Locked rooms

Chapter Two

It is a characteristic difficulty of shipboard life that one cannot escape an interrogator or a boor for long. It is particularly true when one is sharing rooms with one's interrogator.

So it was that the next morning, Holmes knew as well as I did that the dreams had not plagued me during the night. I did dream of the locked rooms, but for the first time since we had left Japan, the flying-objects nightmare did not arrive to jerk me gasping from my bed.

The other two dreams persisted. The faceless man had returned, although he had stood clearly outlined in the door-way of a tent, and had not spoken. Still, his presence had not been as troublesome as before. Instead, that night and the following, the enigmatic concealed rooms became the focus for my sleeping mind, dimmer yet ever more sumptuously laid beneath the dust of disuse.

Had I been in the city as a child of six? Had I felt the earth leap and split, watched half the city go up in flames in the worst fire America had ever seen? The disappearance of the first dream forced me to consider the possibility that Holmes was right, for it seemed almost as if, by naming the demon, he had stolen its authority.

Later in the afternoon of our last full day at sea, another image came to me that confirmed Holmes' interpretation beyond a doubt. The day was warm and bright and, passing under the ship's white canvas sun awnings, I was suddenly visited by a vision of my mother, wearing men's trousers, a ridiculous wide-brimmed straw hat with an enormous orange silk flower, and a delicious, self-mocking grin. She was turning from an open fire with a cast-iron skillet in one hand, a large spoon in the other, the bright canvas of an Army tent behind her; for a moment it was as if a door had been thrown open, permitting me, along with that tantalising glimpse, all the sensations the room-dream held: a thud of heavy sound beneath the crisp noise of breaking glass, a sharp thrill of terror, the feel of arms wrapping around me, and over it all an angry red haze. Then the door slammed shut, and I stood motionless for a long time, until a child ran past and broke my reverie.

It was, I knew without question, real. For that brief glimpse of recovered memory, I could forgive Holmes any degree of meddling. I could even admit to him that he was right: I had been in San Francisco during the earthquake, a child of six.

Why, however, had I pushed away all memory of the event?

We came at last to my childhood home, the West's biggest, youngest city, which spread over the end of a peninsula between ocean and bay. Eighty years ago, a ship coming through the Golden Gate would have seen nothing but a handful of Indian shacks clustered around a crumbling mission. Then, in 1848, John Marshall picked up a gleaming lump of yellow metal from a creek near Sutter's Mill, and the world came pouring in.

I had relatives in that first wave, victims of gold fever who worked claims, made fortunes, and lost them again. I had other relatives who joined the second wave of those who supplied and serviced the miners; their fortunes were more slowly made, and not as quickly lost. But unlike the others who now reigned supreme in the state of California, my grandfather had clung to his East Coast roots: Although he had built a house in San Francisco, it had been on Pacific Heights, keeping its distance from the showy Nob Hill mansions of Hopkins and Stanford; and although he had kept his holdings and remained a financial power on the West Coast, he had also bowed to his wife's demands that they return to the civilised world of Boston to raise their children, and thus loosed his hold on Californian political authority.

Still, my restless iconoclast of a father had claimed San Francisco as his home, declaring his independence by settling his Jewish-English wife in the family house there, and taking control of the family's California business interests. My father loved California, that much I knew, and I remembered him speaking of San Francisco as The City, a phrase that from my mother's lips meant London. I remembered almost nothing about the place itself, but I looked forward to making The City's acquaintance before I turned my back on her for good.

Thus it was that on a morning in late April, seventy-five years after the gold rush began, I stood on the deck and saw the Gate that had welcomed my father's people, smooth hills bracketing the entrance to the bay—green now following the winter rains, but golden in summer's long drought. Stern gun placements protruded from the hills on either side, but as we entered the Golden Gate and followed the curve of the land to our right, the white-walled city that carpeted a dozen or more hills came into view, its myriad piers and docks stretching long fingers out into the bay.

Our pilot took us in to one gleaming set of buildings not far from the terminal where ferries bustled in and out. We eased slowly in, coming to rest with a barely perceptible judder; ropes were cast and tied; the crowds on board and on land pressed towards each other impatiently, while behind them rough stevedores lounged among the lorries and heavy wagons, smoking and making conversation. The first officials started up the board walkway; as if their uniforms made for a signal, the passengers turned and scurried for their cabins.

