The Baker Street Jurors (15 page)

“But when they came ashore—hearing one final clang from the bell as they tromped across the beach—they found no one inside the castle. No monks, no bling, and no wine. Still no nuns or maidens of any kind. And no note on the door, either.

“The visitors from the north were so offended by this discourtesy that they never came back to this island, and took up the hobby of plundering France and Spain instead.

“Now—what do you suppose had happened to all those bare-pated monks? Well, I'll tell you,” she said.

“Not that twaddle again, Maggie,” said Bert, coming up to put his empty glass on the bar.

“Legend has it that they built a tunnel,” she continued.

“Now Maggie, you know that's all just a lot of codswallop.”

“Just because no one ever proved it doesn't mean it isn't so, Bert. And you're a fine one to talk. You spent more than a few afternoons scraping around looking for it yourself.”

“Not anymore,” grumbled Bert. “And I still say it's codswallop.” Bert zipped up his full-length slicker and went out the door.

“Don't mind him,” said Maggie to the jurors. “He's just out of sorts because he never found anything. And because he has to get the boat fueled and ready with the weather picking up. Anyway, the legend is that the monks built a tunnel, from the island to the mainland, so that when they saw the tall ships coming, they could escape even if the tide was high. And there's also a legend that they built a tunnel to sneak into the nunnery some five miles inland; they wouldn't be the first ones to try that, I'll wager. So I say the legend makes sense. Stay alive, get sex. What stronger incentives would you need to do a little digging?”

“Makes sense to me too,” said Nigel.

Siger took out his pipe. Maggie shook her head and pointed to a sign above the bar. “Sorry,” she said. “We don't allow it anymore.”

“How much time do we have before our transportation is ready?” said Siger.

“Fifteen minutes,” said Maggie. “If the weather holds.”

“Can I take this out to the lawn in the back?”

“Certainly,” said Maggie. “That's what the locals do.”

Siger looked at the group of jurors around him. “Shall we stretch our legs a bit?” he said. “I mean, if my pipe won't bother you.”

“I gave up cigs the first time I got—I mean—years ago,” said Lucy. “But I can put up with a pipe, if it's out in the fresh air.”

“I'll join you,” said Nigel.

“I'll stay here and have another pint,” said Bankstone.

“I'll come along,” said Mrs. Peabody.

A few moments later, the outdoors-inclined jurors stood in the middle of the meadow in back of the Running Monk pub. The meadow was emerald green, punctuated here and there by low outcroppings of yellowish rock and patches of dark earth. It extended some fifty yards to the north, ending at an unimposing wooden fence that marked the edges of the Westbury Resort golf course, which was apparently undergoing some improvements. To the west was the tidal beach, and beyond that was the island.

Siger had his pipe out, but Nigel noticed that he seemed in no particular hurry to actually light it.

“Ah, this is better,” said Siger. “Now my joints feel alive again. I'll just step over there to fire this up.”

“You don't need to do that,” said Mrs. Peabody, but the man moved a few yards away despite her dispensation.

“You can certainly smell the ocean here, can't you?” said Lucy. “Much more than out front in the car park.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Peabody. “Although it's not what I would call a pleasant scent. More like rotting seaweed.”

“Yes,” said Nigel. “Although I don't see any seaweed.”

Siger had his pipe in full flourish now. He exhaled a couple of respectable smoke rings. He watched them dissipate in the breeze, and then he walked back to the others and put out his pipe. “I hope I was far enough away to not disturb you,” he said.

“Not a problem,” said Nigel. “But I could have told you which way the breeze is blowing from the way the waves are peeling back.”

If Siger knew what Nigel was getting at, he didn't show it. He just sniffed the air, and grimaced slightly.

“See? Mr. Siger doesn't like it, either,” said Mrs. Peabody.

Siger turned his pipe upside down, tapped it to empty the contents, and kicked the dirt lightly where the ashes fell. “I think it's time for us to get back,” he said. “We don't want to miss our boat ride.”

