“Always eager to learn new habits,” I lifted my glass. “Cheers.”

  I told Ryan about our visit to Elsie Saunders. I didn’t usually tell him what I was up to, as he never took my interference in police matters well, but I wanted to show my good faith tonight. I also told him Morrison had been completely uninterested in my suggestion Elsie was someone they might want to investigate further.

  “Jerk,” he said.

  “I’ll talk to Brian in the morning,” I said. “The police might not be interested in following up the theft of Randy’s sketches, but the defense team certainly will.”

  “We can hope your dad never comes to court,” Ryan said, “but if he does, the police failure to investigate a viable suspect can be grounds for the whole case to be thrown out.”

  He finished his drink. “We’re still moving into your parents’ house tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please, please, don’t make me share with Donald. I swear, Gemma, the man’s snoring would wake the dead. It certainly keeps me awake.”

  “Time to brush my teeth.” Jayne leapt to her feet and fled into the bathroom.

  Ryan gathered me into his arms and we kissed lightly.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

  “What’s up for tomorrow other than moving?”

  I hadn’t forgotten about Gallery Lambert. Grant and I were due to meet Julian Lambert tomorrow (now today) to look at paintings that for some reason weren’t being displayed publicly. “Grant and I have an appointment at three, and no you cannot come, and no I am not going to tell you about it. Other than that, we’ll have to wait to hear what happens in court.”

  “I enjoyed my assignment tonight. I wish you’d let me do more to help, Gemma.”

  “Let’s see what tomorrow brings. Why don’t we have breakfast together?”

  “I’d like that. Call me when you get up.”

  “Good night.” He kissed me lightly, and then let himself out. I watched him walk to the staircase and then I shut the door.

  “It’s safe to come out,” I yelled through the bathroom door as I headed for my pajamas.

  * * *

  I woke to a buzzing sound. The room was pitch-dark, and not a trace of light edged the corners of the drapes. Jayne’s breathing was deep and steady.

  My phone. A text. I sat up and grabbed the phone, thinking that any call at this time of night couldn’t be good.

  My heart settled fractionally when I saw the number of the store. Two AM here in London was 9 PM in Cape Cod, and Ashleigh might have forgotten the time difference.

  “Hi, Gemma!” my shop assistant said cheerfully.

  So cheerfully, I was immediately on guard. “What’s happened? Why are you calling?”

  Jayne groaned and sat up.

  “I don’t want you to worry, that’s all,” Ashleigh said.

  “Worry about what?” I asked.

  “What’s happened?” Jayne mouthed.

  “I wouldn’t bother you,” Ashleigh said, “except that it’s on Twitter so I was afraid you might see it. It sounds worse than it was. Things always do, don’t they?”

  “What’s on Twitter? What are you talking about?”

  “The fire in the store. Don’t worry, we didn’t lose too much.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  By the time I got off the phone, Jayne had switched the lights on, brought us glasses of water, and was checking Twitter.

  “It sounds worse than it is,” I said.

  “That’s good, because it sounds pretty bad. The fire department arrived. They put out the blaze before it had a chance to spread to neighboring stores. The fire inspector is assessing the damage.”

  “Ashleigh said it didn’t even spread to the bookshelves and she put it out herself with a bottle of water she fortunately had in her hand.”

  “What happened?”

  “One of Uncle Arthur’s lady friends …”

  “That numbers in the hundreds,” Jayne said.

  “So it does. Anyway, sometimes thinking she’s back in the fifties, this lady isn’t always mindful of modern regulations around smoking in public spaces. She lit up her cigarette in the store. Ashleigh was on her break and Arthur was minding the shop. He went upstairs for a few moments. He didn’t say why, but Ashleigh suspects he was going for a drop of whiskey for him and his lady friend.”

  Jayne groaned.

  “She, the lady friend, dropped her cigarette on the floor. She didn’t bother to put it out first, and it caught the edge of the rag rug under the puzzle table.”

