Locked Rooms (35 page)

At the end of the alleyway, he stopped to change his neck-tie for one less gaudy, reverse his coat so that its staid side was facing out, snap the brim of his hat down into dignity, and brush the dust from his trouser-legs and shoes.

He entered Chinatown with the appearance of just another stray from the financial district, looking for a late lunch.

It took a while before Long could extricate himself from customers, a while longer while they settled into the corner of a tea-house, and even longer before he grasped what Holmes was asking.

“You think there is treasure buried in the Russell garden, and you want me to help you find it?” He was too polite to sound openly incredulous, but it was in the back of his voice.

“I believe there is something of importance hidden in the grounds, yes. Consider, if you will, three points. First, Charles Russell wrote a codicil to his will shortly after the fire, making it nearly impossible for any outsider to gain access to the property, a thing most easily explained by the presence of something either valuable or incriminating on the premises. Second, a thorough search of the house interior gave us nothing. And third, your family, long and faithful though their service seems to have been, appears nowhere in the house records after the summer of 1906. There was no mention of them in the will, no cheques made out to them in the account registers after that time, no official link whatsoever that I have been able to uncover.

“Taken separately, none of the three pieces of information leads to much in the way of a conclusion. Taken together, the indications would be that the thing Charles Russell wished to conceal was not in his house, but in the garden. And how could he hope to keep a buried object hidden from a gardener as skilled and conscientious as your father? He was forced to take your father into his confidentiality, but to protect him, he cut all evidentiary ties between himself and the Long family. He paid their salaries in cash, he made no provisions in his will for them, and he and his wife refused a signed document when she lent your parents money to buy the bookstore. So yes, I believe there is something buried in the garden, something your father knew about. Something too sensitive to be locked into a bank’s safe-deposit vault, where it would come to light on Charles Russell’s death.”

“You may be correct, Mr Holmes, but I assure you, he did not tell me about it.”

“I should be very surprised if he did. However, I should also be surprised if you could not find it.”

“How? What would I be looking for?”

“I have no idea.”

“Then how do you know that it is there?”

“This threatens to become a circular argument,” Holmes said. “I know it’s there because it’s all that explains the facts. My wife tells me that astronomers posit the existence of an invisible planet by the effects it has on the orbit of other celestial bodies. Thus do I posit the existence of this object.”

“I see. Mr Holmes, I have been in the garden a few times, yes, when I was very young, but I doubt that now I could even find where my father had his vegetables growing—the place is a jungle, I saw that much the other evening.”

Holmes hunched forward over the table, and spoke in a low voice. “Mrs Russell kept a detailed record of the work done in her garden, including a yearly sketch or map of the arrangement of flower-beds and paths, the addition of major plantings, and so on. There is a volume for every year, beginning with the spring of 1903. The years she spent in England, 1907 to 1911, are missing, but there is one made dated March 1906, and one made in the autumn of 1912 after her return.”

“None of them, I would assume, have a spot marked ‘X’ with the Stevensonian suggestion to ‘dig here’?” Long asked it with a smile.

“Alas, no. However, I believe your father may have acknowledged the presence of some object of supreme importance in the arrangement of the garden itself, whether he was instrumental in its concealment or simply told of its presence after the deed was done.”

“How do—ah.” Long sighed. “You are thinking of my father’s commitment to the principles of feng shui.”

“Precisely,” said Holmes. “I am suggesting that, were one to analyse the adjustments that were made, the replacement of the fish pond, for example, and the shift of the rock-garden, one might work backward to find the source of the perceived problem. That, to a knowledgeable eye, the re-channelling of the earth’s energies that was done some years ago might point to a specific source.” He watched closely until he was satisfied that Long understood, then sat back to let Long think.

After a while, the bookseller shook his head. “I could look at the garden drawings and see if anything catches my eye, but I am a neophyte, and if my father did the thing correctly, the changes would be quite subtle. After all, there is little purpose in hiding a thing if you then place a large arrow over its location. He would have consulted a practitioner of the arts.”

“Did he know such a man?”

“He did. He used him to arrange the fittings in the bookstore, in fact. But the man was very old, and died years ago.”

“That is unfortunate,” Holmes said. “However, perhaps if we were to give those maps to another with that knowledge, might he be able to perceive the place that your father would have
been . . . protecting?”

“It is possible. The classical principles of feng shui are laid down in history, and although each practitioner has his or her own style, the formulae should be the same. Would you like me to find out?”

“Very much.” As the alternative would be to reduce the entire garden to something resembling the trenches of northern France, any guidance, however idiosyncratic, could be of value.

“I know a man who can do what you need, if anyone can. Would you care to wait here while I go and see if he would consider taking the consultation?”

The phrasing and the way in which Long nervously adjusted his tie and cuffs indicated that the person he intended to ask was of an exalted rank, not at all the sort of person a casual Westerner could drop in on. Holmes told Long that he was happy to wait, and he settled in with his tea, tossing down countless tiny cups of the scalding beverage while the citizens of this town-within-a-town scurried back and forth across the window. He was impatient: The clock was ticking, and it was beginning to look less and less likely that he would get this thing settled before Russell returned.

When Long came back, he wore the face of unsuccess.

“He is out of town,” he reported. “A new restaurant in San Jose has a complicated set of problems. He is not expected to return until tomorrow. I asked to be notified as soon as he comes back, but if you prefer, I can find another practitioner.”

“Would the other be as good?”

“No,” Long said simply.

Holmes rapped his tiny cup rapidly on the table a number of times, then pushed it away from him, sitting back in his chair. “Very well, then; tomorrow.”

“Will you call?”

“I shall either call by your shop or telephone to you, after noon.”

“I shall be there.”

