There's a Murder Afoot Read online

  I would have liked to have a closer look at Randy’s art. His sketches weren’t suitable for my store—too dark in mood—but I’d enjoyed them. Instead, I took care not to get too near. If he noticed me in the area, he also chose to keep his distance.

  At ten to five my phone buzzed with a text from Jayne: FINISHED HERE. DRINK?

  Me: ON MY WAY

  We met outside the doors of the exhibit hall and went to the hotel lobby bar. The room was packed, but we spotted a small unoccupied table by the windows and pushed our way through the crowd. Jayne took the seat facing into the room, leaving me to look out the window. The view overlooked a laneway and the solid brick wall of the building behind.

  A young woman approached our table and asked what we wanted to drink. We both ordered a glass of white wine.

  “In the books I read, in England you have to order at the bar and carry your own drinks to the table,” Jayne said. “The characters are always jumping up and down fetching drinks. Isn’t that right?”

  “Depends on licensing,” I said. “It’s like that in pubs.”

  Jayne sucked in a breath.

  “I hope you’re not too disappointed,” I said. “Maybe we can go to a pub for dinner tonight. I’ve been saving a special place to take Donald.”

  “It’s not that.” She nodded to the room behind me. “Don’t look now, but your uncle Randy’s coming in.”

  I doubt there’s a phrase in the English language more inclined to make people instantly turn around than don’t look now. I refrained from doing so. “Is he alone?”

  “No. He’s with a woman. They’re looking for a place to sit. Oh, a group is getting up. Randy’s snagged two seats at the bar.”

  “Tell me about the woman.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything,” I said. “Start with describing her. How old?”

  “Older than us. Fifty-five, maybe.”

  “The right age to be a wife or girlfriend. Does their attitude to each other indicate that?”

  “I’m not sure. They’re not hugging or anything.”

  “Are they sitting close?”

  “Not particularly.”

  Lights shone on the alleyway outside the window, so nothing inside the room reflected back at me. I started to turn around.

  “Duck!” Jayne yelled.

  I didn’t duck, but I didn’t complete the turn either.

  “He’s casing the joint. I mean he’s looking around to see who’s here. I don’t think he saw us. He might not recognize me. I don’t think he looked at me once with all the drama swirling around.”

  “Don’t count on it,” I said. “I suspect he’s very perceptive, and you were with me when we first stopped at his booth.” Never mind that Jayne—tiny, blonde, fair-skinned, heart-shaped face—attracted men’s attention wherever she went.

  “Okay, the bartender’s asking what they want. You can look if you’re quick about it.”

  I turned in my chair. The woman was, as Jayne had guessed, in her midfifties, short and slim with chestnut hair swirling around her shoulders, dressed in tight jeans with rows of rhinestones lining the seams. The jeans were tucked into calf-high leather boots with stiletto heels. A black shirt with a deeply plunging neckline was worn under a bubble-gum-pink jacket with elbow-length sleeves. A conference lanyard hung around her neck.

  While Randy placed their order, his companion surveyed the room. I’d seen her in the exhibit hall earlier, staffing a booth selling Sherlock-themed jewelry. I’d paused to look, but nothing in the collection had struck me as original or good enough to be worth bothering with. She lifted her hand to tuck a lock of hair back, and I could see a big stone shining on the third finger of her left hand.

  Randy swung around in his stool and I quickly turned away.

  “She does not look at all happy,” I said to Jayne.

  “Even I can see that.”

  Not happy was an understatement. The woman was furious.

  “Tell me what’s happening,” I said to Jayne.

  “They’re having champagne. He’s raising his glass to her. She isn’t returning the toast. Wow, she downed that mighty fast.”

  I absolutely hated observing events secondhand, but I was afraid if I turned, Randy would notice me and then he’d come over. I had absolutely no desire to talk to him.

  Our waiter placed our drinks on the table. “Can I get you ladies anything else?”

  “No, thank you,” Jayne said.

  Jayne and I clinked glasses and took our first sips.