  “The dry dusty old rug with the loose threads and tasseled edges?”

  “That one. And there she left it, smoldering away, when Arthur returned and they moved to the reading nook to enjoy their tipple. Ashleigh returned, fortunately bearing a bottle of water she’d picked up at the convenience store on the corner, the moment the rug went whoosh!”

  “Ashleigh saved the store, probably the tearoom as well, not to mention Arthur and his friend. She’ll be wanting a raise.”

  “Here’s an interesting thing. Ashleigh was only alerted to the impending disaster by Moriarty, who set up a big fuss and drew her attention.”

  “Good for Moriarty. But what’s interesting about that? Animals have good senses.”

  I pondered that for a few moments. Moriarty had saved my livelihood. Did he do that because he, deep down inside where he kept it hidden away, cared for me? Or because he lived in the store and didn’t want to see it burn down around him and have to find new accommodations?

  Jayne put her iPad away, switched out the lights, and we went back to sleep.

  * * *

  Drat that phone. I really needed to learn to turn it off in the night.

  The next time it woke me, daylight was creeping into the room, Jayne’s bed was empty, and I could hear water running into the bathtub.

  More heart leaping into mouth, more heart settling when I saw the number. This time it was one I didn’t recognize. “Hello?”

  “Gemma Doyle?” A Polish accent, strong today, indicating the owner was under some stress.

  “This is she. Can I help you, Arianna?”

  “I … I hope so. I need to talk to you. Can we meet?”

  “What’s this about? I have a busy day planned.”

  “I’d rather not say on the phone.”

  “I assume this is something to do with the death of Randy Denhaugh. If you know anything about that, you need to take it to the police, not call me.”

  “I know nothing! And that is my problem. Please.”

  “Garfunkel’s, near Gloucester Road station. Half an hour.” I might as well have breakfast while I heard what she wanted to say.

  “Thank you.” Arianna hung up.

  I climbed out of bed and knocked on the bathroom door. “We have breakfast plans. Be ready in twenty minutes.”

  * * *

  I dislike being kept waiting. Jayne and I arrived at the restaurant with three minutes to spare. We asked for tea (for me) and coffee (for Jayne) and told the waitress we’d wait for the rest of our party before ordering our food.

  Then we waited. And we waited.

  “She didn’t say what she wanted?” Jayne asked.

  “No.”

  My phone buzzed. “Maybe that’s her now,” I said. “Oopsie.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  I lifted a finger and answered the phone.

  “Good morning,” Ryan said. “Are you sleeping in? I’ve been waiting for your call, but I’m getting mighty hungry.”

  “I’m sorry, but something important came up, and Jayne and I had to go out.”

  “What came up?”

  “Nothing important.”

  “One sentence ago, you said it was important.”

  I heard Donald’s voice in the background saying, “Let’s have breakfast in the hotel. One last treat.”

  “You go with Donald, and I’ll call you when I’m finished here,” I said. “We can check out of the hotel and take a cab to Stanhope Gardens.”

  “I might not be free,” Ryan said. “Donald wants to go to Speedy’s Café.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “A café where some scenes in the Sherlock show were filmed.”

  Even I caught the annoyance in his voice. “I’ll fill you in later, but right now I have to run,” I said. “Bye.”

  “That didn’t sound good,” Jayne said when I’d hung up.

  “It wasn’t. Ryan’s truly annoyed with me this time. I suppose I should have invited him to come with us, but I’m thinking Arianna will be more forthcoming with you and me, whom she’s already met. Ryan sometimes looks too …”

  “Male?” Jayne said.

  “Not the word I was searching for, but it fits.” I checked the time on my phone. “Five more minutes and then we’re outta here, and I can call Ryan back and apologize. She could at least contact me if she’s running late.”

  Arianna made it in four and a half minutes.

