Echoes of Sherlock Holmes

by Laurie R. King

  “Guardsmen?”

  “Guardsmen.”

  “How did you discover all this?”

  “Why, by listening, Inspector. People do love to gossip. The Castle is abuzz with stories of Vicars and his entourage of handsome young men. Did you know that they frequent some of the flash houses at the bottom of the street—those which cater solely to men? And that they sometimes dress in women’s clothing and . . . wear the jewels as part of their costumes?”

  “Oh God!” Dermot leaned forward and put his head in his hands.

  “And that the jewels have disappeared before, when the boys accidentally forgot them at one of their parties?”

  Dermot sat back into the chair. “You have been busy. And, let me say that you seem to be enjoying yourself.”

  Katherine nodded. “One in my position is rarely given an opportunity to exercise her abilities, although I have spent my entire life watching and listening. It makes me quite suited to the role of detective, don’t you think?”

  “What should I do?” he asked suddenly.

  “This is a scandal, and scandals destroy careers. If you identify the thief, then you earn the enmity of him and his friends. If you continue to investigate you will bring yourself to their attention and even if you make no accusation, then your career is destroyed.”

  “So what should I do?” he asked again.

  “Do nothing. The jewels will either mysteriously turn up, or they will not.”

  “But the police will still descend on these streets and close your businesses. This morning you spoke about children starving . . .”

  Katherine leaned forward, firelight turning her face golden. Her smile was feral. “About an hour ago a letter was delivered to both the Viceroy and the head of the Dublin Metropolitan Police outlining some of the facts of the case. There will be no real investigation, I assure you; the scandal would involve the crown, and Edward now works hard to distance himself from the excesses of his youth. I am sorry that you will not get that promotion, however. Your future fiancée will be disappointed.”

  “There will be other cases,” he said. “And I have waited this long to propose; another few months will not make any real difference.”

  “Women do not like to wait, Inspector. Propose. If she loves you, then she will say yes, in spite of your circumstances.”

  “And if she says no?”

  “If she loves you she will say yes,” Katherine said softly.

  Finishing his hot chocolate, he stood. “I will take my leave of you. All in all, it has been quite the day.”

  Katherine rose and stretched out her hand. Dermot bowed over it. “Thank you for your help, Madam Kitten.”

  “Katherine. Call me Katherine.”

  “Will I see you again, Katherine?”

  “I have no doubts about it.”

  Dermot Corcoran paused with his hand on the door handle and turned to face the woman lost in the shadows. “You never did say who stole the jewels . . .”

  “Inspector. Follow the money. And then, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable . . .”

  “. . . must be the truth.”

  The jewels never did turn up and, as I predicted, the scandal destroyed careers. Inspector Kane came over from Scotland Yard, investigated and discovered the culprit. His report was never published, then mysteriously disappeared.

  Vicars went to his grave convinced that Shackleton had stolen the jewels. He openly accused him, even going so far to include the accusation in his Last Will and Testament. I know that Shackleton was exonerated by the investigating Royal Commission, despite some strong evidence that if he was not involved, then he knew who had stolen the jewels. But Shackleton had friends in very high places and his brother, Ernest, was about to embark on his Nimrod Expedition to Antarctica. Vicars lost his position, his pension, and ultimately his life, when he was shot on the lawn of his home by the IRA in 1921.

  Years later, I learned that Shackleton had been charged with fraud and spent some time in prison in England. When he was discharged, he changed his name and disappeared.

  No one ever looked too closely at Goldney, the man who had rather recklessly guaranteed Shackleton’s debts. He went on to become the Mayor of Canterbury. When he died a decade after the theft, amongst his possessions was discovered a cache of items he purloined over the years from the various offices and positions he had held.

  Perhaps the last word belongs to Vicars, a distant cousin of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who told a Daily Express reporter: “The detectives might well say that it is an affair for a Sherlock Holmes to investigate.”

