Echoes of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon(50)

Police officer, police officer, police officer. Again, I thought, sometimes our initial responses are wrong.

As the appendix directed me, I turned to page 193.



“Are you ready?” I whispered. It was now almost four A.M. We’d entered the studio using Daley’s key. “I hear footsteps coming up the stairs.”

“Ready!” Watson whispered back, having taken up her position in the left wall’s coat closet.

“Are you ready, Arthur? Careful of the mirrors.”

“Ready!” He’d hidden himself behind the armoire housing the record player and collection of vinyl.

“Officer Lester?”

“Yup.” Jake was concealed behind the door of the right wall’s closet.

If all went as planned, we would soon know whether my deductions were correct. I had the proof we needed close at hand. In Father’s bequeathed Hitchcock, on page 193, I’d found “Copper, in Massachusetts.”

And on page 194: “Copper, maps of.”

The maps revealed the treasure: one seemingly worth arson, and deception, and deadly threats.

Underneath the groomed lawns of Stoke Moran lay a forgotten bonanza—the fabled copper lode of western Massachusetts.

The pictograms had not meant “police officer police officer police officer”—but copper copper copper.

I sent a silent thank you to my departed father, who had once again been my partner.

The footsteps drew closer.

Into the reception area.

Down the corridor.

I ducked into the shadows.

The door to the studio swung open.

“So you have finally come to your senses!” Anthony Selwyn Harrison slammed the door behind him as he entered, and with a dramatic flourish, flipped on the reliably dim overhead lights. “Now that your precious house is gone, you’ll have no need for the property. Shall we sign the sales paperwork right now?”

“That’s good enough for me!” Lester cried. He sprang from his hiding place and clapped handcuffs on the thunderstruck dance master.

My one reliable ally in law enforcement had agreed, reluctantly, to participate in my trap. I had offered him an arsonist, after all, revealing several convincing bits of evidence, including that Harrison had left the dance studio before the fire started. If I’d called it wrong, Lester would have sneering rights forever. A cop—I smiled at my abbreviation—cannot resist that. Now Officer Lester owed me a drink, which I much looked forward to. I might even wear the black dress. If it ever dried.

“What? What the hell is this? Who are you?” Even in handcuffs, Harrison demanded answers. He pointed his chin at me, narrowed his eyes. “Wait a minute—you! In the glasses. You’re that Irene Irvine! But where’s Penny Moran? Only she could know—”

Then he stopped.

“Precisely,” I said, pointing at him for punctuation. “Officer Lester, do you have enough?”

“Gotcha, Sherlock,” he answered. “And got you, too, buddy.”

“You’re fired, Irvine!” Harrison, red-faced and fuming, was no longer so handsome.

“It has been my pleasure.” I curtsied, briefly, impossible to resist.

“You have the right to remain silent . . .” Officer Lester began.

My initial reaction had been wrong, I thought again as I listened to Jake give the Miranda warning. The messages were not in substitution code. The three cops were shorthand. And the other message? Initials.

Not apple smiley-face heart, but their first letters. A-S-H. Anthony Selwyn Harrison.

Not Sun Moon Wind. But, as events now confirmed, Stoke Moran, Wednesday.

And then the death’s head. Unmistakable shorthand. No wonder Ms. Moran had fled in fear.

“Hang on, you morons.” Harrison, blustering even after the Miranda, apparently could not fathom the collapse of his scheme. “If Penelope Moran isn’t here, then who sent me that email?”

“I did, of course,” I said. “My colleague set up our own anonymous email account, and when you saw the pictograms, you assumed, as I intended, they must be from the only other person who understood them. And that Ms. Moran had—after your reprehensible arson of the home she would not sell to you—finally capitulated to your demands.”

Orange and kangaroo, the emoticons on my message to Harrison had depicted. Meaning, I hoped, “Okay.” I had signed it Pear Moon. Penelope Moran. And then, not in code, the place, time, and date.

“And here you are, arriving exactly as the email proposed,” I went on.

“Penelope Moran? I have no idea about her!” Harrison bellowed. “I hardly even know her! Or her idiot boyfriend.”

I heard a growl coming from behind the armoire. But for now, I ignored it.

“That’s enough from you, sir,” Officer Lester interrupted. “Tell it to the judge. And possibly you can also explain arson, extortion, and abduction. But”—Lester gave me a wink—“I doubt it.”

The cop and his quarry wrestled out the door, Harrison’s protests echoing down the hall. “There’s no abduction! I want a lawyer! I have no idea where that woman is!”

“I do,” Penelope Moran said, as she stood in the now empty doorway. “That bathroom is really small, Annabelle.”

With a whoop I cannot describe, Arthur Daley burst from his hiding place. Watson did, too. It was almost farcical, but Arthur’s ardent rush to his beloved’s side instead set a joyous mood.