As they entered the back door of the pub, they were approached by the New Zealander in a rugby shirt, who was now well into his cups. He went up to Lucy as soon as she came in the door.

“Did you go out for a smoke, miss? Should have told me; I'd have gone with you.”

“No fraternizing,” said Nigel, pushing in between.

“No what, mate?”

“You're intruding,” said Nigel. “Go away.”

The man glared but stepped back, just a little unsteadily.

At the front of the pub, the steward and the bailiff had entered.

“Time, everyone, please!” said Ms. Sreenivasan. “I mean everyone who is on the jur—I mean everyone who came in on the bus! Our boat is ready!”

Mr. Walker began to stride through the pub to make sure all the jurors were accounted for. He paused for just a moment at a table where several jurors were finishing their beers.

The bailiff frowned when he saw that empty glasses had accumulated, especially near the insurance agent in the Lacoste shirt, who was just now waving to the barmaid for another.

“You've had enough, lad,” said the bailiff.

“You're not my mum,” said the man, who wouldn't have said this to the imposing bailiff if he had not already had one too many. “If you want to leave me here, it suits me.”

The bailiff reached down, pushed the remaining glass of beer away, and said, “If you are too inebriated to continue, and I tell the judge, he will not only remove you from the jury, he will find you in contempt and throw you in jail. Think about it.”

The insurance agent looked up, saw the serious look on the bailiff's face, and nodded. “All right then,” he said. “If you say I've had enough, Mr. Walker, I've had enough.”

Bankstone and Armstrong were huddled together in a booth, on their second or third pints. Bankstone was shaking his head. “No. You must stay away from public offerings. And I'll tell you why: there are people like me getting in early, and then there are even more people like me trading milliseconds ahead of you every day for every individual stock on the market. You can't beat us. The only thing you can do is this: index funds.”

Armstrong considered it, nodded, and raised his glass. “To index funds, then!”

“Damn right!” said Bankstone. “Index funds!”

Mrs. Peabody smiled as she passed by them. “I'm so glad they're getting on,” she said.

Ms. Sreenivasan held the door open for the jurors to exit the pub, and a blast of cold air greeted them. “Everyone zip up!” she shouted. “It's getting nippy!”

Outside on the beach, just a few yards beyond the car park, the ferry—a twenty-five-foot, shallow-draft water taxi with a blue canopy over a narrow seating area—was now tied up at the little dock.

Ms. Sreenivasan and Mr. Walker herded the jurors in that direction. The judge and barristers were already there, looking at the boat and talking with Bert, whose attitude clearly said that whoever they all might have been back in London, they were in his world now.

“We're going in that?” whispered Mrs. Peabody.

“She's more than seaworthy,” shouted Bert. “I patched her myself just last week.”

Mr. Walker and Ms. Sreenivasan stood at the edge of the dock and helped the jurors onto the boat. The group boarded quickly at first, and then began to take longer as they crowded in and the seating logistics became complicated.

Finally all the jurors were in place, and then the judge, the lawyers, and Percy Pemberton stepped on board.

“All right then, off we go,” said Bert. He untied the mooring rope and started to go toward the helm.

“Wait,” said the judge. “My bailiff and steward are coming, too.”

“Afraid not, guv,” said Bert. “We're already at capacity once you stepped on. We can't take another soul.”

“Then you'll come back and get them and bring them across, too, as soon as you drop us off?”

Bert looked at the sky, and then at the choppy waves, and shook his head. “Not likely. The wind is picking up. I'll be lucky to get back to the dock myself before we have to tie her up for the night.”

“I can't manage all these jurors by myself!” said the judge in an impassioned plea. “It's like herding cats!”

Bert looked at the group of jurors trying to arrange themselves in the little boat, and he nodded—what the judge said was painfully obvious. “All right then,” said Bert. “I'll take a chance, and make an exception. You can bring one more. Her.” Bert was pointing at Ms. Sreenivasan. “That other fellow is way too big.”

