone building blazed with light. Fowler was consulted and confirmed that the building had been cleaned about eight o’clock on what was now the previous night. I stood back with Lestrade, watching Holmes as he worked, tensely examining every scrap of evidence, muttering to himself continually, and occasionally snapping out instructions.

  “Boots again, the small boots, square heels, not new. A bicycle rider I see. Lestrade, have you had the Men’s blocked off, and the street outside? Good. She went here, here she stood. Hah! Another blonde hair; yes, too long for a man in this day, I think, and quite straight. Mark these envelopes please, Russell. Mud on her heels, traces in the sink, yes, and the tap. But no fingerprints on the mud. Gloves?” Holmes looked up absently at his reflection in the mirror, whistling softly through his teeth. “Why should she have mud on her gloves, and wash them? A perplexing question. Another light over here, Lestrade, and have the photographer take another set of the cab, would you, after MacReedy has finished? Yes, as I thought, right-handed. Washed, shook the water from her hands, or rather her gloves, and to the door. Off the footprints, man! Heaven help us. To the street, then…no! Not to the street, back on the path, here it is, and here.” He straightened up, winced, frowned vacantly up the bare branches overhead while we watched in silence. “But that makes no sense, unless—Lestrade, I shall need your laboratory tonight, and I want this entire park cordoned off—nobody, nobody at all to set foot here until I’ve seen it by daylight. Will it rain tonight, Russell?”

  “I don’t know London, but it does not feel like rain. It’s certainly too warm to snow.”

  “No, I think we may risk it. Bring those envelopes, Russell. We have much to do before morning.”

  Truth to tell it was Holmes who had much to do, as there was but one microscope and he refused to say what he was looking for. I labelled a few slides, my eyes heavy despite strong coffee, and the next thing I knew it was morning, Holmes was standing at the window tapping his pipe on his teeth, and I was nearly crippled from being asleep with my head on the desk for several hours. My spine cracked loudly as I sat back in the chair, and Holmes turned.

  “Ah, Russell,” he said lightly, “do you always make such a habit of sleeping in chairs? I doubt your aunt would approve. Mrs. Hudson definitely would not.”

  I rubbed my eyes and glared at his ever-tidy person bitterly. “I take it that your revolting good humour means that something from last night’s exercise has pleased you?”

  “On the contrary, my dear Russell, it has displeased me considerably. Vague suspicions flit about my mind, and not one of them pleases me.” His manner had grown distant and hard as he gazed unseeingly at the slides sprawled out on the workbench. He looked back at me with his steely eyes, then relaxed into a smile. “I shall tell you about it on our way to the park.”

  “Oh, Holmes, be reasonable. You may be presentable, if a bit idiosyncratic in topper and tails, but how can I go out like this?” He took in my rumpled gown, my town stockings and impractical shoes, and nodded. “I’ll ask if there’s a matron who can help us.” Before he could move, there was a knock at the door.

  “Come in.”

  A tense young PC with an untamed cowlick stood in the doorway.

  “Mr. Holmes, Inspector Lestrade asked me to tell you that there’s a parcel for the young lady at the front desk, but—”

  Holmes exploded out of the room, giving lie to any rumours of slowness, pain, or rheumatism. I could hear his voice shouting “Don’t touch that parcel, don’t touch it, get a bomb disposal man first, don’t touch it, did you catch the person who brought it, Lestrade…”

  His voice faded as I followed him down the hall to the stairs, the young policeman jabbering away at my side.

  “I was going to say, but he left, the package is with the bomb squad now, and Inspector Lestrade would like Mr. Holmes present at the questioning of the young man who brought it in. He didn’t give me a chance to finish, sir.” This last to Lestrade, who had intercepted Holmes in his precipitous flight. We could see the men at work downstairs, one with a stethoscope to the paper-wrapped parcel on the desk. We watched tensely, and I became aware of the unaccustomed silence. Traffic had been diverted. Holmes turned to the inspector.

