A Three Book Problem Page 2

  As the part owner and manager of the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium, I would never say so out loud, but I tend to fall on the side of those who think you can have too much tacky Sherlock stuff. David and his friends, I had been assured, did not.

  I arranged pipes and deerstalker hats and magnifying glasses, maps of London as it would have been in Holmes’s day, and copies of nineteenth-century railway timetables around the room. I picked up the box at my feet. “One more room to do. You can help me.” Annie had shown me around earlier so I knew my way to the library.

  It was a lovely library, as befitted a pretend grand old house. Two walls were lined with built-in, floor to ceiling bookcases, stuffed with books with brown, black, or red binding, most of them old, dusty, and slightly tattered. A huge plastic, and very dusty, philodendron loomed next to a small alcove tucked into the far wall containing a large wooden desk, the surface bare now but showing signs of use and considerable age, and a standard office chair. A sliding door opened onto the patio and swimming pool. The fourth wall contained an enormous fireplace. Crumpled newspapers and kindling had been laid in the hearth and a stack of logs rested in a U-shaped iron container next to it. I studied the wallpaper above the mantle. “I can’t shoot holes into the wall, unfortunately, so I brought something to fake it. Hold that chair.”

  Donald obediently held the chair while I climbed onto it and arranged decals resembling bullet holes into the shape of a “patriotic VR.” The wallpaper was beige and gold, not red, but not much I could do about that.

  I placed three hardcover books on the desk: later-edition copies of The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Sign of Four, and Valley of Fear. I arranged them as though the occupant of the chair would soon need to consult them.

  I then scattered more props as well as reproductions of the Times and other London newspapers of the era around the room along with some biographies of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle I’d brought from the bookshop. I piled a stack of Holmes-related puzzles and brain teaser games onto the side tables and laid out a Sherlock Holmes jigsaw puzzle on the round table in the center of the room for the amusement of guests. Earlier, Ryan had brought in the DVD player and portable screen onto which we’d project the movies I’d brought and tucked them into a corner.

  I stepped back to admire my handiwork.

  “Perfect,” Donald said. “I might almost believe I’m in the sitting room at 221B.”

  “As are you,” I said, referring to his outfit.

  He smiled shyly. Donald was dressed in a brown tweed suit with a bright red waistcoat and a stiffly starched white shirt. A red cravat was tied at his throat and a gold watch dangled from his waistcoat by a thick gold chain. The gold itself was fake; Donald doesn’t have the money for such frivolities. A deerstalker hat was on his head.

  “You look as though you’re about to bound across the moors in pursuit of the great spectral hound,” I said.

  “Precisely the mood I’m hoping to achieve at cocktails. I have a dinner suit ready for tonight, and formal wear for tomorrow evening.” His eyes narrowed as he studied me. “I, uh … trust you’re going to change, Gemma.”

  I looked down at my T-shirt, jeans, and scruffy trainers. “This won’t do?” I said seriously, before laughing at his expression. “Don’t worry, Donald. We’re here at your recommendation, and I won’t embarrass you.”

  “You could never do that, my dear,” he said. “You should have brought a violin and some sheet music with the sort of tunes Holmes would have played.”

  “I don’t sell violins or music. Everything I brought, I pulled off the shelves of the Emporium.” I glanced around the room. “Don’t you think it’s enough?”

  “Sufficient for the library and the drawing room. I was thinking of appropriate items for the music room.”

  “This house has a music room? Annie didn’t show me that.”

  “David’s invitation letter said some of the weekend participants had musical talents. I popped my head in earlier and saw a grand piano.”

  Even though the library door was closed, we clearly heard the sound of Smithers’s voice, and a man answering.

  Donald clapped his hands. “The guests will soon be arriving! Talk to you later, Gemma.” He bustled out.

  I smiled after him, gave the room one more look over, and then went upstairs to change. Nice to have a house with a back staircase, so I didn’t have to run into anyone before I was ready.

  I stopped at the kitchen on my way. The delivery from the liquor store had arrived and been unpacked, and the empty cardboard boxes were stacked by the door. Jayne was taking a tray of pastries out of the oven as I came in. “Those smell good,” I said. Ryan was chopping a mountain of vegetables.

