A Study in Sherlock

THE ADVENTURE OF THE PURLOINED PAGET Phillip Margolin and Jerry Margolin

Everything about the moor made Ronald Adair uneasy. He had lived his whole life in Manhattan and he felt that there was something inherently wrong with places where you could actually see the horizon and the silence wasn’t annihilated by honking horns and pounding jackhammers. There were no Michelin-star restaurants in this wasteland, but there were bogs that could swallow a man in minutes. Ronald shivered as he imagined being sucked down into the ooze, struggling helplessly until the slime choked off his last terrified scream.

A year ago, Ronald had flown to Hollywood to talk to a studio head who wanted to buy the movie rights to Death’s Head, the video game that had made him a multimillionaire. He’d brought his girlfriend along and she had insisted that they visit the La Brea Tar Pits. The place had given him the willies. Sixteen-foot-high mammoths had disappeared into that darkness. At his last physical, Ronald had measured exactly five foot eleven inches tall. If he was sucked into one of those pits he wouldn’t stand a chance. He wondered if he would even recognize a tar pit or a bog should he wander out upon the moor. At least the manholes in Manhattan had covers you could see.

And then there was the Hound! Ronald knew The Hound of the Baskervilles was fiction but he was a fanatic Sherlockian—an investitured member of the Baker Street Irregulars with a complete set of Conan Doyle first editions in his library—so he also knew that Arthur Conan Doyle’s tale had been inspired by the legend of the seventeenth-century squire Richard Cabell, a monstrously evil man who had allegedly sold his soul to the devil. Cabell was buried on the moor and his ghost was said to lead a pack of baying phantom hounds across them on the anniversary of his death. Intellectually, Ronald knew there was no Hound prowling the “craggy cairns and tors” Conan Doyle had described in his story, but somewhere in the lizard part of his brain lurked the fear that an unearthly, slavering beast with glowing red eyes might roam a godforsaken place like this.

Ronald scanned the eerie countryside through the window of the jet black SUV that had been waiting for his private plane at Heathrow. The moor was shrouded in a thick, impenetrable mist that would cloak any ravenous fiend lurking near the dark pools of liquid peat. He pulled his gaze away and checked his cell phone. There were still no bars. They had disappeared as soon as the SUV passed through a small village which, the driver informed him, would be the last sign of civilization he would see before they arrived at Hilton Cubitt’s estate.

There were two other SUVs and a chauffeured limousine in the caravan that was headed toward Cubitt’s manor house. Ronald had seen the passengers in the other SUVs at Heathrow when they walked to the vehicles from their private jets. He had one thing in common with them: an outstanding Holmes collection. The limousine had joined the convoy as it left the airport and Ronald had no idea who was riding in it.

In the SUV directly behind Ronald was William Escott, a heavyset, dissipated Texas oilman who had inherited his wealth from his father. Ronald had disliked the collector the first time their paths had crossed at an auction. His low opinion of the man had never changed. Escott was a foul-mouthed slob who drank too much and talked too loudly. He had actually gotten into a fistfight during the Baker Street Irregulars’ annual meeting in New York in a dispute over the date of the action in “The Musgrave Ritual.” Escott did not limit his collecting to Holmes. He had an ownership interest in the Houston Astros and one of the best collections of baseball memorabilia outside of Cooperstown.

Robert Altamont was in the SUV that was following Escott. He was a chubby five-ten with a ruddy complexion, straw-colored hair, and bright blue eyes. The inventor had grown up on a farm in Oregon and had made his fortune after graduating from Boise State, but he dressed like a Boston WASP, affected a Haavaad accent and tried to create the impression that he’d been educated at places like Andover, Princeton, and MIT. The veil was easy to penetrate. Ronald had seen him use the wrong fork more than once at the BSI banquet and had caught numerous grammatical errors when Altamont tried to throw French phrases into a conversation.

Altamont had never confirmed the gossip about the source of his wealth but it was rumored that he had invented an electric car that really did what it was supposed to do and had sold the technology to a consortium of car manufacturers who now held the patent and the design in a vault in a secret location. The deal had supposedly made him a fortune.

Altamont was as avid a Sherlockian as Ronald. He had been turned on to Holmes by his older brother when he was ten years old and had started collecting on a small scale when he was still poor and in college. After he became rich Altamont not only built one of the world’s best Holmes collections but expanded his interests to Shakespeare First Folio, signed first editions of famous literary works, and French Impressionist paintings.