Holmes and I waited until the crowd had thinned, then went below to gather our hand-luggage and present ourselves for collection.

The only hitch was, no one appeared to be interested in our presence. We sat in the emptying dining room where the purser had told us we might wait, Holmes smoking cigarettes, both of us watching out the windows as the disembarking passengers went from a torrent to a stream to stragglers. I glanced at my wrist-watch for the twentieth time, and shook my head.

“It's been nearly an hour, Holmes. Shall we just make our own way?”

Wordlessly, he crushed his cigarette out in the overflowing tray, picked up his Gladstone bag, and paused, looking out of the window.

“This may be your gentleman,” he noted. I followed his gaze and saw a portly, tweed-clad, sandy-haired gentleman in his thirties working his way against the flow of porters down the gangway. Sure enough, he paused at the top to make frantic enquiries of the purser, who directed him towards our door. A moment later he burst into the room, red-faced and breathless, his hat clutched in his left hand as his right was extended in our direction.

“Miss Russell? Oh, I am so terribly sorry at the delay—the boy I sent to watch for the ship's docking appears to have a girl-friend in the vicinity, and he became distracted. Why didn't you have someone 'phone me? Have your bags been taken off? Hello,” he inserted, his hand pumping mine, then moving to Holmes. “Good afternoon, Mr Holmes. So good to meet you. Henry Norbert, at your service. Welcome to San Francisco. And to you, Miss Russell, welcome back. Come, let's get you off the ship and to your hotel.” He clapped his soft hat back onto his head, scooped up my bag, and urged us with his free hand in the direction of the doors.

“Why an hotel?” I asked. “Surely we can stay at the house?”

Norbert stopped and removed the hat from his head again. “Oh. Oh, no, no, I wouldn't think that's a good idea. No, you'd be much more comfortable at a hotel. I've made reservations for you at the St Francis. Right downtown, just around the corner from the offices.”

“Is there something wrong with the house?”

The hat, which had been rising in the direction of the sandy head, descended again. “No, no, it's still standing strong, no trouble there. But of course, it's not terribly habitable after all these years.”

I opened my mouth to protest that he'd been told to get it ready for us, then decided there was little point: Clearly, I should have to see for myself, and decide if the house was in fact uninhabitable, or simply uncomfortable after ten years of standing empty. Probably hadn't had the dust-cloths cleared away. I closed my mouth again, Mr Norbert's hat resumed its head, and we allowed ourselves to be herded gently from the ship and into a gleaming saloon car that idled at the kerb.

Eighteen years ago, I reflected as we drove—almost exactly eighteen years ago—this city had been reduced literally to its very foundations. There was no sign of that catastrophe now. The busy docks gave way to a land of high buildings and black suits, then to the commercial centre. We passed between shop windows bright with spring frocks and alongside a square that had patches of spring flowers around a high pillar with some sort of winged statue at the top. Then the motor turned again, dodged the rumbling box of a cable-car, and drifted to a halt before a dignified entranceway. Liveried men and boys relieved us of our burdens, and we followed Mr Norbert through the polished doors to the desk.

The equally polished gentleman behind the desk greeted us by name, with professional camaraderie, as if we were longtime guests instead of newcomers known only through our local escort. Another, even more dignified, man lingered in the background, casting a gimlet eye on the desk man's efficiency. While Holmes signed the register, I asked Mr Norbert if his office had received any messages for me.

“Hah!” he exclaimed, and dug into the breast pocket of his suit for a thick packet of letters. “Good thing you asked, I'd have had to come back across town with them when I got home.”

I flipped through them—three from Mrs Hudson, Holmes' longtime housekeeper although more of an aunt to me, several from various friends that she had sent on for us, a post-card from Dr Watson showing Paris. Norbert noticed the disappointment on my face.

“Were you expecting something else?” he asked.

“I was, rather. It must have been delayed.”

Back in Japan I had decided that the one person I wished to see in San Francisco was Dr Leah Ginzberg, the psychiatrist who had cared for me after the accident, in whose offices I had laboriously begun to piece together my life. I had written to tell her that I was going to be passing through the city, and asked her to write care of Mr Norbert.

Perhaps the mail from Japan was unreliable.

“Well, I'll certainly have my secretary check again,” he said. “Perhaps it'll come in the afternoon delivery. Now, I'll have most of your paperwork together in the morning; if you'd like to come to the offices first thing, we could have a look.”

