The Baker Street Letters (18 page)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ride back from the institute hit the late-afternoon rush hour, and it was dusk when Reggie returned to Mara's street.

The detour to the geological institute had been worthwhile in his opinion; at least he had a glimmer of why the map sent twenty years ago to Sherlock Holmes might be important to someone now.

But he had not intended to be away so long. He paid the driver quickly and got out.

The rescue mission on the opposite corner had opened its soup kitchen; and a few lights were coming on in the block now. Not so Mara's window; it was still dark. But Reggie could make out white curtains stirring in the breeze. Her kitchen window was open, and he was almost sure it had been closed before.

He hurried up the stairs.

No one answered on his first knock. He knocked again. Still nothing. He called her name. Nothing again.

He tried the door. Locked.

Reggie came down the stairs and went around to the alley entrance.

It bothered him that the window was now open but she was not home. It was possible, of course—even likely—that she had come home, opened the window to let in the breeze, and then gone out again. It worried him nevertheless.

But if he could get up on the fire escape, he could look inside through that window.

He went into the alley. It was dark now; one weak lamp cast a yellowish glow on the ground at the entrance but did nothing to illuminate the upper reaches.

He identified the fire escape below Mara's kitchen window—the fire escape where, in Reggie's opinion, her neighbor had been killed earlier.

It was a railed platform, eight feet across and entirely dark except for a shred of residual light from the end nearest the entrance to the alley. The distance from the platform to the ground—some ten feet or so—was intended to be bridged by a heavy metal ladder that would drop down on release of a lever. But to release the ladder, of course, you had to already be on the fire escape.

Reggie looked up at the fire escape. He could probably manage it—struggle up onto the platform and get a look in the window—if he could get a grip on the edge of the platform, but it was a tad too high.

He took an orange crate from the nearby Dumpster, positioned it beneath the platform, and pushed off from it. It was just enough—the crate broke, but Reggie got enough of a jump to catch on to the metal base of the fire escape with both hands.

He pulled himself up chin high, turned his right elbow perpendicular to the platform base, and levered himself all the way up and onto the platform.

Now he was standing on the platform, next to Mara's open kitchen window. He parted the curtains and looked in.

Nothing appeared to be amiss. The kitchen and what he could see of the living room were as orderly as they had been before.

But he couldn't see much from this angle in the dark. He got down on his knees, put his arms on the windowsill, and began to lean in for a better look.

As he did so, it occurred to him that Mara's neighbor might have been doing this exact same thing before he died.

And then—suddenly—everything went hot, stinging, and black.

Reggie came to an instant later—it might have been just an instant—lying flat out on the iron grille of the fire escape.

A dull, heavy ache was spreading from the back of his head to his temple, and his collarbone hurt, too, from contact with the rounded edges of the windowsill over which he had been leaning. He touched the back of his head and felt a bleeding cut where his scalp had grazed the lower edge of the window.

The window itself, he saw as his vision cleared, was now shut. Someone had struck him, then pulled him back out of the kitchen window—and then closed it from the outside.

Beneath him, the platform grillwork rattled as that person clambered down the metal drop-down stairs.

Reggie saw the man jump to the ground on the last step and run up the alley. The man wore an old gray windbreaker and jeans. He ran quickly but not smoothly—middle-aged or older, thought Reggie. And as groggy as he was, he knew he could catch the man within a few hundred yards. Reggie clambered down the stairs in pursuit.

He reached the street.

He saw no one in either direction.

But across the street, half a dozen or so raggedly dressed men had gathered in front of the rescue mission. The man in the dark windbreaker did not appear to be among them, but people were going in and out of the entrance. Reggie walked quickly in that direction.

Reggie supposed as he approached the entrance that he would find himself more than a little conspicuous here, but almost no one gave him a second glance as he went in.

The mission was configured for the evening meal, with large, square, mustard yellow plastic tables and seating for perhaps a hundred.

There were easily a dozen men eating at the tables who were of the same general height and appearance as Reggie's assailant. Without having seen the man's face, he had little hope of picking him out.

Reggie walked past the tables to the serving line, where mashed potatoes, something like minced meat with gravy, and green beans were being spooned out by a man with a short salt-and-pepper beard and deeply lined face.

“Get your tray first,” he said as Reggie approached in line.

“I've eaten,” said Reggie. “I'm looking for a man in a dark gray jacket who entered in a hurry within the past few minutes.”

“I don't keep track,” said the man. “You're holding up the line. Step back if you don't want any.”

Reggie grabbed a tray and got back in line. He slid the tray along until he faced the same food server again.

“See the building across the street?” asked Reggie.

“What of it?”

“A young woman lives in a flat there. Pretty, mid-to-late twenties, with long dark hair, walks a Saint Bernard every day that weighs more than she does. Have you seen her?”

“No,” said the man. He picked up one of the thick white
plates and shoveled food onto it; then he looked up with a glare at Reggie. “Little old to be following twenty-somethings around, aren't you?”

“I'm not,” said Reggie, meaning following her around—although the suggestion that he was too old for her was annoying and worthy of a denial itself. “So you haven't seen her, then?” he said to the food server.

“No,” said the man. “Don't hold up the line.”

Reggie took his tray and moved on.

