“Not for a moment. If they, who do not reside in Britain by the way, had been innocent, I would have merely reported the location of the painting to the proper authorities, and let you sort it out in court. Instead, I convinced them to place it in my care.”

  “You threatened them,” Pippa said.

  Sir John raised one eyebrow and David coughed discreetly.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this when we met at your house?” I said.

  “Because I didn’t have the painting. I was conducting negotiations and not yet fully confident of a successful outcome. I landed at Heathrow not much more than an hour ago, and came directly here.”

  “This is simply astounding,” my mother said. “I don’t know how I can thank you enough. I only wish my parents had lived to see it one more time.” Dad had gone to stand by her, and he laid his hand on her shoulder.

  “I simply followed your brother’s directions, Mrs. Doyle. You have him to thank.”

  Mum wept some more.

  “Will you stay for tea, Sir John?” Pippa asked.

  “Thank you, but no. I had a long flight.”

  Pippa and I walked Sir John and David to the door. “You’ve made my mother very happy,” I said.

  “I’ll be in my office later this afternoon,” Pippa said. “Please pay me a visit. I’m looking forward to a chat about where you were yesterday.”

  “I didn’t go to the Hermit Kingdom,” he said.

  “No. But your sources had been there.”

  He turned to me. “I’m thinking of vacationing in America this summer. I’d love to visit your shop and pay a call on Arthur.”

  “You’d be very welcome.”

  “Good day,” Sir John said. David touched the brim of his hat.

  “The Hermit Kingdom?” I said to Pippa when the visitors had gone. “You mean our painting has been in North Korea all these years?”

  “If not in that country, then in the private rooms of an embassy somewhere.”

  “And Sir John’s been …”

  She tapped the side of her nose. “Need to know, Gemma. You do not need to know. I have to go to back to work, but I’d like one more peek at it before I leave.” She linked her arm through mine. “Shall we join the others?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  We were able to rebook our flights to Boston for Friday evening.

  “I cannot wait to get home.” Jayne punched SEND on the airline’s website to finalize the bookings. “This vacation stuff is exhausting. Sure you don’t want to come into the city with us?”

  “No thanks.” I shut the cover on the iPad.

  Jayne, Donald, and Grant planned to visit the Mithraeum, the temple to the Roman god Mithras, which recently opened in the basement of an office building in central London. After that, they were going to the Museum of London and on a tour of Roman London. Donald, it turned out, was almost as much an enthusiast of ancient Rome as he was of Sherlock Holmes.

  I hadn’t heard from Ashleigh again, and I was dreading what I would hear when it was daytime in West London and I could return her call. Hopefully, Uncle Arthur’s cigarette-wielding friend hadn’t returned to finish the job, and no more New York Times best-selling authors had blacklisted us. I’d cautiously checked Twitter and the website of the West London Star and had been relieved to find no news of the Emporium or Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room. I wasn’t going on the group outing. I’d seen the Roman stuff many times before, and although the Mithraeum sounded interesting, I needed some serious downtime.

  By downtime, I meant Ryan-time. Once we’d waved the others out the door, Dad and Horace had escaped to his workshop, and Mum was in the library staring at the Constable, Ryan and I headed out.

  We walked slowly through the streets of Kensington, holding hands, peering into shop windows, talking about our friends and our lives. We found a little French bistro on Cromwell Road and took a table at a back corner.

  “I’ll have to come to London for Julian and Vivienne’s trials,” I said. “I’ve no idea when that will be. I hope not in the summer when we’re so busy.”

  “I’ll try to get some time off,” he said, “and come with you.”

  I reached out and touched his hand where it lay on the table. “That would be nice, but I have the feeling you don’t want another vacation in London.”

  “I do if I’m with you,” he said. “When we come again, and assuming we can get some time alone, what would you like to show me in London?”

  “Not the Sherlock Holmes Museum?”

  He pretended to shudder. Or maybe it wasn’t a pretense. “Anything but that. What’s your favorite place?”

