The Murder of Mary Russell (39 page)

Four and a half decades of chipping away, trapped together under one roof: him never slackening his attentions lest she slip, her never free of his iron rule. “I find it extraordinary that in forty-five years, neither of you killed the other.”

“Oh, it did not take nearly that long,” Holmes said lightly. “My Reichenbach disappearance came ten years after we began, and she did fine without me. But I should not want you to think it was only a matter of my will over hers.” He was no longer speaking to me. “You know how much Dr Watson helped me understand my fellow man. Mrs Hudson has done the same. Although perhaps for different reasons.”

She broke in, to jab a stopper into the spilling emotion. “And during those early years you are right: I did take comfort in knowing that poison would go unnoticed in my recipe for curry.”

The two of them laughed heartily; me less so.

“Forty-five years ago—forty-six, come September,” she reflected. “And fourteen years before that. Do you know, this may be the first time I have ever just been myself?”

“Whoever that might be,” Holmes muttered. “Are you ready, then? You and Billy need to be gone before it's light.”

“I am as packed and ready as I need to be.”

I had managed to sponge the blood-stains from her bank passbook, and slipped it into her desk when we returned. And although I could not help noticing that the accumulated savings were substantial, I nonetheless ventured an offer. “Can I—that is, would a cheque…?”

“Oh, my dear, the thought is kind, but I am sufficiently funded.”

“You need only ask,” I told her, rather more vehemently than I'd intended. “But where will you go? What will you do?”

“Well, wherever I end up, I'm probably finished with scrubbing floors. Oh, don't blush, dear heart! A clean house can be a remarkably satisfying achievement.”

Any response I may have had was interrupted by a rap at the door. Holmes stood to let Billy in, his stocky figure bundled in a great-coat and bringing in a waft of Downland air.

He shot Mrs Hudson an amused sideways glance, and told me, “That man of yours gave a flick on his torch, like you said. Nobody's stirred out there all night. I'll go warm up the motor.”

Patrick—that man of mine—had climbed the old smuggler's path behind the village at sundown, laden with thermos, electric torch, and a great-coat of his own, to spend the night watching for motorcar head-lamps or the beams of approaching hand-torches. However, just because the police hadn't arrived yet did not mean they weren't on their way.

Holmes picked up the suit-case and followed Billy to the door. I bent for the small valise, thinking,
Such little baggage to show for a lifetime
—then stopped when her arms went around me. She embraced me, long and hard; I in turn clung to her.

“Mary, Mary,” she said. “Thank you for making my life such a joy.”

With that, the tears burst forth. “I am sorry.” I'd said it to her earlier; she had merely nodded. “Oh, God, I'm
so
sorry! When he came—I didn't mean—I was only trying to protect you, but I should have—”

She jerked back, eyes blazing, her fingers digging into my shoulders. “
You
did not do this,” she declared fiercely. “Samuel's death is on his head alone. If anyone is to blame, it is me. I knew, when my sister's husband died, that it was wrong to leave Samuel with her, but I did. You paid for my mistake. My son came here intending to cause any hurt he could: never doubt that. What you did saved me, and your husband, and heaven only knows who else.”

She studied my face, and continued in a quieter voice. “When things settle, you're going to drag yourself over the coals, fretting on what you might have done differently. Know this: you had no choice. Samuel took any choice from you when he came here. He surrendered to greed, then let himself be manipulated by two men hungry for money and for power. He was dead the minute he motored away from London.

“I should be the one to say I am sorry, to you. I
am
sorry, that you were forced into the burden of taking a life. That will be with you all your days. It will haunt your nights, it will ride your shoulders. It may even slow your hand, if—God forbid—a time ever comes when you find yourself facing a similar choice.

“But know this: only one small portion of the burden belongs to you. What you did feels like murder. But it was not.”

She said
you,
but she was talking about herself—and not of her son's death, but her father's. She watched my face until she saw the doubt mingling with gratitude, then embraced me again, until we heard a loud clearing of the throat from the front door.

