The Sherlockian (17 page)

With a great
humph
of an exhale, Harold concluded his monologue. His normally plump, pale cheeks had become taut and red. Both Sarah and Jennifer stared at him, stunned.

“That was shockingly coherent,” said Sarah at last.

Harold squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and gave her a look that he hoped would indicate that he did not find her last comment particularly helpful.

“I can see why Mr. Conan Doyle hired you,” said Jennifer after another pause. Harold couldn’t tell whether or not this was meant as a compliment.

“Ms. Peters,” he began, “there is one question I still have for you.”

“
One?
” whispered Sarah,
sotto voce.

“In all the books lying around this apartment, I haven’t found a single one written by Arthur Conan Doyle. I haven’t found any notes either, or reference materials, relating to the great work of Alex’s life, his Conan Doyle biography. I understand why he took the original diary to New York with him, but would he have taken
all
of that secondary material as well?”

“No,” replied Jennifer, “he would have kept it in his writing office.”

“His writing office?”

“Yes. My brother kept a writing office down the street, in which he worked. He didn’t like to write in the same space in which he lived—it made him feel claustrophobic or locked up or something or other.”

“What about all of the books in the study, and that great wooden desk? That’s not his office?”

“That’s his
reading
office. Or maybe it was his pleasure-reading office, I can’t remember what he called it. But all of the Sherlock material would be in his writing office. It’s literally right down the street. We can head there now, if you like.”

While Jennifer gathered her heavy coat and Harold buttoned his, Sarah whispered to him, quietly enough that Jennifer wouldn’t hear.

“Just to be clear,” Sarah said, “is there one of you people who
doesn’t
have obsessive-compulsive disorder?”

The walk to Alex Cale’s writing office was indeed brief. It was on the very next block north. Harold couldn’t help but notice that the apartment building looked just like that of Alex’s other, nonwriting flat—a fact that served only to accentuate the idiosyncratic pointlessness of the expense.

On the front stoop, Harold listened to the midday hum of activity in the building while Jennifer fumbled in her bag for the keys. She removed a collection of personal effects—square black makeup cases, rounded contact-lens holders, curved-steel beautifying apparatuses— and then placed them back in her bag as the rummaging continued. Harold considered offering to help, but wondered whether asking a woman to help sort through her purse might be considered rude. He could never tell about situations like this.

But before he could speak up, the door swung open, seemingly of its own accord. A man emerged from inside, carrying a leather bag, and politely held the door open for Jennifer. Though he looked young—he couldn’t be much above thirty—his hairline had already started to recede on the sides, while the center section remained firmly tethered to his brow. His loose jeans were dirty, stained with splotches of blue paint. He sported a nondescript gray sweater and an awful, ill-kempt goatee.

Jennifer smiled at the man as she took the weight of the door from his hand, and he returned a smile as he wordlessly trotted down the front steps.

“I hate goatees, too,” said Sarah to Harold, as if reading his mind, when they had entered the building. “It’s, like, have a beard or don’t, you know?”

By the time they’d reached the door to Alex’s writing office, Jennifer had managed to find the proper ring of keys from her bag. But as she held the key up in front of
2
L, she stopped suddenly, realizing that it was unnecessary: The door was already ajar.

It looked like an animal’s jaw, opening wide to eat them.

“Hello?” called Jennifer, a note of fear in her voice. “Hello?!”

There was no response.

“Is someone inside?”

Harold turned to Sarah for guidance, but her eyes were locked on the open door.

She nodded to herself: This would be
her
department. Without looking at him, she stepped forward, pushing the door open all the way. She entered the bright flat.

It was even more of a mess than Alex’s hotel room in New York. The diffuse London sun shone through wide windows onto a sea of books, all of them toppled onto the floor from their rightful shelves. Cushions had been thrown off the couch and the linings cut open. White tufts of down—or whatever couch pillows were stuffed with—were spread around like snowdrifts. As Harold entered, he noticed the freshly emptied wooden bookshelves, the insides of which were colored more darkly than the outsides, having not been exposed to daylight in years. He could see a tiled kitchenette off to one side of the central living space, with its own mess. Plates shattered on the floor, a clattered array of silverware gleaming from the white tiles. Every drawer on the desk at the far side of the room had been opened, and some even removed. Blue ink spilled across the desktop from an overturned bottle.

