Locked Rooms

by Laurie R. King

  It was, at times, trying, to live with a man constitutionally incapable of relaxation. Despite the emptiness within, I was more than a little relieved to get away from him for a couple of days.

  Then it occurred to me, a mile or so south of where we had met the insurance man, that my embarrassing display of weakness on Friday might possibly have unexpected benefits, in setting Holmes another problem at which to worry. Dr Ginzberg’s nine-year-old murder might not be of a complexity worthy of Holmes’ efforts, but it was a case I would like to see solved, if he could do so in the few days left to us here. And if it turned his attentions away from the pointless and uncomfortable mysteries of the house and my past, so much the better. He hadn’t seemed terribly interested in it this morning, headed to the ferry on one of his odd scholarly pursuits, but in any event, it would be difficult to ferret out any official sources of information before Monday.

  I smiled: Sundays were often a vexation of spirit to Holmes.

  My companion in the front seat must have been keeping a surreptitious eye on me and seen a degree of relaxation on my features, because my distant thoughts were interrupted by a solicitous question directed at me.

  “Feeling a bit warmer, Mary?”

  “Sorry? Oh, yes, I’m fine. It’s very beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Satisfied, either with my answer or that I could make one, Flo gave me a smile meant to be encouraging and left me to my thoughts.

  Watching the back of her glossy black hair dancing in the breeze, I realised that I liked her, and her friends, more than I had expected.

  Our beginnings on Friday had not been auspicious: Flo Greenfield and her entourage were late. I was in the lobby by nine, more than ready to put the day’s shocks behind me; by nine-thirty, I was pacing and considering a return upstairs. Three minutes later, gathering myself up to go, I became aware of a riot approaching rapidly down the street, a cacophony of horns and shouts. The Rolls-Royce that squealed to a halt before the doors was the colour of a cloudless sky in June, and throbbed with power from within its elegant bonnet. As the man behind the wheel attempted to perform the contortionist manoeuvre of threading himself out from behind wheel, brake, and shift levers, the passenger by-passed the entire issue of male chivalry by flinging open her door before either driver or hotel staff could reach it. A slim figure in a dress that complemented the colour of the motor stepped unescorted onto the pavement, and I realised belatedly that Flo had arrived.

  She was dressed in a costume every bit as extreme as that in which she’d come home the previous morning, although this one was still in good repair. Tonight’s frock was silver with a spray of beads the precise blue of the motorcar, a brief lamé frock that clung and outlined a body patently unencumbered with a surfeit of undergarments. Her hair clung to her head with careful spit-curls in the height of fashion, her cheeks and lips were redder than Nature had granted, and her legs glistened with silk. Around her right wrist clustered a mass of silver and turquoise beads that I thought had been originally intended as a long necklace, now twisted over and over her hand to form a thick bracelet. Around her sleek hair she wore a silver bandeau, from which rose a bright blue ostrich plume, and her light fox-fur coat was spilling negligently from her near-bare shoulders.

  She looked gloriously young and beautiful and light-hearted and fun, and my spirits lifted the instant I laid eyes on her.

  The motor contained at least six other people, although it might have been ten or eleven. As I allowed myself to be inserted into the front, ending up on the lap of a young man who told me to call him “Dabs,” Flo waved a genial hand towards me, shouted my name at the passengers in the backseat by way of introduction, and wedged herself in beside me. The throbbing engine roared into life and we spun into the oncoming traffic.

  The driver, according to Flo’s running commentary, was called Donny. He was a tall, elegant figure with slick blond hair parted down the centre as if he’d invented the style, a pencil-thin moustache a shade darker than the hair on his head, a warm and humorous voice, and an immaculate Tuxedo. He appeared to be something of a beau, although Flo bestowed her affections equally on the young man beneath me, on the gentlemen in the back, and on the occupants of several passing motorcars as well, blowing kisses and giggling flirtatiously at their shouted remarks.

