Moriarty Returns a Letter (25 page)

“Well, no,” said the guard. “We’ve got nothing to compare them to if we did.”

“And you’ve not been checking in the boots of vehicles?”

“No. Truth is, we weren’t really expecting that security would be needed here, except to weed out the intrusive photographers, and the groundskeeper was going to handle that himself. But if you like, I can hold you here at the gate until the lady of the manor sends someone down to vouch for you.”

“No,” said Nigel. “I’m rather confident that I myself am not a threat. But have you seen a petite young woman, jet-black hair and eyes the color of those lawns over there?”

“No, sir,” said the man. “Though I believe there are dating agencies where, if you specify those particulars, they will do their best.”

“Carry on then,” said Nigel. “But if you see her, ring the house and ask for me before you let her in.”

The guard held the gate open, and the taxi drove on through.

The cab proceeded on up the drive, around the central fountain, and came to a stop at the front door of the castle.

Nigel guessed that the structure probably comprised some fifty rooms, on three levels. Although it retained its original structure, it did not radiate a history of broadswords and crossbows in the way that the larger coastal castles and ruins did; it had been built relatively recently, in the seventeenth century probably, and renovated even more recently, with pleasant peach-colored plaster and paint covering the original heavy stonework.

Best to be civilized and not frighten visiting Americans, Nigel supposed, if one wants to use tour groups to pay for the castle’s upkeep.

There was staff to maintain it of course, and Nigel was greeted at the door by a butler.

The man introduced himself as Spenser. He looked to be as old as the sycamores that lined the driveway, but was not nearly so tall. Nigel had never seen a short butler; he had always presumed that height was one of their job requirements, necessary for supervising subordinate staff and intimidating guests.

This butler was balding, but with a comb-over that combined the few remaining strands together with some sort of molding gel, perhaps even candle wax, in a way that was so obvious that it screamed defiance—it knew it was a comb-over, and was proud of it.

The defiantly combed butler also had a surprisingly strong grip. He tried to take Nigel’s mac, and the duffel bag, and the cardboard box. Nigel surrendered the duffel bag and mac, but held on to the box.

“I will take you to Lady Darby,” said the butler, in a clear, imperious voice that had all the stature the man needed.

The butler escorted Nigel to the back of the castle, to a sitting room overlooking the back lawn, where Laura’s aunt Mabel—formally Lady Darby, outside of the family—was having tea, with two guests who had arrived early.

“You must be Reggie’s brother Nigel,” said Laura’s aunt.

“Because Laura said I’d be the really good-looking one?” suggested Nigel.

“Well, that, too, I’m sure, but Laura said you’d be traveling informally and have the sort of stressed, smoggy-looking tan that people tend to get these days in Los Angeles.”

“Fair enough,” said Nigel.

Aunt Mabel looked to be about seventy years of age, perhaps a little more. She was tall, with a slightly equine face and a leisurely pace in her speech that, to Nigel, indicated intelligence and a comfortable attitude toward life.

She introduced Nigel now to the two tea guests—Lady Ashton-Tate, an actress in her sixties who was now edging her career more toward causes and had become friendly with Laura since an encounter involving plastic ducks, conservation of red squirrels, and a bomb plot the previous year; and Lord Tate, who had apparently threatened to take Reggie down to the river and teach him how to fly fish for trout, if only Reggie would arrive in time.

“Then Laura and my brother are not yet here?” said Nigel.

“No,” said Aunt Mabel. “But not to worry. There’s plenty of time before dinner.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” said Nigel. “But may I use your phone?”

The butler showed Nigel the phone in the first-floor study. Nigel waited until the man left the room, and then he rang Scotland Yard.

“I’ve seen Darla Rennie,” said Nigel, the moment Wembley got on the phone.

“Where?”

“On the train to Newquay. She’s in the vicinity, and the only security here is one local constable greeting guests as they drive up. Unless you put someone on the train, undercover. An authorized firearms officer perhaps?”

“No,” said Wembley. “I didn’t. No one from my division is carrying in that vicinity. You are at the castle now?”