  She rushed in through the street doors, not looking good. Hair mussed, makeup sloppily applied, coat buttons pushed through the wrong buttonholes. “Sorry,” she said. “Tube was slow.” She took off her coat, threw it onto the bench seat next to me, and dropped into the place next to Jayne.

  She glanced around the restaurant, nervous and jumpy.

  “What’s happened?” I asked.

  “Good morning,” said the waitress. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Coffee.” Arianna nibbled on a broken fingernail. When the waitress had gone, she blurted, “I need your help.”

  “Why?”

  “I need a job in America.”

  I’d risen from my bed early, rushed out without taking a shower, offended my boyfriend, to meet someone who wanted a job as a store clerk? “Aside from the fact that we’re not in America at the moment, and I doubt you have a work visa, I don’t need any more employees at my store.”

  “I’ll work for nothing. I have retail experience.”

  “Arianna, I can’t offer you a job, paid or unpaid, if you don’t have a visa, which is a moot point, as I don’t want to.”

  The waitress set down a cup of coffee. “Are you ready to order?”

  The only thing that kept me from gathering my bag and leaving Arianna to pay our bill was the look in her eyes. She was clearly frightened. Whatever had scared her had happened since Jayne and I talked to her on Sunday.

  “I’ll have the classic breakfast,” I said.

  Jayne ordered the veggie breakfast, and Arianna said, “Nothing for me.”

  “Someone has threatened you,” I said. “And it has to do with Randy Denhaugh.”

  She gripped her coffee cup and nodded. The door opened, and she just about jumped out of her skin. Coffee splashed onto the table.

  “Spill,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, dabbing at the spreading puddle of liquid with a pile of napkins.

  “I mean, tell me what’s going on.”

  She sighed and stopped dabbing. “A man came to my door last night.”

  “What man?”

  “I do not know. I did not see his face. He rang the buzzer. All he said was he wants the painting. Today, he will send me an address to take it to.”

  “What painting?”

  Her eyes slid to one side. “I do not know. I’m innocent. I know nothing. I have to get away. Now! Today! You will take me with you?”

  “I’m not leaving London today, and I’m not taking you anywhere. Besides, it’s perfectly obvious you know what painting this caller is talking about, meaning you have two options. Give it to him, or call the police and report that someone has threatened you.”

  “I cannot call police.”

  The waitress brought our plates and asked if we wanted anything else. I said, “No thank you,” and cut into my grilled tomato. There’s nothing like a proper English breakfast. “If you can’t call the police, that puts you in something of a pickle, Arianna. You know of the painting, but you don’t know its present whereabouts. Some scheme of Randy’s, I suppose.”

  Without asking, she took a piece of toast off Jayne’s plate and bit into it. Jayne lifted her eyebrows in my direction, but didn’t reclaim the toast.

  Arianna chewed. I waited. “Yes,” she said at last. “You are right. Randolph always had a scheme. A very wealthy man, I do not know who, hired him to recover a lost painting.”

  “You mean a stolen painting.”

  She nodded.

  “Was he working as some sort of art private investigator?” Jayne asked.

  “Randolph knew people,” Arianna said. “People in the art world.”

  “People in the art underworld, at any rate,” I said. “Which is probably no less nasty than any other underworld. Do you know where the painting is?”

  “No. I do not think Randolph found it. But he did spend the money he was paid.”

  “Ah, so now we come to the crux of the problem.”

  “If I do not turn over the painting, they want their money back,” Arianna said. “I do not have it.”

  “How did they know your name and where you live?”

  “Randolph met them at my flat. He gave me money to go shopping.”

  “Of course he did,” I said. “You really have been played for a fool, Arianna.”

  Her lower lip quivered and tears filled her eyes.

  “When did this meeting happen?”

  “Two weeks ago.”

  “Tell me about the person who phoned you. Did you recognize anything about his voice? What sort of accent?”

  She shrugged. “The voice was strange. Like speaking through cloth? I don’t know for sure if it was a man or a woman. Their accent was … a mixture of many.”

