Elementary, She Read: A Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mystery

by Vicki Delany

  “Don’t talk to the press,” Estrada said. “Or anyone else about this.”

  “We won’t,” Jayne said.

  “We’ll see ourselves out.” At that moment the doorbell rang. Ryan opened it to admit a man and a woman with badges pinned to their shirts. They carried bags of equipment.

  “Do this room first,” Ryan said, “then the kitchen and the upstairs bedroom.”

  “You got it, Detective.”

  “What about my car?” I said.

  “Take a cab,” Estrada said.

  “I’ll put the dog outside,” Ryan said. “Otherwise, she’ll be in the way. Come on, girl. Gemma, get that lock on the back door fixed tonight.”

  Estrada left by the front door, and Violet trotted happily behind Ryan out the back.

  Jayne and I watched the forensics people go about their business. I have to admit, I find it a fascinating procedure. Absolute proof to one’s identity and presence can be so small it can’t be seen by the unaided eye.

  “If you don’t mind, ma’am, can you step back, please. Give us some room to work.”

  “You’ve missed that spot there.”

  “Thank you so much for pointing that out.”

  “Why don’t we let these people work and go and pick up your car in the meantime?” Jayne said. “I’ll call a cab.”

  “Might as well.”

  We waited outside while I tried to ignore Violet’s plaintive cries to be allowed back in. Fortunately, the taxi arrived promptly, and a few minutes later, Jayne and I were settling into the Miata. I drove out of the hotel parking lot at a calm, stately pace. Too many cops around to risk getting a speeding ticket.

  To the west, the sky was streaked gray and pink in the last dregs of sunset. We crested the hill, and the harbor and town lay spread out before us. The fourth-order Fresnel lens at the top of the lighthouse by the harbor flashed its pattern of three seconds on, three seconds off, three seconds on, and twenty seconds off. Smaller lights bobbed from boats moored in the harbor, street lamps threw soft golden puddles onto the boardwalk, and the Atlantic Ocean stretched out in the distance, black and silent.

  Jayne let out a long sigh. “This isn’t good, Gemma.”

  “All I can say is I’m thankful Uncle Arthur left town today and he wasn’t home when our visitor placed a call.” As Officer Johnson had said, my great uncle was a feisty old guy. He was also stubborn and argumentative. If the intruders had found him at home and demanded to know where the magazine was hidden . . . I pushed away the thought.

  “She wants to have you arrested,” Jayne said.

  “Who? Estrada? That’s ridiculous.”

  “I know it is, but she’s trying to convince Ryan to do it.”

  “On what possible grounds?”

  “She doesn’t believe our story of how we found out where the woman was staying or why we tracked her down. She thinks you . . . we . . . killed her and stole her magazine.”

  “Even she must be able to see that’s impossible. The magazine was in the house. We were elsewhere. At the hotel.”

  “To keep it secret then. She thinks you . . . we . . . trashed the house to make it look like someone had been searching. She doesn’t believe you knew someone had been in there before you even turned on the lights.”

  I was so shocked I almost missed the next turning. Good thing the Miata’s a small, fast car. It was obvious that Estrada had taken an instant dislike to me, but she wasn’t in the likeability business. She was suspicious about some of my observations, but I was used to that from pretty much everyone I met. The possibility that anyone might think I was guilty of theft and murder hadn’t so much as crossed my mind.

  “Ryan told her he knows you. He said that you might appear uh . . . strange.”

  “Strange? What do you mean strange? I have an English accent, but that’s not exactly grounds for arrest. Does the woman never watch Masterpiece Theater?”

  “Gemma, be serious. He pointed out that you sometimes notice more than other people do.”

  “It’s hardly my fault if others are too lazy to use their powers of observation. Present company excluded of course.”

  “Thanks. I think. Anyway, the point is that he’s convinced her not to arrest you at this time.”

  “In that case,” I said slowly, “it might be up to you and me to find out who’s behind this.”

  Chapter 5

  I’d put my phone on vibrate after photographing the hotel room and stuffed it in my bag. When I checked it again, I had a string of texts from Andy at the Blue Water Café. The latest said:

  Gemma, where are you! I’ve held your table for over an hour!