The caravan rounded a curve in the road and a pair of wrought-iron gates attached to weather-worn stone pillars suddenly appeared out of the fog. The gates and the house they protected looked familiar and Ronald had no trouble figuring out why. Hilton Cubitt had chosen this desolate stretch of the moor for his manor house because he wanted to model it after Baskerville Hall but the description in Doyle’s story did not provide enough detail, so he’d had the architect study the plans for Cromer Hall, which had inspired Doyle’s fictional architectural creation. Cubitt’s manor house was a variant of Tudor Gothic. There was a central three-story section with two-story wings on each side. The manor was gray stone. Octagonal stone chimneys rose at several points along the slate roof. The gray stone blended into the sullen surroundings and looked rather foreboding. For a brief moment, Ronald imagined that the high windows at the front of the house were watching him arrive.

The SUVs and the limousine stopped in front of a high, carved door fashioned from weather-worn oak. The driver opened Ronald’s door and he stepped out. The chill wind that swept across the desolate landscape stung his cheeks and he turned up the collar of the motorcycle jacket he wore over a black turtleneck and worn jeans. Ronald knew he was underdressed for a stay at a British manor house, but one nice thing about being filthy rich was that he could dress any damn way he pleased.

The limousine parked next to Ronald’s SUV. When the chauffeur opened the rear door, Ronald was surprised to see Peter Burns work his way out of the rear seat and limp around the front of the vehicle, leaning heavily on his cane. Burns was a dealer in rare books and the owner of London’s Great Mystery bookshop. Ronald had met him on a few occasions and he’d had many transatlantic dealings with him by phone or e-mail. Burns had a thin, aristocratic face with high cheekbones, a nose as sharp as a knife, and a narrow, pointed jaw. A pleasant smile and a head of curly gray hair softened his features. He was slightly taller than Ronald but the two men were eye to eye because he was forced to bend forward slightly due to the height of his cane.

“So Hilton invited you, too,” Ronald said.

“Didn’t you know I was coming?” Burns asked.

“Hilton told me there would be other guests, but he didn’t tell me who they were. Do you know why he summoned us?” Ronald asked.

“That’s what I want to know,” said William Escott, who had no compunction about butting into the conversation. Ronald and Peter Burns looked down at the five foot four interloper who seemed to be almost as wide as he was tall.

“I’m also curious, chaps,” chimed in Robert Altamont. “All Hilton told me was that my visit would be one of the most memorable events of my life.”

“I’m afraid I’ve been sworn to secrecy,” Burns said. “But Hilton will explain why you’re here soon enough.”

Before anyone could ask any more questions the front door was opened by Phillip Lester, Cubitt’s butler, a dignified and superbly fit ex-SAS sergeant whose military service records were shrouded in mystery. Lester was flanked by two men who looked like bodybuilders and had the hard eyes of people who have seen the dark side of life. The visitors were beckoned into a cavernous entryway. A massive stone staircase led up to the second floor and suits of armor stood at attention on either side of the bottom step.

“Welcome to Cubitt Hall,” Lester said as the drivers brought in Ronald’s stewardess case, Burns’s golf-club-size duffle bag, Escott’s valises, and Altamont’s monogrammed luggage. “Before I can show you to your rooms I’m afraid the security staff will have to go through your belongings and search you.”

“This is outrageous,” Escott shouted. “No one is going to lay a hand on me.”

“Mr. Escott,” Peter Burns interceded. “Take my word for it, you will think nothing of this search when you discover why you are here.”

Escott looked like he was about to say something else but he snapped his jaws shut.

“Very well,” he said as he raised his hands above his head and let one of the security men pat him down while the other went through his suitcases.

“I’ll show you to your rooms so you may freshen up,” the butler said as soon as the men and their luggage had been searched. “Mr. Cubitt would like you to meet him in the library for drinks before dinner at five.”

“A drink sounds mighty good to me,” Escott said.

Hilton Cubitt was an average-looking man who had made an above average fortune in the stock market, but he had just been through a costly divorce from his fourth wife and Ronald had heard whispers about severe financial reversals. Had Cubitt invested heavily with Bernie Madoff? Was his fortune depleted by the failure of several banks? If so, Cubitt did not show it. He strode into his library dressed in a hand-tailored suit sporting a confident smile.

Cubitt was five-nine with the compact build of the rugby player he’d been at Oxford. He’d parlayed a degree in finance into a fortune as a hedge fund manager and he’d used some of that fortune to build collections that were the envy of everyone who collected in his fields of interest. Cubitt was rumored to own the thirty-fifth Vermeer and he had an antique car museum that housed some of the rarest vehicles ever created, but he had two favorite collections.