  “There’s so much I love, but if I had to pick a favorite, it would probably be the sculpture hall in the Victoria and Albert.”

  “That’s just down the road from here.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  He threw money on the table. “Let’s go. I want you to show it to me. I want you to tell me why you love it.”

  “I’d like that. I’d also like to tell you that I love you.”

  He held out a hand and lifted me to my feet.

  * * *

  “See that piece hanging from the celling?” I said as we entered the center rotunda.

  “It’s amazing.” Ryan threw his head back to get a good look. And it was amazing, blue and green glass formed into enormous balls and twisting tendrils.

  “Do you remember the pieces stolen from Rebecca Stanton’s house the day Jayne and I catered the fund-raising tea for the theater festival?” I asked.

  “How can I ever forget?”

  “Same artist,” I said. “Dale Chihuly.”

  Ryan looked around, at the soaring arches, the marble pillars, the ancient gilt statues on the second-floor veranda. “It doesn’t seem to fit in here,” he said. “It’s so modern.”

  “I think it does. Art’s not static, nor should it be frozen in time. They had to reinforce the ceiling for this piece.”

  Ryan and I spent hours in the V&A. I was delighted that he seemed to be enjoying it as much as I always did. At one point, I left him having a coffee in the café and slipped outside to stand on the steps and phone the Emporium. To my enormous relief, Ashleigh said she’d called me yesterday just to check in, and that everything was going great in my absence. They didn’t miss me one bit.

  I didn’t know how I felt about that, but I said, “Glad to hear it.”

  “Arthur has some grand scheme in mind,” she said.

  “Not glad to hear that,” I said. “What is it?”

  “He won’t say. Except that it’s going to be the talk of West London this summer.”

  “I’ll be in the shop first thing Saturday,” I said. “I’ll put a stop to it. Whatever it is.”

  “Maybe you should give him a chance, Gemma. I think he feels bad about what happened with Mrs. O’Reilly.”

  “Who’s Mrs. O’Reilly?”

  “Cigarette lady.”

  “Oh, yes. Her.”

  “He’s sorry about offending those customers from the bus tour. I think he’s sorry, anyway. What he actually says is that if they didn’t want him to insult them, they shouldn’t have insulted him first.”

  “That’s not the way customer service works,” I said.

  “This big idea is a way of making up to you. You should be nice about it, Gemma.”

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  * * *

  After the museum, Ryan and I went for a drink in a pub before walking back to Stanhope Gardens. I hadn’t heard anything about dinner plans, so I assumed we’d be going out again.

  Instead, on the way back from their expedition, Jayne had stopped at a supermarket. She and Mum were in the kitchen, chatting while they chopped and mixed and simmered and sautéed, sipped wine and laughed together.

  The others, including Pippa, had gathered in the library. My father poured me a glass of wine and handed Ryan a beer. Pippa and Grant each had a whiskey.

  “Would you like to see what I bought today, Gemma?” Donald asked. His big brown briefcase was tucked under his chair.

  “Sure.”

  He opened it, brought out a stack of papers, and handed them to me.

  I flicked quickly through them. “These are Randy’s drawings. Where did you get them?”

  “From his partner,” Donald said.

  “His what?”

  “Jayne told us Elsie Saunders had some of Randy’s sketches,” Grant explained. “Donald insisted on going around to her place and buying them.”

  “You do know she stole them, Donald? After the man was dead?”

  He grinned at me. “Ms. Saunders and I came to an arrangement, facilitated by Jayne. I made the check out to a charity that works with the homeless in Whitechapel and gave Ms. Saunders twenty pounds for her trouble.”

  “She agreed to that?”

  “Better than seeing the sketches in a police evidence locker until Julian and Vivienne come to trial,” Grant said. “Which was her other option.”

  “I wouldn’t have approved,” my father said. “They should be in the evidence locker.”

  “The police have others,” Donald said.

