The Baker Street Jurors Read online

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  For my father, Bill McKinley

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks to my editor, Marcia Markland, and assistant editor, Quressa Robinson; production editor, Elizabeth Curione; designer, Nicola Ferguson; publicist, Shailyn Tavella; jacket designer, David Baldeosingh Rotstein; and copy editor, NaNá Stoelzle, at Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press.

  My thanks also to my agent, Kathleen Nishimoto, at William Morris Endeavor, and Laura Bonner, for international rights.

  WATSON, YOU ARE A BRITISH JURY, AND I NEVER

  MET A MAN WHO WAS MORE EMINENTLY FITTED

  TO REPRESENT ONE.

  —Sherlock Holmes,

  The Adventure of the Abbey Grange,

  by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  Prologue

  It was no ordinary cricket bat.

  Made of English willow, harvested at its prime from a Suffolk preserve and air-dried without a single knot or blemish, it bore the emblem of the England cricket team, and it had won more international championships for England than any piece of sporting equipment in modern history.

  It was Liam McSweeney’s cricket bat—and there was blood on it.

  Chief Inspector Wembley didn’t touch the bat, but only stared. His heart was breaking.

  He shook his head very, very slowly from side to side, and said, “He can’t have done it. Dear Lord God in Heaven, let someone please tell me a reason why he can’t possibly have done it.”

  The constable standing next to the cricket bat—which lay only partially concealed, under a rosebush in the east garden of the mansion in Hampstead—nodded his agreement with Wembley’s sentiment, and said, “Not McSweeney. Surely not McSweeney.”

  But then the constable volunteered what he knew, “Your forensics officer said it’s his bat, his fingerprints, his footprints, his house, and his wife. Pending lab confirmation, of course. I mean, except for the house part. And the wife part. Don’t need the lab to confirm those.”

  Wembley straightened his posture and put on his official face, which was like steel on a cold day.

  “You were the first officer on the scene?” said Wembley.

  “No, sir. That was Sergeant Thackeray. He was so upset when he saw the condition of the body that—well, he was just overcome, sir. We sent him back to the station for some counseling.”

  “That’ll happen to a rookie,” said Wembley.

  “He’s actually been on the force a few years. But we’re a quiet neighborhood. We don’t get much of this sort of thing. Not like this, anyway.”

  “Show me,” said Wembley.

  They walked on ceramic pavers across the side lawn of the Hampstead mansion, with the morning dew still shining on the green grass. At the far end they reached a wrought-iron fence with a gate, and just inside that gate, the Scotland Yard forensics team was huddled around something covered with a tarp.

  Inspector Wembley approached.

  Helen O’Shea, the lead forensics officer, lifted the tarp. O’Shea’s expression, conditioned by twenty years at her job, was always professionally stoic. But the constable stepped back. And Inspector Wembley himself managed to stand his ground for only perhaps two seconds before he too chose to look away.

  “It’s textbook,” said O’Shea. “If you want a perfect illustration of injuries consistent with a crime of passion, this is it.”

  “All of it from the cricket bat?” said Wembley.

  “Yes,” said O’Shea, “and from someone who knew how to swing it, too. The first blow, the one that incapacitated her, was a classic batsman’s uppercut. The next one—overhead, which I guess isn’t exactly cricket, but effective for this purpose—did her in. All the ones that followed were gratuitous.”

  Wembley gestured for O’Shea to cover the body back up.

  “The gate was locked?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Any footprints on the other side?”

  “No. The only footprints are between here and McSweeney’s house. Hers go only one way. His—the footprints of the size-ten male, weighing about a hundred and eighty pounds, with a pattern that matches a style that McSweeney likes, given what we found in his closet—go in both directions.”

  The constable, still standing back from the covered body, shook his head, and said again, “Not McSweeney. Surely not McSweeney.”

  O’Shea looked up. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

  “You don’t take your sports all that seriously then, do you, Helen?” said Wembley.

  O’Shea shrugged. “I do. But if the shoe fits … and it does…”

  Now a uniformed officer shouted from the side yard. “Inspector?”

  Wembley turned. The sergeant pointed toward the street in front of the house.

  “Here they come!”

  “Bloody hell,” said Wembley.

  He glared at the arriving media vans. The body was only hours cold, and the BBC was already here.

  1

  SEVEN MONTHS LATER

  It was early spring, so early that it didn’t really feel that way. As Lois exited the Marylebone tube station and turned the corner onto Baker Street, she saw fluffy white clouds high over the trees of Regents Park. But they were gliding on a cold northeast wind.

  Lois zipped up her parka and walked less than halfway up the 200 block. She stopped at the newsstand in front of the Dorset National Building Society—just across the street from the French patisserie and a few doors down from the Beatles memorabilia store.

  She didn’t want a newspaper. But she knew she probably needed to pick up a coffee. She took a moment to look up at the second-story window above her, to be sure. She saw no light in the window.