Cubitt had spent a year in the States as a graduate student at Columbia. During that year, he had become a fan of American baseball and his favorite team was the New York Yankees. He had an impressive collection of Yankee memorabilia, which was said to include a World Series uniform worn and signed by Babe Ruth and the bat Mickey Mantle used when he hit his longest home run plus the uniform he wore when he hit it. The originals of these items were supposed to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame but there were rumors that Cubitt would neither confirm nor deny that the items in Cooperstown were copies.

Cubitt’s other pride and joy was the world’s largest collection of artwork pertaining to Sherlock Holmes, some two to three thousand pieces.

Cubitt’s guests were seated in his library in upholstered high-back chairs set up in a semicircle in front of a massive stone fireplace. A roaring fire radiated enough heat to counteract the chill and drinks had been provided by the butler. Every inch of wall space on either side of the fireplace was taken up with ornately carved floor-to-ceiling wooden bookshelves. Ronald had inspected some of the spines while waiting for Cubitt to appear and had been impressed by the quality of the collection.

“Thank you for coming, gentlemen,” Cubitt said as he strode to a spot in front of the fireplace. “I am certain that you will find your journey worthwhile.”

“And why is that, Hilton?” Escott asked. “Why did you drag us out here?”

Cubitt smiled. “I’m going to keep you in suspense a little longer, Bill. Please follow me.”

“Any chance I can see your Yankees memorabilia?” Escott asked.

“Perhaps, but I’m reluctant to do so since I hear that you’re a Red Sox fan.”

Cubitt led them down a long hall and stopped in front of a carved wood door while the butler unlocked it. When the door swung open, Ronald could see that the wood covered a thick steel inner door. The guests entered a pitch-black room. When Cubitt threw the light switch Ronald, Altamont, and Escott gasped. Only Peter Burns showed no reaction. He had been guiding Hilton Cubitt since the millionaire began collecting and he had been in this room on many occasions.

The gallery was massive and every square inch was covered by artwork related to Sherlock Holmes. What drew Ronald’s eye was a wall covered by Sidney Paget drawings. Paget was the original illustrator of the Holmes stories in The Strand Magazine, where the stories first appeared. There were only supposed to be thirty-five existing originals out of the hundreds of drawings Paget had completed. The most famous Paget was from “The Final Problem.” It showed the fight at Reichenbach Falls between the detective and his archenemy, Professor Moriarty, and had sold for more than $200,000 at auction.

“Are these …?” Ronald asked.

Cubitt nodded. “All originals.”

“My God,” Ronald said. On the wall were more than twenty Pagets that were not supposed to exist.

Cubitt gestured to four chairs that had been placed in front of the wall with the Pagets.

“Please sit down.”

Ronald could not tear his eyes away from the Pagets as he lowered himself onto his chair. When the men were seated, Cubitt walked in front of them and put his back to the wall.

“Bear with me while I tell you a story. Queen Victoria was born in 1819 and she ruled England from 1837 until her death in 1901. It is not widely known, but the queen was a huge fan of the Holmes stories and she was devastated when Doyle, who had grown tired of his creation, killed him off in ‘The Final Problem’ in 1893.

“On June 20, 1897, England held the Diamond Jubilee to celebrate the fact that Victoria had surpassed King George III as England’s longest-reigning monarch. It is not clear who, but someone close to the queen had the brilliant idea of asking Doyle to write a Holmes story solely for Her Majesty. Paget was asked to illustrate the tale.”

“Everyone knows that never happened,” Escott scoffed. “It’s a legend like the Loch Ness monster, with about as much truth to it.”

Cubitt smiled. “That is the majority opinion.”

“You’re not saying it really happened, are you?” Altamont asked with raised eyebrows and a smirk that broadcast his opinion of the tale.

“Why don’t you let me finish. Then you can draw your own conclusions,” Cubitt answered. “Those of us familiar with this so-called legend know that the story and the illustrations were alleged to have been individually bound in leather and presented to the queen. That is where the story usually ends, but some years ago Peter went to an estate on the North Shore of Long Island, New York, and bought a collection from Chester Doran, a distant relative of John Jacob Astor. Over dinner the conversation turned to Holmes. Doran asked Peter if he was aware that Astor had once owned the only copy of a short story Doyle had written for Queen Victoria and the original artwork Paget had created for it.”

Ronald turned toward Burns but the dealer’s face showed no emotion.

“Peter told Doran that the story in question was not believed to have actually existed, but his dinner partner assured him it was real. According to Doran, Astor heard the rumor while visiting England in 1912. Using contacts in the royal family he learned that the story was still in Buckingham Palace.

“Doran grew reluctant to continue his tale at this point but Peter persuaded him to complete it. Doran told Peter that Astor paid a huge sum to a servant to steal the story and the artwork, which he received the day before he was to sail back to the States.”

