The Adventure of the Plated Spoon and Other Tales of Sherlock Holmes

by Loren D. Estleman

  He said, “That department store has been defunct for years.”

  Sheila withdrew more boxes like the first, stacking each like it on a nearby chair.

  “Aren’t you going to open them?”

  “Not until we see what else is in here.”

  Momentarily, she caught her breath. “Look at this! I’ve never seen such exquisite stitching.”

  She lifted a segment to reveal a Victorian crazy quilt, done up in rich shades of silk and velvet and heavily embellished with fancy embroidery. When she started to pull more of the quilt from the trunk, a clunking sound came from inside. “It’s wrapped around something.”

  Jeff jumped up to help. He searched out the shape of the solid object, and carefully lifted it from the deep trunk. The pair worked together, removing the velvet wrappings. He hoisted the large receptacle onto the library table, then both he and Sheila stepped back to study it.

  The large bowl shape with a footed pedestal was of chased silver with porcelain cabochons depicting pastoral scenes. The lid’s silver finial was in the shape of an acorn.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Sheila asked.

  “I believe so. Heavy, too.”

  “Do you think it contains ashes?”

  He shrugged. “There’s a good chance it does.”

  “Well, I don’t know what you plan to do with it, but it’s not staying here.”

  “Wonder who it is?”

  “Does it really matter? You said yourself the old woman had no relatives. What on earth do people do with ashes when there’s no one left to claim them?”

  “I can’t very well just dump them in the garbage. At the very least, that seems disrespectful. Might even be illegal.”

  Greer entered the room, and handed a package to Sheila. “Missus, this just arrived for you.”

  “Thank you, Greer.”

  Jeff said, “Greer, it appears there was a body of sorts in the trunk, after all.”

  Greer studied the urn. “It appears so, sir.”

  “Would you get me the phone number of that nursing home?”

  “Rose Trellis Nursing Facility. Yes, sir.” Greer started toward the door.

  “Jeff, what are you going to do?” Sheila asked.

  Jeff called the butler back.

  “Sir?”

  “What would Sherlock do?”

  “The same thing you’re about to do, sir: Follow the clues to a logical conclusion.”

  “But what if there isn’t one? A logical conclusion, I mean.”

  “To quote Mr. Holmes: ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”

  Sharon Swan’s office was small, well organized, and busy. The director of nursing had warned him on the phone that she wouldn’t have much time, because corporate was expected in the building, two residents were due back from the hospital, and an aide had called in sick.

  Jeff sat in a chair in front of her desk, and waited as a parade of smocked employees, EMTs, and suits filed through. His promise to be brief had him scrambling to come up with the most pressing questions.

  “Like I told you on the phone, there’s not much I can divulge. I follow HIPAA to the letter.”

  “Understood.” Jeff shifted in the small chair. “To the point: There’s an urn with ashes in the bottom of the trunk.”

  The woman shrugged. “Happens all the time.”

  Pragmatic. He liked that. “I’d like to know whose ashes they are, so I can decide the best way to process them. A husband’s, perhaps?”

  “That would be in public records, so I can tell you there was a husband.” She turned, opened a credenza that held a lateral file system. “As I recall, he passed several years ago.”

  She skimmed contents of a folder labeled ELDER, VERONICA. “Here it is. Richard Elder died April 2, 1984, in Portland, Oregon. Worley Funeral Home.” She stood. “I hope they can help you, Mr. Talbot.”

  Back home Jeff searched online for the funeral home, but couldn’t locate one with that name. He bookmarked a page listing funeral homes in Portland, and begrudged the task before him of contacting the dozens on the list. As much as he wanted to know the answer, he wasn’t in the mood to be on the phone making cold calls the rest of the day, so he shelved the chore.

  He tried to read, but the urn—its contents, rather—distracted him. He tried to call Mike Danville about the discovery, but when the call went straight to voicemail he remembered that Mike was currently on a Japanese clock. He tried to call Sharon Swan to ask if there was any other information she could divulge. Again, voicemail. Finally, he gave up and moved to the trunk.

  There was some sort of satchel inside. He retrieved it; a valise, black leather, plain but in good shape. He opened it, found a deerstalker cap, Inverness coat with the cape (just like the ones he’d seen in Paget’s illustrations), ebony-handled magnifying glass, and a Calabash pipe.

  Holmes smoked one or another of many pipes in the stories he’d been reading. The trunk had belonged to a woman, that much he knew. But what about these items? Had they belonged to her husband? Or had the woman herself dressed in the likeness of Sherlock Holmes, right down to propping the pipe between her lips?

  Jeff next wondered whether any female characters in the canon had smoked a pipe. He made a mental note to ask Greer. But when Greer appeared a few minutes later, that wasn’t the question he asked.

  “Do you know anything about pipes?”

  “Yes, sir. What would you like to know?”