“Yes.”

“And your brother and Laura are there?”

“No. They haven’t arrived.”

There was a pause, as Wembley put the phone down and checked with one of his subordinates. Then he was back.

“You’re certain it was Darla Rennie you saw?”

“I spoke to her myself, Wembley. And she’s armed.”

Now there was another pause, and this time Wembley wasn’t consulting anyone. He was absorbing the gravity of this news.

“I’ll try to get someone out there,” he said. “But I hope the weather holds. There’s a storm coming in off the North Atlantic, and those smaller roads become impassable. With the wind, sometimes you can’t even get a helicopter in.”

Nigel hung up the phone. That was the best response from the Yard that he expected, but he was still concerned that it might come too bloody late.

Nigel sat down at a mahogany table in the center of the study and prepared to examine the contents of the cardboard box.

But now the door opened and the butler poked his head in.

Nigel wasn’t sure of the etiquette. Wasn’t the fellow supposed to have knocked?

“Yes?” said Nigel.

“If you are finished with your phone call,” said the man, “shall I tell Lady Darby that you will be joining her for tea?”

“Thank you, but no,” said Nigel, closing up the box. “Can I have my mac back? I’d like to take a walk around the grounds.”

“Not the entire grounds, I hope,” said the butler. “That would take a full day.”

“I just want to stretch my legs a bit.”

“I hope you don’t plan on going onto the moors, sir,” said the butler. “We have a spot of weather coming up.”

“Well,” said Nigel, “at least you’re not warning me of a full moon and weird howlings in the night.”

The butler gave Nigel a blank look—at first. And then he said, “Of course not, sir. That would be so last century.”

“Thank you,” said Nigel. “I promise I won’t venture beyond the lawns.”

“Shall I stow that away for you, sir?” said the butler, as Nigel exited the study. Spenser seemed to be offering to exchange Nigel’s mac for the Scotland Yard evidence box.

“No,” said Nigel, “I’ll just take it with me.”

Nigel waved to Aunt Mabel and her friends as the butler escorted him past the sitting room, and then out one of the back doors and onto the estate’s walking path.

“I was hoping you’d have a moat,” said Nigel.

“We used to,” said the butler. “It’s filled in now with compost and bulbed plants. But I can ask the landscapers to change it all back for your next visit, if you like.”

“Thanks much,” said Nigel. “I’ll let you know.”

The butler went back toward the house. Nigel looked about.

The lawns and low garden hedges extended more than a hundred yards in all directions.

To the north was the windbreak of sycamores lining the road on which Nigel had driven in, which would obscure any vehicles arriving from that direction until they reached the gated path. That was unfortunate, though at night headlamps would be visible.

To the east and south was a hedge that marked the edge of the moors.

Nigel took to the path due west. In ten minutes, at a fast pace, he reached the one-room stone gardener’s cottage.

Nigel stood in front of the cottage and looked back at the castle. The sun was setting behind him; it wasn’t quite dusk yet, but the castle was beginning to fall into shadows. The air was growing rapidly colder and the wind was picking up.

It didn’t seem likely that Darla Rennie would try to sneak across from the forested side. Not with her sense of direction. And she wouldn’t scale the cliffs or come across the moors. A commando approach just didn’t seem likely.

So one way or the other, Darla Rennie would have to come right in through that front gate and up to the front door. At least that was Nigel’s best guess.

At the moment, there was still enough light to watch for that from here. And he had an hour before the grand dinner was supposed to start.

Nigel went into the cottage and sat at a rough-hewn table in the center, with a line of sight through the window toward the gate. He put the cardboard evidence box on the table and, finally now with a bit of confidence that he could do so privately, he opened it.

A musty odor of decayed paper escaped, and Nigel knew immediately that what was inside the box was far older than the box itself. Darla Rennie must have transferred the materials from an older box to this new one before removing them from the Scotland Yard archive.

Nigel gingerly touched the edges of the two items in the box—a single sheet and something thicker and bound, underneath that sheet.

