“Why don’t you tell me about your day, Donald? I’d love to hear about it. I’ve never been to the Sherlock Holmes Museum.”

  He turned to her. “You haven’t? Oh, you must, it was fascinating. And the walking tour! I consider myself to be somewhat of a minor expert on Holmes, but even I learned new things today.”

  I jerked my head toward Jayne, and she followed me into the hall. Pippa followed us. Grant followed Pippa.

  “Your job,” I said to Grant as I pulled on my coat, “yours and Donald’s, is to keep Mum occupied and not worrying.”

  “I can do that,” he said.

  “I have the burner phone, so if Julian Lambert calls again, I’ll answer it, tell him you’re busy, and offer to take any messages.”

  “I’ll put things in motion,” Pippa said, “to see what I can learn about the painting Sir John Saint-Jean claims Randolph cheated him out of. Although, I have to say, I consider Sir John to be the least viable of our suspects. Someone with his background and training wouldn’t bludgeon a man to death in a public place.”

  “Don’t discount it,” I said. “Anyone can act out in a moment of sudden anger. What do you know about him, anyway? He said he knows you, and he had to do some nimble footwork on Saturday evening to avoid running into you at the banquet.”

  “Let’s just say that if Sir John Saint-Jean did kill Randolph, or anyone else, it would be an inconvenience to the powers that be to see him stand trial.”

  “What does that mean?” Grant asked.

  Pippa said nothing.

  “She means,” I said, “that he’s intimately involved in matters of national security.”

  “How do you know that?” Jayne asked Pippa.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “I’ll outline our plan, not that I have one, on the way.”

  Jayne and I stepped outside. The light snow continued to fall, soft and beautiful in the glow of light from the streetlamps. A man walked past, a golden retriever trotting at his side, and a group of schoolboys in their neat uniforms chased each other up the road.

  “Hold on,” I said. “I forgot my scarf.”

  I hurried up the steps and threw open the door to see Grant and Pippa standing close together. Very close together. So close together that their arms were around each other and their lips touching. They flew apart, looking as guilty as school kids caught necking in the bushes.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Forgot something. Never mind. Don’t need it.” I slammed the door behind me and dashed down the steps.

  “Everything okay?” Jayne asked.

  “Perfectly okay. Fine.”

  “Where’s your scarf?”

  “What scarf?”

  “The scarf you went back for?”

  “Oh, that. I decided I don’t need it. Come along. Don’t dawdle.”

  * * *

  Pippa had told me the dreadlocked woman was named Elsie Saunders and she lived in Whitechapel. Jayne and I caught the Tube and crossed the city. The trains were crowded with people heading home from work.

  Whitechapel’s most famous resident was a certain gentleman known to history as Jack the Ripper. Jack, like the police officers who chased him and the women who feared him, wouldn’t recognize the place today. At the turn of the last century, it was a slum, in the full, filthy, nasty, poverty-and-disease-ridden Victorian meaning of that word. Today it’s a neighborhood of good restaurants, lively nightlife, small family homes, bustling markets, and shining steel-and-glass towers.

  Elsie’s flat wasn’t far from Ten Bells Pub, the place where Jack’s final victim, Mary Kelly, enjoyed one last drink before heading out to the streets and meeting her fate. These days the pub’s a popular place for tourists wanting to soak up the Whitechapel atmosphere or enjoy a drink at the end of a Jack the Ripper walking tour. We passed a group of people, bundled up against the cold, standing on a street corner shifting from foot to foot, listening to a man perched on a milk crate.

  As we passed, a woman stepped up to him. He turned her around, held her close to him, and pressed his hands against her exposed throat.

  Jayne gasped and stopped walking. The woman giggled, a watching man laughed, and a flash went off as someone snapped a picture. I tugged at Jayne’s arm and we continued on our way. “Is that a tour, do you suppose?” she asked me.

  “Yes. We’re at the heart of Ripper territory here. I’ll give you your own private tour.” I talked as we walked. What I don’t know about Jack the Ripper (and that’s a lot), I made up.

