As he turned to the bathroom door, which could have been any bathroom door in any hotel room on either side of the Atlantic, Harold saw wisps of steam escaping from the bottom. The shower was running inside the bathroom. It looked warm. He heard someone move around inside the shower and realized it was Sarah. The events of the past night came back to him. Harold was sorry to recall that nothing thrilling had occurred the night before.
They’d found this hotel after a quick Google search from the Internet café. It was close, it was quiet, and it accepted payment in cash. They couldn’t risk using credit cards.
They had spent the evening separately reading through Alex’s Conan Doyle biography. Sarah had appreciated the chance finally to read it for herself, while Harold pored over it again and again for any indication of where Alex had found the diary. Or any glimpse as to what was even inside it. No matter how many times he read it, no new facts presented themselves.
The most exciting moment of the evening, for Harold, had come when the two learned that the hotel had a laundry room. They realized that without a return to their previous hotel room they’d be spending another day in the same clothes. They changed into the white robes they found hanging inside the bathroom door and walked, dirty underwear, jeans, and shirts piled in their arms, down the stairs in nothing but the robes. Harold’s eyes kept drifting to the folds of Sarah’s robe, which swayed to expose her right thigh halfway up to her waist every time she stepped forward. He did his best not to stare. He was pretty sure she didn’t notice.
Later that night they slept on opposite sides of the single king-size bed. They wore their robes like pajamas. The whole thing felt dishearteningly chaste, like a teenage sleepover, and yet Harold still had trouble sleeping. He lay on his side, facing away from Sarah even though he usually slept on his back. He didn’t want to risk turning and accidentally staring at her. What if she opened her eyes just at the instant that his happened to be on her? She’d think he’d been staring at her the whole night, which he certainly hadn’t been. Better not to let his head point anywhere near her direction, for fear of a misunderstanding. So he lay on his right side and felt the weight of his body pressing painfully into his shoulder as he failed to fall asleep.
Harold sat up in bed when he heard his BlackBerry buzz from the nightstand. He examined it and found a new e-mail from Sebastian Conan Doyle. Sebastian was in London and wanted to meet with them. “Immediately,” Sebastian had insisted.
As Harold set the BlackBerry on the nightstand, he noticed Sarah’s phone resting beside it. He thought back to her long calls the day before, while they were in the café. He was suspicious. He had no trouble admitting that to himself. Whatever affection he might have for
Sarah-however much he might enjoy her teasing and whatever tiny crush he might have on her-he still didn’t trust her.
As he took Sarah’s phone from the nightstand, he comforted himself with the thought that Holmes hadn’t been totally honest with Watson all the time either. He had lied to Watson frequently, in fact, keeping his companion in the dark so that Holmes could solve his cases as he saw fit. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes even had Watson off on a pointless mission for the majority of their investigation, so that Holmes could hide in the shadows and observe the suspects while they were distracted by his bumbling sidekick. Harold wasn’t doing anything that Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t have done himself.
Harold didn’t feel guilty as he examined the call records on Sarah’s phone. However, as he heard the shower shut off in the bathroom, he knew he needed to move quickly.
Yesterday afternoon Sarah had exchanged a number of calls with a New York area code. One of the calls had been at 3:03 p.m. They had definitely been in the café then. This must have been the call she made to her editor.
As Harold heard Sarah puttering in the bathroom, he pressed Redial. The seconds stretched interminably as he waited to hear a ring.
A female voice answered quickly. “Silverman, Rummel, Tabak, and Siegler. How may I direct your call?”
“I… ummm…” Harold hadn’t considered how he’d respond. “Is this a law firm?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Yes, sir. Can I help you?”
The bathroom door opened suddenly, and Sarah came out fully dressed but with a towel wrapped around her wet hair.
“No, thank you,” said Harold into the phone as he hung up.
Sarah stopped when she saw him with her phone in his hand.
“Is something going on?” she asked.
“Who’s Silverman, Rummel, Tabak, and Siegler?”
Her first reaction was anger. “You checked my phone? Why would you check my phone?”
“Because you lied to me about calling your editor. At least I know that now. Look, I’m sorry, but between the car chases and the guns and the dead people, I’m a little bit on edge. And you seemed very eager to follow me to London.”
Sarah sighed. She stared at the floor for a moment, collecting herself, and then sat down on the bed. She curled and uncurled her bare toes on the carpet as she spoke.
“Yes. I lied to you. I didn’t want to tell you that… the law firm. They’re my divorce attorneys. I’m in the middle of getting a divorce.”
Of all the things Harold was expecting her to say, this was definitely not among them. “Marc Epstein. That’s the name of my lawyer. You can call him and check. I didn’t want to tell you because… well, I don’t have an editor. I’m not actually working as a reporter right now. But I used to. I wrote for a bunch of papers, a few magazines-I’m sure you Googled me. But then, after I got married, I sort of stopped. My husband-my ex-husband-made enough, and I ended up moving away from writing. And now that I’m getting divorced, I want to do it again. So I’m writing freelance articles. Or trying to, at any rate. And when I heard about Alex finding the diary, when I started reading about the Irregulars, all of you guys, it just seemed too perfect. Anyone would buy this. It’s an amazing story.”
“That’s why you put me in touch with Sebastian. Why you made all of this happen. You wanted something to write about.”
Sarah looked up from her feet for the first time since she’d started talking. Her eyes shone with moisture. “I needed it, Harold. I needed this story to happen. I needed to get my life back.”
After his shock had subsided, what Harold realized was that he wasn’t angry. He understood her, more than he wanted to.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I get it. We’re going to find the diary. I promise. But let’s make a deal first. We’re in this together. You won’t lie to me, and I won’t go through your phone logs.” He smiled. She smiled back. In a moment that he would recall fondly later, he even reached out and put his arm around her. She laid her towel-wrapped head on his shoulder.
“Thanks,” she said at last.
“No problem. I know what it’s like to need to prove yourself. To imagine yourself a certain way in your head for so long, and then to get a chance to put it into action in real life. And real life is a lot trickier than I was hoping for.”
Sarah laughed.
“We both need to solve this,” Harold added.
“Yes,” she replied. “And the funny part is, I think I need to solve this more than you do.”
Sebastian Conan Doyle’s London home was in Holland Park, along Abbotsbury Road. The four-story was tooth white and bracketed on either side by tall plane trees. Harold and Sarah took the few steps from the street to the entryway quickly and gave their names to the doorman. He let them in right away. He’d been expecting them.
The house swallowed Harold within its massive enclosure. The ceilings seemed a few feet taller than they needed to be and the hallways a few feet wider. Even the doorways seemed oversize, stretching almost to the ceiling. Art hung genteelly from the walls. It was all modern, or so Harold assumed, though he didn’t know much about art. The paintings seemed structural, architectural, full of simple colored shapes smashing into one another.