The Baker Street Translation Read online

  Buxton looked at the return address, which had no street number, but just “Shady Oaks, Texas,” and he started to laugh. It was the name of a rest home, probably. A woman on her deathbed in a rest home was writing to Sherlock Holmes to give him her remaining valuables; no doubt a few coins stashed in a shoe box under her bed, or perhaps a few dollars tucked between the pages of old novels.

  So this was the sort of thing Reggie Heath had to deal with.

  What a git.

  But then Buxton had an inspiration.

  He looked about the secretary’s station until he found some stationery. It had Heath’s law chambers letterhead. Perfect. Then he took the letters and the stationery and went to the small open office.

  He sat at that desk and rolled a sheet into the old typewriter. Yes, he thought, this was indeed a brilliant idea. The damage to Heath’s reputation would be incalculable.

  Then he hammered out a letter:

  Dear Ms. Clemens:

  Thank you for your kind letter, and your interest in bequeathing your entire fortune to me, Sherlock Holmes.

  Your generous gift can enable me to bring many nefarious villains to justice.

  However, I fear it would prove difficult, given the convoluted and irrational intricacies of American law, for your bequest to me to be honored by the court. At best, it would be tied up for years, allowing many scoundrels to continue doing bad deeds unfettered.

  And although I would like very much to meet you in person and explore other possibilities, I will be off to the moors very shortly to deal with an occurrence so evil and borderline supernatural that I hardly dare take pen to paper to describe it to you. Or a typewriter, either.

  However, I have appointed my good friend Reggie Heath to act on my behalf. If you will kindly make your bequest to him, I know that he will see that it is disposed of properly.

  Yours truly,

  Buxton prepared to sign the letter, and then he stopped. He had no real idea what a Sherlock Holmes signature should look like. Neither did this old woman, surely. Nor, in fact, did anyone, given that such a thing did not actually exist.

  But it did need to look like Reggie Heath’s attempt at such a signature.

  Buxton looked quickly about at the secretary’s station again, until he found a document that Heath had signed. There was no S in his signature unfortunately, but there was a distinctive H. The rest could just be a blur.

  Buxton forged the signature and held the letter up to a lamp. Oh yes. This would do.

  He found a mailing envelope with the Baker Street address on it, sealed the letter inside, and dropped it in an outgoing mail basket so that it would get the appropriate postmark. For good measure, he marked it for overnight delivery.

  And then he heard a sound from down the corridor—the single chime of the lift arriving . This was surprising; it was still well before opening hours; he should have had more time.

  But clearly he was no longer alone. One or more individuals were on the floor with him. And at any moment, whoever had just gotten out of the lift would probably come his way.

  Buxton held his breath and listened—no, no one was coming down the central corridor. Whoever it was must have gone around the side. That meant he had a couple of moments before he was discovered.

  Buxton considered his options. Certainly he could make up an excuse for being there and carry it off with a bluff; that would not be difficult, unless it was Heath himself who had just arrived.

  But it would not do to get caught holding the bunch of Sherlock Holmes letters. And he could not get them back to their original location without being seen by whoever had just come up on the lift.

  Buxton looked about at the law shelves and documents and wondered what to do.

  And then he knew.

  He worked quickly; he knew he had only seconds left. And, in fact, it took less than a minute.

  Of course, someone would discover them soon enough during business hours. But it wouldn’t matter; he would be long gone by then. And even if they were found within a day or two, no one would think it had anything to do with him.

  There. It was done.

  And then he turned and walked quickly straight down the central corridor, prepared to bluster past whoever had come onto the floor, should that person turn up in his path.

  But no one did. He reached the opposite side of the office and turned a sharp left, heading for the stairs. He congratulated himself on another job well done.

  And then he felt a flash of burning white pain at the base of his skull.

  7

  A FEW DAYS LATER

  At midmorning in Los Angeles, Nigel Heath shuffled in flip-flops down the red masonry steps from Mara’s apartment, carrying his second cup of Earl Grey tea with him on his way to the mailbox.

  His natural British sensibilities told him that there was something indolent and irresponsible about wearing flip-flops on a weekday. Certainly Reggie would never do it.

  And, in fact, flip-flops or no, Nigel felt that he was indeed verging on indolence—even by his own standards. It simply would not do to have Mara going off to work in the early morning while he sat sipping tea. He needed to get back to work. And given where he was and what he knew how to do, that meant practicing law in the States, and that meant passing the California Bar.

  And so he had taken the exam six weeks earlier. He hadn’t thought it would be necessary to study much for it; surely it would be nothing compared to what he had waded through at King’s College.

  But it had been much more difficult than he anticipated, and he wasn’t sure now that he wanted to see the results. The casualness of his footwear was entirely a bluff—in fact, he was approaching the mailbox with some trepidation.

  With any luck, the results wouldn’t be there yet. With any luck, what he’d see instead would be a large yellow express package of Sherlock Holmes letters from Reggie. It had been a while since he received any, and at the moment he wouldn’t mind the distraction. The previous batch had, in fact, been quite fun, even though—well, actually, specifically because—he had departed from the standard responses a bit.