  “How to sterilize a pipe’s stem, for one thing.” Jeff showed him the Calabash.

  “I’ll see to that for you, sir.”

  “Just don’t let Sheila see it. For now, anyway.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Waiting on callbacks caused him as much angst as the hovering task of making all those funeral home calls. No wonder Sherlock Holmes often grew impatient and turned to vices. Jeff certainly didn’t condone the cocaine, but the pipe? He pondered the stories he’d read so far, and began to understand. He found himself gaining a new appreciation for the pipe, and by the time Greer returned with the sterilized stem, he had decided to give it a try.

  Of course, he had no tobacco, no tamping tools, no pipe cleaners. But he could pretend. This was all about pretending, wasn’t it?

  He grabbed the next short story from the stack and sank into his chair. The curved pipe stem bobbed precariously between his teeth, making the large bowl ebb and flow in his sights. It crossed his mind that a man might turn green as much from the motion as from the tobacco.

  Upon Greer’s recommendation, he started watching TV adaptations of the canon every evening before going to bed. The paisley prints on vests, ascots, and smoking jackets reminded him of a vintage jacket that had belonged to his grandfather. Jeff rummaged in the attic until he found the item of clothing, which became his new livery while reading more stories, watching more episodes, and stacking more letters on the table from the trunk’s contents.

  From time to time, during his career as a picker, he had stumbled upon a mystery connected to an antique. At times, being dragged into those mysteries had become more harrowing and challenging than anything he’d tackled during his years with the FBI. Now, with the influence of Sherlock Holmes under his skullcap, he found himself attaching mysteries to most of his finds throughout the course of his daily work. He watched for bicycle marks on boots, and wax drips on hats, and footprints on practically everything.

  The next morning, Jeff left to take a stab at making a living. He’d been gone from home less than an hour when Greer called his cell to relay messages. “Sir, Dr. Danville reports that no DNA can be ascertained from the ashes, and that if it turns out to be necessary for some reason, he’ll help you obtain dental records of Mrs. Elder.”

  “What about Sharon Swan at the nursing home?”

  “Actually, sir, it was a receptionist who called. She wanted you to know that Miss Swan is away at a conference.”

  Jeff thought a
moment, then said, “Might be the perfect time to swing by there.”

  No one seemed to notice him as he entered the nursing home, so he kept moving. At the end of the east corridor was a cleaning cart, and as he strolled toward it, a young lady in pink scrubs walked out of a room, deposited a bundle of sheets into the bin, then pumped a dollop of sanitizer into her palm. Jeff seized the opportunity to strike up a conversation.

  “Thank goodness for that stuff, huh?” He threw a nod toward the large dispenser.

  “You got that right. I don’t know what they used to do.”

  Jeff fought the urge to say, soap and water. He gave her his name, and used Dr. Danville and the trunk as his connection to Veronica Elder. “Did you know her?”

  “Sure. Everybody knew her, nobody liked her.”

  The girl wiped excess sanitizer on her pant legs. “She was hard on everyone, for sure, but she was a lot like my grandmother, so I usually didn’t let her get to me.” She picked up a folded set of bedding from one of the cart’s shelves. “It got harder, though, not to get dragged down by her, especially when she’d get confused. She was at her worst then.”

  “Confused? In what way?” He leaned against the wall in order to appear nonthreatening.

  “Oh, she’d forget where she was, even what town she was in, sometimes. Or she wouldn’t know her name, so it’d really set her off when we called her ‘Miss Ronnie.’ She’d tell us that was her older sister’s name. You know, things like that.”

  “Sister? I was told she had no one.”

  “Exactly.” The girl raised a brow. “Like I said, confused.”

  Someone called out from one of the rooms.

  “Sorry, I have to get back to work.”

  Jeff smiled. “Thanks. You’ve been most helpful.”

  He hurried home and virtually locked himself in the library. Systematically, he went through the bundles of letters.

  They were tied in batches according to year, and the batches were conveniently in chronological order. That not only saved time, but also helped give flow to the conversation. By the time he was well into them, he could practically guess what the letters to the woman named Violet Chilson had said.

  “Violet?” Greer said, when Jeff reported his findings. The butler placed the day’s mail on Jeff’s desk, then picked up a stack of books from the credenza.

  “Unbelievable, isn’t it?” Jeff studied the return address on the envelope in his hand, printed under the once-required line reading After Five Days Return To. “That must’ve been Conan Doyle’s favorite name for a woman, since he used it so many times in the stories.”

  “You could be right, sir.”

  Jeff paced. A notion was forming. When he had it worked out, he said, “What would Sherlock do?”

  Greer looked up from the books he was returning to their shelves. “Sir?”

  “I’m serious, man! What would he do?”

  “Well, sir, he would tell Watson to pack a toothbrush, then a message would be wired, and they would be on the next train to interview the subject.”

  “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.”