Baker Street Irregulars Read online

  “It never stopped people blaming her,” Lorraine said, then added, “and then she wrote a journal entry saying she knew the truth.”

  “Interesting.”

  “She never said what the truth was but, on the last page of the final journal, she said that the facts were there for Irene to decide what to do about it. We’ve always taken it to mean she’d left some hint in the diary.”

  “Your family never investigated?”

  “Irene Hodgson sealed the journals in a strongbox and they’ve been locked up ever since. We only found them last year when Dad died and we were cleaning up to sell the house. Kylie’s got a bee in her bonnet about it. She made it a project to solve the mystery.” Lorraine made a scoffing sound.

  “But yesterday she made a breakthrough,” said Sherlock, “and today she’s missing. Let’s see what we can find out, hmm?” He powered up the iPad and was confronted with a password screen. He downed the third of his espressos.

  “Password?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She’s been studying this problem for months. A compulsion like that tends to bleed into everything, including passwords. Let’s see. The mace vanished in October 1891. Soooo: 1-0-1-8-9-1. And we’re in. Too easy.”

  A double click of the home button spread out an array of active apps. Sherlock went straight to the image from the journals that Kylie had been poring over for so many weeks. He pinched and expanded it, peering intently, then held the screen up to John.

  “What do you see?”

  “Shocking handwriting,” said John instantly.

  “And?”

  John squinted. “She’s writing about someone called George…”

  “Her first husband,” supplied Lorraine, “He died at her property in St. Kilda.”

  “What else?” prompted Sherlock. “Come on, John. This is the last image she was looking at on this screen, which led her to interleaving the diaries. Something must be there.”

  John took the tablet into his hands and peered more closely still, knowing that Sherlock had already found what he was looking for.

  “There are some weird marks on the page,” he said at last. “Random lines in the margin and across the top and bottom. It looks like she half-erased that top line with the date and down here where she’d scribbled a few sums and then tested the ink of her fountain pen on them.”

  “A form of palimpsest,” Sherlock noted gleefully, taking the tablet back. “Your ancestor was a very clever woman.”

  “Palimpsest?” Lorraine was bewildered.

  “An old document that’s had text scraped off and the paper reused,” John explained. “Sherlock’s got a bit of a thing for them. He’s got a collection at home.”

  “A collection of reused documents?”

  John shrugged. “He’s easily bored.”

  Sherlock, who had been flicking back and forth among the photographs, clicked his fingers in the air. “Paper! Pen!”

  John fetched both from beneath the counter, and Sherlock immediately began to scribble odd marks across the page. It became clear that he was spacing the lines across and down the page in a reflection of the marks he’d found in the journal image. Then he added the lines he’d located on images from the other two journals, four pages in all. As he added the lines from the salient page of the third journal, Caroline Hodgson’s 120-year-old message to Irene took shape.

  Irene. Tom left the mace in Lt Lon. Took by Jack and hid in Golgotha Club chimney. Serves the pollies right. Do as you like when I’m dead.

  Lorraine blinked at the message. “Well,” she said at last, “Caroline was very angry with them after they changed the laws in 1907 and forced her to close down. She was very sick at the time.”

  “Which is all beside the point now,” said Sherlock, on his feet and heading for the door. “Coming, Johnno?”

  John had already snagged his tweed coat from the hook, pulling it on over his cream shirt and red suspenders to complete an aptly Victorian appearance for this nineteenth-century mystery. His limp hardly showed as he threw the keys to their chef, Mrs. Hudson—“Lock up if I’m late back”—and followed Sherlock into the alley.

  “Where are we going?” Lorraine Mitchell demanded at their heels.

  “The Golgotha Club.” Sherlock was tapping away at an app on his smartphone.

  “That closed down in the sixties!”

  “Correction,” Sherlock told her as their Uber pulled up on Little Bourke Street. “It moved in with a friend.”

  The car took them up Little Bourke Street, left on Queen, right on Collins, and up the hill to the pedestrian-only Bank Place. They alighted, Sherlock in the lead and John in the rear, with Lorraine Mitchell shielded in between. A few steps down the paving stones, they came to a grey nineteenth-century mansion with a portico of eight blocky pillars flanking a red door set in a white frame. Only the street number appeared in the window above the door. The building was otherwise unmarked.

