And with that, he marched out, swinging the door shut and leaving Inspector Miller alone to contemplate what mayhem he’d just wrought.

CHAPTER 12 A Proposal

January 6, 2010, cont.

“It’s not a bloody mystery, ” insisted Ron Rosenberg, slapping a sharp palm to the bar top for punctuation. Harold gave a jolt. Ron had a tendency to throw his wiry arms around when he became agitated. The more dire Ron’s inflection grew, the more alert Harold had to be for an errant elbow swipe.

“You’re going to pin this on me, and I think we both know exactly why,” continued Ron.

“Look,” replied Harold, “I’m seriously not saying you had anything to do with this. With the murder.”

“Hush!” said Ron, flitting his eyes across the hotel bar. “Quietly. This is between us.”

Ron swung his elbows out again, and Harold dodged. Ron Rosenberg was not among Harold’s favorite Irregulars, and it was moments like this that reminded him why. Ron was in his forties, though he looked older. Squinting eyes gave his face the impression of wrinkles, and the impeccably tailored three-piece suits he wore every day made him look like an aged banker. Which he was not. Harold vaguely remembered something about Ron’s owning a small real-estate firm in London, though he wasn’t sure what kind. Harold was sure, however, that Ron was not the focus of anyone’s investigations.

Ron had descended upon Harold a few minutes earlier, after Sarah had left to take a phone call, and had immediately begun professing his innocence. He was growing more animated by the minute, even as he was trying to contain their conversation by pressing in close to Harold’s shoulder and whispering angrily. The effect was that Harold felt he was chatting with a bee-ever buzzing and vibrating.

“What are you so worried about?” asked Harold.

“He was there when you found the body, wasn’t he? What did he say? I know he talked about me, don’t bloody lie.”

It took Harold a few moments to figure out whom Ron was referring to.

“Jeffrey? You’re worried about Jeffrey Engels?”

Ron scanned the bar again for prying ears. Sherlockians still surrounded most of the tables in groups of three or four. Strains of elaborate conspiracy-hushed with gravity and paranoia-wafted toward Harold and Ron.

“You know that he and I have had our… polite disagreements,” said Ron. “And, very well, some of them have not been so polite. But they have been civil, as such things go, don’t you think? We’re friends. I would fairly call us friends. Do you think he knew Cale was dead already when he gave that introduction this morning?”

Harold was briefly stunned by the last question.

“No,” he replied. “I don’t.”

“You know he had his disagreements with Cale as well, don’t you? Yes, right, they gave a good show of camaraderie, but it was rubbish. Jeffrey kept pressing him for information about the diary and about what he would say at his lecture, but Cale was mum. Jeffrey wasn’t happy about it, I can tell you that.”

“Look,” said Harold, “I don’t think either of you did it, okay?”

Ron made a curious face. He seemed genuinely surprised to hear Harold say that.

“Really?” he replied. “Because one of us must have.”

Harold hadn’t known all of his fellow members for very long, but he had known them. And he genuinely liked these people. He enjoyed being with them. He felt like he was almost at home among them. In the exchange of the faded shilling the night before, Harold had almost-almost-found a place in which he belonged.

He was surrounded by dozens of his colleagues, his supposed friends, and he was alone. One of them was a killer. Maybe more than one, Harold had to reason, if they’d read Murder on the Orient Express. Of course they had. They’d all read the same books. They all knew the same stories by heart-Christie, Chandler, Hammett, on and on, the list would fill pages. How could any of them have done this?

For the first time that morning, Harold felt angry. He was angry with the killer for taking Alex Cale, and for taking the diary, but he was also angry at him for taking the Baker Street Irregulars. What would the group be like now? At Harold’s last Sherlockian meeting, in Los Angeles, they had stayed up drinking scotch until 2 a.m. and laughing about that one massive plot hole in “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist.” They would never do that again. How could they?

No one could be allowed to get away with this. These things meant too much to him-the group, the club, the people. No one would be allowed to let Harold slip back into the loneliness of his life.

He felt the narcissism of his growing anger.

“Why did Jeffrey give that speech this morning?” Harold said. His thoughts were moving quickly.

Ron smiled. “That’s an excellent question,” he said. “Why not hold off until he knew where Cale was? Why start expounding on the issue at hand, to a roomful of people who already knew everything he had to say?”

“It’s like Jeffrey wanted to make sure that everyone in the building knew that he still believed Alex Cale was alive.”

“Harold, I’m glad you’re coming round to my way of thinking.”

Harold had to pause at this comment. Coming around to Ron’s way of thinking? No. This was not a good omen. If Harold were going to do this-and Harold was going to do this-then he would have to do it soberly, reasonably. Paranoid theorizing was too easy, too emotionally satisfying.

“I think we should-” Ron clammed up midsentence. He was staring over Harold’s shoulder.

A hand tapped Harold from behind. He turned and found himself staring into the eyes of a handsome man a few inches shorter than himself and ten years older. The man’s crisp black eyebrows burrowed down toward his thin feminine nose, making him look at once pretty and serious. He was dressed in a wealthy-casual style: unpressed khakis and a black collared sweater. Harold would later notice his bulky watch, undoubtedly made of real gold, as the man’s one obvious nod to ostentation.

“Are you Harold White?” said the man, speaking quietly.

“Yes,” replied Harold.

“I’ll let you two talk,” said Ron, slinking away. Why was Ron retreating? Who was this person?

Harold looked over the handsome man’s shoulder to see Sarah at the door of the bar. She was watching them.

“Might we go somewhere and chat?” said the man. “My name is Sebastian.” He stretched his right hand to enclose Harold’s, while his left came over the top to press down on the handshake, solidifying the bond. “Sebastian Conan Doyle.”

Arthur Conan Doyle’s great-grandson paced across the soft cream carpet in Harold’s hotel room. He intertwined his hands behind him, compressing his shoulder blades, and then folded his arms in front of him sternly. He moved back and forth between these two positions as he spoke.

“Look, it’s no secret that Cale and I fought. We’ve argued publicly about that diary for years, and there’s no point in pretending we haven’t. He mistakenly believed that it was public property and that when he found it, he could donate it to a university or to some museum. Obviously, as I’m sure you’ll understand, that diary rightly belongs to me. It was written by my great-grandfather. It is my property. I came to New York to talk some sense into Cale, to explain this fact to him once and for all.”

Sebastian Conan Doyle looked to Harold for agreement. Sitting erect on the hard-backed wooden desk chair and listening attentively, Harold had no desire to argue with him on this point and yet didn’t feel like he could let it pass.