Moriarty Returns a Letter (14 page)

“Quite done then, are we?” She walked quickly around the perimeter of the room, and she finished her inspection with a glance at the empty easel display at the center.

“So, you managed to get all of them, I see, with no problem?”

“Not to worry,” said Rafferty, a bit petulantly. “We didn’t damage anything.”

“No, of course not,” said the woman. “I was just … well. I’ll just see you out then, shall we?”

She escorted them back along the corridor and down the carpeted ramp into the main lobby, with Reggie pushing the trolley stacked with boxes.

Rafferty brought the hatchback up to the front entrance.

“Let me get some help for you,” said the woman, and she pulled the younger doorman from his station to help out. “Charles will load those for you,” she said.

“Not necessary,” said Rafferty. “We can handle it.”

The doorman, no doubt feeling under the gun with the hotel manager standing by, moved to help out anyway. Reggie and Rafferty each loaded boxes into Rafferty’s vehicle; the doorman picked up the final box before Reggie could turn back for it.

“No, wait,” said Rafferty to the doorman.

But too late. Instead of lifting the box properly from the bottom, the doorman tried to handle it just by grabbing the corner and a top edge—and the box collapsed.

Framed letters fell out onto the pavement, with a thud and the sound of breaking display glass.

“Bloody hell,” said Rafferty.

“I’m very sorry,” said the doorman, with a panicked glance back at the hotel manager.

The hotel manager said nothing, but just continued to observe.

“I’m so very, very sorry,” said the doorman. He tried desperately to pick up letters and get them back into their frames and, failing that, to just get them stuffed somehow into the boxes already in the hatchback.

“Stop, stop,” said Rafferty. “Just let me do it.”

“I’m so very sorry,” said the doorman again, finally stepping back.

Reggie pushed the boxes in securely, and Rafferty finally got the door shut on them.

“Well,” said Rafferty. “No harm done, I suppose. Just a little broken glass.”

“I’m so very—”

“Please,” said Rafferty. “It’s all right.”

Clearly, by Rafferty’s expression, it wasn’t.

But thank God, thought Reggie. At least they were done.

“They’re all yours, Rafferty,” said Reggie.

Rafferty got in the van and drove out onto Marylebone Street.

Reggie turned to walk back to his Jaguar. As he did so, he saw the doorman trying pathetically to clean up the remnants of the broken box and glass, with the hotel manager still watching intently from the lobby entrance.

Then Reggie stopped. Something caught his eye.

“One moment,” he said.

He stooped down toward the broken cardboard box that the doorman was about to carry to the trash, and looked closely—between the flattened sides, the edge of an old, yellowed piece of paper was visible.

“One more,” said Reggie. He extracted the letter from the cardboard debris. “Got it.”

“I’m so very sorry,” said the doorman.

Rafferty had already departed with the other boxes. Reggie took the last remaining letter—it was the one from the easel display, which Laura had read from when they were putting them up—and he put it in his briefcase.

Then he locked the briefcase in the boot of his car.

“I’m so very sorry,” said the doorman once again to Reggie, as though he had sunk the
Titanic,
and he followed that apology with an apprehensive glance back at the hotel manager—who was still watching.

“Relax,” said Reggie to them both. “It’s just a letter.”

Reggie got in his car and drove back to Baker Street. He parked, then looked both ways for Rafferty, didn’t see him, and entered the Dorset House lobby and took the lift directly up to chambers. One more nonemergency taken care of.

He had a feeling he was forgetting something minor. But he knew it would come back to him if it was important.

He reached his office. And within seconds, Lois was in the doorway.

“Wembley called while you were out,” she said, just a little out of breath from rushing over from her station. “He said it’s urgent.”

“He always says that,” said Reggie.

But of course, sometimes it was true.

Reggie made the return call in his office.

“We got prints back from the murder scene at Canvey Island,” said Wembley.

And then for some reason, the detective inspector paused.

“Yes?” said Reggie.