“I could come now, if that's convenient.”

“Oh,” Norbert said, “it's not, I'm afraid. There were some problems with the records of the water company shares, I had to send them back for clarification. But they promised to have them brought to me no later than nine in the morning. Shall we say nine-thirty?”

There did not seem to be much of a choice. I told him I'd see him at half past nine the following morning, and he shook our hands and hurried off.

Holmes had finished and was waiting for me, but before we could follow the boy with the keys, the dignified man who had been lingering in the background eased himself forward and held out his hand. “Miss Russell? My name is Auberon. I'm the manager of the St Francis. I just wanted to add my own personal welcome. I knew your father, not well, but enough to respect him deeply. I was sad to hear of the tragedy, and I am glad to see you here at last. If there's anything I can do, you need only ask.”

“Why, thank you,” I said in astonishment. Holmes had to touch my arm to get me moving in the direction of the lifts.

In our rooms, while Holmes threw himself onto the sofa and began ripping open letters, I stood and studied the neatly arranged bags and realised that, between the hasty packing of our January departure from England and a most haphazard assortment of additions in the months since then, there was little in those bags that would impress a set of lawyers and business managers as to the solidity and competence of the heiress whose business they had maintained all these years. To say nothing of the long miles that lay between here and the final ship out of New York. I did have a couple of gorgeous kimonos and an assortment of dazzling Indian costumes, but my Western garments were suitable for English winters and two years out of date, which even here might be noticed. I wasn't even certain the trunk contained a pair of stockings that hadn't been mended twice.

“Oh, what I could do with that Simla tailor of Nesbit's,” I muttered, interrupting my partner's sporadic recital of the news from home.

“Sorry?” said Holmes, looking up from his page.

“I was just thinking how nice it would be if women could get by with three suits and an evening wear. I'm going to have to go out to the shops.”

“Sorry,” he said again, this time intoned with sympathy rather than query.

I gathered my gloves and straw hat, then checked my wrist-watch. “I'll be back in a couple of hours, and we can have a cup of tea. Anything I can get you?”

“Those handkerchiefs I got in Japan were quite nice, but the socks are not really adequate. If you see any, I could use half a dozen pair.”

“Right you are.”

Down at the concierge's desk, I asked about likely shops, receiving in response more details than I needed. I thanked the gentleman, then paused.

“May I have a piece of paper and an envelope?” I asked. “I ought to send a note.”

I was led across the lobby to a shrine of the epistolary arts, where pen, stationery, and desk lay waiting for my attentions. I scribbled a brief message to Dr Ginzberg, explaining that an earlier letter appeared to have gone astray, but that I hoped very much to see her in the brief time I would be in San Francisco. I gave her both the hotel address and that of the law offices for her response, signed it “affectionately yours,” then wrote on the envelope the address I still knew by heart and handed it to the desk for posting.

The doorman welcomed me out into a perfectly lovely spring afternoon. Far too nice to be spent wrangling with shopkeepers, but there was no help for it—no bespoke tailor could produce something by nine-thirty tomorrow morning. Grimly, I turned to the indicated set of display windows on the other side of the flowered square and entered the emporium.

An hour later, I was the richer by three dignified outfits with hats to match, two pairs of shoes, ten of silk stockings, and six of men's woollen socks. I arranged to have everything delivered to the St Francis and left the shop, intending to continue down the street to another, more exclusive place mentioned by the concierge for dresses that did not come off a rack. But the sun was so delicious on my face, the gritty pavement so blessedly motionless underfoot, that I decided a brief walk through the flowered square would be in order.

Union Square was full of other citizens enjoying the sunshine. The benches were well used, the paths busy with strolling shoppers and businessmen taking detours. Few children, I noted—and then a sound reached me, and my mind ceased to turn smoothly for a while.

A rhythmic clang, a rumble of heavy iron wheels, the slap and whir of the underground cable: That most distinctive of San Francisco entities, a cable-car, rumbled up Powell Street, its warning bell ringing merrily as it neared Post.

The combined noises acted like the trigger phrase of a hypnotist: I dropped into a sort of trance, staring at the bright, boxy vehicle as it passed. It paused to take on a passenger, then grabbed its ever-moving underground cable again to resume its implacable way down the centre of the street towards the heights. Before it had disappeared entirely, a passer-by brushed past me, waking me from the dream-world. I turned away from the tracks and began walking fast, head down, crossing the flower-bedecked square and fleeing up streets with whichever crowd carried me along.

