He raises an eyebrow.
“Me, working full time for Croft Security. Seems I have an eye for things that are out of place. Such as your name,” she says. “I spent the afternoon at the library. The Companies House register lists the owner of Croft Security as Freddy Phelps, ‘Trading As Michael Croft.’ Mike Croft—as in Mycroft Holmes, the detective’s brilliant brother. You deliberately gave your business the Baker Street aura. Sweet.” She raises her cup. “Pleased to meet you.”
“My word.”
She smiles. “Street Team. We can ‘go everywhere, see everything, overhear everyone.’ Sherlock Holmes for Dummies, page one hundred twenty.”
He leans back. “All right.”
“After I get my degree at university, of course.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll join your staff as a paid intern whilst I do my studies. Unless the firm prefers to directly fund my university fees.”
“We’ll work it out.” He looks stunned, yet ready to smile. He turns to go.
“One other thing.”
He turns back. “What’s that?”
“Harry. His family is probably safe, though Fallon had confederates.”
Word of the . . . well, the hour, confederates.
“We’ll make sure.”
“Harry needs a safe school. He and his sisters. Fairfield Park is ideal. You’ll see to their fees and transport. Uniforms, supplies, everything. Lunch.”
“Of course.”
She searches his face for sincerity or signs of duplicity. Extends her hand. They shake.
A cop strolls over, a Detective Inspector. He nods to her. “I hear you helped close this case. We should be thanking you.”
“No call for that. It’s done.” Done, dusted, gone. Like Holly Kendrick.
“Nevertheless, well spotted, Miss . . .”
“Call me Shaz. It’s Sharon, actually. Sharon Hill.” She glances at Croft. “But from here on I’ll be trading as Shar. Shar Locke.”
“That’s . . . unexpected,” Croft says.
“I think you mean irregular.”
Word of the year.
WHERE THERE IS HONEY
by Dana Cameron
Writing settles my mind. Getting the thoughts out of my head and onto the page, with the accompanying smell of ink and the scratch of the pen across fresh paper, has become a daily habit, especially when we are working on a case. Once committed to paper, my whirlwind ideas cease to plague me so terribly. I hate the persistence of memory, questioning the actions I took or did not take on a case, what I observed or did not observe—and always, what might have been. These “might have beens” stretch to eternity, a litany of failure. I have observed a marked lowness of spirits when I do not keep to this ritual, and so try to be constant in it. On some occasions, since my discharge from the army, I have found myself unnerved by new worries, and the ordering of my rampaging thoughts, corralling and quieting them, helps.
Indeed, I was busily writing when my friend Sherlock Holmes stalked into the room and hurled himself into a chair that late March evening just a few months after we took up residence together. I had hoped that he would presently close his eyes and doze, as he sometimes did after reviewing the successful completion of the day’s work, but it was not to be. He immediately leaped up again and began to pace, ignoring the brandy and gasogene, snapping his long fingers as if counting time in music or attempting to summon up a stray memory.
Many would have seen this as rude, juvenile behavior. But for me, alarm bells began to ring. His tenseness often infected me, even as I worked diligently to keep to a quiet life to stave off those terrible spells that come over me, paralyzing and robbing me of all sense. But only this morning he had been bemoaning the swirling yellow fog and the prosaic dun-colored houses across the street.
“You’re writing, Watson.”
I remarked that his powers of observation had never been more acute.
Ignoring me, he continued, giving a description of my day up to this point: an empty surgery office, a walk in Regent’s Park to settle my thoughts, luncheon at home on veal pie, and how my writing was proceeding well, after some pacing, based on the scuffing of the carpet by the desk. I might as well have been the skull he kept on the mantel for all the attention he paid me. I was merely an audience—no, less than that. I was merely the rocks upon which a great cataract crashes, for a flood must rush freely, or else tear up all the earth and everything in its path.
“—and now you are writing up ‘The Clue in Amber’—no, ‘The Adventure of the Unquiet Grave.’”
“Yes.” This recounting of observations was a habit of his, a plaything for a restless mind.