  “I looked Harrods up on the map,” Jayne said. “The Victoria and Albert Museum isn’t far from there. I’m thinking of doing the museum in the morning, and then meeting you and your mother for lunch.”

  “Hard to do the V&A in a morning,” I said. “It’s huge and everything in it is worth seeing.”

  “But that’s all the time I have. I want to see so much. That’s if I can sneak away without running into Donald and being dragged on his expedition to Baker Street.”

  “I’ll run interference for you. I’ll tell him I need your help in the morning.”

  “What have you got to do that I’d be any help with?”

  “I’ll think of something. Go shopping for bras maybe. That’ll scare him off.”

  Jayne laughed. We sipped our wine and talked about what we’d seen and done at the conference today. When our glasses were approaching empty, Jayne glanced around the room, wanting to beckon the waiter to bring the bill. “Don’t look now, but she’s standing up. She looks mighty angry. He’s lifting his hands. He’s trying to placate her.” A gasp. “She knocked his hand away.”

  I turned fully in my seat in time to hear the woman yell, with a trace of a Polish accent, “You really are a coldhearted creature, aren’t you?”

  Conversation in the bar momentarily died. The woman’s face was bright red, her lips tight with anger, and her eyes blazed fire. In contrast, Randy grinned his self-satisfied, smug grin. “Takes one to know one, Arianna,” he said. “You were pretty quick off the mark to check out the value, weren’t you? Not a whole lot of trust toward your intended.”

  She threw the contents of her glass in his face. Then she turned on her heel and marched out of the bar. Everyone in the room watched her go.

  Everyone except me. I kept my eyes on Randy. He scooped a napkin off the counter and wiped causally at the liquid dripping down his face. “Good thing,” he said in a voice designed to carry, “I didn’t buy her the good stuff.”

  A man at the table next to us laughed. The woman with him threw him a poisonous look, and he quickly took a gulp of his beer.

  “Waiter!” Randy called. “I’ll have another. And this time, I will have the good stuff.” He looked directly at me and lifted his glass in a toast. So much for trying not to be seen.

  A group of people walked between us, and when they’d passed, my uncle had turned back to the bar and was consulting with the waiter.

  “I wonder what that was about,” Jayne said as we gathered our things and left.

  I didn’t reply. The man who’d accosted me in the kitchen hallway earlier, the one who liked Jeremy Brett, was leaning against a wall near the exit. He stood in a circle of laughing men, holding a glass of beer in his hand, but he was not part of the group, and he was not enjoying himself along with them. His dark narrow eyes were fixed on Randolph Denhaugh.

  Chapter Five

  As I’d said to Jayne, I had a special treat in mind for Donald tonight.

  After our drink, Jayne and I went back to the Bentley to meet the others. We didn’t bother to change to go to dinner, and we were on our way shortly after six. Early enough, I hoped, to get a nice table in the Hereford Arms.

  We were in luck and a big table near the fireplace was vacant. The pub was all brick walls and old wooden floors and scarred tables. The fireplace was real, making the room warm and cozy, and candles burned in hurricane lamps on the mantel. People, many of them from the conference, surrounded the bar and kept the bartenders hopping.

  “In true English fashion,” Ryan said, “I’ll get the first round. Grant, give me a hand. What does everyone want?”

  We placed our orders, and they pushed their way to the bar. “What’ll you have, mate?” asked the bartender in a strong Australian accent. Donald, Jayne, and I shrugged off our coats and divested ourselves of scarves and gloves.

  Donald dropped into a seat with a happy grin. “Exactly like the sort of pub Holmes and Watson might frequent,” he said.

  “It’s more than that.” I took his hand and helped him to stand. “Come with me.”

  A series of framed typed statements hung on the fireplace wall. I showed Donald the last one. He gasped.

  According to the sign, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had been a regular at this very pub when he was president of the College of Psychic Studies.