She kissed me and stood away. I swiped my eyes beneath my spectacles, and picked up her valise.

The sky was black and clear, the smoke from Billy's motor streaming across the light that spilled from the portico. Mrs Hudson pulled her gloves from her pocket. As she worked them on, she spoke to Holmes. “If Mr Lestrade seems to be on the verge of making an arrest—any arrest—let him know that he is to speak to me first. I will return, if you need me.”

“But where are you
going
?” I pleaded, sounding like a child. “France? Australia? How will we find you again?”

The three of us paused as Mrs Hudson worked the buttons on her gloves. When her head came up, she looked young—almost young enough for that brown hair.

“Do you know,” she said, “I've always been fond of Monte Carlo.”

A
s Billy's motor crested the road out of East Dean, Mrs Hudson spoke. “You'll take care of them for me, won't you?”

“I will,” her old friend promised.

“This will wear on Mary's mind.”

“But not on yours?”

“Oh, Billy, it'll have to find room with all my other sins.”

Halfway to Newhaven, the sky began to grow light. When it was bright enough to see, Billy pulled out his watch, then tucked it away and put his foot more firmly onto the accelerator pedal.

“The boat will wait for me,” Mrs Hudson reassured him.

“I know that. I just want to get you on board before the harbour inspectors come on duty.”

“It'll be fine, Billy. Unless we get into an accident on the way.”

He eased his foot back a fraction.

“What am I going to do without you?” he lamented.

“Ah, Billy, we've had such a good run of it, haven't we? Who'd have guessed, that day at The Bishop's den, where the two of us would end up?”

“It's not over,” he insisted. “Things'll die down, you can come back. This is just a holiday.”

“I don't think things are going to fade, my dear. If it was just Hugh, perhaps: a struggle, the gun going off accidentally. But the police have the earlier bullet. The one from my father. And Mr Lestrade is a very clever copper.”

“We might be able to disappear one or the other of 'em,” he suggested.

“That would only make matters worse. No, Billy, I think I'm finished with England. You'll just have to bring the family over for holidays.”

His hand shot out to seize her fingers and lift them to his mouth. He kissed her hand, long and hard, then gave it a squeeze and let it go.

“You were always a sweet boy, William Mudd,” she said, not far from tears.
If only,
she thought.
Oh, Samuel
…

But Billy's fingers had felt something when he took her hand. “What've you got there?”

She held the thing up, and he glanced briefly away from the road for a look. “A dolly?” An ancient and much-chewed dolly.

“My father made it, on board the
Gloria Scott,
when my mother was pregnant with me. He posted it from Gibraltar, and told Mother that she could make a dress for it if I was a girl, or a sailor suit if I was a boy. My sister, Alicia, took it over when she was young. As she took over most of my things. After she died, Samuel included it with a load of what he regarded as rubbish. Something in one of my father's letters yesterday brought it to mind.” As she spoke, she had been digging through her handbag, and now came up with a pair of nail-scissors. She bent over the misshapen, dirt-coloured manikin, snipping with care.

As the stitches holding the doll's spine together parted, kapok welled, and she made a sound of irritation. “May I borrow your handkerchief?”

He kept a clean one in his breast pocket. She arranged it across her skirt, and began to dig at the packed kapok with a finger-nail.

It did not take long to come across something that was not fibre.

It looked like an oversized commercial cigarette, a tight roll of cream-coloured paper some five inches long with a length of fine linen string around it. Mrs Hudson worked the cord off, then spread open the near-rigid paper.

Billy caught a glimpse of ornate writing—then the roll snapped shut, shooting kapok fibre in all directions. She made the sound again, and pulled off her other glove to separate the roll's outer layer.

In the end, one cylinder turned into five somewhat looser spirals. She picked one up and stretched it between her hands. Billy took his eyes off the road for a glance, which went on…

Deliberately, slowly, Billy steered into a nearby farm lane, shut down the engine, and took a shaky breath.

