I have to admit, it was a lovely wedding. The bride was beautiful and radiant, the groom handsome and beaming with joy. The guests were well turned out, everyone clearly delighted for the couple. The service had been a short, no-nonsense affair held in a no-nonsense registry office, but the reception was held at an excellent restaurant in one of the city’s best hotels. Wine and cocktails flowed freely, the food was extraordinary, the ambience perfect, the service unobtrusive and discreet.
When the groom tapped his glass and rose to his feet to speak, he choked up for a moment and I wondered if he might cry. Instead, he swallowed and then simply thanked everyone for coming, some of us a long way, and mumbled a few words about how delighted he was that this amazing woman had agreed to spend the rest of her life with him. Pippa, my sister, gazed at her beloved in sheer adoration.
To my considerable surprise, she hadn’t so much as glanced at her phone since arriving at the registry office at Mayfair Library, as far as I could tell anyway. The perfect place for this marriage ceremony, I thought, considering the groom is a dealer in rare books, as it is in a real library and the Marylebone Room is full of antique books. Formalities over, Grant and Pippa had taken a cab to the reception venue at a hotel on the Strand in central London, so it is possible she checked in with “the office” as the newlyweds wound through the crowded streets of a Saturday evening. Then again, my sister could be mighty discreet. When she wanted to be.
Perhaps she truly had taken an entire day off. They were supposed to be going on honeymoon eventually, but no definite plans had been set. A vacation for my workaholic, high-achieving sister? Perhaps. She’d changed since meeting and falling in love with Grant Thompson. She sent me the occasional photograph of the two of them enjoying dinner in a nice restaurant or touring the sights of London and the South of England together. They’d gone hiking in Wales for an entire three-day weekend, Pippa’s hiking gear so new, I could hear her boots squeak above the sound of the wind in the video on my phone. She’d put on a bit of much-needed weight—not too much, mind—and she smiled in a way I hadn’t seen since … since ever, I suppose. She was seven years older than me, and even when she was a child, Pippa had been more of an adult than many adults I knew.
Pippa was next to stand up, her smooth, sleek cream satin gown flowing like a river as she did so. She also made a short speech thanking us for coming and thanking Grant for coming into her life, before raising a toast to him, to which we all responded with enthusiasm. She was about to sit down when she hesitated, took a breath, and lifted her glass once again. “Last of all, I have to give my heartfelt thanks and all the love in the world to my darling sister.”
That was unexpected. I refrained from glancing around to see if a previously unknown sibling had suddenly put in an appearance.
“To Gemma, for bringing Grant into my life.”
“To Gemma!” Everyone drank my health. I smiled stiffly and waved in acknowledgment. I might have even blushed. I try not to make a habit of doing such a thing.
“That was a nice gesture.” Jayne Wilson leaned across her own fiancé once conversation resumed. “Thanking you, I mean.”
“It was,” I said. “Surprisingly so.”
On the other side of me Ryan Ashburton, here as my date as well as a friend of the groom, pushed back his chair. He laid one hand lightly on my shoulder. “I’m going to grab the chance to corner Grant while he’s momentarily alone. We haven’t had the opportunity to catch up.”
I watched Ryan thread his way across the crowded room to the head table. My sister thanking me was unexpected but entirely warranted. Grant had been my friend before he met Pippa and subsequently being swept off his feet. I’d come to London to attend a Sherlock Holmes convention in my home city. Grant had accompanied me hoping to find some good deals on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first editions. Instead, he found Phillipa Doyle. By the time we returned to West London, Massachusetts, where I now live, he and Pippa had made plans for him to move to England to be with her.
At the time, I’d had my doubts as to the wisdom of that, but it clearly worked out well. For both of them.
In addition to Grant, Ryan, Jayne, and our friend Donald Morris had come to the convention with me and found themselves caught up in subsequent unfortunate events. Thus they’d all been invited to the wedding. Jayne had brought her own fiancé, Andy Whitehall.