He glanced back at the food server, who paid him no further attention and continued shoveling up the stuff for the next person in line.

From all he had seen of his attacker, it might have been the food server himself. Or it might have been almost anyone else in the room. But even if he could identify one suspect as more likely than the others, he couldn't call the police—not unless he wanted to try to explain to Mendoza what he himself had been doing on Mara's fire escape.

So he took his tray and located a seat in front of the window. From there he had a decent vantage point on both the entrance to Mara's building and the side alley.

As Reggie considered whether he was hungry enough to eat what he had before him, he looked through the window and saw a taxi moving slowly down the frontage road. It came to a stop two blocks away, near the overpass where Reggie had gone to meet Nigel two days before.

The passenger door opened, but the passenger stayed inside.

Reggie stood up in front of the window and watched. It was not a location where one would expect a typical sightseer to stop.

The taxi held its position for a moment longer, and then the
passenger door closed. The driver turned the cab around, coming back now in Reggie's direction, and turning onto Mara's street.

When it had just passed the mission, the taxi stopped. The passenger window rolled down, and then the driver backed up and pulled to the curb directly in front of the mission.

Reggie, still standing in front of the window, stared as the passenger got out of the taxi.

On the pavement, staring back at Reggie through the window of the shelter, was Laura.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I'm famished,” said Laura. She was seated next to Reggie inside the homeless shelter now.

“Aren't you supposed to be in New York?” said Reggie.

“With Nigel about to be carted off to jail on two continents? Give me better credit than that,” she said. “I caught a flight first thing. They can spare me a day or two. I rang your hotel, but you weren't in, so I thought I'd take a look at the place where you said you tried to meet Nigel. Lovely spot, wasn't it? And I saw a mashed Smartie wedged into a crack, without even trying. Really, Reggie, if I can find these things, certainly the police—”

“They did.”

“Well, there you are. And then I'm on my way back to the hotel and I see you here having a lovely dinner without me.” She reached over, grabbed one of Reggie's eating utensils, and took two spoonfuls of what he was eating. “It's rather like shepherd's pie, isn't it?”

“I'll get back in the queue and get you a second helping if you like.”

“No, this will tide me for a bit.” She finished it off and pushed the plate out of the way. “Now,” she said, “how do we get Nigel out of jail?”

“The arraignment is at eight in the morning,” said Reggie. “We'll see whether bail can be set.”

“But then what?”

“You mean how do we prove him innocent?”

“Of course that's what I mean,” she said. Now she noticed Reggie's most recent bruises. “Oh, that looks nasty,” she said, and gingerly touched the back of his head.

“Let's take it as a given,” said Reggie, “that with no other murders being attributed to Nigel in the first thirty-three years of his life, two in a matter of days cannot be coincidence and must be somehow related.”

“Agreed.”

“And so it's not just some workplace squabble between Nigel and Ocher that got out of hand.”

“Clearly,” said Laura.

“So the letter is the key. The letter and the map that was missing from his office.”

“The letter that you said was nonsense,” Laura said with an unaccusing face but with what sounded to Reggie like an emphasis on the “you.”

“Yes,” said Reggie. “Which I told him to ignore, but of course he would not, thereby involving him, and me, and you, apparently, if you have your way about it, in something that I just can't see having a very good end.”

“Well, you needn't get snippy about it. I didn't say you were wrong to tell him to leave it alone.”

“All right, then,” Reggie said after a moment.

“Don't pout. Tell me more about your dead body.”

“Just bruised a bit; hardly dead. I can prove that to you later if you like.”

She smiled, but only a little. “I mean the one you discovered. The one you discovered here.”

“He had some interest in our letter writer. I'm chalking that up to the map as well, until we know otherwise.”

“Oh? Our girl's not attractive, then? The croaked bloke wasn't just trying to get her into a bit of a romp?”

Reggie shrugged. “I don't think it was that,” he said. “But yes, she's attractive. And it's a problem—because the police here think that is motive for Nigel, that he flew out here to stalk her and that he committed murder in an attempt to eliminate the competition.”

“Why don't you just tell them the truth?”

“That he read a letter written by a child to Sherlock Holmes twenty years ago and was so concerned by it that he felt he had to come here himself? I did tell them. They consider it improbable, to say the least.”

“If the truth is improbable,” said Laura, “I suppose we have to prove that the police theory is impossible?”

“Ideally, but I'll settle for presenting a more plausible alternative,” said Reggie. “I've been waiting for her to come back. Nigel thinks she is in danger, and even if she is not, I need her to tell me who the map was for and why her father created it.”

“Do you want to try again to get inside her flat? I learned a trick once with a charge card.”

Reggie looked across at Laura and mentally registered one more reason why she was unlike any other woman he had known. And for a moment, given her almost eager willingness to do so, he considered accepting her offer to break the law in a foreign country.

But as they looked through the window at Mara's building, they saw a marked police car roll up to the entrance, pause, and then cruise slowly to the front of the alley. The cruiser shined its spotlight into the alley for several seconds before rolling slowly on.

“No, it won't do,” said Reggie. “Not now. Someone must have seen the commotion. And I can't be found camping on her doorstep.”

“Well, if there's nothing to be done here,” said Laura, “then there's the arraignment tomorrow to look forward to. And I still have my cab outside.”