Locked Rooms (4 page)

“But why?”

“My father, who of course drew up this will, did not see fit to tell me the reasoning behind its details before he died,” he replied, with the bemused attitude of one who had himself written so many odd wills that he no longer questioned them. “However, the requirement of the codicil is crystal clear, although it leaves to the discretion of this legal firm the means of ensuring that the house remain undisturbed. Within days of your father’s unfortunate demise, my father, as head of the firm, arranged for a single lady relative of his to take the house across the street, Agatha Grimly is her name—she’s my great step-cousin or something of the sort. Miss Grimly was later joined by her unmarried nephew. She was a schoolteacher most of her life, so she’s got eyes in the back of her head. The nephew is a little dim-witted, but quite clear as to his job. They receive a bonus each time they run strangers off the property, which happens two or three times a year—the first time was within a few days of her taking over, the most recent—apart from last night’s, of course—was a couple of months ago. And they live under the threat of losing their comfortable position were they to let an intruder slip past them. Frankly, it’s a little game we play—I occasionally hire someone to try to break in, to see if he can get by them. They probably assumed you and your husband were such.”

I supposed it was sometimes necessary that a solicitor not be too curious about his client’s purposes. Clearly, my father had intended that no one get into that house but family. The why of that intent did not enter into Norbert’s realm, merely the how. I gave a mental shrug and closed up the will.

“You may keep that, if you like,” he said. “I have two other copies, one of those in a vault down the Peninsula. The lessons of 1906,” he explained with a grimace. “We’re still struggling with the consequences of City Hall burning.”

He then reached into his desk’s central drawer and drew out a lumpy, palm-sized brown-paper envelope, its flap glued down and signed across by my father’s distinctive hand. Its contents gave off a slight metallic tick as he laid it onto the glossy wood of the desk.

“If you need assistance with cleaning ladies,” he went on, “gardening services, anything, I hope you’ll call on me. We do have a gardener come in once a year, to keep the front from becoming an offence to the neighbours—although as that is questionable under the will, I go down and stand watch while they work, always, to ensure that none of them approach the house itself. In the same way, my father supervised the cleaners who came in the week after the accident, when it became apparent that
you . . . that the house would have to be closed up. He was never absolutely certain, because strictly speaking the codicil indicated that he should have allowed the milk in the ice-box to go bad and the moths to get into the carpets, but he decided that protecting the client’s assets allowed for a degree of flexibility. He may even have consulted with a judge on the matter, I don’t remember. However, that is neither here nor there. I’ll ’phone Miss Grimly, and let her know that you’re coming—wouldn’t want you to be arrested again.”

I stood up, tucking the folder under my left arm and putting out my right hand.

“Thank you, Mr Norbert. Although as I indicated, I have no intention of doing anything other than preparing the house for sale as soon as possible.”

“Whatever you choose, I am at your service,” he answered, shaking my hand. He retrieved the lumpy brown envelope and handed it to me with a small laugh. “Don’t forget this—you’ll be climbing over the walls again.”

“Certainly not,” I agreed, and slipped the envelope into my pocket. As we made our way to the door, I asked him, “Do you by any chance know how far the fire reached, in 1906?”

“I remember it vividly—I was seventeen then, and spent the whole time digging through rubble and helping people rescue their possessions from its path. The entire downtown burned. The only things left standing were the U.S. Mint down on Mission Street, a few houses on the peak of Russian Hill, and a handful more on Telegraph— everything else was gone, churches, saloons, Chinatown, and as I said, City Hall with all its records. But if you mean your house, the flames were stopped at Van Ness when the Army dynamited the entire length of it. Three blocks down from yours.”

“I see. Thank you.” I paused at the door, and reluctantly asked the question that had been hovering over me the entire time in his office.

“Mr Norbert, this may sound odd, but do you know if I was here during the earthquake? Actually during it, I mean?”

