The Brothers of Baker Street

by Michael Robertson

  “Do you suppose I might leave her a note?” Laura asked.

  “Yes,” said the girl. She had relaxed her grip on the door just a bit.

  “You’ve been so helpful,” said Laura, in her most soothing voice. “But I’ve nothing to write on out here. Might I come in just for a moment?”

  The servant girl hesitated. Laura smiled kindly.

  The door opened.

  The servant girl escorted Laura quickly, as though to minimize the risk of letting a stranger in, through the front room, then the kitchen, and then out onto the back garden patio, where there was a nice wrought-iron table with a marble top.

  “You can write here,” said the girl. “It’s where she always does. I’ll get some paper.”

  The servant girl went away, and Laura sat down at the table.

  Laura looked about. It was quite a pleasant place, really, a lovely garden, with a clear sweet scent from brilliant red roses. They were even more striking than the white and pink ones she had seen in front.

  Near the patio door, on the cobblestone flooring, was a two-foot-high stack of newspapers, mostly tabloids. The one on top, Laura, could not help but notice, was the Daily Sun.

  Now the servant girl returned.

  “Your employer enjoys the Daily Sun?” said Laura, indicating the stack by the door.

  The Russian girl nodded. “I read the headlines to her at breakfast.”

  “Really? Just the headlines, not the stories?”

  “Sometimes she wants me to read the story, too.”

  “I see. You scan the headlines for her and then read whatever she says sounds interesting. Leaving her hands free to concentrate on more important things, like scones.”

  “Yes. Black Cabs and barristers.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Those are the only stories she has asked me to read.”

  Laura thought about that for a moment. “Perhaps you will show me a barrister story?”

  But now a phone rang inside the house. The servant girl jumped up and went back inside to answer it. There was a brief conversation of some sort; Laura tried to hear what was said, but could not.

  And then the servant girl came back outside.

  “You must leave,” she said nicely, but quite firmly.

  “Was that your employer? Perhaps I could have a word with her?”

  “No, that wasn’t her.”

  “Oh,” said Laura. “Who was it then?”

  The servant girl gave Laura a startled look, and then clammed up tight.

  “Of course,” said Laura. “Rude of me to pry, and right for you to not reveal identities without permission. But perhaps just a hint as to the general category … Was it a friend calling? A relative?”

  The girl said nothing; she looked back at Laura with deer-caught-in-headlamps eyes and lips pressed so tightly together Laura was almost afraid she’d hurt herself.

  “Business acquaintance? Professional services? Gardener?”

  Now there was a response.

  “I do the roses myself!” said the servant girl, with some pride.

  “Ahh,” said Laura. That was just a bit comforting to know. Darla Rennie wasn’t perfect.

  “Under her direction,” added the girl.

  “Oh,” said Laura, and then she wished she hadn’t, because that slight note of disappointment seemed to give the girl her courage back.

  “You must leave now,” said the servant girl.

  “Is someone returning? Perhaps I should just stay, and we’ll all have a nice chat?”

  The servant girl went do the front door, opened it, and looked at Laura with an attitude of desperate determination.

  “Please. It will mean my job. You must leave!”

  18

  Nigel returned to chambers before Laura. It was early afternoon. That she had not returned first surprised him a little. It worried him a little, too, though he wasn’t quite sure why.

  Nigel pulled one of the smaller guest chairs up close to the desk, sat down, and stared at the edition of the Daily Sun that Laura had left unfolded there. It was still opened to the photo of the solicitor sliding her shining legs out of the Black Cab.

  When he had seen the photo earlier, he had allowed himself to believe he might be imagining things. But that was before he had gone to the cab drivers meeting and seen Trimball, the man making the techno-pitch. Nigel remembered now where he had seen the man before. And given who Trimball was, Nigel no longer had much doubt who the solicitor with the lovely legs was. It just couldn’t be a coincidence.