“Aside from Cheeverton’s own prints, there was only one other set—and they were everywhere, in the loo, in the kitchen, on a half-eaten bag of little burgers, on the trash, everywhere, in abundance.”

“So you’re saying you think he had not just a date—but a houseguest.”

“Yes,” said Wembley. “Our best guess is that she has been living there with him over a number of days, at least.”

“She.”

“Yes. We ran the prints through the HOLMES database, and we got a match. We’ve identified her. It’s a woman, and it’s her prints—and only her prints—on the newspaper clipping. It wasn’t his tin box hidden under the floorboard. It was hers.”

“I suppose that’s good news,” said Reggie. “I think I’m more comfortable with it being an obsessed female fan, as opposed to a male stalker.”

Wembley did not respond to that immediately.

“Right?” added Reggie.

“As I said, Heath, we’ve identified her. We know exactly who she is, and we know she’s obsessed, but not a fan.”

“Well, spit it out, Wembley. Who is she?”

“She’s Darla Rennie.”

Reggie felt his chest tighten. He said nothing for a moment.

Then he said, “That’s not possible.”

“It’s fact,” said Wembley.

“But Darla Rennie is dead!” said Reggie. “She fell between the spans of the Tower Bridge. She drowned in the Thames last September!”

“So we all thought,” said Wembley. “And we tried hard to find the body. But not everyone who falls into the Thames drowns, Heath. Darla Rennie is alive. She is at large. And it was her that had Laura’s itinerary tucked away under the floorboards.”

“Thank you, Wembley,” said Reggie.

“And I’m pretty damned sure it was her that stuck a kitchen knife into the fisherman she was living with,” added Wembley. “You may recall that she knows how to use one.”

Reggie got off the phone.

He recalled quite clearly that Darla Rennie knew how to use a kitchen knife. She had killed a man with one. And that was only one of the felonies she had committed before abducting Laura.

Reggie remembered that all quite clearly.

So now he called Lois into his office.

“Lois, do you know the itinerary for my trip with Laura?”

“Yes, sir, I do. Everyone who reads
The Daily Sun
does.”

“Yes. Well. We are going to remedy that. I want you to call around and make some changes to it.”

“You mean you want me to change your reservations?”

“Yes.”

“To what?”

“To something different. Anything different. Same dates, and the same ultimate destination, but different accommodations.”

Lois gave Reggie a puzzled look. Reggie looked expectantly back.

“You mean different from what Laura booked?” said Lois, as if worlds would collide.

“Yes.”

Lois shifted uneasily from one foot to the other and looked over her shoulder.

“Are you sure Laura will approve?” she said.

“Lois, who do you work for?” said Reggie.

“You.”

“Then do as I say, and get the current itinerary from
The Daily Sun,
and then change all the accommodations that Laura already booked for me and her, and if anyone questions you, they can call me. And change the routes, too.”

“But you are traveling by train. There are a limited number of—”

“Well, we’re changing that, too. Now we’re going by car. And get us off the obvious main roads.”

“I’ll try.”

“And don’t let anyone know. The whole idea is, until we get to the castle for the engagement celebration itself I don’t want anyone to know where we are, what route we’re taking, or where we’re staying.”

Lois still looked stumped.

“What’s wrong?” said Reggie.

“Sir, you’re leaving in two days?”

“Yes? So?”

“Sir, have you ever planned an extended holiday?”

“Lois, I can’t remember ever even taking an extended holiday.”

“Well, the fact is, it just won’t be possible to find alternative accommodations at this late date. Everything will already be booked.”

Reggie drummed his fingers on the desk.

“All right then,” he said. “Here’s a thought. Try the woman who runs the Marylebone Grand Hotel. They’re a huge chain; they claim everything travel related from petrol station convenience stores to flagship hotels. They’ve taken over local inns pretty much everywhere. So they should have something. She seemed to get on with Laura, and she owes us a huge favor for brightening up her little exhibit with our letters and then taking them back again on such short notice. Give her a call.”

“I’ll try, sir,” said Lois. “But it will take some luck. I just hope you’re one of those people who are lucky with hotels.”