  I was coming to regret the evening long before we pulled up in front of the club. It was not in a salubrious part of town, and did not at all appear the sort of place that justified the degree of fashion we were wearing: Across the street was a warehouse, and next to that the sort of speakeasy for which bath-tub gin had been invented. The building Donny parked before was something of a warehouse itself, ill-lit, in want of paint, and with boards nailed over its few windows. There were attendants, however, one of whom hopped into the motor and drove it away while another pulled open the door, greeting some of our party by name.

  Inside lay a gilded cavern with some sort of Oriental theme to it, rich colours and a surfeit of patterns. When we had been shown to a table near the band and had our drinks placed before us, I looked around and realised that the theme was intended to be that of an opium den. A highly romanticised version of an opium den—I doubted any of the patrons of the establishments I had been inside would recognise any similarity. Instead of a filthy, claustrophobic room littered with equally filthy and near-comatose individuals, this glittering palace was bursting with more energy than a classroom full of eleven-year-old boys. The only thing I could see that was at all similar was the thick fug in the air, although this had the smell mostly of tobacco instead of the cloy of opium.

  Mostly, I say. There was also cannabis in the air, and the smell of illegal spirits, served openly and without apology. I accepted the glass of champagne handed me, and could only hope that there was not a raid of the premises.

  Now, in the normal course of events, I have no great appreciation for a raucous setting and great lashings of alcohol, but the course of events that week had been nothing like normal. The alcohol went down smoothly, the conversation seemed more witty than I’d have expected, the entertainment more stylish, the dancing feverish but physically satisfying—all in all, it buoyed my spirits beyond measure.

  When we first got there, a band was playing some tune with a syncopated beat that my companions seemed to know, for two or three of them sang snatches of words in between swallows of their first drinks. With the next number, several of my companions got up to dance, and shortly after that, the band took a short break, to return with a fanfare and the announcement of the singer.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the band-leader purred to the crowd, “the Blue Tiger is just thrilled to present, fresh from her triumphal tour of Paris, Berlin, and New York, our own home-town girl . . . Miss Belinda Birdsong!”

  The singer with the unlikely name appeared in a sudden burst of spotlight, dressed in a shimmer of white, head bowed; the hall erupted in applause, cat-calls, hoots, and intoxicated laughter. It was evident that Miss Birdsong was well known here. And as soon as she opened her mouth to sing and the sound died down a bit, it became clear why.

  She was a Personality, in the tradition of Lily Langtry and the like who had come to the city through the dance-halls and cabarets of the West. Pretty if not beautiful, saucy yet preserving an air of innocence, Miss Birdsong had the crowded hall wrapped around her nicely manicured little finger. And I had to laugh myself, when I recognised her first song—I’d heard just that tune coming from a peculiar dive in Delhi some weeks before, a ’Nineties ditty about a bird in a golden cage.

  It was apparently her trademark song, because the patrons made no attempt to dance to it, even those already out on the dance-floor. Instead, they hung on her every syllable and note. When it ended, a wave of cheers arose that put the earlier cacophony in the shade; when that finally died away, the singer started another song, and this time, the couples on the floor started to move.

  I knew none of the modern dances and would have sat most of them out, but Flo would not
permit it, and demanded that Donny pull me out onto the floor. That night I learnt the ridiculously satisfying moves of the Charleston, as well as several variations, and between the various males in our party, and later from adjoining tables, I spent a respectable time gyrating beneath the lights. It is a dance of unbridled energy, making it impossible to feel anything but strong and filled with the invulnerability of youth. It was breathless and pointless and fun, and the thirsty work of it made the champagne flow. In time, another singer took Miss Birdsong’s place, a rather raw-boned female with an uncertain voice and a practiced line in raunchy jokes, but then the local heroine returned, wearing scarlet sequins this time, and saw out the rest of the night.

