“Where is the body?”
“Mycroft had someone come for it, and the car. He said they would make it look like an accident, with a fire. He also told me that Hudson bought the thing just last week. He paid cash.”
“I was not sure that you would bring the problem to Mycroft,” he said. “You have not been terribly fond of my brother, in recent months.”
“Even if there hadn’t been a threat lying over Mrs Hudson, I couldn’t let her walk in and find that. And I haven’t changed my mind about Mycroft. He has too much power. But in the end, who else did I have?”
“That may, in fact, be the entire point of Mycroft Holmes. In any event, it was the right decision. You could not have anticipated the problems.”
He drew me into a quick embrace, then turned towards the sitting room, grumbling as he went. “I have to say, Russell, haematology has proved a most irritating science, woefully slow to develop past a crude analysis of evidence.”
It was his way of apologising, for his own perceived failure to summon a miracle. “Still, once you saw the photographs, you knew. Why did it take Lestrade so long to get them to you?”
“Ah. Well. That was not entirely his fault. More coffee?”
Holmes poured from the dregs of the pot. I arranged a pillow beneath my aching arm.
“Were you away?”
“In Hampshire,” he replied. “With Billy.”
“Hampshire? What was so urgent down there?”
“I needed confirmation of an identity.”
“Holmes, don’t make me pull teeth. Just tell me.”
“It has to do with the Gloria Scott case.”
“Who is she?”
“It, not she. A ship that went down following a mutiny, six years before I was born.”
“Oh yes, I remember now. You had a friend. Talbert?”
“Trevor.”
“That’s right. His father was being blackmailed by a man named…” I stopped—and not because I could not recall the villain’s name.
He nodded. “Hudson.”
“Do you mean to say, that Hudson has something to do with this?”
“I am afraid so.”
“What?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why on earth not?” I knew more state secrets than half the men in the House of Lords: what could possibly be worse here?
“A promise made.”
“A promise involving Mrs Hudson, who used to be called Clarissa, who had a son that the whole world assumed belonged to her sister? A son with clear criminal tendencies, who was related to a blackmailer, and who came to England to get something from his mother?”
Holmes did not comment.
“The Gloria Scott was one of your first cases,” I continued. “I knew it was no coincidence that you came to rent rooms from her on Baker Street. I’m now suspecting that I didn’t guess the half of it.”
He cocked his head. “Are you saying that you knew Mrs Hudson was…not all that she appeared?”
“I’ve known that forever, more or less.”
“How?”
“Simple mathematics. Dr Watson’s readership might believe that the names are but an amusing coincidence, but what are the odds that two unrelated people, both of whom had a great impact on your personal history, should bear the same surname? There was another Hudson, too.”
“Morse, who owned a statue shop. A distant cousin.”
“Also,” I admitted, “I searched her rooms.” He blinked; I laughed. “I know, not a thing one does to one’s housekeeper, but the first time I came back from Oxford, during the Christmas holidays, I noticed that her accent had slipped somewhat. She regained it quickly, but I started to reflect on some other behaviour of hers that didn’t entirely fit with what I knew of her—what I thought I knew of her. You apparently had not noticed—certainly you’d never given me any indication that she might be other than she appeared. I had to be certain. That you did not have a traitor in your midst, I mean. So one day when you both were away, I conducted a search.”
“You, were protecting me?” The look on his face was most peculiar.
“I suppose I was. She has a pistol, you know? A tiny little thing, but with bullets.”
“Does she, now?” It did not seem to come as a surprise to him. He fiddled with his pipe, taken up with the image of sixteen-year-old Mary Russell, protecting an experienced grey-haired detective from his potentially homicidal housekeeper. “And what,” he asked eventually, “did your search tell you? Apart from the gun?”
“That she had secrets, but nothing that seemed ominous. One thing was interesting: a birth certificate for a boy, with her as the mother, and no father’s name. Nor was there a marriage license among her papers.”
He picked up his pipe, and busied himself with its bowl.
“Since then, I’ve been aware that when letters came from Australia, they spoke of her nephew, but gave news of her son.
“So, Holmes, tell me: who is Samuel Hudson’s father?”
His tobacco was giving him difficulties. “Holmes?” I said sharply.
He shook out the match and dropped it into the laden bowl. “I met Clarissa Hudson in the autumn of 1879, when Samuel was an infant. A year later, she returned from Australia without him. Three months after that, in January, 1881, Watson and I took rooms in her house. Outside of that,” he said, “I made her a promise. That so long as her past remained behind her, I would make no further enquiries into her life, pursue no more investigation into any crimes and misdemeanours she might have committed. From that day, her slate was clean. I gave her my word,” he reiterated.
“For forty-five years?”
“An excellent mental exercise, always to be upon one’s guard.”
“Always?” I exclaimed.
His grey eyes squinted at me through the smoke.
“And has that past remained behind her?” I asked. “Doesn’t her son sticking a gun in my face call for a re-evaluation?”
“If she brought him deliberately to our doorstep, perhaps. Do you think that to be the case?”