  The address we’d been given was next to a convenience store. The building was three stories tall, made of red brick dark with age. Narrow windows overlooked the bustling street below, and a solid row of parked cars lined the curb. The front door opened directly onto the sidewalk—no decorative iron railings or flowerpots here. I studied the front of the building, looking for someone watching me through the curtains. Lights were on inside, but no one moved in front of them. I stepped forward and knocked on the black door. It opened almost immediately.

  The woman was in her midforties, substantially overweight, with long blonde hair reminiscent of a rat’s nest showing about two inches of gray roots. She wore a formless red tunic over lumpy bare legs. “If you’re selling,” she said in an accent that proved she’d been born within the sound of Bow’s Bells, “I’m not buying. Not interested in finding God neither.”

  “Sorry to bother you,” I said in an accent that originated very far from Bow’s Bells. More like West London, Massachusetts. “I’m looking for Elsie? Elsie Saunders?”

  “She’s at work.”

  “What time does she get home?”

  “She knocks off at nine. Sometimes she goes for a pint after. Sometimes not.” Her eyes flicked toward Jayne, standing slightly behind me, and then she began to close the door.

  “We’re not selling,” I said, “but my friend and I are interested in buying.”

  The door stopped moving. “What’s that?”

  “Elsie’s an artist. A friend of mine told me she did the sort of work I might appreciate. I’d like to talk to her tonight. We’re going home tomorrow.”

  “Guess it won’t hurt none,” she said. “Els works at Glennbow Art Supplies.” She gave me an address. “Tell ’er I sent you and I want a cut.” The door shut in our faces before I could even say thank you.

  “Art supplies,” I said to Jayne. “That sounds interesting.”

  “Do you know where that place is?”

  “Haven’t a clue. But as we’re on legitimate business this time, I don’t mind looking it up.” I called up the address I’d been given on my phone.

  Fortunately, Glennbow Art Supplies wasn’t more than a ten-minute walk away.

  The streets of Whitechapel were quiet on a Monday night in January, but we didn’t walk as fast as I might have liked because Jayne kept stopping to stare at everything around her.

  “It’s all so fascinating,” she said. “The way the old is mixed up with the new. Look at that house; it’s practically falling over and looks like an opium den Sherlock Holmes would visit in pursuit of a case, and it’s right next to that ugly office tower.”

  “This part of the city was extensively bombed during the war,” I said. “When they rebuilt, they weren’t always sensitive to maintaining integrity of the streetscape.”

  The art supply store was in a row of shops not far from Spitalfields Market. The large front window was brightly lit, featuring a colorful display of half-finished abstract canvases propped on easels and cans of spray paint arranged in color-splashed pyramids.

  The bells over the door tinkled as we came in. Elsie Saunders stood behind the sales counter, ringing up a purchase for a multi-tattooed, multi-pierced man. He put his credit card in his wallet, picked up his bag, said “Cheers” to Elsie and “Hello” to us, and left.

  “Hi.” Elsie turned to us. “Can I help you?” She didn’t appear to recognize us. She looked the same as she had on the weekend: colorful flowing dress, tons of cheap jewelry, numerous piercings. When I looked closer, I could see that her hair, tied into masses of dreadlocks, which Pippa suggested might have been a wig, was the real thing. Meaning, she had not been in any sort of disguise at the conference.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “This is a nice store,” Jayne said.

  “Thanks,” Elsie said. “Visiting from America, are you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “We’re here for the Sherlock Holmes convention.” I didn’t put on an American accent. If Elsie had heard me speak at the conference, she’d be suspicious of why I’d be pretending now.

  “I think I saw you,” Jayne said. “Were you there?” Before coming in, I’d suggested to Jayne we take the tag-team approach and both talk to Elsie. I’d also decided not to pretend we’d been sent to her house by a contact. That might fool her friend, but Elsie would likely not have anyone recommending her art to visiting Americans.

  “I was there.”

  “Sherlock lover, are you?” Jayne said. “That’s so great.”

