The Art of Detection Read online

  “Late on Monday, yes, after his family had been notified. Mr. Gilbert’s lawyer said that you and Philip were friends?”

  “Ah, you talked with Tom—I wondered how my name had come up. We were friends. As much as Philip actually had friends.”

  Rutland had made a similar remark, Kate reflected, although the lawyer had been matter-of-fact about it, whereas in Nicholson she sensed a well of regret. “Mr. Gilbert seems to have led a rich fantasy life.”

  At that, Nicholson’s face shifted into a crooked smile, and he reached forward to spoon sugar into his cup. “You’re talking about his house? He did carry it all a good way beyond the necessary.”

  “You know him through the Sherlock Holmes thing?” Kate asked.

  He finished stirring his drink, set the spoon on the tray, and eased himself back into the embrace of the sofa. “We met about five or six years ago, when I was living in New York. I was at one of the big auction houses, and they’d put me in charge of organizing a Holmes collection for sale. Philip came out for the auction. He has—” Nicholson caught himself, and repeated the crooked smile. “He had a good working knowledge of antiquities and collectibles, but my own area of expertise is manuscripts, and there were a couple of letters from Conan Doyle in the lot. They were genuine, although not particularly valuable, and Philip ended up buying them. Then a few weeks later he wrote to me about another set of letters he’d come across, asking if I would authenticate them for him—for a fee, of course. I looked, found that three of the seven were fakes, and he said he’d thought something was wrong but couldn’t figure out what. Anyway, to save you the tiresome details, perhaps two or three times a year he’d either show up for an auction or bring me something to look at—he found some fascinating stuff, had a real nose for it, so to speak. Sorry, bad joke. Anyway, when I moved out here, about five years ago, I started seeing him socially as well. He was a real character, was Philip. He could be difficult, or utterly charming, even at the same time. Not unlike Holmes himself, I have to say. We’re all going to miss him terribly.”

  Kate sipped her coffee and listened to the echoes of that last statement. The sentiment was honest, she thought, but there was also a kind of formulaic meaninglessness that concealed the opposite, as if one might also speak of missing a toothache. Certainly it would seem that in general, people’s reactions to Philip Gilbert were complex.

  “When did you last see Philip?”

  “Just before I left. Which was Saturday. Saturday before last, that is, the twenty, what is it? Twenty-fourth, I guess. I’ve been up in Seattle for a friend’s funeral, and making various duty visits to family in Oregon on the way back down.”

  “And you drove? That’s a lot of miles.”

  “I don’t like flying.” From the flat tone of his voice, Nicholson meant that he really didn’t like flying.

  “I see. What time was that, on the Saturday?”

  “He called around, oh, eight, eight-fifteen, just as I was loading the car, to ask if I would look at something for him. I told him I’d be gone for a while, he said that in that case he’d give me a photocopy to look at while I was away. He sounded terribly excited, which was unlike him—he invariably cultivated a phlegmatic air. I tried to put him off, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, said I’d regret passing on it, that he’d be here in an hour with the thing. I didn’t much want to wait around, but he was insistent, so I said I would.

  “He was a lot more than an hour, but I waited, and when he came I could see why he’d given me a copy—there were over a hundred pages of typescript. He wanted me to read it, get a preliminary feel for its content, and then when I returned, he’d let me see the original. I won’t render judgment on a document I haven’t actually handled, of course, but I’d done these preliminary reports before, and they come with no guarantee.

  “So I took the folder—rather churlishly I’m afraid, since it was by then nearly noon—and told him I’d try to look at it but I couldn’t promise, I’d be busy. But he was so, I don’t know, cock-a-hoop over the thing that he practically rubbed his hands and said he didn’t think I’d want to wait too long, that he was going to be showing it to others very soon.

