"Well, good luck, Holmes," I said.
"Luck," he said austerely, "has nothing to do with it."
When he had left, Mrs Hudson and I stood looking at each other for a long minute, sobered by this reminder of what was almost certainly foul murder, and also by the revealing lack of enthusiasm and optimism in the demeanour of the man who had just driven off. Whatever he might say, our success in the Simpson case two months earlier had been guided by luck, and I had no yearning to join forces in a second kidnap case, particularly one that was patently hopeless.
I sighed, and then we turned to my trap. I explained how the camera worked, told her where to take the film to be developed and printed, and then tidied away my tools and prepared to take my own departure.
"You'll let me know if anything turns up?" I asked. "I could try to make it back down next weekend, but-"
"No, no, Mary, you mustn't interfere with your studies. I shall write and let you know."
I stepped cautiously over the taut fishing wire and paused in the doorway. "And you'll tell me if Holmes seems to need any assistance in this Oberdorfer case?"
"That I will."
I left, ruefully contemplating the irony of a man who normally avoided children like the plague (aside from those miniature adults he had scraped off the streets to form his "Irregulars" in the Baker Street days); these days he seemed to have his hands full of them.
I returned to Oxford, and my studies, and truth to tell the first I thought about Mrs Hudson's problem was more than a week later, on a Wednesday, when I realized that for the second week in a row her inevitable Tuesday letter had not come. I had not expected the first one, though she often wrote even if I had seen her the day before, but not to write after eight days was unprecedented.
I telephoned the cottage that evening. Holmes was still away, Mrs Hudson thought, interviewing the Oberdorfer uncle in Paris, and she herself sounded most peculiar. She seemed distracted, and said merely that she'd been too busy to write, apologized, and asked if there was anything in particular I was wanting?
Badly taken aback, I stammered out a question concerning our camera trap.
"Oh, yes," she said, "the camera. No, no, nothing much has come of that. Still, it was a good idea, Mary. Thank you. Well, I must be gone now, dear, take care."
The line went dead, and I slowly put up the earpiece. She hadn't even asked if I was eating well.
I was hit by a sudden absurd desire to leave immediately for Sussex. I succeeded in pushing it away, but on Saturday morning I was on the train south, and by Saturday afternoon my hand was on the kitchen door to Holmes' cottage.
A moment later my nose was nearly on the door as well, flattened against it, in fact, because the door did not open. It was locked.
This door was never locked, certainly not in the daytime when there was anyone at home, yet I could have sworn that I had heard a scurry of sound from within. When I tried to look in the window, my eyes were met by a gaily patterned tea-towel, pinned up neatly to all the edges.
"Mrs Hudson?" I called. There was no answer. Perhaps the movement had been the cat. I went around the house, tried the French doors and found them locked as well, and continued around to the front door, only to have it open as I stretched out my hand. Mrs Hudson stood in the narrow opening, her sturdy shoe planted firmly against the door's lower edge.
"Mrs Hudson, there you are! I was beginning to think you'd gone out."
"Hello there, Mary. I'm surprised to see you back down here so soon. Mr Holmes isn't back from the Continent yet, I'm sorry."
"Actually, I came to see you."
"Ah, Mary, such a pity, but I really can't have you in. I'm taking advantage of Mr Holmes' absence to turn out the house, and things are in a dreadful state. You should have checked with me first, dear."
A brief glance at her tidy, uncovered hair and her clean hand on the door made it obvious that heavy housecleaning was not her current preoccupation. Yet she did not appear afraid, as if she was being held hostage or something; she seemed merely determined. Still, I had to keep her at the door as long as I could while I searched for a clue to her odd behaviour.
Such was my intention; however, every question was met by a slight edging back into the house and an increment of closure of the door, until eventually it clicked shut before me. I heard the sound of the bolt being shot, and then Mrs Hudson's firm footsteps, retreating towards the kitchen.
I stood, away from the house, frankly astonished. I couldn't even peer in, as the sitting-room windows overlooking the kitchen had had their curtains tightly shut. I considered, and discarded, a full frontal assault, and decided that the only thing for it was stealth.
Mrs Hudson knew me well enough to expect it of me, of that I was fully aware, so I took care to stay away that evening, even ringing her from my own house several miles away to let her know that I was not outside the cottage, watching her curtains. She also knew that I had to take the Sunday night train in order to be at the Monday morning lectures, and would then begin to relax. Sunday night, therefore, was when I took up my position outside the kitchen window.
For a long time all I heard were busy kitchen sounds-a knife on a cutting board, a spoon scraping against the side of a pot, the clatter of a bowl going into the stone sink. Then without warning, at about nine o'clock Mrs Hudson spoke.
"Hello there, dear. Have a good sleep?"
"I always feel I should say 'good morning,' but it's nighttime," said a voice in response, and I was so startled I nearly knocked over a pot of herbs. The voice was that of a child, sleep-clogged but high-pitched: a child with a very faint German accent.
Enough of this, I thought. I was tempted to heave the herb pot through the window and just clamber in, but I was not sure of the condition of Mrs Hudson's heart. Instead I went silently around the house, found the door barred to my key, and ended up retrieving the long ladder from the side of the garden shed and propping it up against Holmes' window. Of course the man would have jimmy-proof latches. Finally in frustration I used a rock, and fast as Mrs Hudson was in responding to the sound of breaking glass, I still met her at the foot of the stairs, and slipped past her by feinting to the left and ducking past her on the right.
The kitchen was bare.
However, the bolt was still shot, so the owner of the German voice was here somewhere. I ignored the furious Scots woman at my back and ran my eyes over the scene: the pots of food that she would not have cooked for herself alone, the table laid for three (one of the place settings with a diminutive fork and a china mug decorated with pigs wearing toppers and tails), and two new hairbrushes lying on a towel on the side of the sink.
"Tell them to come out," I said.
She sighed deeply. "You don't know what you're doing, Mary."
"Of course I don't. How can I know anything if you keep me in the dark?"
"Oh, very well. I should have known you'd keep on until you found out. I was going to move them, but-" She paused, and raised her voice. "Sarah, Louis, come out here."
They came, not, as I had expected, from the pantry, but crawling out of the tiny cupboard in the corner. When they were standing in the room, eyeing me warily, Mrs Hudson made the introductions.
"Sarah and Louis Oberdorfer, Miss Mary Russell. Don't worry, she's a friend. A very nosy friend." She sniffed, and turned to take another place setting from the sideboard and lay it out-at the far end of the table from the three places already there.
"The Oberdorfers," I said. "How on earth did they get here? Did Holmes bring them? Don't you know that the police in two countries are looking for them?"