  “The Rivers Club,” said Sherlock, reaching up to rap on the door. “Established 1894, fashioned after London’s Bohemian Savage Club, as was the Golgotha. Doesn’t surprise me in the least that one of that lot nicked the mace for a laugh and hid it. Then the Golgotha ran out of money and amalgamated with their more successful rival.”

  He knocked on the door again.

  “Men’s only club, isn’t it?” John asked. “Is your brother a member of this one?”

  “No,” said Sherlock, “that’s the Melbourne Club.”

  The door opened. Sherlock shouldered past the doorman, who shouted for him to stop but had to turn to block John and Lorraine’s egress as well. When John tried to push past, the doorman grabbed the collar of his jacket.

  John, well-used to Sherlock’s shenanigans and how to play along with them, shrugged out of the garment, grabbed Lorraine by the hand, and ran after Sherlock into the vast hall beyond the foyer.

  The cavernous length of the hall was dimly lit, the dark-paneled walls decorated with hunting trophies and weaponry seeming to suck in all the light. Large fireplaces were set at either end of the hall, but John’s attention was on the southern end, where a very angry and fairly sooty Kylie Mitchell stood brandishing a silver-plated, ornately engraved five-foot mace. Two men stood warily in front of her, reluctant to either grapple with her or let her leave.

  “Come on, give it back,” one of the men urged.

  “Piss off,” snarled Kylie.

  “Kylie!”

  “Mum!” One of the men moved towards Kylie, and she threatened them with the mace again. John admired her brisk reflexes.

  “Oh, excellent!” Sherlock exclaimed at the tableau. “Nice to see a self-rescuing princess at work. Need a hand?”

  The two Riverians whirled to face the incoming party as the doorman ran in behind them. “I’m sorry, Mr. Driscoll, they just…”

  Mr. Driscoll, the elder of the two men, took a menacing step towards them.

  John Watson had faced drill sergeants, East Timorese paramilitaries, Taliban snipers, and once, while on holiday in the Grampians, a bad-tempered tiger snake. Mr. Driscoll held no terror for Doc Caffeine.

  “I wouldn’t, mate,” he said drily. “I may be trespassing, but you can be done for kidnapping.” He nodded towards Kylie.

  “We didn’t kidnap her,” Driscoll protested. “She broke in here last night and stole the mace.”

  “I didn’t break in,” Kylie replied hotly. “I dressed like a tradie and told you I was here to fix the lights, and your doorbitch let me in.”

  “Clever,” said Sherlock approvingly. “Like Caroline Hodgson. How did you know they’d let you in?”

  “These old places always have wiring somewhere that’s cactus,” said Kylie. “Seemed a good bet. Then I checked the chimney to see if they’d just hidden it in the same place as they did at the old Golgotha Club.” She brandished the mace again. “And here it is.”

  “That’s ours,” said the younger man.

  “It’s really not,” Sherlock
said, “and the kidnapping charge still stands. Ms. Mitchell there had gotten the mace all the way home before you two snuck up on her, snatched her, and brought her back here. Why you didn’t just take the mace…”

  “We panicked,” mumbled the younger man, and he nodded at the doorman. “Me and Wayne. We just snatched her and brought her back here for Bruce to sort out.”

  Bruce Driscoll gave both Wayne and the young idiot a glare that could bubble asphalt. Then he sighed. “Perhaps we can arrange something, Ms. Mitchell. We won’t press charges if you won’t, and if you give us back the mace. The Rivers Club board can announce to the press that we discovered it, in due course.”

  Ms. Kylie Mitchell suggested some very unparliamentary things Bruce Driscoll and the Rivers Club board could do with that mace.

  John whipped out his smartphone and took a couple of photos of the scene.

  “Bloody women,” muttered the young Riverian. “Wrecking the joint. Ruining everything.”

