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lifting an apologetic hand to the man behind her.
She d worked homicide for going on a dozen years now. She d come across
bodies dead from gang disputes and domestic madness, drug-fueled rage and
cold-blooded greed, sexual perversion and criminal neglect. Never in all that
time had she even heard hint of a person killed over an eighty-year-old short
story.
Lee was going to love this.
And what the hell wasdesuetude, anyway?
SIX
Kate worked the phone for a while from her desk, first checking on Ian
Nicholson s alibi and indeed, all was as he told her, from his Saturday motel
to his Sunday arrival in Seattle then trying to get a handle on the history of
this document with the odd coincidence. She started with the bigger dealers in
town who handled manuscripts and old maps, but after three of those suave
individuals went from polite to hungry in seconds flat, she turned to Tom
Rutland. He had indeed heard the rumors of a Sherlock Holmes story the
Sherlockian world had been aflutter for weeks with talk of such a thing, even
before the briefChronicle article that Philip had sent the Diners in the
middle of January, but no one, including Philip Gilbert, had admitted to
knowing anything concrete about it.
 Would it surprise you to know that your client had a copy of the story?
 Did he? What a rat bas I mean, what a rat. He sat there at the last dinner
and said not a thing, even though that rumor was the main topic of
conversation.
 That would have been the dinner at his house?
 That s right. We keep talking about having the January meeting set on the
sixth, which is generally accepted as Holmes s birthday, but since some of us
go back to New York for the BSI dinner, which is always that first weekend in
the year, we ve decided to keep ours on the Wednesday. That way we can have a
report, if anyone goes back.
 Right. The seventh of January. Which is funny, because according to his
ledger, he received the manuscript in the first part of December.
 He actually had it, then? We re talking about an unpublished Sherlock Holmes
story, by Arthur Conan Doyle? He sounded torn between frank disbelief and
yearning.
 That I don t know, Mr. Rutland. I haven t read it yet.
 But you ve seen it? I can t believe it. My God. Why on earth did Philip not
tell anyone about it, I wonder? Christ, he must have been just exploding with
the news. I wonder where he got it? Can you tell me that?
 I m sorry, I can t.
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 Where is it now?
That she could divulge, since he would guess anyway; best to leave Nicholson
out of it until he chose to step in.  I have a photocopy. The original is in
the bank vault, safe and sound.
 My God, he repeated.  Look, I d be happy to look it over for you as an
expert in things Sherlockian, you know. If it would do you any good. Would you
say it s got any chance at all of being genuine?
 Mr. Rutland 
 No, of course you wouldn t know. And probably someone like Ian would do a
better job of judging it, anyway. I wonder how Philip planned on letting us
know? No little resentment there, Kate could hear it ringing loud. The lawyer
kept her on the phone, practically pleading for more information; when she
hung up, she was thoughtful.
She regretted phoning him; should have gone to see him instead, so she could
have watched his face. Something about the conversation had sounded a faint
wrong note, as if he had been staging a piece of courtroom drama. Nothing she
could pin down, and admittedly, most of the time when she felt that, it turned
out to be either some unrelated matter the witness was concealing, or else
Kate s personal dislike for the individual. Both of which could easily be the
case here.
Still, she wished she could have seen his face.
Of one thing, however, there was no doubt: If the mere possibility of such a
manuscript so thrilled not only Thomas Rutland, but experienced antiquarians,
its existence had to be a remarkable thing. For a dyed-in-the-wool collector
like Philip Gilbert, it must have taken his weak heart to the edge of failure.
Although maybe it had actually taken his heart past the edge of failure, she
thought sourly, and phoned the ME s office, yet again.
Hawkin called a while later, the reception thin and crackly.
 Martinelli? Can you hear me?
 Barely. Where are you?
 I was calling to ask you the same thing. I m out on the Marin headlands.
 Sounds like the moon. I had an interesting talk with Mr. Nicholson. She
told him about the manuscript, its apparent worth and importance.  I ve been
trying to find the guy Gilbert bought it from, according to the ledger. You
ever hear of someone named Paul Kobata?
 Never came across him.
 Me neither. Anyway, I ve been calling around to see if any of the dealers
know where he is, and every time I say anything about a Sherlock Holmes story,
they practically crawl down the phone line at me. What the hell is it with
these people? Anyway, I can do that later, where do you want me to meet you?
 Sounds to me like your time s better spent working that angle. I looked
through the park records for crimes and found a lot of nothing, and I m now [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]