Andy had never been to the U.K. before, and normally I love nothing more than showing off my beloved city to American visitors. Unfortunately, our arrival had been severely delayed. A flight that didn’t take off, for reasons still unknown; another having to turn around over the Atlantic and return to Boston; overnight in an uncomfortable, hugely overpriced airport hotel; yet another delayed flight. All the joys of modern air travel.
We finally arrived at Heathrow, tired, hungry, grumpy, late in the morning of the wedding. At least we made it in time, although one bag had not—mine. As I couldn’t go to the wedding of my only sister in nylon trousers with numerous zippers and big pockets, a beige T-shirt on which coffee had been spilled while waiting for the first (which never happened) flight, and a baggy cardigan, all of which had been worn several days in a row, I had to spend the day shopping while my friends slept. My mother, Anne, accompanied me to Harrods to get something suitable. The dress we chose was far above my regular budget, but I did love it. Navy blue, tea dress length, boat neck, sleeves to the elbow, wide chiffon skirt with a lacy overskirt dotted with sequins, thin belt. Not only expensive but far fancier than I would normally wear. But this wedding was a grand affair, and everyone dressed in their best finery. Grant and my father wore morning suits; the other men, including Grant’s father, were in suits and ties. Fortunately for Donald, Sherlockian to his core, men’s evening wear hasn’t changed all that much in the last hundred years, so he wasn’t entirely out of place in his gray three-piece suit, gold watch chain, heavily starched white shirt worn without a tie, Ulster cape, and sturdy black umbrella. I still have no idea how he got the umbrella through airport security.
At my request, I’d been seated at the dinner with my American friends, rather than my distant, largely unknown relatives. When the toasts and speeches were over and the guests up and mingling, Donald leaned across the table toward Andy. “Fortunately you have a free day tomorrow before heading off on your fishing expedition on Monday. I spent some time earlier today rearranging our plans. I was able to get us places in the Sherlock Holmes walking tour for ten thirty tomorrow morning.” In his fifties, Donald had given up his law practice to devote his life to the study of the Great Detective and his creator. Whereupon he found being a Sherlockian expert doesn’t provide much of a living. But he was a happy man, nonetheless, and a faithful patron of the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium.
“Ten thirty’s a bit—” Andy began.
Donald paid him no mind. “It’s a different tour than the one I went on last time, specifically recommended by some of my illustrious colleagues, so I’m looking forward to new sights and a new perspective. After the tour, we’ll have time to fit in …”
I tuned Donald out as he continued laying out his well-planned schedule. On our previous visit to London, Donald’s first time in the city of which his idol had “an exact knowledge,” he missed many of the Sherlockian highlights, as he’d been caught up in helping me clear my father of a false murder accusation. He was determined to see absolutely everything on this visit. And equally determined that the rest of us would as well, whether we wanted to see the highlights of Holmes’s London or not. Which, judging by the look on Andy’s face, was a definite “not.” Before leaving West London, he told me that as well as the planned fishing trip with my father and Ryan, he wanted to see the great art galleries and museums. I hadn’t known until this week that Andy was enraptured by the Pre-Raphaelites. While Jayne scoured guidebooks for the best places to see the work of Millais, Rossetti, and their fellows, Donald consulted schedules and locations of the most touristy of tourist traps.
I left them to their plans and found my mind wandering. I’d had a wedding once. I’d been young, too young, and my parents hadn’t entirely approved of my choice of groom or of me leaping prematurely to the altar. But they’d forced out smiles and congratulations and gave us a nice celebration. We’d been married in the Church of England, all flowers and hymns, and had our reception at a swanky restaurant in South Kensington. As I recall, to my extreme embarrassment, I wore an over-stuffed, over-decorated, overly large white dress. I must have looked like an idiot. On the termination of the marriage, I tossed every picture of that bad memory I could find. I still don’t know what had come over me, other than, I suppose, youthful romanticism. Then again, Paul could be quite the charmer.
And not only to me, as I later found out.
