Finally, with the sensation of a key's wards sliding into place and an almost audible click, the hard barrier fell away, and I took a step into the hidden rooms of my past.

Where all around me, the walls, the furnishings, the very air shouted at me—

Was it an accident? Or was my family in fact murdered?

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

Accident, or murder?

With that simple question, the world shifted dizzily on its axis. My father's peculiar will, the deaths of the Longs and Dr Ginzberg, the attempt to assassinate me on the street—all those came together with a clap in my mind. Not that I could see anything resembling a cause, but I had worked with Holmes long enough to see the pattern of a knot forming in the disparate strings around me. Too many deaths, too many coincidences.

Something had happened, Long had said, during the fire of 1906; something that took Micah Long away from his own family during the frantic hours when Chinatown burned, something that changed the relationship between our fathers, an event that may have driven my mother back to England for six years.

An event that, two years after our return, sent their motorcar off a cliff.

And that within four months had extinguished the lives of three individuals in whom various Russells might have confided.

And which, ten years afterwards, caused someone to lower a gun on the only surviving Russell.

The Russell who was currently sitting in a completely exposed position as the sun climbed towards the surrounding hills, with her only weapon buried at the bottom of her valise.

The stupid Russell who hadn't thought to look behind her since giving a token glance to the street outside the St Francis on Sunday morning.

I scrambled to my feet and scurried towards the house as if I'd heard a twig break in the woods. Inside, I locked the terrace door, then went rigid, waiting for a careless motion or uncontrolled breath to betray an intruder. The house was silent, and the only dampness on the stones of the floor was from my own feet. I slipped up the stairs of the bedroom wing and cautiously nudged open my own door, but the room was empty.

I felt slightly more secure with the pistol resting in my trouser-band. I stuffed my possessions into their bags any which way, then went upstairs to bang on the door of Flo's room.

No response: I had my fingers around the knob when I heard a befuddled whimper from within. “Flo, we need to go as soon as we can. I'll get the coffee ready, but you need to wake up now.”

Donny's head had already emerged from the door behind me.

“Something up?” he asked.

“I think I should be back in the city right away. I'm making coffee.”

I had just taken the percolator from the heat when Donny appeared, dressed, combed, and shaved.