  “There is nothing,” I said, “sexier than a man in an apron.”

  He growled at me. The apron was pink and frilly. Jayne wore a matching apron over a loose-fitting black skirt and crisp white blouse. Her shoes were black flats and her only jewelry a pair of small hoop earrings. She always took off her engagement ring when she baked. By rights Jayne, as the head cook, should stay in the kitchen and Ryan, as the assistant, should be the one circulating with drinks and serving the food. But, as he was the lead detective in our town’s police department, he put his foot down at being seen in public acting as a waiter.

  I was here to provide the Sherlockian touches, but I’d also be helping Jayne in the kitchen and acting as a waitress when needed.

  We should have had more staff, but my shop assistant Ashleigh was needed to keep the store open, and Jayne’s two helpers would be working at the tea room. Jayne had been putting in overtime for weeks (meaning even longer hours than usual) to get food in the freezer for them to serve when she was away. Jayne’s mother, who was originally supposed to help out, had come down with a cold at the last minute. In one way, that wasn’t entirely a bad thing as now she could take care of Violet and Peony, whereas the original plan was for my neighbor Mrs. Ramsbatten to pop in and refresh the dogs’ dishes and let them into the yard. Mrs. Ramsbatten loves the dogs and is happy to look after them, but she’s too elderly to take two lively animals out for a walk.

  If worst came to worst, I’d corral Donald and even Great-Uncle Arthur into washing dishes, chopping vegetables, or serving cocktails.

  “Everything under control?” I said.

  “What would you do if it wasn’t?” Ryan asked.

  “Tell you two to get it under control while I carry on with what I planned to do,” I replied.

  “Under control.” Jayne arranged the fragrant, piping-hot pastries on a platter. It took a lot of willpower, but I managed to resist snatching one up.

  I passed Annie in the third-floor hallway. She’d changed out of her shorts and Doc Martens into a calf-length black dress with a white collar and white cuffs. A black cap with lacy white trim covered her short blond hair and the long sleeves of the dress hid her tattoos. She’d removed all her earrings and slipped her feet into sturdy, lace-up black shoes.

  “Goodness,” I said, “you do look the part.”

  She glared at me and tugged at the collar. “This thing itches and my feet hurt already, but I’ll do what I have to do. I’ll consider it a performance and this getup my costume. It’s almost five and the guests will be arriving in a few minutes. I’m to meet them at the door with Billy … I mean Mr. Smithers, and show them to their rooms.” She continued down the hall, muttering darkly.

  I smiled to myself as I went into my room. Annie might not know it, but the dour, sharp-faced housekeeper was a staple of historical fiction and she was playing the part perfectly.

  I don’t normally wear any sort of costume to Sherlock events, but I’d been asked to “fit in” this weekend, and so I would. For tonight, I’d found a dress in a vintage clothing store. Not quite of Holmes’s era, it was peach satin, very 1920s, coming to just below the knee, with straight lines, a dropped waist, and a tasseled hem. I paired the dress with a long double strand of fake pearls, my own pearl earrings, and abo
ve-the-elbow white gloves. I studied myself in the mirror, and decided I’d do. At five foot eight, I’m tall enough to wear this style of dress, but not thin enough to do justice to the sleek lines, and my mop of dark curls is nothing at all like a smooth ’20s bob, but it was a costume, not an attempt at an imitation. Satisfied, I returned to the kitchen.

  I wheeled the bar cart—already loaded with a bucket full of ice, glasses, bottles of wine, gin, vodka, whiskey, mixes, and little plates of olives and slices of lemon and lime—to the drawing room, while Jayne carried in a tray of cocktail nibbles. Mr. Smithers, we’d been informed, would act as bartender.

  I doubted Smithers was his real name as much as I doubted he was a real butler. Judging by his age, he was probably also an out-of-work relative of our host, same as Annie.

