The Adventure of the Plated Spoon and Other Tales of Sherlock Holmes (19 page)

“Precisely!” Jeff slapped the envelope against his palm. “Let's go, then. Pack our bags, and check the train timetable. The game's afoot, Watson!”

He looked at Greer, whose mouth was gaped open. Jeff, having rarely seen the butler display shock, snapped back to reality almost as quickly as Greer's jaw snapped shut.

“Greer, old fellow,” he said, “you'll have to be both Dr. Watson and Mrs. Hudson on this trip.”

Greer nodded once, then was off like a shot.

Forty minutes later, they were at King Street Station, boarding the 507 to Portland, Oregon.

The Amtrak car was nothing like the wood-paneled beauties that Jeff had imagined Holmes and Watson journeying on in England during the late 1800s. Still, it had been too long since his last trip by rail.

Greer sat next to him, reading. Jeff closed his eyes and settled back for the short journey, happy for the time to contemplate what he knew about the case so far.

He was asleep almost instantly. When Greer awakened him, he remembered why he rarely accomplished anything while rocking on rails.

McMinnville, Oregon, was located southwest of Portland. Greer had arranged for a rental car that, to Jeff's surprise, was equipped with GPS. The butler deftly entered the woman's address, then followed the spoken directions.

Jeff thought about the online search he'd done while Greer packed their bags, and he wasn't sure which fact surprised him more—finding the woman's phone number online, learning that she still lived at the same address printed on thirty-year-old envelopes, or garnering an invitation from her for that very afternoon.

Forty-five minutes later, they pulled into the driveway beside a stately Italianate on the corner lot of a neighborhood with tree-lined sidewalks and well-maintained historic homes.

The sun was shining, but a crisp breeze swept the valley, carrying with it the perfume of wine country and the bite of autumn chill. They were greeted at the door by an elderly butler who, for all intents and purposes, might well have been an original fixture of the historic home.

Jeff held out his business card, and the man took it, then swept his arm in a gesture of invitation. Out of nowhere, a petite woman seized the card from the butler's hand while grabbing reading glasses from atop her head. “Such a bother getting older,” she said while reading the card. She looked up and smiled.

From the letters, Jeff knew her to be in her mid-sixties, but her appearance suggested someone much younger. Her glittery silver pixie cut was spiked on top, and her stylish blue jeans and fitted white shirt outlined a slender figure. The shirt showcased a necklace assembled from vintage findings that caught Jeff's eye, among them faceted chandelier rondelles that refracted the light and sprinkled the woman's face with tiny rainbows. Sheila would call her trendy.

“Mrs. Chilson?” Jeff held out his hand. “Thank you for seeing us.”

“How could I not? Likely you know more about my early life than I'll ever remember.” She shook his hand firmly. “Call me Vi. Since you've been reading my letters, you know me by no other name.”

She was on the move. “Let's go to the sunroom, shall we? I've asked Whitcomb to set up tea out there so that we might enjoy this wonderful autumn day.”

As they followed her through the well-appointed home, Jeff noted that the furniture choices were true to its architectural style. The only thing that didn't seem to fit in was the woman herself.

“Whitcomb, I'll serve Jeff. Why don't you and Greer take tea in the atrium, then you can give him the cook's tour of the place.”

“Yes, Mum.”

Greer and Jeff exchanged glances before the young butler followed Whitcomb from the room, and Jeff suspected they were thinking the same thing: Both Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson had often garnered vital information from the servant class. Jeff hoped Greer might do the same.

“Sit, please.” Vi motioned to a chair, then poured two cups. “I see Whitcomb has forgotten the lemon slices.”

“I'm fine without them,” Jeff said, but the energetic woman was gone and back before he could protest further.

She seated herself across from him. “Whitcomb won't show it, but he was thrilled to learn that you employ a butler. I'm sure he's doubly thrilled now to see that young people are still going into service. Mr. Chilson, God rest his soul, promised Whitcomb a place here till either he or I pass on. I argued the point, but could never bring myself to turn him out. And God knows he won't retire. Chilson's promise actually made Whitcomb more loyal, if that's possible.”

