Elementary, She Read: A Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mystery

by Vicki Delany

  Which is what Jayne had told me. Just between us girls.

  Interesting that she’d never tried it on me.

  “Ruby, or Charmaine, as she’s usually called,” he said, “pretended to be interested in her grandfather’s Sherlock Holmes collection with the sole intention of inheriting some of the stuff one day. No one else in the family had the slightest interest in it.”

  “What degree of involvement? Did she buy for him?”

  “Nothing like that. She’d drop in now and again, and he’d show her what he had. Over the last several years, he hadn’t bought anything new, and she says it was getting tiring pretending to be interested in the same dusty book or tattered magazine every time she visited. Some years ago, he told her he was leaving the most valuable piece in his collection to her in his will. It was a shock to her, and everyone else in the family, when the old man died and the will was read. By that time, Mary Ellen Longton had scampered off with her bequest.”

  The butter in the frying pan began to sizzle, and I jumped up to pour in the eggs. I added green onions and cheddar cheese and popped wheat bread into the toaster.

  “Mary Ellen, in her capacity as Mr. Kent’s private nurse, had a room next to his suite. After she left, Charmaine searched the room and found a card from the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium.”

  “I was wondering how I got dragged into this.”

  “You don’t deal in rare books, but I’m thinking that, as neither Mary Ellen nor Charmaine had any real interest in collecting, they wouldn’t know that, and they both figured you’d be the place to buy the magazine.”

  “How convenient for Charmaine that I was advertising for a summer shop assistant.”

  “Exactly. How long did she work for you before all this began?”

  “About two weeks. There was always something about her I didn’t care for. I couldn’t put my finger on it, and I know it seems like hindsight now.”

  “You have good instincts, Gemma. And I, for one, made a mistake expecting you not to follow them. I’m sorry about that.”

  I gave him a smile.

  “Mary Ellen lay low for a while, but she must have decided she needed to sell the magazine while she still had it. The Kents were searching for her and wanted it and the jewelry back pending the result of the court decision on the validity of the will.”

  Bread popped out of the toaster, and I put it onto a plate and dished up the eggs. I placed in the food in front of Ryan.

  “You not eating?” he said.

  “Not hungry.” I sat down and cradled my teacup. “Eventually, Mary Ellen did arrive at the Emporium, and who did she see but Charmaine, working under the name of Ruby.”

  “They recognized each other, and both knew what the other was doing there.”

  “Ruby offered Mary Ellen a deal,” I said. “If she handed over the magazine, she’d see that Mary Ellen got a cut. Better to get something than risk losing everything if the court case went against her. Which it almost certainly would.”

  “You’re right again.”

  “Ruby disappeared from the shop around the time Mary Ellen came in. We were busy, and I was annoyed at her for taking her break at such a bad time. They must have cut this deal, and then Mary Ellen left. Mary Ellen had no intention of giving up full ownership of the magazine, so she hid it where she thought it would be safe until she could come back and get it. In my shop, among the books and magazines we sell. A forest is the best place to hide a tree, isn’t it? My staff and I don’t wear name tags, so Mary Ellen might not have even realized Ruby worked for me. Unfortunately for both of them, I found it almost immediately. Ruby got a glimpse of it before I asked her to leave. She would have realized then and there that Mary Ellen had no intention of honoring their deal.”

  “So she went around to the hotel and killed her.” Ryan mopped up the last of his eggs with the last of the toast.

  “No honor among thieves.”

  “Ruby then came here, to your house, to search for the magazine but was interrupted when we arrived.”

  “And Elaine? Why kill Elaine Kent, her aunt?”

  “According to Charmaine, Elaine and Mary Ellen were friendly when Mary Ellen was living at the house. Elaine and Colin’s marriage was on the rocks . . .”

