The Baker Street Translation (3 page)

“I will leave them on the mailing cart,” said Reggie. “They are to go to Nigel in tomorrow morning's post.”

“Yes,” said Lois, slumping back into her chair. “Of course.”

Reggie tried not to get annoyed. In most other respects, Lois was working out quite well. And he had more important things to think about.

“Did you clear my calendar for next Tuesday?”

“Oh yes,” said Lois. She recovered her chirpiness. “No appointments at all on Tuesday, and just two new briefs for the entire week. They're both rolled up and tied with their little red strings on the shelf, and both are quite simple pleadings, pure formalities, no more than a page or two each, which you can stand up and deliver next week in your own inimitable style, with no advance preparation whatsoever.”

“You are catching on, Lois.”

“Thank you,” she said.

Now, finally, Reggie made it into his office and closed the door behind him.

Reggie's interior chambers office was a sanctuary. He had made sure it was so: a massive mahogany desk, rows of law books lining the wall, a tall swiveling leather chair behind the desk for Reggie, and two subordinate, but nevertheless expensive chairs in front of it, for solicitors and their clients.

But this morning, there in the middle of all the gleaming hardwood and leather and brass were the incoming Sherlock Holmes letters that Lois had plopped on his desk. The bloody things were beginning to accumulate.

It made Reggie uneasy.

Most of the letters that arrived every week were simply from dedicated fans of the Sherlock Holmes canon. People who knew perfectly well that the man was fictional. They just wanted to express their knowledge of Doyle's work, like
Star Trek
fans dressing up at a convention.

But there were always a few that were—well, different.

Some of the letter writers—typically the very young, or the very old—believed Sherlock Holmes to be real.

In theory—and as stipulated in the lease—Reggie was obliged to open the letters personally and respond to them—always in a standard way—assuring the letter writers that Sherlock Holmes appreciated their interest but was now retired and keeping bees in Sussex and was unable to respond personally to their inquiry.

But in practice, Reggie always had Lois bundle the things off across the pond to Nigel, Reggie's younger brother. Reggie did not want these letters accumulating on his own desk. Lois was supposed to put them on the cart at the other end of the corridor, to get picked up for Express Mail to Nigel in Los Angeles.

Nigel didn't seem to mind wading through them, and to Reggie they were at best a bother, and at worst a dangerous liability.

But at the moment, they were on Reggie's desk, staring him in the face.

He sat down, hesitated, and then in the same way one pushes on a tooth to see if it is still sure, he took one off the top.

The first was from a ten-year-old schoolgirl in Iowa, asking if Mr. Sherlock Holmes could please tell her how to know whether the boy in the next row liked her. Should she boldly just go up and ask?

No one at this address can answer that one, thought Reggie. Try Dear Abby.

The first one hadn't been too bad. Reggie relaxed a bit and looked at another. This one was from a centenarian in Texas who was making out her will.

Get an American lawyer, thought Reggie; they're plentiful.

The next was from Taiwan. This letter writer was grateful for an earlier, very helpful response from Sherlock Holmes's personal secretary, and he requested further assistance regarding some additional attached documents.

This was annoying. The earlier response from “Mr. Holmes's personal secretary” could only have come from Nigel. And if Nigel had, in fact, sent anything helpful, then he was departing once again from the standard reply.

The letter writer had obligingly included a copy of that first response. Reggie picked it up and looked at it:

Dear Mr. Liu—

Thank you for your inquiry regarding the enigmatic nursery rhyme. Unfortunately, Mr. Sherlock Holmes is at the moment unavailable, and children's verses are not within his particular area of expertise anyway—but perhaps my poor attempt at a response will help.

First, be aware that there is no such thing as a “dub-dub.” It is not, in fact, a word. When used in English following “rub,” all those words together constitute an idiom that means, roughly, “scrub away with abandon.” That is only an approximation, of course; such is the way with English idioms, and especially the ones that rhyme.