“Greer was first hired for the benefit of my wife. She's agoraphobic, so having someone to run errands has been a lifesaver. Of course, I've come to rely on him, too. Being an antiques picker keeps me on the road.”

“So that's how you ended up with Ronnie's trunk?”

Jeff nodded. “She left it to her doctor—apparently more common than one might think—who's a friend of mine.”

“And you said it's full of Sherlock Holmes memorabilia? I'm surprised she kept all that stuff.”

“Are you still one of the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes?”

“ASH, we call ourselves.” She smiled. “We meet on Ash Wednesday, just like the bona fide ones in New York do. I was one of the originals, you know.”

“I didn't know. Sorry, I haven't read the copies I found of
The Serpentine Muse
.”

“Not to worry. I was in college in Connecticut when a group of us girls discovered a shared love of the Holmes canon. Back then, the Baker Street Irregulars didn't allow women to attend meetings, so we started our own.

“After graduation, I married Mr. Chilson, who brought me from one side of the world to the other—or so it seemed at the time. I found more like-minded women out here, so I started holding meetings.”

Jeff nodded. “About the letters. To tell you the truth, I've barely scratched the surface. As I mentioned on the phone, I'm simply trying to learn whose ashes are in the urn I discovered.”

“Did you bring the letters with you?”

Jeff withdrew a small bundle from his jacket pocket, and placed it before her on the table. “Two larger bundles are in the car. Greer will bring them in before we leave. I'll ship any others I find when I've finished going through the trunk.”

She spread the ones before her like one would a hand of gin rummy, then chose a large envelope and removed its contents. She clapped her hand over her mouth. After a moment, she removed it and said, “I remember purchasing this very card for her.”

Jeff gave her a moment before he spoke. “What about letters and cards she sent to you? Was she as prolific as you were?”

“Yes, she was.” Vi paused. “Bear in mind, I was both shocked and deeply hurt by the things she said to me the last time I saw her. We were having one of our meetings, and the rest of the women were here in the sunroom. She was late arriving, but she didn't join us. Whitcomb told me that she was waiting for me in the parlor.

“I went in there, and she wouldn't even show her face. I suspected that her brute of a husband had hit her. But after she lambasted me, I wondered if it was simply because she didn't have the nerve to look me in the eye.”

Vi paused again, then continued. “That night, I ripped up all of her letters and threw them away. I regretted it later.”

“Do you recall your last conversation with her before that one?”

“We rarely spoke on the phone back then, before long distance plans and unlimited minutes. It was a big deal that she drove an hour each way for the meetings. Nowadays, an hour is nothing—plus, we have cell phones in case we break down. Back then, you were at the mercy of whoever might stop—if anyone came along at all. I always tried to get Ronnie to spend the night, but she wouldn't do it.

“The month before, she stayed after the others left, long enough to tell me that the private eye she had hired several months earlier had located a younger sister. Turned out they were separated as toddlers when their parents were killed, and didn't know each other existed. Ronnie's paternal grandmother raised her, told her that there was no other family. When her grandmother passed, Ronnie found family memorabilia that indicated otherwise.

“Anyhow, she contacted the sister, and begged her to come to Portland for a visit. She was as excited as anyone can be. It was short-lived, though. I received one letter during that month between those two ASH meetings. Ronnie wrote that it wasn't going very well between her and her sister, Vickie. She said that the woman hadn't enjoyed a nice upbringing, like she'd had. Apparently Vickie drank a lot, and dressed a bit trashy. Ronnie also said that her husband had taken quite a shine to the woman, though, and that the more those two got along, the more she was being squeezed out.”

“You don't think . . . ?”

“That there was some hanky-panky going on? It crossed my mind. Maybe that's why Ronnie was so upset when I last saw her. She didn't want to lash out at her newfound sister, and she didn't dare lash out at her husband, so I was her scapegoat.”

“Or,” Jeff said, “she did lash out at him, and got her mouth mashed for her trouble.”

After a moment, Vi said, “I can tell you one thing: If those ashes in the urn you told me about are her husband's, they're probably still burning.”