  I left Donald staring openmouthed at the wall and went back to our table in time to accept a glass of wine from Ryan. Grant threw menus onto the table. Pippa had planned to join us tonight, but Grant told us she’d had to cancel at the last minute.

  “What do you think she does as an admin assistant,” he asked me, “that she’d get an emergency call to come into work on a Friday evening?”

  “No idea,” I said. And that was true. I had no idea what Pippa did. But I had my guesses. “Maybe her boss needed someone to take the minutes.”

  “I guess that’s it,” he said. “She’s going to try to get to the banquet tomorrow night. I bought a ticket for her, just in case.”

  “Step carefully, Grant,” I said.

  He gave me a quizzical look. “What does that mean?”

  I bit my tongue. I’d once told a woman that, based on my observations, her fiancé was interested in her only fo
r her potential inheritance. She had not taken my kindly meant interference well. I seemed to remember a door slamming in my face. I didn’t want that to happen between Grant and me.

  “My parents were planning to come tomorrow,” I said. “I’m not sure if they’ll still want to after running into Randy.”

  “What’s the story there?” Grant asked.

  I told him what little I knew, and then we went on to talk about other things.

  * * *

  Saturday morning Jayne and I were on the steps of the Victoria and Albert Museum when it opened. I tried to show her my favorite things in the short time we had, but before I knew it, it was time to hurry to Harrods to meet Mum.

  My idea of heaven is the sculpture hall in the V&A; Jayne’s is the food hall in Harrods. I swear she must have had them open every large red tin of tea leaves so she could drink in the aroma of each one.

  Once she’d loaded herself with various boxes of tea to take home, instead of going to the restaurant for our lunch we perched on stools at the fish counter, nibbled on oysters, sipped champagne, and watched the world go by.

  Then we went upstairs to shop. While Jayne gagged at the prices, Mum tried on clothes for work—gray or black suits and starched white blouses, of course—and shoes for country weekends. Jayne bought a selection of scented soaps for her mother and a silk scarf for herself.

  Dusk was falling when we staggered out of the store, Mum and Jayne laden with parcels. I emerged empty-handed.

  “I need to get home and change. We can share a cab.” Mum asked the doorman to fetch us a taxi. “Your event starts at seven, dear?”

  “You’re still coming?” I asked.

  One of the iconic London black cabs screeched to a halt in front of us. The doorman opened the door and bowed us in. Mum pressed a coin into his hand. We climbed in. Mum and Jayne took the bench seats and I pulled down one facing them. Jayne bounced in her seat. “This is so cool. Just like in the Sherlock TV show.”

  Mum smiled at her. “As long as we don’t get into a car chase.” I was delighted they were getting on so well. My parents live in a row house on Stanhope Gardens, not far from the Bentley Hotel. The cab dropped Mum off first.

  “I’m assuming,” she said before she got out, “dress is not too formal?”

  “Only if you plan on coming in a full Victorian gown. Corset and bustle and all.”

  “Perish the thought.”

  “That’s the house you grew up in?” Jayne asked as the cab pulled back into traffic.

  “Yes.”

  “The whole house?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was looking at pictures in the window of the realtor’s office last night. Even apartments in buildings like that cost a couple of million pounds.”

  “Forty years ago property in South Kensington was a lot cheaper than it is now,” I said. My parents’ house was in the center of the row. The houses on this street were typical of Kensington and similar neighborhoods in the West End. Three stories tall, painted white with a black door, white pillars on either side of the entrance, black-and-white-check tiles on the stairs and landing, black iron railings around a set of steep stairs leading belowground to what used to be the kitchen staff door. The second-floor balcony wasn’t large enough for anything more than a few plant pots, and once my father had built his woodworking studio in the back garden, there hadn’t been room for anything else. On the other side of the street an enclosed and locked square-block-sized private garden was provided for the enjoyment of residents of the street.

  It had been a nice area in which to grow up. The house had belonged to my mother’s parents, and they’d lived with us until they died within a year of each other when I was in fourth form, the equivalent to American grade ten. The house had been one of the few things of value my grandparents had. After, I’d learned yesterday, their son had absconded with their most valuable possession.

