Locked rooms

Chapter Twenty-two

An invalid Hammett might be, but the man had nerves of steel. His bony hands tightened over the arms of the chair when the weapon first appeared, then they relaxed, curled loosely over the leather. He did keep a close eye on the pistol while Holmes stepped forward to explain: It was a decorative object, but big enough to mean business.

“Russell, this is Mr Hammett. He was clambering around on those cliffs at my instigation. I've hired him as an Irregular in your absence; hope you don't mind?”

The silvery barrel wavered, as if it might decide to point at Holmes for a while, then sank towards the floor. “You hired him,” she said flatly.

“He knows the ground here better than I, and I needed an assistant.”

“When did you make this arrangement?”

“Saturday,” he admitted: an exaggeration, as it had been little more than Friday night.

“Saturday. And you didn't think to mention it to me that night, or even Sunday morning?”

“We had a great deal to get through on Saturday as it was. And in the morning, you were busy, I was busy. I'd have told you—it hardly mattered if you did not know.”

“It would have mattered just now if I'd shot the man,” she retorted.

Hammett gave a little snort of laughter, and her eyes went to him. In a moment, the gun went back into its hand-bag and she came up to him, hand out. “Mr Hammett, pleased to meet you. I apologise for my ill manners.”

“Miss Russell. Don't worry about it. You have remarkably steady hands on a gun.”

“For a girl, you mean?”

“For a hand. More people get shot by twitchy fingers than ever get aimed at.”

“I try to avoid manslaughter when I can. Mr Hammett, if you are working for Holmes and not our two opponents, then I take it you retrieved the brake rod of my father's Maxwell?”

“Safe and sou—” he started to reply.

“Two opponents,” Holmes broke in. “You say that as if you've identified them.”

“Yes,” she said, sounding rather pleased with herself. “I believe you'll find that either your assistant here is keeping something from you, or else he got so excited about the evidence that he forgot to carry through with the interrogation of the Serra Beach mechanic.”

“Yeah, I was afraid of that,” Hammett said with chagrin. “I didn't remember until later that night that there were questions I'd forgotten to put to him, but it was too late to go back, and the garage wasn't open Sunday. I should've run him to ground at his home.”

“Well, I nearly did the same,” Russell admitted generously. “And I didn't even have a lovely piece of solid evidence to distract me.”

Hammett's haggard face pulled into a grin that matched hers, but Holmes was impatient.

“Tell me about the two.”

“Can we sit down? I've had a tiring day, steering from the backseat.”

“Certainly. I had the sweep in yesterday; we can even light the fire. Would you care for whiskey, or coffee?”

“Is it the same coffee we found in the house?”

“No, I found a charming Italian gentleman up on Columbus Street who permitted me to buy some of his freshly roasted beans.”

“Such domesticity, Holmes. Coffee would be lovely.”

As she passed the small table, Russell scooped up the drooping petals of her flower arrangement and tossed them onto the bones of the fire she had laid but not lit the other day. Borrowing a match from Hammett, she set it against the dried kindling and stood back cautiously, but indeed, the chimney drew cleanly. Holmes pulled over the desk chair, and the two men settled their glasses on the table alongside her cup, then took out their tobacco pouches.

With the crackle of flames and the odours of coffee, spirits, and tobacco—Hammett's cigarette joined by Holmes' pipe—the library was transformed from a habitation of ghosts into a place where civilised conversation might take place.

Holmes cleared his throat. “What made you decide that your parents were murdered?”

Her eyes went sideways to the third person in the room, as if to ask how much they were to say in front of him—but then, Holmes would not have asked if he had not meant her to answer. “You mean, seeing as how I've been fighting the idea for days now?”

He would have said somewhat longer than that, but he merely nodded.

“Too many oddities, piling up on each other. The codicil to the will, my parents' behaviour in the years after the fire, three related deaths immediately after theirs that were clearly murder, the shooting here. But mostly it was the dreams: The dreams were pushing me to something, all the time. I finally got there.”

“So tell me about your two villains,” Holmes suggested.