  “Shut up, Gavin,” said Driscoll in a weary tone tinged with disgust, “and call your lawyer. This has all gone completely pear-shaped and it’s your fault. Kidnapping? Jeez.”

  In the end, as John recorded in his personal diary, Kylie Mitchell didn’t press the kidnapping charge. Instead, she took great delight in restoring the mace to Parliament and getting a book deal to present, with added commentary, the diaries of Madame Brussels, naming historical names.

  “Her mum’s not happy about it,” John noted, back at his Strada.

  A new picture hung on the wall opposite the coffee molecule motif: the scene from the Rivers Club. John had made the colors hyper-real, and judicious editing of the faces protected the guilty-as-hell. Outraged postures, rich browns and golds, light glinting off the mace held by Kylie Mitchell, looking like a warrior queen. The picture was surmounted with text reading The Problem of the Three Journals in elegant cursive. This title made it part of a set with John’s other digital art, all bearing similar script—The Case of, The Mystery of, The Problem of—as testament to their adventures.

  (John, it must be said, knew he had a bit of a theatrical bent.)

  “She’s not,” said Sherlock, “but she’s a prude.”

  “Kylie sent something for you, though. A thank you present for coming to get her.”

  Sherlock tore the wrapping off the parcel John handed him. In it was a T-shirt that Kylie had had made especially for him. It read:

  Sherlock Holmes. Bloody Legend.

  Sherlock laughed, put it beside his laptop, and whistled one of his band’s tunes as he returned to his pharmacology essay.

  Six Red Dragons:

  An Adventure of Shirley Holmes and Jack Watson

  BY

  Keith R. A. DeCandido

  I’d had a really long day, and I was half-asleep fumbling for my keys at the front door when someone walked up to me and asked, “Need some help, sir?”

  I turned to see a man in a denim jacket, button-down shirt, and khakis. His skin was even darker than mine, and he had a short afro and a Haitian accent. He was shorter than me, but I’m 6’3”, so that put him in company with a lot of people.

  “I’m fine, just trying to find my keys.”

  “You live here?” he asked dubiously.

  I sighed. I got this a lot since I’d moved to this fancy old house on Riverside Drive and 107th Street. “Yes, I live here.”

  Then the man put his hands on his hips, pushing his jacket aside to reveal a gold shield on his belt.

  Quickly, before he decided to unholster his weapon, I said, “I have the top floor. I moved in back in the new year. My name’s Jack Watson, I’m a med student at Columbia, I—”

  The man broke into a huge smile. “Oh, you’re the one they brought in to be Shirley’s ‘companion’ once her aunt got cancer.” He put out a hand. “I’m Guillaume Lestrade. I’m a detective at the 24th Precinct.”

  I stared at the hand for a second before returning the shake. “Um, pleased to meet you.”

  “My apologies for the racial profiling.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m used to it by now. What brings you here, Detective?”

  “Tea with Shirley. She, ah, assisted me on a case a year ago. She did not take credit, for which I was grateful, as NYPD frowns on unofficial consultants, particularly ones who are only twenty years old.”

  “But you come and have tea with her in return?”

  “And tell her of some of the current cases floating about the precinct. Perhaps you could join us?”

  I chuckled. I knew that tone of desperation. I’d had it myself a few times. Shirley could be a little intense. “I’ve had one shitty day, and was really looking forward to some rack time, so putting up with a conversation with Shirley wasn’t really on my to-do list. If she’s all right with it, though, I’ll sit in.” I pointed at him. “But you owe me one.”

  Lestrade’s grin widened. “That is eminently fair.”

  I finally found the right set of keys and led Lestrade inside. We entered the fancy foyer, and I took Lestrade’s denim jacket and hung it with mine on the wooden coatrack.

  Shirley Holmes was in the dining room, a full tea set in front of her with two teacups on saucers and a pair of small plates put out at two of the big dining-room chairs. Shirley was only about five-feet-nothing, and thin—she couldn’t have been more than ninety pounds soaking wet—so she looked like a little kid sitting in the big wooden chair with the flared arms. Me, I barely could squeeze into the thing.