  UNDERSTUDY IN SCARLET

  by Hallie Ephron

  It’s not an open casting call, Angela Cassano realizes as she takes in the emptiness of director Glenn Lancaster’s outer office. The gloomy space, on the second floor over storefronts on Santa Monica in Beverly Hills, has rough stucco walls painted off-white. The furnishings are chrome and ebony and black leather, and the stale air smells faintly of cigar. Her appointment was at two. At three she’s still waiting for Lancaster to emerge from his inner sanctum.

  “They want you,” her agent had said when he called, sounding as surprised as she was that a remake of A Scandal in Bohemia was afoot, this time as a major motion picture. Same director, same actor as Sherlock Holmes, and they wanted her to read for the role she played twenty-five years ago: Irene Adler, the one woman who outsmarted the great detective.

  Was she interested? Of course she was. The only gig she’s got lined up is summer stock in Ojai playing Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? But she’s also more than a bit wary. She and Lancaster didn’t part on the best of terms, not after she refused to sleep with him—something he seemed to think was his due for casting her in his movie. Bygones, she hopes. Because if he were holding a grudge, why would he be calling her agent?

  The office suite hasn’t changed much since she was here last. The door to a small inner office stands open, and Angela has a dim memory of Lancaster’s bookkeeper working in the now-empty room, his desk piled high with computer printouts. The receptionist, who is studiously avoiding eye contact, could be the same one Angela had to get past years ago. The woman’s chin sags and her hair is more salt than pepper.

  Angela sits up, straightening her shoulders, fluffing her hair, and bunching a bit more cleavage into the deep V-neck of her top. She crosses her legs and tugs at the hem of her pencil skirt.

  Last night she got out the old script and put on a slinky red silk gown like the one that she wore in the film. She practiced her lines, watching herself in the mirror. Then practiced again with her eyes closed. She could feel Irene Adler spring back to life inside her.

  She’s capable of far more nuance than when she first played the part, though reviewers were kind. The LA Times critic called that performance, her first in a starring role, “luminous” and “dangerous.”

  She’s still luminous. Still dangerous. And at forty-five, far more suited to the role of the retired opera singer whose torrid love affair with the Crown Prince of Bohemia—captured in a compromising photograph—threatens to derail that Royal’s impending marriage.

  Her best line in Scandal is the painfully grammatically correct, “I love and am loved by a better man than he.” She can deliver it sad and brooding. Or defiant. Or proud. Or secretive. She can even make the statement sound self-deluding if that’s what they want. Or start one way and end another.

  Anthony Fox, the actor who played Sherlock opposite her Irene, is reprising his role in the remake, too. Even way back then, he was on the downhill side of a semi-distinguished acting career. The Times reviewer called his performance “solid.” After Scandal he found himself showered with cameos in films like Scream IV and The Muppet Mystery. Not the Royal Shakespeare, but it was a living. On top of which he had points on the back end of Scandal, which Angela did not. That’s turned out to be the gift that keeps giving.

  Because who could have predicted that their Sc
andal would develop a cult following? At classic film festivals, Angela’s Irene Adler is nearly as recognizable as Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia. Fans come to midnight showings dressed in character and intone famous lines like “To Sherlock Holmes she was always the woman.” They boo and throw popcorn at the screen when the king dismisses his former lover as “a well-known adventuress.”

  At last the door to Lancaster’s inner office opens. “Angela!” The man himself emerges. He doesn’t look half bad. Black T-shirt tucked into jeans, sockless loafers, his shaved head gleaming. That weird scruffy beard is new. He bounds over to her with the intensity of a much younger man.

  “Darling!” he says. “There you are.” He bends down and, pure reflex, she crosses her arms over her chest as she leans in for what turns out to be a perfectly innocent air kiss. He whispers, “There’s someone I need you to meet.”

  Coming out of the office behind Lancaster is a young woman. A tiny sprite, pale and ethereal as a ghost, she’s got to be a natural blonde. Her tight blue jeans are artfully ripped like the ones that cost hundreds. She’s carrying an enormous pumpkin-colored bag, its straps too long and floppy to be a real Birkin.

  “Angela, this is Ruby Lake,” Lancaster says.