Holmes left the tea shop and walked down the street, but there he stopped, a large barrier of indecision on the bustling pavements. In the end, he turned abruptly back and walked in the direction of his telegraphist. Not that he expected a response from Mycroft, who would have received the second telegram less than twenty-four hours before, but only the careless leave a possibility unattended due to assumptions.

To his surprise, the busy man responded to his arrival in the door by slapping an envelope onto the counter-top. To his greater surprise, once he had redeemed the thing and gone out to the street to open it, it was not second thoughts from Watson, but from Mycroft:

DEAR BOY FAR EASIER TO GIVE ALL DETAILS AT BEGINNING AND DON’T MAKE ME GUESS BUT BASED ON GUESSWORK AND WORKING BACKWARD FROM RUMOURS SENT ME FROM OUR FRIEND IN ADEN I BEGAN ENQUIRIES REGARDING FURTHER ACTIVITIES OF ANY PERSON OR PERSONS UNKNOWN WHO MADE HASTE TO INTERCEPT YOUR BOAT IN MARSEILLES OR PORT SAID OR CAIRO. ONLY ONE SUCH LOOKED PROMISING NAMELY WOMAN IN PARIS BEGAN SEARCHING FIFTH JANUARY FOR FLIGHTS TO EGYPT FOUND PILOT AND ACCEPTABLE WEATHER MONDAY SEVENTH ARRIVING PORT SAID EARLY HOURS OF TUESDAY EIGHTH. COST UNKNOWN BUT CONSIDERABLE. DESCRIPTION QUOTE TALL BUT WOMANLY UNQUOTE LATE THIRTIES BROWN HAIR AND EYES SPOKE FLUENT FRENCH AND ENGLISH WITH QUOTE SOUTHERN AMERICAN UNQUOTE ACCENT NOT CERTAIN IF MEANS SOUTHERN USA OR SOUTH AMERICA SORRY O THE PROBLEMS OF FINDING GOOD HELP. LET ME KNOW IF I SHOULD EXTEND ENQUIRIES TO THE BOAT WHICH DOCKS HERE THURSDAY. NEXT TIME BE FORTHCOMING EARLY TO YOUR BIG BROTHER. ALL WELL HERE LOST TWO STONE. MYCROFT.

Holmes laughed aloud with pleasure at the undiminished authority of Mycroft’s voice. He did not care to think of the world without his older brother, who in January had looked very ill from his heart attack.

He went back inside to send a return message of thanks and to assure Mycroft that it would not be necessary to interview the staff of the
Marguerite
at this time. No doubt Mycroft could extract more detail from the pursers than Watson had, but he did not think it necessary.

Telegram sent, he made his way back to the house, let himself in with the key he’d had cut the previous day, and settled in for a minute study of the household accounts. These covered the period from 1890, when Charles Russell had arrived here after university, until the close of 1913—later records, he figured, would be with Mr Norbert.

He had looked these over before, gleaning from them such information as when the Russells had come here after their marriage, when Judith Russell had left for England, and when the Longs had first begun, then ceased, to appear on the books. Now, however, he read more carefully. Making notes, he turned back from time to time as he tried to piece together the portrait of a family.

He laboured all the afternoon and far into the night, breaking away only to make two telephone calls to the St Francis from his new Italian friends down the street, but there were no messages. On his second trip down, the owner of the café urged a dinner on him, and he returned to the accounts refreshed by a nice scallopini and a litre of powerful Italian coffee.

He discovered many fascinating truths about the Russell family, but only two that stood out in his mind for the purposes of the investigation. Both of those were associated with the father of the young lady currently sharing a house near a lake with Russell. In 1892, before he had gone to Europe and met his wife, young Charles Russell had made out a cheque for $750 to Robert Greenfield, with the notation “for help with building cabin.” Then on April 22, 1906, he had written another to the same person, for $7500. Against this had been noted “repayment of loan.”

He closed the last book near midnight and went to stand, only to stop halfway upright, biting off an oath. He eased his back through a series of cracks, feeling like an arthritic grandfather. “I’m getting too old for this,” he muttered, although he’d been saying it for years now, and did not really believe it. He stretched and popped his joints, then let himself out of the house, moving with the determined ease of a man who had never known discomfort.

Early Wednesday morning he went around the back of Hammett’s apartment building and found that his Irregulars had been organised into an efficient body of surveillance operatives. The urchin at the entrance of the alleyway spotted him coming down the street, and gave out a shrill whistle that had the leader waiting for Holmes at the base of the fire-escape.

The boy reported that they had seen no one all day, not until the tall man who lived there came home about four o’clock and his wife and the little girl about an hour after that. They’d stayed in all night, except when the woman had stepped out to the little market up the street for milk and bread at six and the man had brought the garbage down to the alleyway around eight. In the first case, two of the boys had followed her, in the second they had all faded away into invisibility behind the cans.

“And I know you said we weren’t to keep watch all night,” the lad told him, “but I figured that if they all got murdered in their beds during the night, you’d like to know who done it. That maybe there’d be a bonus, like,” he added cheekily.

Holmes hid his grin and counted out the previous day’s pay, then added half as much again for the night duty. “You’ll stay on during the day, when they leave?”

“You pay, we stay,” the boy told him. “We’ll hunt you down if anything happens.”

“You’re doing a good job. I only hope you go back to school when this is over.”

“School’s a waste of time.”

“That may be so, but university isn’t, and you have to get through school to get to university.”

The look of scepticism shooting out of those dark eyes would have given a priest doubt, but Holmes had seen it before. He tipped his hat to the boy, then paused. “What’s your name, lad?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because gentlemen do not address each other as ‘Hey, you.’”

“Gen’lmen, huh? Okay, it’s Ricky. Rick Garcia.”

“Mr Garcia, it is a pleasure doing business with you. My name is Holmes. I shall try to return this evening, but you know where to find me.”