The Sherlockian (25 page)

Sebastian met them at the upstairs landing. He seemed happy to see them. He shook Harold’s hand warmly, and did the same with Sarah. “Come,” he said, leading them through the flat into what could only be described as a drawing room.

Sebastian settled onto a large couch, the cushions of which looked as if they’d never before been rested on. Harold and Sarah sat delicately on an opposing couch. Harold felt as if he didn’t want to break it, or disturb it, as it looked so pristine. A fat and unmarked manila envelope lay on a coffee table between them.

“Let’s get to it, shall we?” began Sebastian quickly. “What have you found?”

Harold and Sarah exchanged a furtive look: What should they tell him? Harold felt it was his duty to be the one to respond.

“First of all,” Harold said, “did you get anything from the New York police?”

“Yes, of course,” said Sebastian. “I’ve everything you’d asked for. Autopsy results, police reports, crime-scene photographs. All the bloody horrors.” He plucked the manila envelope from the coffee table, then tossed it to Harold.

Harold opened it and began flipping through its contents. Indeed, there were photocopies of the handwritten police reports, computer printouts of the crime-scene photos, hotel manifests, and a thick set of documents labeled “CORONER’S REPORT.”

“How did you get these?” asked Sarah.

Sebastian turned to her with a look of pure condescension. He did not respond to her question.

“I’ve flipped through them myself, out of curiosity,” he said. “The photos especially are more gruesome than I’d have thought.”

There was something about Sebastian that made Harold uneasy. Something about his casual intensity. His ever-tilted head. Sebastian conveyed the impression that your number was already up and he was just waiting for the right moment to let you know.

“The most interesting bit here,” continued Sebastian, “is in the supplemental section of the detective’s report. It concerns the DNA test of the blood on the walls.”

“Oh?” said Harold as he looked for the page. “The blood in the word ‘elementary’? Do they know whose it was?”

“They do. It was Alex Cale’s.”

Harold stopped flipping through the documents, and looked up at Sebastian.

“Damn,” he said. “In the story the blood came from the killer, not the victim.”

“There are a whole bunch of departures from the story, though,” interjected Sarah. “In
A Study in Scarlet,
the victim is poisoned, not strangled.”

Harold turned to Sarah, surprised that she was already so familiar with Conan Doyle’s work.

“Jesus,” she said in response to his look, “you’ve been talking about the stories nonstop for the past three days—you can’t blame me for wanting to read more of them myself. I read a bit online while we were in the café.”

“Did the coroner find any poison in Cale’s blood?” Harold asked the room.

“No,” said Sebastian. “Alex Cale was strangled to death, no doubt about it.”

“What about his nose?” Harold asked strangely.

“His nose?” said Sebastian.

“His
nose
?” said Sarah.

“The blood,” said Harold. “Was it from Cale’s nose?”

“Harold,” said Sebastian, “I’m not a doctor, but I don’t think they can tell you where in the body a person’s blood came from. They can only tell you that it’s someone’s blood.”

“No, no, the coroner’s report...” Harold trailed off, thinking rapidly as he tore through the pages in front of him. He slowed down as he found what he was looking for, trying to read the illegible scribbles of the coroner’s handwriting. The photocopy itself was blurry, making the report even more difficult to read than it would otherwise be. “Can either of you tell what this says?”

Sarah leaned in close and ran her fingers down the page. She squinted. Harold could smell the hotel shampoo on her hair as a strand fell across the coroner’s report. She flicked it back behind her ear with a swipe of her hand.

“Hemorrhage?” she said. “Something about a hemorrhage?”

“In the nasal cavity. A blood clot in . . .” Harold again let his sentence collapse halfway through.

“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re trying to communicate, Harold,” said Sebastian. “So Alex had a blood clot in his nasal cavity? He might easily have smashed up his nose fighting with his killer.”

“No. His face wasn’t bruised when we found him. His nose wasn’t broken. It was more deliberate than that. In
A Study in Scarlet,
the message from the killer, written in blood on the walls—the blood came from the killer’s nose. He’d gotten a nosebleed while he argued with the victim.”

“So here,” said Sarah, “the killer used Alex’s blood instead of his own. He made an incision inside Alex’s nose, or something along those lines, after he killed him. He was probably worried about DNA evidence. Didn’t want to make it too easy for you.”