  “You have the man who brought it?”

  “Yes, he’s here. He says a man stopped him in the street an hour ago, offering two sovereigns to deliver this package. Small blond man in a heavy coat, said it was for a friend who needed it this morning but he couldn’t take it himself. Gave him a sovereign then, and took his address to send the second after he’d confirmed delivery.”

  “Which will never arrive.”

  “The boy expects it to. Not too bright, this one. Not even sure he knows what a sovereign’s worth, just likes the shine.”

  We had watched the two men work this whole time, their strain palpable as they gently snipped twine, cut away paper, and uncovered the contents, which had the appearance of folded clothing. Gently, slowly, the package was disassembled. In the end there lay draped over the police desk one silk shirt, a soft wool jacket, matching trousers, two angora stockings, and a pair of shoes. A folded note fell out of this last set of items and fluttered to the floor.

  “Use your gloves on that,” called Holmes.

  The puzzled but relieved bomb man brought the note to Lestrade in a pair of surgical tweezers. He read it, handed it to Holmes, and Holmes read it aloud in a voice that slowed and climbed in dismay and disbelief.

  “Dear Miss Russell [he read],

  Knowing his limitations, I expect your companion will neglect to provide you with suitable clothing this morning. Please accept these with my compliments. You will find them quite comfortable.

  —An admirer”

  Holmes blinked several times and hurled the note at Lestrade. “Give this to your print man,” he snarled. “Give the clothes to the laboratory, check them for foreign objects, corrosive powder, everything. Find out where they came from. And, for the love of God, can someone please provide Miss Russell with ‘suitable clothing’ so this case will not come to a complete standstill?” As he turned away in a cold fury I heard him breathe, “This becomes intolerable.”

  A variety of clothing appeared, part uniform, part civilian, all uncomfortable. We set off for the park in a police automobile, Lestrade in front with the driver, Holmes beside me, silent and remote and staring out the window while his long fingers beat a rhythm on his knee. He did not divulge his laboratory findings. At the park he dashed up and down the paths for a very few minutes, nodding to himself, then bundled us brusquely back into the car. He turned a deaf ear to Lestrade’s questions, and we rode in silence back to New Scotland Yard to make our way to Lestrade’s office, where we were left alone. Holmes went over to Lestrade’s desk, opened a drawer, took out a packet of cigarettes, removed one, lit it with a vesta, and went to the window, where he stood with his back to me, staring unseeing out onto the busy Embankment and the river traffic beyond, smoke curling through the dirty glass. He smoked the cigarette to the end without speaking, then walked back to the desk and pressed the stub with great deliberation into the ashtray.

  “I must go out,” he said curtly. “I refuse to take any of these heavy-footed friends of yours with me. They will send the wildlife scurrying for cover. While I am away, draw up a list of necessities and give it to the matron. Clothing for two or three days, nothing formal. Men’s or women’s, as you like. You’d best add a few things for me as well—you know my
sizes. It will save me some time. I shall be back in a couple of hours.”

  I stood up angrily. “Holmes, you can’t do this to me. You’ve told me nothing, you’ve consulted me not at all, just pushed me here and there and run roughshod over any plans I might have had and kept me in the dark as if I were Watson, and now you propose to go off and leave me with a shopping list.” He was already moving toward the door, and I followed him across the room, arguing.

  “First you call me your associate, and then you start treating me like a maid. Even an apprentice deserves better than that. I’d like to know—”

  I had just come up to the window when a sound like a meaty palm slapping a table came from just outside the wall, followed a second later by a more familiar report. Holmes reacted instantly and dove across the room at me just as the window imploded in a shower of flying razor-sharp glass and a second slap came from the opposite wall. We both came up in a crouch, and Holmes seized my shoulder.

  “Are you hit?”

  “My God, was that—”

  “Russell, are you all right?” he demanded furiously.