  Oops.

  I replied, Dramatic events. All are fine. Check local news Twitter feed. Cancel table.

  Better than telling him I’d forgotten.

  We’d arrived back at my house. I had parked in the street and answered my text while Jayne trotted down the driveway to free Violet from confinement in the backyard. Only once I’d climbed out of the car did I notice an unusual amount of activity in my street for eight thirty in the evening. Neighbors were watering their lawns, sitting on their front porches, or standing at their windows. All of which might have had something to do with the police vehicles parked outside my house. I went in through the front door. I still hadn’t seen the condition of the rest of the house and wanted to take my time to examine everything properly.

  I found the forensic people packing up their things. They repeated Ryan’s advice to have the back door fixed and then gave me tight nods and told me they were finished. They left, not bothering to sweep up the trail of black dust they’d left on every visible surface.

  When Jayne and Violet joined me in the den, I said, “I’m going to have a look around the house, before we get to work.”

  “What sort of work?”

  “Finding out what we can about the recently deceased.” I put my iPad on the coffee table and turned it on. I was afraid it might have been damaged when thrown around, but it came to life instantly. “Good. No harm appears to have been done. You wait here. Try to find out if the police have taken anyone into custody. With luck, this murder will have nothing to do with us or the magazine, and the police will have found some weeping boyfriend hiding in the hotel shrubbery saying he didn’t mean to do it.”

  “You think that’s possible?”

  “Not for a single moment.”

  I first ventured upstairs to Uncle Arthur’s apartment, which comprises the entirety of the second story. Violet trotted after me. She didn’t seem to be at all disturbed by the drama. Not that it had been any sort of an ordeal, for which I was very thankful. Our intruder, whoever it was, had enough common sense to know that a house pet was not trained to protect property. As long as the intruder walked through the door (even if only after breaking it down first), Violet would let them do whatever he or she wanted. I didn’t know if she’d make any effort to protect Arthur’s or my person, and I hoped I’d never have to find out.

  In his bedroom, as Estrada had said, the drawers had been upturned, the closets rifled, the mattress dragged half off the bed. After a lifetime in the Royal Navy, Arthur made his bed to military precision every day and kept his rooms as tidy as though the Queen might to drop by at any moment to inspect them, and it gave me a pang to see his things in such a mess. Uncle Arthur had eclectic tastes and an avid curiosity about everyone and everything. The paintings on the bedroom walls were a mix of framed tourist posters of castles in Scotland, modern art from Haiti, and red-and-black limited-edition prints of eagles and totem poles from the Pacific Northwest. The pictures had not been disturbed. I went through to his study. The walls were lined with shelves where he displayed all the evidence of a lifetime of travel. Graceful statues from East Africa, coffee cups from Saudi Arabia, carved elephant tusks (collected when that was still legal) from South Africa, multiarmed goddesses from India, a conical hat from Vietnam, a tiny red Buddha from Cambodia. Great Uncle Arthur loved to collect souvenirs of his
travels, but he didn’t care about value. Most of it was standard tourist stuff, and all of it was now on the floor. I picked up two halves of a plate marking the wedding of Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer and placed them on a table. I crouched down beside a shattered Japanese tea set and studied it. Violet came to check it out, and I pushed her away from the shards. I was hoping the intruder had stepped on the fragile china and made an imprint, but that didn’t seem to be the case. The police had dusted for fingerprints but I had little hope they’d find anything other than Arthur’s and mine. This wasn’t an impromptu or random act. Anyone who trashed a house these days without wearing gloves would be so stupid they’d post something on Facebook tonight: Lookin for half-million buck mag. Real old. Call Bill. Don’t tell the cops.

  The cut-glass decanter of brandy and matching glass were still in their places on the small table by Uncle Arthur’s favorite leather chair. His nighttime indulgence had not been disturbed because it was obvious the magazine wasn’t under them. His book lay beside them, and I smiled when I saw that he was reading The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz. Even this, the first Holmes book not written by Sir Arthur to be officially authorized by the Conan Doyle estate, had originally been greeted by Uncle Arthur with a sneer. He might sell books of the pastiche in the bookstore, but he himself had always refused to read anything he considered a “knock-off.”