The judge looked at his steward and bailiff, who both nodded agreeably. Ms. Sreenivasan stepped onto the boat—and Mr. Walker stepped back onto the dock.

“Off we go then,” said Bert.

 

14

At the top of the island hotel, the turret widow's walk had a fresh coat of white paint, and so the manager, Mr. Farnsworth, had to be careful. It wasn't a true widow's walk—it looked out the wrong way for that, east toward the mainland rather than out to sea. It was a “tourist turret,” Mr. Farnsworth liked to say, and he meant it in two ways—for tourists to visit (during the proper hours, from ten to two only) and pretend to be spies or illicit lovers, and for him to visit at all other hours, and spy just for the fun of it on the incoming and outgoing tourists.

He made sure that the sleeves of his jacket were gathered in close. It wouldn't do to brush up against the railing.

From this vantage point, he could see the passenger boat when it departed from the mainland, and yes, there it was—just now embarking.

He wondered if this group had bothered to check the weather report. Even if they hadn't, if they knew the island like Farnsworth did, they would have looked up and noticed the heavy gray mass drifting in, and the hotel's colored pennants fluttering. Whitecaps were already beginning to form all around the island.

And if they had checked the almanac, they would be aware that the storm coming in was riding with an unusually high tide—which meant that instead of being at least partly accessible to foot traffic at low tide, the island would, for the next twenty-four hours, be entirely surrounded by water, and rather rambunctious water at that.

These weather conditions would have deterred any ordinary group. But he knew this group was not ordinary. He adjusted the focus on the telescope and saw that most of the passengers on the boat were sensibly sitting under the canopy, but two individuals were visible on the outside.

One of them, a tall man, stood at the bow, with his shoulders hunched against the wind, calmly smoking a pipe. The other was leaning over the side rail in the way that people do when they don't quite have their sea legs—or stomach, either.

Farnsworth smiled at that—always a great entertainment, at least from a proper distance. He had seen enough to know that it was the expected group. He turned and went back down the stairs.

 

15

Nigel wiped his mouth and tried to gather himself up from the railing. He tried to ease his vertigo by looking toward the shoreline of the little island. Even this close, no more than a mile to go, he could see both ends of it. He tried to find one specific distant object to focus on. To his right, at the top of the hotel, he saw something that glinted—and then it was gone.

That was no good. He felt even dizzier than before. He still didn't understand why standing on a boat would do this to a person, but riding a surfboard—a skill he'd learned when he was in Los Angeles and it was just a short drive up Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu—would have the opposite effect.

Paddling out on a longboard was invigorating, not dizzying. Floating at the edge of the surf line was calming. And catching a wave was more of a thrill than almost anything else he knew.

At least it had been, when he was still in Los Angeles with Mara.

But then Mara had gotten an offer for an exhibit in New York, and had decided it was time for a permanent move. The morning after Nigel learned that it was not her plan that he go with her, he'd gone up to Malibu to shake it off. The surf would do that for you, focus your mind, put your body back in touch with the physical world, and break you out of whatever funk you might be in.

But then he'd made a mistake in the water. He didn't really have his focus back, not quite. On a day when the sets were just barely head high, he'd gotten careless, turned his back—and when he saw the rogue wave, rising behind him, it was just an instant too late.

He'd gone under, and stayed under, with the turbulence churning above him, longer than he'd ever been. When he had finally come up, his leash was broken, his board was gone, and it turned out to be a bloody long swim getting back in.

He'd gone back home that afternoon to a house where Mara had packed and gone to New York—and the next day he booked his own flight back to London.

 

16

The boat was getting very near the island now, with Nigel still at the rail. Bert shouted to him from the helm, with a sadistic grin.

“Don't care much for boats, then?” he said.

“Never have,” said Nigel. “Is it always like this?”

Bert nodded sagely. “At least once every twenty years or so. I can't say much for the timing of your tour group. This is the highest tide in years, and anyone can see there's a storm coming in. Normally you can just take the little sea tractor across. Not today.”