“Yes,” she said. “The two villains. A woman with a Southern accent, and the faceless man—only he is now merely a man with facial scars.” Then she paused as a thought occurred to her. “Er, Holmes, before I get into that, why are you here?”

“We are awaiting Mr Long and a friend of his, who may be able to point us towards the solution of one of our mysteries.”

“Oh yes? What time will they be here?”

“With any luck, before it is too dark outside to see the trees.”

“Will we need to see the trees?” she asked, then held up her hand. “Never mind, I'll find out soon enough.” And without further questions, she told the two men about her days at the Lodge. She kept it to the essentials—the lack of anything resembling evidence in the hidden storage room, Mr Gordimer's two visitors, her revealing conversation with the Serra Beach garage mechanic, the conversation with Donny and Flo that revealed the extent to which Dr Ginzberg had been known as a doctor with a speciality in helping patients retrieve memories. She did not bother telling them about her other conversations with Flo and Donny, as those were not pertinent to the matter at hand.

Holmes listened with his hands steepled and his eyes on the flames, his face showing nothing of the relief and pleasure surging through his veins. Russell was awake at last, returned to her normal clear wits and keen vision. Although he had to admit that even half asleep, she'd managed to turn up as many items of vital importance as he had working flat out. When she had reached the point in her narrative where she'd decided to come here, she sat back and said firmly to Holmes, “Now it's your turn.”

He began by giving her the telegrams, explaining how his own had started the exchange. He told her about meeting Hammett, although he left a great deal out of the manner and precise time of their meeting, not wishing to get side-tracked into the reasons he had been following her on the Friday night. He described the cut brake rod, safely in the bank vault, and his growing conviction that her father had concealed something in the garden. He then turned the floor over to Hammett, who described how he had become involved, how he had been caught and recruited by Holmes (he, following Holmes' lead, also avoided specific mention of time and place), and spent the next few days searching crash sites and interviewing police officers.

“And,” he finished up, “just in case you're wondering, I had a second conversation with the lady who'd tried to hire me, telling her I wasn't working for her and asking her where I could send her money. She hasn't gotten in touch yet, but I told her that if she didn't fetch it by Friday, I'd be putting it out for the birds to find.

“Which reminds me,” he said, turning to Holmes, “are those children yours?”

It never even passed through Russell's mind that the man might be referring to any biological responsibility. “More Irregulars, Holmes?”

“It seemed a good idea to keep an eye on the Hammett apartment,” he replied, then added in disappointed tones, “I expected the lads to be more invisible than that.”

“Oh, they're good, all right—anyone who doesn't know the area would never think twice. But it's my own block, and I happen to know there aren't any kids of that age right there. Especially not kids who just stand around in groups of two or three, and don't seem to wander off much. Although I'll admit that if I hadn't already been thinking of getting someone to watch my door, I probably wouldn't have noticed them.”

“I'm glad to hear that.”

Hammett reached for his pouch and papers again, glancing at Russell as he did so. “I had a couple of questions for you. Your father was going to join the Intelligence branch when he joined up?”

Russell shot a surprised glance at Holmes, who returned it evenly, as if to say, Yes, I told him nearly everything. She shrugged, and said to Hammett, “That's right. He had a slightly bum leg which would have made it difficult to do a day's march with a full pack, but he spoke both German and French, he had travelled extensively in Europe, and in addition his father had gone to school with one of the generals in charge of Intelligence, or at any rate, what eventually became the Intelligence branch.”

“But you don't think your father could have picked up an enemy through those connexions?”

“What, German spies and assassins in San Francisco, just two months after the war started? I shouldn't have thought so. As far as I know, he hadn't done any work at all for them yet, and he didn't even have any links with the Presidio. But would I have known if he did? Probably not.”

Holmes turned to Hammett. “Do you know anyone inside the Army here?”

“I might. Don't know if he'd know, or talk if he did, but I can find out.”

“It might be worth asking. Just to eliminate the possibility.”

“I gave your toilet-pull to my police friend,” Hammett told him. “Nothing yet, but it's not exactly a fast process, and like you said, the prints are probably not in their files.”