Jeff let that thought settle, then told Vi that those who knew Ronnie in her later years said she was hard to get along with.

“I wouldn't have believed it, if I hadn't experienced that side of her firsthand. She always had the sweetest spirit. Whatever transpired during those weeks with her sister seems to have altered the rest of her life.

“Even so, a few weeks later I sent her a funny little card, hoping her actions were caused by hormones or the like. I didn't hear back. I kept trying, though, but she never replied. My last one was returned stamped, ‘Moved. Forwarding Address Unknown.'”

She took a deep breath, as if she'd been physically chasing the story she relayed to Jeff, then blew it out in a gust. “It took me years to get over her. She was my best friend. Then, suddenly, she wasn't my friend at all.”

Jeff touched the woman's hand, then stood. From their conversation, he knew she had nothing to offer as evidence of whose ashes were in the urn.

Vi rose from her chair. “ASH has a motto:
Gutta cavat lapidem, non vi sed saepe cadendo
. It's from Ovid. It means, ‘A drop carves the rock, not by force but by persistence.' It was only after she moved that I realized I should've driven to her house when I had the chance. I should've been more persistent.”

During the drive back to Portland, the two men exchanged information. Jeff shared the high points from his conversation with Vi, then said, “Did you learn anything from Whitcomb?”

“He's a wealth of knowledge—or could be, I believe. Unfortunately, he seemed always to be searching mental files for pieces of information. It was a sobering afternoon. A good one, too, but sobering.”

“The current ways are better,” Jeff said. “You're our employee, not our servant. You're not bound by an unreasonable loyalty, and you have the benefits of a retirement plan. Everyone should be prepared so they don't have to work into their eighties, particularly if they aren't able. I would never make you promise to stay with Sheila to the end if something happened to me.”

“Thank you, sir, but I assure you, the sense of loyalty is a part of who we are, a part that is honed, polished during our training. Whitcomb's loyalty is as much to his oath and his station as it is to Mrs. Chilson.”

Jeff had never thought of it from that angle. Not knowing what else to say on the subject, he changed it. “I'm having second thoughts about our staying in Portland. By now, the funeral homes are closed, and calling them will take all day tomorrow.”

“That's up to you, sir, but I would think you could just as easily find Richard Elder's obituary in newspaper archives online.”

“
You
could just as easily, but it's rare for me to have the kind of luck I had today when I found Vi Chilson's number.”

“If you wish, sir, we can return home now. I'll use my iPad and search for it while we're on the train.”

“Greer, is there ever a time you aren't prepared?”

“I hope not, sir.”

The next day, when Sheila entered the library and announced that lunch was ready, she found, instead of her husband, the very image most people have of Sherlock Holmes: a man wearing a deerstalker cap and Inverness coat, with a Calabash pipe clenched between his teeth and a magnifying glass in his grasp.

“Well, if it isn't Jeffrey Holmes, Amateur Sleuth.”

Jeff looked up, smiled sheepishly. Something glinted in his right hand. “I thought the costume might help me find a clue. Besides, I need to occupy myself while Greer does some research for me.”

“Occupy yourself by joining me for lunch.” She started to turn, then said, “Just as soon as you shed the Sherlock.”

“Are you interested in this?” He held out a large rhinestone fur clip he'd found in one of the Bon Marché boxes. “It's an Eisenberg.”

“If I went anywhere to wear it, I might. You'll turn a good profit on it, since it's a marked piece.”

Sheila left, and Jeff sighed. He held out little hope that his wife would ever attend a large event—whether or not it called for a fur or, indeed, a vintage fur clip. The Internet was a two-edged sword, and, although it gave his agoraphobic wife access to the outer world, he feared it also had further ensconced her inside the elaborate walls of his inherited mansion.

His mind wandered, pictured Sherlock Holmes deducing the solution to a mystery here among the labyrinth of rooms and hidden passageways.

“Jeff,” Sheila called from the kitchen, “your lunch is getting cold.”

“Be right there,” he said, then muttered, “I doubt it'll ever get as cold as this case.”