The Baker Street Translation Read online

  “I bought it yesterday afternoon,” he said in a tone of forced patience. “For my niece, you understand.”

  “Yes, certainly,” said Emily with a hopeful and encouraging smile.

  “When I got it home and opened it, I discovered that it is the wrong version. The toy itself is correct, but the instruction sheet that came with it is not the most recent version. I must have the most recent version. I mean, my niece must have. I … I don’t want her playing with something that is out-of-date, you know.”

  “Of course, I understand completely,” said Emily, although she didn’t quite. “I hope this other one will do, then. It is the only other one we have in stock. We received only these two.”

  The man nodded, as though that was a given. Rather eagerly he began to open the second box. He reached in and pulled out a folded instruction sheet that accompanied the toy. He unfolded it and began to study the tiny print on the thin paper.

  As he did, Emily looked at the toy from the first box, unpacked on the counter between them.

  It was a plastic duck. From the title on the box, Emily guessed it was actually supposed to look like a goose; but in both appearance and size, it was much more like a duck. It was white, with a yellow bill that the child was supposed to press.

  Emily tested it. She pressed down carefully on the yellow bill.

  “One, two, buckle my shoe,” said the duck in a tinny voice intended to sound matronly and British.

  The man looked up with a glare. Emily immediately withdrew her hand from the duck.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Just wanted to be sure it works. It appears to.”

  “As I said, the toy is fine. You do not need to test it. It’s the instructions. They are not the right version. Both packages are wrong.”

  “I’m very sorry,” said Emily, reaching for the instruction sheet. “Would you like me to have a look at them?”

  “No,” said Aspic. He quickly put the duck and the instructions back into the box. “You’re certain these are the most recent two you’ve received?”

  “Yes,” said Emily. “We have no others. They’ve just come in, and we haven’t sold any, except for the one you bought. I’m very sorry it’s not right for you. But we’ll be happy to do a full refund. Was this a credit card purchase?”

  “No, it was cash,” said the man quite impatiently. He quickly packed up the toy that he had brought in with him. “And no refund is necessary. I’ll just keep the one I’ve got, thank you very much.”

  He turned on his heel, with the package under his arm, and strode quickly away toward the escalators.

  Emily got ready to tape the second boxed toy back up again.

  Just on a whim, she pressed the duck’s bill once more.

  “Humpty Dumpty took a great fall,” said the duck.

  Works fine, thought Emily. She closed the box and taped it shut.

  4

  “Do you perhaps have something that is very easily customizable after the fact?”

  Reggie Heath, Q.C., was speaking to a jeweler in Hatton Garden, and he felt very much out of his depth.

  He had gotten there early—before they even opened, in fact—to beat the morning crowds, and to nail down the details that had kept him up all night.

  “Well, gold is malleable, of course,” said the woman, “but not with just your average kitchen utensils. If you really want the lady to have what she wants, perhaps you should ask her to pop in and have a look around?”

  “Is that how it’s done?” said Reggie. He stared through the glass at the many rings—too many—and he realized that he really hadn’t a clue.

  “Actually, I’m not sure anything off the shelf will do,” he said, stepping back just a bit, as if the display were hot to the touch. “Perhaps I need to go to a bespoke jeweler—”

  “Nonsense,” said the woman quickly. “We have every sort of engagement ring imaginable. Here, take our catalog.” She leaned forward, scrutinizing Reggie across the glass counter. “Ah,” she said after a moment. “You haven’t asked the lady yet, have you?”

  “Well…”

  “Don’t let that stop you. Our rings can be returned within a week, for just that very reason.”

  “You mean, in case she says no.”

  “Of course. Happens all the time. You would get a full refund.”

  “Yes. Well. Considerate of you to point out the possibility of a negative outcome. Good God, is that the hour? I believe I’m due in court. Thank you very much.”

  Reggie escaped the jeweler’s, though he was not, in fact, due in court, and he fled in a cab back to Baker Street.

  It was January, not high season—but even so, there was a gaggle of camera-toting tourists in front of Dorset House as Reggie arrived. This particular group looked French, the second most common Sherlock Holmes tour group after the Japanese—milling about in the 200 block of Baker Street, with uncertain and slightly annoyed looks on their faces, searching for 221B.

  Reggie tried to avoid eye contact as he got out of the cab, but it didn’t work. An apparent leader of the group maneuvered between him and the heavy glass doors of Dorset House.

  “Is this Two twenty-one B Baker Street?” the alpha tourist demanded.

  “No.”

  “We are looking for—”

  “Yes, I know. Try the little museum up the street. It has an actual sign.”

  The tourist turned his head, and Reggie negotiated quickly around him and into the Dorset House lobby without having to issue any further travel advice.

  It was enough that he had the letters to deal with. The Sherlock Holmes Museum was happy to receive tourists, especially if they bought something, and Reggie was completely fine with that.

  From the lobby, Reggie took the lift up one floor to Baker Street Chambers. Also known as Heath’s Chambers. Reggie Heath’s formerly muddling, but now doing all right, thank you, law chambers.

