My voice strangled at the sight of the well-dressed figure sitting before the library's fireplace: legs as awkwardly long as Holmes' own, skeletal fingers on the chair's arm, an incongruously healthy head of red hair going grey at the temples: a man I'd last seen driving away from the beach at the base of the cliffs.

In an instant, with no fumbling, the gun was out and level. “Holmes, move away from that man. He's working for the people who killed my parents.”

Holmes did not move, and I glanced briefly at him, keeping the gun steady.

Why the devil was my husband positively grinning—and with what looked remarkably like relief?

Book Four

BOOK FOUR

Holmes

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-one

The previous morning, Tuesday, Holmes had been up long before dawn. With Russell safely retired to the lake-house for another thirty-six hours, Holmes was free to sit amongst his cushions behind closed curtains and drink his morning coffee in solitude, raising as much of a stink as he wished with the black and reeking tobacco he preferred for times of ratiocination.

The question was not so much a matter of whether or not he could convince Hammett to work a play of deception on his erstwhile employer, as whether he should.

The note sent to Hammett by the woman with the Southern accent had said that she would telephone to him on Tuesday morning at eight o'clock. By that time Hammett would need to decide: Should he openly decline her offer of employment and arrange the return of her money, or use the opportunity to lay a trap—feeding her false information, stressing the importance of a meeting?

Clearly, the trap was desirable, but pressing this ex-Pinkerton to be the active cause of the woman's downfall was fraught with delicate ethical considerations. As Hammett had put it, “If I get the better of a guy who's been cheating me, I've got no problems with helping myself to his wallet. But if I take his job and then sell him to someone else, that's worse than stealing, it's plain dirty. A verbal contract's still a contract, and it's got to be broken before it can be ignored.”

Holmes did not know if he ought to force the deception on him. Doing so ran the risk of alienating Hammett completely, having him simply declare a curse on both their houses and go home to the Underwood on his kitchen table.

Actually, Holmes reflected, knocking the first pipe out and reaching for the tobacco, on closer consideration the question might actually be whether he could convince the man to turn coat.

In the end, the previous evening he had simply presented his case for bringing the lady—or even her agent—into the open, that she might be located, identified, and assessed. Then he had left Hammett to make up his own mind.