(I recount these details to show that I was not entirely oblivious to the world around me. Just not attentive enough.)
“Nah, guess I don’t,” he said, running a hand over his visage. “That’s probably why I never doubted who my mother was—Mum and I both have my granddad’s looks, or so I’m told. Identification, is it? I didn’t bring my passport, didn’t expect—ah, what about these?” His fingers came out of an inner pocket with a photograph and a golden chain. He handed me the first.
It showed two women and an infant. The women sat in the formal pose required of a slow shutter speed, although it had been taken in a garden, not a studio—a private garden, most likely, since neither wore a hat. The infant was as unformed as any small human, little more than pale hair and layers of cloth. The woman holding him was blonde, with light-coloured eyes, and I thought—as I had from the first time I’d seen this photograph, years before—that there was something odd about the way the woman’s hands clutched the baby, thrusting him at the camera rather than cuddling him to her. Her features, too, had some faint air of hidden meaning, a triumph almost, that made one very aware of the empty hands of the woman at her side.
The other woman, taller, straight of back and dark of hair and eye, looked into the camera with a gaze of sad acceptance. Even if I had not recognised this woman’s features, I would have known her by that expression: I see what you are up to, it said, but I love you anyway.
Heaven knows she’d had plenty of opportunities to look at me that way, over the years.
I handed the photograph back to Samuel Hudson. “She has a copy of that.” I did not add, Hers is worn down to the paper from ten thousand touches of her finger. My mother had used that very gesture, on the mezuzah at our door.
“Well, that’s me,” he said. “With my mother and aunt—although until just a few months ago, I thought the two went the other way around.”
I glanced up sharply at the bitter edge in his voice, to see his other piece of evidence dangling from thumb and forefinger: a gold chain strung through a hole drilled in an old half sovereign coin.
“Does she still wear hers?” he asked.
The chain looked too bright and the gold of the pendant less worn than I remembered, but the necklace definitely caught my attention. I’d never seen it around Mrs Hudson’s neck, but I recognised it as the flash of gold I’d first spotted years before, tucked in the bottom of her incongruously large and ornate jewellery box. I might have taken no notice, at the time, but for the casual haste with which she had flipped something over it.
“No, she doesn’t wear one like that,” I told him.
“Well,” he said, “I guess she’ll remember it anyway.” He gave it a polish on his coat-tails, held it up in admiration, then set off on a circuit of the room, pausing on his way to drop the chain over the jack-knife Holmes always left on the mantelpiece. I watched with increasing unease as he surveyed the walls, peered at the books on the shelves, poked an obtrusive finger through the clutter of papers and oddments on the table under the window. I was sorry I’d invited him in. And I changed my mind about letting him cool his heels here until she returned.
I would give him a polite cup of tea, and I would get rid of him. Let Mrs Hudson meet him on her own terms.
“Tea,” I said. “Just let me put on the kettle. How long have you been in England? I hope your trip went well—that you weren’t caught in those storms I read about last month?”
As I moved in the direction of the kitchen, I became aware of two things. First, I wanted badly to be alone, just for a minute, so I could try to beat my thoughts into order. (Mother? Mother! Though nothing like her. Shouldn’t I be pleased? Does that make him my sort-of…brother? But—) Second and even more peculiar, while my mouth was making conversation, my body wanted nothing to do with him. I was edging away towards the kitchen door because I did not want to turn my back on this man.
What was going on? I knew of no wrongdoing on his part, other than making his mother sigh. Still, I kept retreating backwards, making conversation as I went—too bad he’d hit a rainy day because the view from Beachy Head was glorious. Where did he live in Australia? Was he staying in Sussex or just down from London for the day?
Sydney, came the reply (which I knew), and only for the day (a relief, although he hadn’t come far that morning: the car bonnet was shiny, not hot enough to steam away the rain). At that point, my heels touched wood, so I ducked through the door and let it close, to stand with my hands resting on the old, well-scrubbed wooden table. I took a deep breath, then another.
I, better than most, had reason to understand that when one does not face up to events, they return—with a vengeance. My mother’s death and my desperate adoption of Mrs Hudson in her place might be facts of a distant past—but only until a situation came along to upend matters.
Well, that situation had arrived. Mrs Hudson was not my mother. Mrs Hudson was getting old, and deserved a full relationship with her son—her actual child—before she died. That he was a touch smarmy for my taste had nothing to do with matters.
After a moment, I scrubbed my damp palms down my shirt-front and picked up the kettle. (The new whistling tea-kettle, that I gave her for her birthday, just last— Oh, get a hold of yourself, Russell!) I filled it, shoved the whistle in place, and set its broad bottom over the flame. I would not hurry. Samuel Hudson might push through the door at any moment, to invade his mother’s private realm, but he had the right to invade. This was his mother’s home. If she were here, she would permit him inside. Therefore, so would I.
But I was relieved when he did not follow me.
Kettle on, two cups on a tray, anything else a hostess ought to do? A plate of something hospitable, perhaps? I searched through the tins where she stored her baked goods, and found a startling array of biscuits, sponges, and tea cakes—ah, yes: we were having a party on Saturday. I hesitated between her Sultana biscuits and a loaf with strips of lemon peel on the top. Which would an Australian salesman prefer? Perhaps I should ask.
“Mrs—your mother has made Sultana biscuits and a lemon loaf. Which would you—”
My voice strangled to a halt as I stepped into the sitting room and looked into the working end of a revolver.
Behind the gun stood a man with murder in his eyes.
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The Marriage of Mary Russell Page 6