I was dimly aware of changes: the standard odours of a downtown shopping district—petrol, perfume, perspiration—gave way to more exotic fragrances, chillies and sesame oil, roasting duck and incense. Then a splash of colour caught my eye, and I raised my head to look around me. A row of bright paper lamps danced in the spring breeze, strung between two equally colourful buildings. The streets were oddly discordant, strongly remembered yet utterly foreign, as if I'd known the idea of the place, but not the reality. I walked on, but after a while the streets changed again. The air became redolent of garlic, tomato sauce, and coffee. In a short time, those smells faded beneath the air of a waterfront, and suddenly I had run out of land.

I stood on the edge of a wide, curving roadway fronting a row of piers that bustled with machines and men, loading and unloading ships from a dozen countries. Wagons and lorries came and went, few business suits appeared, and the air smelt only of sea and tar.

Reassuringly like London, in fact.

After a while I began to walk along the waterfront road, turning towards the western sun. It felt good on my face, as the unmoving ground felt good beneath my feet, and the muscles of my legs took pleasure in the fact that they could stride out without having to turn and retrace their steps every couple of minutes. The claustrophobic air of shipboard life slowly emptied from my lungs, and I thought, maybe it actually was some “curious aversion to the ship itself” that had inflicted the insomnia on me. That and lack of exercise.

I stopped to watch some fishermen at work, all high boots and loud voices, repairing holes in their nets while wearing sweaters more hole than wool. The fresh, powerful smell of fish and crab rose up all around me, to fade as I continued on. An Army post intruded between me and the water for a time, then allowed me back, and with the water before me, a dark round mountain rising from the northern shore and the island of Alcatraz before me, I stretched out my arms in the late sun, half inclined to shout my pleasure aloud, feeling a smile on my face. I turned to survey the rising city—and it was only then I noticed the length of the shadows the buildings were casting.

“Damn,” I said aloud instead: I'd told Holmes I'd be back for tea.

I crossed the waterfront road to re-enter the city, and in a couple of streets I spotted a sign announcing public telephones. At least three languages mingled in the small room, an appropriate accompaniment to the Indian, English, and Japanese coins I sorted through in my purse. At last I found some money the girl would accept and placed a call to the St Francis. Holmes did not answer, nor had he left a message for me, so I left one for him instead and walked out of the telephone office nursing a small glow of righteousness: Had I been at the hotel at the declared time, I told myself, I'd only have been cooling my heels waiting for him to return from heaven knows where.

I continued south, which I knew was the general direction of downtown—it is difficult to become seriously lost in a city with water on three sides. And I was beginning to take note of my surroundings again, raising my eyes from the pavement to look around me. This was a more heavily residential area, the houses both older and larger than they had been in the area I had fled through, the residents less strikingly regional. As the ground rose, steeply now in a delicious challenge to my leg muscles, the houses began to retreat from the public gaze behind solid walls and gated drives. Street noises diminished with the loss of restaurants and shops, the trees grew taller and more thickly green, and the paving stones underfoot were more even although the number of pedestrians was markedly reduced.

The hilltop enclave might have had a moat around it and signs saying Important Persons Only. From here, the bank manager's driver could take his employer to the financial district and easily return in time to run the man's wife to her luncheon date downtown. There was no risk of roving gangs of boisterous children here, or late-night revellers walking noisily past by way of a short-cut home.

Even the air smelt of money, I thought, crisp and clean.

I looked up smiling at the house opposite, an unassuming brick edifice of two tall stories, and nearly fell on my face over my suddenly unresponsive feet.

I saw: snippets of red-brick wall and once-white trim set well back from the street, now nearly obscured by a wildly overgrown vine and an equally undisciplined jungle of a garden; a grey stone garden wall separating jungle from pavement, in want of repointing and somehow shorter than it should be; one set of ornate iron gates sagging across the drive and a smaller pedestrian entrance further along the wall, both gates looped through with heavy chains and solid padlocks; the chain on the walkway gate, which for lack of other fastening had been welded directly onto the strike-plate—the very strike-plate that had reached out to gash open my little brother's scalp when he had tripped while running through it.

There was no mistaking the shape of the house: My feet had led me home.