  “Yes, I think so. Do you—” but he was sprinting low towards the door as it opened and an inspector in mufti looked in open-mouthed. Holmes gathered him up, and they pounded off down the stairs in pursuit. I steeled myself to creep around to the broken window and edge one eye over the lower corner. A steam launch was making its rapid way downriver, but there was also a mother with a pram stopped on the bridge, turned to look at a retreating taxi-cab, her shoulders in an attitude of surprise. Inside of a minute Holmes and the others had swept up to her, and she was soon surrounded by gesticulating men pointing east over the river and south across the bridge. I saw Holmes look unerringly up to where I stood in the window, turn to say something to the tweedy inspector, and then set his shoulders resolutely and walk, hatless and head down, back to the Yard.

  With typical police efficiency and priorities, Lestrade’s office was filled with people measuring angles and retrieving bullets from the brickwork, none of whom had a dustpan or a means of blocking the icy air from the window. I retreated into the next office but one, a room with no window. As soon as Holmes appeared I knew there would be no arguing with him, although I intended to try. “I think you’d best change that order to clothing for several days, Russell,” were his first words. “Stay away from windows, don’t eat or drink anything you’re not absolutely certain is safe, and keep your revolver with you.”

  “Don’t take sweets from strangers, you mean?” I said sarcastically, but he would not anger.

  “Precisely. I shall return in two or three hours. Be ready to leave when I get back.”

  “Holmes, you must at least—”

  “Russell,” he interrupted, and came over to grasp my shoulders, “I am very sorry, but time is of the utmost urgency. You were going to say that I must tell you what is happening, and I shall. You wish to be consulted; I intend to do so. In fact, I intend to place a fair percentage of the decisions to be made into your increasingly competent hands. But not just at this moment, Russell. Please, be satisfied with that.” And he shifted his hands to both sides of my head, bent forward, and brushed his lips gently across my brow. I sat down abruptly, felled by this thunderbolt, until long after he had gone…which, I realized belatedly, was precisely why he had done it.

  HOLMES’ AIR OF illicit excitement told me that he was extremely unlikely to be back from his haunts in two or three hours. Irritated, I scribbled the lists for the young policewoman, gave her the last of my money, and turned my back on the windowless office. I was jumpy at every window I passed, but I wanted to take a closer look at the parcel of clothing that had arrived for me that morning, which I had only seen from a distance. I made my way to the laboratories, where I disturbed a gentleman in an unnecessarily professional white coat standing at a bench with a shoe in one hand. He turned at my entrance, and when I saw what he held, I was stunned speechless. The shoe was my own.

  This pair of shoes now inhabiting the laboratory bench had disappeared from my rooms some time during the autumn, in one of those puzzling incidents that happen and are finally dismissed with a shrug. I had worn them the second week of October, and two weeks later when I went to look for them, they were not there. It troubled me, but frankly more because I took it as a sign of severe absentmindedness than anything sinister. I had obviously left them somewhere. And here they were.

  I was relieved to see that the clothes were not familiar to me, although very much to my taste. They were all new, ready-made from a large shop in Liverpool, unremarkable, though not inexpensive. Thus far the examiners had found nothing but clothing—not so much as a stray shirt pin.

  The note that had accompanied the parcel lay in a steel tray across the bench, and I walked around to take a look at it. It was grey with fingerprint powder, but even if the sender had been careless, the paper was too rough to retain prints. I picked it up, read it with grudging amusement, noted casually the characteristics of the type, and started to lay it back down, and then I froze in disbelief. Yes, that’s one too many shocks in the last few days, my brain commented analytically. I fumbled for a stool and after some time became aware of the technician’s alarm. I told him what I had seen. I told Lestrade the same thing when he appeared. Some time later I found myself in the windowless room with the policewoman who had returned from shopping saying how she’d been careful to watch each item taken down and wrapped, and I made polite noises of (I suppose) gratitude and then sat there for a long while with my brain steaming furiously away.