“Didn’t Astor go down with the Titanic?” Ronald asked.

Cubitt nodded. “He was one of the poor souls who sailed on that doomed ship in April 1912. Those scholars who heard the rumor that Astor possessed the story and artwork believe that they joined him at the bottom of the sea. But Doran claimed that he had discovered a Paget drawing in a leather case in a trunk belonging to John Jacob Astor that had been mistakenly left behind in England when the Titanic sailed and was shipped to Astor’s estate a month after the ship sank.”

“You’re saying you have the Paget?” Ronald asked incredulously.

Cubitt walked to the wall on the far side of the room and took down a painting that concealed a wall safe. He spun the dial, opened the steel door, and took out a framed fifteen-by-twenty-inch drawing. Escott leapt to his feet but Altamont and Ronald were too stunned to move. Cubitt placed the drawing on an easel that had been set up in front of the safe.

“Gentlemen,” Cubitt said.

Ronald and Altamont stood slowly and stared at the drawing like men in a trance. The three collectors edged forward with the same reverence priests would show if they were approaching the Holy Grail. Ronald’s heart beat furiously. The drawing was a full-length portrait of Holmes in a long coat and his famous deerstalker hat smoking a pipe in front of the fire at 221B Baker Street. It was signed SP, as Paget always signed his drawings, and dated June 20, 1897. There was no known Paget this large and the date under the signature was something no Sherlockian collector had ever seen on a Paget drawing.

“My God,” Altamont gasped. “How much did you pay for this?”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to keep that information confidential.”

Escott snorted. “Whatever you paid was money down the drain. This has got to be a forgery.”

“Peter vetted it thoroughly,” Cubitt said. “Before I bought it he had the paper tested, the ink tested. He had it examined by Paget experts. I’ve seen the documents. It is authentic.”

Escott tore his eyes away from the drawing and cast a sly glance at his host.

“Why are we here, Hilton? I reckon there’s more to this than an art show.”

“There’s no fooling you, Bill,” Cubitt answered. “With the acquisition of this Paget I have completed my collection of Holmes memorabilia and I’ve decided to sell it off. Collecting Holmes has no interest for me now that I have the whole set. I’m going to have Peter handle the sale of my collection but I wanted to give you three a chance to bid for the most important piece of Holmes memorabilia ever discovered because you are the only Holmes collectors with the financial resources to buy it. Tomorrow morning I will hold an auction for the Queen Victoria Paget.”

Hilton Cubitt’s personal chef produced a dinner worthy of the best French restaurant but Ronald and Altamont were too distracted to do more than pick at their food. William Escott devoured his meal with gusto and drank with even greater enthusiasm. Ronald was exhausted from the flight, the long drive, and the excitement caused by Cubitt’s startling surprise. As soon as it was socially acceptable, he called it a night and went to his room, but he found that he was too excited to sleep. He was also troubled by a question of ethics.

If the Paget was genuine, it was in truth the most important discovery in the history of Holmes collecting. But it was also stolen goods. If the existence of the Paget was made known, along with the manner in which it was acquired, the British government would demand its return. Neither he nor Altamont nor Escott had brought this up to Cubitt.

Robert Altamont was a genius and Ronald was certain he had considered the moral and legal conundrums the owner of the Paget would face. Ronald would not have been surprised if Escott had failed to think through the problem presented by the drawing’s provenance. The Texan wasn’t very bright. His morals were also suspect. If he did realize that the owner of the Paget would be in possession of stolen property, Ronald doubted that it would spoil his sleep.

Ronald had always prided himself on being an honest man. If he bought the Paget he would have to keep it hidden. If he hoarded his treasure so the British government didn’t learn of the Paget’s existence would he be able to look himself in the eye whenever he looked in a mirror?

Ronald’s bedroom was large and dominated by a king-size canopy bed in which he tossed and turned while visions of the Paget kept sleep away. A little after midnight, he finally gave up any idea of getting a good night’s sleep and got out of bed. Ronald had started a legal thriller on the plane ride from New York to London and he fished his e-book reader out of his traveling bag, hoping that reading would tire him out. There was a comfortable armchair next to a high window with a view of the moor. Ronald settled in and turned on the lamp on the side table.

Forty-five minutes later, the words were swimming in front of his eyes and he turned off the light. The reflection from the lamp had made it difficult to see through the window. The moment the light went off Ronald saw another light bobbing up and down on the moor. The fear he felt when he read The Hound flooded him and he took an involuntary step away from the window. Then he caught his breath and leaned forward.

