The Baker Street Letters Page 4

  Nigel had gone off again.

  His favorite print of the American West dangled from its wall frame like a flag at half-mast—damage that Nigel in his right mind would never have done. And just barely visible in the dark corner above the top edge of the file cabinet was an empty shelf where Nigel’s prized Remington bronze had been on display.

  “Odd, isn’t it, Mr. Heath? I didn’t know quite what to make of it.”

  Reggie turned with a start. He hadn’t seen Ms. Brinks come up next to him.

  “Don’t let anyone near,” he said to her.

  Reggie took a key from her, opened the door, stepped inside alone, and shut it quickly behind him.

  He stood just inside the doorway and looked left to right to take it all in. Everything was chaos—folders, forms, and legal papers of all sorts tossed about; all the books dumped to the floor, spines broken and flattened. Everything that could be had been torn, gutted, dumped, or bent.

  Everything but Nigel’s hearing notice from the Law Society—that document was folded over and taped securely to the near corner of Nigel’s desk, with Reggie’s name written on the back of it in blue felt pen.

  Reggie detached the document and unfolded it.

  There was a short note written on the inside. It was unquestionably in Nigel’s hand, and it said this:

  Can’t make hearing. Sorry. Just let it go.

  N

  As he read this, Reggie heard the door latch turning behind him.

  “I said no one,” he called out.

  The door opened anyway. It was Laura.

  “You shouldn’t invite me to brunch and then tell me to sod off,” she said. She stepped inside. “Do you know you have people gathered about as if—Oh my.”

  “I pushed him too far, didn’t I,” said Reggie.

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  He handed her the note Nigel had written. “You said it yourself—he only got out a month ago. I leaned on him just a bit—and now this. It’s just the same as last time. He’s trashed his office, and by now I’ll bet he’s checked himself into the asylum again.”

  “Recuperation center,” said Laura, reading the note.

  “Whatever.”

  She gave the note back to Reggie. “Well,” she said, “if he doesn’t want to be a lawyer, I guess you can’t make him be.”

  “Agreed.”

  “But I think you’re wrong about what’s happened here. I think it’s a burglary.”

  “What is there to burgle?”

  “I don’t know, but—” Laura stopped suddenly. Her nose wrinkled.

  “What?” said Reggie.

  “That smell,” she said.

  She walked toward the other side of the desk, the side that had not been visible through the window.

  She stood near the shelf where the Remington bronze should have been. Then she looked downward, behind the desk.

  She gasped and put her hand to her mouth.

  Reggie crossed to the other end of the desk, following Laura’s stare. Then he froze.

  On the floor behind the desk was the bronze of American Indians hunting buffalo—a replica, but even so not inexpensive by Nigel’s standards—and something that would never be found on the floor of his office. But that was merely odd.

  What stopped Reggie and Laura in their tracks was what lay next to the bronze and the damp, thick scent that accompanied it.

  It was Ocher. Or at least had been. He was lying silent and still on the floor, and with pupils fixed as stone.

  The bronze Remington sculpture was coated on one long side and a corner with something dark, reddish, and crusted around the edges.

  “It is . . . it is Ocher, isn’t it?” said Laura.

  “Yes. You aren’t going to faint, are you?”

  “Why on earth should I faint?”

  “You’re rather leaning against the file cabinet. I thought perhaps it was for steadying.”

  “I’m trying to look casual. For your secretary’s benefit. I’m afraid she’ll hurt her nose, mushing it up against the window like she is, and—Oh, too late, here she comes.”

  Ms. Brinks was in the doorway. Before Reggie could stop her, she stepped up to the desk and tried to lean over to see what Reggie and Laura were looking at.

  “Oh!” said Ms. Brinks. “Oh my.” She jerked backward at first, then just stared. “Is he . . .”

  “Yes,” said Reggie. “Please go out and ring the police, will you? And make sure no one else comes in here.”

  Ms. Brinks exited, and Laura knelt along with Reggie over the body.

  “Should we try . . . I mean . . . that resuscitation thing?”

  “I’m afraid that ship has sailed,” said Reggie.

  “You’re not saying that simply because you never liked him, are you? I mean, I can do it if you don’t want to. Although I think I heard him say once that he eats kippers for breakfast.”

  “He has no breath and no pulse, his pupils are completely fixed, and his skin is like a Yorkshire pudding that’s been in the fridge. whatever good points he once had, they’re all completely gone, along with his more predominant qualities.”

  Laura leaned in for a closer look. “Yes, I see now. You’re quite right. Oh, do you suppose this is—”

  “Don’t—,” began Reggie as she reached for the bronze, but it was too late.

  “I’m only touching the edges,” she said, holding the bronze quite gingerly in three slender fingers. She turned it base upward. One of the sharp corners at the heavy bottom edge was thick with recently congealed blood.

  “Rather nasty,” said Laura.

  “Yes,” said Reggie. “But let’s leave it as we found it, shall we?”

  “Of course,” said Laura.

  She put the object back on the floor where she had found it. She regarded it for a moment, then said, “No, I think it was more like this.”

  She adjusted it ever so slightly, then she stood and looked from Ocher’s body to the mantel where the sculpture had been displayed.