When he looked again at the object in her hands, he felt as if he were still headed for a tree.

“What the bloody hell is—Sorry,” he said. “What is
that
?”

Clara Hudson cleared her own none-too-certain throat. “That, my dear friend, is what they call a bearer bond. Designed to be paid out to whoever holds it.”

“Fifty—that can't be real.”

“I think it may actually be.”

“Fifty
thousand
pounds?”

The second was identical, and the third. At the fourth, Billy let out the breath he'd been holding, and reached out tentatively for one of the water-stained, long-furled pieces of official paper. Gingerly, he stretched it open, trying to make sense of the ornate writing.

“These are old,” he said.

“A bit older than I am,” she told him. “Which means they are either worthless, or they have decades of interest accrued on top of their face value.”

The fifth piece of paper was a different size and texture. No official document, this, but a letter, undated, from a hand she knew well—from, most recently, the letters Mary had found in Samuel's hotel room. In this case, the writing was tiny, the paper onionskin. It was dated two days before she and her father had left Sydney for London.

My dearest Allie,

I hope this surprises you one day, or if it dont, it comes as something I show you in person. I'm leaving it hidden here until I can figure out if these mean anything at all. Knowing my luck, they probably wont. But once upon a time they were the work of a very clever man, and thow even now just looking at them reminds me of some things Id rather not remember, and makes me feel a little sick, I've always thought there was just a chance they'd be worth something. But I never wanted to get arrested for trying to hand them over.

I came across them fair enough, the day the ship that I was on going to Sydney went down. Her name was the Gloria Scott. On board was a cove named Jack Prendergast who pulled a bank dodge in London and stole a whole stack of money. He had a partner on the old boat, and when she went down that day and I was waiting to drown, I kept my mind off the sharks under my feet and the bodies of all those men—mates, they were, men I'd worked with and played cards with for weeks—by talking to anyone who floated by and going through their pockets. Sounds mad, I know, but I think talking to dead men kept me from just letting go of the spar I was hanging to. Anyway, I found some letters that I mailed later on, and not much cash or anything, but when the so-called chaplain's body floated by, I found a waterproof pouch around his neck, and put it around mine.

Later, when I looked, I found these. I'm not sure just what they are, and I never quite nerved myself up to trying to cash one in. What happened on that ship, well, I never done nothing wrong, Allie, I promise—but if anyone got wind of your father being on that ship, I'd hang for sure. But just in case, when Clarrie and I are in London, I'll see if I can find somebody to tell me about these things. If I do, and if I can be sure it's safe, I'll send for you (and the dolly!) and we'll all do London in a big way then.

Nobody knows about this but you, Allie dear, not even your sister. Let it be our surprise.

Your Loving Pa

She handed the letter over to Billy, who read it twice.

“The Bishop was right,” he said in awe. “The money didn't end up nibbled by fishes.”

“So it would appear.”

“But these couldn't possibly be good anymore, could they? Do bonds expire?”

“That remains to be seen.” She fitted the five pages together, and began to re-roll them into their tight cylinder.

“Don't
you
get arrested over them.”

“No.”

“Would you like me to take them to Mr Holmes?”

She did not reply. His head came around. He bent down to stare into her face. “You…” He studied her expression, a look of mischief that he hadn't seen since—when? Since he was a child, and she had rescued him. Long enough to forget she was capable of looking like that. He shook his head in wonder, and felt his mouth begin to lose control. “You're not going to tell him, are you? Oh, you wicked woman.”

She tore her gaze from his and concentrated on returning the roll to its manikin exterior, her own lips wearing a demure smile. “You know, when it comes to women, Mr Holmes has always been just the teensiest bit naïve.”

“Ha!” Billy pounded his fist on the wheel, grinning hugely. He slapped the car back into gear and pulled merrily out, chuckling like a cooling percolator. Clara Hudson, meanwhile, took the little sewing kit from her handbag and set to work closing up the doll.

Yes, she thought. Monte Carlo would do nicely, to begin with.