The Mary Russell Companion

by Laurie R. King

  Night came. Mrs Hudson—our latest Mrs Hudson—did the washing up and grumbled her way towards bed. The downstairs lights were turned off, then those in the laboratory, and finally the bedroom went dark. All this time, Patrick sat prominently behind the wheel of the Land Rover while the dogs prowled the grounds.

  Except that shortly after dark, Patrick’s outline in the car was in fact a scarecrow made of stuffed shirts and a hat. Leaving the more obedient of his two dogs to guard the dummy and the car, and the less obedient one inside the house to bark warningly, the three of us set off across the dark landscape.

  One advantage of having walked the Downs for the better part of a century— daylight and dark, rain and snow—is that one’s feet know the way when one’s eyes do not. We strolled in easy silence over the cropped grass, keeping to the sheep-tracks to reduce the sound of crackling frost. In half an hour, we came out in the roadside car-park near the road to Eastbourne, and Patrick went forward to tap at the window of the Mercedes sedan that waited there.

  8.

  The door of the waiting car clicked open and the gravel crunched. Our actor greeted us in low whispers as we handed over Holmes’ outer garments (which the Americans might recognise, if they had been keeping watch for some days) in exchange for his keys. In under two minutes, we were in the car and Patrick was leading the actor back the way we had come.

  He was, I thought, already dressed and made up for his role, although anyone paying attention to his gait would know his middle-aged strength—he was a competitive runner, which gave him the necessary thinness to enact Holmes. In fact, I learnt later, this fleetness of foot came in useful the very next afternoon, when the waiting Sherlockians saw “Holmes” set out for a walk along the cliffs and took off baying in pursuit, only to be utterly confounded when Sherlock Holmes broke into a brisk sprint and left them panting in his wake.

  (The following day, Patrick withdrew his guard, and within the hour, knock came on the door. The actor was suitably taken aback by these Americans who imagined his stone cottage was inhabited by Sherlock Holmes. With exquisite rural politeness he asked, Were they not aware that Sherlock Holmes was a fictional character?)

  By the time the confused and downhearted pack walked back up the drive, we had been gone for three days.

  9.

  The house in Oxford to which we retreated was in the northern district of the town, a tree-studded neighbourhood of large brick houses inhabited by dons and their families. It is close enough to town that a stroll to the Bodleian and Radcliffe libraries, even with an arm full of books, is a pleasant interlude; it is far enough from the centre that the wrangle of bells on a Sunday morning is amusing, not headache-inducing.

  My house is like its fellows from the outside, with high walls on all sides, a spacious gravel drive at the front, and a narrow turret glued onto one corner. The house and its garden are too nondescript for any passer-by to bother with a second glance, and as far as the neighbours are concerned, the owner is an independent older woman who spends much of her live travelling and working on her academic studies, which (it being Oxford) could be Romanian campanology or liver flukes of the upper Nile.

  Many, many years before, Holmes had arrived at my student flat through an upper window, setting off an elaborate and circuitous traverse of Oxford’s roof-tops in the snow. Fortunately for us, this time I was permitted to drive through the elaborate and circuitous city roads in the actor’s Mercedes.

  10.

  My Oxford house has a self-contained apartment at the front, in which I habitually install a series of graduate students, mostly women, whose only rent is an agreement to air the rooms, keep the car’s battery charged, pick me up at the train station if I ring, and above all, to tell the neighbours nothing about me. The resident that year was a small, wide girl with adenoids and a brilliant medical mind, who greeted our 6:00 am arrival in a startling pink dressing gown, a cup of tea in one hand and the current copy of Lancet in the other.

  I greeted her, and asked if she was aware of any stray Americans asking about me, or if she had received any odd telephone calls. “No calls, no questions,” she said. “Shall I bring a bottle of milk through to your kitchen?”

  I thanked her for her thoughtfulness, blessed her for her preoccupation, and left luggage and husband in the house while I drove the Mercedes over to the train station for retrieval.