  “You don’t suppose it could have simply—fallen on him, do you?” she asked.

  “Not with that much force,” said Reggie.

  Laura considered that. “I suppose then suicide is out of the question as well,” she said without much enthusiasm. Then, for a short moment, neither of them said anything.

  “Well,” ventured Laura, “this might have been a burglar, and Ocher catching him.”

  “Yes.”

  “But if it was not a burglary, then the next likely scenario would be . . . well, Ocher is—was—a very unlikable man, any number of people might have wanted to bash him with something sharp and heavy.”

  “In Nigel’s office.”

  “You’d bash him where you find him, I would think,” said Laura.

  “Well, you’re right about the unlikable part. But the geography is unfortunate.”

  She gave that due consideration, then said, “Nigel could not have done it.”

  “Of course not,” said Reggie.

  “He would never abuse his Remington that way.”

  “You’re right,” said Reggie, “but I hope he’s got a better alibi than that.”

  “What’s making that annoying hum?” said Laura.

  Reggie listened. He knew the sound, but he was so accustomed to hearing it in Nigel’s office that he hadn’t noticed.

  It was Nigel’s computer. Reggie had assumed it was off, but he looked now and saw that, yes, the computer was still on. Only the monitor had been turned off.

  Reggie pushed the monitor’s button, and it began to flicker. Then the display came up, and right in the center was the text of an opened message. It was from Transcontinental Airlines. It read:

  Thank you for confirming your reservation on:

  Flight 2364 to Los Angeles

  Departing at: 8:45 A.M.

  Do you wish to perform another transaction?

  YesNo

  “Bloody hell,” said Reggie.

  “Why on earth
Los Angeles?” said Laura.

  “The bloody letter,” said Reggie. “He’s gone to Los Angeles over the bloody letter to Sherlock Holmes.”

  Laura pondered that for a moment, then said, “And do we think that was before . . . Ocher was killed? Or after?”

  Reggie looked at Laura, and they both grasped the implications of what she was asking.

  “Of course it had to be before,” she said quickly.

  “Yes, it must have been,” said Reggie. “Ocher heard something after Nigel was gone. He came in, around the desk, and then someone concealed here, behind the file cabinet, struck him with the first object at hand.”

  “Yes,” said Laura. “Because otherwise, if Ocher were here first, and Nigel came in after, that would mean it was Nigel who—”

  She didn’t try to finish that sentence, and now there was a knock at the door.

  Ms. Brinks stuck her head in. “The police are here,” she said.

  Reggie nodded to Laura in the direction of the corridor where the police were approaching.

  “I’ll just say hello to them,” she volunteered, and stepped out of the office, closing the door and taking Ms. Brinks with her.

  Reggie knew he would be alone in the office only for a moment.

  Nigel had gone to Los Angeles—but where?

  Reggie turned to Nigel’s filing cabinet. It had been gutted, all its hanging folders yanked out and their contents dumped on the floor.

  He began to look about for the envelope in which Nigel had been keeping the letters. He didn’t see it.

  And then he did.

  It was under Ocher. Under Ocher’s left forearm, to be exact, as if for some reason he had been clutching it when struck.

  That was disturbing.

  Reggie reached down and tugged on the envelope—gently at first and then with a bit more force—to pull it out from under Ocher, just enough to look inside.

  It was empty. The enclosures it had contained—which Reggie had refused to look at the other night—and the letters, including the letter writer’s name and return address, which was almost certainly Nigel’s destination—were gone.

  Reggie could hear Laura trying to chat up the police outside in the corridor, but it apparently wasn’t slowing them much; they were right outside the office now.

  There was no time for anything more. Reggie gave the computer’s plug at the wall outlet a quick nudge with his foot. The monitor’s display crashed out in a hazy blitz of blue and black, and Reggie managed to step away and into the doorway just as the two officers—one of them a woman, which perhaps explained why Laura had not been able to delay them longer—pushed open the door.

  “Thank you for coming so quickly. I assume you have an inspector on the way?” Reggie said to the male sergeant.

  “Detective Inspector Wembley will be here, sir.”

  “You didn’t touch anything?” said the female officer, crossing around behind the desk to view the body.

  “Just as we found it,” said Reggie.

  “I picked that thing up for just a bit, though,” Laura said innocently, pointing at the statue.

  “Inspector Wembley won’t like that,” the male officer said in an annoyed tone directed at Reggie rather than Laura. “Not quite untouched, then, is it?”

  “Reggie didn’t say it was untouched,” offered Laura. “He only said it is as we found it, and it is—I put it back quite exactly. Although I admit you do have to watch Reggie and his words; he’s a QC, of course, and likes to prove it more often than really necessary.”

  “Yes, we know Mr. Heath is a queen’s counsel,” said the female officer to Laura, rather dryly. “We got that from the nameplate.”

  “Did you say Wembley?” Reggie asked the sergeant.

  “Yes, sir. Do you know him?”

  “We may have met. Ms. Brinks will be available to him here when he arrives. I’ll be in my chambers office, at the opposite corner.”

  “Very good.”

  Reggie walked with Laura back to his own office and shut the door behind them. They were alone, for the moment.