To avoid thinking any more about that unpleasantness, I glanced around the crowded room. Ten round tables for eight plus the head table for Pippa, Grant, Grant’s parents, and mine. Meaning eighty-six guests. Other than a few distant relatives I vaguely remembered meeting once or twice, I didn’t know most of the people here, but that came as no surprise. Not only is the age difference between my sister and me considerable, but we’ve always moved in completely different circles. I’m a bookstore owner. Paul, my ex-husband, and I had owned a mystery bookstore near Trafalgar Square, but after I divested myself of both the marriage and the business interest, I moved to America to help my great-uncle Arthur Doyle manage the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium he’d foolishly opened on a whim because he liked the address—222 Baker Street, West London. We’d later gone into partnership with Jayne Wilson to establish Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room, located at 220 Baker Street.
Uncle Arthur hadn’t made it to Pippa’s wedding. He hadn’t even made it as far as the airport. A few days before our scheduled departure, he sprained his right ankle. Nothing terribly serious, except that most things are serious for a man in his eighties. Rather than struggle on and off airplanes, in and out of subway and railway stations, and try to maneuver his way around my parents’ multistoried house, he declared he’d stay at home and nurse his injury. Besides, he assured me, someone had to keep an eye on our dogs and our businesses. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with that. Arthur was strictly a silent partner in our affairs. There was a reason he needed me to run the shop. And that reason was because he sometimes forgot that to stay in business we had to sell things to people. Fortunately, it was late October, a slow time in our tourist town, and my assistants Ashleigh and Gale were more than capable of the day-to-day running of the shop. Same applied to Jayne’s tearoom, where she’d convinced a retired baker friend by the name of Mikey to handle the majority of the baking in her absence.
Fortunately, Uncle Arthur had no interest in “helping” to run the tearoom.
While Ryan and Grant talked, and Donald regaled Andy and Jayne with details of his plans for the trip, I amused myself by studying the room. No one had been introduced to me as a friend of Pippa’s. My sister didn’t have friends. She had her “office” and she had “people.” But not friends. I don’t know exactly what Pippa does for a living, but I have my suspicions. She was, she told everyone who asked, an admin assistant to a midlevel manager in the Ministry for Transport, a “minor functionary in the British government.”
She was a heck of a lot more than that, but there was no point in asking her for specifics. As I said, I had my suspicions. A couple of people here, I thought, might be her coworkers. Men in exceptionally good suits with school or regimental ties, women in high heels, well-fitted dresses, and discreet but obviously expensive jewelry. Maybe the older woman, the one with sharp eyes, gray hair in a perfect chignon, designer suit, diamond necklace and matching earrings. She saw me looking and gave me a tight nod.
Yup, that one for sure. I considered going up to some of the younger people and casually asking what they did in the “Ministry for Transport,” but I knew they wouldn’t slip up. That sort never did. They wouldn’t work for the “Ministry for Transport” if they did.
The three other people seated at our table were a teenager, who said she was Millicent’s daughter and spent most of her time typing on the phone on her lap. I didn’t know who Millicent was or why she’d brought her daughter, and polite inquiries had been returned with nothing more than a tight smile and a comment on the bride’s dress, so I went on to introduce myself and my friends to the others. A solicitor from my mother’s chambers—her law office—and her husband, a ruddy-faced man with a strong East End accent and belly-splitting laugh, who owned a construction company.
“Sherlock ’olmes?” he said on meeting Donald. “You lot have come all the way from America and you want to see Sherlock ’olmes rubbish?”
I thought Donald might choke.
“I’ve got two tickets for tomorrow’s match,” the solicitor’s husband said. “For me and my mate. I’ll see if I can get one more. Nothin’ like a good rugby match to show you Yanks how we live over here.”
