Neil and Larry stood on a windy corner in North London. Neil looked up and saw the nearby tube station was Baker Street. Home of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.
“Well, that’s ironic,” Neil said, as he watched the dark SUV drive off into the distance. “Since we’re stuck with a mystery we can’t unravel.”
Jones had suggested a solution to their impasse. He and Isabella were done with the search for the jewel. They were off to look for Rose, and Rose alone. It was now up to Neil and Larry to figure out what Kemp had stolen and where he’d hidden it. If that led them to Rose, then all the better. But chasing a clue with no obvious meaning was just a waste of time right now.
It began to rain.
“I wish we’d asked Jones for an umbrella,” Larry said.
“I wish we’d asked for a vote,” Neil said.
Larry shook his head. “It would have been two-two. Tie goes to the enormous scary guy with the keys to the car and the leg wound that makes him even more ornery.”
“Two-two? You think Isabella would have voted for the split?” Neil said.
“She went with Jones, you’ll notice,” Larry said.
Neil said nothing. The SUV turned a corner and disappeared.
“Are you getting the feeling there’s more to Isabella’s job than she’s letting on?” Isabella’s mysterious nature was one of the things Neil found so interesting about her. But he was finding himself wondering what she might be up to when they weren’t together.
Larry gave Neil a condescending look. “Haven’t you ever wondered why a perfume maker has a full-time bodyguard?”
“She always says he’s a friend of her mother’s,” Neil said, knowing as soon as he said this how odd it really did sound.
“Let’s talk about that over some dinner. Put that nose to some good use, cuz.”
Neil sniffed the air, and was happy to discover the smell of some seriously good pork sausages being carried on the wind.
“Good boy,” Larry said, patting him on the head. “Which restaurant? Fetch!”
Neil growled like a dog. “It’s actually coming from inside that park over there.” He pointed to a large field that seemed to have about a hundred soccer fields and a small collection of trees in the middle.
A wisp of smoke rose from the tiny collection of trees and bushes.
“Let’s go!” Larry said. A few minutes later they were standing on a pebbled path outside a stone lodge with THE HONEST SAUSAGE written on a sign over the door.
“It looks like it was built by elves,” Larry said.
“Don’t eat the candy-cane doorway,” Neil said, walking past Larry. He opened the door and was met by a rush of incredibly aromatic food and the unmistakable sound of a barista steaming milk.
Larry heard it too and sprinted past Neil.
A few minutes later Neil was sitting with a full tasting platter in front of him and had placed an order for a hundred sausages for the command performance at the palace. Larry was on his fourth cappuccino and wore the most contented grin Neil had seen in days.
Their satisfaction soon faded as they got back down to business.
Neil put down his napkin. “I do think Jones is right that splitting up might give us a better chance to find Rose.”
“So let’s see where we are at.” Larry pulled out a map of London. He’d marked the location of the previous clues on the map. “The tower is on the right of the map. The tavern where Kemp hid the honey is at the bottom. Westminster is on the lower left. Clement’s Inn is this bit on the upper left in between them.”
“A pattern?”
“Possibly. I was kind of hoping that the places would be on the edges of a circle.”
“ ‘Merry Drake goes round the globe,’ ” Neil quoted.
Larry nodded. “I like circles.”
“I remember,” Neil said. Larry’s knowledge of Japanese wasan math—based on circles—had helped them crack their last case.
“And the great thing about circles is that when we don’t have all the coordinates, we can still figure out the center with as few as two, and that would help us narrow down our search for the actual final location.”
“Really?”
Larry gently tapped Neil’s head. “Repeat after me. Geometry. It’s a good word. You may have heard it in school once or twice. You sometimes only need to know two points on a circle to figure out the rest of the circle.”
It was like Larry was speaking a foreign language, so Neil just nodded.
“So, class, we have all these places so far,” Larry said, pointing at all the Xs on his map, “but they are clearly not points on a circle. They might form a square or some pattern we haven’t guessed at yet.”
“But there’s only one more place we need to plot in, right?”
“Yes, but until we know that place, there are millions of possibilities. Triangles, boxes, rectangles, lizards.”
“Lizards?”
“Sure. Maybe he drew a lizard on a map and then figured out what places fit.”
“Sounds a little weird.”
“Look at how his life was falling apart.”
“I was talking about you.”
“Ha-ha.”
“There’s got to be some way to figure out this pattern. Rose used all her biographical knowledge of Kemp and Shakespeare to find patterns and crossovers in the text.” Neil looked at the map.
“Maybe we should go see some Shakespeare.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, remember the theater where you found Lane’s clothes?”
“Yes.”
“They were putting on Macbeth. It’s one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. There’s even a scene with witches making soup with eyes of newt and stuff. We should head back there. Maybe we’ll see some other clues, or at the very least it will get us thinking about Shakespeare.”
“If they are still doing the play,” Neil said.
“As they say in theater, ‘the show must go on.’ Heck, they even continued to put on plays when the Germans were bombing London during World War Three.”
Neil blinked. “I thought there were only two world wars.”
Larry smiled. “It was a test. Glad to see some useful knowledge is sinking through that thick skull of yours.”
* * *
The theater was, in fact, open for business, but Neil and Larry seemed to be the only ones there. Larry paid for their tickets—from a young and very cute woman in the box office—and they walked into the theater.
“Her name is Cordelia,” Larry said.
“She seemed pretty talkative.”
“I think she’s bored. She said we’re the only two people to buy tickets so far.”
“I thought you only had eyes for Rose right now,” Neil joked.
“ ‘Let every eye negotiate for itself and trust no agent; for beauty is a witch against whose charms faith melteth into blood.’ ”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“It just means that the world is an interesting place, and don’t ever limit your horizons.”
“I’ll bet it does. I’ll ask Isabella for a translation later.”
Larry gulped and quickly changed the subject. “I wonder if they sell coffee?” Larry said, climbing the stairs in the foyer in search of a concession stand. “Maybe some Yorkie bars and treacle tarts as well!”
“So who is this Macbeth guy anyway?” Neil said as they reached the first floor.
Larry smacked Neil on the head with the program.
“You goofball. You never say that name in a theater.”
“What name, Macbeth?” Neil said. Larry smacked him again.
“It’s considered bad luck. Inside a theater you refer to it as ‘the Scottish play.’ ”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. What do the actors call Macbeth in the play? The Scottish guy?”
Larry responded by smacking Neil again.
“Stop that!” Neil said, defending himself from another swing of the program.
“Fine. Actually, you’re right. It is a bit of a silly tradition.”
“Was that the play they were putting on at the Globe when it burned or something?”
Larry shook his head. “Nope. That was Henry the Eighth. Remember, Rose told us about the cannons. No, there was a staging of the Scottish play about fifty years ago or so where the lead actor died during rehearsal, there was something else like an electrical fire, and I can’t remember what else. Voilà, a curse. Actors are a superstitious lot.”
Neil stopped for a second and looked around. “Speaking of actors, and audiences, where is everybody? This is the emptiest theater I’ve ever been in. It’s weird, though, because I do smell food.”
“Popcorn? Coffee? Popcorn with coffee?”
“No, weirder than that, as appetizing as it sounds. It smells like roast chicken, some potatoes, and maybe even some fruit—berries.”
“Sounds delicious. I’ll tell you what. The play doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes. I’m going to run back outside and grab a coffee or, gag, yet another tea. I’ll be right back.”
“Okay,” Neil said. “Make sure you have your cell phone. I’ll go find us some seats.”
Larry was off like a shot. Neil heard him bounding down the stairs, hollering a loud “huzzah” as he passed Cordelia again, and then the doors closed.
Neil turned his attention back to the smells coming from inside the theater. A heavy red curtain separated the corridor from the seating section. It was closed. Neil assumed an usher would come out just before showtime.
Where was everybody? Neil was starting to feel uncomfortable. Perhaps the ushers had already seated the other guests and then closed the curtains. Maybe Larry and Neil were late, not early. Neil wasn’t a big theatergoer, so he wasn’t completely certain of the protocol.
He took out his phone and dialed Larry to tell him to hurry back; then he snuck his head around the curtain. It was pitch-black inside.
Larry answered the call. “Neil. Hold on—I’m just paying the lovely Juliet for the coffee; I’ve got to put the phone down for a second.”
At that precise moment, Neil felt a hand over his mouth and smelled the unmistakable odor of chloroform. The last thing he heard before losing consciousness was the click of a lock, and the sound of Larry calling his name from somewhere in the distance, followed by a heavy foot crushing his cell phone.