“There's a project for the future,” Holmes mused, “developing a central and quickly accessible registry for finger-prints.”

“A hobby for your retirement, Holmes,” Russell commented.

But before the men could get any further in the planning stage of such a thing, the bell sounded. As Holmes went to let in Mr Long and his mystery-solving friend, Russell glanced at the window, and saw that the trees were still clearly visible.

Five hours later, when Mr Long's feng shui expert pushed himself back from the paper-laden library desk, the trees in the garden behind him had not been visible for some time.

His name was Ming, and he was a doctor of some kind or other, although apparently not including medical. Long's every gesture made it abundantly clear that the old scholar was one of the most important individuals in the Chinese community, and that it was an unheard-of honour for the practitioner to come to a Western house for a consultation. The three barbarians expressed their proper gratitude, which the scholar waved aside with a gracious hand. He seemed, if anything, amused at Long's solicitous behaviour, and interested in everything around him.

Particularly in Holmes. The old man stood before the English detective with an enigmatic look on his ageless features, the lips beneath their wisps of beard twisted in what might have been distaste, or amusement. His first words did not make the attitude any clearer.

“This low-born servant is unspeakably honoured at this opportunity to meet the English High Prince of Hawkshaws,” he said. His audience looked startled, at the flowery speech as much as at this unlikely reference to low detective fiction; even Long seemed taken aback.

Hammett got the joke first, and let loose a snort of smothered laughter. Holmes, looking more closely at the visiting sage, deliberately continued extending his hand, a motion that had been interrupted by the man's flowery words.

“The Savant of the Breath of Dragons is of course welcome to take amusement at the expense of this humble thief-taker,” he replied, and Ming nodded, the twist of his mouth finally becoming a smile.

Dr Ming was a thin, elderly gentleman with white hair that flowed from his high forehead down over the collar of his beautifully cut Western suit, a back straight and flexible as bamboo, and delicate hands that seemed to fold themselves together into the sleeves of an invisible robe. His English was fluent and precise, although accented, and he emanated a Mandarin sensibility in everything he did, from opening the cover of one of Judith Russell's garden journals to picking up a cup of the pale green tea Long had thought to bring with him. Watching him make notes with his silver mechanical pencil was like witnessing the art of a master water-colourist, the meditation of precise and delicate strokes.

He was not, however, speedy.

Holmes explained what he was hoping for. He described the document they had found in the fireplace, and its possible meanings (leaving aside the potential interpretation that implicated Charles Russell as the author of blackmail—undue complications were not for the moment) and then pulled up the stack of Mrs Russell's journals, one for each year, to show Dr Ming the drawings they contained. He presented his theory that Charles Russell, most likely with the knowledge of his wife but certainly with the assistance of the gardener Long, had concealed something of considerable importance in his garden before he had died: the garden that, as Dr Ming could see, was now so hugely overgrown as to be unreadable, and very nearly impenetrable.

When he had explained all this, he asked his question: Knowing that the man in charge of the garden, Tom Long's father, was devoted to the precepts of feng shui, and knowing that Mr Long would have wished to help conceal and protect this important article, could a comparative study of the garden before and after 1906 suggest to Dr Ming where precisely the item might have been buried?

Dr Ming asked, “Is this an item of importance, or one of value?”

“It could be either, although I suspect to Charles Russell, its importance would not have lain strictly in its monetary value. He was a wealthy man.”

Dr Ming tucked his hands into their invisible sleeves and meditated on the open journal before him, that with the date of March 1906. He meditated for so long, and sitting so still, that Hammett began to think the old fellow had drifted into a nap, and Russell found herself wondering if, despite his earlier fluency, he actually understood English as well as he had seemed to.

Finally he took his hands apart and looked into Holmes' eyes. “It may be possible,” he pronounced. He turned to Long to suggest that another pot of tea be assembled, began to unpack a collection of papers and writing implements, and asked the room in general, “I shall need the precise time of birth of the owner of the garden.”

Fortunately, Holmes had come across just such a document in his search through the family papers, or all might well have been lost before it began. The aged scholar merely accepted the information as if such knowledge was a given, and pulled the first of the garden journals towards him.

