She was coming to it: The mounting pressure of the things she had seen yet not perceived would break down her blindness. She knew, yet kept it from herself; she had the key, and had only to draw it from her pocket. He would force himself, as he had all this time, to continue trusting that she would face the question before she failed to notice a man with a gun, or absent-mindedly stepped out in front of a taxi. Sooner or later, something would drive her to a confrontation with all the things she knew and did not see.

He, Holmes, had known the question's answer the moment he saw that intent young man making his way up the hill in Miss Adderley's photograph: This was not a man to be fatally distracted by a pair of argumentative children.

Russell should not require a photograph: She knew her father.

And there were any number of ways to send a motorcar off a cliff: steering wheel, brakes, a score of parts vulnerable to sabotage.

Russell knew that as well.

Soon now, she would look down at her hand and see the key lying there; she would ask herself a simple question that would teeter an edifice of ten years' belief.

Was it indeed an accident? Or had my family in fact been murdered?

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

The fog had ceased its teasing around the street-lamps and taken possession of the streets. However, the fog here was a very different thing from that stinking, inert yellow blanket that settled over London every winter. This seemed a living thing, shifting and breathing across the city, and it sheltered their walk, wrapping these two wayfaring strangers in anonymity. No shots rang out, no gaunt figures with tubercular coughs dogged their heels, and they walked arm in arm in mutually distracted silence, physically linked but mentally miles apart, through the Chinese district and downtown to the welcoming lights of the St Francis.

Between the excess of drink and the shock of two complete meals that day, Russell succumbed quickly to the warmth of the bed and did not wake until Holmes placed a cup of coffee on her bed-side table. She opened one eye, winced back from the brightness as the curtains went back, then threaded out a hand to fumble with the alarm-clock, holding its face up before her own. When she had focussed, she slammed it back down and made to throw off the bed-clothes.

“Nearly nine o'clock! Holmes, why didn't you wake me earlier? I told you that Flo wanted to get an early start, and I haven't finished packing my things.”

“Your friend telephoned five minutes ago to say that she was only now putting her things into a bag, that she would be here in an hour. The word ‘early' appears to have a different meaning in Californian English.”