  By the time Holmes blew in, hair awry and a wild light in his eyes, I had recovered enough to be examining the woman’s purchases. I drew back sharply as he entered and dropped a boot.

  “Good God, Holmes, where have you been to pick up such a stench? Down on the docks, obviously, and from your feet I should venture to say you’d been in the sewers, but what is that horrid sweet smell?”

  “Opium, my dear protected child. It clawed its way into my hair and clothes, though I was not partaking. I had to be certain I was not being followed.”

  “Holmes, we must talk, but I cannot breathe in your presence. There is a fine, if austere, set of shower baths in the prisoners’ section. Take these clothes, but don’t let them touch the thing you have on.”

  “No time, Russell. We must fly.”

  “Absolutely not.” My news was vital, but it would wait, and this would not.

  “What did you say?” he said dangerously. Sherlock Holmes was not accustomed to outright refusals, not even from me.

  “I know you well enough, Holmes, to suspect that we are about to embark on a long and arduous journey. If it is a choice between expiring slowly from your fumes or being blown to pieces, I choose the latter. Gladly.”

  Holmes glowered at me for some seconds, saw that I was on this issue inflexible, and with a curse worthy of the docks snatched the proffered clothes and hurled himself out the door, furiously demanding directions from the poor constable stationed outside.

  When he burst in again I was ready for travel, a booted young man. No doubt, I thought, the newness of the clothes would quickly fade in Holmes’ company.

  “Very well, Russell, I am clean. Come.”

  “There’s a cup of tea and a sandwich for you while I look to your back.”

  “For God’s sake, woman, we must be on the docks in thirty-five minutes! We’ve no time for a tea party.”

  I sat calmly, my hands in my lap. I noticed with interest that his cheekbones became slightly purple when he was severely perturbed, and his eyes bulged slightly. He was positively quivering when he threw off his coat, and one button of his misused shirt skittered across the floor. I put it into a pocket and picked up the gauze while he gulped his tea. I worked quickly on the nearly healed wound, and we were on the street within five minutes.

  We dove into the back of a sleek automobile that idled at the kerb and squealed away. The driver looked more like a ruffian than he did the own
er of such a machine, but I had no say in the matter. I waited for Holmes to stop his silent fuming, which was not until we were south of Tower Bridge.

  “Look here, Russell,” he began, “I won’t have you—” but I cut him off immediately by the simple expedient of thrusting a finger into his face. (Looking back I am deeply embarrassed at the effrontery of a girl not yet nineteen pointing her finger at a man nearly three times her age, and her teacher to boot, but at the time it seemed appropriate.)

  “You look here, Holmes. I cannot force you to confide in me, but I will not be bullied. You are not my nanny, I am not your charge to be protected and coddled. You have not given me any cause to believe that you were dissatisfied with my ability at deduction and reasoning. You admit that I am an adult—you called me ‘woman’ not ten minutes ago—and as a thinking adult partner I have the right to make my own decisions. I saw you come in filthy and tired, having not eaten, I was sure, since last evening, and I exercised my right to protect the partnership by putting a halt to your stupidity. Yes, stupidity. You believe yourself to be without the limitations of mere mortals, I know, but the mind, even your mind, my dear Holmes, is subject to the body’s weakness. No food or drink and filth on an open wound puts the partnership—puts me!—at an unnecessary risk. And that is something I won’t have.”

  I had forgotten the driver, who proved an appreciative audience to this dramatic declaration. He burst into laughter and pounded on the wheel as he slid through the narrow street, dodging horses, walls, and vehicles. “Right good job, Miss,” he guffawed, “make him wash his socks at night, too, whyn’t ya?” At last here I had the grace to blush.

  The driver was still grinning, and even Holmes had softened when we reached our destination, a dank and filthy wharf somewhere down near Greenwich. The river was greasy and black in the early twilight, high and very cold looking, its calmer reaches one undulating mat of flotsam. The swollen body of a dog rocked gently against a pier. The area was deserted, though voices and machinery noises drifted from the next row of buildings.