The Sherlockian (24 page)

The women’s W.C. in Caxton Hall was the very image of Dutch cleanliness. Three flushing water closets were separated by dark wood along the right wall. The tiles spread from the toilets to a sink on the left. Of all the public restrooms Arthur had been in, this was by far the most sanitary. Even Bram, who managed his own theater and its rest areas, seemed impressed.

At the sink, Arabella had removed her bonnet and adjusted her hair in the mirror. She turned to Arthur and Bram, nodded at them politely, and returned her gaze to the mirror. She seemed not to give either of them another thought.

A flush from one of the water closets signaled the presence of Arabella’s friend. Bram walked into the far closet and shut the door behind him. Arthur was unsure what to do. He wanted to stay close to these women, to hear what they said to one another, and yet he couldn’t just stand there staring, could he?

Arthur found his solution near the sink. Two comfortable chairs had been set out, most likely for ladies who needed a place to sit and collect their breath when their corseting grew too tight. Arthur sank into one of the chairs and gave a dramatic sigh. He fanned himself with the sleeves of his frock. Though he was putting on a bit of a show, he had to admit that this clothing did exhaust the wearer. If the day hadn’t yet convinced him of the merits of women’s suffrage, it had certainly convinced him of the justness of the movement for Rational Dress.

Arabella’s mousy friend exited her water closet and moved toward the sink.

“Oh, Emily,” said Arabella to her friend, “I’m to join Dot and those Manchester girls for a late supper. I do believe they’re plotting something grand for their home town. Care to join us?”

“Thank you, no,” said the mousy girl, now revealed to be named Emily. “I left some work unfinished at home, before I came here. I should return to it.”

“A few stitches of knitting?” said Arabella with a laugh.

“Yes,” said Emily through a grin. “Some knitting.” With that, Emily placed her right foot up on the resting chair next to Arthur’s. She lifted her skirt above her knee. Arthur tried to seem uninterested while she adjusted the straps on her garters. Her stocking was white, and quite thin. Arthur could practically see straight through it. He picked a spot on the wall across from him and held his gaze on it. It wouldn’t do if she saw him staring. She pinched at her stocking, trying to shift it across her beautiful, pale leg. She moved her knee from left to right as she shimmied the stocking, and the motion hiked her skirt farther up her thigh. Arthur was becoming quite distracted.

He lost track of the spot along the far wall and let his eyes drift to Emily’s exposed thigh. He saw her muscles tighten as she leaned her weight into her leg. His eyes traveled down to her dimpled knee, which seemed to pucker out as her leg bent further. His gaze fell to her sleek shin and then around to the long back of her smooth leg and the black splotch upon it. He stared closer. It was a tattoo of a three-headed crow.

Arthur gave a start and almost fell off his chair. Both women immediately turned their heads to him.

“Pardon,” he said in his best female voice. “Dizzy.” He was trying to minimize his word count, so as to lessen their opportunity to detect the masculine undercurrent to his speech.

“I understand,” said Arabella sympathetically. “I used to pass out once a week when I wore corsets like yours. I don’t mean to pry, and you’re free to wear the clothing you choose, but there is a wonderful sale on now at Whiteley’s, on their modern bodices. My very life changed when I switched over myself.”

“Thank you,” said Arthur.

“I don’t see how we’re to win our suffrage if we can’t draw a decent gulp of air into our lungs. Right, Emily?”

“Yes. Right,” said Emily. She regarded Arthur suspiciously. She did not seem so easygoing as Arabella, nor as trusting.

“Well then, I’m off. Do give one of these ‘liberty’ bodices a try, ma’am, I’m sure it would do you wonders,” Arabella said to Arthur. She next turned to Emily. “I’ll see you Thursday next? And please, be careful with your . . . knitting. I’d hate for there to be any accidents. In your stitch work.” With a gentle bow, she was gone.

By the time Bram flushed and came out of the water closet, Emily had finished adjusting her stocking and replaced her skirt over her leg. She left quickly, without a good-bye to Arthur or even a friendly nod. The very instant she had left the room, Arthur burst up from his chair.