  “Which,” my father said, “is the only reason I don’t report you.”

  “I don’t suppose I’ll ever see my umbrella again,” Donald said.

  “Probably not,” Dad said. “There are items in the cellars beneath Scotland Yard that haven’t been seen since the force was founded.”

  “An exaggeration, Dad,” Pippa said.

  “Elsie gave us something else,” Grant said. “Show them, Donald.”

  Out came another folder from Donald’s briefcase. Grinning, he opened it and held up the contents. A series of photographs of a Dutch old master. A stout woman, unsmiling, dressed all in black. The photographs had been taken close up, showing the details of her lace collar, the fine stitching of the handkerchief in her hand, the section of garden outside the window over her right shoulder.

  “That looks like the painting I saw in Randy’s apartment,” I said. “I was wondering what he was working from.”

  “Elsie simply grabbed a folder off his table in the dealers’ room and stuffed as many of his sketches as she could grab into it,” Jayne said. “She assumed he was studying art techniques and was going to throw these out. She put the sketches for Donald into the same folder, not realizing the significance.”

  My father held out his hand. “Those I will take as evidence.”

  “Randy would be pleased,” I said, “to know his sketches have gone to a good home.”

  “As long as we’re talking about the women in Randy’s life,” Pippa said. “Arianna Nowacki has gone to visit her parents in Poland. I agreed it was probably wise for her to leave England.”

  “It wasn’t Julian and Vivienne who threatened her?”

  “No. Our uncle Randolph might have tried to make amends at the end of his life,” Pippa said. “But he’d made too many enemies over the years. People you’ve cheated don’t forgive and forget just because you say you’re sorry.”

  “Well, they should,” Donald said.

  Mum came into the library to call us in to dinner.

  * * *

  We didn’t linger long over after-dinner liqueurs. Ryan, who hadn’t slept at all last night, almost fell asleep face first in his sticky toffee pudding. Jayne and Donald went up soon after, knowing we’d have a long day tomorrow. Mum excused herself, and Dad said he was going to take Horace out and then turn in.

  Pippa, Grant, and I were left in the dining room with the bottle of Courvoisier.

  “Nothing more for me, thanks.” I started to stand. “I’m going to bed too.”

  “Have a drink, Gemma,” Pippa said. “Just a small one.”

  I eyed her. I eyed Grant.

  They were pointedly not looking at each other. Grant’s hand shook ever so slightly as he poured my drink. Pippa studied the painting hanging on the wall over my head.

  “Congratulations,” I said. “Can I be a bridesmaid?”

  “What?” Grant said.

  “We’re not getting married, Gemma,” Pippa said.

  “Oh. Sorry.” I ducked my head in embarrassment. I’m not often wrong about things like that.

  “But,” Pippa said, “Grant does have news, don’t you, Grant?”

  He smiled at her. She smiled at him.

  “I’m coming back to London,” he said. “Permanently, I mean. To be with Pippa. I’m only renting my house on Cape Cod, so I don’t have to worry about that, and I can move my book dealer business to England. If I still have a business, considering I never did get around to making all the deals on this trip I planned on.”

  “We’re not getting married, Gemma,” Pippa said, “but we want to be together. We’re going to take things slowly. I’m probably not the easiest person to be in a relationship with. My job’s important to me.”

  “We’ll work it out.” Grant said. “I understand about your job.”

  I doubted he did. Pippa got calls in the middle of the night or in the middle of a sold-out play. She’d once been called away from the funeral of a close family friend. She worked so many hours I sometimes wondered why she bothered to keep a flat. I glanced between my sister and my friend, both of them almost glowing with the joy of being in love. Maybe they would work it out. I jumped to my feet. “I’m happy for you both.” I hugged Grant. “I’ll miss you so much.”

  “I’ll miss you too,” he said. “I’ll miss the Cape, but I love London. And I love Phillipa Doyle.”

  Pippa beamed. I hugged her and she hugged me back. Her thin frame felt strange in my arms. I couldn’t remember the last time my sister and I hugged.

