The Body in the Bookseller's: A Sherlock and Lucy Short Story (The Sherlock and Lucy Mystery Series Book 21)

by Anna Elliott

  “No!”

  Clarissa looked rather startled by the vehemence of my interruption.

  I drew in a breath. This conversation was actually beginning to sound like something out of Patience, or one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s other comic operas, where romantic mix-ups and misunderstandings abounded. But if I came here for the simple task of gathering information on Adolph Meyer and then accidentally convinced an innocent girl to marry him, I was going to have Holmes—not to mention my own conscience—to answer to.

  “I don’t know either of the young men who admire you, so I don’t think I’d be much help at choosing between them.”

  I studied Clarissa. She wasn’t stupid, I thought. She was simply a good, happy girl who beamed upon all the world with kindness and greeted every person she met like a long-lost friend—expecting all the world to be kind to her in return, because it had never failed her yet.

  It might strike me as a dangerous way to live. But maybe humanity needed the Clarissas of the world as much as it needed me or Sherlock Holmes.

  “I will say this, though,” I said. “Love and marriage … it doesn’t mean finding someone that you can live with. It’s finding someone you can’t live without.”

  With a final sneeze, the elderly gentleman struggled upright and shuffled towards the door, just as it opened to admit three men: one older, who I took to be Clarissa’s father, and two younger men, one tall and broad-built, with blue eyes and very fair hair, the other slim and dark-haired. They must be Günter and Eric, the shop assistants.

  Mr. Lovejoy came in last and held the door open, allowing the elderly man to pass out onto the street.

  Few people—unless they were detectives in disguise—had an appearance that exactly matched their profession. But Phineas Lovejoy looked precisely the way that anyone’s idea of a seller in rare books and manuscripts ought to look. A chubby, rotund man with a round-cheeked face, he wore his grey hair pulled back in a ponytail, in the style of an eighteenth-century man’s wig. A pair of wire-rimmed spectacles perched on the end of his nose, and his clothes looked dusty and haphazardly put on, as though he couldn’t be bothered to tear himself away from the world of literature long enough to give attention to what he wore.

  Clarissa didn’t at all resemble her father, but I could still see a little of her smile in the look of greeting that Mr. Lovejoy turned on me. Although where Clarissa’s smile was radiantly unclouded, her father’s was a shade more reserved, his eyes tinged with a shadow of sadness behind the spectacle lenses.

  Clarissa might not have learned the lesson yet, but Mr. Lovejoy had been alive long enough to be aware that the world didn’t always return kindness for kindness.

  “Good afternoon, Miss,” he greeted me. “I hope my daughter has been able to help you?”

  “She’s not looking for a book, Father. She came looking for Mr. Meyer. Although—” Clarissa stopped, struck by the thought that had obviously only just occurred to her. “You never said why you wanted to find Mr. Meyer?”

  “It’s a matter of an inheritance,” I said smoothly. Holmes and I had worked out a plausible reason for my inquiries before I’d come to Lovejoy & Sons. “A distant cousin of his in Australia has died, leaving all her money to him. Her firm of solicitors in naturally anxious that he should be found so that he can claim his inheritance. I don’t suppose you have an address for him?”

  I let my questioning look take in the two young men, as well as Phineas.

  Holmes had Adolph Meyer’s permanent address in his files: a magnificent London mansion at 13 Great George Street, Westminster, that could have been expressly designed to disprove the aphorism that crime didn’t pay. And of course, Meyer was also being watched by police agents.

  But we couldn’t bank on Meyer’s remaining under surveillance. Considering that we dared not approach him more closely, it was far more likely that he would sooner or later manage to evade his watchers.

  If Meyer was waiting to receive the stolen packet—and the deadly anthrax that it likely contained—he would need a secure location in which to make the exchange, and another where he might store the anthrax until his illicit auction could be arranged. We were hoping that someone at Lovejoy & Sons might give us a clue as to where we might expect him to go, if he succeeded in giving his watchers the slip.

