The Brothers of Baker Street (16 page)

“Not yet, apparently. But I presume they won’t be able to get anything from what was chugging away in the hot suds?”

“No,” said Nigel. “But it looks to me like the victim knew his attacker, and the attacker didn’t wear gloves, and so had to try to clean up after, and your average murderer just isn’t sufficiently neat and tidy to wipe away every possible print.”

“And if the murderer isn’t average?”

“Somewhere there’s going to be some square inch of a print that didn’t get wiped down. It’s just a matter of knowing where to look.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Laura. And then she said, “Powder or liquid?”

“Sorry?”

“Boxed, or bottled? Does the report say what sort of detergent it was?”

“No,” said Nigel. “Does it matter?”

“Boxed, I hope, and as poorly constructed as most,” said Laura.

“Why?”

“Nigel, haven’t you ever done your own laundry?”

“Of course I…” began Nigel, and then he stopped and thought about it. “Well, that might be a long shot,” he said. “But I’ll ask Wembley to make sure they check it.”

Nigel continued reading the report. “Damn. They say the Rolex has the initials of the male tourist Reggie’s client allegedly killed.”

“Do we have to say allegedly even when the person who probably did it is already dead himself?”

“Let’s do,” said Nigel. “It will make my brother feel better to think there is still some doubt about him having released a guilty man.”

“Well, it has made him very mopey. I could get hardly a word out of him at the jail. He’s being very dense about it. That’s why you’re here.”

Nigel looked back at Laura as though she had paid him a compliment. The look surprised her; she thought she had stated the obvious.

“Have they indicted?” said Nigel, almost authoritatively now.

“Yes. This morning. The magistrate who heard it was the same one who released Reggie’s client two days ago, and he was not at all pleased. He immediately committed Reggie’s case to the Old Bailey.”

“And when is the bail hearing?” said Nigel.

“It’s this afternoon.”

“We’ll need a barrister. The court won’t like it if Reggie gets up and argues for his own bail.”

“Reggie said to get Geoffrey Langdon,” said Laura. “Is he any good?”

“Yes,” said Nigel. “And scary as hell, if you ask me. Very sneaky fellow. But all the better for us, when he’s on our side instead of the prosecution’s. What about the solicitor that engaged Reggie for the client? Does he have anything that can help us?”

“She. And she seems to be either missing, or accidentally out of town, or deliberately unavailable, depending upon whether you are talking to Reggie, or to New Scotland Yard, or to me. Reggie said she sounded as though she were in some distress. He hasn’t heard from her since, but she has an answering service, and the service says she left word that she will be out of town on holiday for a few days.”

“Well, that’s bloody convenient for her.”

“That’s what I thought as well.”

“So because of that message she left with the answering service, the police aren’t looking for her?”

“Right. At least not yet.”

“All right,” said Nigel. “I’ll see if I can track her down while you and Langdon are at the bail hearing.”

“You won’t be there?” said Laura.

“Me and Reggie at the same bail hearing?” said Nigel. “I don’t think so. Not unless you want to see us both locked up.”

13

When Nigel entered the Dorset House lobby on Baker Street, he was surprised at how different it felt.

So far as he could tell, nothing had changed: the glass doors at the entrance, the marble flooring of the lobby, the security station with the elderly guard, the nicely business-seductive attired women moving to and from the financial floors—all seemed pretty much the same.

Perhaps the difference was that the last time he was in this lobby, he had been rushing frantically out for Heathrow and the next plane to Los Angeles, with the knowledge that there was a dead body in his office on the next level up.

Yes, that might be the difference.

Nigel got in the lift. Just before the doors could close, someone put a hand in to stop them.

A man whom Nigel had not seen before got in and pushed the button for the top floor.

The man looked over at Nigel as the lift began to move.

“You’re a Heath, aren’t you?” he said.

Nigel would have just nodded politely, but the flight had been very long, and although the brunch with Laura had been quite pleasant, the subject matter of their conversation—and Nigel’s present task—verged on stressful. And so Nigel was in a short mood.

“Are we a species, then?” Nigel replied.

“I wouldn’t know that,” said the man, “but wouldn’t rule it out. Just thought I saw a resemblance between you and, I presume, your brother Reggie. My name’s Rafferty.”

Nigel studied the man for a moment, then said, “The leasing committee.”

“Ahh,” said Rafferty. “I thought so. You’re the brother who notices the details.”

Nigel said nothing to that. He didn’t know whether Rafferty was referring to the Sherlock Holmes letters themselves or to the clause in the lease that made them so important to Reggie’s chambers. But either way it sounded like a problematic discussion, especially so because Rafferty gave the impression of being just a little too impressed with himself.

But fortunately, Rafferty did not seem intent on continuing the conversation, and the lift doors had opened. Nigel nodded quickly in Rafferty’s direction, and then exited the lift, heading for his former office.

The walk down the corridor felt odd, and Nigel realized after a moment that it was not because he had been away for a while. It was because the floor was quieter than it should be in the middle of a workday. Reggie’s practice could not be going well. Between the lift and the secretary’s desk, which he was approaching now, he had encountered no one, and that was not a good sign.

But the secretary was there—the new one, whom Reggie had hired after the events in Los Angeles.

As Nigel approached, Lois got up from her desk, maneuvering as quickly as she could between the corner of it and the edge of the cubicle.

“This is Baker Street Chambers, Reggie Heath QC,” she announced eagerly.