  Lois—a rotund fiftyish woman who looked as though she’d been incarnated directly from an advert for baking flour—greeted Reggie at the secretary’s station.

  “Where were they from this time?” she said quite cheerfully.

  “France.”

  “Oh. It still surprises me they would bother. I thought they preferred their own detective icons.”

  “I wish all tourists would prefer French detective icons—I’d have an easier time getting into my office in the morning.”

  Lois laughed.

  “And the same goes for the letter writers,” added Reggie.

  “Oh, you can’t mean that,” said Lois.

  “I certainly do mean it.”

  Lois stopped what she was doing and looked up.

  “Why, if it were not for the letters, where would this chambers be?”

  “Humming along nicely and without distractions,” said Reggie.

  “Really? Would you have had the Black Cab case, and all the wonderful publicity that came with it?”

  Reggie thought about it. “No,” he said after a moment. “But I’m not sure coverage in the Daily Sun constitutes wonderful publicity.”

  “But now you have more clients.”

  Reggie nodded.

  “And were it not for the letters, would you have ever had need to hire me?”

  “You have a point,” said Reggie, “If it were not for the letters, my previous secretary would not have murdered my previous clerk, and I would not have needed to hire you. But I did not hire you as a law pupil, Lois, so there’s no point in your practicing cross-examination on me.”

  “Of course,” said Lois, “But I think you should show more respect for the letters. I, for one, and I know I’m not the only one, think they’re wonderful.”

  “Duly noted,” said Reggie. He opened the door to his interior chambers office.

  Before he could go in, Lois said, “I put the new ones for this week on your desk.”

  Reggie paused, and sighed. He had instructed her, more than once, to just routinely send all the letters to Nigel in the States.<
br />
  “I will leave them on the mailing cart,” said Reggie. “They are to go to Nigel in tomorrow morning’s post.”

  “Yes,” said Lois, slumping back into her chair. “Of course.”

  Reggie tried not to get annoyed. In most other respects, Lois was working out quite well. And he had more important things to think about.

  “Did you clear my calendar for next Tuesday?”

  “Oh yes,” said Lois. She recovered her chirpiness. “No appointments at all on Tuesday, and just two new briefs for the entire week. They’re both rolled up and tied with their little red strings on the shelf, and both are quite simple pleadings, pure formalities, no more than a page or two each, which you can stand up and deliver next week in your own inimitable style, with no advance preparation whatsoever.”

  “You are catching on, Lois.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Now, finally, Reggie made it into his office and closed the door behind him.

  Reggie’s interior chambers office was a sanctuary. He had made sure it was so: a massive mahogany desk, rows of law books lining the wall, a tall swiveling leather chair behind the desk for Reggie, and two subordinate, but nevertheless expensive chairs in front of it, for solicitors and their clients.

  But this morning, there in the middle of all the gleaming hardwood and leather and brass were the incoming Sherlock Holmes letters that Lois had plopped on his desk. The bloody things were beginning to accumulate.

  It made Reggie uneasy.

  Most of the letters that arrived every week were simply from dedicated fans of the Sherlock Holmes canon. People who knew perfectly well that the man was fictional. They just wanted to express their knowledge of Doyle’s work, like Star Trek fans dressing up at a convention.

  But there were always a few that were—well, different.

  Some of the letter writers—typically the very young, or the very old—believed Sherlock Holmes to be real.

  In theory—and as stipulated in the lease—Reggie was obliged to open the letters personally and respond to them—always in a standard way—assuring the letter writers that Sherlock Holmes appreciated their interest but was now retired and keeping bees in Sussex and was unable to respond personally to their inquiry.

  But in practice, Reggie always had Lois bundle the things off across the pond to Nigel, Reggie’s younger brother. Reggie did not want these letters accumulating on his own desk. Lois was supposed to put them on the cart at the other end of the corridor, to get picked up for Express Mail to Nigel in Los Angeles.

  Nigel didn’t seem to mind wading through them, and to Reggie they were at best a bother, and at worst a dangerous liability.

  But at the moment, they were on Reggie’s desk, staring him in the face.

  He sat down, hesitated, and then in the same way one pushes on a tooth to see if it is still sure, he took one off the top.

  The first was from a ten-year-old schoolgirl in Iowa, asking if Mr. Sherlock Holmes could please tell her how to know whether the boy in the next row liked her. Should she boldly just go up and ask?

  No one at this address can answer that one, thought Reggie. Try Dear Abby.

  The first one hadn’t been too bad. Reggie relaxed a bit and looked at another. This one was from a centenarian in Texas who was making out her will.

  Get an American lawyer, thought Reggie; they’re plentiful.

  The next was from Taiwan. This letter writer was grateful for an earlier, very helpful response from Sherlock Holmes’s personal secretary, and he requested further assistance regarding some additional attached documents.

  This was annoying. The earlier response from “Mr. Holmes’s personal secretary” could only have come from Nigel. And if Nigel had, in fact, sent anything helpful, then he was departing once again from the standard reply.

