A book lay on the front seat. It was A Study in Scarlet. The lab team had already dusted the interior for fingerprints. And the book.
I picked it up and opened it. The title page had been signed:
For Henry, with best wishes,
Christopher McBride
It was dated Friday night.
They’d found two sets of prints. One was Cable’s. The other, on the book, would turn out to be McBride’s.
But there was a surprise. “There’s blood in the boot, Inspector,” said one of the techs.
“The victim’s?”
“Still checking. There’s just a trace. But it’s there.”
It was Cable’s.
So he was murdered somewhere else. I was looking at A Study in-Scarlet. At the inscription. It was easy to guess why Cable had called McBride.
I went by Agatha Brantley’s house to deliver the news. She knew as soon as she saw me, and she crumpled. Tears leaked out of her eyes and she fought back her emotions as I explained what we’d found. Then she seemed to get hold of herself. I’ve been through this kind of thing before. It’s the suspense that kills. Once you know for sure, whatever the facts are, it seems to be easier to calm down.
“He mentioned to Madeleine Harper that he had big news of some kind,” I said. “Have you any idea what that might have been about?”
“No. He never said anything to me.”
“Is there anyone you can think of who wanted him dead?”
“Henry? No, he didn’t have an enemy in the world.” That brought on a round of sobbing. When she’d got through it I asked if she wanted me to call someone.
She said no, that it was okay. “We were very close, Henry and I. But I’ll be all right.” She wiped her nose, began beating her fist against the arm of the chair. “He never hurt a soul.” And finally, when she had gotten control of her voice: “Hoodlums. They don’t deserve to live.”
The creator of Sherlock Holmes lived in a quiet two-story house on a tree-lined street in Gullane. He’d been a high school English teacher before hitting the big time with his detective hero. He’d retired six years earlier, and apparently had put his time to good use by starting on A Study in Scarlet.
The houses were modest structures, surrounded by hedges. Swings hung from several of the trees. And a few kids were playing with a jump rope in the early dusk.
I pulled into McBride’s concrete driveway and eased up behind a late model white Honda, which was parked in a carport. Lights came on, and I followed a walkway to the house. I rang the bell and, moments later, McBride opened up and peered at me through thick bifocals. I identified myself and he nodded.
“Inspector Page,” he said. “I’ve been expecting you. I was so sorry to hear about Professor Cable.” He stood aside and opened the door wider. “Please come in. Have you caught them yet?”
A fire crackled pleasantly in the living room. There were a couple of oil paintings, two young women gazing soulfully at the sky in one, and at the sea in the other. A plaque was centered between them, announcing that Cable had won the Amateur Division of the annual Edinburgh Golf Festival. As had been the case at Madeleine’s and at Cable’s, books and magazines were stacked everywhere. The windows were framed by dark satin drapes. He pulled them shut and showed me to a worn fabric armchair.
“No,” I said. “But we will.”
“Yes. I’d be surprised if you didn’t, Inspector. Not that it will do Cable any good.” He was tall and lean, with dark hair, a long nose, and dark laser eyes. I couldn’t help thinking that he resembled his fictional detective. All he needed was a pipe and a deerstalker cap.
“One of your former students asked me to say hello,” I told him.
“And who would that be?”
“Mark Hudson. He’s one of us now. A detective.”
“Good old Mark. Yes, he was an excellent student. I’d hoped he’d become a teacher. But he wanted something more exciting, I guess.”
“He speaks very highly of you.” And he had. I’d talked to him before leaving the station. Hudson had nothing but good words for Christopher McBride. “He tells me he’s especially happy to see your success with Mr. Holmes.”
“Well, thank you. Please pass my best wishes to him.”
“He’ll appreciate that.” He offered me a drink. When I explained how it would not be a good idea, he said he hoped I wouldn’t mind if he got one for himself.
“Mark says you’re related to Arthur Conan Doyle.”
“Yes.” He smiled. “It’s a distant relationship, but I used it in school. It was a back door I could use to get the kids interested in historical novels.”
“They liked his work?”
“Oh, yes.” His eyes lit up. “They loved The White Company. And they liked the Professor Challenger novels as well.” He was looking at something I couldn’t see. “There’s no profession like teaching, Inspector. Introducing kids to people like Doyle and Wodehouse. Makes life worth living.” He sat back. “Time to get serious, though. What can I do for you?”
“Mr. McBride, you had a phone call from Henry Cable on Friday evening.”
“Yes. That’s correct.”
“Did you know him previously?”
“No. I’d never met him. Until Friday. He wanted me to sign a copy of A Study in Scarlet for him.”
“I see. Isn’t that a bit unusual? Do people often call you about autographs?”
“It happens more often than you might think, Inspector. Usually, I let them know where the next local signing is. And invite them to go there.”
“But in this case you invited him over.”
“Yes,” he said. “I did. When he told me what he wanted, I explained that I was not engaged, and if he wished to come to the house, I’d be glad to do it for him.” He lifted his glass--it was bourbon--from a side table, stared at it, and let his eyes slide shut. “What an ugly world we live in.”
“Tell me, are you always so obliging?”