  “I was hoping to have a space in the dealers’ room,” she said, “but by the time I went to pay for my table, they were full.”

  “A table? Are you an artist?” I asked.

  “Yes, I am.”

  The door opened and two young men came in. Elsie nodded at them in greeting, and they made a beeline for the cans of spray paint stacked against one wall.

  “Do you do anything Sherlock related?” I asked.

  Elsie talked to us but kept one eye on the shoppers. “I specialize in pen-and-ink drawings of scenes from the books.”

  Jayne’s eyes opened wide. “Oh, I’d love to see them! Are they any good?” She laughed. “Sorry, silly question. Of course you think they’re good.”

  The young men carried a basket piled high with cans of paint to the counter.

  “Give me a minute here,” Elsie said to us. She rang up the paint, put the cans in a bag, and accepted the money.

  The young men left, and we were again alone in the store.

  “I’d like to see your work,” I said. “I own a shop specializing in Sherlockiana. Sounds like the sort of thing my customers might like. Do you have a studio we can visit? We don’t have a lot of time, I’m afraid. We leave tomorrow.”

  “I keep a few pieces of my work here. In the back. The owner lets us use some of the space to show our own art. He pretends he’s being generous, but it allows him to get away with paying less than everyone else on the street.”

  “Can I see them?” I asked.

  “Sure. Let’s say it’s my tea break, okay?”

  “Fine with me,” I said.

  Elsie locked the door, flipped the sign, and led the way through the store to a small room off the back hallway. She opened the door, switched on the lights, and walked in. The art in this room was eclectic, to say the least. I saw some beautiful watercolors of London at night, all hazy and romantic, that I’d have enjoyed hanging in my own house. There was also a giant piece reminiscent of graffiti found on the sides of train cars, and some oils by an artist who seemed to be releasing his or her anger issues onto the canvas.

  “Quite the variety,” I said.

  “Ben, that’s my boss, and some of the other employees keep their stuff here too.” She took a thin stack of papers off a table and handed them to me. “Have a look.”

  I looked.

  The idea was there, but the execution was sorely lacking. In these sketches, Holmes—I had to take a guess it was supposed to be the Great Detective—was unrecognizable. The Hound of the Baskervilles looked as threatening as Violet immediately after supper, and at first I mistook the horse pulling a hansom cab for a tall thin cow. None of the drawings had the modern touches that made Randy’s so unique and disturbing.

  There were only four pictures. “Is this all? I have to say I was looking for something a bit more … edgy. Like the ones I saw at the conference.”

  I threw out the comment, expecting her to get angry and defensive and, if I was lucky, verbally attack Randy for stealing her idea. Instead, her eyes slid to one side. “I might have some others. These are prototypes, getting the concept down on paper. My idea is to approach Holmes from a different angle. Sherlock Holmes has been done to death. Anyone can imitate Conan Doyle’s writing or the Sidney Paget illustrations. Just about everyone has. My art is a fresh interpretation.” A ragged fingernail stabbed at the figure of the supposedly spectral hound. “See this. Not what you were expecting, is it?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Anyone can make a dog look scary. I’m saying it’s what’s underneath the surface that we really need to be afraid of.”

  “You are so right,” Jayne said.

  “If I’m buying for my store, I’ll need more than this,” I said. “Can I see your finished pieces?”

  “They’re at my studio. I’m not working tomorrow—I’m only part-time here; come around then.”

  I put my disappointed face on. “That’s too bad. We’re off home tomorrow. Sorry to bother you. Let’s go, Jayne.”

  “I finish work at nine,” Elsie said. “I was going to meet a mate for a pint after, but we can go to my studio instead. How’s that?”

  I pretended to give it some thought. “I guess we can do that, if it’s not far. Is it?”

  “No.” She gave me a familiar address. Her flat. If her roommate was there and recognized us, I’d have to come up with some reason for tracking Elsie down at home.

  We went back to the shop front and Elsie unlocked the door.

  “What do we do now?” Jayne asked when we were standing on the street.

  “We have dinner and go to her place at nine.”