  “I finally managed to leave, and since I clearly wasn’t going to make it to my friends in Salem before dark I figured I might as well take my time. When I drove through the Lake Shasta area, it looked worth stopping at, so I found a motel and wandered around for a while, which was actually quite restful. Silver linings and all that. Then when I was going through my bag before dinner, I came across the typescript and took it along for a look. At first glance, my heart sank, because as far as I could see it was just another pastiche. Er, are you familiar with the word?”

  “I know what a pastiche is.” More or less.

  “The world of the Sherlockian is littered with pastiches, most of them either bad or just plain silly. Even while Conan Doyle was still active, people were writing ‘missing Holmes adventures,’ often under the pretense that Conan Doyle had written it but for one reason or another not published it. Perhaps I should make clear that, with the possible exception of one story written by his son, these aren’t forgeries, they’re just, as it were, homages. It’s a game, played openly. For one thing, it’s patently absurd to assume that Sir Arthur left much of anything unpublished. In the early days, he had a family to support and a sick wife, but even after he became famous he didn’t tend to write something and then leave it in his desk. Particularly not something the length of what Philip gave me.”

  Kate nodded her head, as she’d done at regular intervals ever since his tale began, although she had to wonder where this was leading, and what it could possibly have to do with murder.

  As if he had heard her doubt, Nicholson was shaking his head and looking distressed. “By the time I finished it, I already wished I could say that the thing was a joke. But I couldn’t, not anywhere near, and that meant Philip was going to land in it with both feet. You probably have no concept of the size of the controversy that was going to blow up over this, but I’ve seen the whole machinery of claim and counterclaim, and it’s an ugly thing to have descend on a friend.

  “In any case, within the first few pages, the thing pricked my interest. As a pastiche, it’s not half bad, and on the surface it has something of Conan Doyle’s style—although I would wish to subject it to a detailed linguistic analysis before I put that into a report. Thematically, the story, if one lays aside the considerable problem of content and the lesser problems of setting—it takes place here in San Francisco—and an unusual length, is nonetheless sufficiently complex and atmospheric to pass for an original. The writer even managed to avoid the more common markers of a fake—giving Holmes a calabash pipe, for example, which Conan Doyle never did, or trundling out the hackneyed old phrase ‘Elementary, my dear Watson.’ Also not used by Sir Arthur.

  “So although I started out assuming Philip had bought a pig in a poke, if not fallen victim to an outright hoax, once I’d read the thing, I was forced to treat it like a serious project. I got out my laptop and did some research, and found that as I had vaguely remembered, Conan Doyle did indeed spend some time here in San Francisco, on one of his Spiritualist tours—were you aware that Doyle was a believer in the spirit world?”

  “Er, no,” Kate replied.

  “A real nutter, Doyle was—mediums, ectoplasm utomatic writing, the lot. Believed that Houdini actually dematerialized to get out of his chains, for example. He kept trying to get in touch with his dead son and his beloved mother, refused to believe that they were absolutely gone. He went on worldwide speaking tours for the cause, including San Francisco in 1923, and as the story Philip gave me appears to be set at about that time, it’s not out of all possibility.”

  Kate finished her coffee and put her cup into its saucer, firmly; clearly the tale was not leading anywhere, and she’d merely stumbled into another nutter’s passion. “Sir,” she started, but he wasn’t finished with his thought, and spoke as he reached for t
he coffee to refill their cups.

  “Actually, there’s a funny coincidence there, or not funny, just sad, I suppose. Unless of course Philip’s body was found in a gun emplacement.” The offhand final remark was accompanied by a smile, but when Kate didn’t immediately answer, Nicholson’s eyes rose, and at the expression on her face he sat up sharply, the carafe in his hand forgotten. “You don’t mean to tell me…?”

  “Why did you ask about the location of the body, Mr. Nicholson?”

  “In the gun emplacement, you mean? I meant it as a joke—you don’t mean to say that’s where he was found?”

  “Why?” she repeated.

  “Because in the story, that’s where the body is found. In a gun emplacement on the Marin headlands.”