“With teachers and police officers, yes. Absolutely. Teachers give us our civilization and policemen hold it together.” He smiled. “And especially with teachers who, in their spare time, write reviews that are read all over the country.”
“We know you signed a book for him.”
“That’s correct.”
“Did you by any chance sign a second book? For anyone else?”
“Why, no, Inspector. It was just the one.”
So I still didn’t know what the surprise for Madeleine was to be. “When did he get here, Mr. McBride?”
“About eight.”
“And how long did he stay?”
“Not long. Five minutes or so.” His eyes fixed on me. “When did it happen?”
“Sometime Friday evening or early Saturday morning.”
“Shortly after he left here.”
“Yes, sir. Did he say where he was going?”
He thought about it. “No. He just said nice things about A Study in Scarlet. We talked a few minutes about the rise of illiteracy in the country. Then he left.” He shook his head. “Pity. He seemed like a decent man. Who’d want to kill him? Do you have any idea?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out, sir. At the moment I must confess that we could probably use the assistance of your Mr. Holmes.”
I could see why Mark liked the guy. He was friendly, energetic, and when we talked about his golfing accomplishments--he’d won several local tournaments--and his extraordinary success with Sherlock Holmes, he shrugged it off. “I was in the right place at the right time,” he said. “I got lucky.” He told me he’d been trying his entire life to sell a piece of fiction. He showed me a drawer full of rejections. “Don’t ask me what happened,” he said. “It’s not as if I suddenly got smarter. It’s just that one day lightning struck.”
“Just like that?”
“Inspector, it was as big a surprise for me as for everybody else.”
But still it seemed odd that he’d invite a stranger to his house on a Friday
night for a signing. Why not lunch on Sunday? I called George Duffy in the morning. George was the only other published author I knew. He wrote science fiction, but otherwise he seemed rational. “Would you do it?” I asked him.
“Invite somebody into my home? At night? To sign a book? I’d say no if it weren’t Henry Cable. For Cable, I might make an exception.”
We put together a list of persons Cable had criticized in his column over the past few months. It was pretty long. I spent the next few days talking with them. Some seemed angry. Even bitter. But nobody struck me as being a likely psychopath.
In the evenings, I took to reading A Study in Scarlet, which turned out to be a historical narrative about Brigham Young, as well as a murder mystery. And I read the others. The Sign of the Four and the stories. Ordinarily I don’t read much. Don’t have time, and I never cared for fiction. But I enjoyed McBride’s stuff.
I was bothered, though, that he’d dragged in the historical business in the first book. And why, especially, was he writing about a detective living in the Nineteenth Century? I knew I was being picky, but it felt wrong. On the other hand, you’re not supposed to argue with success.
“It was as big a surprise for me as for everybody else.”
I stopped by the university and caught Madeleine between classes. “You haven’t had any ideas about Cable’s surprise, I suppose?”
“No,” she said. “Sorry, Inspector. I haven’t the faintest idea what he was referring to.”
We settled into a corner of the faculty lounge, where she poured two cups of tea for us. “You said Cable had been working on a biography of Robert Louis Stevenson.”
“Yes. Stevenson grew up in this area, you know. Edinburgh has been home to quite a few literary figures.”
I knew that, of course. You could hardly miss it if you’d gone through the Edinburgh schools. I grew up hearing from all sides how we were the literary center of the world. Robert Burns. Walter Scott. James Boswell. Thomas Carlyle. Edinburgh was where the action was. “When was the last time you saw him?”
“Thursday. We went to dinner.”
“The day before he died.”
“Yes.”
“And he didn’t mention anything about a surprise then?”
“No.”
“You said he was working on the Stevenson book.”
“That’s correct.”
“What does that mean exactly? Is he at home on the computer? Is he conducting interviews? Is he--?”
“At this stage, Inspector, he was going over the primary sources.”
“The primary sources. What would they be?”
“Stevenson’s diaries. Letters. Whatever original material of his that’s survived.”
“Where would that be?”
“At the National Library of Scotland.”
The National Library, of course, is located in Edinburgh on the George IV Bridge. The staff assistant who controlled access to the archives wished me a good morning, told me I needed a reader’s ticket, and showed me how to get one. I showed a driver’s license at the main desk, and minutes later I had my official approval. The staff produced the archival register. I checked to see what Cable had been looking at, and ordered the same package. It was a collection of letters from Robert Louis Stevenson written in 1890-91. She led me into a reading room, occupied by an older man bent over a folder.
I consulted a reference, and learned that Stevenson was at that time in the Samoan Islands. He’d been in poor health for years, and was getting ready to settle there. The letters were in a ringed binder, each encased in plastic. A log listed the contents by date and addressee. Most of the addressees were unfamiliar names. But I knew Henry James, Oscar Wilde, and Herman Melville. And of course Doyle.
I sat for hours, reading through them, but saw nothing that could have led to Cable’s murder. Of course, my literary knowledge was limited. Something that might be a surprise to him, or to Madeleine, would probably mean nothing to me.
Then I discovered that two letters listed in the register were missing. Both were dated April 16, 1890. One to Doyle. And one to James Payn.
“That shouldn’t be,” said the young woman who’d signed me in.