  He would have to tell Laura and Reggie. But he wasn’t looking forward to it.

  Now the chambers door opened. Nigel looked up as Lois held the door open for Laura.

  “It’s … it is as I feared,” said Nigel, without any preliminaries, or any remark about the large, apparently full, brown paper grocery bag Laura was carrying.

  “What is?” said Laura. She put the bag down by the side of the chambers desk and nodded her thanks to Lois, who exited, closing the door behind her.

  Laura sat down, again in Reggie’s barrister chair. She looked at the photo Nigel was staring at. “Dare I ask?” she said.

  Nigel hesitated, but then he got a reprieve—the door opened again.

  “There you are,” said Laura. “I was beginning to wonder.”

  It was Reggie.

  Without being caught doing it at all, Laura quickly appraised Reggie’s condition and concluded that other than some slight bags under the eyes, he looked none the worse for wear from his brief stay in jail.

  He had clearly taken the time to put himself back together quite immaculately after getting out. He looked like a junior barrister at first appearance in court. Or just a bit older than that, but taller and with a nicer suit than most.

  Reggie stood in the doorway, exchanged nods with Nigel, and then focused on Laura, sitting there in his chair. She was bright and inviting, she was looking right back at him, and for a moment Reggie forgot why he was angry with her.

  Then he remembered, and he quite deliberately put on a sterner face.

  “I thought I was clear about my bail.”

  “In what respect?” said Laura, innocently.

  “That I did not want your friend Buxton—”

  “Fiancé.”

  Laura regretted it the moment she said it. She wasn’t even sure why she had said it. It wasn’t even quite formally true yet.

  Reggie heard it, comprehended it, and did his best to ignore it.

  “Whatever. That I did not want him to have a hand in it.”

  “I mean probable fiancé, anyway, and, yes, I suppose you did indicate a preference for sulking in jail. But he’s not the Godfather, Reggie, and you are not indebted to him for life. If you will refrain from absconding to one of those tropical places that have lots of Polynesian beauties but few extradition treaties, then he will get his money back, and that will be the end of it.”

  Reggie decided, wisely, not to mention that it was not himself feeling indebted that he was worried about.

  But then he said something quite similar anyway.

  “I’ll remember that if you will,” he said.

  Laura gave Reggie a quizzical look on that remark, and then decided to drop the issue entirely. Instead, she said, “Your brother thinks there is something very important about your solicitor’s legs.”

  Reggie thought that one over and chose the safest response possible. He just nodded slightly, mumbled “I see,” and sat in the other client chair.

  “The solicitor’s legs in the photo,” said Nigel, quite tentatively. “In the Daily Sun pic.” He picked the paper up and showed it to Reggie. “I believe you’ve seen them? I mean, it? I mean the photo of them?”

  “What of them?” said Reggie.

  “Yes,” said Laura, with just a bit of exasperation, looking from one brother to the other. “What of them?”

  “I remember now where I’ve seen them before,” said Nigel.

  “The pic didn�
��t even show her face,” said Reggie. “You’re saying you can recognize her just from her legs?”

  “Yes,” said Laura. “Apparently your brother has that faculty.”

  Nigel nodded, obviously taking some pride in it.

  Reggie shrugged, indicating that it was no big deal. “I do as well,” he said.

  Laura looked at him.

  “I do,” said Reggie. “For example, do you know that behind your left knee—”

  Laura waved that comment away. “You needn’t try to impress me,” she said. “I just want to know where Nigel met our so-called solicitor.”

  “At Bath a couple of months ago,” said Nigel. “She was in my group at the Mental Health and Recovery Center. After I had my—you know—.”

  “Obligatory lawyer’s stress leave?” offered Laura.

  “Yes,” said Nigel. “They funnel you into specialized groups that are specific to one’s own particular…”

  “Disorder?” said Reggie.