“It’s strange,” said Harold. “He’s not re-creating the story exactly. He’s using bits and pieces of it. Is he trying to tell us something, with what he’s including? Or is he . . .” Harold again let his sentence collapse midway through. He exhaled the rest of the air in his lungs through pursed lips.

“Or what?” asked Sebastian.

“Or,” finished Harold, “what if the killer didn’t actually know the story very well? What if he didn’t know it by heart? He killed Cale in haste. He wasn’t planning it. They had a fight. Some sort of argument. Had to be about the diary. Then he tried to cover his tracks by making it look like a Sherlockian did it. Dressing the murder up with these Sherlockian clues. He half remembered the beginning of
A Study in Scarlet,
but he got it wrong.”

Sarah looked confused.

“So now you think it
wasn’t
a Sherlockian who did it?”

“I’m suggesting the possibility,” said Harold as he fixed his gaze dead on Sebastian, “that the murderer might have been someone familiar with the Sherlockians and yet not of them.”

Sebastian looked down his nose at Harold in silence. Finally he grinned devilishly, his cheeks turning apple red.

“Really, Harold? Is that it? Is that the best you’ve got?”

Sarah looked back and forth between the two men. She seemed unsure of her position.

“We found the message you left on Cale’s machine,” said Harold. “You sounded pretty angry.”

“Yes, yes, yes, and then after Cale died, I offered to help
you
two silly twats find the killer. And
I told you all about my fight with Cale.
I never made a secret of it.”

“Who’s following us?” blurted Sarah suddenly.

Now Sebastian appeared confused. “I’m sorry, someone is following you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Someone with a gun,” added Harold. “A very large gun. And whoever it is ransacked Cale’s office as well.”

Harold studied Sebastian’s expression as best he could. Sebastian gave every indication of processing this information for the very first time.

“Then don’t you think,” Sebastian said, “that it’s likely that whoever this armed pursuer is, he might be, oh, let’s just suppose, Cale’s bloody killer?”

“Maybe,” said Harold. “Except I don’t think that guy has the diary. I think you do.”

A long moment of silence followed.

“Perhaps, Mr. White, you’ve exhausted your usefulness,” said Sebastian icily.

Harold braced himself. Would Sebastian lunge at him? Did he have a weapon? Harold stepped back, trying to prepare himself for anything.

“I suggest you leave,” continued Sebastian. His voice was firm yet calm. He seemed to be a man easily driven to annoyance, but not to anger.

“I’ll be in touch,” said Harold as he made his way toward the door. He felt he’d handled that quite well.

“So where’d you get those balls from?” asked Sarah after she and Harold had made it onto the street below. They walked along Abbotsbury, under the older Oriental planes that grew closer to the park. They hadn’t discussed where to go, but that didn’t stop them from walking. Harold was deep in thought, processing the new information. He felt as if he were at the edge of something, just at the precipice between not-knowing and knowing. He was so irritatingly close to figuring it all out, and yet, damn it, he didn’t quite have it.

“Sorry?” said Harold, awakening from his thoughts.

“Balls. All of a sudden. Up there.” She gestured behind them toward Sebastian’s building. “Do you really think he killed Cale?”

“No,” said Harold after a sizable pause. “I don’t. I suppose there’s a lot of evidence that points to him. Motive, means. And the guy creeps me out, I’ll be honest. But I don’t think he killed Cale.”

“Great way to show it.”

“I don’t
think
he did, but I could be wrong. And I wanted to see how he’d react. Maybe he’d break down and confess the whole thing. Murderers do that in the Holmes stories all the time, once they’ve been confronted. Even if there isn’t any real evidence against them.”

For a few minutes, they walked in silent lockstep. Holland Park turned into Notting Hill and then Bayswater. The buildings grew a few stories taller, and the street noise a few decibels louder.

“So,
déjà vu,
we’re being followed,” said Sarah suddenly.

“What?” Harold was incredulous.

“Older man. Mud-brown suit. Glasses. Wing tips so loud I can hear them from here.”

“Christ,” said Harold. “How did they find us? And how are you so good at telling when someone is watching you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they had a man on Sebastian’s flat, figuring that ten to one we’d show up there eventually? And you try being a woman walking down a busy street sometime. You become acutely aware of each set of eyes that’re on you. It’s better training than the CIA.”