After an hour of studying the sketches and journals, he began to transfer certain pieces of information to the sheets of paper he had brought, using as reference a drawing that looked like a highly complex cross between a compass and maze. He murmured from time to time in his own language. Long sat on the edge of his chair, unwilling to relax in the great man's presence. Little else happened.

After two hours, Holmes directed Hammett to an upstairs bed for a rest while he and Russell strolled down to the Italian café, bringing back an assortment of food. Dr Ming plucked curiously at a plate of noodles with a pair of chop-sticks he pulled from his case, but seemed unimpressed with what the Italians had done with the product. Another hour after that, and Dr Ming was on his third pot of tea (“Quite a three-pot problem,” Russell had murmured to Holmes), frowning slightly with the intensity of his excitement, and giving tiny nods of the head from time to time.

Finally, four and a half hours after he had begun, he raised his head to Holmes and said, “Yes.”

“You know where it is?”

But he would answer the question in his own way. “When my friend here explained your problem, it was of interest to me, this matter of anticipating how another man might read the energies. Of course, it simplified matters considerably when I found that the woman whose garden this was left the country shortly after the item was buried. Therefore I could assume that the considerable changes made between her drawing of 1906 and her subsequent one of 1912 would reflect entirely the work of Mr Long Kwo. You see where he has extended the pond a few feet here, and planted a red-flowering bush there?

“You no doubt wonder at this superstition,” he said, carefully not looking at Hammett, who had been sprawling back in his chair for several minutes, as if to put as much distance as possible between himself and this nonsense. “It seems to the Western mind absurd to believe that the manipulation of material objects can change the nature of human emotions, expectations, and perceptions. Yet a room with walls the colour of a peach will make a person feel entirely differently from an identical room whose walls are pale blue. That is a minor example of the precepts of feng shui. In a painting, a small brush-stroke, a specific shape and colour placed in a key position, can change the balance of the whole; in life, a small adjustment in precisely the right place and time may have more effect than an enormous effort elsewhere and later. We use a, hm, mythological language to speak of these adjustments and effects, but that does not mean we believe that there are actual dragons living under the earth.”

Under the force of those sparkling eyes and sensible words, even Hammett had to withdraw his scepticism. He pulled back his outstretched legs and sat nearer upright in his chair, and Dr Ming went back to his notes.

“The difficulties—your difficulties—arise with the question of whether the item you seek was considered important, or if it was valuable. If he was seeking to protect a thing of monetary value, the adjustments made would reflect that, whereas if, for example, the thing he concealed could be detrimental to the public reputation of the family if it were found, then the adjustments would stem from an entirely different set of considerations.”

Holmes controlled his impatience, for scholars must be allowed their full explanations. However, it seemed that Dr Ming's caveats were brief.

“I believe, looking at what Long Kwo has done, you will find he shared with his employer the attitude that the matter's importance lay not in its monetary value, but in how it affected the family's welfare and social standing—what is called ‘face.' If it is a thing merely worth money, you may find it in this area.” His silver pencil darted out to add a neat little square to the drawing he had made of the garden's bones. “However, if its power lies in its preservation of face, it should be in this place.” The second square was on the other side of the drawing. Just where the worst of the bramble thicket lay.

Holmes saw Long and the scholar of feng shui out to the car that had waited at the kerb for them all this time. He bowed to the old man, thanked him, asked Long to have the bill for the services sent to the St Francis, and went back inside.

“Too bad Conan Doyle didn't meet that man,” he muttered. “It might have made him think differently about San Francisco's psychic energies.”

Russell looked up from the desk where she was collecting the journals and scraps of paper. “Sorry?”

Holmes shook his head to indicate it was nothing of importance, and began to transfer the used cups and glasses onto a tray. With an armful of journals, Russell paused in the door-way and said, “It is too dark to go bashing around in the garden.”

“I agree,” he said to her obvious relief. “We shall return at first light. However, let us bring the good doctor's treasure maps with us.”