  Downstairs, the scene in the kitchen was as Detective Estrada had described. Drawers had been pulled open and rummaged through, the contents of the larger canisters dumped onto the counters. Everything in the walk-in pantry had been swept off the shelves. A bottle of pickles had smashed, adding to the scents I’d noticed earlier. A bottle of Australian Shiraz rolled around the floor, and I scooped it up. Proof, not that I needed any more, that this wasn’t an act of vandalism. No teenager on a rampage would leave a bottle of booze behind.

  A glass pane in the window next to the mudroom door had been smashed, giving the intruder access to the lock. We didn’t worry about home security much in West London. I made a mental note to start worrying about it from now on. I examined the shards of glass on the black-and-white ceramic tiles but found no clues there. I swept up the glass and tossed the fragments into the trash.

  I continued down the hall, past the guest rooms, to my own bedroom. The door was shut, and I opened it cautiously. But no one was hiding within, ready to leap out at me. This room had not been violated. I hadn’t served in the Royal Navy, and I am not exactly neat. Everything was as I had left it: bed unmade, around-the-house clothes tossed over a chair, jewelry and hand lotions tumbled about on the dresser. A stack of books waiting to be read teetered precariously on the nightstand, and a couple of pairs of shoes lay on the carpet where they’d been kicked off. Unlike in the shop, where everything must be in its assigned place so I can keep track of it, no one ever comes into my bedroom to disturb things.

  And today, as always, no one had.

  A quick check in the guest rooms revealed the same thing. I could only assume the intruder didn’t have time to finish searching the house—it is a very big house. One room off this hallway had been converted into my home office, as I sometimes do the business accounts at home. It would have been a logical place to look for the magazine. Did failure to complete the task mean the possibility of a return visit?

  Probably not. Not if he or she had been watching the house and knew the police had been in. This person or persons might have been standing in the shadows between the street lamps and seen Ryan leave with an evidence bag tucked under his arm.

  Violet and I returned to the den. Jayne was bent over my iPad, her fingers flying.

  “Find anything?” I said.

  Jayne leapt completely out of her chair and half out of her skin. She sank back with a relieved sigh. “Can’t you knock?”

  “In my own house?”

  “Walk noisier then.”

  “I’ll try. What have you found out?” I peered over her shoulder. The screen showed the menu of the Golden Dragon Chinese Restaurant. “You’ve discovered that our intruder works at the Golden Dragon? Good work, Jayne!”

  “No, I discovered that I’m starving. I was about to order delivery. What do you want? I’m having General Tso’s chicken with mushroom fried rice and vegetables in black bean sauce.”

  “We have work to do here.”

  “So? We can eat and work. Multitasking.”

  “Sticky ribs and noodles.”

  “What do you want for vegetables?”

  “I’ll have some of yours.”

  “I’ll get two orders then. Is the rest of the house okay?”

  I told her what I’d discovered and what I thought it all meant. “As long as you’re on there, will you find me the number of a locksmith? I want to get someone out tonight.” She did, and I made the call. They said they’d be around in an hour.

  That task completed, Jayne said, “The magazine must be genuine if someone’s going to this much trouble to get it.”

  “Perhaps. Did you find anything? If the threat of immanent starvation didn’t get in your way, that is.”

  “Don’t give me that,” she said. “A girl’s gotta eat. I found nothing, but that in itself, as you sometimes say, is significant.”

  “Do I say that?”

  “Yes. Anyway, I searched for any mention of the Beeton’s Christmas Annual of 1887. I got a lot of hits, but when I added ‘on the market’ or ‘for sale,’ I got much fewer. I then narrowed the time frame down to a month and got nothing.”

  “Meaning the magazine is not currently for sale on the open market or through the reputable book dealers or auction houses.”

  “I then added words such as ‘stolen,’ ‘steal,’ and ‘police report,’ and got nothing.”

  “It’s possible, likely even, that the magazine has been stolen but not reported to the authorities.”

  “Why would the owner not tell the police?”