“Yes,” said Nigel. “I’m Nigel Heath. I’m—”

“Oh yes,” she said. “I’ve heard of you.”

“That I’m the taller, better-looking, and more responsible one?” said Nigel. All of this was patently untrue, of course, except for the better-looking part, which Nigel regarded as subjective.

Lois was stumped for just an instant, her eyes fixing at some nonexistent point in the distance as she tried, no doubt, to think of the appropriate lie.

“Yes,” she chirped, with a wide smile.

“Well put,” replied Nigel. “You know Reggie’s situation?”

“He’s in—”

“Go ahead, you can say it.”

“Indisposed,” she said, bravely.

“Quite right,” said Nigel. “That’s exactly how you should respond to the odd solicitor that might drop by. Or close enough. But you and I know where Reggie is, though it’s not good business for a barrister to be there.”

“Yes,” she said in a low voice.

Nigel continued. “Every day that goes by with Reggie still accused is another day that he will get no briefs and another day of being slammed in the tabloids to the point his chambers might never recover. We might have several weeks until the trial date to find evidence to keep him from going to prison. But we have only days to save his career. And—unlike me, as you may have heard—Reggie values his law career.”

“Yes,” she said. “I have noticed.”

“Very well. The bail hearing is already in good hands. I’ve got Reggie’s arrest report, but there are some other things I’ll need: the prosecutor’s disclosures from Reggie’s Black Cab case, the solicitor’s instructions in that case to Reggie—and we need to hunt up the solicitor herself as well.”

“I’ve been trying to reach her,” said Lois. “Reggie told me to do so when he called from … that place where he is … but I get no answer.”

“Yes, I heard that she’s been hard to get hold of,” said Nigel. “Which is odd, because even if she regards her case as over and done with, you’d think she’d read the papers this morning and check in.”

“Perhaps she’s on holiday?”

“Perhaps. Do you have her address?”

“I’m sure it must be in Reggie’s office,” she said. “I’ll get it.”

Lois was about to move off toward Reggie’s office, but Nigel paused and looked toward the smaller office, the one just across from the secretary’s desk, that he himself had occupied until the events in Los Angeles.

“Is that locked?” he said.

“No, you can go right in. It’s your old office, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Nigel. “You go on; I’ll just be a moment.”

Lois bustled off to get the briefing papers.

Nigel entered his old office. He shut the door behind him and leaned back against it. He wanted to get a sense of the room once more.

He had not been in this office since discovering the body of the previous clerk, Robert Ocher, just a month earlier.

In the time since, he had gone to Los Angeles and solved Ocher’s murder, rescued Mara or been rescued by her (depending upon how he looked at it), got his solicitor’s license suspended without regretting it, and, finally, set Reggie back on the right course with Laura—or at least tried, to the extent one sibling could do for another without crossing the line.

So it was surprising, after all that, how the office itself still seemed familiar.

The old wooden file cabinet that had hidden the crouching secretary was still there in the corner.

And there was still an in-basket on the desk, into which the new secretary was still collecting the letters addressed to Sherlock Holmes. One thing had changed in that regard, and Nigel had to smile at it: Reggie obviously wanted Lois to have no doubts about who would be responding to the letters; on the edge of the basket he had taped a note in broad felt pen strokes: “For Nigel.”

At this moment there was one new letter in the basket. Presumably everything else had been in the packages that Reggie had sent on.

Nigel picked it up.

It was a rather short letter:

Dear Mr. Holmes:

What you value most.

Your humble servant,

Professor Moriarty

That was all it said.

Nigel sat down in his old chair. Perhaps one letter from Moriarty could be ignored by more sensible minds than his own. But two such letters indicated a continuing delusion, in Nigel’s view, and should not be taken lightly.

Nigel took the first letter from Moriarty out of his pocket and compared it to the new one.

In the second letter, the writer seemed to have been promoted to “Professor”—and for a moment, Nigel considered whether the letters might have been written by two different people.

Both were done on the same stationery. That didn’t mean much by itself, it was a common brand.

Both letters were also done, apparently, in the same typeface. So one stationery, one typeface—probably one person, in the absence of evidence to the contrary.

But who?

Neither letter had a return address, of course. And no handwritten signatures.

Nigel looked at the backs of the sheets. Nothing. He held them up to the light—nothing. He looked at them sideways—of course, nothing.

He knew he wasn’t focusing properly. He was in the office, he was sitting in the chair, the letters were on the blotter. There must be something important in them beyond the obvious message but he just wasn’t getting it. Something was impeding his concentration.

But what was it? Finally, Nigel thought to open the top left drawer of the desk, the shallow drawer for pencils and paper clips and such.

Thank God, there it was. Reggie had not had the drawer cleaned out.

There was still an unopened tube of chocolate Smarties.

Forty minutes of sugar rush ought to do it. Nigel started in on the candy-shelled discs and then, careful not to smudge, again picked up the letters.

Nigel looked more closely at the typeface on each. It was blunt, uneven in impact, and irregular in alignment. A manual machine. A very old one.

Nigel picked up the letters and went to find Lois, who was just about to exit Reggie’s office, papers in hand.

“I have the bundle the solicitor brought in for the Black Cab case,” she said. “Her business phone just gets an answering service; we tried that earlier. But I did find her mobile phone number.”

“Let’s give it a try then,” said Nigel.

Lois picked up Reggie’s desk phone, put it on speaker phone, and rang Darla’s mobile number. It rang continually, until finally it switched over, and an automated voice from the mobile phone company identified the number they had called and said to leave a message.