“It could be argued that his presence alone was a statement, but no, he said nothing that directly suggested she knew he was coming. And,” I added as a memory hit me, “the bonnet of the car wasn’t hot. It hadn’t come far.”
“He’d been waiting for her to leave the house?”
“It’s possible. He may have been at least roughly aware of her habits, and knew that she always goes to market on Wednesday. Years and years of letters, they must have contained a lot of casual information such as that.”
“One must also consider Samuel’s words, that you would ‘do.’ If she was his primary target, she was hardly a willing accomplice. It leaves my promise intact.”
That did not mean I could not ask Mrs Hudson many pointed questions about her past.
And what a pleasant conversation that was going to be.
“So if we’re not off to, er, interrogate Mrs Hudson,” I said, “where do you propose we begin?”
“Your arm requires rest.”
I surreptitiously eased my elbow from its supporting pillow while glaring at my husband. “Holmes, I have been lounging about here for three days listening to Mycroft discuss whether or not the chairman of the electricity commission should be made a Knight Grand Cross or a Knight Commander, whether or not the Minister Plenipotentiary to His Majesty the Shah of Persia has served long enough for his KC, and whether a youthful indiscretion should keep the retiring head park-keeper at Holyrood from an OBE. If I have to stay here any longer, I shall vote Socialist in the next general election.”
“We cannot have that. Very well, I propose to pay a visit to the hotel room of Mr Samuel Hudson.”
“Good plan. Any idea where we might find it?” My heart sank a bit at the task: how many thousand hotels were there in London, anyway?
“A relatively specific idea, as it happens,” he replied. “Mr Mudd located a guest by the name in an hotel near Paddington.”<
br />
“He hasn’t searched it?”
“He did not have the time before coming to Sussex.”
I stood up. “With luck, they won’t have cleaned the rooms yet. Let me just dress and run a comb through my hair.”
But when we got downstairs, Mycroft’s doorman greeted us with a tip of the head towards the street. “You have a friend.”
Billy’s car stood directly in front of the door. As we emerged, the legs that were stretched across the seat drew back. His head appeared at the window.
“Offer you two a ride?”
A lesser man than William Mudd would have gone straight to Hudson’s hotel, that he might greet Holmes with a fait accomplis of evidence in hand. Billy just craned his neck up at us with an expectant look on his face. Accepting defeat, Holmes opened the front door for me, then climbed into the back.
“You’ll want to see Hudson’s rooms, I’d guess,” Billy said.
“Billy, you’ve done enough,” Holmes said.
The swarthy driver put his elbow on the seat back and met Holmes’ eyes. “This is Mrs Hudson we’re talking about. There are no other jobs on my books until she’s in the clear.”
When Holmes did not object further, Billy turned to reach for the starter—but before the motor ground into life, Holmes opened his door. “You two search Samuel’s rooms. I shall meet you back here this afternoon.” He stepped briskly out onto the pavement, and was already moving off when I got my own door open far enough to call at his back.
“Wait,” I said. “Where are you going?” With armed men in the picture, it did not seem an unreasonable question—but he said something I only half heard, then waved a hand and was gone in the morning crowds.
“You think he knew I was still down here?” Billy asked as I shut my door again.
“Are you asking if Holmes deliberately planned this, what—division of labour?”
“I’m wondering if he’s off to put his hand somewhere he doesn’t want ours.”
“He never looked out of Mycroft’s window, after you left the apartment. Whether or not he noticed the lack of an engine starting up, I couldn’t say.”
“Want to go after him?”
The question was slightly moot, since Holmes was nowhere in sight. “No, let’s go look at Samuel’s room before some maid cleans everything away.”
Billy pushed the starter button. “What did Mr Holmes say? When you asked where he was going?”
“It sounded like he was going to see a bishop, but I can’t have heard him right.”
Billy went still. When I looked over, his face was unreadable.
“What?” I demanded.
Slowly, he slipped the car into gear.
“Billy, what does a bishop have to do with anything?”
“Not a bishop,” he said at last. “The Bishop. An old lowlife with more sins to his name than Lucifer.”
“Oh, right. I’ve heard of him. Not for a while, though.”
“He used to be a power in London, like his father before him. Inherited the position, you might say. The father and Mrs Hudson had an arrangement, when I was young.”
I gaped at him: was he suggesting that the man was Samuel’s father? “Mrs Hudson and an aged villain were…friends?”
“No!” he said, after he’d nearly ripped the stairway from an omnibus. “No, those two were never ‘friends.’ ”
“What, then?”
“Business partners? Though that’d be stretching it.”
“When was—”
“That’s all I have to say on the matter.”
“Oh, Lord, not you, too?” I was going to have to convince the Save Mrs Hudson League to accept my application for membership. “Can you at least tell me: Samuel Hudson is actually her son, rather than her nephew, correct?”
He nodded.
“Why did he think she’d killed someone?”
He took a long time to reply, and even then, it was no more answer than Holmes had given me. “Tell you the truth,” he said, “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
He parked down the street from an hotel of the sort favoured by commercial travellers, cheap but clean. As if to confirm my judgment, a man tugged to one side by a weighty sample case came down its front steps and made in the direction of the railway station.
“Do you know Samuel’s room number?”