  Now Nigel opened the mailbox and looked inside. Lots of coupons and junk mail. No letter from the California Bar examiners, and that was a relief at first, and then it wasn’t.

  And still no new letters to Sherlock Holmes.

  Damn, thought Nigel. No distractions. Now there was nothing to do but go back to worrying about the bar.

  8

  There were days when it was good to be a barrister, and today was one of them.

  Reggie’s last remaining hearing for the day had concluded early, he was already back at chambers on Baker Street, and it wasn’t even yet five in the afternoon.

  In theory, court was in regular session until half past four. But the pubs beckoned, and judges and lawyers always began checking their watches at quarter past. Only clients, wary of the hourly fees if their barristers had to come back another day, wanted to stick it out and extend the session.

  It wasn’t all quite fair to the clients, in Reggie’s view. But today he was glad for it. The early adjournment had made it possible for him to go to the jeweler again before returning to Baker Street Chambers.

  And now he was done with court for the day, and he was done at chambers, as well. He turned off the desk lamp.

  He had not heard anything further about the alleged buyout offer for Dorset House, and he was determined not to give it any more thought. Probably Rafferty had been misinformed. Or he had misunderstood, or been exaggerating.

  In any case, Reggie had other priorities. He had Laura’s ring—the best choice he had been able to make after hours of study—in a little jeweler’s box in his coat pocket. He intended to leave now, get a pint at the Olde Bank pub to relax his mind, and mentally rehearse how he would approach the subject.

  He was planning it for her first day back from the shoot in Thailand. He didn’t intend to wait to make his move. And he would do it in a way that she did not expect
.

  But now Lois stuck her head through the open office doorway.

  “There’s a client to see you,” she said. “I think. I mean sort of.”

  “Who does he have as solicitor?”

  “I don’t think he has one.”

  “Well, he can’t retain a barrister directly. You know that.”

  “Yes, but … he’s come a very long way to see you, I think. Perhaps just a word?”

  Reggie looked at his watch and began to drum his fingers on the desk.

  “I told him you would see him,” said Lois apologetically. “I know I shouldn’t have. I couldn’t help it. And I did the test for walk-ins that you told me about earlier.”

  “The test?”

  “I asked if he is familiar with the entire canon.”

  “Oh,” said Reggie. He had forgotten about the Sherlockian incident from before; he made a mental note to be more careful in the future about giving Lois instructions when he himself was either annoyed or hungry.

  “He seemed quite genuinely confused by the question,” said Lois. “He replied that he is not familiar with any aspect of English weaponry at all. His exact words. And his eyes were not sparkly, or twinkling, or any such thing that would indicate a prank.”

  Reggie sighed and stopped drumming.

  “Very well. Bring him in, then.”

  “Yes,” said Lois, and then she quickly disappeared from the doorway.

  Minutes went by, with Reggie waiting at his desk. He was about to get up and see what the delay was—and then he saw the end of a smooth wooden cane plant itself, unsteadily, just inside the doorway.

  Gripping the top of the wooden cane was a gnarled, heavily wrinkled left hand, calloused and scarred from what had to be a lifetime of manual labor. The hand was just barely visible, almost lost, in the gray sleeve of an ancient cloth coat.

  The wearer of the gray coat tapped the cane unsteadily forward about half a foot; the gnarled hand was trembling, and Reggie got up from his desk and went to the doorway to assist.

  Lois was already on the other side, hovering to help.

  The man was Asian—probably Chinese was Reggie’s guess—and from the look of him, Reggie suspected he might reasonably lay legal claim to being the oldest man in the world.

  Reggie hastily positioned a chair—it felt disrespectful to try to assist more than that until clearly necessary—and watched in suspense as the man lowered himself very slowly but calmly into it.

  When the man had accomplished that, he said, “Thank you, Mr. Holmes.”

  Bloody hell, thought Reggie, and he cast a glare in Lois’s direction, but she had already fled.

  It was too late to do anything about it now. Reggie sat behind his desk.

  “I am most grateful that you are willing to see me,” said the man. “When I was a boy, I read about you first in my own language, and then in yours. There is not any shadow of a doubt that you are the greatest detective who has ever lived.” He lifted his head slightly to survey Reggie for a moment. “And you are very well preserved.”

  “Thank you.”

  “In the small village where I grew up, I used the accounts of your famous exploits to teach English to myself as a child. And now, many years later, it has opened up a great new opportunity for me. I was a humble farmer in my youth. My children want me now to open up my home as a vacation farm for tourists, but I cannot bear to do so, now that my wife is gone. My country is modern, and I shall be modern. Now I shall be a … a professional man, like my grandchildren.”

  He said this with evident pride.

  “I see,” said Reggie. “Congratulations.” Then, guessing that he was supposed to ask, he said, “And this new career path is … what, exactly?”

  “I have recently become a translator. I am able to translate my native traditional Mandarin into both French and the British variation of English.”

  “Ah. Yes.”

  “And that is why I have come to see you, Mr. Holmes.”

  “Yes. Well. The first thing you need to understand is that I am not Sherlock Holmes. My name is Reggie Heath, and I am merely a barrister. These are my law chambers.”