  “You might have left out the dissertation on the sculpture,” he said.

  “I was being diverting.”

  “You’re always diverting.”

  “I mean diversionary. I was creating a diversion,” said Laura. “You couldn’t tell?”

  “Diversion from what?”

  “From them seeing you were impeding their investigation. The computer was on when I left, and off when I came back. I’m sure you did what was necessary, but I didn’t want them to notice. They might have touched it and found it still warm, you know.”

  “You’re being quite tactical, given that we know Nigel didn’t do it.”

  “So are you. The police can make mistakes, we both know that, and we’re trying to help them not make one here. But at least I’m not doing anything that could be considered obstructing. You did, and I wish you wouldn’t. It’s difficult enough just trying to protect one of you.”

  Reggie sat down. After a moment, he said, “Then you think it’s possible Nigel needs protecting?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  Reggie nodded. “It doesn’t help that Wembley is investigating.”

  “Why?”

  “I destroyed him in a cross a few years back, when I was doing criminal.”

  “So you’re worried about a karma thing, or do you think he holds a grudge?”

  “Shouldn’t matter, I guess. No doubt he’s forgotten all about it.”

  There was a short pause. Then Laura said, “You know my plane leaves in little more than an hour.”

  “I know,” said Reggie.

  “I could hardly leave if I didn’t know Nigel would be all right.”

  “I will see to Nigel,” said Reggie. “You must go to New York, exactly as you had planned. If you delay it, Wembley will think you are hanging about out of concern for Nigel, and that will just increase his suspicion.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I’m going to Los Angeles. Wembley won’t like it, but he’s got nothing with which to stop me at the moment. I think it’s a safe bet that Nigel went there to see the girl. That’s where I’ll start. With luck I’ll find him and figure out what’s going on before Wembley does.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to stay and wait for your brother to contact you?”

  “Have you ever known Nigel to ask for help when he should?”

  Laura had no answer for that.

  “No,” said Reggie, “I haven’t either, and I’ve known him thirty years longer than you. And you know he’s been like that even more so since . . . well, since you and I . . .”

  “No,” said Laura. “I don’t think I do know that. But I know you think it.”

  Laura said that as if there were more to discuss on the issue, but Reggie avoided it. “Point remains,” he said, “whatever Nigel’s dug himself into, he’ll only dig it deeper if I don’t reach him. Wembley will already think he’s found means and opportunity. I won’t be able to stop him from grilling the staff, and if he asks the right questions and gets the wrong answers, he might think he’s found motive as well. As you said, they make mistakes.”

  Now Ms. Brinks was at the door.

  “Inspector Wembley is here,” she began, but that was as far as she could get.

  “I’ll only need a minute, Heath,” said a voice from behind her, and now the door opened fully and the detective stepped in without invitation.

  Yes, that was the Wembley, Reggie remembered.

  “How are you, Wembley?”

  “Better than your clerk,” said Wembley. Then he turned toward Laura. “You’re Laura Rankin, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Laura.

  “I saw you in Chicago. The play, I mean. It was a bit over the top for my taste, but not you—you were captivating.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “It’s always comforting not to be lumped in the over-the-top category.”

  “It wa
s you found the body?”

  “No,” replied Laura. “Reggie found the—Mr. Ocher. I came in after.”

  “Oh.” Wembley nodded.

  “He was a horrid little man, you know. Mr. Ocher,” continued Laura.

  “Really?” said Wembley.

  Reggie knew Laura was being diversionary again, and he tried to give her a cautioning look behind Wembley’s back—but she ignored it.

  “He had more annoying little qualities than I can even begin to recount,” she said to Wembley.

  “Knew him well, did you?”

  “Only from my visits to Reggie’s chambers. I mean the legal chambers, of course. Not Reggie’s other chambers.”

  “So you didn’t get on with him, then?”

  “Not a bit. I rather despised him, and I’m sure he felt the same about me.”

  “Laura—”

  “Well, I don’t know that he didn’t.”

  “You’ll understand that I have to ask you this,” began Wembley. “Just as a matter of form—”

  “Yes?”

  “Where were you last night, and early this morning, say, between the hours of—”

  “Home in bed,” said Laura. “Rather, alone. No one saw me there at all.”

  Wembley had a look on his face that said “More’s the pity.” Reggie decided it was time to interrupt.

  “Miss Rankin is due in New York,” he said. “She has rehearsals starting immediately. There’s no need to delay her, is there?”

  “Not on my account,” said Wembley. “Professionally speaking. But it’s the City’s loss whenever you are away, Miss Rankin.”

  “Thank you again, Inspector Wembley,” said Laura. She kissed Reggie lightly on the cheek and turned toward the door.

  “The hotel you’re at?” Wembley said suddenly as she turned the latch.

  “Something over Central Park,” she said. “Reggie always knows how to find me if I’m needed.” She stepped out and closed the door behind her.

  There was a pause for just a moment after, before Wembley said, “You’ve done well for yourself, Heath.”

  He seemed to be looking about at the room as he said it, but it wasn’t clear that the chambers was what he was referring to.

  “Sit if you like,” said Reggie.