  “Miss Cassano!” Ruby says, holding back, shy. “I’m such a fan girl. I’ve seen you in this movie a gajillion times. I just hope I can be as good.” Angela doesn’t get time to consider what that means because the girl, she’s barely out of her teens if she’s a day, adds, “And I adored Wallflower.”

  Angela is taken aback. She stands. “You saw it?”

  “At Sundance. It was great. Really terrific.”

  “Thank you so much,” Angela says, and she means it. Wallflower was a low-budget film that she wrote and directed, and when it got into Sundance a few years ago Angela thought maybe, just maybe she’d break into Tinseltown’s most exclusive boys’ club. But despite rave reviews, the film didn’t get picked up. No opportunities to direct more motion pictures came flooding her way.

  Angela can count on two hands the number of people she knows who’ve actually seen her movie. She can tell from Lancaster’s blank expression that he’s not one of them.

  “I’m so looking forward to working with you,” Ruby says. “I can use all the help I can get.”

  Help? It’s not until then, as Angela registers the look of undisguised pity that the receptionist is sending her way, that the penny drops and Angela’s stomach goes queasy.

  “Won’t Ruby make a splendid Irene Adler?” Lancaster says, standing back and appraising his prize. Confirming the worst.

  Angela’s face burns with humiliation and her insides feel thick. How is she supposed to respond? She wills her face to go expressionless. She’s an actress. She can handle this.

  Lancaster turns to Angela. “And of course, you’ll make a fabulous Mrs. Hudson. One for the ages.”

  She swallows the lump in her throat. From infamous femme fatale to iconic landlady who, in the script, doesn’t even get a name. The thought should have cracked her up but instead it’s put her on the verge of tears.

  “I’m so delighted to meet you,” she says to Ruby, forcing a smile and extending her hand. She imagines that Ruby is her sister’s daughter Gracie, an adorable precocious six-year-old. But the person Ruby actually reminds her of is Angela herself, twenty-five years ago. Beautiful, sexy, ambitious, more than a little insecure, and just nineteen when she walked out of this same office with the role of Irene Adler. She hopes Ruby can handle Lancaster’s advances, since the old dog’s undoubtedly up to his usual tricks.

  Angela wants to kill her agent. Deliberately ambiguous, that’s what he was. Knew he had to be in order to get her to show up for this. But really, what had Angela been smoking that made her think Lancaster would still yearn for the smoldering sexuality and timeless beauty that only Angela Cassano could bring to the role? It’s no secret that Hollywood considers any woman a day over forty far too old to play opposite a man who’s pushing seventy. Only British leading ladies are allowed to age.

  “See you,” Ruby says, waving as she backs into the hall. Angela wants to follow her out, but the bitter truth is she needs the work. So she follows Lancaster into his office and takes a seat across his massive desk.

  The walls are hung with movie memorabilia. A neon sign that reads BATES MOTEL NO VACANCY. A bowler hat like the one Malcolm MacDowell wore in A Clockwork Orange. A rack of five flintlock pistols that would have been at home on the Bounty. She also recognizes a full-length portrait of herself as Irene Adler. It’s a 25-year-old prop from the original Scandal in Bohemia.

  “You were fabulous,” Lancaster says, following her gaze to the portrait.

  I know. “And now you want me for Mrs. Hudson?” Is he being deliberately cruel or can he be that clueless?

  “Of course I want you. And not just for Mrs. Hudson. I also want you to be our stand-in for Ruby.”

  “Stand-in.” She tries to say it without sneering.

  “You know the plot. You know the character. You’ll be perfect, and you’ll be able to mentor Ruby on her performance. After all, you set the gold standard.”

  What he wants her to do is smile. Bask in praise from on high. What she wants to do is scream. Tell him to take his gold standard and . . .

  She takes a cleansing breath and waits. She hears the voice of her first acting coach: Don’t rush to fill a silence.

  “I’m prepared to pay you well. Very well,” Lancaster says. She says nothing. He holds up a finger. “Supporting player.” A second finger. “Stand-in.” He balls his fist. “More for any time you need to step in for her.”

  Step in for her? “Why would I need to do that?”

  “She’s”—he looks for the word—“inexperienced. She’s done some commercials and worked a season on Mean Girls.” Angela’s never watched it. “This is her first major film role.”