  I thought we were safe.

  11.

  I rang Patrick the following evening—trusting that our Sherlockian pursuers lacked the wherewithal to tap lines and trace telephone calls—to ask him to stow the trunk of memoirs with a third party for the time being. He told me of the pack’s confounding by the actor’s cross-country sprint, and said he would spend another night sleeping in the Land Rover at our door. On the morrow, he would load up our trunks and valuables and abandon his post, leaving the actor to his play.

  We spent a pleasant three days in my second home of Oxford, visiting with old friends, pursuing our varied studies, and worrying not in the least that we would be discovered—the ancient city is generously endowed with ancient academics, and even the closing days of April are cool enough to justify low-pulled hats and the occasional scarf.

  On the fourth day, my medical student greeted our return with the news that a couple of rather odd Americans had come to the door while we were out. With sinking heart, I asked if they had worn lapel pins with pipes, deerstalker caps, or 221B.

  No, she replied—they were hounds. “Holmes,” I shouted up the stairs, “time to be off.” But when I went to get out the car, they were lying wait.

  12.

  You need to remember, this was 1992, and the number of people who knew that Sherlock Holmes had a wife was relatively small. No doubt our pursuing Sherlockians thought I was a housekeeper, or a nurse—they were standing watch outside of the gate, and began to bay wildly when first I set foot out of the house. I feigned great age—admittedly not a difficult act, at ninety two years—and hobbled to the car, back bent with apparent arthritis and a large straw hat pulled down, not so much to hide my features as to explain why I wasn’t seeing ten jumping figures thirty feet away. I got the door open with my ancient hands, bent slowly—slowly, to retrieve some small object from the door pocket, then inadequately closed the door and, crouching low, crept back into the house.

  Thus, before dawn the next morning, the three who had been set to watch overnight from their hire car recognised the hatted old lady behind the wheel of the motor that pulled out of the gate, and hastened to follow—it being too dark to see that the person at the wheel was a foot shorter and seventy years younger. Nor did they notice that the brisk young man closing the gate was in fact the old woman they thought they were following.

  Whistling, I went to finish my coffee and leave the house, on what promised to be a perfectly lovely May-Day morn.

  13.

  May-Day in Oxford is an ancient ritual, practiced with such enthusiasm that it has been suspended at various times over the centuries due to excessive unruliness. The celebration begins well before dawn, when from all directions people trickle into the high street, making their way in the direction of the Magdalene College tower.

  As the sun hits the spires (or, illuminates the drizzle), choir-boys raise their voices to the day, a sweet, high chorus that trails across a packed High street, touching the families and homeless men, passing tradesmen and beer-sodden undergraduates, antiquarians and tourists.

  William Holman Hunt, May Morning on Magdalene Tower

  Participants of the previous night’s college balls, held upright by the press of the throng, pass around half-empty bottles of cheap champagne, most of them bedraggled, tieless, sometimes shoeless, and often sodden from the puzzling ritual of leaping out of punts or off of bridges in their evening dress. When the snatches of song finish drifting down from the tower, the crowd shakes off its attentive silence, gives a noisy pulse, and reverses its progress, out from Magdalene College. Morris dancers bounce and rattle on
the paving stones surrounding the Radcliffe Camera, Hobby horses give the kiss of fertility to doomed young women, odd foodstuffs are sold, the manifold clergy of the town looks on fondly at the pagan frenzy, and the rites of spring are officially ushered in.

  When the sky was still dark overhead, Holmes and I let ourselves out of the gate and joined the trickle, soon stream, of May Day celebrants. Before the Magdalene choir had finished, we were spotted.

  14.

  I do not know if our American pursuers were actively watching for us, or if they had decided to make the best of their visit and take in the May Day festivities while waiting for us to emerge, but at the corner of the Botanic Gardens, where Rose Lane comes into the High, the music drifting from on high was shattered by loud American accents: “Hey! There he is!”

