The Baker Street Letters Read online

  The best he could do now was to feign ignorance. He picked up the document.

  “‘Additional Duties of the Lessee,’” Reggie read aloud.

  “That would be you,” said Rafferty, helpfully.

  Reggie gave Rafferty the look that handy tip deserved, and Rafferty settled back in his seat a bit. Reggie read the clause, though he did not give Rafferty the satisfaction of hearing it aloud:

  The undersigned lessee is aware and acknowledges that Dorset House occupies the portion of the 200 block of Baker Street that has historically been regarded as containing the residence of the Fictional Character known as Sherlock Holmes, that correspondence addressed to said Fictional Character is known to be delivered to the second above-ground floor at Dorset House, and that as the primary occupant of that floor, lessee shall have the duty of replying daily to said correspondence with the form letter attached to this codicil as Exhibit A. Under no circumstances shall lessee reply to said correspondence in any other manner other than sending said form letter.

  Should the undersigned lessee violate the above provisions, or fail to execute the duties described therein in any way, the leasehold shall be terminated, payment for the entire amount of the unfulfilled tenancy shall become immediately due and payable, and the lessee shall vacate the premises forthwith.

  “The remedy seems a little extreme,” said Reggie, after he had finished reading.

  “Which?” said Rafferty, innocently. “The termination of the leasehold, or the immediate payment of—”

  “Bloody all of it,” said Reggie.

  “Well, but then of course you did sign it, did you not?” said Rafferty. “But there’s another matter. And that is the current letters.”

  “I promise you I am not about to jet off to America or anywhere else again in response to any of these damned letters. In fact—”

  “In fact, you have not responded to any of them at all since your return. Is that what you were going to say, Mr. Heath?”

  “Well … yes.”

  “We find that unacceptable.”

  “We?”

  Rafferty cleared his throat, and hesitated for the first time since the conversation had begun. “The committee,” he said.

  “I thought it was just you in charge of internal leasing. There’s an entire leasing committee?”

  “Well, yes, there is a committee,” said Rafferty, quickly. “But the point is, I’m sure this single violation of the rules for handling the letters can be overlooked, assuming that no others occur, mind you, if only—”

  “If only—what?”

  “If only you will resume responding to the letters again. I mean, in the manner that you are supposed to. In the manner that it states in the codicil.”

  “You’re saying that your big complaint is not my trip to America that was instigated by one of these bloody things, but that I have allowed a few of them to go unanswered since my return?”

  Reggie said that with some heat. It was difficult to remain calm about the letters. If it had not been for the earlier ones, his younger brother, Nigel, would not have run off to Los Angeles, Reggie would not have followed, none of the Los Angeles events would have transpired, and Reggie would never have felt obliged on principle to blow the whistle on a company that he himself had invested in through Lloyd’s of London. His own finances would not now be teetering as a result, and solicitors would not be avoiding his chambers out of fear it could not survive.

  Granted, no good deed goes unpunished. But he had not been intending a good deed. Only what had to be done. So the outcome should have been better.

  But that was history, and Rafferty was continuing. “Not just a few letters, Mr. Heath. By the cleaning lady’s estimate, there must be fifty or more unanswered letters accumulated now. And our complaint is both—that you responded to one in person, and that you have not been responding to the others at all since your return.”

  “And you’re saying you can overlook the former, if I resume the latter.”

  “We can overlook that one occurrence, yes. But it must not happen again. And you must resume responding to the current incoming letters—in the appropriate manner—immediately.”

  “Well, it may take me a bit. My brother is still in the States, and there’s no one else to—”

  “Immediately, Mr. Heath. Even if it means licking the envelopes yourself.”

  Reggie looked Rafferty in his watery eyes. Rafferty blanched—but did not back down.

  “Immediately,” he said again. “You are at least two weeks behind already.”

  Reggie smiled patiently. Sometimes one could get around the specifics of a lease, and sometimes one could not.