“Sure you were. My father took me to check on your family the day the fire died down. That would have been the Saturday. Took most of the day to track you all down to the park where you were staying, but I remember your mother, making us coffee on an open fire as if she’d done it that way her whole life.” His face took on a faraway look, and he smiled slightly. “She was in trousers and a pair of men’s boots, but she wore the most extraordinary hat, with an enormous orange flower pinned to one side. It was as if she was thumbing her nose at the discomfort and fear all around her. She was an impressive lady, completely undaunted.”

The pale hat with the orange flower dominated my vision as I took my leave of the lawyer and wandered towards the busy thoroughfare of Market Street. Trolleys and traffic were thick there, and the other streets met it at odd angles. Idly, my mind still taken up with the vision of the hat, I watched an ex-soldier with one leg negotiate his crutches through a flurry of female office workers in bright frocks.

Why would my father have written that codicil into his will?

When I put the question to Holmes some time later, he tossed the will onto the room’s desk and shook his head. “There is no knowing at this point. But I agree that it is an oddity worth looking into.”

Holmes had spent the morning getting the lay of the city, returning to the hotel with a sheaf of maps and scraps of paper scribbled with telephone numbers and addresses. He dug through the sheets now until he had found the detailed map; a green pencil had traced the streets to form an uneven outline around a large chunk of the Peninsula’s eastern half, including all of the downtown. When I saw the straight line running more than a mile along Van Ness, I knew instantly what the pencil mark meant.

“This is the part that burned?”

“Wooden buildings, spilt cook-fires, broken water lines,” he listed succinctly. “The city burned for three days, and almost nothing was left standing inside the line.”

“Must have been absolute hell.”

“You truly don’t remember?”

“Oh, Lord, Holmes. I don’t remember anything but my mother cooking over a camp-fire. Surely a child of six years would recall an event like the city burning?” I was beginning to feel as if someone had just pointed out to me that I was missing a leg. “Even a person with amnesia must be aware of some . . . gap.”

“I don’t know that I should term it amnesia, precisely—that condition is extremely rare outside of ladies’ fiction, and generally stems from a severe head injury. In your case I venture that it is the mind choosing to draw a curtain across the memories of your early childhood, for any number of reasons.”

That I liked even less, the idea that my traitorous mind chose the cowardly option of hiding from unpleasant memories. “Holmes,” I said abruptly, “last night you said that the process of discovery may be the reason we came here. What did you mean by that?”

“My dear Russell, think about it. Had you merely wished to rid yourself of your business entanglements in California, you could have done so in London with a command to your solicitors and a flourish of signatures. There would have been no need to traverse half the globe for the purpose. Instead, for the last three years you have delayed making decisions and refused to give direction until things here had reached a state of near crisis. And when my brother asked us to go to India, it seemed natural to you that we continue around the world to come here, although in fact it is both out of the way and considerably disruptive to our lives. What other reason could there be but that some well-concealed urge was driving you here, with purpose?”

A part of my mind acknowledged that he was right. The larger portion held back, unwilling to believe in such transparent machinations.

There was something else as well: Holmes was eyeing me with that awful air of expectancy he did so well, as if he had placed an examination question and was waiting for me to follow my preliminary response with the complete answer. He believed there was more in the situation than I perceived; were I to ask what it was, he would make me work for the answer.

That was more than I could face at the moment. Instead, I stood up briskly.

“I want to go look at the house. Norbert gave me the keys. Would you like to join me?”

“Shall we take lunch first?”

“I’m not really hungry. You go ahead, if you like, and join me later.”

“No, I shall go with you,” Holmes said. We assembled our possessions, and at the door he paused to ask, “Do you have the keys?”

“Of course,” I said. “They’re in my . . . No, they’re not. What have I done with them? Oh, yes, here they are.”

I had left the brown envelope on the foot of my bed, I saw, and went back to pick it up. As I turned back to the door, I thought about the walk before me and the condition of the house—and, no doubt, its facilities—at the end of it. “I’ll be with you in a moment, Holmes,” I said, and stepped into the marble-and-gilt room. When I had finished, I dried my hands, patted my hair (unnecessarily—the bob minded neither wind nor neglect) and strode to the door.