The quarter moon provided little illumination and thick, fast-moving clouds frequently blocked even those feeble rays. For a second, Ronald thought he could make out a silhouette moving across the moor, whether man or woman he could not be sure. Then the light disappeared and he guessed that the person had moved behind a hummock or rock formation that was blocking the light.

What would possess someone to venture out on the moor in the cold and dark? Ronald could not imagine anything that would send him out into that trackless, merciless waste with its quicksand bogs and God knew what else. But the puzzle intrigued him and he decided to sit again and keep a vigil in hopes that the phantom would return and he could discover its identity.

Ronald jerked awake. At first, he had no idea where he was. Then he realized that he had fallen asleep in the chair by the window. The sun was just rising over the moor and he could make out stunted trees, barren ground, low hills, and rocky prominences. Nothing about the place in daylight changed his mind about his desire to avoid it.

Ronald’s Franck Muller wristwatch was on his nightstand. It was just shy of seven A.M. He showered and shaved before dressing in pressed jeans, a tight black T-shirt, and a Harvard sweatshirt. Unlike Robert Altamont, he had actually gone to Harvard for two years before dropping out to work full-time developing Death’s Head.

The table where they had eaten dinner was set. Silver serving dishes had been laid out on a long credenza. Phillip Lester asked him if he’d like some coffee. While Ronald poured a glass of orange juice and filled his plate with bacon, scrambled eggs, and a scone, the butler brought him a cup of the best black coffee he’d ever tasted. Ronald asked where it was from and Lester told him that the blend had been specially created for Mr. Cubitt but that was all he was at liberty to say.

“Did you sleep?” Robert Altamont asked from the doorway soon after Ronald had dug into his eggs. He was wearing gray slacks, a white silk shirt, and a blazer.

“Not until the wee hours. I was too wound up. What about you?”

“I caught a few winks but thinking about the Paget kept me up most of the night. I’ve been collecting forever but I’ve never been in a position to own something like this.”

William Escott walked in before Ronald could reply and made straight for the food. He stacked his plate so high that Ronald waited for it to collapse like a building brought down by a demolition expert.

“When’s the auction?” Escott asked the butler, though it was difficult to understand what the Texan had said because his mouth was stuffed with food.

“Mr. Cubitt should descend shortly.”

“Can we see the Paget again or do we have to wait for Hilton?” Ronald asked.

“Last night, Mr. Cubitt instructed me to take you to the gallery if you requested a viewing.”

“Well, I certainly do,” Escott said. He pulled a magnifying glass out of his pocket. “I’m not buying unless I get a chance to inspect the damn thing. Personally, I think this picture is just too good to be true.” He snorted. “Queen Victoria, the Titanic, John Jacob Astor. The whole thing sounds like a plot for a comic book.”

After everyone had eaten, Lester led them to the gallery. The door was closed but there was a key jutting out from the lock.

“That’s odd,” Lester said. He tried the door and it opened. The butler stepped into the pitch-black room. As soon as the light went on he tensed. Ronald looked over Lester’s shoulder to see what had prompted the reaction. His eyes widened.

Hilton Cubitt was sprawled on the floor, staring at the ceiling with dead eyes. There was a bullet hole in his forehead. Ronald stared, transfixed by the grisly scene. Then William Escott’s shout jerked him out of his trance.

“It’s gone!”

Ronald followed Escott’s pointing finger and found himself staring at an empty easel. The Paget was missing.

Ronald was shaken by the sight of Cubitt’s corpse. While Phillip Lester called the police, he returned to his room and collapsed in the chair by the window. Ronald had confronted death every day while he was developing Death’s Head. His digital victims had been stabbed, decapitated by chain saws, riddled with machine gun bullets, and fed to sharks. His game contained a copious amount of animated blood that flowed and spouted from hundreds of grisly wounds, but nothing he’d dealt with in the world of his video game had prepared him for the sight and smell of real death.

Ronald wanted nothing more than to be allowed to run home to the safety of his penthouse, but he knew he was going nowhere until he had spoken to the police. That prospect was unnerving, but not nearly as unnerving as the realization that the person who had murdered Hilton Cubitt was probably near enough to kill again.

Inspector Andrew Baynes had been dispatched to Cubitt Hall as soon as Hilton Cubitt’s death had been reported by Phillip Lester. He was six feet tall with thinning black hair and a wiry build. After organizing the crime scene and making certain that his forensic experts were hard at work in the gallery, Baynes had Ronald Adair, Peter Burns, Robert Altamont, William Escott, and Phillip Lester escorted into the library.

The inspector studied them as they filed into the room. Baynes was an exercise fanatic and something about the short, fat Texan repulsed him. Maybe it was the smirk on Escott’s face or his nonchalance in the middle of a murder investigation or the fact that he had not shaved and was dressed in a maroon track suit, but Baynes was certain he would not like the man.

