Somehow, that did not seem like a good sign.
Laura’s arms ached as the bow of the boat struck up against the shore.
Alex came down from the road, intending, she presumed, to help her pull the boat up onto dry land, but then he stopped on the edge of the mud, hesitating, looking down at his Italian shoes.
Laura hoisted the boat halfway out of the water herself. Then she got out, and in her bare feet—she had not thought to retrieve her own shoes from the island—tromped up through the several yards of muck.
A passing jogger, and an old man feeding ducks, and a young woman with a baby stroller, all stopped to stare.
On Laura’s last step from the muck, the chief of staff gallantly extended his hand to pull her out.
“Thank you,” said Laura, grabbing onto his arm. “Did you catch them? Is Robert safe?”
Laura knew from the apprehensive look on his face that she wasn’t going to like the answer.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “We never saw them.”
Laura pulled so hard that the man lost his balance and had to plant his Gucci loafers in the mud to steady himself.
Then she marched on toward Park Road and went right past the Range Rover.
Alex shouted after her: “Where are you going?”
“Home,” she shouted back, in a lie. “And you needn’t drive me. I’ll take a cab. They’re more reliable.”
19
Reggie had not slept well, and now he was awake at a ridiculously early hour in the morning.
He had been having one of those dreams—or sets of dreams, actually, because it was never just one; it was always themes that merged and morphed—where he literally tried to accomplish in his sleep what he had been unable to complete that day while awake.
When he had been much younger, painting houses to supplement his scholarship at university, there had been times he would wake up at night with his arms waving, trying to trim out the eaves on the building he’d been unable to finish during the day, and at the same time slogging desperately through the set of essay questions he’d been assigned for seventeenth-century European history. And the two would combine—in his dream state, it would be necessary for him to finish layering the blue outdoor enamel on the fascia board in order for Huguenots to escape France after the Edict of Fontainebleau.
Last night had been one of those nights. He had kept trying to put the engagement ring in front of Laura, but the old man from Taiwan, his head dripping blood, had been right there in chambers with them, continually trying to force the letters, or translations, or something written on paper—you could never be sure in a dream—into Reggie’s line of sight. And Laura’s damned orange cat kept jumping in between.
Reggie didn’t like these dreams. They never accomplished anything. Except to focus his mind when he woke up. And it was focused now.
He intended to get to chambers early, look again at the letter Mr. Liu had sent to Sherlock Holmes, satisfy himself that there was nothing of importance there, and then phone Laura, or drive to her house if necessary, and put that ring on her finger. No preliminaries, no more elaborate presentation ritual—just get it done.
He reached Baker Street just before 6:00 A.M. Except for the ever-present vehicular traffic heading toward the interior of the city, the block was actually quiet. No tourists yet in front of the Sherlock Holmes museum, a few doors down. At the corner, the Volunteer Pub would not open for several hours. And even Pret A Manger and the little news agent shop were not quite ready yet. It was that early. Reggie had to skip his morning coffee.
He entered the lobby of Dorset House. It was empty except for Mr. Hendricks, the security guard. Hendricks, white-haired, tall, and thin, was in his mid-seventies, but he had stubbornly kept his job well past the age lesser men would have hung it up. This, Reggie had always assumed, was because Hendricks liked having someplace to go where he could read his papers and drink his tea in peace. No better place for that than the security station at the back wall of the Dorset House lobby.
Hendricks did not look up from the Daily Sun, but he did seem to raise an eyebrow and almost smile slightly when Reggie entered. This was most uncharacteristic; Reggie had no idea what to attribute it to.
Reggie got in the lift alone and took it up to the next floor.
Lois would not be here yet, of course; no one would. He would have it all to himself.
The lift doors opened. Reggie got out on the dark floor and began walking toward his office.
Something crunched under his feet. He stooped down to look.
Mud. Dried mud. And it hadn’t even been raining that morning.
The cleaning crew were usually so efficient. He would have a word with them. Someday when there was time.
Reggie continued on toward his office, and then, halfway there, he paused.
Dim light was leaking out from beneath the closed door. That wasn’t supposed to be. He always turned the desk lamp off.
Reggie put his hand on the door. The knob turned; it was unlocked. That wasn’t supposed to be, either.
He thrust the door open.
There was a crashing sound—something breakable hitting the floor—and the dim light went out.
Reggie flipped the light switch at the side of the door.
The overhead lights came on, and there on the floor, kneeling by Reggie’s broken desk lamp, was Laura.
“Oh, thank God,” she said. “You gave me such a start.”
“Me as well,” said Reggie.
“Why didn’t you knock?”
Reggie stared back at her.
“It’s my office.”
“Oh,” said Laura. “Yes. Of course. Well. Knocking when a door is closed is still a good habit. Why are you here so early?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Oh. Why not?”
Reggie shrugged.
“Well, I haven’t been getting much sleep, either,” said Laura, “so I thought I’d just come in and … catch up on a few things.”
“In my office?”
