A Letter of Mary by Laurie R. King

Author:Laurie R. King [King, Laurie R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9780553577808
Publisher: Bantam Books

THIRTEEN

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The rain started during the night, in its typical understated London fashion. The grumble of distant thunder grew imperceptibly from the dying roar of the traffic, and the eventual rustle of drops on stones and slate gradually came to underlie what passed in London for a quiet night. Nothing dramatic, just dull London wetness. I huddled under my black umbrella in the bus queue the next morning and thought, Here I cannot even turn to my neighbours and say how good it is for the crops—they’d look at me as if I were from another planet.

I escaped from the crowded omnibus and its smell of wet wool a full twenty minutes early, so I went into Rosie’s for a cuppa to start the day. Rosie was busy, but she sloshed my tea with affection and asked what I was doin’ out so early.

“I found a position! I start with Colonel Edwards this morning. I met him at the pub last night and he said he needed a secretary, and he hired me.”

Rosie froze, and her face travelled through surprise and appraisal to suspicion and reappraisal, then ended up at a politely noncommittal “Good for you, dearie, so I guess we’ll be seein’ summat of you.”

Ten minutes later, I splashed up the drive to my new job, berating myself. Fine detective you make, Russell, I thought. Can’t even play a rôle without worrying about what a complete stranger thinks of you. I shook the water from my umbrella, squared my meek shoulders, and rang the bell.

The work of any decent detective is at least nine-tenths monotony, despite the invariably brisk pace of any detective novel, or even a police file, for that matter. Take, for example, the accounts written by Dr Watson of the earlier cases of Holmes: They give the overall impression of the detective leaping into the fray, grasping the single most vital clue in an instant, and wrestling energetically with the case until all is neatly solved. There is little indication of the countless hours spent in cold, cramped watch over a doorway, of days spent in dusty records rooms and libraries, of the tantalising trails that fade away into nothing—all are passed over with a laconic reference to the passage of time. Of course, Watson was often brought in only at the end of a case, and so he missed the tedium. I could not.

I will not recount the secretarial work I did for Colonel Edwards, because to do so would bore even the writer to tears. Suffice it to say that for the next few days I was a secretary: I filed and organised, I typed, and I took dictation. At the same time, of course, I had my ears fully cocked and my eyes into everything, at every moment. I listened in on telephone calls when I could, hearing long, dreary, manly conversations about dead birds and alcoholic beverages. I went systematically through each filing cabinet until my fingers and back cramped, and

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