  “As we know. In that case, it’s likely Elaine and Mary Ellen arranged for Elaine to be in the Emporium at the same time as Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen must have been planning to offer the magazine to me, and Elaine was there to watch her back. The tour leader told me Elaine was late getting onto the bus and appeared to be flustered when she did. It’s likely she and Mary Ellen talked, and they decided the plan had to change if Ruby was hanging around.” The bus tour guide had said she didn’t know why Elaine had come on that trip, as she was not friends with any of the other women and not much of a bridge player. Obviously, it was because she’d seen the visit to the Emporium listed as part of the tour schedule. “Trying to seem like one of the members of the tour group, Elaine bought a book. How to Think like Sherlock. You’d be surprised how many people I meet in the shop believe he was a real person. As if anyone could have a thought process like his. Why are you smiling?”

  “Why not smile? A successful conclusion to a difficult and complex case.” He lifted his mug in a toast. Violet barked her agreement.

  “Anyway,” I continued, “when Mary Ellen and Elaine saw, of all people, Charmaine, a.k.a. Ruby, in the store, the plan was canceled on the spot. I’m guessing they had a similar scheme for the jewelry, to try to sell it under the table. I wonder why Ruby didn’t take the jewelry from the hotel room after killing Mary Ellen.”

  Ryan studied me. “How’d you know the jewels were in her hotel room?”

  “A logical assumption. She brought the magazine to the Cape with her, thus I assume she brought the jewels also.” I smiled at him.

  He looked as though he didn’t believe me, but he didn’t press the point.

  “Ruby must have killed Mary Ellen only moments before we called up. It’s easy enough to get someone to open the door to their hotel room—just call out ‘housekeeping’ or something similar. She was interrupted before she could search the room, very likely when the receptionist rang the room for me. She slipped out in case someone followed up the phone call and came upstairs looking for Mary Ellen. Which, of course, is exactly what happened. When we got out of the elevator, we went in the wrong direction, and I called Jayne back. If Ruby hadn’t already left the room, my voice would have alerted her. She didn’t have a key, so she had to leave the door off the latch.” I called up the image of the hotel corridor as Jayne and I arrived at room 245. “The room was at the end of the hallway, and I heard the door to the staircase squeak. Hotels are busy places, and I paid it no mind. Ruby had been standing there, watching us. She saw us go into the room, and we came out immediately. I told Jayne to run and call the police. Ruby would have realized I knew enough about the value of the magazine to want to secure it. Jayne and I both carried small purses that day, nothing nearly large enough to contain a bound magazine. Thus Ruby would have concluded we didn’t have it on us. She knows I keep my car at home and walk to work every day. Therefore, as we drove to the hotel, I had to have gone home in the interim. Logically, that would be where the magazine was. Knowing we’d be tied up with the police for a long time, she headed for my house to search.”

  “You’ve got it all thought out.”

  “Unfortunately, not until it was almost too late. What did she tell you about Elaine?”

  “Elaine, so Ruby told us, wanted revenge on the cheating Colin. What better way than to take his mother’s jewelry? She was planning to divorce Colin, and she knew she’d never get it in a settlement. Mary Ellen and Elaine came to an agreement. Elaine would argue in court that Mr. Kent had told her he was so grateful to his nurse that he wanted to leave her items of significance. In return, Mary Ellen would share the jewelry with Elaine. That’s only Ruby’s speculation, but it rings true to me. When Elaine heard of the murder of
Mary Ellen, she leapt immediately to the correct conclusion and, instead of calling us, she foolishly blackmailed Ruby. We never released any information to the public about the jewelry, so Elaine must have assumed Ruby had taken it after killing Mary Ellen. She demanded the jewels in exchange for her silence. But Ruby didn’t have the jewelry and wouldn’t have handed it over in any case . . .”

  “And so Elaine had to die.” The day of Elaine’s death, Ruby started work at noon. She would have had plenty of time to drive to Boston in the early morning, kill her aunt, and get back to West London.

  Ryan pushed himself to his feet with a sigh. “I’d better get going. It’s going to be another long day tomorrow. You might be interested to know that I contacted Grant Thompson and told him he can examine the magazine again. We’ve also got a jeweler coming to have a look at the gems. They’re both coming at ten.”

  “I might just drop by,” I said.