  The man looked first puzzled, then very much embarrassed.

  “I am sorry for my mistake. I believed this to be Two twenty-one B Baker Street. I must have come in the wrong door. Is it the next building?” He half-stood, and Reggie reached across the desk, ready to support him, just in case.

  “No, no, you came in the correct door. I mean, this is where Two twenty-one B would be, or would have been, if it had existed. At least the Royal Mail and a few other people seem to think so.”

  The man sat back down.

  “Then I am glad that I have not made a mistake. I saw the statue of you at the entrance to the underground station. It is you, although not a perfect likeness. I hope you did not pay too much for it. In any case, I shall keep your identity a secret if you wish me to do so.”

  This was the first Reggie had heard of any slight resemblance between himself and the bronze of Sherlock Holmes at Baker Street station. He did not regard it as a compliment, but then, the old man’s eyesight probably wasn’t all that good.

  “No,” said Reggie, “It’s true there is a statue of Sherlock Holmes. But he is simply a very well known character of fiction.”

  “Yes, your exploits are well documented in the guise of novels, and your fame is written everywhere. It was in the books that I studied in my class for students of English as a second language. The Hound of the Baskervilles.”

  “Yes, but again, fiction. Written by a man named Arthur Conan Doyle.”

  “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,” said the man, correcting Reggie.

  “Yes,” said Reggie. Now they were getting somewhere.

  “I know that he is Dr. Watson’s literary agent, and he arranged for the publication of the accounts that Dr. Watson created of your exploits. Your English experts have said so.”

  “No, Conan Doyle is not my—is not Sherlock Holmes’s—is not Dr. Watson’s—literary agent.”

  “That is sad news. But I know he must be quite old. He has died? Is there a new agent?”

  “Conan Doyle died in— Well, it doesn’t matter, as he was never— Look, there never was a Sherlock Holmes. I’m sorry, but there it is. He was entirely made up. No such person exists or has ever existed.”

  The man stared at Reggie, and then he looked at the floor for a moment, and then back at Reggie again.

  “In my country, it is necessary that a person first exist, and also that he accomplish great things or espouse great philosophies, and only then would we consider placing a sculpture on a large boulevard to honor him.”

  Reggie thought that was a very good point.

  “Sometimes we do things oddly here,” he admitted.

  The man nodded, and having scored that point, he raised another. “And how would a person who does not exist manage to employ a personal secretary?” asked the man.

  “I’m not sure I follow,” said Reggie.

  The man gave Reggie a puzzled look. “Follow … where?”

  “I mean,” said Reggie, “I do not understand your reference to a personal secretary.”

  The man took that in, considered it, and nodded. Then he removed a letter from his coat pocket, and suddenly Reggie knew what he must be referring to.

  Reggie waited as the man began to unfold it painstakingly. Reggie’s visions of a pint of Guinness were evaporating.

  Now the man had the letter open.

  “I wrote to you,” he began, and then he paused, gave Reggie a knowing look, and corrected himself. “I mean I wrote to Sherlock Holmes, not to you, several weeks ago because I know that you—that is, he—having traveled so widely all over the world, and being conversant in many languages, and surely an expert in the quaintness of your native tongue, could help me confirm my translation of one mysterious English phrase. Here is the letter that I received from you in response.”

  He placed the letter in front of Reggi
e. Reggie recognized it, and sighed. It was the letter that Nigel had sent, explaining the term dub-dub in a nursery rhyme.

  “I found your response to be very helpful,” said the man, “even though you are only Mr. Holmes’s secretary.”

  “No,” said Reggie, “I am not Sherlock Holmes’s personal secretary.”

  “Ah,” said the man. “Yes. As I thought.” He leaned forward and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “You are, in fact, the man himself. I knew that if I came this great distance to London, I would have the honor of meeting you in person.”

  Reggie wanted to object again, but it didn’t seem to be much use.

  And the man had traveled halfway around the world. Next thing, Reggie feared, he would be saying that he had mortgaged his house to do it.

  As if on cue, the man said, “It took all of my savings for the flight. But what are savings for, if not for such an emergency?”

  Reggie took a breath.

  “Mr. Liu, perhaps you’d best tell me,” said Reggie, “exactly what you hoped Sherlock Holmes could do for you.”

  The man nodded and smiled slightly, as if this outcome had never been in doubt. He began to pull more documents out from a deep pocket in his coat.

  “That letter helped with my first translation as a professional. But it was only my first. I then received a much larger translation, with many more rhymes. My employer was no doubt impressed at my success in translating the very difficult English word dub-dub.

  “No doubt,” said Reggie.

  “And so I did the complete set of translation, and I sent it to my employer here in London. Here, you see: Mrs. Elizabeth Winslow, Standard Translation Services.”

  “Yes.”

  “But she returned them to me. She said that my translations were incorrect and told me to try again. But I am certain that my translations are correct. They were not nearly so difficult as the first one. And so I informed her that if she did not accept my work and render payment as agreed, I would be forced to send the rhymes to Sherlock Holmes—as I had done with the first one—and you would confirm that I had them right.”

  “Let me guess,” said Reggie. “That did not resolve the matter?”