The Baker Street Jurors

 

Begin Reading

Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

 

Thank you for buying this

St. Martin's Press ebook.

 

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,

sign up for our newsletters.

 

Or visit us online at

us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

 

For email updates on the author, click
here
.

 

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way.
Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author's copyright, please notify the publisher at:
us.macmillanusa.com/piracy
.

 

For my father, Bill McKinley

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks to my editor, Marcia Markland, and assistant editor, Quressa Robinson; production editor, Elizabeth Curione; designer, Nicola Ferguson; publicist, Shailyn Tavella; jacket designer, David Baldeosingh Rotstein; and copy editor, NaNá Stoelzle, at Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press.

My thanks also to my agent, Kathleen Nishimoto, at William Morris Endeavor, and Laura Bonner, for international rights.

 

WATSON, YOU ARE A BRITISH JURY, AND I NEVER
MET A MAN WHO WAS MORE EMINENTLY FITTED
TO REPRESENT ONE.

—Sherlock Holmes,
The Adventure of the Abbey Grange,
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 

Prologue

It was no ordinary cricket bat.

Made of English willow, harvested at its prime from a Suffolk preserve and air-dried without a single knot or blemish, it bore the emblem of the England cricket team, and it had won more international championships for England than any piece of sporting equipment in modern history.

It was Liam McSweeney's cricket bat—and there was blood on it.

Chief Inspector Wembley didn't touch the bat, but only stared. His heart was breaking.

He shook his head very, very slowly from side to side, and said, “He can't have done it. Dear Lord God in Heaven, let someone please tell me a reason why he can't possibly have done it.”

The constable standing next to the cricket bat—which lay only partially concealed, under a rosebush in the east garden of the mansion in Hampstead—nodded his agreement with Wembley's sentiment, and said, “Not McSweeney. Surely not McSweeney.”

But then the constable volunteered what he knew, “Your forensics officer said it's his bat, his fingerprints, his footprints, his house, and his wife. Pending lab confirmation, of course. I mean, except for the house part. And the wife part. Don't need the lab to confirm those.”

Wembley straightened his posture and put on his official face, which was like steel on a cold day.

“You were the first officer on the scene?” said Wembley.

“No, sir. That was Sergeant Thackeray. He was so upset when he saw the condition of the body that—well, he was just overcome, sir. We sent him back to the station for some counseling.”

“That'll happen to a rookie,” said Wembley.

“He's actually been on the force a few years. But we're a quiet neighborhood. We don't get much of this sort of thing. Not like this, anyway.”

“Show me,” said Wembley.

They walked on ceramic pavers across the side lawn of the Hampstead mansion, with the morning dew still shining on the green grass. At the far end they reached a wrought-iron fence with a gate, and just inside that gate, the Scotland Yard forensics team was huddled around something covered with a tarp.

Inspector Wembley approached.

Helen O'Shea, the lead forensics officer, lifted the tarp. O'Shea's expression, conditioned by twenty years at her job, was always professionally stoic. But the constable stepped back. And Inspector Wembley himself managed to stand his ground for only perhaps two seconds before he too chose to look away.

“It's textbook,” said O'Shea. “If you want a perfect illustration of injuries consistent with a crime of passion, this is it.”

“All of it from the cricket bat?” said Wembley.

“Yes,” said O'Shea, “and from someone who knew how to swing it, too. The first blow, the one that incapacitated her, was a classic batsman's uppercut. The next one—overhead, which I guess isn't exactly cricket, but effective for this purpose—did her in. All the ones that followed were gratuitous.”

Wembley gestured for O'Shea to cover the body back up.

“The gate was locked?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Any footprints on the other side?”

“No. The only footprints are between here and McSweeney's house. Hers go only one way. His—the footprints of the size-ten male, weighing about a hundred and eighty pounds, with a pattern that matches a style that McSweeney likes, given what we found in his closet—go in both directions.”

The constable, still standing back from the covered body, shook his head, and said again, “Not McSweeney. Surely not McSweeney.”

O'Shea looked up. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

“You don't take your sports all that seriously then, do you, Helen?” said Wembley.

O'Shea shrugged. “I do. But if the shoe fits … and it does…”

Now a uniformed officer shouted from the side yard. “Inspector?”

Wembley turned. The sergeant pointed toward the street in front of the house.

“Here they come!”

“Bloody hell,” said Wembley.

He glared at the arriving media vans. The body was only hours cold, and the BBC was already here.