  “Thanks for that; yes, one’s own particular disorder. Or areas of challenge, as we liked to call them. My group was centered on careers, of course. Career-disappointment trauma is what the therapist called it. “Job Sobs” was the term the staff used. It was an exploration into the reasons why I—why all the members of the group—were such miserable failures in our chosen professions. Or as my group leader liked to put it, just couldn’t seem to find our bliss.”

  “I’ve heard that phrase; it’s all the rage in Hollywood just now,” said Laura. “I think it’s quite overrated.”

  “Point is, among all the heart surgeons who could not stand the sight of blood, and ballerinas with inner-ear problems, and timid rugby captains, there was one—and only one—failed Black Cab driver. She had great legs, a genius IQ—and was a sort of instant savant. Other people in the group would talk about their areas of expertise and she would respond as though she knew the subject matter better than they did. She talked about the coronary-bypass techniques with the cardiologist. She talked about data packets and throughput with the techno geek.”

  “And about briefs and motions with you?” asked Laura.

  “Well, yes,” said Nigel. “And I had the impression that whether it was from prior knowledge or some odd sort of mental osmosis, she could have gone out and performed a transplant, and filed a successful motion, and created a high-end software program all in the same day. But the point is, with all this brainpower, what she really wanted to do was drive a Black Cab. But it had turned out that she simply had no sense of direction whatsoever, and as a result she had failed the Knowledge exam so miserably and repeatedly that she was advised to just give it up altogether.”

  “No one else ever failed at the Knowledge before?” said Reggie.

  “Many, I’m sure, but no one else was in therapy for it at the time I was there.”

  “So,” Laura asked, “just what was the form of therapy where you memorized her legs?”

  “Well … there were group swim sessions … they did have a pool.”

  “You couldn’t get that good a look in a pool,” said Laura. She looked from one brother to the other again. “Could you?”

  Nigel squirmed. “Well, no, there was more to it than that. Not as much as there might have been. I mean … well, I was actually just about to get to that—”

  “Don’t stop on our account,” said Laura.

  “We struck up a friendship. Not allowed, actually; they have rules. But we set up a rendezvous, the last night before I was scheduled to be discharged. She was to meet me at one hour past curfew that evening.”

  “And did she?”

  “Meet me? Oh yes. She certainly did. She was a few minutes late, having got lost on the way apparently, but she did show up, and when she did, she seemed—if I may say so—quite eager about the whole thing, too.”

  “Oh,” said Laura. “She was the eager one.”

  “Yes,” insisted Nigel. “Surprisingly so. I mean, much more so than when we had made the initial appointment. It was as though she had spent the last several hours working herself into a state of high—” Nigel paused, searching for the right word.

  “Yes?” said Laura. “High what?”

  “Well … randiness, I suppose. Or at least anticipation. I could hardly believe my good fortune. But then—”

  “Yes?” said Laura.

  “Well, we were just getting started, and I had begun, as I said to take careful note of her legs … and such … progressively. When suddenly she began talking.”

  Laura shook her head slightly, in a way that indicated just how hopeless both the Heath brothers, and perhaps all men, were.

  “I don’t mean just that she was talking,” said Nigel, alertly. “But so rapidly, and what she was saying.”

  “Nigel,” said Laura. “If you are now going to claim that your touch made a woman speak in tongues, I’m leaving the room.”

  “She talked about her great-great-grandfather. On her mother’s side. The American-Irish side of the family, it turns out. And how he met a mysterious death in Switzerland.”

  “Mysterious in what way?’

  “She didn’t say exactly, but she said it couldn’t have happened the way everyone believed, because he was terribly afraid of heights and would never have been caught dead—so to speak—on a cliff, no matter how spectacular the view of the falls.”

  “Her great-great-grandfather died at a waterfall?”

  “According to some reports, or so she said. But she was certain—vehemently so—that he was in fact killed, murdered, at a train station in Meiringen, and that she knew who did it, and that she would someday prove it.”

