Moriarty Returns a Letter (9 page)

He was now harboring a wanted woman. A fugitive. He was almost sure of it.

But perhaps she hadn’t really done any of the things she was wanted for. From just looking at her, it was quite difficult to imagine that she had done them.

Cheeverton didn’t ring the Thames patrol. Perhaps he would do so later. Not now. He would sleep on it. There was no harm waiting until morning, and so he did.

And the next morning, when she woke, she began to speak. This was good, thought Cheeverton—perhaps it would help him decide what to do.

But all she did was ask questions:

“Where am I?” she said. “Who are you? How did I get here?”

Those questions seemed natural enough, at first. But when he told her that he had fished her out of the river and then she asked, “How did I get in the river?”—well, then he began to wonder a bit. She should remember how she got in the river.

“Don’t you know?” he said.

But she had not answered; she just stopped talking and lay back and closed her eyes.

As she lay there, Cheeverton studied her calm face and he wondered if perhaps she was not the person from the news reports at all. Or even if it was her, perhaps the telly reports might have gotten it all wrong. Perhaps she was not the criminal that they all said.

Perhaps she was just misunderstood.

Later that morning, Cheeverton went out and got a newspaper, brought it back, and then he fixed another breakfast for her.

While she ravenously devoured the toast and bacon and tea that he brought her, Cheeverton opened up his morning copy of
The Daily Sun
.

And then he quickly shut it. He stared across at her, just to be absolutely sure, and then he opened the paper again, but this time more carefully, below the table, out of her line of sight.

It was all right there in the paper. Her name, her color photo, and everything. More than Cheeverton really wanted to know. This was her.

Her name was Darla Rennie. She was twenty-five years old, according to the tabloid. It had dubbed her a schizophrenic savant, because although she clearly had some difficulty distinguishing personal fantasy from reality, she was also a sort of genius at learning things. But she had gone off her meds, believing and proclaiming herself to be the great-great-granddaughter, on her mother’s side, of someone named Moriarty—yes, the paper said, that Moriarty, the Professor Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes stories. And while under that delusion, she had become obsessed with a barrister, one Reggie Heath, who currently occupied the location at Baker Street where 221B would be, if it truly existed, and whom she believed to be Sherlock Holmes and therefore responsible for the death of her ancestor Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls, and as a result of that obsession she had murdered one of Reggie Heath’s clients and had made an apparent attempt to abduct Laura Rankin—ending, as everyone now knew, in Darla Rennie herself plunging from the Tower Bridge into the Thames.

“What is in the paper?” said Darla Rennie, wiping her mouth and looking up at Cheeverton.

“Nothing,” lied Cheeverton. He tried to glance down and look at the paper he was holding beneath the table, because there were more details there—something about how the client was murdered, and other things, which Cheeverton felt in his gut he probably should read.

“Are you sure?” she said.

“Yes,” said Cheeverton, without finishing the article. He quickly closed the tabloid, and tossed it out of reach onto the kitchen counter. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“Better,” she said. “I was so hungry. May I have coffee?”

He brought her coffee. And now she began talking eagerly, in a torrent. But still none of it was about her. It was all questions—first about Cheeverton, and then about the village nearby, and then about pretty much everything else in the world, seemingly at random. He had never known anyone who asked so many questions, and he had never answered so many in his life. She might as well have been a mermaid, for all she seemed to know of the world.

And suddenly Cheeverton understood, so clearly—from the things that she asked and the things that she could not respond to when he asked questions back—that she simply did not know who she was.

Within a few days she seemed to be completely recovered physically, and quite aware mentally—very bright in fact—even if she didn’t know her own identity.

It had become a problem now to know what to do. The police were looking for her. Everyone in the Thames basin, it seemed, was talking about her.

Cheeverton did not think it would do to take her to the pub with him. Even if she was not specifically recognized, for her to be seen with him would cause the entire town to talk. He would have to explain her presence—and he had no explanation to offer for this woman half his age. At least none that the town would accept without it becoming a focus of public attention.