If their opponents were so set on whatever might or might not lie out in that wasteland that they would tackle it in the dead of night at the cost of much bloodshed and injury, Russell would almost have been inclined to let them have it. Almost.

When she had returned her mother's journals to the front parlour, she folded Dr Ming's map into her pocket. They walked back to the hotel by a circuitous route of Holmes' devising, reached it without interruption, and took their leave of Hammett.

Early in the morning, Holmes dressed and went to see to his Irregulars. He found their interest flagging, but they bounced back with an infusion of cash and the reassurance that it would be either that day, or not at all. Young Mr Garcia assured him they wouldn't take their eyes off the place, an assurance rather spoilt by his subsequent discovery that the very young lad who was supposed to be watching at that moment was instead standing at his elbow, unwilling to miss anything. However, as Hammett had not yet left the apartment, no harm was done.

By seven o'clock, the two detectives-turned-archaeologists were at the house. Both were dressed in their toughest, most impenetrable clothing, but the bramble thicket laughed at them, inflicting a thousand scratches and punctures. Hammett appeared shortly after eight, and although he expressed his willingness to pitch in, he seemed not unhappy to be assigned a seat and the position of look-out. Later in the morning, Long came walking down the drive, although he, too, ended up sitting in the sun while Russell and Holmes took turns with the saws, branch clippers, and spades they had found in the garden shed. Hammett rolled and smoked one cigarette after another and began to tell them about a story he was writing, its protagonist an operative in a detective agency rather like that of the Pinkertons, only more efficient and ethical. Long contributed suggestions from his own broad reading of the literature of the masses, while the other two sweated and cursed and drew themselves mental goals, after which they swore to move the hunt over to the other marked square, the one where Dr Ming had suggested mere money might lie.

Well past several of those mental goals, but before the final one could be reached, Russell's spade hit something metal.

All four of them went still. Without taking up the tool, Russell squatted and brushed at the crumbly soil. She slipped off the leather gloves (also from the shed, and half eaten by mice, but better than nothing) to feel around the base of the spade. In a minute, she tugged at an object a foot long and half that wide: a biscuit tin, surprisingly heavy, freshly dented and rusty around the corners. She handed it to Holmes, who most manfully waited as she dug around to see if there was anything else. Almost immediately, her fingers encountered a second such object, equally weighty, this one advertising the contents as chocolates, which she wrestled out of the ground and gave to him. Two seemed to be all, and she followed Holmes along the path-way they had hacked and to the kitchen door, where they kicked off their dirt-encrusted shoes and went into the scullery to scrub the worst of the grime from their hands while Hammett and Long spread one of the house's dust-cloths over the table.

Russell sat down before the two tins, sucking absently at a bleeding place on the side of her hand. Holmes clattered around in the kitchen drawers until he had found utensils to prise and rip, and did so.

Although they had been digging in the place indicated for something of importance, the first box contained money. Some of it was paper, tied together in three bundles, but the weight came from the coins, mostly silver but a few of very old gold. Hammett whistled; Long sat back in surprise; Holmes and Russell looked inscrutable and turned to the other tin.

This one held money as well, but in addition to coins it had a white cloth with bright red markings on it. This was wrapped around what proved, upon unfolding the cloth, to be a fist-sized tangle of jewellery—a dozen or more gold chains, four completely plain gold rings, three loose diamonds, two rubies, and half a dozen sapphires, of various sizes and conditions. Holmes tugged the cloth free and spread it out, revealing it as an arm-band with a red cross painted onto it. He dropped it back into the box, and poked at the knot of chains, saying, “I should think that finding the original owners of these would be extremely difficult. Particularly as some of it appears to have been taken from people who were bleeding.”

They studied the brown stains clotting a couple of the chains, all four faces registering various degrees of distaste. Then Russell nudged the valuables and Red Cross arm-band to one side to prise with her finger-nail at the flat oil-cloth shape that lay beneath, tugging its corner to work it loose from the jewellery, laying it on the dust-cloth to unfold the wrapping.

Inside lay the carbon copy of a letter, typed on an Underwood machine with a crooked lower-case “a”: her father's type-writer; her father's words.