“No, just that he was here, and he’s paid up till Monday.”
“Good,” I said. “Then there’s a chance they haven’t cleared out his things.”
The woman at the desk looked as if she’d been up all night. On impulse, as we crossed the linoleum floor of the lobby, I tucked my arm through Billy’s and murmured, “Follow my lead.”
At the desk, I leant into my startled companion and fluttered my eyes at the raddled female with her elbows on the stained wood, asking in a tiny voice if she had any rooms that were ready to let out. I had to repeat it twice in progressively louder tones, then admit that my…husband and I would only require it for the week-end. At this point, two men in shiny suits came out of the breakfast room and stood in the lobby talking loudly about the difficulties involved in hauling about wallpaper samples. I gestured the woman towards the desk’s far end to explain that we would not require cleaning services in the morning, that we would be gone by Sunday evening, and that our suitcases had inexplicably failed to arrive. She cast a knowing look down the desk at Billy, who was making a desperate attempt at nonchalance by glancing through the pages of the ledger. The giggle she loosed brought an interesting cast to his dark skin: a blush.
She and I returned to our original places across the desk from one another, and watched Billy sign the ledger: Mr and Mrs Smith.
She pushed the key across the desk and accepted Billy’s money. With chins raised and cheeks warm, we walked arm in arm up the stairs.
“Room 307,” Billy muttered. “He checked in on the fourth.”
“Isn’t it nice when hotels are thorough?” I murmured back. Not all hotels were thoughtful enough to note the guest’s room number in their book.
The moment we were out of sight, we hastily drew apart, to walk down opposite sides of the corridor to our room. Billy clattered the key into the lock of room 204, opened the door wide, and slammed it shut. We then turned back on silent feet and continued up the next flight of stairs to room 307.
“Shall I?” he asked, gesturing at the door.
“You’ll be faster,” I told him. I could manage, with my arm, but it was sore.
He laid out a set of pick-locks somewhat more elaborate than my own. I took up a position that would hide the tools if some commercial traveller happened down the hallway, waiting in silence until the lock gave way. He gathered his tools, inviting me to step inside.
I hesitated, although I could not have said why. Perhaps I feared the cloying odour of his hair oil, that it might stir memories: the gun, that blood, those sounds…
But the air smelt only of cleaning fluid, cigarettes, and bacon from the kitchen downstairs. I let Billy shut the door, and we looked around us.
The bed had been made and the spatter from his shaving brush cleaned from the washbasin, but his possessions remained. Some of them, at any rate. There were Australian labels on the shaving soap and underpants, blond hair in the hair-brush.
“He didn’t intend to be gone for more than the day,” I commented, and opened the next drawer.
The drawers held nothing of importance.
“What did he have on him?” Billy asked.
“A photograph, some money. Not much more.”
“Passport? Cheque-book?”
I put my hand into my pocket, and pulled out the ring of keys Mycroft had handed me, after his man had returned from…what he had done. The car key was gone, of course—one didn’t want the police to wonder why a burnt-out hulk lacked its means of ignition. Three keys remained.
We looked around us at the room’s complete lack of locks, then embarked on a more thorough search: stripping the bed, overturn
ing the mattress, prodding the pillows, taking out the drawers to check beneath them, seeing if the bed rails had hidden compartments, prising at the suitcase for false sides.
All we found was a single unused bullet, pushed into the corner of his sponge-bag.
I took out the keys again. One was a house key that had been manufactured in Australia. One bore the name of a brand of padlocks. The third key was small. I thought about the man we had seen leaving with a sample case. “Would a place like this have its own secure storage area?”
“We’d have to come back when that woman has gone off her shift,” he pointed out. “I can’t very well pretend that I’m a salesman, now.”
“She could be here all day. We’ll have to try something else.”
We went back down to room 204, where an argument soon began, building so loud it was audible at the desk. When the door crashed open and the two combatants spilled out into the hallway, few residents could have been unaware of the noise. I stormed down the stairs, hat awry, hair flying, eyes red and swollen, my voice a shriek of almost unintelligible words.
“—don’t know what you were thinking, I told you I’d come because I loved you and now you say you’re not so sure, you want to wait—oh, how could you, you beast? I hate you, you—oh, why didn’t I listen to Mother, she warned me, she took one look and she just knew that—”
And on, in that vein. I staggered blindly across the lobby with Billy at my back, weeping and agonising at him. Every male in the place stared in horror; the female staff watched in glee.
I came to a halt between the end of the desk and the door to the breakfast room. There I sank to my knees and cried out like a penitent in Rome.
Such was the uproar that no one noticed Billy’s absence. I watched through my fingers until I saw a pair of familiar boots through the forest of suited knees, making for the door. With a final exclamation, I pulled myself upright on the arms of the two nearest men, settled my cloche, and thanked them with as much dignity as I could pull together.
Billy had the car moving before my door was fully shut.
I retrieved the metal box from the floor, and fitted in the key. Inside lay a trove of papers and letters.
Billy made a noise, and then he was laughing, pounding a fist against the wheel. “You—I got to say, Miss Russell, you’re good. As good as—”