 

1

SEVEN MONTHS LATER

It was early spring, so early that it didn't really feel that way. As Lois exited the Marylebone tube station and turned the corner onto Baker Street, she saw fluffy white clouds high over the trees of Regents Park. But they were gliding on a cold northeast wind.

Lois zipped up her parka and walked less than halfway up the 200 block. She stopped at the newsstand in front of the Dorset National Building Society—just across the street from the French patisserie and a few doors down from the Beatles memorabilia store.

She didn't want a newspaper. But she knew she probably needed to pick up a coffee. She took a moment to look up at the second-story window above her, to be sure. She saw no light in the window.

So yes, better get the coffee.

“A large?” said Bob, who ran the newsstand.

“Yes, and put gobs of sugar in it, too. Not for me, of course, I don't need it.”

“Oh, I say we all need a little of it,” said Bob.

Lois was fifty or a few years more, rather short, more than a little rotund, and not concerned about it, despite all the public service announcements. But she'd given up sugar in her own coffee long ago.

She glanced at the news headlines as Bob poured the very dark brew. There were the usual domestic and worldly disputes. But the dominant story—in all but
Barron's,
which gave it second billing to something more staid—was from the world of sports, and of murder.

“McSweeney Must Play,” said one headline, in an English daily tabloid.

“McSweeney Must Pay,” said another headline. Lois looked closer at that one. It was from a New Zealand weekly. She wondered if it might be a typo.

Lois paid for the coffee and tried not to spill any through the tiny aperture in the lid as she opened the door at Dorset House.

Two American tourists, their noses pressed up against the glass wall of the entrance, delayed her. Lois felt sorry for the puzzled middle-aged man, who obviously was not clear on the concept of March weather in London and was rubbing his bare arms as he spoke. His wife at least had a sweater.

“Is this the place where Sherlock Holmes…”

“No,” said Lois. “Your best bet is the museum up the street.”

“But that doesn't make sense,” said the man. “The museum is almost at the other end of the block. The address 221B wouldn't be up there, it would be right—”

“Yes, I know, and I'm sorry about that,” said Lois. “And for what it's worth, the Royal Mail delivery service agrees with you. But you won't find Sherlock Holmes here. This is Dorset House, and all the tenants of Dorset House are strictly business. Especially these days. Cheers.”

Lois knew that answer would not satisfy them—it wouldn't have satisfied her, if she'd been in their shoes—but it couldn't be helped. She went into the Dorset House lobby and walked quickly across the marble floor to the security guard's station.

The security guard was a white-haired, wiry man in his seventies, who looked up from his sports section as Lois approached. “Good morning, Mr. Hendricks,” said Lois.

“
The Daily Sun
has it spot-on, don't you think?” said Hendricks.

“Regarding?” said Lois.

Hendricks held up the paper and displayed the page-one headline that Lois had already seen: “McSweeney Must Play!”

“The New Zealand paper has a headline just like that,” said Lois. “Except theirs says ‘Pay,' not ‘Play.'”

“That's because the Kiwis want to win the championship themselves. He's innocent until proven guilty, ain't he?”

“Yes,” said Lois, and now the headline made sense. The Kiwis had international cricket ambitions of their own. And, like siblings, the competition between England and former members of the British Empire was always more fierce than between complete strangers.

“Well, there you have it then,” said Hendricks. “They must let him play in the championship. They must! You don't convict an entire nation over one man's indictment, is what I always say, and
The Daily Sun
says it, too, right here. So unless he's found guilty, the International Cricket Council will let him play, right?”

“I suppose.”

“Well, they bloody well better,” said Hendricks. “I put ten quid on England winning this year. But it won't happen without McSweeney.”

“I'm sure you're right,” said Lois, though she had no idea. “Have you seen Nigel yet this morning?”

“No.”

“Oh my. I was afraid of that.”

“It's not the end of the world.”

“Well, that's easy for you to say, Mr. Hendricks,” said Lois. “I'm worried about him. It was so sudden—from his point of view—and he just hasn't seemed himself since he came back.”

“Looks the same to me,” said Hendricks.

“Well, the hurt is on the inside, of course.”

“Bollocks. Nothing that a good rugby scrum won't knock out of you. He just got soft there, staying across the pond for so long. Why, back in the day, I can tell you things…”

“You often do, Mr. Hendricks. And quite shocking they are, too.”

Hendricks grinned, showing only a few missing teeth—which, he often said, made him not a bad catch for a man in his seventies, especially one who was still quite capable in other areas as well.