  Mr. Lovejoy slowly shook his head. “I am afraid that I cannot help you.” He had a deliberate, slightly antiquated way of speaking. “A man should be happy at home, as the great Dr. Johnson so famously wrote. But I do not know the location of Mr. Meyer’s abode; he always calls here to collect his purchases in person.”

  Mr. Lovejoy glanced at his assistants, as though seeking confirmation.

  “Yes, sir. Das ist—I mean, that is correct.” It was the fair-haired young man who spoke. He glanced at Clarissa, dropped his gaze before she could notice him looking, then said, “Should the crates from the sale in Northumberland be unpacked this afternoon, sir?”

  “Yes, indeed. Thank you for reminding me, Günter. Eric, you had better go and lend a hand. If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly, as Shakespeare says.” Another slightly wistful smile flashed on his rotund face. “Although thankfully we have a far less sinister task at hand than poor Macbeth.”

  “Yes, sir.” The darker of the two assistants nodded, bowed to Clarissa, and then followed Günter towards the back of the shop.

  “Now, was there anything else I might be able to help you with?” Mr. Lovejoy asked, turning back to me. “We have a truly lovely edition of Virgil’s Aeneid that I’ve just acquired.” His expression kindled with enthusiasm. “The end sheets are of moire fabric with a silk ribbon page marker.”

  Fresh alarm was skittering through me as I watched the two assistants go out through the swinging door that led to the back rooms of the shop. But I kept my expression politely bland, giving Mr. Lovejoy a smile.

  “Thank you so much,” I said. “But I must be going, now. I’ll have to look for Mr. Meyer elsewhere.”

  CHAPTER 4: LUCY

  “Done already?”

  Jack fell into step beside me as I walked away from Lovejoy & Sons. His old man’s white hair and beard had been discarded, probably bundled up and left in a convenient alley’s dust bin.

  “You didn’t stay to question the two assistants, then?” he asked.

  “I didn’t want anyone in the shop to think I had too vested an interest in finding Adolph Meyer. Not without knowing more about them.”

  Jack nodded. “The blond one’s German.”

  “How could you possibly know that? You didn’t hear him say a single word.”

  Jack watched a young chimney sweep rattle past with his assorted collection of brooms and buckets. “The girl said one of them was named Günter Richt. It wouldn’t exactly take your father to deduce that he might be German.”

  “That still doesn’t tell you which of them was Günter.”

  “The tall blond one had on German-made shoes.”

  Which Jack had noticed in the approximately two seconds that it had taken him to pass Günter, Eric, and Mr. Lovejoy at the front door.

  I gave him a sidelong look. “I hope you enjoyed yourself in there, by the way.”

  “What, listening to your questioning Clarissa turn into a newspaper advice column for the lovelorn?” Jack grinned. “I’m just lucky you married me, considering all the other men falling at your feet with admiration.”

  “And don’t forget it.” I took his arm, looking up to study his face again. Although I stopped myself from asking how he was, really.

  Less than two weeks ago, Jack had been kidnapped by one of our more unpleasant enemies, and the truth was that we were both still on-edge. Which I suspected was the reason he had volunteered to accompany me to Lovejoy & Sons on this, his one day of the week off from his duties at Scotland Yard.

  “Clarissa is a sweet girl,” I said. “She doesn’t deserve to be mixed up with German spies.”

  Jack gave me a
quick, sharp look. “And you think she is?”

  “Not knowingly, perhaps.” The uneasiness I’d felt in the bookshop was still sending little prickles of alarm through me. “Clarissa mentioned that someone has broken into the shop twice,” I said. “It’s possible that we’ve stumbled on something more than just an antiquarian book shop—and that Mr. Meyer has reasons for going there other than his love for old manuscripts.”

  Jack looked grim. “In which case, one of them—the assistants or even Mr. Lovejoy himself—could be mixed up with the sale of the anthrax.”