Having no experience being stared at himself, Harold felt obligated to accept her reasoning. “You said he’s older?” he asked as they continued walking, faster now.

“Yes,” she replied. “Seventies, maybe.”

“Seventies? You don’t see a lot of goons in their seventies. Unless . . . Unless he’s the boss of the operation! He hired them to follow us, they screwed it up, and now he’s doing the trailing himself.”

“Shit,” said Sarah, suddenly more nervous. “You see the alley up ahead on the left? Ten paces? Eight?”

“Yeah.”

“Turn into it with me. Right . . . now.”

Sarah slid suddenly to her left, and Harold followed into the alley. In an instant she had thrown out her arm, pressing him up against the wall. The bricks felt hard and cold against his back. Her arm felt hard and warm against his chest.

“Don’t move,” she said.

She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her retractable knife. She flipped out the blade. It was dark in the alley, even for a foggy midday, as the tall buildings on either side blocked out the sun. The steel blade appeared a murky blue in the dim light.

Sarah flattened her own back against the wall, next to Harold but closer to the alley’s entrance. Harold saw her breath in the cold air, even and measured. He realized then that he’d been holding his breath. He was too scared to exhale. He heard loud footsteps approaching the alley. The man’s wing tips sounded like hooves on the pavement. Harold let out a tiny wisp of air.

There was an instantaneous flash of violence. The old man turned into the alley, and Sarah leaped at him. Her movements seemed half professional and half bestial. Before Harold’s single puff of hot breath disappeared into the cold alley, Sarah had the old man on the ground. Her knife was pressed into his neck.

The old man clutched at his knee. Sarah must have kicked it.

“Ahhhh!” he yelped.

Harold’s eyes settled on the man’s face. His big glasses. His patchy gray skin. His thick, dark eyebrows. His nose, seemingly too large for his face, looked soft and mushy. As if it were a costume nose, knocked halfway off in the man’s fall...
Oh, Jesus.

“Don’t! Ah! It’s me!” yelped the old man again.

“Let him up,” said Harold.

Sarah didn’t budge, keeping her eyes firmly on the old man and her knife scraping against his neck.

“Harold, please, owww, don’t let her kill me!”

“Sarah,” said Harold after a deep gulp of oxygen. “It’s okay. Let him up.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. For the first time, she took her eyes off the old man and looked up at Harold.

“It’s okay,” said Harold. “It’s Ron.” His face grew flush with embarrassment. “From the Irregulars. It’s Ron Rosenberg.”

C
HAPTER 25

Surveillance

“Danger is part of my trade.”

—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,

“The Adventure of the Final Problem”

November 12, 19oo

Arthur inhaled a deep lungful of Morris tobacco, then coughed it up, sputtering as a mist of gray smoke floated up into the gaslight above him. He leaned against the streetlamp and inhaled again on his cigarette. Arthur was not a regular cigarette smoker, and yet he felt that while one was engaged in the work of surveillance, smoking seemed the only practicable method for passing the time. He glanced across the street, into the third-floor window of a moderate four-story. The lights were on inside, and they shone clear out into the night. He saw a figure move in front of the window, framed in the light like an actor in a Chinese shadow play. Arthur instantly stepped backward, out of the narrow beam of the streetlight above him, and dipped his head. The figure in the window was Emily, the petite suffragist from the night before, and it was of the utmost importance that she not discover Arthur spying on her. She passed out of the window’s frame, deeper into her flat and out of Arthur’s vision. He took another puff of his Morris, this one a bit less full. Goodness, was not surveillance the most infernally tedious activity to which he’d ever submitted himself?

The “chase” the previous evening had been so utterly typical that Arthur felt he must have scripted it himself. Emily had dashed into a passing two-wheeler on Palmer Street, and Arthur and Bram had quickly found another free cab behind her. They had shown their driver a handful of coins and let him know that it would be his fee were he to successfully follow the two-wheeler up ahead to its destination. He’d given Arthur a heartening “As you say, ma’am” and whipped at his reins. If the cabbie had any concerns as to the disassociation between Arthur’s clothing and his voice, he did not express them.