  When we separated, I failed to smother a gigantic yawn. “On that happy note, I’ll again say good night.”

  “One thing before you go,” Pippa said. “If you don’t mind. Grant, can you give Gemma and me a moment, please.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll see if there’s any more coffee in the pot.”

  He left and I sat back down. “What?”

  Pippa’s face had settled into a serious expression, and I knew she didn’t want to talk about wedding plans or the practical details of setting up housekeeping with Grant. “I’ve been instructed to offer you a job.”

  “A job? What job?”

  “A government job. They want to hire you.”

  “To do what?”

  She said nothing.

  “This is unexpected.”

  “Your dogged determination to find Uncle Randolph’s killer and to clear our father, as well as your well-thought-out deductions and attention to detail, caught the attention of powers-that-be.”

  I decided not to point out that if not for Donald and his black umbrella, my failure to notice the detail that Vivienne was in charge at the art gallery, not Julian, might have gotten us all killed.

  “No,” I said.

  “If you need time to think about it …”

  “I don’t. You might think my life seems small, unimportant in the grand scheme of things, and I suppose it is. But I love owning that silly little shop. I love living on Cape Cod and in the saltbox house I share with Uncle Arthur. I love Jayne and the working relationship we have. But most of all, I love Ryan. We have our problems, to be sure, but I can’t imagine leaving him. In short, Pippa, I love the life I’ve created for myself in West London.”

  “You’re a lucky woman, Gemma,” she said.

  “I know I am,” I said.

  “Can I come in?” Grant called from the doorway. “I found more sticky toffee pudding.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “I’m back!” I unlocked the sliding door between the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium and Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room, balancing a takeout mug of tea and a paper bag containing a blueberry muffin.

  Moriarty met me at the door. He threw me a poisonous glance, hissed once, and then turned around and marched to his bed under the center table, tail held high, hips swinging.

  “I’ve missed you, too,” I said.

  Jayne had headed in to work the moment we arrived in town, but I’d gone home, unpacked, taken Violet for a short walk, and had a shower, ready to get to the store in time for opening.

  I hadn’t seen Uncle Arthur yet. His 1977 Triumph Spitfire had been in the garage and his coat and winter boots in the mudroom, the boots standing in a puddle of melted snow, so I’d assumed he was upstairs in his own apartment. Probably enjoying the lie-in, as he hadn’t had to get up to come in to work today. I was looking forward to telling him all about my trip.

  I’d told Ashleigh I’d open the shop today and we’d return to the regular schedule, so I was surprised to see her burst through the front door at one minute after ten.

  She was dressed in a calf-length black wool winter coat with the collar turned up and a dark gray scarf, her hair arranged in a mass of dark curls. “I couldn’t stay away a moment longer,” she said. “I’m so excited, I came in early. I won’t even charge you for the extra time.” She made no move to take off the coat. Ashleigh dressed according to her mood. I couldn’t think of what her mood might be today, other than cold. And it was, if anything, too warm in the building this morning.

  “Excited about what?” I asked.

  “Don’t pretend to be so cool, Gemma. I’m excited about Arthur’s special guest, of course. Even you have to be over the moon.”

  “Perhaps I would be, if I knew what you’re talking about.”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I’d better not say. He’ll want to tell you himself.”

  “You can’t not tell me now. What?”

  “Arthur’s been saving this for the right time, Gemma. He thinks you’re mad at him. He’ll never say so, but he’s afraid you think he isn’t a help in the store anymore.”

  “But he is a help. Didn’t you say you’d been busy when he was in? They said that in the Tea Room also.”

  “You need to tell him, Gemma.”

  “I suppose I do. What’s this news?”

  “Okay, but you have to pretend to be surprised when he tells you.” She took a deep breath. “He has some good friends who have a son who’s an actor. Arthur knew the son when he was growing up, and he was sorta like an uncle to the kids.”