At that, the lawyer's somewhat distracted air vanished and he sat upright, frowning. “A visitor? Oh, that is not good. The will clearly stipulates—”

“Yes, I remember. Tell me, you mentioned something about your elderly relative spotting someone about the place fairly recently. Would you perhaps recall when it was?”

“It must have been, oh, five or six weeks ago. Certainly well before the end of March—we send Miss Grimly a cheque the first of each month, and I do remember that April's included a bonus. But she did see them, and called the police immediately, although they didn't find anyone there. Most worrying. Is anything missing, or damaged?”

“No, nothing of the sort. They merely looked around, tracked some soil on the floor, may have burnt something in the fireplace—I take it the fireplaces were cleaned back in 1914?”

“Oh, certainly they would have been. We shall have to do something about the locks, I'm afraid—it just wouldn't do to have some vagrant moving in and lighting fires. And perhaps the old lady is getting beyond the responsibility. But nothing was missing, you're sure?”

“Not that I could see.”

And he nodded and stretched out his arm for the first of many files.

When I left, three and a half hours later, my mind was so taken up with balance sheets and legal language that I was at the street before I remembered, and turned back to the office. Norbert's secretary looked up at my entrance.

“Sorry,” I told her, “I forgot to ask, has a letter come for me?”

“Nothing today, Miss Russell.”

I reminded myself that the United States postal system was not the English one, and that a letter posted one afternoon might not generate an overnight response, even within the city limits.

Perhaps Dr Ginzberg was too busy to speak with an old patient? No, that I could not imagine. She might be out of town.

If I hadn't heard from her by tomorrow, I decided, I would travel across town to her house and see if she was there. I wanted badly to see her, to let her know that I had done well, that I was well.

And perhaps to ask her how it was that a person could forget half her life.

At something of an impasse, I watched a trolley rattle past, considering my options. I could go to the house and join Holmes in his examination of the fireplace's burnt papers. Or I could interview the old woman and her halfwit nephew across the street, to pin down the date of the March intruders. Or I could see what I could discover about Mah and Micah on my own, without waiting for Norbert.

I retraced my steps to the hotel for the photograph and for directions, then followed the route I had wandered in a daze three days before. Soon I was standing at the gates of Chinatown.

Chapter Five

Chapter Five