So he told no one.

A full week went by. Remarkably, she gave no indication that she wanted to leave. She seemed perfectly content to go out with him onto the river in his little boat every day. It was almost his normal routine. They would rise well before dawn—earlier than the other Thames fishermen, because Cheeverton did not want to encounter anyone on their way to the dock. She would help him cast off and mind the engine, and perform other basic tasks, although she showed no interest in the fishing itself. She would just sit near the bow and watch, like a small terrier that he had once years ago.

In the full morning, with other boats on the river, Cheeverton would keep an eye out for any that came too close. Once, Thaddeus Sizemore’s boat had appeared out of a fog bank, just fifty yards or so off to starboard, and then had suddenly turned and come in Cheeverton’s direction.

“I think you’d best go below now,” he’d said then to the woman, and she had done so quickly, and without another word.

Sizemore had brought his boat up alongside and asked Cheeverton how productive his morning had been. Sizemore had never done that before; he was older and even more taciturn than Cheeverton, and unlike most of the small net trawlers, he rarely volunteered anything about his own catch, or inquired about anyone else’s. But on this day he had come over full of curiosity, to the point that Cheeverton finally just started the motor on his own boat and moved on.

That evening, in the pub, Sizemore stood at the bar and kept looking sidelong in Cheeverton’s direction. Had Sizemore seen her? Cheeverton couldn’t be sure, but he was taking no chances, and he left the pub after his first pint.

Months had flowed by in that manner. Cheeverton had pulled her from the Thames in early autumn, and now it was solid winter.

Had she warmed to him? He couldn’t tell. She had not indicated any desire to venture from her little cot into his bedroom, though he himself lay awake agonizing about that fantasy nightly. But neither had she shown any restlessness or a desire to leave.

Until just recently.

The wind was cold and the water was cold, but even so, she had begun to walk down to the deserted shore in the late afternoon. She would walk barefoot, though there were sharp shells among the pebbles, and then she would sit on the damp sandbank and just stare out for hours, until the sun set. He had no idea what she might be thinking.

And now, just in the past couple of weeks, she no longer wanted to go out with him fishing on the boat. She wanted to stay behind, and though he knew there was risk in that—that she might be discovered—it didn’t feel right, or wise, to deny her.

And then, just a few days ago, she had asked him for bus fare to London.

He asked if she knew how to get about in the city. She said that’s what buses are for.

And it had become clear to him that her remaining amnesia was, apparently, only regarding her own personal specifics—she might not know her own name, or where she was from, or what she had done in the past, but she had no difficulty now with any of the details of the world around her.

He gave her the fare. But he asked her to promise that she would avoid their little local village—she would just go to the bus stop and get on the bus, and if she should encounter anyone along the way she would not stop to talk to them.

She had agreed.

And when he returned from his boat late that afternoon, he was greatly relieved to discover that she had returned home.

The same thing happened the next day. And the next day as well—but this time, when he returned from his boat, she was not already there at their home. He had to wait. And the next night, he had to wait even longer.

He would ask her where she had been, and she would tell him, but without much editorial comment at all:

She had been to the British Museum. She had taken the bus all the way out to the National Archives. She had taken the tube to Baker Street and gone for a walk.

Did she see anything she liked at the British Museum? He had never been there himself, except once in a group trip in primary school.

She shrugged.

Why did she go to the National Archives? Not much to see there, really, was there? He had never been there, either, but it sounded like just a lot of dusty old paper.

She shrugged. She said it was a very large place and she wanted to go back there again.

What did she see on Baker Street?

She looked down at her fried flounder, put a bit of it on her fork and then in her mouth, smiled slightly—and shrugged.

She hadn’t quite said so, but he was almost certain now—she was remembering who she was.

What all the consequences of that would be he didn’t know. But he knew what one of them would be—she would leave or she would be found out, but either way, he knew she would soon be gone.