“She has the tattoo!” he cried. “On her right leg! I saw it!”

“Arabella Raines?” said Bram, confused.

“No,” said Arthur. “Her friend Emily. The other one. Quickly, man, we’ve no time to spare!”

Arthur narrowly avoided tripping over his own skirt as he hurried out of the ladies’ powder room in full pursuit.

C
HAPTER 24

The Bloodstains Bear Fruit

“You have brought detection as near an exact science

as it will ever be brought in this world.”

—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,

A Study in Scarlet

January 10, 2010

Harold woke to the sound of running water. Groggy, he raised his head and turned to find the source. He gazed across disheveled sheets—deep blue with red stripes crossing in a grid pattern—to a cream carpet and a dark wooden desk. Harold had been in so many different hotel rooms over the past week, hadn’t he, and they all looked exactly the same. Which of them was this?

As he turned to the bathroom door, which could have been any bathroom door in any hotel room on either side of the Atlantic, Harold saw wisps of steam escaping from the bottom. The shower was running inside the bathroom. It looked warm. He heard someone move around inside the shower and realized it was Sarah. The events of the past night came back to him. Harold was sorry to recall that nothing thrilling had occurred the night before.

They’d found this hotel after a quick Google search from the Internet café. It was close, it was quiet, and it accepted payment in cash. They couldn’t risk using credit cards.

They had spent the evening separately reading through Alex’s Conan Doyle biography. Sarah had appreciated the chance finally to read it for herself, while Harold pored over it again and again for any indication of where Alex had found the diary. Or any glimpse as to what was even inside it. No matter how many times he read it, no new facts presented themselves.

The most exciting moment of the evening, for Harold, had come when the two learned that the hotel had a laundry room. They realized that without a return to their previous hotel room they’d be spending another day in the same clothes. They changed into the white robes they found hanging inside the bathroom door and walked, dirty underwear, jeans, and shirts piled in their arms, down the stairs in nothing but the robes. Harold’s eyes kept drifting to the folds of Sarah’s robe, which swayed to expose her right thigh halfway up to her waist every time she stepped forward. He did his best not to stare. He was pretty sure she didn’t notice.

Later that night they slept on opposite sides of the single king-size bed. They wore their robes like pajamas. The whole thing felt dishearteningly chaste, like a teenage sleepover, and yet Harold still had trouble sleeping. He lay on his side, facing away from Sarah even though he usually slept on his back. He didn’t want to risk turning and accidentally staring at her. What if she opened her eyes just at the instant that his happened to be on her? She’d think he’d been staring at her the whole night, which he certainly hadn’t been. Better not to let his head point anywhere near her direction, for fear of a misunderstanding. So he lay on his right side and felt the weight of his body pressing painfully into his shoulder as he failed to fall asleep.

Harold sat up in bed when he heard his BlackBerry buzz from the nightstand. He examined it and found a new e-mail from Sebastian Conan Doyle. Sebastian was in London and wanted to meet with them. “Immediately,” Sebastian had insisted.

As Harold set the BlackBerry on the nightstand, he noticed Sarah’s phone resting beside it. He thought back to her long calls the day before, while they were in the café. He was suspicious. He had no trouble admitting that to himself. Whatever affection he might have for

Sarah—however much he might enjoy her teasing and whatever tiny crush he might have on her—he still didn’t trust her.

As he took Sarah’s phone from the nightstand, he comforted himself with the thought that Holmes hadn’t been totally honest with Watson all the time either. He had lied to Watson frequently, in fact, keeping his companion in the dark so that Holmes could solve his cases as he saw fit. In
The Hound of the Baskervilles,
Holmes even had Watson off on a pointless mission for the majority of their investigation, so that Holmes could hide in the shadows and observe the suspects while they were distracted by his bumbling sidekick. Harold wasn’t doing anything that Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t have done himself.