“The keys?” Holmes reminded me.

“They’re—Damn it, where have I put them now?” I spotted the manila rectangle, half hidden between the mirror and a vase of flowers, and picked it up curiously: The wretched thing eluded me so persistently, it might have been possessed. With a spasm of irritation, I ripped it open and tipped its contents into Holmes’ outstretched palm. His long fingers closed around the simple silver ring with half a dozen keys that ranged from a delicate, inch-long silver one to an iron object nearly the length of my hand. I tossed the scraps of paper in the direction of the trash basket, and marched out into the corridor.

Twice on the way I took a wrong turn; both times I looked around to find Holmes standing and watching me from up the street. The first time he had a frown on his face, the second a look of concern; when we finally reached the house itself he stopped before the wide gate, studying the keys in his hand.

“Russell, perhaps it would be best for me to enter first.”

“Open the gate, Holmes.”

He raised his eyes to my face for a moment, then slid the big iron key inside the padlock’s hole and twisted. The metal works had clearly been maintained—oiled, perhaps, on the gardener’s yearly visits—and the key turned smoothly.

I stepped onto the sunken cobblestones of the drive, my nerves insisting that I was approaching the lair of some creature with teeth and claws. I could feel eyes upon me, and not simply those of the guardian neighbour across the street. Yet there was no movement at any of the windows, no evidence of traffic apart from the footprints and crushed vegetation Holmes and I had left the day before. With Holmes at my back I walked towards the front door—and nearly leapt into his arms with a shriek when the branches above us exploded with sudden motion: three panicked doves, fleeing this invasion of their safe sanctuary.

I forced a laugh past my constricted throat, and gestured for Holmes to precede me to the door.

The solid dark wood was dull with neglect, the varnish lifted in narrow yellow sheets where the years of rain had blown past the protective overhang of the portico. Thick moss grew between the paving tiles; an entire fern grotto had established itself in the cracks where stonework met door frame. I heard the sound of the tumblers moving in the lock, a sound that seemed to shift my innards within me. Holmes turned the knob without result, then leant his shoulder against the time-swollen wood, taking a sudden step across the threshold as the door gave way.

The dark house lay open to us. I looked over Holmes’ shoulder down the hallway, seeing little but a cavern; steeling myself, I took a step inside. As I did so, the corner of my eye registered an oddly familiar rough place in the frame of the door, about shoulder height. I stopped, one foot on either side of the threshold, and drew back to examine it.

A narrow indentation had been pressed into the surface, some four inches in height and perhaps half an inch wide. Screw-holes near the top and the bottom, and a gouge a third of the way down from the top where someone had prised the object out of the varnish that held it fast. A mezuzah, I thought, and suddenly she was there.

My mother—long rustling skirt and the graceful brim of a hat high above me—pushing open the glossy front door with one hand while her other came up to brush the intricate carved surface of the bronze object. A blessing on the house, laid at the entrance, mounted there by command and as recognition that a home is a place apart. My Jewish mother, touching it lovingly every time she entered. And not only my mother: My fingertips remembered the feel of the carving, cool arabesques protecting the tightly curled text of the blessing within.

My hand reached out of its own volition and smoothed the wood, indented, drilled, splintered, puzzling.

“What have you found?” Holmes asked.

“There used to be a mezuzah on this door. My mother’s father gave it to her, the year I was born. It was his first overture after the offence of her marriage, her first indication that she might be forgiven for marrying a Gentile. And as it turned out, his last, since he died a few months later. It meant a great deal to her. And it’s gone.”

“Perhaps Norbert senior took it down, for safekeeping?”

“I shouldn’t think it would occur to a Gentile to remove it.”

“And your mother herself wouldn’t have taken it down?”

“Not unless she didn’t plan to return. And they died on a week-end trip to the Lodge—our summer house down the Peninsula. We intended to be back in a few days.”