"A very strange sort of a message, Miss Russell."
"Yes, isn't it? I have a rather eccentric aunt who occasionally tracks me down. I suppose it was she. I'm sorry if she bothered you. How was she looking?"
"Well, Miss, I would never have taken her as a relative of yours. Black hair like that and ugly as — Beg your pardon, Miss, but she should really have a doctor do something about that great ugly mole on her chin."
"When was she here?"
"About three hours ago. I offered to let her stay here and wait for you, and gave her a cuppa tea, but when I went to lock up the back, she said she'd go, and she was gone when I got back. If she returns, shall I bring her up?"
"I think not, Mr. Thomas. Send someone for me and I'll come down." The way from my rooms to the gate house was enclosed, so I wouldn't get wet again. However, I did not want a stranger admitted straightaway. My eyes went to the pigeonhole from which he had taken my letters. Very curious. Who was this who wanted to know where my room was, and more important, why?
I thanked Mr. Thomas and went past him into the hallway that led to the wing my rooms were in. I sat on the bottom step to remove my boots — I think, though I cannot be sure, that I only removed them because they were so uncomfortable, and I did not wish to make more of a mess for Mrs. Thomas to deal with. Whatever the motive, conscious or no, I continued up the stairs in stockinged feet, without even the rustle of the waterproof to betray my presence.
The building was silent, oppressively so. The rain on the landing windows was the loudest sound. And to think I had often, coming up these stairs, shuddered fastidiously at the quantity of noise a number of women living together can produce. Veronica's rooms here, the doors shut as they rarely were, her presence so strong I could almost hear the wild party she'd had in that room a week earlier. Jane DelaField's rooms here, quiet and religious and cocoa drinking Jane with the unforeseeable gift of limericks, followed always by a blush. And Catharine, whose attractive brother had the odd passion for, what was it, roses? No, iris. And all of them gone now, back in the bosoms of their families, warm and secure, while Mary Russell, cold and lonely, went up the cold draughty stairs to her rooms.
At the top of the stairs I turned towards the back of the building and pulled my key from my pocket. As I reached for the knob my mind was so filled with dolorous thoughts as to have forgotten the odd episode of Mr. Thomas's ugly woman, and so I very nearly overlooked the marks on my door. The key was inches from the lock when I froze, feeling something like an automobile engine must when it is moving forward and is suddenly thrown into reverse gear. There was a black and greasy smudge on my shiny brass doorknob. There were tiny, fresh scratches on the inside of my keyhole. There was light coming from under the door — I shook myself. Come, Russell, don't be absurd. Mrs. Thomas often set a light burning at dark for me and laid a coal fire in the grate. There was nothing to be concerned about. I was on edge still, from the vile weather and the delay of my escape to Berkshire, my nerves were raw from the tutorial I had been through, nothing more. Nothing but an ordinary room on the other side of the door, as I could even see when I bent down and looked, through the keyhole and, feeling ever more ridiculous, under the door.
I reached again with my key, but my antennae were well and truly quivering now, and I drew back and looked around me, for confirmation of one attitude or the other, but no omens presented themselves. However, looking down the corridor, I was aware of a vague feeling that I had indeed seen something, some tiny thing. I went slowly back down towards the stairway and saw, on the sill of the window that had been built to illuminate the landing, a smear of mud, two ivy leaves, and a scattering of raindrops.
How did those get in? How did that smear of soil escape Mrs. Thomas's vigilant cleaning rag?
No, Russell. Your imagination is going berserk. It must have been Mrs. Thomas herself, opening the window to let out a moth and letting in the drops and the leaves and — No? The crew that had trimmed the ivy so inadequately last spring, returned to finish the job? But why should they have the window open — I took hold of myself firmly and strode down the hall to my door, and there I stood for several minutes, the key in my hand, and I could not bring myself to use it. More than anything I wished I had the revolver that Holmes had insisted I take, but it sat in my chest of drawers, as useless as if it had been in China.
The truth of the matter was that Holmes had enemies, many of them. He had explained this to me a number of times, drilled me on the precautions I had to take, forced me to acknowledge that I too could become a target for vengeance-seeking acquaintances. I thought it highly unlikely, but I had also to admit that it was not impossible. And right now, all the suspicions Holmes had so laboriously implanted in me wondered if tonight, in my lodgings house, on this wet night in Oxford, someone's animosity against Holmes had not spilled over onto me.
I was sorely tempted to go back downstairs and have Mr. Thomas ring the police, but I found the thought of the Oxford constabulary walking through here with their big shoes and heavy manner little comfort. They might frighten off an evildoer temporarily, but I could not imagine myself sleeping any better after they had gone.
Discounting the police, then, I had two choices. I could use my key after all and confront whomever I found inside my rooms, but that was an action my association with Holmes made me loath to carry out. The other was to approach my rooms by another means than the door.
Unfortunately, the only other entrance was through the windows that looked out onto a stone courtyard twenty five feet below. In the summer I had once climbed the ivy in the nonalcoholic exhilaration of a long midsummer's dusk, but it had been warm and light then, with nothing more dangerous at the end of the climb than a fall forward through an open window. I did know that the vines would hold my weight, but would my fingers?
"Oh for God's sake, Russell, it's only twenty-five feet. Oxford is making you lazy, sitting on your backside in the library all day. You're afraid of the cold? You'll warm up again. There's really no other choice, now is there? Get on with it." My father's American drawl often surfaced when I spoke to myself, as did his irritating tendency to be right.
I went silently back down the hallway, down one flight of stairs, up that hallway, and down the stairs at the far end. These led into the building's inner quad rather than out onto the street. I removed my wool stockings and jacket and left them with my boots and book bag in a dark corner. My glasses I buttoned carefully into a shirt pocket and, taking a deep breath, let myself quietly out into the wicked hands of the storm.
The temperature had dropped further since I had been out on the street, and I stood in wool clothing that might have been gauze when faced with a downpour that was perhaps three degrees from freezing. It took my breath away as the icy wave drove over me, plastering my shirt against my shrivelled breasts and encasing my legs in a thick layer of frigid wool. I pulled myself up into the greasy ivy with fingers that already had trouble moving and thrust into the branches with unfeeling toes. I really ought to get Mr. Thomas to call the police, I thought, but my body had taken over and numbly continued the climb.
I reached the second layer of dark windows and could see the lighted squares of my own just above my head. With renewed caution I reached for the next handhold, only to find that my hand had not loosed from the previous hold. From then on I had to consciously think the muscles of my hands open and, more important, shut on the vine. Slowly, slowly I pulled myself up beside the first of my windows and peered in the inevitable crack between the scant curtains. Nothing there, only the room fire blazing merrily. Cursing gently to myself I forced my fingers to carry me across to the other window. The ivy was thinner here, and once, when my hand did not completely close, I nearly fell to the stones below, but my other hand kept hold, and the wind hid my noises. I made it to the second cheerily lit rectangle and dangled myself like a sodden monkey to peer into the narrow curtain-crack.