Harold didn’t feel guilty as he examined the call records on Sarah’s phone. However, as he heard the shower shut off in the bathroom, he knew he needed to move quickly.

Yesterday afternoon Sarah had exchanged a number of calls with a New York area code. One of the calls had been at 3:03 p.m. They had definitely been in the café then. This must have been the call she made to her editor.

As Harold heard Sarah puttering in the bathroom, he pressed Redial. The seconds stretched interminably as he waited to hear a ring.

A female voice answered quickly. “Silverman, Rummel, Tabak, and Siegler. How may I direct your call?”

“I . . . ummm . . .” Harold hadn’t considered how he’d respond. “Is this a law firm?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Yes, sir. Can I help you?”

The bathroom door opened suddenly, and Sarah came out fully dressed but with a towel wrapped around her wet hair.

“No, thank you,” said Harold into the phone as he hung up.

Sarah stopped when she saw him with her phone in his hand.

“Is something going on?” she asked.

“Who’s Silverman, Rummel, Tabak, and Siegler?”

Her first reaction was anger. “You checked my phone? Why would you check my phone?”

“Because you lied to me about calling your editor. At least I know that now. Look, I’m sorry, but between the car chases and the guns and the dead people, I’m a little bit on edge. And you seemed
very
eager to follow me to London.”

Sarah sighed. She stared at the floor for a moment, collecting herself, and then sat down on the bed. She curled and uncurled her bare toes on the carpet as she spoke.

“Yes. I lied to you. I didn’t want to tell you that . . . the law firm. They’re my divorce attorneys. I’m in the middle of getting a divorce.”

Of all the things Harold was expecting her to say, this was definitely not among them. “Marc Epstein. That’s the name of my lawyer. You can call him and check. I didn’t want to tell you because . . . well, I don’t have an editor. I’m not actually working as a reporter right now. But I used to. I wrote for a bunch of papers, a few magazines—I’m sure you Googled me. But then, after I got married, I sort of stopped. My husband—my ex-husband—made enough, and I ended up moving away from writing. And now that I’m getting divorced, I want to do it again. So I’m writing freelance articles. Or trying to, at any rate. And when I heard about Alex finding the diary, when I started reading about the Irregulars, all of you guys, it just seemed too perfect. Anyone would buy this. It’s an amazing story.”

“That’s why you put me in touch with Sebastian. Why you made all of this happen. You wanted something to write about.”

Sarah looked up from her feet for the first time since she’d started talking. Her eyes shone with moisture. “I
needed
it, Harold. I needed this story to happen. I needed to get my life back.”

After his shock had subsided, what Harold realized was that he wasn’t angry. He understood her, more than he wanted to.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I get it. We’re going to find the diary. I promise. But let’s make a deal first. We’re in this together. You won’t lie to me, and I won’t go through your phone logs.” He smiled. She smiled back. In a moment that he would recall fondly later, he even reached out and put his arm around her. She laid her towel-wrapped head on his shoulder.

“Thanks,” she said at last.

“No problem. I know what it’s like to need to prove yourself. To imagine yourself a certain way in your head for so long, and then to get a chance to put it into action in real life. And real life is a lot trickier than I was hoping for.”

Sarah laughed.

“We both need to solve this,” Harold added.

“Yes,” she replied. “And the funny part is, I think I need to solve this more than you do.”

Sebastian Conan Doyle’s London home was in Holland Park, along Abbotsbury Road. The four-story was tooth white and bracketed on either side by tall plane trees. Harold and Sarah took the few steps from the street to the entryway quickly and gave their names to the doorman. He let them in right away. He’d been expecting them.

The house swallowed Harold within its massive enclosure. The ceilings seemed a few feet taller than they needed to be and the hallways a few feet wider. Even the doorways seemed oversize, stretching almost to the ceiling. Art hung genteelly from the walls. It was all modern, or so Harold assumed, though he didn’t know much about art. The paintings seemed structural, architectural, full of simple colored shapes smashing into one another.