  Violet and I walked with Ryan to the back door. He put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes. If he’d kissed me, I would have kissed him back. But he did not. Instead he said, “What am I going to do with you, Gemma Doyle?” and walked away into the night.

  Chapter 20

  I continued reading The Moonstone after Ryan left. The tale of an enormous diamond stolen from mines in India leading to betrayal and murder on an English country estate seemed appropriate for the night. The rising sun had barely crossed the horizon when Donald Morris rang.

  “Gemma, the most marvelous thing has happened. The Kent estate is opening their library for a viewing by the Speckled Band . . .”

  “The what?”

  “That’s the Boston Chapter of the Baker Street Irregulars. I’ve been invited to join them. We have one hour only to examine the contents. I’m leaving now. I have to be there by ten. This is beyond my wildest dreams. I’ll be in touch if I see anything you or Arthur might be interested in.” He hung up before I’d had time to tell him to have fun.

  I arrived at the West London police station promptly at ten o’clock. I met Grant Thompson as he was coming up the steps, and we walked into the building together.

  “Excited, Gemma?” he asked me.

  “Not particularly.”

  “Why not? This is a big deal. It might well be the real thing.”

  “I already know the value of the magazine, Grant.”

  “You do not.”

  “I do. It’s elementary.”

  Ryan opened the inner doors for us.

  “Okay,” Grant said. “Let’s have a bet. We’ll both write down what we suspect to be the estimated value of the magazine at auction and ask Detective Ashburton here to hold the guesses until we’ve seen it. Person who’s closest wins and the other one has to take him . . . or her . . . to dinner at the Blue Water Café tonight. Deal?”

  “Deal,” I said.

  He took a pad of paper out of his brief case and ripped off two sheets. He handed me one. I jotted down the dollar amount, folded the paper, and gave it to Ryan. Grant did the same.

  “Mr. Conrad, the jeweler, is in an interview room with Detective Estrada,” Ryan said. “I’ll take you two to the magazine.”

  Uniformed officers and civilian staff stopped what they were doing to watch us pass. I suppose the unveiling of a magazine with the potential value of half-a-million dollars isn’t something they see every day.

  Ryan unlocked the door, and we went in. The unadorned room was painted industrial beige. A single table sat in the center of the room, bolted to the floor. Three chairs were arranged around it.

  The magazine, still wrapped in plastic, was the only item on the table.

  Grant put his briefcase down and opened it to reveal the tools of his trade arranged within. He slipped on a pair of white gloves and took a deep breath. Ryan leaned closer. I was the only one who took a seat.

  Very gently, Grant slipped his hand into the plastic and took out the bound magazine. The golden gilt script glimmered in the harsh overhead light. He opened it slowly and carefully, revealing the magazine cover. Beeton’s Christmas Annual. December 1887. The man rising from a desk chair to switch on a lamp. “A Study in Scarlet by A. Conan Doyle.”

  Grant held a magnifying glass to his eyes and bent close. For a moment, in profile with his strong nose and chiseled cheekbones, he looked very much like a modern Sherlock Holmes. His look of delighted anticipation faded. He quickly flipped the page.

  He groaned, threw the magnifying glass onto the table, and stepped back.

  “What’s the matter?” Ryan said.

  I didn’t bother to put on white gloves to feel the pages. “Computer paper. The contents have been printed by a computer. The cover is moderately well done, good enough to fool an expert without close examination, but the interior wouldn’t deceive anyone who bothered to so much as glance at it.”

  “So it’s fake?”

  “Completely and totally.” Grant ripped off his gloves in disgust. “Literally not worth the paper it’s printed on.”

  Ryan unfolded the two pieces of paper we’d handed him. “Grant, you guessed five hundred thousand. Let’s see what Gemma said. Five dollars and seventy five cents.”

  “How did you know?” Grant said. “You told me you never opened it.”

