Her eyes went sideways to the third person in the room, as if to ask how much they were to say in front of him—but then, Holmes would not have asked if he had not meant her to answer. “You mean, seeing as how I've been fighting the idea for days now?”

He would have said somewhat longer than that, but he merely nodded.

“Too many oddities, piling up on each other. The codicil to the will, my parents' behaviour in the years after the fire, three related deaths immediately after theirs that were clearly murder, the shooting here. But mostly it was the dreams: The dreams were pushing me to something, all the time. I finally got there.”

“So tell me about your two villains,” Holmes suggested.

“Yes,” she said. “The two villains. A woman with a Southern accent, and the faceless man—only he is now merely a man with facial scars.” Then she paused as a thought occurred to her. “Er, Holmes, before I get into that, why are you here?”

“We are awaiting Mr Long and a friend of his, who may be able to point us towards the solution of one of our mysteries.”

“Oh yes? What time will they be here?”

“With any luck, before it is too dark outside to see the trees.”

“Will we need to see the trees?” she asked, then held up her hand. “Never mind, I'll find out soon enough.” And without further questions, she told the two men about her days at the Lodge. She kept it to the essentials—the lack of anything resembling evidence in the hidden storage room, Mr Gordimer's two visitors, her revealing conversation with the Serra Beach garage mechanic, the conversation with Donny and Flo that revealed the extent to which Dr Ginzberg had been known as a doctor with a speciality in helping patients retrieve memories. She did not bother telling them about her other conversations with Flo and Donny, as those were not pertinent to the matter at hand.

Holmes listened with his hands steepled and his eyes on the flames, his face showing nothing of the relief and pleasure surging through his veins. Russell was awake at last, returned to her normal clear wits and keen vision. Although he had to admit that even half asleep, she'd managed to turn up as many items of vital importance as he had working flat out. When she had reached the point in her narrative where she'd decided to come here, she sat back and said firmly to Holmes, “Now it's your turn.”

He began by giving her the telegrams, explaining how his own had started the exchange. He told her about meeting Hammett, although he left a great deal out of the manner and precise time of their meeting, not wishing to get side-tracked into the reasons he had been following her on the Friday night. He described the cut brake rod, safely in the bank vault, and his growing conviction that her father had concealed something in the garden. He then turned the floor over to Hammett, who described how he had become involved, how he had been caught and recruited by Holmes (he, following Holmes' lead, also avoided specific mention of time and place), and spent the next few days searching crash sites and interviewing police officers.