  And the hunt was on again.

  I spoke in Holmes’ ear, ordering him to abandon me. He hesitated, being neither cowardly nor disloyal, but even he could see the logic in my suggestion. He bent down enough to vanish in the crowd, while I appropriated a nearby furled umbrella (in any English crowd, there will always be a man who doubts the clear sky overhead) and tripped one attacker, jabbed the second in the stomach, and propelled the third into the embrace of a large, intoxicated Rugby player.

  With that trio temporarily disposed of, and making certain they had seen me, their unlikely assailant, I pushed into the crowd, crossing the High and making for Magdalene Bridge.

  Halfway across, I ducked down to make my way back up the human stream, dodging into the grounds of the Botanic Garden towards the Cherwell beyond. Holmes had located a punt, worked its anchoring pole out of the bottom, and was waiting for me. I heard a shout behind me—English, not American—and tumbled into the boat. He pushed off, and I turned to face the boat’s irate owners.

  “Terribly sorry,” I called to them. “There’s a trio of Americans just behind you who said they’d be happy to repay you for the hire cost. You take it up with them, there’s a good lad.”

  A sweet old lady in a boat; how could he argue with me?

  15.

  Had our pursuers been familiar with Oxford, they could have caught us up several times over. As it was, by the time they extricated themselves from the young man whose boat we had stolen, then consulted their maps, we were away from the river-side path in Christchurch meadow—by this time, I was punting—and down the new cut to the Isis proper.

  By the time they had located the Thames path, gone back up to Folly Bridge, and crossed the river to get to the towpath, the current had moved us briskly downstream. The fleet-footed leaders nearly caught us up at Iffley, when the lockkeeper protested about working the locks for one solitary punt, but a few coins changed his mind, and we were away.

  The day was warm, the cushions were comfortable, and the merest touch of the pole kept us moving in the right direction. We stopped from time to time to take refreshment. And at one such stop, I bought an antique post-card, thinking to amuse Ms King in California.

  When evening came upon us, I changed into raiment that would draw less notice than trousers on a woman my age, and we abandoned our vessel. In a fit of whimsy, I left the day’s clothing folded in the boat, with my secondary pair of spectacles, since every reader of crime fiction knows that suicides always remove their spectacles.

  Thus, the explanation of how Ms King came to possess my memoirs. I may at a later time recount the story of our subsequent communications: What I meant by the antique postcard that she read as, More to follow; why we were in Utrecht when I sent it; and why, most puzzling of all, The Times did not publish its account of the punt washed up in central London for an entire three years.

  Is it not satisfying to know that there is always more to any tale?

  A Case in Correspondence

  The Twenty Documents

  in the Case

  (With transcriptions)

  The people involved in this correspondence are:

  Mary Russell

  Sherlock Holmes

  William Mudd (Billy): a former Baker Street Irregular and page-boy, now owner of an investigations agency in London

  Mrs E. Hudson: Housekeeper, married to the original Mrs Hudson’s great-grandson

  Dr. Watson-Scopes: Granddaughter to Dr. John Watson

  “M”: Successor to Mycroft Holmes, in the government secret intelligence division

  Mrs. L Delaney: Either the original or the daughter of the Memoirs’ “Lulu”

  Laurie R. King: Agent and granddaughter of a friend from Russell’s childhood

  3 May 1992

  Holmes—I trust you reached home without difficulty, following my crass abandonment of you on the banks of the Thames. As I expected, I had no problem creating the façade of aged and infirm old woman—one of my rescuers even insisted on pressing a £5 note into the cabbie’s hand. I will be here at the Vicissitude for two or three days, completing that research the Americans interrupted. If you wish anything from Town, a note will reach me in the usual way. R

  PS. I discovered a box of ancient postal cards behind the shot-gun shells in the Brompton Road bolt-hole, which I am appropriating for the purpose. Do you never clear anything out?