Jennifer remained in the doorway, too afraid to enter. Sarah took a quick walk through the flat, from end to end.

“No one’s here,” she pronounced.

Harold watched the blue ink on the desk dribble onto the floor. It was still wet. And still dripping.

“That goatee!” yelled Harold, putting it together. It wasn’t blue paint that he’d seen on the man’s jeans. It was ink.

He ran past Jennifer into the hallway and down the stairs, taking them three at a time. He popped open the building’s front door with a great push. But it was no use. Harold surveyed the long street as he heard the door click shut behind him. He didn’t see a soul.

C
HAPTER 19

The Broken Hair Clip

“There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through

the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it,

and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.”

—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,

A Study in Scarlet

October 27, 19oo

The Needling family lived in a mansion called Millhead, which rested at the bottom of a hill in West Hampstead. Great white pillars shot forth from the dirt, pressing the sharply angled roof upward, like an arrow to the heavens. Before the pillars lay a row of delicate hedges, and two empty, symmetrical flower beds. Into the distance spread a craggy heath, whose reddish outcroppings of rock stretched into the cloud-covered horizon.

Arthur had sent word of his coming the day before. He’d prepared the first telegram himself, a “Dear Sir” sort of job to Sally Needling’s father, explaining who he was, how he’d become involved in “the tragedy” and all that, and asking permission to visit the man’s home. Then Arthur had decided it might be odd, to send such a missive without warning, and so he’d hurried down to the Yard again, to have them broach the issue. Best to let the authorities handle the awkward bits, Arthur felt. Inspector Miller had made contact with Sally’s father, Bertrand Needling, who quickly assented to a visit. Arthur had sent a brief, yet polite, note this morning, thanking Mr. Needling for his time and letting him know that Arthur would be on the 4:05 from King’s Cross. He’d made no mention of Sally directly, nor of her murder, nor of a cheap East End boardinghouse with a white lace wedding dress tucked away in its back bedroom closet.

Arthur clapped the heavy bronze knocker against the front door. He could hear the sound echo throughout the house. After a wait, a servant answered the door and let him inside. The family had been expecting him.

His interview with the family was tense and hushed, their voices quieted to a whisper. Bertrand and Clara Needling sat on opposite ends of the drawing room. Sally’s two brothers were out. Arthur never learned where. The talk was punctuated by strange, sudden silences. In the middle of describing some facet of her daughter’s brief life, Mrs. Needling would lose the train of her thoughts and her sentence would putter to a halt, like a steam engine cooling to its last breaths. Mr. Needling, a pallid barrister, would not jump in to pick up the thought, however, and Arthur was mindful of interrupting. And thus a lengthy silence would hang, until finally Arthur felt comfortable asking another question, on an unrelated topic so that it seemed he’d received a satisfactory answer before. He found that the household existed in a grief-drunk haze, and he waded through it cautiously and politely.

Sally had been born in ’74, in this very house. A happy girl, Mrs. Needling assured Arthur. She used to run up the hill behind the house and then roll down it with the boys. She’d put on her brothers’ worn and oversize trousers so she didn’t get her dresses dirty. For her eighth birthday, she’d begged and begged for a ruby hair clip she’d seen in a shop window in the city, at Routledge’s on Oxford Street. After some pleading with her father, the hair clip had been acquired and presented in a box filled with pink tissue paper to a squealing Sally. She wore it all day long, and her mother had to pry it from her hair that night at bedtime. And wouldn’t you know? The next day Sally went up the hill with her brothers, the clip still in her hair. As she rolled down the hill, gay as a bird, the clip broke into a dozen pieces. Sally was devastated. Of course another, identical clip had to be purchased, and it was, the very next day. It had taken only the smallest bit of cajoling of Mr. Needling, his wife explained through her first smile of the afternoon.

“Dr. Doyle doesn’t need to be hearing about all this,” said Mr. Needling with a terse and quiet ferocity. “He’s trying to find out who killed her, not write her biography.”

Mrs. Needling began to respond to Mr. Needling’s outburst. “Dear, I was just explaining what a . . .” And then she let her sentence go, fading off into the stuffy air.