  “Mr. Nicholson,” Kate said grimly, “maybe I’d better have a look at this story of yours.”

  WHEN Kate walked back through the bare courtyard, some forty minutes after she had arrived, she startled a solitary sparrow from its bath in the fountain. The tiny bird circled around and around the high enclosing walls, gradually gaining height with each pass of the spiral until it came to a gap between apartments and ducked away into the sunlight.

  Back at the car, Kate tossed the photocopy Nicholson had made for her onto the passenger seat, a sheaf of plain white paper held together with a big clip. His had been printed on a substantial buff-colored paper and tucked into a clear cover; she had been inclined to demand his original, but when he seemed loath to let it go, she relented, and allowed him to make her a copy on his home printer. When he’d taken it off the machine and handed it to her, she realized she’d probably seen the original in Gilbert’s bank vault, a hundred-odd pages of old typescript in a plastic envelope. But she said nothing to Nicholson, and took the copy of his copy.

  She paused with the car door open, running her eyes across the row of garages, wondering how many of them were occupied. She then turned to look back at the apartment building’s empty foyer. She hadn’t seen another soul in the place, no sign of life besides Nicholson and the small brown bird. Once upon a time, that might have seemed normal to her, even desirable. Now it just seemed sad.

  She checked her cell phone for messages, finding nothing of any importance, then started the car and set off for the Hall of Justice. As she waited to cross Market Street, she glanced down at the passenger seat, flipping the document over so the print side was up. As she read the opening lines, she felt her face twist, either in irritation or amusement, she could not have said which:

  The mind is a machine ill suited to desuetude. The occasional holiday is all very well, but without the oil of challenge and the heat generated by effort, the mind rusts and seizes and is unavailable when needed.

  I found myself in San Francisco one spring evening, my travelling companion temporarily about other business and my mind at a loss for a load to carry. Recent days had seen the successful conclusion of a case not without interest, but after forty-eight hours of solitary leisure, a dangerous restlessness had begun to set in, so I cast

  An impatient horn sounded; Kate slapped the car into gear and drove off, lifting an apologetic hand to the man behind her.

  She’d worked homicide for going on a dozen years now. She’d come across bodies dead from gang disputes and domestic madness, drug-fueled rage and cold-blooded greed, sexual perversion and criminal neglect. Never in all that time had she even heard hint of a person killed over an eighty-year-old short story.

  Lee was going to love this.

  And what the hell was desuetude, anyway?

  SIX

  Kate worked the phone for a while from her desk, first checking on Ian Nicholson’s alibi—and indeed, all was as he told her, from his Saturday motel to his Sunday arrival in Seattle—then trying to get a handle on the history of this document with the odd coincidence. She started with the bigger dealers in town who handled manuscripts and old maps, but after three of those suave individuals went from polite to hungry in seconds flat, she turned to Tom Rutland. He had indeed heard the rumors of a Sherlock Holmes story—the Sherlockian world had been aflutter for weeks with talk of such a thing, even before the brief Chronicle article that Philip had sent the Diners in the middle of January, but no one, including Philip Gilbert, had admitted to knowing anything concrete about it.

  “Would it surprise you to know that your client had a copy of the story?”

  “Did he? What a rat bas—I mean, what a rat. He sat there at the last dinner and said not a thing, even though that rumor was the main topic of conversation.”

  “That would have been the dinner at his house?”

  “That’s right. We keep talking about having the January meeting set on the sixth, which is generally accepted as Holmes’s birthday, but since some of us go back to New York for the BSI dinner, which is always that first weekend in the year, we’ve decided to keep ours on the Wednesday. That way we can have a report, if anyone goes back.”

  “Right. The seventh of January. Which is funny, because according to his ledger, he received the manuscript in the first part of December.”

  “He actually had it, then? We’re talking about an unpublished Sherlock Holmes story, by Arthur Conan Doyle?” He sounded torn between frank disbelief and yearning.