  “Such is the question, isn’t it? To which I might have an answer.” I pulled out my phone, entered my password, and called up the photo app. Jayne got to her feet and stood on her tiptoes to see the screen. She sucked in a breath. “I can’t believe you took pictures of the dead woman.”

  “Even I don’t have a fully photographic memory.”

  “You’re lucky the police didn’t tell you to hand over your phone. That detective Estrada would think you had an unhealthy prurient interest.”

  I flicked through the pictures of the body and the contents of the drawer as Jayne gasped, “Are those real diamonds?” I stopped at the newspaper cuttings. We peered closer.

  “I can’t make out what it says,” Jayne said.

  “I’ll print them out.” I sent the photos to the printer in my office and ran to get them. I returned with a stack of papers and spread them across the coffee table.

  They were newspaper clippings, mostly from the Boston papers, though a couple were from the back pages of the New York Times.

  A knock sounded at the front door, and Jayne screamed.

  “You are jumpy tonight,” I said. “Relax, it’s the Golden Dragon.”

  “How can you know that without opening the door?”

  “I saw the delivery van drive past the window. We should probably draw the curtains. I’ll do that while you answer the door. We’ll call this a business meeting and take the funds out of petty cash tomorrow.”

  “Come with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Suppose the killer is waiting out there, wanting to get back into the house, and he has a knife to the throat of the delivery person?”

  “Then he’ll kill us both when we tell him we don’t have what he’s after. He or she, I should say. Answer the door, Jayne. And then get some plates and things.”

  Grumbling, Jayne answered the door, and the scent of hot, spicy food drifted into the room. She clattered about in the kitchen for plates and cutlery while I skimmed the newspaper articles.

  Two of them were obituaries, both of the same man. K
urt Frederick Kent Jr., age ninety-four, passed away three weeks ago after a long illness, leaving three children and three grandchildren. His wife, Juliette Elizabeth Reynard Kent, died in 1975, and he had never remarried. Jayne handed me a plate, and I handed her a copy of the Times obituary while I continued reading the one from the Boston Globe. A long list of companies of which Mr. Kent was the chief executive followed. Most of them appeared to manufacture car and truck components. His father, Kurt Kent Sr., had made his fortune in the automotive business, rising from car salesman to owner of the company, which he then sold for a considerable profit, switching to the parts business just in time to cash in on the industrial demands of World War II. Kurt Jr. had been educated at Harvard, spent his career working for his father, and when his father retired, he took over the business empire. He continued to control it until illness forced him into reclusion. His eldest son, Colin Kent, now managed the family businesses.

  “Why do you suppose our Small Woman has these?” Jayne asked. “She must know this man.”

  “Kurt Kent. There’s something familiar about that name. Let me think.” I leaned back in my chair, intertwined my fingers, and closed my eyes.

  “Clark Kent,” Jayne said. “That’s why it’s familiar.”

  “Not Clark, but Kurt. You know someone by that name?”

  “Not him. The other one. Clark Kent. Superman.”

  “Who?”

  “Superman’s real name is Clark Kent.”

  “Isn’t Superman’s name ‘Superman’?”

  “He’s called Superman, but that’s like a nickname. His name is Clark Kent. When he was a kid, his mother didn’t stand on the back porch calling, ‘Superman, time for dinner.’”

  “I hate to be the one to tell you this, Jayne, but Superman, like Sherlock Holmes and Santa Claus, was never real, thus never was a child nor did he have a mother. Regardless, I don’t see the significance. We aren’t trying to locate the owner of a comic book. Although I understand they can be collectors’ items and thus of some value.”

  “I’m telling you why the name’s familiar.”

  “As I have never heard of Clark Kent, a.k.a. Superman, that can’t be the reason, Jayne.” I let my mind sort through the thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of names I’d come across in my life. And then I had it. “Kurt Kent of Boston is a reclusive Sherlockian. He’s said to have a substantial private collection, but no one knows for sure because he doesn’t allow visitors to view his collection. Donald told me about him some time ago. Donald wanted to invite the man to join the Baker Street Irregulars but he couldn’t get past the outer phalanx of secretaries and personal assistants.”