  Mrs Mary Russell-Holmes

  The Vicissitude Hotel for Ladies

  Altamont Close

  London W2

  4 May 1992

  Dear Mrs Holmes, I opened the envelope containing your post-card, but I regret to say that Mr Holmes has not returned. Could he have gone to his brother’s old flat? Quiet has returned to the farm, following the excitements of the previous week. The wireless reports that we are to expect rain, so when you find Mr Holmes, kindly remind him to carry his umbrella.

  Yours, Emma Hudson

  5 May

  Hello Billy, I hope you and the family are well? I’ve lost Holmes again—I don’t suppose you have seen him since Friday? I put him into a taxi that afternoon at Kew, having a punt to dispose of (long story), and I expected him to return to Sussex. However, I have just learned that Mrs Hudson has not seen him. Ring me at Mycroft’s old number if you have news.

  Russell

  P.S. The last time I looked in, your namesake grandfather seemed much better. We had a long chat about the Robert Goodman case—one which no doubt you have heard about in endless detail, due to its repercussions. You may even know why I chose this card.

  Ms E. Hudson

  The Villa

  Nr. Beachy Head

  Sussex

  5 May

  Dear Ms H, (It is amusing how, even though we’ve had you as THE Mrs Hudson in our lives for a decade now, there persists a moment of astonishment as my mind’s eye attempts to link your name with the face of your husband’s great-grandmother!) I am glad to hear that the American invasion of Sussex has ceased—no doubt they are still quartering Oxford in hopes of finding our scent. If they reappear, do not hesitate to call on Patrick for assistance. About Holmes, please don’t concern yourself, no doubt he thought of some urgent business in Town, I shall let you know when I find him.

  —M.R.

  WILLIAM MUDD INVESTIGATIONS

  5 May (though only just)

  Miss R, Sorry, haven’t seen Mr Holmes since Easter. Neither has Granddad. If you wish me to stir up an enquiry first thing in the morning, just say the word.

  Billy (III)

  PS. The wife sends her regards and says that you are to come to dinner soon, now that Billy-the-Fourth is now quite house-trained, or enough that there will be no more accidents onto visiting laps.

  P.P.S. Were you aware that The Cracker is in Town?

  6 May

  Dear Dr Watson-Scopes,

  I read of your honour recently, my heartiest congratulations. Your grandfather would burst his waistcoat buttons with pride.

  I wonder if I might ask a favour of you? Six days ago (Friday) I dropped my husband at Kew expecting him to make his way to Sussex, only to discover on Tuesday that he did not. I have begun the usual enquiries at hospitals and through friends and
associates, but with your medical network, might you also put out the word that an aged and no doubt querulous individual has gone missing? I shall be moving about a great deal, but messages at the Vicissitude or at your “Uncle” Mycroft’s old flat will reach me.

  Mary Russell

  Billy- No doubt he’ll be extremely cross when he finds out, but yes, I’d appreciate it if you would kindly spread the word that we’re looking for Holmes. A week without a word, at his age, is not to be taken lightly.

  MR

  PS. If I haven’t heard from him by tomorrow, I’ll get into touch with the current “M”. Who won’t be happy with me either, for different reasons.

  PPS. I wrote to ask Watson’s granddaughter—another Dr Watson—to enquire after him amongst her medical colleagues, however I have since heard that she is away in New York for another week.

  PPPS. Get word to The Cracker that if he does not scuttle back under his Glaswegian rock posthaste, he should expect a broken nose from the walking-stick of a 92 year-old woman. And if Holmes catches him first, the nose will be the least of it.

  7 May 1992

  Dear “M”,

  I write for a reason unrelated to our most recent series of communications, namely, that my husband seems to have gone missing. Holmes was last seen a week ago, on the afternoon of the first, at Kew Gardens. Telephone calls to hospitals and police stations have led to nothing, and I spent much of yesterday at Kew with a photograph, but the only response was from one attendant who thought he recalled a tall old man talking with a sturdy blond man in his thirties—an individual who may even have had green eyes.