  “Very well,” said Reggie, standing. He towered over Rafferty. “I’ll see to it.”

  Reggie exited the leasing office. On his way down in the lift, he took out his mobile phone to ring Nigel in Los Angeles.

  There was a time zone difference, of course. But Reggie didn’t much give a damn at the moment.

  The phone rang just twice before someone picked up.

  “What time is it?” said Nigel. He sounded groggy.

  “Almost noon,” said Reggie.

  “For you, maybe,” said Nigel, speaking in a low voice. “Here it’s … it’s … I don’t know what bloody time it is, but it’s pitch-black out. Even Mara is still asleep.”

  “I need a favor. I’m going to overnight you a package. I need you to respond to the bloody things.”

  “What bloody things?”

  “Letters.”

  There was a silence at Nigel’s end. Then—

  “You mean the letters?”

  “Yes.”

  “You told me to never touch the things again.”

  “Better you than me.”

  Reggie heard Nigel first laugh and then pause briefly, apparently considering it.

  “Will do,” said Nigel. “You pay the postage.”

  “Gladly,” said Reggie.

  Reggie shut off the phone, got out of the lift, and went to Nigel’s former office to get the letters.

  The in-basket that Nigel had used for them was still there. That was intentional. Reggie didn’t want the letters to Sherlock Holmes cluttering up his own office. And he didn’t want them getting in the way of new briefs, the instructions from solicitors with new cases, that Lois would be placing in his office—if they ever began to roll in again.

  And neither did he want anyone else messing with the letters and creating new troubles for his law chambers.

  Lois was under instructions to deposit the letters in the basket and then to flee from them as quickly as possible, which she faithfully did—although, unfortunately and with the best of intentions, she had opened all the envelopes to spare Reggie the trouble, and so the opened letters were there, faceup, staring back at Reggie now from the in-basket.

  He looked at the one on top.

  It was a marriage proposal. From a ninety-year-old woman in Bolivia. But it was a tentative proposal: she wanted Mr. Sherlock Holmes to first confirm for her whether he was still alive, and if so, which century he was born in.

  Reggie briefly considered replying that she should not get her hopes up, because Mr. Holmes was born in the previous century and did not date younger women.

  But might as well let her have the hope. And besides, he really didn’t want to deal with the things at all.

  And there were simply too many of them. They had over-flowed out of the basket onto the floor, no doubt annoying the cleaning lady and causing her to snitch to Rafferty.

  Reggie began to gather up all the letters, doing his best not to read another word of them in the process. Better not to know.

  He got the largest mailer he could find and proceeded to stuff the letters into it.

  It was a tight fit, and in the process a letter fell out and drifted down to the floor, settling so far under the desk that Reggie knew he would have to move the chair and get down on the floor to get at it.

  There was hardly ti
me for that. And now Lois appeared in the doorway.

  “You have a call.” She said this with visible trepidation.

  “Yes?” said Reggie.

  “A reporter. Emma Swoop from the Daily Sun. She wants to know if you have any comment on the story about Laura in Phuket with the unnamed gentleman who—I mean, the one with the pic of a man’s fingers on Laura’s left—I mean the one where her bikini top is—”

  “Emma Swoop,” said Reggie tightly, before Lois could dig herself in any deeper. “Why do I know that name?”

  “She was the one who wrote those bits about you in Los Angeles.”

  “You’d think I’d done something bad to her in a past life,” said Reggie. He hammered three staples into the mailer in rapid succession and with much more force than necessary.

  He picked up the mailer and plopped it into Lois’s outstretched arms.

  “Overnight this,” said Reggie. Then he said, with all the self-control he could muster, “And tell Emma Swoop that I will deliver my comments to her boss in person.”

  Reggie went downstairs and got in the Jag. The tires squealed as he accelerated out of the car park, heading toward the Docklands.

