Chapter 44

“Perhaps there are points which have escaped your Machiavellian intellect.”

-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Valley of Fear

I tried sorting out my thoughts on Philip Green. Tom, I realized, couldn’t get past his conviction that Green had tried to kill him, but I was skeptical. In insurance investigations, we generally don’t get an opportunity to use lie detectors. Instead they teach us how to read people to see if they’re telling the truth. Green didn’t exhibit any of the usual “liar” mannerisms we’re taught to observe. He didn’t blink too often; he made direct and sustained eye contact; he didn’t look down and to the left; and he wasn’t fidgeting. He was favoring his injured arm, but that injury wasn’t part of the equation. If he was lying, it was an Oscar quality performance. I made a decision. I hoped Tom would follow my lead.

“Tom, I need you to trust me on something.”

“What?”

“I believe Philip when he says he didn’t push you or take the diary. I think we should tell him everything about the diary and the missing manuscript and the Doyle notes. We’re stuck here, and it’s in our best interests if we work together.”

“DD, you know I trust you, but no. I can’t agree.”

“Ha. I knew you wouldn’t,” Philip Green shouted. “I’ve suspected from the day you came to the mansion that you were working with Ivy Douglas or maybe with John Turner to remove materials from the collection. I don’t have any proof yet, but there’s definitely something going on. Who are you in league with? You might as well tell me. I’ll track down every precious artifact from Grange’s Conan Doyle collection if it takes me the rest of my life.”

“Wait a minute,” Tom retorted. “You can’t accuse me. You’re the one who’s been sneaky. You’re the one who didn’t want to cooperate with me from the day I was hired. If anyone is trying to get artifacts from the collection, it’s you.”

“I resent that accusation. I’m a Doyle scholar and a Sherlockian of international reputation. I’m not some fly by night thief. I don’t operate that way. The entire collection should be available on the market so any buyer can have a chance to own it. I want it properly catalogued so it can be read and enjoyed by millions of Doyle’s fans.”

“Stop!” I shouted. “At the risk of getting my head taken off by you two, I’d like to interject a few words here. Tom, you know Philip Green is right. You’re aware of his past dealings. There’s never been a breath of scandal linking him to artifact fraud, faking or sub-rosa dealings. Am I right?”

“Well, I suppose so. Anyway, my head hurts. I’m too tired to fight anymore, even with him.”

“Tom, you’ve been doing too much since you left the hospital. You need to take it easy.” I approached Philip Green. “Now Mr. Green, I’ve known and worked with Tom Joyce for years. He’s a Chicago icon. There’s no one less likely to try to steal from a collection. Tom’s an amateur Sherlockian himself, and I think you have to agree that he is not and never would be involved in any nefarious activity concerning a client. I assure you he’d never met Ivy Douglas or John Turner for that matter until he was contacted to do the appraisal.”

“Miss McGil, I want to believe you. It’s true Tom and I have known each other for years, but in the past we’ve never competed for the same thing. I admit that when I lust for an object, I get a fever, and it always brings out the worst in me.”

“You’re not going to find the Doyle manuscript by fighting amongst yourselves. So let’s work together.” I had averted the immediate confrontation. I pressed on, hoping I wasn’t making a fatal error of judgment. “So Tom, tell Philip about finding the diary.”

Green interrupted. “I already know you found Grange’s diary. Tell me what was in it about the manuscript.”

I could see Tom struggling with himself. He looked beaten. “Grange wrote about purchasing The White Company manuscript from Doyle,” he said slowly.

Green nodded. “I thought that might be the case. You see, years ago I ran across a letter Doyle wrote in 1895 to his publisher. There was one line in the letter that sparked my interest, but I’d forgotten about it. It wasn’t until I was asked to look at Grange’s collection of Sherlockiana that it came to mind again. In the letter to his publisher, Doyle said that ‘he’d gotten a nice sum for it from a chap in Chicago’ or something like that. I’m paraphrasing. I’m thinking that the ‘it’ was the manuscript of The White Company.”

“And the chap in Chicago must have been Grange. You’re right,” Tom nodded. “Grange wrote that he met Doyle during the Chicago leg of Doyle’s 1894 tour of the States. I’m sure you know what a big splash he made on that trip. He spoke at all the important Chicago venues, including the Union League Club. That’s where Doyle sold The White Company manuscript to Grange.”

“Ah ha. Interesting isn’t it that Doyle loved that story better than his Sherlock Holmes stories,” Green mused. “Did Grange say how much he paid for it?”

“No,” Tom said, petting Wolfie. “But it was probably a nice sum. The White Company was popular when it first came out. I remember reading that Doyle was asked to sign a lot of copies of it on the tour.”

Green cocked his head to the right. “And Doyle would have needed the money at that time,” he said.

Tom nodded. “After Grange’s death, there’s no record of the manuscript being sold or transferred. But why isn’t it listed in the estate inventory? Where has it been all these years?”

Green fussed with his injured hand as he stood up. “A good question. Let’s assume that Grange held on to it. Since it wasn’t in the library safe where one would expect to find it, my thinking was that Grange must have brought it up here. That’s why I came tonight to search.”

“Have you heard any buzz about a new Doyle manuscript coming onto the market recently?” I asked Green.

“No. We Sherlockian keep abreast of ‘everything ACD’ as it were, and I’ve heard nothing.”

“So we can assume that whoever has the manuscript is holding onto it - maybe waiting to put it on the market after the Grange estate is settled,” I commented.

Green and Tom both agreed that was possible, but tricky. The Sherlockian world is a small world and people would know when it came up for sale.

That was a first. They agreed.

“And whoever has the manuscript also has Doyle’s notes,” I concluded.