Other English phrases for which you should show caution in translation include “Bugger off, mate!” and “Bob's your uncle.” These are not meant to be taken literally.

You may find it comforting to know that this particular nursery rhyme has many variations in its English form. When it first popped up, it referred to “Three maids in a tub,” and shortly after the enthusiastic scrubbing, all the young ladies went off to the fair. The Victorians found this tale a bit too titillating, and so they tried many variations to take the fun out of it. Perhaps that's why your version of it uses “toffs” instead.

But it is just a nursery rhyme, after all, and I'm sure that your translation of it, whatever it turns out to be, will be fine.

Yours truly,

Mr. Sherlock Holmes's personal secretary.

Reggie looked at the signature at the end and sighed. Yes, it was Nigel's. Reggie's brother just couldn't seem to leave well enough alone

And no good deed goes unpunished. Now this letter writer politely wanted to verify the exact meaning of more phrases in other nursery rhymes.

There are lexicons for such things, thought Reggie. Look it up. Stop thinking of Sherlock Holmes as a sort of general help center.

Reggie had had enough. He made a mental note to remove the letters from his desk and put them on the cart on his way out to lunch. For now, he pushed the entire stack onto the corner of his desk nearest the door.

And anyway, he had plans to make. Lois was rapping on the closed chambers door, but Reggie called out for her to go away. At least for the next five minutes.

It was time for his next step. Laura would be back in London in just a few days, and Reggie did not intend to bollix this up.

As he picked up the phone, he briefly considered whether this was really the best way to go about it. Perhaps a moonlit dinner above the Thames would be more romantic.

But no. She would be terribly impressed; she would love it. There really was no doubt about it at all.

“I would like to speak to the person in charge of catering,” said Reggie.

“Sir, we do not do catering for the general public,” said the woman on the phone. “Would you like to make a reservation to dine in?”

“No, I'd like to set up a small catered affair,” said Reggie. “For two. Next week.”

“Sir, we do catering only for the royals. And we are quite busy this week.”

“Yes, but I have it on good authority that there was a particular type of chocolate raspberry tart that you served at one of those affairs a year or two ago, and I know a lady who would very much like to—”

“Sir, we are a purveyor of catering services to Her Majesty the Queen.”

“Yes, but that doesn't mean exclusively, does it? I know barristers who buy socks from purveyors to the queen. Half the point of being such a purveyor is that you can demand exorbitant prices when you sell similar things to commoners, correct?”

“Well, yes.”

“So what would that exorbitant price be?”

There was a short pause, then—

“How many people?”

“Two.”

“How many courses?”

“All of them. And the dessert cannot be just similar; it must be exact.”

There was another pause at the other end of the line as the woman crunched some numbers.

The she stated a price to Reggie.

Reggie gasped.

It took a moment, but he gathered himself.

“All right,” he said. “Let's do it.”

Reggie hung up the phone and exhaled.

It would be worth it.

Lois was at the door once more, and now Reggie could let her in.

“Yes?” said Reggie.

“There's a solicitor here to see you. He doesn't have an appointment, but he says it is urgent, and since your calendar is clear, I thought—”

“All right,” said Reggie. “Show him in.”

Lois stepped away for a moment, and then she returned with a man of about forty-five, unremarkable in appearance, wearing a standard middle-range solicitor's dark brown suit.

“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Heath,” said the solicitor. “I apologize for not making an appointment, but I was told you are the only person for this job, so I came to you at once.”

“What are the specifics?”

“It is a civil case. My client wishes to have a purchase contract nullified so that he can recover his original possession or be compensated for the actual value of his loss. All attempts for settlement have been rejected, the court briefings have been filed, and because the article in question is worth well over one hundred thousand pounds, he wants a Q.C. to do the oral arguments.”

“Contract nullification is never easy.”

“Yes, but this was a mistake of fact. My client thought he was selling one thing, and the purchaser claims that he was buying something else.”

“And what was the thing that caused all this confusion?”