  “Hey, Shirley,” I said as I led Lestrade in. “Your cop buddy’s here.”

  She was arranging the pastries on the three-tiered tray and didn’t look up at either of us. “Welcome, Detective. Hello, Jack. I see you had a difficult shift in the emergency room.”

  Shirley hadn’t known that I was doing an ER shift today—mostly because I hadn’t known myself until I showed up at work. Like most med students, I went where they told me to go, and, because someone called in sick, I got the ER shift instead of the lab shift I was scheduled for.

  With a sigh, Shirley added, “Before you ask how I knew, you’re wearing a different shirt than you were wearing when you left, specifically the one you keep in your locker as a backup, you have the same soap smell you had the last time you had to shower at the hospital after your shift, there are tiny flecks of blood and vomit on parts of your shoes, and a bruise on your left arm, all indicators of the somewhat more chaotic nature of an emergency room shift. Also, you have bags under your eyes, which has only happened when you’ve worked the emergency room.”

  “I wasn’t gonna ask that,” I said with a smile. I’d given up asking how she knew stuff, ’cause it was always just that she noticed every damn thing. And it was Saturday night in the ER, which meant lots of puke, piss, and shit on top of the expected blood. “I was gonna ask if I could join you and the detective here for your tea.”

  “I did not set a place for you. However, your need for caffeine is obvious, and the traditional tea service is generally more than two people can reasonably drink, so you may join us, yes.”

  I had to admit, as soon as I saw the two places set out, I figured she was gonna kick me upstairs because I wasn’t part of the already-set service, but she worked her way through letting me stay. I was kinda hoping she wouldn’t. The detective owing me a favor was nice and all, but I was really tired.

  Still, she was also right that the caffeine hit would be good.

  I offered to get my own place setting, and Shirley said, “That will not be necessary. I am the host, and it is my responsibility to adjust the place settings accordingly.”

  “Maybe, but I know where everything is, and you look like you want to start hearing what the detective has to say.”

  “That is true.” She sounded almost relieved. Even though she had talked herself into letting me stick around, I could tell that, on the one hand, she didn’t want to do the extra work, but on the other, she felt obligated to. She sounded pretty relieved that I just gave her an out.
<
br />   Of course, she didn’t thank me.

  I got a plate, a knife, and a teacup and saucer. I didn’t put sugar in my tea—hell, until I moved into this place, I was all about the black coffee—so I didn’t bother grabbing a spoon.

  When I got back, I poured myself some tea and grabbed a scone. I started spreading the clotted cream on it. I’d never even heard of that stuff before living here, and now I’d gotten addicted.

  Shirley sipped her tea and then set up a tablet on a small stand with a tiny keyboard.

  Lestrade pulled out a paper notebook and started flipping through it. It didn’t look like his official notepad that he used for casework. He would start mentioning a case—a burglary, a mugging, a fraud. Shirley didn’t let him get in more than two sentences before she said, “That is not of interest.”

  The minute she said that, Lestrade flipped a page and moved on. Shirley kept typing all along, though, even when she said it wasn’t of interest.

  “Detective Bradstreet caught the double on 88th Street. She—”

  Shirley interrupted him. “I looked at that when it occurred, and based on newspaper and television accounts, and social media postings by both victims, I surmise that it is a murder-suicide. The couple was going through a contentious divorce, there was no sign of forced entry or robbery, and—”

  “Bradstreet thinks the same,” Lestrade said.

  I winced.

  Shirley finally looked up from the tablet and glared right at Lestrade, who flinched. “The couple was going through a contentious divorce, there was no sign of forced entry or robbery, and the husband owned the Sig Sauer pistol that was used.”

  “Moving on,” the detective said, blowing out a nervous breath and flipping a page. You’d think he’d been around Shirley enough to know not to interrupt her. “Detective Gregson thought he finally had a break in the Mehu Gallery case.”

  That one I recognized. “That was that gallery over on Columbus that had a jewel or something stolen, right?”

  “Yes, the Borgatti Pearl. Gregson even called in the FBI’s white-collar division, but the lead went nowhere, sadly. So he’s back to square one.”