  Lord Robert Buxton’s current empire included a film studio in Los Angeles, a music distribution company, a promotional racing yacht in Melbourne, and book publishers in New York—but the flagship for it all was the Daily Sun. And as Reggie turned onto Wapping High Street, he could see the sign for that tabloid’s headquarters a mile away in the Docklands.

  Buxton’s newly constructed compound was far larger than it needed to be for any practical purpose; larger, even, than that of an even more successful publishing magnate who had relocated there prior to Buxton. Reggie was pretty sure that Buxton had built his own there just for the bragging rights.

  The compound was enclosed all around with a ten-foot wall; at the entrance gate was a full security station, complete with weapons screening.

  Reggie gave the guard his name, the guard relayed that information, and after a few moments someone in Buxton’s office—perhaps even Buxton himself—sent word that Reggie could enter. Which Reggie did, after two aborted attempts in which his watch and car keys set off the weapons alarm.

  He walked rapidly across the compound, entered the main building, and took the lift to the top floor.

  Buxton’s private office was three or four times the size of Reggie’s law chambers. It had wide windows that looked across the Thames, a skylight, an electronic, dynamically lit map of the world and its time zones, and more large indoor shrubberies than the Royal Botanic Gardens.

  Buxton—about the same age and height as Reggie, but somewhat heavier—turned from the window as Reggie entered.

  “Heath! Great to see you! How have you been?”

  “Hold out your hand.”

  “Excuse me?

  “Hold out your right hand, please.”

  “This hand?”

  Buxton held out his right hand. Reggie opened his copy of the Daily Sun to the photo of the hand on Laura’s breast. In that photo, on the fourth finger of the suspect’s right hand, was the same garish, gold signet ring that Buxton was wearing.

  Reggie looked at the photo, and then at Buxton’s hand, and then at Buxton.

  “Thank you,” said Reggie. “I just needed to be sure.”

  Buxton looked at Reggie, at the photo, back at Reggie again, and then made the mistake of grinning.

  “The sun really brings her freckles out, don’t you think?” said Buxton.

  Reggie hit Buxton with a right cross. It had been his best punch in school, and he connected cleanly.

  But in the same instant, there was a flash of light. As Buxton fell backward onto a potted rubber-tree plant, Reggie turned and looked behind—and saw a Daily Sun photographer standing there in the open doorway.

  The photographer continued to snap and flash away as Reggie pushed past.

  Security did not stop Reggie on his way out of the building. He did not think they would. Not if Buxton had any sense of self-respect.

  But as Reggie got in his car, with the flash spots still fading from his eyes and his adrenaline throttling down, he began to realize what a huge mistake he had just made.

  Buxton had obviously positioned the photographer at the ready for whatever might take place. And Reggie had fallen into the trap neatly. Tomorrow he would once again be in the Daily Sun doing unbarrister-like things.

  Reggie drove back to Baker Street, with the stupidity of his mistake sinking in, and with the second, third, and fourth knuckles on his right hand turning blue with bruises. He bumped them twice getting out of the Jag, and again on the heavy glass door at the entrance to Dorset House.

  He walked quickly across the lobby, hoping to encounter no one.

  The lanky brunette from earlier in the morning got in the lift with Reggie again.

  He saw her give just one quick sidelong glance at the bruises on his knuckles, and then look away with what amounted to a shrug. Of course. Today’s sophisticated London woman was not impressed by the cave-man thing. In the real world, pugilistic skills did not compensate for not owning a yacht.

  And Reggie saw no hope of winning Laura back while his law career—the essence of his existence for the past fifteen years, his very identity—was failing.

  How would she respect a man who not only has next to nothing, but is no good at what he does? He was well past the age of getting by just on his potential.

  The lift opened now, and Reggie tried to shake himself out of that train of thought. He walked quickly down the corridor, toward his secretary’s desk.

  As Reggie approached, he saw that Lois was quite excited about something; she nearly leapt out of her chair in enthusiasm.

  “You have a client!” She said this as if it were a rare and wondrous occurrence.