  Of our host, there had been no further sign. So far, other than the brief encounters with the butler and the housekeeper, we hadn’t met anyone, but it was obvious that people were in the house. Voices came from behind bedroom doors, leaked through walls, drifted down the stairs, a phone rang and was answered, floorboards creaked overhead. The walls and doors of this house were surprisingly thin and sound carried. Everything looked authentic and impressive, but, I’d soon realized, beneath the surface this house had been built quickly and on the cheap.

  That didn’t matter. It was all a pretext: it wasn’t two hundred years old and nestled deep in the rolling green hills of the Home Counties either.

  In addition to my great-uncle Arthur and Donald Morris, five guests were expected, plus the host David Masterson, here to re-create the atmosphere of an English country house weekend in the era of Sherlock Holmes. Rather than riding to the hounds or venturing out on shooting parties, the group would discuss the minutiae of the Canon, toss around outlandish theories, and play Holmes-related games and puzzles. They’d do all that between lavish meals and plenty of cocktails. It was to contribute to the atmosphere that I’d been invited, and to provide the food that Jayne had.

  “I hope we get a chance to have a look around the house,” Jayne said. “What I’ve seen of it so far is marvelous, but I’m not surprised this place hasn’t sold. It must be worth a heck of a lot, never mind the upkeep on the grounds and the inside.”

  “A rich man’s folly,” I said. “And now his heirs can’t get rid of it. They can’t stop maintaining it either, or it’ll never sell.”

  “Do you suppose it has any secret rooms, priest bolt holes, or the like?”

  I smiled at my friend. “Your imagination’s running away with you. This house was built in 1965, not the seventeenth century. No need to hide priests.”

  “It might be a modern house,” Jayne said. “But they’ve gone all out decorating it as though it isn’t.” Paintings of English pastoral scenes hung on the pale green walls of the drawing room, the sofa was covered in pink flowered damask, the armchairs in cream touched with pink. The heavy drapes matched the sofa and a dark wood coffee table was centered on the thick green and pink rug.

  At first glance the room was lovely, but when I looked closer, I could see that the carpet had a stain in the center and the edges were fraying. Dirt was ground into the arms of the armchairs, the tops of the drapes and picture frames were thick with dust, and the paintings were tourist-shop prints.

  This room, this house, this setting, was a fantasy. No matter: the guests would enjoy it and that was what this weekend was all about.

  I glanced at my watch. Five minutes to six. Almost show time. At that moment, the door opened and a man came in. Like Donald, he was dressed for the occasion.

  “Mrs. Wilson and Miss Doyle, I presume. Pleased to meet you. I’m David Masterson.” He was quite short at five foot five and almost as round as he was tall. His brown hair was thin on the top and he blinked rapidly at me from behind Coke-bottle bottom lenses. I estimated his age as early fifties, slightly younger than I’d expected. The small amount of information I’d found on the internet concerning our host hadn’t mentioned his age.

  We shook hands. His grip was limp, his hands soft and moist with lotion. He glanced around the room and gave a brief nod of approval. Jayne slipped out, back to the kitchen to get started on dinner prep. Smithers arrived, suitably dressed all in black, and took his place behind the bar, back straight, hands folded behind him, feet slightly apart, eyes straight ahead.

  “May I offer you a drink, Gemma?” David asked. “If I may call you Gemma?”

  “You may, and a glass of white wine would be nice.”

  “I am paying you to be here this weekend, but I want you to consider yourself one of my guests. Please feel free to take advantage of all the amenities this house has to offer. When your attendance is not required, of course.”

  His accent was upper-class New York City, and he spoke formally, far more formally than any middle-aged American should. I wondered if that was put on for the weekend or if it was the way he always spoke. He was obviously to the manor born, what Americans would call a trust fund baby. His soft pale hands were recently manicured, he was close-shaven, his cheeks slightly rosy, his small teeth blindingly white. He smelled of expensive aftershave and hand lotion. His face was lightly tanned, not a deep summer or Caribbean-vacation tan but the coloration a resident of the Northeastern United States would get by walking from the house to the car, maybe sitting outside at a restaurant patio in the summer.