  “I can’t help you,” I said, “with a job or anything else. My advice is to go to the police. If you don’t want to do that, you should probably lay low for a while and get out of Dodge.”

  She blinked in confusion. “Where is Dodge?”

  “An American expression, meaning leave town. I try to talk like an American sometimes, to fit in back in Massachusetts.”

  “Like that ever works,” Jayne said.

  “Do you want me to come with you to the police?” I said. “I will, if you have no one else.”

  She shook her head.

  “Up to you.” I wiped the last of the runny egg yolk with my toast and then took money out of my purse. “I have places to go. First I need to use the loo. Be right back.”

  When I returned, I didn’t sit down. I picked up my coat and said, “Let’s go, Jayne. Coffee’s on me, Arianna, and I paid for you to have something for breakfast. You need to spend some time thinking things over, and this is as good a place as any. Goodbye.”

  Jayne and I walked out of the restaurant.

  “Should we leave her?” Jayne said. “She’s in danger.”

  “We can’t help her and she won’t go to the cops, so anything that happens is on her. But I don’t think anyone will bother with her again.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she doesn’t have this painting they’re after or the money they spent to try and get it, if what she says is true. Whoever called her this morning was just covering their bases in case she did have it.”

  We stood on the street slightly to one side of the doors. I could see Arianna, still at our booth. She’d signaled to the waitress, who was bringing over a menu.

  “Randy’s death hasn’t benefited her at all,” Jayne said. “If anything, it’s put her in danger.”

  “That doesn’t mean she didn’t kill him,” I said. “She doesn’t look to me like the sort of woman who thinks things through long-term.”

  Jayne started to walk away.

  “Let’s wait here a few minutes,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “No reason.” I pulled a map out of my purse. “Sherlockians have been speculating for a long time about the actual location of Caulfield Gardens, the fictional street on which the flat used to dump the body in the Bruce-Partington Plans was situated. I think it’s …”

  “Gemma, your father is under suspicion for murder and we’ve just spoken to a woman afraid for her life, and you want to find the location of a fictional story?”

  A large black Mitsubishi Shogun pulled up to the curb. A man and a woman got out. He was in a black suit under a rumpled overcoat, and she wore a plain brown trench coat. The driver remained in the car.

  The couple went into Garfunkels. I watched as they crossed the floor with rapid, purposeful steps. Arianna’s avocado on toast had only just arrived.

  “Now we can go,” I said.

  “What’s happening?” Jayne said.

  “I called Pippa when I went to the loo. A precaution in case I’m wrong and Randy’s business partners really do mean Arianna harm. They’ll take care of her for a few days.”

  Jayne started to turn around. I grabbed her arm. “Let’s go. Time we were getting back.”

  I kept hold of her arm as we headed down Gloucester Road.

  “Who are those people?” Jayne asked.

  “I’ve no idea,” I said in total honesty.

  I’d done what I could. I couldn’t make Arianna go to the cops. She hadn’t committed any crime, and she wasn’t admitting to knowing anything about Randy’s death. She hadn’t met the people he’d dealt with, nor could she identify the person who’d contacted her last night.

  I’d tell the police, if someone was assigned to replace DI Morrison, what Arianna had told me, but all that meant was that my uncle Randolph was involved in nefarious activities. That hardly came as a shocking revelation.

  The person who phoned Arianna wanting a painting recovered wouldn’t have killed Randy. Not without getting their money first.

  I thought about Sir John Saint-Jean. Had he been willing to do business with the man who’d cheated him out of his painting, in order to get possession of the real thing?

  Possibly. I have no idea how people think at that rarefied level of dealing and finance.

  I couldn’t see Sir John threatening Arianna, though. He didn’t seem the type. Then again, I had got him wrong on our initial meeting.

  I thought about that for a moment. Had the caller really threatened Arianna with bodily harm? Or had he or she politely asked her if she knew where the painting was, and Arianna overreacted?