“My client sold a plaster bust—not an original, mind you, but a simple reproduction—for ten pounds. Moments later, he saw the purchaser take the bust down to the street, smash it on the pavement, and retrieve from it a very rare and valuable black pearl.”

“Well,” said Reggie, “This would be difficult to—” And then he stopped. He looked hard at the solicitor.

“A black pearl, you say?”

“Yes.”

“A plaster bust?”

“Yes.”

Reggie sighed. There were the positive results from publicity. And then there were the negative ones. “Whose bloody prank is it this time?” he said, glaring across at the stone-faced solicitor, if indeed that's what he was. The man was probably from the Sherlockian Society, which had begun taking great pleasure in needling Reggie—plain jealousy, in Reggie's view—but the Sherlock Holmes letters had received so much publicity that even Reggie's legal colleagues were not above setting up such a joke.

“Why, I've no idea what—”

“Please,” said Reggie. “Even I have heard of the ‘Adventure of the Six Napoleons.'” And with that, Reggie pushed the button for his secretary. “Lois, is my ten o'clock here yet?”

“No, sir. You don't have one today.”

Bloody hell, thought Reggie. He really needed to get Lois up to speed on the office code words.

“Well, come and escort this gentleman out of my chambers anyway.”

Reggie turned to the still-poker-faced prankster. “Good day, sir. And please tell your friends from whichever Sherlockian society you belong to, to stop wasting my time.”

“I've no idea what you mean,” said the solicitor, getting up from his chair. “Cheers.”

Then, exiting Reggie's chambers office, the man finally betrayed just the slightest smirk, and Reggie caught it. It was just too annoying to let pass.

“I even know that the Napoléons weren't pastries!” shouted Reggie as Lois escorted the man to the lift.

This had to stop. As the lift doors closed on the Sherlockian solicitor, Reggie took all the letters from his desk out to the cart in the corridor, and plopped them there unceremoniously. Then he returned to his office and resolved to have a chat with the leasing committee about the whole thing.

Yes, there was that bloody provision in the lease that made Reggie responsible for them.

But leases were made to be broken and to give lawyers employment in breaking them; that was the very nature of them. Reggie was good at it himself, especially at arguing the case; and for finding the most subtle nuance and the most obscure precedent that could expand it into an actual loophole, there was no one better than his brother Nigel.

As Reggie was beginning to consider this, the phone rang.

It was Lois again. She said that Mr. Rafferty, from the leasing committee, wanted to have a word.

“Perfect timing,” said Reggie. “Tell him I'll be right up.”

Reggie stopped at Lois's desk on his way to the lift.

“Oh, and Lois—”

“Yes?”

“Just for future reference—the type of gentleman who was just here? That was not an urgent matter.”

“I'm very sorry, sir. He said he had a legal problem that couldn't wait, and he even told me what the point of law was.”

“Yes,” said Reggie. “I understand, and it's not your fault that one sneaked by you, when they're going to be so devious about it. But for future—when you get walk-in solicitors who didn't even go to the trouble of making an appointment—I want you to give them a little test.”

Lois gave Reggie a puzzled look. “You mean like a written exam?”

“No,” said Reggie. “Just do this: Ask if they are familiar with the entire canon.”

“The canon?”

“Yes. And then watch their eyes. If their eyes get all sparkly when you say ‘entire canon,' or if their pupils dilate—that's a warning sign. That will mean they are a Sherlockian. Not a humble Trekkie university nerd, nor a wannabe Jedi knight quasi-religious sycophant, but a genuine, dyed-in-the-Shetland-wool, grown-up, I've-already-got-a-life, adult Sherlockian. An original. Don't let them in. Don't let anyone who claims to know the entire canon near my office. I mean, except Nigel, of course, if he should return.”

“Yes,” said Lois doubtfully. “I'll try to remember.”

“Thank you,” said Reggie.

Then he took the lift to the top level of Dorset House and walked across the hardwood floor to Rafferty's office.