  I never go into a new situation blind, and I’d done my research into David Masterson. Outside of the world of the devotees of Sherlock Holmes, where he was very well known, there wasn’t much to find, and I hadn’t seen a picture of him other than standing at the back of a group. David’s maternal grandfather had made a fortune in New York City development and real estate, and his son, David’s uncle, had piled an additional fortune on top. The uncle had given up control of the company a number of years ago, and it was now publicly traded and managed by a board of directors. David himself didn’t, according to what I could find, seem to do much at all except study Sherlock Holmes. He’d self-published a handful of scholarly works on the subject. When I heard about this weekend, I’d ordered copies for the store and read one of them, as much as I could get through before falling asleep. His writing was pedestrian, his topics unoriginal and uninspired.

  David’s mother had been well known as a supporter of classical music. She made hefty donations to, and often served on the board of, the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic, as well as smaller and lesser-known classical music companies. My research showed that following his mother’s death, David had maintained her monetary contributions to her favorite organizations, but he himself played no active part in the arts community. Those hefty donations had abruptly stopped about a year ago, with no explanation given. To the public at any rate.

  David gave Smithers a short, sharp nod, and the butler took a bottle of mid-priced New Zealand sauvignon blanc out of the ice bucket and poured my drink. Jayne had been given a free hand with the food for the weekend, but David had taken care of ordering the booze. Unasked, Smithers then prepared a whiskey with a splash of soda and one ice cube for his employer.

  Precisely at six o’clock the guests began filing into the drawing room. The men were in suits and ties, the women in cocktail dresses, one historic and one modern.

  I put a smile on my face and circulated. The guests were a mixed bunch indeed. Two women, both in their fifties, one as tall and slim and sharp-boned as a former fashion model, one round of body, frizzy of hair, heavy of bosom, and pudgy of cheeks. The three men varied from a handsome chap in his mid-thirties, to a man in his forties with a heavy unkempt black beard and round belly, to a buzz cut–bearing gentlemen in his sixties with the tone and bearing of a former military man. I wouldn’t have been surprised if his pajamas were stamped “Semper Fi.” They were all Americans and all from the East Coast. The younger man gave me a long look followed by what he might have intended to be a wink, as he accepted a beer from Smithers. Beer in hand, he took a step toward me, but David stoppe
d him and asked him if his accommodations were satisfactory.

  At six fifteen, I slipped up to Donald. He and the frizzy-haired woman, stuffed into a gorgeous floor-sweeping blue and silver dress dotted with black beads, were examining the railway timetables and discussing what route Holmes and Watson would have taken to get from Charing Cross Station to Devonshire, the location of the fictional Great Grimpen Mire.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” I said. “Can I have a moment, Donald?”

  “Oh, Gemma.” He blinked at me, coming back to the twenty-first century. “Have you met Jennifer Griffith?”

  “Not yet. Pleased to meet you.” Jennifer briefly came out of the nineteenth century to greet me, and then immediately returned to her study of the railway schedule.

  “Have you heard from Arthur?” I asked Donald when we’d stepped away. “It’s not like him to be late, not for something like this.”

  “Not today. I spoke to him earlier in the week. I asked if he wanted a lift this afternoon, but he declined.”

  “I’d better give him a call.” I’d left my phone upstairs and prepared to run up and get it. My uncle was fit and hearty and more than capable of looking after himself, but he was approaching ninety and it was natural for me to worry.

  I hesitated when the drawing room door opened, and Annie ushered in my friend Irene Talbot. It was immediately obvious Irene hadn’t come to give me any bad news. Not only was she smiling and looking around her with shining eyes, but she was dressed in a stunning one-piece evening jumpsuit of wide-legged black trousers, three-quarter-length sleeves, deep neckline trimmed in black satin, and a matching black satin belt. A tiny black bag on a metal chain hung from her shoulder. Her hair was piled high on her head, and her mouth was a slash of deep red. She saw me watching and gave me a wiggle of her fingers. Annie pointed toward the bar, where David Masterson was chatting to the former fashion model, and Irene thanked her and came into the room, almost floating in her uncharacteristically elegant clothes and stiletto heels.