Who else had had access to the letters? Since Saturday? The register showed one name: Michael Y. Naismith.
“This is terrible,” said the assistant. She’d begun checking the wastepaper bins.
“Do you remember this Naismith?” I asked.
“Not really,” she said. “We have a lot of people who come in here.”
There was no Michael Y. Naismith listed anywhere in the area. While I was looking, Sandra called from the bookshop. Catastrophe Well in Hand of course hadn’t come in yet, she explained, but she’d discovered a copy at the library. In case I was interested.
I read through it that evening. Payn had been the editor of Chambers’s Journal for fifteen years, and The Cornhill Magazine for fourteen more, ending his run in 1896. He wrote essays, poetry, and approximately one hundred novels. I wondered what he’d done with his spare time.
I was looking for connections with Stevenson or Doyle. They all seemed to know one another, and letters had been exchanged. Payn was an admirer especially of the Professor Challenger novels. But there was one item that caught my eye: Payn comments in a letter to Oscar Wilde that he’d rejected a short novel from Doyle. “An excellent mystery,” he says, “that unfortunately takes a sharp turn into the American West.”
A sharp turn into the American West.
I began looking into McBride’s background.
He’d been head of the English Department at his high school. The administration there couldn’t say enough kind words about him. The students had loved his classes. Test scores had risen dramatically during his tenure. He’d taught drama for fifteen years, had edited the yearbook for a decade. He’d helped found a support group for handicapped kids.
He’d invited student groups to his home for discussions during which his wife Mary had prepared lunches and served soft drinks. (Mary had died seven years earlier of complications from heart surgery.)
To date, he’d published eight Holmes adventures: two short novels, A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four, and six stories. All had appeared in the Chesbro Magazine, headquartered in London, although the novels had proven so popular they’d later been published separately in hard cover editions. The stories had appeared at intervals of approximately three months, but there’d been no new one for a year. The most recent one, “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” had been published last winter.
I took the train to London and, accompanied by a local officer, called on Chesbro’s editor, Marianne Cummings. She was a diminutive woman, barely five feet tall, well into her sixties. But she showed a no-nonsense attitude as she ushered us into her office. “I don’t often receive visits from the police,” she said. “I hope we haven’t done anything to attract your attention. How may I help you?”
I couldn’t help smiling because I knew how my question would affect her. “Ms. Cummings,” I said, “have you scheduled a new Sherlock Holmes story?”
She peered at me over her glasses. “I beg your pardon?”
“Sherlock Holmes? Is there another one in the pipeline?”
She broke into a wide skeptical smile. “Is Scotland Yard using Mr. Holmes for training purposes?”
“I’ve a good reason for asking, Ms. Cummings.”
That produced a standoff of almost a minute. “No,” she said finally. “We’ve not scheduled any.”
“Will there be any more?”
“I certainly hope so.”
“Why the delay?”
She sat down behind a desk and turned to stare out a window. A pigeon looked back at us. “Will my answer go any farther?”
“I can’t promise that, but I’ll be as discrete as I can.”
“Mr. McBride has submitted several stories since ‘The Twisted Lip.’“
“And--?”
“I think he’s hired some
one else to do the writing. That he’s just putting his name on the work.”
“They’re not as good as the ones you’ve published?”
“Not remotely.”
“You’ve told him that?”
“Of course.”
“What’s his explanation?”
“He says he’s been tired. Promises that he’ll get something to me shortly.”
Christopher McBride’s connection with the Doyles was through his cousin Emma Hasting, who’d married Doyle’s grandson, three generations removed. Emma Hasting lived in Southsea, just a few blocks from the site where Doyle had lived during the 1880s.
She was widowed now. Her husband had been a software developer, and Emma had taught music.
She lived in a villa with a magnificent view of the sea. I arrived there on a cold, gray, rainswept morning. “I’ve been here all my life,” she said, as we settled onto a divan in the living room. There was a piano and a desk. And a photo of a young Conan Doyle. “It’s from his years here,” she said. “According to family tradition, it was taken while he was working on ‘The Man from Archangel.’ It was also the period during which he was trying to save Jack Hawkins.”
She turned bright blue eyes on me. The gaze, somehow, of a young woman. “He was also a physician, you know.”
I knew. I had no idea who Jack Hawkins was, though, and I didn’t really care. But I wanted to keep her talking about Doyle. So I asked.
“Jack Hawkins was a patient,” she explained. “He had cerebral meningitis. But Conan refused to give up on him. He took him into his home and did everything he could. But that was 1885, and medicine had no way to deal with that sort of problem.” She used the first name casually, as if Doyle were an old friend. “In the end they lost him.”
“I see.”
“During the course of the struggle, Conan fell in love with his sister, Louise Hawkins, and married her that same year.”
I called her attention to the photo. “Has anything else of his survived and come down to you?”
She considered it. “A lamp,” she said. “Would you like to see it?”
It was an oil lamp, and she kept it, polished and sparkling, atop a shelf in the dining room. “He wrote The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard by its light,” she said. “And several of his medical stories. According to family tradition.” She gave me a sly wink. There was really no way to be certain of the facts.
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