  “Talented?”

  “Very. But learning the ropes. Having you there will be a godsend. If she needs advice. Shaping. And you’ll be there to pick up the slack if she should have to take a sick day.”

  Actors don’t get sick days during a movie shoot. Not unless they’re dying. “What, she has a drinking problem?”

  Lancaster shakes his head.

  “Drugs?”

  He scoffs.

  “Neurotic?”

  He raises his eyebrows, allowing that might be the case. “She’s green. And she can be”—he gazes past Angela—“volatile.”

  It sounds weird. Why would Lancaster hire a drama queen for a role she’s not ready to play? It’s not as if there’s a shortage of talent in this town. But it’s his movie, he can do whatever the hell he pleases, which apparently includes casting Angela Cassano as Mrs. Hudson.

  It’s hardly the “comeback” she envisioned. As she recalls, Mrs. Hudson has three scenes, and mostly they involve serving tea. Angela can’t be luminous or dangerous. She can only be old.

  As Ruby’s stand-in, Angela will have to be on the set much more, moving through Irene Adler’s motions while the lights and camera setups are tweaked. But no screen time. The only up-side is the extra she’ll be paid, which better be considerable.

  Lancaster is sitting forward, waiting for her to respond. Sensing her advantage, Angela leans back in her chair and waits. His chair creaks as he leans back, too, tenting his fingers over his stomach. Light gleams off his head.

  From outside she hears the beep-beeping of a truck backing up. A phone rings in the outer office.

  “How much?” she says.

  He winks and claps his hands together. “That’s what I’ve always liked about you, Angie. No bullshit.”

  Two months later, the movie begins shooting. Day one, Angela arrives early. A makeup artist who introduced herself as Briana is stippling Angela’s face with liquid latex aging makeup when Ruby arrives. She’s wearing a short dungaree skirt with a frayed hem and a T-shirt the same orange as the fake Birkin. The cell phone she’s clutching is encrusted with r
ed rhinestones. Branding. It’s all Angela can do to keep from rolling her eyes.

  “I’m super nervous,” Ruby says, dropping her phone in the purse. “That hair,” she says, studying the Irene Adler wig of wild auburn curls that’s waiting patiently on a blank-faced, Styrofoam head. “Looks like I’m playing a Wookie.”

  Angela laughs. Briana squeezes her shoulder and says, “Don’t make me have to start over with this. You can talk but try not to move your mouth.”

  With Ruby watching, Briana finishes with Angela’s face. The aging makeup is extraordinarily natural. When Briana pins on Mrs. Hudson’s granny wig, it’s scary. Picture of Dorian Gray scary. She’s going on camera looking like this? If she’s lucky, no one will recognize her, because there’s no way she can make this part into a bravura turn.

  “I’m so nervous,” Ruby says. “Seriously, I hope I don’t forget my lines.”

  Last night Angela studied the new script, learning her lines for the scenes scheduled to film today. Mrs. Hudson has exactly two. “But Mr. Holmes, you have to eat something!” and “Dr. Watson, just look at you, half-soaked to the skin!” Preferably not delivered through clenched teeth.

  She’s learned Ruby’s lines in her first scene, too, all eight of them. Ruby also gets to fire a gun at burglars and emote like crazy. If Angela were directing the film, the drama of that opening would take place in Ruby’s face.

  “You’ll be fine,” Angela says.

  “You think?” Ruby’s eyes go wide and her lower lip trembles as she kneads her hands. Overacting could get to be a habit.

  Angela smiles, feeling her face pull. Mentor her, she recalls Lancaster’s instructions, reminding herself of the reason why, for once, she’s being paid well above scale. “You do improv, right? Make the words your own.” This is a safe bet because it’s unlikely that Lancaster has read the script all that carefully himself. He calls himself a big picture kind of picture maker.

  “Really? Is that, like, okay?”

  “Just remember, Irene Adler is It-AL-ian. Or that’s her schtick, though she was born in New Jersey. Donna fatale. Eez all about affect.” Angela gives a hand flourish.