At the moment, Pippa was chatting with a gentleman I did recognize. Alistair Denhaugh, the eighth Earl of Ramshaw, my mother’s second cousin once removed. His distinguished title in no way matched the state of his finances. “Virtually destitute” was my mother’s usual comment on the aristocratic branch of her family. “Only managing to hold on to that pile he inherited because of his wife’s private income.” When you’re the eighth earl of anything, you can dress pretty much as you like. His suit was at least forty years out of date, and I could smell the mothballs from here. He was accompanied by a well-preserved lady a few years younger than his mid-sixties, his wife, Genevieve. Her dress was not new, although well cared for, likely chosen for its longevity and bought at an end-of-season sale. Tiny stitches attempted to repair a rip on the hem of her sleeve, and the heel of one shoe was worn on the inside, giving her a slightly lopsided tilt when she walked. Her necklace was a long double strand of pearls, matching her earrings. Imitation, obviously, copied from what had had to be sold off long ago. The younger man with them showed every sign of having come to this dinner only for the free meal. And drinks. He’d had plenty of free drinks. He’d been introduced as their son, Lawrence.
I met Grant’s parents, Roger and Linda Thompson, for the first time at the registry office. I had no reason to think they weren’t exactly what they appeared to be: a pleasant middle-class couple from Iowa, thrilled to be in England for the first time, and totally overwhelmed by their son’s new bride and her parents. Not that my parents are at all stuck-up. Quite the opposite. But my mum does speak in the plummy vowels of an elite private school nurtured in the highest law courts of the land; my father, Henry Doyle, is a retired DCS, Detective Chief Superintendent, with the Metropolitan Police. They own an entire row house in South Kensington, which must be worth in the fifteen to twenty million pound range these days. Roger, a real estate agent, would have checked into what similar houses were going for. He’d know the value of the property but not be aware that the house where my sister and I grew up had been my grandparents’ house, and once they died, my own parents worked very hard indeed to keep it.
Pippa, on the other hand, can be the very definition of English aloofness, but I noticed her chatting comfortably with her new mother-in-law over pre-dinner cocktails. Yes, Grant was mellowing her. Several of the guests were new friends of Grant, people from the book business. A couple of them pressed their business cards on me the moment he told them what I did for a living. I accepted the cards with a smile and slipped them into my tiny evening bag without saying that the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium is strictly retail. We don’t sell used or collectable books, with the occasional exception of a second or third edition or low-quality first, which might attract Uncle Arthur’s interest.
I stifled an enormous yawn. I didn’t stifle it well enough, as Jayne interrupted Donald in mid-expostulation to lean across Andy and say, “You must be beat, Gemma.”
“You could say that.”
While my mother and I grabbed a cab and ran around London looking for clothes for me, Jayne napped. She looked refreshed, bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked. Her blonde hair was washed and styled to fall around her shoulders in sleek waves, her makeup lightly but perfectly applied.
My mother offered to lend me some of her cosmetics, but we do not have the same coloring, so I reluctantly invested in a completely new set. Which was not cheap (nothing is) at Harrod’s. We also had to shop for a casual outfit in case my suitcase never managed to find me. Fortunately, I’d kept my good jewelry in my carry-on, so I was wearing the earrings I’d inherited from my grandmother.
Grant moved on to visit with other guests, and Ryan and my dad found a table in a corner where they leaned close together, clearly exchanging police war stories. Ryan is the lead detective with the West London PD.
I yawned again.
Jayne began gathering her things. “Why don’t you and I slip away? We have a good excuse, jet lag. We’ve been on the move for days.”
“But Grant said there’ll be a late-night dessert buffet,” Andy protested. “Besides, it’s only afternoon at home, and I’m still on that time zone.”
“I haven’t finished laying out the plans for Sunday and Monday,” Donald said. He’d managed to politely excuse himself from attending a rugby game on the grounds of wanting to spend the day with his friends. Once dinner was finished and guests began to mingle, the solicitor excused herself to speak to my mother, while her husband wandered away, still mumbling about that “’olmes rubbish.” Millicent’s daughter continued texting.
I was beginning to suspect the young woman wasn’t the daughter of anyone. Anyone here, that is. Her head was down, her thumbs moving constantly; she sighed or chuckled occasionally. She was seated on the other side of the table from me, so I couldn’t see the screen of her phone. Her head was down, but her eyes were not totally focused on the object in her hands. She had a way of watching everything without appearing to be doing so that reminded me very much of my own sister. She’d nibbled at her food, and although she accepted a glass of Champagne with which to toast the couple, noticeably she did little more than wet her lips, although she had a regretful look on her face when she pushed the glass aside. At a hotel like this one, that stuff must cost in the hundreds of pounds a bottle range.