  I was, truth to tell, disappointed to call the evening to an end. Donny drove us all (or mostly all—I thought we numbered fewer than we had, and a couple of those newcomers) to Flo’s house, where he opened cupboards and drawers with the readiness of long practice and whipped up cheese omelettes, after which Flo hacked uneven wedges off a slightly stale cake and served them with a bowl of strawberries dipped in sugar, and mugs of cocoa.

  In the end, Donny piled the rest of us back into his blue Rolls and drove through a city where only the milkmen and paper boys were stirring. When I walked into the dim hotel, I looked around for the clock, and found to my astonishment that it was nearly four in the morning.

  Holmes was still awake, so we’d talked for a while before turning out the lights. I was too elevated to sleep much, and rose a few hours later to take a walk through the waking city. It was very beautiful, San Francisco, its uneven terrain and highly varied inhabitants making it both distinctive and worldly. It resembled London, in that it seemed to be made up of hamlets that had been joined but which had not lost their individuality. Here, however, the air was clean, the buildings fresh, and working men met one’s eye straight on (an egalitarian reaction one tended to find only in the docks area of the English capital).

  I came back to find Holmes, astonishingly, still abed. And also, unfortunately, watching me as if I were about to relapse into the previous afternoon’s quivering mass. The only answer to that sort of concern is to assume a brisk manner and an assertion of strength, and although it did not entirely convince him—his ongoing fixation with the amount of food I required, for example, was vexing—it did allow him to draw away sufficiently that I could breathe. It may even have reassured him, when I responded to his mother-hen overprotectiveness by declaring that I would do as I please, whether that involved finishing my plate of food or going to see the Lodge on my own. He was not pleased at the latter decision, but as I said, I think my spirited defence of the choice he found reassuringly normal.

  As a result, he made no attempt to linger during Saturday afternoon, leaving me alone in the big house while he went about his own business. When he came back before I had finished in the house, I found that he’d persisted in his fixation and spent the afternoon interviewing the neighbours—although I couldn’t be completely annoyed, because in the course of his interviews, he had come up with the solution to the second of the dreams. It was, I had to grant him, a nice piece of work, and he seemed pleased with himself when we went to dinner with Mr Long. Then this morning, he’d appeared to be so convinced of my rehabilitation, he had not even insisted on hovering over me when Flo and Donny were delayed. He had merely told me to have a good time, said he’d see me on Wednesday, and left.

  And if I’d regretted his absence the moment I climbed into Donny’s motor, the regret had faded under the bright day and the coastal beauty and Flo’s friendly and not unintelligent conversation. Perhaps this trip would not be a complete disaster, after all.

  The road continued to flirt with the sea, coming near and ducking away again, before we turned definitively towards the hills and the engine noise deepened with the climb. My body knew the twists and turns, the scattered farms and cattle lots rang a familiar note in my heart, but the hollow space at the core of me grew: I should not have come; Holmes was right, it was a mistake; it would be bad if I were to find something of my family still inhabiting the Lodge; it would be worse if I did not. I wanted to seize my savaged hair in both hands and scream aloud, just to relieve the building pressure, but I knew that if I screamed, it would be impossible to stop.

  So I sat and quivered, staring in hope and apprehension, responding to Donny’s questions with silence or a brief gesture—a flick of the finger to say, “Go right, here” or a nod to say we were on the correct road. I was conscious that Flo was watching me out of the corner of her eye, wary as a horse about to startle, but at some time in the previous couple of miles I had also become aware that Flo was riding in the place my mother had sat, and my mother had usually done something—very soon now, she used to . . . what?

  We cleared a corner and the hillside of trees dropped away, and I threw off my rug and shouted, “Wait! Stop!”

  Donny slammed on the brakes, causing Flo to choke on her chewing gum and the heavy motor to skid to the edge of the loose gravel roadway, but he managed to stop the machine before its front tyres entered the drop-off. I swallowed hard to push my heart back out of my throat—I emphatically didn’t like being a passenger—and then scrambled over the side of the car to the ground. Donny turned off the engine. Silence took over, broken only by the crunch of their shoes on the gravel as they joined me, the ping of cooling metal, and the call of some rude-voiced bird.