The butler was all business. He was dressed in a suit and tie and had been extremely helpful from the beginning.

Peter Burns was also dressed in business attire and limped in using an elegant cane. It was clear that walking was a chore for him. The rare book dealer being the tallest of the five men, the inspector could look him straight in the eye. Burns didn’t flinch under Baynes’s intense scrutiny, but returned the inspector’s stare without blinking.

Ronald Adair looked impossibly young to be as rich as he was rumored to be but he also looked very nervous.

Finally, there was Robert Altamont, who entered the room cautiously and looked ill at ease.

After having the men sit in the seats they had taken the night before, Baynes asked them to explain why they were at Cubitt’s manor house. Then he asked Phillip Lester to tell him about the discovery of the body.

“And no one heard a shot?” the inspector asked when Lester was through.

“That’s not surprising, sir,” the butler said. “Mr. Cubitt’s art collection is very valuable and the gallery was constructed like a vault. The doors are thick steel and the walls are also steel lined. The room is quite soundproof.”

“Did any of you hear anything that might be useful?” the inspector asked.

Ronald hesitated. Then he raised his hand timidly.

“Yes, Mr. Adair?” Baynes prompted.

“I didn’t hear anything, but … Well, I was so wound up by Mr. Cubitt’s revelation that I couldn’t sleep. So I read in a chair by the window in my bedroom in hopes that I would grow tired. At some point I started to yawn so I closed my book and turned out the lamp. That’s when I saw something on the moor.”

“Something?”

“I couldn’t make it out. Whoever it was had a light of some sort because that’s what attracted me.”

“What time was this?” the inspector asked.

“I can’t say with certainty but I began reading a little after midnight and probably continued for half an hour to forty-five minutes. I never looked at my watch.”

“So sometime around one in the morning?”

“That would be a good guess.”

“We’ll see what the medical examiner has to say about time of death but you may have seen our murderer if he puts it in that neighborhood.”

“Unless Adair is making up this ghostly apparition on the moor,” Escott said. “It sounds like something out of The Hound of the Baskervilles.”

“I assure you this is no fabrication,” Ronald snapped, “and you’ve some nerve to suggest that it is.”

“Take it easy, Adair,” Escott answered. “No need to get excited unless you have a guilty conscience.”

“Call me a liar again and you’ll see how excited I can get.”

“Gentlemen,” Baynes cautioned sternly. “I insist that you calm down.”

Ronald and Escott glared at each other but they held their tongues.

“Can someone explain why this stolen drawing is so important?” Baynes asked. Then he listened intently while Peter Burns related the background of the missing Paget.

“And it’s valuable?” the inspector asked when Burns was through.

“Very,” Burns answered.

“What does that mean?”

“The Paget is the rarest piece of Holmes memorabilia in existence and would fetch several million dollars at auction.”

Baynes whistled. “Now that’s a motive for murder. But I have a question for you, Mr. Burns. If this painting—”

“Drawing, Inspector,” Burns corrected.

“Right, drawing is so unique, why was Mr. Cubitt selling it?”

“He said he had collected everything he could of Holmes and wasn’t interested anymore,” Altamont said.

“Actually,” Burns said, “Mr. Cubitt wasn’t completely honest about his motive. His fortune had taken quite a hit lately and he was forced to sell off his collection. I tried to talk him out of it but his back was to the wall.”

“What are you doing to find the Paget?” Escott demanded. “I’m still ready to bid if the thing is real.”

“Can’t you wait for Hilton to be buried?” Altamont asked with disgust.

“No one will be able to do a thing with Cubitt’s estate until it’s probated,” Ronald said.

“You should search the help. One of the servants probably took it,” Escott said.

“That may not be the case,” Inspector Baynes said. “Mr. Lester has informed me that the cook, maids, and serving staff were dismissed after dinner. They all live in the village and were gone long before Mr. Cubitt was murdered. The security men room together in a cottage behind the house and they say that neither of them left the cottage last night. The drivers who brought you from Heathrow are rooming above the garage and they alibi one another. They also say that none of their cars left the house last night and no one saw a car leave after the last of the staff drove off.”

“Are you looking for the drawing?” Altamont asked the inspector.

“I’ve got my men searching the house. If we find the Paget we may find the murderer.”

“The drawing may not be in the house,” Ronald said. “If no one drove away after the murder then the Paget must be close at hand, which means it is either in the house …”

“Or somewhere on the moor where your phantom stashed it,” Baynes said.

Ronald’s brow furrowed. “I’ve just had a very troubling thought,” he said. “If the staff, the drivers, and the security men are accounted for, the killer has to be one of us.”