  “That she would someday prove who murdered her great-great-grandfather.”

  “Yes. And get her revenge. She was quite adamant about that. And it was at this point that I started to think twice about following through, despite how wonderful her—”

  “Must we go there?” said Laura.

  “Well, I didn’t, finally, because she was truly railing on quite a bit. I kept waiting for her to jump up and say ‘Fooled you!’ and that it was all a sort of odd joke, and when she didn’t, I decided to call it an evening.”

  “Wise move,” said Laura. “So this woman with whom you did not engage in a midnight tryst—was her name Darla Rennie?”

  “I don’t know,” said Nigel. “People didn’t use their real names in the group. But I can tell you the name of the American-Irish great-great-grandfather on her mother’s side. Or at least what she said it was.”

  “And that name is?” said Laura.

  “Moriarty.”

  Laura and Reggie both stared at Nigel. He looked back, from one to the other.

  “Well, it’s what she said.”

  “Please,” said Reggie. “Moriarty? A waterfall in Switzerland?”

  “I’ve no idea about the waterfall thing,” said Nigel. “But the name itself is not a stretch. Do you know how many Moriartys there were in 1890 in America alone, not even counting the UK?”

  “No.”

  “Thousands. I looked it up. More than a hundred with first name of James. And Switzerland was a popular tourist destination for Americans who could afford it then, as it is now.”

  Reggie thought all that through for a short moment, and then he said, just a little irked, “You might have mentioned the patient’s delusions when you warned me about the Moriarty threat letter.”

  “I would have done,” said Nigel, “if you had mentioned that you were working with a solicitor who looked like this.” Nigel held up the Daily Sun photo.

  “Yes,” said Laura. “Reggie was keeping rather quiet about her appearance. But what of her actual occupation? Was this woman in your group in fact a solicitor before she failed at cab driving?”

  “She never said. Most of us were required to do so—that was the whole point, of course, of the group—but when it came her turn, Dr. Dillane, our therapist, said that she did not have to. The fellow rather played favorites, if you ask me.”

/>   “I’ve heard of a Dr. Dillane,” said Laura. “‘Prescriber to the Stars,’ by reputation, at least in the circles that do that kind of thing. For those who just can’t seem to find their bliss in the natural sort of way. But there was a bit of an overdose scandal.”

  “Probably someone else,” said Nigel. “This Dr. Dillane seemed inclined toward less medication.”

  “And what happened after that night at Bath?” said Laura. “Did you see her again? Or did you just manage to run away and never ring her?”

  “The next day, back at therapy, she seemed quite herself again,” said Nigel. “Completely back to normal. Or at least back to usual. She said nothing of what had transpired the night before, and neither did I, but I happened to hear two of the nurses talking later that day, and … it seems that for the past two days before our rendezvous, she had stopped taking her meds. On doctor’s orders apparently. I never saw her again after that. She was discharged, and so was I a day later. In fact, our entire Job Sobs therapy group was disbanded at that point, and I’m pretty sure the other members were discharged within days as well. Which brings me to the odd part.”

  “Good,” said Laura. “I was hoping.”

  “I just came from a big meeting about this new high-tech navigation system that’s supposed to revolutionize the job of driving a cab. The inventor was there on stage presenting it, a fellow named Trimball, and—” Nigel stopped again.

  “Yes?”

  “I could be wrong, but … I could swear he also was in my same therapy group at Bath.”

  “He was in Job Sobs? With you and Ms. Legs?” said Laura.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s an interesting coincidence.”

  “Yes,” said Nigel. “And I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “Neither do I,” said Reggie. “But legs notwithstanding, I think we need a little more certainty that it was in fact Darla Rennie in your therapy group.”

  “Right,” said Nigel. “And I know what we need to do to find out.”

  “Which is?” said Laura.

  “Reggie needs to go to the Mental Health and Recovery Center at Bath,” said Nigel.

  “Excuse me?” said Reggie.