“If she loves you she will say yes,” Katherine said softly.
Finishing his hot chocolate, he stood. “I will take my leave of you. All in all, it has been quite the day.”
Katherine rose and stretched out her hand. Dermot bowed over it. “Thank you for your help, Madam Kitten.”
“Katherine. Call me Katherine.”
“Will I see you again, Katherine?”
“I have no doubts about it.”
Dermot Corcoran paused with his hand on the door handle and turned to face the woman lost in the shadows. “You never did say who stole the jewels . . .”
“Inspector. Follow the money. And then, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable . . .”
“. . . must be the truth.”
The jewels never did turn up and, as I predicted, the scandal destroyed careers. Inspector Kane came over from Scotland Yard, investigated and discovered the culprit. His report was never published, then mysteriously disappeared.
Vicars went to his grave convinced that Shackleton had stolen the jewels. He openly accused him, even going so far to include the accusation in his Last Will and Testament. I know that Shackleton was exonerated by the investigating Royal Commission, despite some strong evidence that if he was not involved, then he knew who had stolen the jewels. But Shackleton had friends in very high places and his brother, Ernest, was about to embark on his Nimrod Expedition to Antarctica. Vicars lost his position, his pension, and ultimately his life, when he was shot on the lawn of his home by the IRA in 1921.
Years later, I learned that Shackleton had been charged with fraud and spent some time in prison in England. When he was discharged, he changed his name and disappeared.
No one ever looked too closely at Goldney, the man who had rather recklessly guaranteed Shackleton’s debts. He went on to become the Mayor of Canterbury. When he died a decade after the theft, amongst his possessions was discovered a cache of items he purloined over the years from the various offices and positions he had held.
Perhaps the last word belongs to Vicars, a distant cousin of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who told a Daily Express reporter: “The detectives might well say that it is an affair for a Sherlock Holmes to investigate.”
UNDERSTUDY IN SCARLET
by Hallie Ephron
It’s not an open casting call, Angela Cassano realizes as she takes in the emptiness of director Glenn Lancaster’s outer office. The gloomy space, on the second floor over storefronts on Santa Monica in Beverly Hills, has rough stucco walls painted off-white. The furnishings are chrome and ebony and black leather, and the stale air smells faintly of cigar. Her appointment was at two. At three she’s still waiting for Lancaster to emerge from his inner sanctum.
“They want you,” her agent had said when he called, sounding as surprised as she was that a remake of A Scandal in Bohemia was afoot, this time as a major motion picture. Same director, same actor as Sherlock Holmes, and they wanted her to read for the role she played twenty-five years ago: Irene Adler, the one woman who outsmarted the great detective.
Was she interested? Of course she was. The only gig she’s got lined up is summer stock in Ojai playing Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? But she’s also more than a bit wary. She and Lancaster didn’t part on the best of terms, not after she refused to sleep with him—something he seemed to think was his due for casting her in his movie. Bygones, she hopes. Because if he were holding a grudge, why would he be calling her agent?
The office suite hasn’t changed much since she was here last. The door to a small inner office stands open, and Angela has a dim memory of Lancaster’s bookkeeper working in the now-empty room, his desk piled high with computer printouts. The receptionist, who is studiously avoiding eye contact, could be the same one Angela had to get past years ago. The woman’s chin sags and her hair is more salt than pepper.
Angela sits up, straightening her shoulders, fluffing her hair, and bunching a bit more cleavage into the deep V-neck of her top. She crosses her legs and tugs at the hem of her pencil skirt.
Last night she got out the old script and put on a slinky red silk gown like the one that she wore in the film. She practiced her lines, watching herself in the mirror. Then practiced again with her eyes closed. She could feel Irene Adler spring back to life inside her.
She’s capable of far more nuance than when she first played the part, though reviewers were kind. The LA Times critic called that performance, her first in a starring role, “luminous” and “dangerous.”