Baynes nodded. “My thought exactly. Do any of you have alibis?”

The men looked at one another. Then all of them shook their heads.

“Something just occurred to me, Inspector,” Robert Altamont said.

“Yes, Mr. Altamont,” Baynes said.

“Peter, Bill, Ronald, and I may not have alibis but none of us could have committed the murder.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Hilton was shot to death.”

Baynes nodded.

“Then we couldn’t have killed him. When we arrived, Hilton’s security men searched us and our luggage. None of us had a gun on him or in his bags.”

“An interesting point,” Baynes conceded.

He turned to the butler. “Mr. Lester, are guns kept in the manor house?”

“Yes, sir. I have a pistol and so do the members of the security team. Then there are hunting rifles.”

Baynes sighed. “All right, I’ll have one of the boys from the lab go with you. I want every gun accounted for and tested. And I guess I’d better send a search party onto the moor. Will someone please describe the drawing?”

Phillip Lester had set out tea and snacks in the dining room and Inspector Baynes and Ronald bumped into each other there.

“Have you found anything?” Ronald asked. The inspector shook his head.

“We’ve searched all over Cubitt Hall and the moor and we haven’t found the Paget or the murder weapon. And none of the guns Mr. Lester turned over could have fired the shot that killed Mr. Cubitt. Unfortunately, there are a number of bogs and sinkholes on the moor into which the murder weapon and the drawing could have been dropped. If the murderer disposed of them there we have no chance of recovering them.”

“The killer may have disposed of his weapon on the moor,” Ronald said, “but he’d never leave the Paget there.”

“What makes you say that?” Baynes asked.

“Sequestering the Paget on the moor would risk exposure to the elements and damage to the drawing. I would never take that gamble.”

“You might if discovery of the drawing could lead to your incarceration for life for murder.”

“You’re not a collector, are you?”

“No, sir.”

“Then it will be impossible for you to understand the reverence we collectors have for objects we desire. Trust me, Inspector, that drawing is not on the moor. It is somewhere in this house, unless …”

Ronald’s brow furrowed. Then his eyes widened and he whispered, “Oh, my God!”

“What are you thinking?” Baynes asked.

Ronald turned to the inspector. “Have you recovered the bullet that killed Hilton?”

“Yes.”

“Is it a soft-nosed revolver bullet that mushroomed on impact?” Ronald asked.

Baynes’s mouth gaped open. “How did you know that?”

“Elementary, my dear Baynes,” Ronald answered with a wide smile.

“Huh?”

“Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I need one more piece of information and I’ll be able to tell you who killed Hilton Cubitt and the location of the Paget.”

Altamont and Escott protested at having to spend another day at Cubitt Hall but Inspector Baynes insisted. He had phoned an urgent request to police contacts in the States. Baynes received the information he needed just after dinner and gave it to Ronald Adair. Half an hour later, Baynes had Escott, Lester, Burns, and Altamont rounded up and brought to the library where they took their places, once again.

“I wish I could take credit for cracking this case,” Baynes said, “but the honor belongs to Mr. Adair. So I’m going to let him tell you what he figured out.”

The others cast suspicious glances at Ronald as he stood and took his place next to the inspector.

“It was the bullet that killed Mr. Cubitt that led me to the solution to this puzzling mystery. Hilton was killed with a revolver bullet. I asked the inspector if it was soft nosed and had mushroomed on impact. He confirmed this fact.”

Ronald noticed that Altamont’s brow furrowed first and Escott’s a moment later.

“Does that description sound familiar, gentlemen?” Ronald asked his fellow Baker Street Irregulars.

“ ‘The Adventure of the Empty House,’ ” Escott blurted out.

“Exactly, Bill. In that story, Colonel Sebastian Moran tries to assassinate Sherlock Holmes with an air gun. The weapon was constructed for Professor Moriarty, Holmes’s archenemy, by Von Herder, a blind German mechanic. In the story, Doyle writes that ‘the revolver bullet had mushroomed out as soft-nosed bullets will.’ ”

“You’re saying Cubitt was killed with an air gun?” Altamont asked incredulously.

“Something like it,” Ronald answered.

“But you were all searched,” Lester said. “How was the gun brought into the house?”

“No one searched you,” Escott said.

Ronald laughed. “No, no, Bill. The butler didn’t do it. The weapon used to kill Hilton Cubitt was concealed in Peter Burns’s cane.”

Burns looked astonished. “I don’t know whether to laugh or get angry, Ronald.” He held out his cane. “Feel free to inspect this as much as you wish. I assure you it’s quite solid.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that. What I do doubt is that the cane you are using is the same one you carried on the evening we arrived at Cubitt Hall. I am exactly five foot eleven and you are taller, but when we met outside the front door I looked directly into your eyes because you had to bend down to lean on your cane.”