  “Dinner sounds good, but why are we bothering?”

  “She knew I didn’t like the pieces she showed me.”

  “They were terrible.”

  “So they were. I’m wondering what else she has. Not more of the same, I’m hoping. It’s entirely possible she and Randy were in the art forgery business together. Now, what do you feel like eating?”

  We found a nice comfy pub with warm lighting and a cheerfully burning fireplace and enjoyed a good dinner of real English fish and chips. I used my burner phone to call Pippa’s burner, and was told they were all—meaning her, Mum, Grant, and Donald—at a local restaurant.

  “When you looked up Elsie Saunders for me,” I asked, “did you check if she had any sort of record?”

  “No. I only had her name.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “I can put someone on it. Unofficially.”

  “Please do. She’s about to show me some art on the QT.”

  “What does that mean?” Pippa asked.

  “On the quiet. Meaning not something she displays publicly. Jayne and I are meeting her at her flat at nine. I’ll have my other phone on in case you need to trace it. Or something like that.”

  “Understood,” my sister said.

  I next called Ryan, but it went to voice mail. I hoped he was having a pleasant time exchanging war stories over a pint of good British stout.

  * * *

  At nine o’clock Jayne and I were standing at the corner of Elsie’s street, bundled up against the damp cold. Ten minutes later I spotted Elsie dashing across the street, her long coat streaming behind her. We stepped out of the shadows as she approached.

  “Hey, there you are,” she said. “I wasn’t sure you were going to show.”

  “Why wouldn’t we?” I asked.

  She shrugged and pulled her key out of her bag. She opened the door and led us into a dark, narrow corridor. The scent of boiled cabbage, fried fish, and stewed tea hung in the air along with unwashed socks and wet wool left to dry over a radiator. Elsie flicked the light switch, which didn’t do much to help break the gloom. She kicked aside a pair of purple rubber boots. “Don’t mind the mess. My flatmate’s a first-class slob.”

  We went into the small, dark sitting room. The furniture was shabby, threadbare sheets used as drapes, half-filled cups of scummy tea everywhere, the carpet dotted with cigarette burns.

  “Temporary accommodation,” Elsie said. “I needed a place to stop when I came to London. I’ll be out of here soon. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  Jayne and I eyed the unidentifiable stains on the chairs. We decided to remain standing.

  True to her word, Elsie returned almost immediately, carrying a stack of drawing papers. She cleared the table by the simple act of shoving all the newspapers and a week’s worth of laundry onto the floor. Then she laid out the papers and stood back with a flourish.

  I hadn’t intended to react at all, but despite myself, I sucked in a breath.

  “Oh.” Jayne said. “Those are quite … good.”

  And they were. They were so good they might have been done by an expert artist. By someone like Randolph Denhaugh. They were the sketches I’d last seen in the dealers’ room of the conference. I’d come here expecting to see forgeries. Instead I saw what had to be stolen art.

  Elsie stood back and let us admire them. She didn’t look happy or proud, as she would have if the pieces were truly hers. Her eyes had narrowed and she glanced rapidly between Jayne and me.

  “These look a great deal like ones I saw on the weekend,” I said. “Some man was selling them.”

  “Yeah, those. They were mine. He was working for me.”

  “I thought you couldn’t get a booth?” Jayne said.

  Elsie’s eyes darted around the room, and she rubbed her palms on the seat of her jeans. “Yeah, that’s right. He agreed to handle mine as well as his things. He did sketches too. Not as good as mine, though.”

  “How much?” I asked. I had no intention of buying anything, but I wanted to give myself time to think. After Randy’s death, Elsie must have gone into the dealers’ room at the conference and swept up what she could get her hands on from his booth. Surely the room was locked after hours? It would have been during the banquet and overnight, but unlocked first thing the following morning. She could have slipped inside as soon as the doors opened, before most of the other vendors arrived, and helped herself as though she were clearing out some of Randy’s things after his death. When I’d seen his booth on Sunday, the tables had been covered in drop cloths. The police would have taken his things away without knowing what should be there or if anything was missing.