  “Günter made an excuse to leave the front room almost as soon as Mr. Meyer’s name was mentioned. Which is why I left—and why I think it would be a good idea for us to keep an eye on the bookshop to see whether anyone leaves in the next hour or two.”

  As it happened, it was not quite an hour later when the door to Lovejoy & Sons opened and Eric, the dark-haired assistant, walked out.

  Autumn in London was a damp, chilly season when the streets were thick with mud, fog drifted off the river, and night closed in early. Already it was almost four o’clock and nearly dark. Gas lamps up and down the street glowed through the fog with a muzzy yellow light.

  I was about to ask Jack whether we should go after him, when Eric was followed almost at once by Günter. The blond-haired young man stood in the doorway a moment, putting out a hand and scowling at the drizzle of rain on his palm with the expression of someone who has forgotten his umbrella.

  Coming here from America, I had spent my first year or two in London with a nearly identical expression on my own face.

  Then he pulled up the collar of his coat, said something to Eric, and strode off down the street.

  Eric waited for a carriage to rattle past, then plunged across the street towards the spot where Jack and I were watching.

  My pulse skipped as, for a second, I thought he had spotted us, even though we were standing in the deepest shadows as far away from the street lamps as one could get. But Eric didn’t look our way, only hurried towards the marble steps that led to the British Museum’s entrance.

  “You should follow Günter,” I told Jack. “I’ll take Eric.”

  Jack’s eyes were tracking the direction that Günter had taken—and probably making note of every other carriage and pedestrian on the street, as well. Even under ordinary circumstances Jack’s skills at observation were every bit as good as mine or Holmes’. But at the moment, his muscles were more than ordinarily tense, and his gaze looked both at me and through me at the same time, constantly expecting a threat to leap at us out of nowhere.

  Another dubious gift from his recent ordeal.

  “I’m not sure we should split up,” he said.

  “We’ll have to. We can’t follow both of them otherwise.”

  If I were being honest, I didn’t like the idea of separating any better than Jack did. I especially didn’t like that Jack, following Günter to an unknown location through the London streets, was a great deal more likely to run into trouble than I was.

  The memory of the hours I’d spent waiting for news while Jack was missing was still so raw that it made my palms feel clammy and my mouth dry to think about it.

  But that was all the more reason to let him follow Günter now. Ours was a dangerous profession, and I’d learned a long time ago that you simply had to learn to coexist with fear, otherwise it would break you.

  “Besides,” I added. “I have to be the one to take Eric. You need an admissions letter to get into the museum’s Reading Room.”

  “And you have one?”

  “I do, actually. I used to come here sometimes to research roles for the Savoy.”

  Jack frowned, momentarily distracted. “Do you miss it?”

  “Sometimes.” I hadn’t thought about it in a while, not until Clarissa had brought it up in the shop, but I did sometimes miss performing on stage. Although no one could claim that I didn’t use my skills as an actress on practically a daily basis.

  “You need to get after Günter,” I told Jack. The young man was already halfway down the street, shoulders hunched against the rain. “Or you’ll lose the chance to find out where he’s going.”

  Jack nodded, but still didn’t move away from me. “Be careful,” he finally said.

  “I’ll be in the library of the British Museum! It’s not exactly a hotbed of crime. And even if Eric is somehow involved with Mr. Meyer, they’re hardly likely to try to exterminate me in the middle of the Reading Room. Besides, I will be careful—very careful—to make sure that Eric doesn’t see me in the first place.”

  Jack still didn’t look entirely happy, but he kissed me lightly and turned to follow Günter down the street.

  I shut my eyes. Please stay safe. Sooner or later, this would get easier again. I just had to wait—and keep tracking the stolen anthrax. Because with this job more than any other, backing down or admitting defeat was not an option.

  CHAPTER 5: LUCY

  Twenty minutes later, I was wishing that I’d gone with Jack to follow Günter after all.