He carefully removed the sheet from the top, and then—when he saw what was beneath it—he set that sheet aside for a moment.

At the bottom of the box was a copy of
The Strand Magazine
. Nigel had seen one once before in a museum. This one looked very much like it—a century or so old, and showing the effects of time, even though carefully stored.

One top corner of one page had been tweaked down—many years ago, certainly, because it would have broken the paper to do so now—as an apparent marker.

Nigel carefully turned to that page and saw the title of the story:

“The Final Problem,” by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Fair enough. And in a way, not all that surprising that Darla Rennie would be carrying that around. Especially if, as was appearing to be the case, she still was under the delusion that her ancestor was the fictional Moriarty, and that he had been killed by Sherlock Holmes, and that, somehow, Reggie was Holmes.

A little surprising, though, that this copy had apparently come from Scotland Yard.

Nigel set the little magazine back into the box and turned his attention to the sheet that had been covering it.

It was just one single sheet. The sheet was still intact—the edges had not disintegrated, and it had been stored without folding, so there was no crease breaking it apart—but it was nevertheless yellowed with age. It was as old as the magazine it accompanied.

The words were typewritten, with the blunt impressions and slightly uneven lines of a very old machine, and the ribbon ink had faded.

Even so, the words were legible enough:

To whom it may concern:

If not desperate times, these are certainly dangerous ones in London. Nothing less would account for the measures that I, on behalf of Scotland Yard, have taken. I acknowledge those measures now and affix my signature to this document, so that if anyone should inquire in future, the pain endured and the bravery shown by the individual here named will be known.

Let it be known, then, that the individual known as James Moriarty, killed this last December 17th, was in fact the American agent James Smith, in the employ of the Special Branch of Scotland Yard, and that all the actions that he is reputed to have taken under the name James Moriarty were in fact in service to this country and in the interests of justice. And that he did not die in the manner reported in the newspapers, but that he was in fact murdered in the Docklands by the fiend known as Redgil. It is the request of his widow that this information shall be retained by Scotland Yard in perpetuity, to be acknowledged and revealed at any future time at which anyone with good reason should ask for it, so that any such person who shall have reason to care will know that the man known as James Moriarty lived his life with courage and in honor.

Signed this day, December 20, 1893

by Inspector Charles Standifer, Special Branch,

Scotland Yard

Darla Rennie had stolen this document from the Scotland Yard archives. She had gone to great lengths to do so.

Why?

Nigel wanted just a moment to think about that, but he didn’t get it. Some flash of light, piercing the dusk from somewhere outside the cottage, flickered past the window.

Nigel picked up the box, went to the doorway of the cottage, and looked to the east, toward the main house. Bright yellow light was pouring out now from the windows on the second floor. The dining room was being prepared.

He looked to the north, toward the gate. Someone’s limo was pulling up there. A much smaller vehicle, almost certainly the car of a paparazzo, was behind it. And the headlights of more approaching cars were flickering through the gaps between the trees.

There was little time. Nigel put both documents back into the box and took it with him as he walked back to the house.

The wind was increasing, and raindrops began to fall. Wembley’s paranoia about the weather might turn out to be well-founded.

Nigel went to the front entrance and rapped on the door.

It opened immediately, and there was the butler again.

“Good evening, and welcome to—” he began; then he stopped. “Oh. It’s you.”

“Yes,” said Nigel.

“I’m glad that you avoided the moors,” said the butler, though rather grimly.

“So am I. Question for you: Do you have a guest list?”

“Of course.”

“May I see it?”

The butler frowned, because of course this was an irregular request—but then he relented, Nigel being the brother of one of the guests of honor. He turned away, went to a small room next to the cloakroom, and then he returned with a list, complete with a clipboard and a highlighter for marking names off.

Nigel began scanning through the names.

“Who are these two you marked in red?” said Nigel.

“Known paparazzi,” said the butler. “They will be allowed certain specific photo opportunities. Especially with Lady Ashton-Tate, if they are so interested.”