  So yes, better get the coffee.

  “A large?” said Bob, who ran the newsstand.

  “Yes, and put gobs of sugar in it, too. Not for me, of course, I don’t need it.”

  “Oh, I say we all need a little of it,” said Bob.

  Lois was fifty or a few years more, rather short, more than a little rotund, and not concerned about it, despite all the public service announcements. But she’d given up sugar in her own coffee long ago.

  She glanced at the news headlines as Bob poured the very dark brew. There were the usual domestic and worldly disputes. But the dominant story—in all but Barron’s, which gave it second billing to something more staid—was from the world of sports, and of murder.

  “McSweeney Must Play,” said one headline, in an English daily tabloid.

  “McSweeney Must Pay,” said another headline. Lois looked closer at that one. It was from a New Zealand weekly. She wondered if it might be a typo.

  Lois paid for the coffee and tried not to spill any through the tiny aperture in the lid as she opened the door at Dorset House.

  Two American tourists, their noses pressed up against the glass wall of the entrance, delayed her. Lois felt sorry for the puzzled middle-aged man, who obviously
was not clear on the concept of March weather in London and was rubbing his bare arms as he spoke. His wife at least had a sweater.

  “Is this the place where Sherlock Holmes…”

  “No,” said Lois. “Your best bet is the museum up the street.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” said the man. “The museum is almost at the other end of the block. The address 221B wouldn’t be up there, it would be right—”

  “Yes, I know, and I’m sorry about that,” said Lois. “And for what it’s worth, the Royal Mail delivery service agrees with you. But you won’t find Sherlock Holmes here. This is Dorset House, and all the tenants of Dorset House are strictly business. Especially these days. Cheers.”

  Lois knew that answer would not satisfy them—it wouldn’t have satisfied her, if she’d been in their shoes—but it couldn’t be helped. She went into the Dorset House lobby and walked quickly across the marble floor to the security guard’s station.

  The security guard was a white-haired, wiry man in his seventies, who looked up from his sports section as Lois approached. “Good morning, Mr. Hendricks,” said Lois.

  “The Daily Sun has it spot-on, don’t you think?” said Hendricks.

  “Regarding?” said Lois.

  Hendricks held up the paper and displayed the page-one headline that Lois had already seen: “McSweeney Must Play!”

  “The New Zealand paper has a headline just like that,” said Lois. “Except theirs says ‘Pay,’ not ‘Play.’”

  “That’s because the Kiwis want to win the championship themselves. He’s innocent until proven guilty, ain’t he?”

  “Yes,” said Lois, and now the headline made sense. The Kiwis had international cricket ambitions of their own. And, like siblings, the competition between England and former members of the British Empire was always more fierce than between complete strangers.

  “Well, there you have it then,” said Hendricks. “They must let him play in the championship. They must! You don’t convict an entire nation over one man’s indictment, is what I always say, and The Daily Sun says it, too, right here. So unless he’s found guilty, the International Cricket Council will let him play, right?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Well, they bloody well better,” said Hendricks. “I put ten quid on England winning this year. But it won’t happen without McSweeney.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” said Lois, though she had no idea. “Have you seen Nigel yet this morning?”

  “No.”

  “Oh my. I was afraid of that.”

  “It’s not the end of the world.”

  “Well, that’s easy for you to say, Mr. Hendricks,” said Lois. “I’m worried about him. It was so sudden—from his point of view—and he just hasn’t seemed himself since he came back.”

  “Looks the same to me,” said Hendricks.

  “Well, the hurt is on the inside, of course.”

  “Bollocks. Nothing that a good rugby scrum won’t knock out of you. He just got soft there, staying across the pond for so long. Why, back in the day, I can tell you things…”

  “You often do, Mr. Hendricks. And quite shocking they are, too.”

  Hendricks grinned, showing only a few missing teeth—which, he often said, made him not a bad catch for a man in his seventies, especially one who was still quite capable in other areas as well.

  Now he winked at Lois. “No, I don’t think I’ve shocked you quite yet, miss. But give me a chance and I will.”

  “No call for that, Mr. Hendricks. But wait till I tell you this…”

  Hendricks waited, his eyes widening, for Lois to lean forward and loudly whisper, “He doesn’t even care about the letters anymore! He’s begun to pass them off to me!”

  Hendricks raised an eyebrow. And then he focused on the view afforded by Lois leaning forward.

  She stood back and checked the buttons on her blouse.

  “The letters are the very thing that made it possible for him to meet her in the first place, you know,” she said. “If she hadn’t written a letter—and if he hadn’t thought it his job to respond to it—he’d never have gone to Los Angeles to save her, and fall for her, and move in with her, and all of it.”

  “So, he rescued a damsel in distress, so to speak, and then she got all better and flew the coop, as it were?”

  “You could describe it that way. I’m not sure I would, but you can if you like.”

