No Police Like Holmes Read Free Page A

down the college quadrangle clad in a kilt and playing the bagpipes on the first day of every spring semester. There was nothing to tell you that he enjoyed writing a blog critiquing the faulty grammar in official communications around campus, delighting the undergrads and putting half the faculty and administration in an uproar. And there wasn’t the slightest hint that he fancied himself a Great Detective lacking only a case. He’s my best friend, and the biggest thorn in my side. When we’d first met as college students at St. Benignus he was already something of an enfant terrible . Now, pushing forty (three years older than me), he’s no longer an enfant , but still terrible .
    â€œCome and meet Woollcott,” he said, waving me into a nearby couch.
    Woollcott Chalmers, sitting at the end of the couch closest to Mac, looked to be in his mid- to late-seventies, if the whiteness of his hair and thin mustache weren’t deceiving. His eyes, enlarged by lenses in his black-framed glasses, were blue and penetrating. He was impeccably dressed in a black suit and red foulard tie. He held a cane loosely between his legs. I knew from Mac that he’d inherited a few million dollars, increased it about ten-fold during a career of investing money for himself and others, and had never been shy about spending goodly quantities of it on pet arts projects or his collection of Sherlockiana. Said collection was the third largest still in private hands, and he was donating it all to St. Benignus - a big coup for a college our size. Some local corporations were putting up the money to maintain it.
    Chalmers rose and shook my hand, exuding the sort of charm you’d expect from a guy who looked like a retired British admiral. His skin was as soft as a baby’s. He had a pleasant smile, showing teeth that were too perfect to be real.
    â€œDelighted to meet you at last, young man,” he said. “I’ve heard much about you from your admiring sister. I should very much like you to meet my wife.” He leaned forward on the cane, looking toward a small knot of people at the other end of the living room, and raised his voice. “Renata?”
    One of the women disengaged herself, flashed a brilliant smile at the group she was leaving, and joined our corner of the universe. Chalmers unnecessarily pronounced my name and his wife’s.
    â€œWe’ve sort of already met,” Renata Chalmers explained to her husband as she shook my hand.
    â€œI’m afraid I drank most of that light beer you asked for,” I said.
    â€œNo worries.”
    What the hell, then. I gulped down the rest of it.

Chapter Three - Night Work
    Renata Chalmers had to be a good four decades younger than her husband and prettier than your average beauty queen. A cynic might look at the estimated girth of the old man’s investment portfolio and draw conclusions, but whoever accused me of being a cynic?
    â€œJefferson is a cynic,” my brother-in-law declared by way of further introduction. He stuck a long, green cigar in his mouth. In years gone by he would have fired it up with a lighter shaped like a hand grenade. Nowadays he mostly uses the cigar as a prop, yielding to Kate’s no-smoking zone inside the house and sometimes to my protests about second-hand smoke outside of it.
    â€œWhy do you say that?” Renata asked.
    â€œBecause it is true,” Mac said grandly. “Only a cynic - a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, according to Oscar Wilde - could share Jefferson’s total incomprehension of the joys of collecting.”
    I confessed that the passion to pay big money for things that nobody really needs, like multiple editions of the same Sherlock Holmes book and even variant printings of the same edition, was way beyond my ken.
    â€œBut maybe you can explain it,” I told Chalmers. I whipped out my notebook and prepared for enlightenment. There could be a