  Mother used to call out for Father to stop, so she could see the view.

  The trees were lush, dark redwoods interspersed with brash young maples, the native oak, and some leathery-leafed tree with peeling red bark. At precisely this point on the road, as if stage curtains had been parted by a pair of huge hands, the forest drew back, revealing a sparkle of blue water.

  But something was missing. I stepped to the side, then further, until the very tip of a dock came into view behind the trees. I wondered if the dock had been truncated, by decay or purpose, or if it was simply that the trees had grown up and obscured its length. Studying the vista, I decided the latter was the more likely explanation: The end of the dock appeared to be as square as ever, and the slice of lake revealed by the parted boughs seemed narrower than it should be. I nodded, satisfied, and climbed back into the motor.

  Flo and Donny glanced at each other, and I realised belatedly that some kind of explanation might be in order, considering that I’d nearly sent us off the road with my sudden shout. Their hearts were probably still racing.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’d forgotten until we reached this point that we always stopped to take a look at the lake. If I’d noticed what a state the road was in, I’d have suggested it more gently.”

  “No problem,” Donny said. “My baby’s got good brakes.”

  He was, I believed, speaking of the motorcar.

  We drove on, slowing as we went through the village that was not as tiny as it had been. The general store had sprouted a petrol pump in front, which would mean that the residents no longer had to remember to stop in Serra Beach or Redwood City to fill up their tanks, and the café next door to the store had nearly doubled in size—it now might seat as many as twelve people at one time. The post office looked just the same, and the minuscule library, but I could never have imagined a day when I would see that brief stretch of village lane with more motorcars than horses.

  “Half a mile or so, and the road will divide,” I said to Donny. “Keep right and circle the lake. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

  The lake was small, and in five minutes, I was saying, “We can pick up the keys from that house with the white picket fence. Flo, would you mind awfully going in and asking for them? If I go I’ll get involved in offers of coffee and she’ll stir up some biscuits and it’ll be dark before we get away. Just tell her I’m feeling rather tired, and I’ll call by tomorrow. Oh, and make sure she knows we brought a picnic for tonight, and that we don’t need her assistance to make up beds.” Mrs Gordimer’s garrulous streak was a steady-flowing stream whose
levee required constant shoring, lest the flood of words wash over the cabin’s lovely quietude. She more than made up for her husband, whose speaking voice I had heard perhaps a dozen times over the years.

  “Sure,” Flo said, and hopped out to trot up the spotless stones of the front path between brutally pruned standard roses, all an identical peach-pink, that hadn’t changed in as long as I remembered. Nor had the face that appeared at the door before Flo could touch the bell, the face that frowned mistrustingly at her explanations before peering past her at the motor. I leant forward, trying to look even more wan than I felt, and waved a feeble hand. Before the caretaker could come and deluge me with sympathy and questions, Flo laid a gentle hand on her, no doubt reiterating her lie about the state of my nerves.

  In a moment, she had retreated; a minute later, and Flo was coming back down the walk with the keys swinging from her finger-tips. Mrs Gordimer came out onto her porch—whiter of hair and more stooped, but I’d have sworn wearing the same exact gingham dress she’d worn when I was a child. I waved at her again, and silently urged Donny to get the motor under way. He heard me, and did.

  The track down to the Lodge had been maintained to the extent of having the ruts smoothed and the branches trimmed away, but Donny had to creep the last few hundred yards, chary of ripping out some vital piece of the underpinnings. Finally, the trees opened up, and we were there, at the living centre of my childhood.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Not much to look at, actually. Certainly nothing grand enough to impress our Pacific Heights neighbours: an original one-storey house made of stripped logs with a newer two-storey addition to one side, cedar shingles going slightly mossy on the roof. However, standing and looking at the way it sat on the earth, one became convinced that here was a house whose doors would shut true, whose windows would not rattle in a breeze, whose porch floor would not attack a child’s running feet with splinters.