It was a perfectly innocent question; Reggie meant it with no suspicion of anything at all, and he sat down comfortably in the client chair in front of the desk.
But Laura, sitting now behind the desk in Reggie’s leather barrister’s chair, seemed to squirm. She did so in an attractive sort of way. She was wearing gray sweatpants, which Reggie liked because the soft cloth showed the outlines of her legs when she moved, but which, he knew, she regarded as mainly appropriate for jogging and grubby sorts of activities. There was dried mud at the bottom edges.
And she was barefoot.
“Have you been out for a run already? Is this the new style?”
“No,” she said. “I mean, yes. Just a short one. And I heard someone say that shoe minimalism is good for the ankles. I gave it a try.”
Reggie nodded, but he was still puzzled.
“And then you just popped in to see if anyone was here at six A.M.?”
“I … I just wanted to see if your copier is working.”
“It is, I presume, but it’s next to Lois’s desk, not mine.”
“Well, I didn’t know, never having used it, of course, and neither of you was here, so—”
“What do you need to copy?”
“Oh, no matter. Now that I know where it is and that it’s working, everything will be fine. Will we be doing lunch again soon, then?”
“Yes,” said Reggie. He put his hand in his coat pocket and checked; the ring was still there.
Laura got up from her chair now and started to move toward the door.
Reggie didn’t even move, he was so perplexed. He just stared as she got to the door and opened it.
“Is your cat better?” he asked, at a loss for anything better.
Laura was facing away from him, about to exit, and now she just froze. Her head and neck, in particular, were absolutely still—until they suddenly began to tremble. Reggie thought he knew what this meant, but he had rarely seen it happen with Lau
ra Rankin.
She turned toward him, in tears.
“Robert has been kidnapped,” she said with sobbing emphasis.
“What?” Reggie stood up from the chair.
“Kidnapped! Kidnapped!”
Reggie just stared at first. It was taking a moment to sink in, partly because pretty much any sentence that Laura could possibly begin with the name Robert was likely to be annoying to Reggie.
On the other hand—as it did begin to sink in—it occurred to Reggie that “Robert has been kidnapped” might be almost as good as “Robert died in a awful accident when all of his unscrupulously gotten wealth fell on him at Tobacco Wharf.” With luck, perhaps that would even turn out to be an accurate, if slightly metaphorical, description of what had taken place.
Robert Buxton kidnapped and never seen in polite society again alive. Such a shame. Could fate be that kind?
But right at the moment, Laura was in tears. She sat down on the edge of Reggie’s desk and tried to wipe them away.
“I wasn’t supposed to tell you. Or the police, either. They told me not to tell anyone.”
“Kidnappers always say that,” said Reggie. He sat down next to her on the desk.
“Not the kidnappers. Robert’s security team.”
“Buxton is kidnapped and his security team contacts you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“They said I’m the closest thing Robert has to family.”
“Bloody hell,” said Reggie. He stood and turned away briefly.
Laura stopped talking and got up from the desk. She knew Reggie was angry now; she wasn’t sure over exactly what—there were so many possibilities at the moment.
Now he turned back.
“So it was Buxton’s security team got you into this?”
“Yes.”
“But you are not Buxton’s family.”
“Well, you know—his parents are gone, and he has no siblings. And from gossip columns, they may have thought—”
“All right,” said Reggie, waving that off. He didn’t want to hear her say what the gossip columns had been saying about her and Buxton. He already knew; for weeks Buxton had been planting hints in the columns that Laura would marry a mysterious publishing magnate with the initials R.B. As if predicting it in the papers would make it happen. As if he could influence Laura that way.
“All right,” said Reggie again, focusing. “I’ll call Wembley and see who’s handling this for the Yard.”
“No,” said Laura. “We can’t. That ‘Don’t tell anyone’ thing, remember? They were quite adamant about it.”
Reggie considered it. It was actually a legal requirement to report a kidnapping. But in practice, no one was ever charged on that. At least not family members, or people acting in place of actual members.
Except that any officer of the court—say a barrister—could very well be disbarred for keeping silent, if it all went wrong and someone had to be blamed.
“All right,” agreed Reggie once more. “So, when does Buxton’s security team meet with these little entrepreneurs?”
“That’s already happened, actually. I’ve already met with them.”
“What? You met with the kidnappers?”
“The security team said it was the only way it could be done.”
“Bloody gits!” Lines that were not usually visible hardened in Reggie’s face. “You should not be involved in this at all. And you sure as hell should not be meeting with them. I want you out of this.”
“Well, I’m in it already, and that’s all there is to it. I was going to figure this all out and find the bloody things and just get out before you got back,” she said, sounding quite frustrated about it.
“What bloody things?”
Laura didn’t answer that. Instead, she began to move toward the door, and she said, “I didn’t expect you so soon. I didn’t want to get you involved in this.”
“Are you going to remain involved in it?” asked Reggie.
“Yes.”
“Then I am involved in it, as well, aren’t I?”