  “Damned damsels in distress. Always up and doing things like that. Why, I remember, back in the day, when I—”

  “Thank you so much for your willingness to share, Mr. Hendricks, but I believe you have told me before…”

  “Well, it wasn’t so long ago, you know,” and he was leaning toward her again.

  “I don’t doubt you, Mr. Hendricks. And don’t you dare mention to Nigel that I said anything!”

  Hendricks assured her by drawing an index finger across his lips.

  Lois checked her blouse again, walked across the quiet lobby, and got into the lift. It was still early, not yet nine o’clock, and so the Dorset National Bank employees—who occupied all the first-floor office space at Dorset House—had not yet arrived.

  The second floor belonged to Baker Street Law Chambers. And when the lift doors opened on that floor this morning, Lois found it even quieter than the downstairs lobby.

  Diagonally across from the lift was Lois’s desk. She was both secretary and administrative assistant. And receptionist. And barrister’s clerk. The barrister—the only one officially a member of Baker Street Law Chambers at the moment—was Reggie Heath, Q.C. His office was the large one on the opposite wall. Lois knew he wasn’t there. Reggie was on his extended honeymoon holiday. She was not to call him with trivia. Neither was she to call him with emergencies. She was not to call him at all.

  Farther down the corridor was the smaller office—the office of Reggie’s younger brother—Nigel Heath, solicitor. To the extent that he could, within the different legal authorizations of their different legal professions, Nigel was to hold the fort in Reggie’s absence.

  In Lois’s opinion, especially so when she first came to work for them a few years ago, the personality differences between the two brothers suited their choice of occupations rather neatly.

  Reggie, the more flamboyant, aggressive, and generally alpha-male-ish, had become a barrister, and rather early in life, too. Nigel, the more studious and inward—though given to sudden bursts of nonconformity and rebellion—had, through various twists and turns, become a solicitor.

  But then, when Reggie located his new chambers on Baker Street, and the letters had begun to arrive—letters for which Nigel had always had more of an affinity than Reggie—Nigel had begun to change.

  Coming out of his shell, is how Lois had described it. Rather late in life, in his thirties to be sure—but coming out of it, just the same.

  What seemed to have made all the difference was the very first letter he had responded to. That letter had taken him to Los Angeles—where he met Mara Ramirez, a young woman who had written a letter twenty years earlier, as a child, to Sherlock Homes. And when it was all resolved, he had remained there with that young woman in California.

  But now Nigel had returned to London. And it seemed to Lois that he had begun to revert to his old ways. Before Los Angeles. Before Mara Ramirez. Before the letters.

  Four weeks ago, Reggie Heath and Laura Rankin had gotten married. Nigel was best man. He had flown out from Los Angeles, where he had been living the past two years with Mara. But Mara had not come to London to attend the wedding with Nigel.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Nigel had said repeatedly, until Lois finally had the good sense to stop asking. But she had her theory. Such things are not unusual around the time of weddings—relationships can heat to a boil, one way or another, and not just for the star participants.

  So Nigel had remained in London, but no longer having a flat in the city, he had taken up residence in the empty law office, and
gone back to work as a solicitor in the bargain.

  His office door was closed at the moment, and the blinds were shut, and as Lois had already seen from the street, the lights were out. But she was sure he would be there. He was always there, these days. Day and night. Well, not all night. He was away at the pub for hours in the evening, especially for the darts and snooker competitions. But except for that, he’d been camping out in his office for weeks now.

  Lois walked up with the large coffee in her hand and she rapped on the office door.

  “Wake up, Mr. Heath!”

  No response. She took the plastic lid off the large coffee, still hot enough to steam, and she blew on it lightly to help the aroma on its way. She rapped again on the door.

  “Wake up and smell it, please!” she shouted. Quite cheerily, but it was a shout, even so. She put the coffee down on the floor, just to the side so that it wouldn’t spill when Nigel finally opened his door.

  Then she went back to her desk to see what might have arrived in the mail that absolutely required her attention. As she sat down, she heard the office door creak open. She didn’t bother to look up. She heard a sigh, and then what might have been a slurp, and then the sound of bare feet walking down the corridor to the loo.

  Lois focused on the two in-baskets on her desk. One was for the law chambers. That in-basket contained no more than half a dozen letters, and there was no hurry about those, given that Reggie Heath, Q.C., was away.

  But the other incoming basket, the one not for the law chambers, was overflowing.

  And every one of those letters was addressed to Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street.

  Or to Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, at 221B Baker Street.

  Or to Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson, or to Mr. Sherlock Holmes c/o Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or to any number of combinations thereof.

  Lois began to sort through them all. This was mandatory. The lease agreement with Dorset House made it so. Because of its address, Baker Street Chambers was required to respond to the letters that people from around the world wrote to Sherlock Holmes, despite the fact that even if he were real, he would be long since dead and buried.