  The historian Thomas Carlyle had famously declared once that the Reading Room of the British Museum was a convenient asylum for imbeciles whose friends wished them out of mischief’s way. I had always rather liked that quotation, although it didn’t do justice to the Reading Room’s space.

  The library of the British Museum was a vast, circular chamber, the walls lined with bookshelves. The ceiling was a great dome made to look like that of the Pantheon in Rome. The sides of the dome glowed with shades of blue and gold, and in the centre a glass oculus let in the sunlight—or it would, during the daytime.

  Long wooden tables padded in black leather radiated out from the keyhole-shaped catalogue desk in the centre of the room, each one providing a cubicle workspace for several scholars.

  If every space at the tables had been filled, there would have been two or three hundred people working here. But at this hour of the late afternoon, the cubicles were more than half empty. For the most part, all that remained were grey-bearded and bespectacled scholars who were likely oblivious to such mundane things as time, and harried-looking students working feverishly to meet the deadline for an assignment.

  What was more to the point, though, was that the empty spaces offered me convenient locations from which to watch Eric’s movements. Likewise, the floors, which had been specially constructed to reduce the sound of one’s footsteps, had the side benefit of enabling quiet surveillance.

  Eric walked briskly among the seated scholars, taking orders for books they wished to consult, then moving off to access the iron stacks that were built around the reading room to house the majority of the museum’s collection. Following him into the stacks themselves would involve too great a risk of him seeing me. But Eric always returned a moment or two later with the requested book in hand, which he delivered to whoever had asked for it.

  None of the scholars who requested Eric Brown’s assistance was Adolph Meyer, and Eric did nothing more sinister—or more interesting—than continue to take and fill orders.

  Although someone besides me was interested in him. Gradually I could sense, on the periphery of my attention, that even as I was tracking Eric’s movements, someone else was also keeping a watch on where he went. At the next table over, another head than mine turned every time the young man walked in and out of the stacks.

  I picked up a leather-bound book at random from a pile left by a previous occupant of my cubicle and stood up, as though about to take it up to the catalogue desk. Then I walked past the other table, glancing at Eric’s other watcher out of the corner of my eye.

  If she was a spy, she was an unlikely one in the extreme: a small, elderly woman who looked as though she could be playing a part in the theatrical production of a work by Charles Dickens. Her clothes were perfect period pieces in the style of half a century ago: a black satin dress with a hooped skirt, trimmed with lace at the sleeves and collar. The capelet she wore draped around her hunched, narr
ow shoulders was likewise of black satin, and the bonnet that tied under her chin with an immense black satin bow was decorated with little jet beads along the brim.

  Maybe it was Jack’s mention of the Savoy, but I couldn’t help thinking that any theatrical director would be enraptured to cast her in the role of elderly maiden aunt, or perhaps benevolent grandmother.

  Or was that because she really was playing a part?

  She most certainly wasn’t Adolph Meyer in disguise; not even Holmes could have managed to shrink his own form into the old woman’s small, sparrow-thin frame.

  But Holmes had disguised himself in female garb—most notably and recently as the bearded lady in a circus act—when he wished to appear particularly innocent and harmless.

  A young woman could be made up to look elderly with a wig and a few strokes of grease paint, especially in dim light like the reading room at dusk, and with her face heavily shaded by a bonnet’s brim.

  And the woman in black was closely watching Eric. She hadn’t even glanced in my direction, but her eyes remained fixed on the young librarian who was just moving once more into the stacks, perhaps twenty-five feet from where she sat.

  Then, as he vanished from sight, the elderly woman rose with sudden purpose and, moving rapidly, went after him.

  I debated. It would be difficult to follow them both without being seen myself, and Eric already knew my face from my visit to Lovejoy & Sons. If the elderly woman’s purpose were entirely innocent, I would have wasted the past half hour’s work by alerting Eric to the fact that I was watching him.

  But, on the other hand—

  My thought snapped off as the sudden report of a gunshot echoed through the hushed stillness of the Reading Room.