Laura was standing by the door now. She knew that she might still get out of his office alone if she wanted to.
But she didn’t want to. She managed a slight smile.
“Yes,” said Laura. “I guess you are, then.”
20
“Tell me all of it,” said Reggie. “From the beginning.”
Reggie was seated now in his leather barrister’s chair. Laura was seated in the client chair. She had gotten the brunch leftovers from the office refrigerator, and she had spread them out on the desk between them.
“I’m not just hungry, I’m famished,” she said. She sat back and wiped some stray soufflé from the edges of her mouth. Then, between gulps, she related what had happened after her arrival at Buxton’s compound.
She told Reggie how she had delivered the money, but then the kidnappers had kept Buxton anyway, made new demands, and escaped from the park.
“How much more do they want?” he said.
Laura hesitated. “They don’t want more money.”
“What, then?”
“They want the letters,” said Laura.
“What letters?”
“The letters to Sherlock Holmes.”
“Seriously?” said Reggie. He could hardly believe his good fortune—if it were true.
“Of course seriously.”
“Well, that’s the best news I’ve had all day. They can bloody well have the letters. But only if they keep Buxton, as well.”
Laura glared at Reggie.
“Sorry. Bad joke. It’s just that this is like asking if I would be willing to transfer an annoying headache to them. Of course I would. It’s just too bad I have to get a nice case of stomach flu back in return.”
Laura still glared.
“Sorry,” said Reggie again. “So they want the letters, then?”
“Yes. I’ve no idea why.”
Reggie nodded. “Well, let’s just go have a look at them.”
Reggie got up, and Laura followed him out of the office and down the corridor to the secretary’s station.
“I don’t suppose they mentioned a specific one?”
“They said everything for the past month.”
Reggie grabbed hold of the little cart behind Lois’s desk and pulled it out into the corridor.
There were just two letters to Sherlock Holmes on the cart, both of them still unopened.
That didn’t seem right. Reggie picked both letters up and quickly opened them.
“Birthday wishes,” said Reggie. “Apparently, the Sherlockian community thinks he has one in January, but both of these arrived in just the last couple of days. These can’t be what the kidnappers are after.”
“I would think not,” said Laura. “Since they asked for an entire month. Surely there are more letters?”
Reggie checked quickly around the desk to see if any had simply fallen off the cart.
Nothing.
Then he remembered.
“Bloody hell,” said Reggie. “I had Lois send the most recent batch to Nigel. At least a dozen. They were beginning to stack up.”
“Well, what more could you hope for?” said Laura, trying to make light of it. “Someone kidnaps Robert to trade for the letters, and we no longer have the letters to get him back.”
“I don’t get why anyone would want the letters anyway,” said Reggie. “I’ve heard the little museum down the street has coveted them for years, but they can’t be behind this; they want the entire franchise, and of course the whole point of that is the publicity of everyone knowing that you receive them. The same would be true for any interested Sherlockian society. You can’t acquire something through illegal means if you are then going to immediately proclaim to everyone that you have it.”
“Does it really matter why the kidnappers want them?” said Laura. “Isn’t it enough that we know we need them to save Robert?”
She was standing b
efore Reggie with mud-caked clothes, damp hair, and eyes growing redder and damper by the moment. His guess was that she hadn’t slept, and she looked ready to collapse.
“I’ll find the letters,” he said.
“How?”
“I’ll call Nigel. He may have them. He must have them. We’ll find the letters and we will get Buxton back. But first I will drive you home and you will swear to me that no matter what his bloody security team does or asks you to do, you will not go near the kidnappers again. You will come to me first.”
“Fair enough,” said Laura. She offered her hand for Reggie to shake, as though they had just concluded a real estate deal.
And then, for just an instant, her feet just seemed to go out from under her.
Reggie caught her.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Of course you are,” said Reggie.
Her neck just below her ears smelled like Chanel, but her clothes smelled like pond muck.
“Nothing that a good night’s sleep and a bath won’t cure,” he said, and she was so exhausted that she didn’t even offer a retort.
There was a small couch in the corridor, next to the door to Reggie’s chambers office, and he lowered her onto that.
Then he went back into his office and rang Nigel in Los Angeles.
It took six rings before Reggie’s younger brother picked up.
“Nice to hear from you Reggie, but I wish you’d learn the time zones. It’s well past the dinner hour here, and Mara and I were just about to—well, call it a day.”
Reggie ignored that complaint and said, “Robert Buxton has been kidnapped.”
There was nothing from Nigel for a moment; apparently, he was pondering it.
Then: “Reggie, wasn’t that a bit drastic? I think you already had the inside track with Laura. So to speak.”
“Bloody hell, I don’t mean kidnapped by me!”
“Oh.”
Reggie could hear Nigel saying something to Mara in the same room.
It sounded like “He claims he didn’t do it.”
“I didn’t,” said Reggie pointedly into the phone.
“I believe you,” said Nigel. “Does Laura?”
The Baker Street Translation Page 10