  “That I don’t know, Mr. Rutland. I haven’t read it yet.”

  “But you’ve seen it? I can’t believe it. My God. Why on earth did Philip not tell anyone about it, I wonder? Christ, he must have been just exploding with the news. I wonder where he got it? Can you tell me that?”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

  “Where is it now?”

  That she could divulge, since he would guess anyway; best to leave Nicholson out of it until he chose to step in. “I have a photocopy. The original is in the bank vault, safe and sound.”

  “My God,” he repeated. “Look, I’d be happy to look it over for you—as an expert in things Sherlockian, you know. If it would do you any good. Would you say it’s got any chance at all of being genuine?”

  “Mr. Rutland—”

  “No, of course you wouldn’t know. And probably someone like Ian would do a better job of judging it, anyway. I wonder how Philip planned on letting us know?” No little resentment there, Kate could hear it ringing loud. The lawyer kept her on the phone, practically pleading for more information; when she hung up, she was thoughtful.

  She regretted phoning him; should have gone to see him instead, so she could have watched his face. Something about the conversation had sounded a faint wrong note, as if he had been staging a piece of courtroom drama. Nothing she could pin down, and admittedly, most of the time when she felt that, it turned out to be either some unrelated matter the witness was concealing, or else Kate’s personal dislike for the individual. Both of which could easily be the case here.

  Still, she wished she could have seen his face.

  Of one thing, however, there was no doubt: If the mere possibility of such a manuscript so thrilled not only Thomas Rutland, but experienced antiquarians, its existence had to be a remarkable thing. For a dyed-in-the-wool collector like Philip Gilbert, it must have taken his weak heart to the edge of failure.

  Although maybe it had actually taken his heart past the edge of failure, she thought sourly, and phoned the ME’s office, yet again.

  Hawkin called a while later, the reception thin and crackly.

  “Martinelli? Can you hear me?”

  “Barely. Where are you?”

  “I was calling to ask you the same thing. I’m out on the Marin headlands.”

  “Sounds like the moon. I had an interesting talk with Mr. Nicholson.” She told him about the manuscript, its apparent worth and importance. “I’ve been trying to find the guy Gilbert bought it from, according to the ledger. You ever hear of someone named Paul Kobata?”

  “Never came across him.”

  “Me neither. Anyway, I’ve been calling around to see if any of the dealers know where he is, and every time I say anything about a Sherlock
Holmes story, they practically crawl down the phone line at me. What the hell is it with these people? Anyway, I can do that later, where do you want me to meet you?”

  “Sounds to me like your time’s better spent working that angle. I looked through the park records for crimes and found a lot of nothing, and I’m now working my way through the people who live here. Nice bunch, completely clueless, reminds me of Tyler’s Road.” Their first case together, a dozen years before.

  “You don’t think I’m wasting my time on the story, then?”

  “We’ve known stranger reasons for killing.”

  “True, and from what Nicholson said, it might be worth some money. This could be a botched robbery, someone heard about it and thought Gilbert had it at home.”

  “If nothing else, it sounds like it may explain why his body was found where it was.”

  “True. And hey, the autopsy’s scheduled for tomorrow.”

  “Finally,” he said. “Anything else?”

  “Just the story. I thought I’d look at it this afternoon.”

  “One of us ought to. ‘Work the weird,’ as Jules tells me.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “In her case, I’m not absolutely sure, although when she was explaining it to me she started out talking about a ‘software glitch,’ on one of her programs. Seems that when you have software problems, you have to figure out all the spots where it’s not doing what you expect, and that leads you to the flaw. She says she has to collect all the strange incidents of behavior, find how they are connected, and trace them backwards to their source. What she calls ‘working the weird.’”

  “And the story and the body’s location are the weird here.”

  “Work it, baby,” Hawkin told her.

  The entry in Gilbert’s loose-leaf ledger read: