Chapter 1

“Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot.”

-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Adventure of the Abbey Grange

Monday afternoon

T.S. Eliot was right - “April is the cruelest month,” and April in Chicago is even crueler. It isn’t winter, and it isn’t spring. It’s that lousy Chicago in-between weather - damp and windy, offering the promise of warmth but not delivering. I’m Chicago born and raised and should be used to it by now. But like the Cubs, I always expect it to be better every year.

My name is DD McGil. My birth certificate reads Daphne December, but that was a horrible compromise between my mother and my father, so people use it only at their peril. I freely admit to being female, blonde, smart-assed and stubborn. My favorite color is red, and being Scots, I’m always suspicious of what’s under the surface. Most of all, I can’t abide the Paisley. I don’t admit to much else ever since the seventh grade when I learned to keep my chin up and never end a sentence with a preposition.

I used to be an assistant professor, happily teaching 17th century English literature, until murder intervened and ended that career. Now I’m an insurance investigator, as far away from academia as I can get. Perhaps most importantly, I’m about to turn 40.

This afternoon I was on a job. I was driving along beautiful Sheridan Road in my green Miata tailing a subject, one Claudine Romani. She’d filed an insurance claim related to severe back injury after a slip-and-fall at one of those big box stores. Fifteen minutes ago she’d left her house, destination unknown. That’s where I come in. United Insurance hired me to make sure she wasn’t scamming. I pulled into traffic far behind her and executed some tricky maneuvers so she wouldn’t tumble to the tail.

In my experience, people are always doing something wrong. It’s an axiom I live by. But so far on this surveillance, Romani hadn’t done anything suspicious - just the usual grocery shopping, drug stores and doctors, and visiting neighbors. I couldn’t read sinister into any of it.

When she changed lanes again, I followed suit. Truth-be-told, I was enjoying this job. Chicago is a magnificent city. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine that a mere twelve thousand years ago the whole of it had been under a glacier - a glacier with ice miles thick that stretched all the way from the North Pole. Right now I was speeding along what had been the terminal moraine of that glacier where mastodons instead of cars would have roamed the wetlands.

I braked suddenly to avoid playing bumper car with the BMW in front of me. We were at one of Sheridan Road’s curves where traffic slows down to 15 mph. That’s when my cell rang. I don’t have caller ID. I never know who’s going to call, and anyway, I like surprises. It was Tom Joyce, my antiquarian bookseller friend. Our friendship goes back to well before he and his bookshop, Joyce and Company Rare Books, became venerable Chicago institutions. He’s helped me out on a few cases, and we enjoy our intellectual sparring bouts.

“Hi, DD. What’s today’s word?”

This was a standing joke ever since Tom signed me up for the Oxford English Dictionary “Word of the Day” service for my last birthday. The OED sends me an e-mail every day, and today’s word was “propitious.” How was I to know it should have been “murder?”

“I’ve got some great news, DD! I’ve been doing an appraisal of the David Joyce Grange library collection. In fact, I’m calling from the Grange estate. I’m just about to head home.”

“You sound excited, Tom. Was David Joyce Grange some relative of yours?” I joked as I spotted a space across from the florist where my subject had stopped.

“Unfortunately, no,” Tom replied. “I only wish he was related.”

My front wheel gently contacted the curb as my back bumper just kissed the car behind me - perfect! “I know I’ve heard of him, but it was so long ago, I can’t remember any details.”

“That’s because he’s been dead for years. He was a lumber tycoon and made a fortune building the City of Chicago. He collected of all kinds of things, especially books. His son inherited the estate, but he died young. The son’s wife, Beatrice - everyone calls her the Dowager - lived on until a year or so ago. She never had old David Joyce Grange’s book collection appraised, and now that they’re selling the property, it has to be done as part of the estate valuation. Everything is going to Leslie Hindman Auctioneers over on Lake Street. They need the appraisal done for their auction catalog.”

“And as luck would have it, I see that the best appraisal guru in the Midwest - namely your modest self - got the job,” I quipped.

“Damn right! It’s fantastic. There’s probably over 5,000 books, many I’ve never seen including some really fine original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle manuscripts as well as a ton of Chicago history and such. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a collector and his treasures. It’s all pretty exciting.”

I turned off the engine. Romani was looking over some yellow roses in a silver bucket outside the shop. “So it sounds like you’re in heaven.”

“I am, DD. I started the job two days ago, but the collection is so massive, I’ll need another 10 days to finish. Listen, what I’m really calling about is even more exciting. I want to stop by and see you. I found something fascinating that’s going to amaze everyone.”

“I’ve never heard you sound like this. What is it?”

“I uncovered a small brown leather book today hidden in a secret recess in the desk in the Grange library.”

“Tom, no one’s going to be excited about an address book of women that the dead lumber tycoon screwed.”

“No, it’s not that! It’s his diary! I had one hell of a time because that desk had at least three hidden compartments. The third one had really tricky springs, and I almost didn’t find it. It even had some numbers carved in the wood. I’ll tell you all about that adventure later.”

“So it’s not a black book, it’s a diary. Same difference.”

“DD, get your mind out of the gutter. This isn’t listed in the estate inventory, and if I’m right, this will be worth more than pure gold. I’ve only skimmed it. Tonight I plan on reading it all.”

“You mean you’re taking it home with you?”

“Well, yes. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I’m so excited, I can’t help myself.”

“That’s what all criminals say,” I jibed.

“DD, you know me better! Maybe I’m stretching the rules, but it’s not criminal.”

“So what exactly is this earth shaking bit you read?”

“Grange personally met Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1894 when Doyle was in Chicago as part of his tour of the U.S.”

“Which probably explains why he collected so many Doyle manuscripts,” I noted. “So what?”

“What’s so exciting is that the diary references the original Doyle manuscript of The White Company. Grange purchased it, but that manuscript, like this diary, wasn’t listed on the inventory of the collection either.”

“That is interesting, Tom. How could an important manuscript like The White Company be overlooked? If you found the diary hidden in a secret compartment, maybe that explains why it wasn’t cataloged, but The White Company was Doyle’s favorite book. He even killed off Sherlock Holmes to give him time to write it. Have you thought that maybe Grange sold the manuscript before he died?”

“The White Company isn’t the big thing.” Tom was breathless. “The diary says that Grange found notes tucked inside the manuscript about ‘JTR.’ He figured Doyle didn’t realize they’d been mistakenly included with the manuscript. Grange wrote in the diary that he would never return them to Doyle.”

“What’s JTR?” I asked.

“DD, that’s the thing. That’s why I’m so excited. “JTR” is Jack the Ripper.”

Good thing I wasn’t driving, or I’d have hit a tree. What a bombshell. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of world famous super sleuth Sherlock Holmes, had notes about one of the most famous criminals in history. Maybe he’d included the Ripper’s identity. This WAS big. I took a deep breath.

“You still there?” I heard Tom ask.

“Yeah, but don’t ever do that to me again. You took me completely by surprise.”

“I was surprised too,” he admitted. “Maybe this answers some questions as to why Doyle never published anything about the Ripper.”

“Lots of people wondered about that,” I agreed. “After all, Doyle lived at the time of the Ripper murders plus he worked with Scotland Yard on some real cases, so why was he silent about one of the biggest unsolved investigations of the time?”

“It’s kind of like the dog that didn’t bark in the night,” Tom said.

“If Doyle wrote about knowing who Jack the Ripper was, it’s an unbelievably fantastic find. Maybe the notes weren’t stolen Tom. Didn’t you tell me once that Doyle’s son, Adrian, wrote about how forgetful his father was? Doyle might have forgotten he put them in the manuscript, and since The White Company was Doyle’s favorite book, maybe he figured he’d never sell it,” I speculated, still in shock.

“This diary and the Conan Doyle notes are the biggest things ever to come to light about the Ripper murders. A lot of people would kill to get their hands on the notes.”

“Maybe that blog I read on the internet recently knew something - whoever wrote it suggested Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself was the Ripper!”

“DD you know that’s ridiculous. From what Grange wrote in his diary, the notes do solve the Ripper murders because they prove Doyle knew who the Ripper was.”

“Wow! Tom, that’s unbelievable! The Ripper murders are still going strong after 125 years. If you can solve that mystery... So tell me, did Grange say in his diary who Doyle fingered?” I asked, tingling.

I heard an odd sound, then a loud noise. It sounded like Tom dropped his phone.

“Tom? What’s going on?”

A thin voice from far away moaned, “DD. Help. Someone’s trying to kill me.”

“Tom... Are you there?”

The line went dead.