Burns looked puzzled. “Where is this going?”

“Inspector Baynes is six feet tall, Peter. When we were first questioned in the library I noticed that you were eye-to-eye with the inspector, but it didn’t dawn on me that this might be important until I realized that Hilton Cubitt was murdered with a variant of an air gun. That’s when I realized that there had to be two canes and the one with the concealed gun was shorter. I’m guessing that the real cane was concealed in the lining of your duffel bag.”

Burns looked completely befuddled. “I don’t know what to say. If the gun was in a phony cane I brought here, where is it now?”

“Buried in a bog in the moor along with the Paget,” Ronald answered.

“My God, Ronald, are you insane? I would never destroy that drawing.”

“You would if it was a fake. Bill, Robert, and I have more than enough money to have bought the Paget if it was real. We would have no reason to steal it. And if we did, we would know that our luggage would be searched when we left so we couldn’t get it out of the house. And we would never leave it outside on the moor where it would be prey to some of the world’s most foul weather.

“But none of us would have any compunction about destroying a fake Paget. And that is what you sold to Hilton. He depended on you to verify its authenticity before paying millions to your accomplice, Chester Doran.

“You and Doran assumed that Hilton would keep the Paget in his collection and that he wouldn’t tell anyone about it. If the British government learned that Hilton had a Paget that was stolen from Buckingham Palace, it would demand its return. Cubitt assumed we would ignore the moral implications of obtaining stolen goods in our desire to obtain the most important and rare piece of Holmes memorabilia that ever existed, but you couldn’t take the chance that we would make the existence of the Paget public.

“Hilton suffered huge financial losses and needed large sums of money fast. You must have been terrified when he told you he planned to sell the Paget. Even if the buyer decided to keep its existence secret you knew he would insist on independent verification of an object that valuable and you would be exposed. You didn’t steal the Paget to possess it. You stole it to destroy it.”

“Well, this is an interesting theory but you don’t have this so-called air gun or the Paget so all you do have is a theory.”

“Not quite,” Inspector Baynes chimed in. “The New York police have Chester Doran in custody and he has been granted immunity as part of a plea bargain. When he heard he could be an accomplice to murder it wasn’t hard to get him to cooperate. He’s told us everything.

“Mr. Burns, I am placing you under arrest for the murder of Hilton Cubitt.”

William Escott and Robert Altamont drove back to London as soon as Inspector Baynes released them but Baynes asked Ronald to walk with him on the moor. Ronald explained his reluctance to go anywhere near the treacherous bogs but the inspector assured him it was perfectly safe.

Ronald and the inspector set off along a marked path. As they walked Ronald began to see that the moor could be scary but there was also a tranquil beauty in the lush vegetation and a sense of awe that was evoked by the cold, gray, mist-shrouded, low-hanging sky.

“Before you left, I wanted a chance to tell you how impressed I was by your deductions,” the inspector said. “You’ll probably have to testify at Burns’s trial. When you return to England, perhaps you’ll assist the Yard in solving another case.”

Ronald gave a self-deprecating laugh. “I doubt I’d be much use unless the case was connected to Sherlock Holmes. If Doyle hadn’t had Colonel Sebastian Moran use an air gun in ‘The Adventure of the Empty House,’ I’d never have tumbled to Burns’s scheme.”

“Then I’ll keep an eye out for a case with a Doyle connection.”

A stiff wind slashed Ronald’s cheeks. He hunched his shoulders and looked nervously at his fog-shrouded, bog-infested surroundings.

“I’ll think about it, but don’t call me if the case involves a bloodthirsty beast and the moor.”

Jerry Margolin is the owner of the world’s largest collection of original cartoon art and illustrations dealing strictly with Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Jerry lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife of forty years and a cat named Paget. He has been a member of the Baker Street Irregulars since 1977. His brother and coauthor, Phillip Margolin, introduced him to Sherlock Holmes at age ten.

Phillip Margolin has been a Peace Corps Volunteer, a schoolteacher, and is the author of fifteen New York Times bestsellers. Phil spent a quarter century as a criminal defense attorney, during which time he handled thirty homicide cases, including twelve death penalty cases, and argued before the United States Supreme Court. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and is proud to be a cofounder of Chess for Success, a nonprofit that uses chess to teach elementary school children study skills. When asked to contribute to this anthology, Phil jumped at the chance to collaborate on a Holmes story with his brother.

The resemblance of any of the characters in this story to any living or dead Sherlockians is probably intentional.