“Of course I am,” said Reggie.

12

Late that night, on the top floor of the Marylebone Grand Hotel, Helene was in the suite that she reserved for herself whenever she had to do long hours at the hotel and there was no one with the prestige of a royal or better who would require her to give it up.

Tonight, London was shimmering outside her balcony, the view was spectacular, but she might as well have been on the ground floor, for all the good it was doing her.

She was staring at the World War II photo that she had taken down from the exhibit on the mezzanine.

Helene looked at that photo and tried to remember.

There had always been a special bond between her older brother and her grandfather; some sort of bond that she had never shared. That bond, she knew, was the reason that after all these years, and all her efforts, her brother was the CEO of the entire corporation—and she merely the manager of the hotels.

She had attributed that bond to her brother being older. She had attributed it to gender. She had wondered whether it was due to some sort of special knowledge that she had never acquired.

But now, as she looked at the photo again, it occurred to her for the first time—the difference was the bond that had been created on that day. The bond existed there in the photograph, in the faces of her grandfather and her brother. But it had not existed before.

That meant something, that the bond had not existed before. It meant something important. She tried to remember.

But now the phone rang, and she picked up. It was her brother.

There was no exchange of pleasantries. He asked her a question, and she responded, tensely.

“Mostly,” she said into the phone. “I couldn’t just pull it down and leave all the other letters up, you know, that would have just called attention to it, and I think that Rafferty person is genuinely paranoid about them. So I had him take them all back. Well, I did try to steal it out from under their noses, but that didn’t work out now, did it? The point is, the letter is no longer on the wall, so no one else will see it. And I’m sure it wasn’t those Baker Street folks that took the founder’s document, so they don’t have it to compare signatures with the letter. And anyway, what’s the worst that could happen? A little public embarrassment? I know there’s no statute of limitations on what Grandfather did one hundred years ago, but he’s long since dead. What are they going to do, dig him up and put his decomposed body on display in a prison cell?”

Her brother said something scatological in the kind of angry voice he rarely dared use on her anymore, not since they became adults. But she didn’t respond in kind.

“All right,” she said. She sighed resignedly. “All right. There might be a way. If the letter still is where I think it is. I’ll see what I can do.”

She paused for a moment, and then she said: “I took the photograph down, you know. The one from the war, where Papa died? Someone on the publicity staff put it up. It was on display, and you could see—if you looked very closely, you could see a body. Not Papa. The other man who was there.”

There was a pause, and then she said, “Well, it wasn’t right to show that in public, so I took it down. I … I’ve been looking at it. There was something that I … I’ve been trying to remember.”

He made a response, and then she said, “Well, no, if I knew what I was trying to remember, I’d remember it, wouldn’t I? But I was only five. You were nine. So I thought that perhaps you could recall what— Well, all right. Never mind then. I said never mind.… Yes, it will be taken care of. Good-bye.”

She hung up the phone.

She stared for another long moment at the photograph, picking it up in both hands, as if by the pressure of them she could just coax something out of the black-and-white image.

And then she just put it facedown on the desk.

She didn’t bother walking out to the balcony to view the skyline, not even for a moment. She couldn’t resolve what was bothering her, and not even the spectacular view would help.

She just closed the drapes, and turned out the light.

13

At the bus stop on Broadway near Tothill Street in London, the R68 bus pulled to the curb and a woman in her mid-twenties stepped down onto the wet pavement. It was raining and she had no umbrella.

But a young man of just about the same age had been sitting behind her on the bus, studying the nape of her neck and the lace of her bra when she would move her left arm occasionally and afford him a glimpse, ever since she had gotten on outside the National Archives in Kew.

It was the third time this week he’d seen her get on at that stop. He’d been thinking for the past hour as they rode how he might best begin a conversation with her, and he supposed he might start by asking her what she was looking for there—he was pretty sure that was what the place was for, looking things up and doing research and the like.

But today she had surprised him. Before she had always taken the bus all the way into Marylebone, but today she got off the bus several stops earlier.