When a waiter dropped a tray and the sound echoed around the room, she was on her feet faster than anyone, with the exception of the bride. Even faster than the father of the bride, a former police officer, and the plus-one of the bride’s sister, a currently serving police officer. When she caught me looking at her, Millicent’s unnamed daughter gave me a shrug and an embarrassed giggle as she sat down again. She patted the vague location of her heart. “Goodness, but that frightened me.”
“Obviously,” I’d said.
“I’m going to take my leave,” I said now. “You don’t need to come with me, Jayne. I can find my way to Stanhope Gardens all by myself.”
My friend looked dubious. Andy looked hopeful.
I stood up.
“If you’re sure?” Jayne said.
“I am. You enjoy the rest of the party.”
“We should leave at nine thirty to get there in time for the tour,” Donald said. “Do you think Anne will have breakfast for us, Gemma?”
I glanced toward my mother. She’d joined the eighth earl and his wife and son at their table. A waiter arrived with a fresh bottle of Dom Perignon, and she signaled to him to fill their glasses. “Mum won’t be up and making breakfast before noon,” I said. “We’re on our own.”
“The tour meets near the Criterion,” Donald said, “the very place where Holmes and Watson first met. I’ll check to see if they serve a hearty full English Sunday breakfast.”
“They don’t,” Millicent’s daughter said, without looking up. “I mean, I think someone told me they’ve closed. Don’t remember who.”
“You can take that to the bank,” I said to Donald. “I’ll tell Ryan I’m ducking out.”
Ryan and Dad had taken off their jackets and loosened their ties. They each had a glass of whiskey in front of them, and their heads were close in conversation. I put my arms around Ryan’s neck and kissed him on the top of the head. “I’m off. Unlike the rest of you lucky travelers, I didn’t get an afternoon nap. I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. No, don’t get up. Please. You stay. I’ll grab a cab.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Am I sure I can get a London cab outside a hotel in the Strand on a Saturday night and direct the cabbie to the street where I lived for the first eighteen years of my life? Yes, I’m sure. If you’re at all interested, and even if you’re not, Donald is organizing a Sherlock Holmes walking tour, preceded by breakfast at a venue yet to be decided, departing at nine from the front door. I will not be joining you. We have dinner at Grant and Pippa’s at six tomorrow. Consider that to be a command performance.”
I kissed him again and left. I didn’t bother saying good night to the newlyweds. Grant was introducing his parents to his bookish friends, and Pippa approached Jayne and Andy, so pointedly ignoring Millicent’s daughter, I knew she was fully aware of exactly what the young woman was up to.
It would appear that Pippa hadn’t entirely taken the day off work after all. None of my business.
I slipped out of the banquet room and headed for the cloakroom. I hadn’t had to buy a new coat; my mother had a closet full of them. Unlike an evening dress, it didn’t matter too much that the sleeves were too short, the shoulders too tight, and the hem fell about three inches above the bottom of my skirt. I buttoned the coat up as I crossed the lobby. It was raining hard, but the doorman would have no trouble, not at this hotel in this area, hailing me a cab.
It was shortly after ten o’clock, and the lobby was still busy. The sounds of conversation, laughter, and the clink of cutlery and glassware drifted out of the restaurant and the bar. Guests, dripping rainwater or shaking off umbrellas, came into the hotel after enjoying a night out. Outside, the streets were slick, and a stream of headlights moved slowly through the traffic.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a man stand up as I approached the doors. I paid him no mind, until he said in a deep, low voice. “Gemma.”
I stopped dead. I knew that voice. I turned and faced him.
He gave me a stiff smile. “Gemma Doyle. I was hoping to run into you.”
His name was Paul Erikson, and he had once been my husband.