“Was she fond of any gentlemen that you knew of? Did she have many callers?” said Arthur, again changing the subject. Best to start here and see if this led to a conversation about Sally’s single-night marriage.

“No, sir,” said Mr. Needling. “She was a quiet girl, you see. Kept to the estate a lot. She was quite fond of her horses.”

Arthur nodded that he understood. They didn’t know that she’d been married when she died. Her relationship with this man, this killer, had been a secret she’d kept from her family. Should he press further? It is a horrid thing, to tell a mother that she’d missed her murdered daughter’s wedding day.

“She did have her friends in the city, though,” offered Mrs. Needling. “She’d been spending a lot of her time around them.”

“Her friends in the city?” inquired Arthur.

“Janet and . . . Emily. Yes. Janet and Emily—those were the names. Sorry, she only ever mentioned their Christian names in talking about them. And they never came to the house either, Sally always went into the city to see them. They’d attend one of those meetings or some such.”

Mr. Needling stirred in his seat, clearly agitated by the direction the conversation had taken. He said nothing, however. Arthur addressed Mrs. Needling, ignoring her husband’s discomfort.

“What sort of meetings would those be?” he asked casually.

Mrs. Needling looked to her husband for guidance, but he refused to meet her eyes.

“Perhaps they were more ‘talks’ than ‘meetings,’ I should say. Sally wasn’t a terribly active member, you understand—she just went for the speeches. And for her girlfriends, of course. She liked meeting the other young women.”

“We don’t want you to get the wrong idea, Dr. Doyle, that’s all!” interjected Mr. Needling. “She was a good girl. Always was. You must remember that.”

“Of course, Mr. Needling. I’m sure your daughter was the very flower of West Hampstead. Which is all the more reason for me to find the man who did this vile deed and see that he’s punished.” Bertrand Needling hardly appeared comforted by Arthur’s words. “Now, what were these . . . these talks your daughter attended with her friends?”

“Voting rights for women,” replied Mrs. Needling unabashedly. “She went to the talks about extending the vote to women. She was a suffragist, Sally.”

“Now, now,” said Mr. Needling. “Let’s not overstate the case, shall we, dear? She went to some talks. She had a few friends. It was all relatively harmless. But I’m a Primrose man myself. I’m in the League.” Mr. Needling raised his right hand, flashing a silver ring on his index finger. Arthur leaned forward and recognized the familiar five-leafrosette shape adorning the ring. “Disraeli right through our Cecil,” Mr. Needling continued, “now, those are statesmen. And I’d never have let a daughter of mine go too far into a folly like that. I’ve read you on the subject as well—of course you agree with me. Understand that it was a youthful diversion for the girl, that’s all. Nothing serious.”

“She was a suffragist,” repeated Mrs. Needling. “She would talk about it whenever she got the chance.” Her husband gave a loud cough, and Mrs. Needling became quiet again. Arthur had no urge to get involved in this family’s politics. He had a lingering fondness for Disraeli, he had to admit, but goodness, Cecil? The Marquess of Salisbury was a rotten prig. How the Conservatives had atrophied, that he was their new standard-bearer. But Arthur, thankfully, had the good sense to refrain from saying as much.

“Do you know the name of her organization? Or the location of those meetings?”

“She didn’t go to meetings,” said Mr. Needling. “She traipsed into a few harmless talks. And she was not a member of any organization. These girlfriends may have been, I can’t vouch for them, but Sally was
not.
I’m sure I’ve forgotten the names of the groups, or where she went. Somewhere in London.”

“I apologize for bringing up such an unsettling point, but her body was found in Whitechapel,” said Arthur. Mr. Needling frowned and gritted his teeth. “Is it possible that your daughter’s meetings may have been—”

“My daughter, sir, had no business in Whitechapel, of that you can be most certain. Do you understand me? No business at all.” Mr. Needling slapped both his hands down against the arms of his chair. “The police are in error. Or her body was transported to that foul spot by the villain who killed her, in order to obscure his tracks.” Her body indeed had been moved, thought Arthur, but, sadly, only from inside the boardinghouse to the alley beside it. The girl had spent her wedding night in Whitechapel.