[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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there was a file describing it all, which later conveniently disappeared.
There s more. The nurse well remembered the baby she was holding it when it
died and finds it hard to believe that its, er, gestational age was more than
five months, six at the very most.
And the colonel had been back at the front since the autumn, I remembered.
November. Slightly over eight months.
He couldn t have had a leave and the records lost?
Unlikely.
How very sordid and ugly. One can t help wondering
If he drove his wife to it, or if she drove him to what he is now?
interjected Lestrade with unexpected perception.
Mmm. I ll have some brandy now, please, Mycroft. I feel rather cold. My
shoulder ached, too, from the horse s strong mouth on the reins and the
succession of long days, but I ignored it and concentrated on what Lestrade
was saying.
Next, we started working our way through all the travelling entertainers who
were in York at the time, beginning with the legitimate theatre players and
working our way down to the dancers in the nightclubs. Pretty close to the
bottom, we came across an all-woman troupe that specialised in rude
music-and-dance versions of Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare. Yes, and it seems to
have been as dotty as it sounds. People were hard up for entertainment during
those years, but still& Any road, the old, er, bat who managed it Mother
Timkins, she calls herself is still alive by some miracle, running a, er, a
house in Stepney.
A house, Inspector? I asked. Of ill repute?
Er, yes. Precisely. She did remember Mrs Edwards, though not by that name.
The colonel s wife was with the Timkins troupe for five or six months, we
finally determined. Joined at Portsmouth, was sick mornings for a couple of
months, and had just started to, er, to show when she died in York. The
woman dressed as a man who took Mrs Edwards to hospital was probably Annie
Graves, stage name Amanda Pillow. She and the Edwards woman were close.
Lovers? I asked bluntly. His delicacy was becoming irritating. He turned
scarlet and consulted his notes furiously.
Er, the Timkins woman seemed to think it possible, although there were a
number of men, as well. Obviously, there had to be at least one. He cleared
his throat again. The, er, the interesting thing is that she told Colonel
Edwards the two women were, as you say, lovers, when he went to see her in
March of 1919. A month after he received his demob papers, that was.
Four months before he was hospitalized for drink, I commented. What
happened to the Graves woman?
She was killed. We all looked up. In June of that same year. She went off
with someone after a performance, and she was found at four the next morning
on a country lane thirty miles away. Dead about two hours. She d been walking,
stinking drunk and in five-inch heels, and was run over by a vehicle. Her body
was down among the weeds in the verge, but it was quite visible as soon as it
became light. They never found the car. Never found the person she d gone off
with.
Throughout my report Holmes had appeared to listen politely, which I knew, to
my severe irritation, meant that he was taking in perhaps one word in three.
With Lestrade s last revelation, however, he began to pay attention, and he
was now looking affronted, as profoundly taken aback as if he had just
discovered a distorting flaw in one of his instruments that threatened to cast
doubts on the results of an experiment. He did not say anything, merely ground
out his cigar and then tried to relight it.
Furthermore, Lestrade continued, with a glance at his notebook, there may
be a slight discrepancy between when the colonel says he arrived home and when
he actually did so. I say may because the one neighbour who saw the car
drive in has a most unreliable clock, which may or may not have been ten
minutes slow or fast that night. According to both Colonel Edwards and the
headwaiter at the restaurant, he left in his car just before midnight, no more
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
than three or four minutes before. At that time of night, it takes eighteen
minutes driving slowly and roundabout or eleven minutes direct and briskly to
the Edwards home. The neighbour thought it was closer to twelve-thirty when he
came home, but as I said, it s unreliable. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl rafalstec.xlx.pl
Page 91
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
there was a file describing it all, which later conveniently disappeared.
There s more. The nurse well remembered the baby she was holding it when it
died and finds it hard to believe that its, er, gestational age was more than
five months, six at the very most.
And the colonel had been back at the front since the autumn, I remembered.
November. Slightly over eight months.
He couldn t have had a leave and the records lost?
Unlikely.
How very sordid and ugly. One can t help wondering
If he drove his wife to it, or if she drove him to what he is now?
interjected Lestrade with unexpected perception.
Mmm. I ll have some brandy now, please, Mycroft. I feel rather cold. My
shoulder ached, too, from the horse s strong mouth on the reins and the
succession of long days, but I ignored it and concentrated on what Lestrade
was saying.
Next, we started working our way through all the travelling entertainers who
were in York at the time, beginning with the legitimate theatre players and
working our way down to the dancers in the nightclubs. Pretty close to the
bottom, we came across an all-woman troupe that specialised in rude
music-and-dance versions of Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare. Yes, and it seems to
have been as dotty as it sounds. People were hard up for entertainment during
those years, but still& Any road, the old, er, bat who managed it Mother
Timkins, she calls herself is still alive by some miracle, running a, er, a
house in Stepney.
A house, Inspector? I asked. Of ill repute?
Er, yes. Precisely. She did remember Mrs Edwards, though not by that name.
The colonel s wife was with the Timkins troupe for five or six months, we
finally determined. Joined at Portsmouth, was sick mornings for a couple of
months, and had just started to, er, to show when she died in York. The
woman dressed as a man who took Mrs Edwards to hospital was probably Annie
Graves, stage name Amanda Pillow. She and the Edwards woman were close.
Lovers? I asked bluntly. His delicacy was becoming irritating. He turned
scarlet and consulted his notes furiously.
Er, the Timkins woman seemed to think it possible, although there were a
number of men, as well. Obviously, there had to be at least one. He cleared
his throat again. The, er, the interesting thing is that she told Colonel
Edwards the two women were, as you say, lovers, when he went to see her in
March of 1919. A month after he received his demob papers, that was.
Four months before he was hospitalized for drink, I commented. What
happened to the Graves woman?
She was killed. We all looked up. In June of that same year. She went off
with someone after a performance, and she was found at four the next morning
on a country lane thirty miles away. Dead about two hours. She d been walking,
stinking drunk and in five-inch heels, and was run over by a vehicle. Her body
was down among the weeds in the verge, but it was quite visible as soon as it
became light. They never found the car. Never found the person she d gone off
with.
Throughout my report Holmes had appeared to listen politely, which I knew, to
my severe irritation, meant that he was taking in perhaps one word in three.
With Lestrade s last revelation, however, he began to pay attention, and he
was now looking affronted, as profoundly taken aback as if he had just
discovered a distorting flaw in one of his instruments that threatened to cast
doubts on the results of an experiment. He did not say anything, merely ground
out his cigar and then tried to relight it.
Furthermore, Lestrade continued, with a glance at his notebook, there may
be a slight discrepancy between when the colonel says he arrived home and when
he actually did so. I say may because the one neighbour who saw the car
drive in has a most unreliable clock, which may or may not have been ten
minutes slow or fast that night. According to both Colonel Edwards and the
headwaiter at the restaurant, he left in his car just before midnight, no more
Page 92
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
than three or four minutes before. At that time of night, it takes eighteen
minutes driving slowly and roundabout or eleven minutes direct and briskly to
the Edwards home. The neighbour thought it was closer to twelve-thirty when he
came home, but as I said, it s unreliable. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]