  The letter writer had obligingly included a copy of that first response. Reggie picked it up and looked at it:

  Dear Mr. Liu—

  Thank you for your inquiry regarding the enigmatic nursery rhyme. Unfortunately, Mr. Sherlock Holmes is at the moment unavailable, and children’s verses are not within his particular area of expertise anyway—but perhaps my poor attempt at a response will help.

  First, be aware that there is no such thing as a “dub-dub.” It is not, in fact, a word. When used in English following “rub,” all those words together constitute an idiom that means, roughly, “scrub away with abandon.” That is only an approximation, of course; such is the way with English idioms, and especially the ones that rhyme.

  Other English phrases for which you should show caution in translation include “Bugger off, mate!” and “Bob’s your uncle.” These are not meant to be taken literally.

  You may find it comforting to know that this particular nursery rhyme has many variations in its English form. When it first popped up, it referred to “Three maids in a tub,” and shortly after the enthusiastic scrubbing, all the young ladies went off to the fair. The Victorians found this tale a bit too titillating, and so they tried many variations to take the fun out of it. Perhaps that’s why your version of it uses “toffs” instead.

  But it is just a nursery rhyme, after all, and I’m sure that your translation of it, whatever it turns out to be, will be fine.

  Yours truly,

  Mr. Sherlock Holmes’s personal secretary.

  Reggie looked at the signature at the end and sighed. Yes, it was Nigel’s. Reggie’s brother just couldn’t seem to leave well enough alone

  And no good deed goes unpunished. Now this letter writer politely wanted to verify the exact meaning of more phrases in other nursery rhymes.

  There are lexicons for such things, thought Reggie. Look it up. Stop thinking of Sherlock Holmes as a sort of general help center.

  Reggie had had enough. He made a mental note to remove the letters from his desk and put them on the cart on his way out to lunch. For now, he pushed the entire stack onto the corner of his desk nearest the door.

  And anyway, he had plans to make. Lois was rapping on the closed chambers door, but Reggie called out for her to go away. At least for the next five minutes.

  It was time for his next step. Laura would be back in London in just a few days, and Reggie did not intend to bollix this up.

  As he picked up the phone, he briefly considered whether this was really the best way to go about it. Perhaps a moonlit dinner above the Thames would be more romantic.

  But no. She would be terribly impressed; she would love it. There really was no doubt about it at all.

  “I would like to speak to the person in charge of catering,” said Reggie.

  “Sir, we do not do catering for the general public,” said the woman on the phone. “Would you like to make a reservation to dine in?”

  “No, I’d like to set up a small catered affair,” said Reggie. “For two. Next week.”

  “Sir, we do catering only for the royals. And we are quite busy this week.”

  “Yes, but I have it on good authority that there was a particular type of chocolate raspberry tart that you served at one of those affairs a year or two ago, and I know a lady who would very much like to—”

  “Sir, we are a purveyor of catering services to Her Majesty the Queen.”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean exclusively, does it? I know barristers who buy socks from purveyors to the queen. Half the point of being such a purveyor is that you can demand exorbitant prices when you sell similar things to commoners, correct?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “So what would that exorbitant price be?”

  There was a short pause, then—

  “How many people?”

  “Two.”

  “How many courses?”

  “All of them. And the dessert cannot be just similar; it must be exact.”

  There was another pause at the other end of the line as the woman crunched some numbers.

  The she stated a price to Reggie.

  Reggie gasped.

  It too
k a moment, but he gathered himself.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

  Reggie hung up the phone and exhaled.

  It would be worth it.

  Lois was at the door once more, and now Reggie could let her in.

  “Yes?” said Reggie.

  “There’s a solicitor here to see you. He doesn’t have an appointment, but he says it is urgent, and since your calendar is clear, I thought—”

  “All right,” said Reggie. “Show him in.”

  Lois stepped away for a moment, and then she returned with a man of about forty-five, unremarkable in appearance, wearing a standard middle-range solicitor’s dark brown suit.

  “Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Heath,” said the solicitor. “I apologize for not making an appointment, but I was told you are the only person for this job, so I came to you at once.”

  “What are the specifics?”

  “It is a civil case. My client wishes to have a purchase contract nullified so that he can recover his original possession or be compensated for the actual value of his loss. All attempts for settlement have been rejected, the court briefings have been filed, and because the article in question is worth well over one hundred thousand pounds, he wants a Q.C. to do the oral arguments.”

  “Contract nullification is never easy.”

  “Yes, but this was a mistake of fact. My client thought he was selling one thing, and the purchaser claims that he was buying something else.”

  “And what was the thing that caused all this confusion?”

  “My client sold a plaster bust—not an original, mind you, but a simple reproduction—for ten pounds. Moments later, he saw the purchaser take the bust down to the street, smash it on the pavement, and retrieve from it a very rare and valuable black pearl.”

  “Well,” said Reggie, “This would be difficult to—” And then he stopped. He looked hard at the solicitor.

  “A black pearl, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “A plaster bust?”

  “Yes.”