He began to wonder how he would endure such a loss again.

6

A FEW DAYS LATER, IN BAKER STREET

“I’m tired of places with bright sun and warm turquoise water and fine white sand that pleasantly tickles one’s toes without sticking to them,” said Laura Rankin. She was sitting on the mahogany desk in Reggie Heath’s law chambers office, she had her shoes off, her red hair on the verge of being undone, and she wiggled those freckled toes as she said it. “I’m ready to go someplace dour.”

“Your aunt’s manor house in Newquay certainly qualifies on that account,” said Reggie. He supposed he could understand why Laura was bored with white sandy beaches; she had been on a location shoot in the South Seas for several months during the past year. But he had not.

“It’s not a manor house; it’s a genuine castle,” said Laura. “I mean, not the type intended for repelling military invaders and such, but imposing enough to intimidate poor peasants who dared to hunt deer in the woods. Though my aunt Mabel says she’s pretty sure the original Earl of Darby never once tried to stop them. Just in case he ever did, she volunteers her time now for lots of good causes. But anyway, it is a castle, and if you don’t believe me now, you will when you realize there’s still no indoor plumbing on the top floor. And the estate has its own trout streams. You can fly fish.”

“I don’t know how to fly fish,” said Reggie, “and I don’t plan on spending our engagement trip with trout.”

“Well, I suppose that’s not what I have in mind for you, either,” said Laura. “But my aunt is my last living relative, and there is this family tradition to uphold. We have a coat of arms bolted in above the main fireplace, with a Latin or Gaelic motto, I forget which, inscribed at the bottom, that says: ‘Everybody has to get engaged in the castle and get drunk after.’ I mean, words to that effect, anyway. It’s all very imposing, almost as much so as my aunt, and I really can’t fly in the face of either one. Don’t pretend you didn’t know this about me.”

Reggie did know that about her. But as much as he would have preferred tickling her toes on the white sands of the beach she had just described, his expressed annoyance at the prospect of traveling instead through dark and foggy moors in the dead of winter was almost completely feigned, and mostly just for her entertainment.

The fact was, after coming so close to losing Laura in so many ways in the past two years, he was now so relieved to have it all settled—he was now so completely committed and eager—that she could have insisted that they spend the night in the dungeon of the blasted castle and he would have happily agreed.

Two years ago, on a dry, windy Los Angeles movie lot, she had—well, dumped him, he had to admit—for not being able to make up his mind, let go of some ghosts of his past, and commit.

In the year after that, with Reggie consigned to a sort of Laura-less purgatory, she had very nearly said yes to Lord Robert Buxton—the publisher of
The Daily Sun
and owner of a vast media conglomerate, a man infinitely more wealthy and powerful than Reggie could ever hope to be.

And then, just this past September, Laura had very nearly been driven off the Tower Bridge and into the Thames by Darla Rennie, a schizophrenic young woman who had gone off her meds and believed Reggie Heath to be Sherlock Holmes and therefore responsible for the death of a nineteenth-century ancestor named Moriarty.

As it turned out, it was the young woman herself who plunged into the Thames, never to be seen again. So that obstacle, complete with its delusions, had been carried out to sea. Problem solved.

And in the months since, Laura had worked through her remaining Buxton issues—saving the life of the pompous ass in fact, thereby making it easier for her to say no to him. Problem solved there, too.

Even so—Reggie knew life to be uncertain. And it seemed to him of late that the world wanted nothing more than to break him and Laura apart—even if one or the other of them had to be destroyed to do it.

He was determined not to let that happen. If anything—or anyone—did try to bollux things up for them now, that would-be bolluxer would be dealt with in short order. Because Reggie was now on the lookout.

“Beware the moors,” he said now, lightly. “I’m pretty sure that’s the Gaelic they write on the walls at most of those castles.”

Laura leaned in toward Reggie, pushing aside some legal documents.

“Sometimes they write: ‘You shall bring no work with you,’” she said, warmly, in his ear.