  I’d always believed my mother was their only child. Every family picture I’d ever seen had shown my grandparents with just my mother. I remembered seeing a couple of snaps of Mum as a schoolgirl standing with a younger boy. A family friend, I’d been told, before the pages of the album were hastily turned.

  “It looks like 221B Baker Street,” Jayne said.

  “A good deal more upscale,” I said. “Did you know that when Conan Doyle wrote the Holmes stories, there was no such number as 221 on Baker Street?”

  “You mean it was a fictional address?”

  “Yes. The street has grown, as has London, since then.”

  It was almost six when we got back to the hotel, giving us not a lot of time to get ready for our night out.

  My suitcase and I had been joyfully reunited yesterday. I changed into a black-and-white linen dress with a matching black jacket, opaque black leggings, and ankle-high boots. I put large silver hoops through my ears and a silver chain around my neck.

  Jayne looked delightful in a slim-fitting raspberry dress and red heels. Then again, Jayne always looked delightful, even in the back of Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room in a hairnet with flour on her nose.

  “The belles of the ball,” I said as we studied ourselves in the mirror.

  She gave me a spontaneous hug. “This is so great. I’m glad I came.”

  “I’m glad you came too. Next time we’ll have to plan on staying longer.”

  “Your mother’s taking me to the National Gallery and the Portrait Gallery tomorrow. Want to come?”

  “No time. I need to do another round of the vendors and make contact with the ones I’m interested in.”

  Our hotel room was large enough for a desk with chair, a gold-brocade couch with two side tables, and a coffee table. Jayne’s shopping bags were strewn everywhere, and almost every surface was covered by discarded clothes, scarves and gloves, suitcases, purses, guidebooks, conference programs, electronic cables and chargers, and advertising information. The two beds, dressed during the day in rich blue duvets and mounds of matching pillows, had been turned down while we were out. Right now, my bed looked far more inviting than attendance at a stodgy formal dinner.

  “Have you called Mrs. Hudson’s?” I asked Jayne as I surveyed the chaos of our room, hoping I wasn’t leaving anything I needed behind.

  “I did earlier. I spoke to Fiona. She said every elderly lady in West London has been in. The widowed and divorced network of women of advanced years has established a schedule of rotation for having your Uncle Arthur to dinner while you’re out of town.”

  I laughed. “Who knew there’s such a network? Little do they know Arthur’s the cook in our house, not me.”

  “From what I hear, he’s in no hurry to enlighten them,” Jayne said.

  We went downstairs to meet the men, waiting for us in the lobby.

  Donald, as could be expected, was in full nineteenth-century men’s formal wear: stiff white shirt with high collar, black frock coat, shoes polished to a high gloss, dark-gray suit with waistcoat. Even a pocket watch on a chain and a tall hat tucked under his arm. Holmes himself would not have looked better heading off to a concert at Covent Garden, dinner at Mancini’s, or even to accept his emerald tie pin from “a certain gracious lady.”

  “You look marvelous, Donald,” I said, and he preened.

  Grant and Ryan looked very plain next to him in their twenty-first-century business suits. Plainly dressed, but so very handsome. I slipped one hand through each of their arms. “Shall we go?”

  A light rain was falling, but we didn’t have far to go. The wet streets reflected the glow of streetlamps and the headlights of passing cars. Donald struggled with the small foldable umbrella he’d brought from home. Eventually he gave up trying to get it to open and hurried ahead of us. He reached an intersection and looked left before stepping off the curb.

  Ryan grabbed his arm as a car sped past in a spray of rainwater, coming fast from our right. “Watch it there, Donald. Remember, they’re driving on the wrong side of the road.”

  “We call it the correct side,” I said. “You need to consciously look down and check the directions before crossing.” Whether for the aid of tourists or not, in London most intersections are clearly marked LOOK LEFT or LOOK RIGHT, with arrows pointing in the appropriate direction.