  And of late, Reggie had to admit, it was.

  “Where?” said Reggie, looking at the empty guest chairs outside his office.

  “I mean, you are about to have, I presume. The solicitor is inside,” she said, indicating Reggie’s closed chambers door. “Hope that’s all right. Her name is Darla Rennie. Didn’t want to … you know … let one get away.”

  “Good job,” said Reggie, with a slight smile. “Mustn’t take chances. Lock them in if you must.”

  Lois sat back down, pleased with herself, and Reggie opened the chambers door.

  The light was dim inside; Lois had apparently been bold enough to let someone into Reggie’s chambers in his absence, but not to turn the lamps on for them. The two main client chairs in Reggie’s office—burgundy leather in a deep, wing-back design intended to convey a sense of power and security—faced away from the door, toward Reggie’s desk. From the entrance, one couldn’t even tell if they were occupied, and for a moment Reggie thought his new clerk must have been mistaken in some uniquely incompetent way.

  Then there was a voice from the client chair to Reggie’s right. A woman’s voice.

  “Your clerk let me in. But don’t blame her; I insisted. I hope you don’t mind.”

  The woman had not gotten up from the chair; at the moment, all Reggie could see was the lower portion of two shapely legs in nude-toned stockings—smooth and subtly shining, like the voice.

  Reggie walked around behind the desk to get to his chair, and to see her face. He still had the copy of the Daily Sun under his arm, and as he crossed behind the desk, he dropped the beat-up tabloid as surreptitiously as he could into the waste basket.

  “I’m Reggie Heath,” he said. His inflexion involuntarily changed when he saw her face. “Tell me what I can do for you.”

  Her hair was dark as jet, and its curls set off skin that was white to the point of translucence. She had green eyes—not warm olive green, like Laura’s, but crystalline green—framed in round gold-rimmed spectacles that were so unembellished and out of fashion that Reggie guessed they had to have been deliberately chosen to add severity to the face.

  She was small-boned, a
lmost pixielike, in a forest-green wool business dress. Except for that glimpse of leg, the deep leather chair had nearly swallowed her up. She leaned forward now to speak.

  “Lunch,” she said, and then she smiled. “I’m Darla. I’ll tell you all about my client; but first things first, and it feels like ages since I had a decent meal.”

  Her skin said she was in her early twenties; the sophistication in her voice suggested possibly a few years more.

  “And what does decent mean?” said Reggie. From the look of her, he made it even odds that decent meant a Portobello mushroom salad with fresh spinach, or kelp-wrapped sushi and rice, or a very small and selective portion of a free-range hen.

  “Anything deeply fried,” said the young woman.

  Reggie and the new solicitor sat down on plastic chairs at Marylebone Fish Fryer, which if not absolutely the best fish-and-chips in London, was certainly the closest. And Darla seemed unconcerned about it either way. The air was filled with the scent of vinegar and deep-fat fried food, and she seemed to almost bask in it.

  “My client,” she said, liberally dousing the crisp batter, “is a driver of a Black Cab. I wish to engage you to represent him in a criminal proceeding.”

  “What is the accusation?”

  “Robbery homicide,” she said. Then she paused to bite eagerly into the fish; she sat back with a contented sigh, and wiped her mouth. She looked back at Reggie watching her, and she gave a little smile.

  Then she continued: “A tourist couple from America, robbed and killed after going to the theater in the West End, and their bodies found several miles away.”

  “I believe I saw something in the news about that,” said Reggie.

  “Really? I haven’t seen it, so little time. I can imagine it would make the papers. But publicity is not always a bad thing for a chambers, is it?”

  “Not always,” said Reggie. And then he paused. It wasn’t the high-profile nature of the case that caused him to hesitate. It was another reason, and the solicitor seemed to sense it.

  “I am absolutely convinced my client is innocent,” said Darla. “And I won’t hold you to the cab rank rule if you are not equally convinced after speaking with him.”