  “I didn’t have to. By all accounts, Kurt Frederick Kent Jr. hated Mary Ellen Longton. He described her as a tyrant. He wanted his family to fire her, but Colin couldn’t be bothered. Kurt was an old man, his health rapidly failing. He lived alone in his private suite, attended only by his nurse, Mary Ellen. Even his granddaughter Charmaine, who we know as Ruby, had abandoned any pretext of being fond of him or interested in his hobby. He was frail and dying, but he was still far sharper than anyone realized. He let Mary Ellen persuade him to change his will to leave something to her. His Holmes collection had been extremely important to him for a good part of his life, never mind his late wife’s jewels. What better way to get back at Mary Ellen than to pretend he was leaving her items of value? I briefly considered that Ruby might have hastened his death, but Ruby didn’t pay sufficient attention to him in his last months to slowly administer poison. Mr. Kent knew he was close to death, but he had one last joke to play on the people who’d made his final days a misery.”

  “Wow!” Ryan said.

  The interview door flew open. Louise Estrada stood there, her face like a thundercloud. “You’ll never guess.”

  “The jewels are fake,” I said. “Two people died for nothing.”

  My phone rang. “Let me take this call, please. I’m expecting another update.”

  “Gemma!” Donald screamed. “There’s nothing here! You might get ten dollars a pound for the books on the shelves. There’s not a first edition to be seen, not even any seconds! The letters between Sir Arthur and his publisher are photocopies. Photocopies! Someone’s drawn a mustache onto his face in the reproduction photograph.” I had to strain to hear him over the noise in the background. I might have heard someone weeping uncontrollably.

  “Jayne’s always looking for tea sets to use in Mrs. Hudson’s. Is there anything like that?”

  “Tea sets! How can you talk about tea sets at a time like this?” he wailed.

  “Drive carefully, Donald.” I put the phone away. Grant and the two detectives were staring at me. “Mr. Kent’s businesses have been in decline for a long time. When he became ill and his son Colin took charge, the decline only accelerated. Kurt might not have liked his offspring much, but I’m guessing he did what he had to do to try to save the companies. He’s been selling off his collection for a long time. All the items sold at auction to unnamed collectors that Donald was so excited about? They were coming out of the Kent collection, not into it. He didn’t want anyone to know he was desperate, so the sales would have been conditional on the seller’s identity being kept secret.”

  “Poor guy,” Grant said.

  “His Beeton’s was probably sold a long time ago. It might even be the one that went up for auction in 2010. He didn’t ge
t the price he wanted, and Sotheby’s withdrew it, but he could have sold it directly to an individual. Same, of course, for the jewelry.”

  “Why have the fakes made?” Estrada asked.

  “He didn’t get on with his family, as we have seen. He probably thought this was the best way of doing what he had to do without them being any the wiser. In fairness, the children might have objected to the selling of their mother’s jewels for sentimental reasons. Maybe he wanted a copy of the Beeton’s so he could remember what he once had.”

  Silence fell over the room.

  “I think,” I said. “I would have gotten on with Kurt Frederick Kent Jr. extremely well.”

  Chapter 21

  Colin Kent came into the Emporium in the afternoon. He did not look happy, and I assumed he’d been told the bad news about his inheritance. He carried a plastic bag, and I didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to guess at the contents.

  “I’ve been told you were there when the book expert examined the magazine,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He took it out of the bag. “Do you want it? I’ll sell it to you.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Five dollars and seventy-five cents?”

  “Done.”

  When he’d left, I tore the cover page out of the binding, found a cheap frame in the storage room, and framed the cover. I hung it behind the counter and thought it looked very nice there indeed.

  * * *

  As promised, Grant took me to dinner at the Blue Water Café that night. Not entirely sure I wanted the evening to turn into a date, I suggested Ryan and Jayne join us. After leaving the police station, I’d gone straight to the Emporium where, not having an assistant anymore, I’d remained all day. In a momentary lull, I made a couple of phone calls and found a local berry farmer more than eager to supply the tea room. We’d been busy at three forty, when Jayne and I normally met for our daily business chat, so I hadn’t had a chance to tell her about the events of the morning.

  I was the first to arrive at the restaurant, and I asked the hostess to let Andy know we were here and to ask him to join us for a drink if he could get away.