In the bedroom, she tackled Renata’s dresser and I took Woollcott’s - just the places a person might casually stick a book that wasn’t much more than a fat pamphlet. I started my search with a once-over at the top of both dressers. His still had keys and coins and a bottle of pills, just as I’d seen that morning. Hers had all those womanly things like lipstick, a hair brush, a jewelry box, eye shadows, and powders.

And yet I had a nagging feeling that something was missing, something was not as it had been earlier that morning.

I opened a wine-colored bathrobe from the top drawer of Chalmers’s dresser and unfolded it. No book hidden inside.

“How do you like this?”

I turned around to see Lynda holding up a red satin-and-lace nightie that clearly wouldn’t hide anything.

“It’s the real you,” I assured her, my voice a little dry.

“You wish.” She refolded the garment and put it back in Renata’s drawer. “If the book was ever here it was probably removed while I was unconscious. Or maybe the whole idea that Chalmers killed-”

“Hold it.”

I’d found something sandwiched between pairs of white undershorts. It was a little book with paper covers, about half an inch thick, five and a half inches wide and eight and a half long. There was a drawing on the cover in brown, a man lighting an old-fashioned lamp. Most of the printing was in black, including the part across the top where it said Beeton’s Christmas Annual. But the title of the lead story, appropriately, was in big red letters - A Study in Scarlet. Gently, I turned to the first page and found a faded inscription in a handwriting I’d seen before:

Dear Ma’am,

I hope this little detective tale brings you some enjoyment.

A.C.D.

“This may be why you were hit on the head,” I told Lynda. “To keep you from finding this.”

Chapter Thirty-One - The Return of Sebastian McCabe

“It’s the biggest story of my career,” Lynda said as we drove back to Muckerheide Center in her Mustang, me at the wheel. “Murder, jealousy, sex, burglary, brilliant detective work - it has it all.”

“Everything,” I agreed, by no means happy.

I could imagine the headline stretched across the top of the Observer tomorrow - or the website today, for that matter. Even worse, I could see Ralph Pendergast’s reaction to the news that the killer was Mac’s house guest. Oh, this was going to get real ugly real fast.

Mac’s talk on “Humor in the Canon” was over and a Sherlockian auction was underway by the time we arrived at Muckerheide Center. In fact, my elephantine brother-in-law was nowhere to be seen as we slipped into the seats at the back of the Hearth Room. The seat next to Kate was empty.

Sherlockian books and memorabilia donated by participants in the seminar were being sold to pay bills not covered by the modest registration fee and to build a kitty for next year’s program, a highly optimistic presumption at this point. Some of the stuff on the block raised (or lowered) the word “obscure” to new levels. Tie tacks, greeting cards, mugs, Christmas ornaments, you name it - anything with a connection to Sherlock Holmes, no matter how tenuous, seemed to be fair game.

Bob Nakamora, acting as auctioneer, held up a volume about the size of a normal hardback book but with a faded red cover of paper. The illustration showed Holmes in his dressing gown.

“Here we have a rare edition of The Incunabular Sherlock Holmes,” he announced. “There were only three hundred and fifty signed and numbered copies printed by the Baker Street Irregulars in 1958. This is number” - he opened the cover just a crack and peered inside - “ninety-four. What am I bid?”

Noah Queensbury, a couple of rows ahead of us, offered a dollar.

After some hesitation, a large woman in a print dress pushed it up to a dollar and a quarter.

“You may not have heard of this because it’s so rare,” Nakamora said, “but it was edited by the late, great Sherlockian Edgar W. Smith.”

“Five dollars,” Woollcott Chalmers said from across the room. He sat next to Renata, watching the auctioneer with eyes that betrayed an intensity of engagement. He cared what happened here.

“Six,” Queensbury counter-bid.

“Ten.” Chalmers’s voice betrayed the ragged edge of irritation.

“What the hell’s he coming on so strong for?” Lynda whispered. “He already owns every Holmes book known to humankind.”

“Not anymore,” I pointed out. “Besides, it’s how you play the game that counts for somebody like him, and he plays the game to win.”

Queensbury hung in until the bidding climbed up to twenty-five dollars, then flashed a nervous look at his spouse, the judge. Molly Crocker stirred in her seat. With obvious reluctance, Queensbury shook his head at Nakamora, silently taking himself out of the competition.

The smile on Chalmers’s craggy face was a sort of victory flag as he limped up to claim his hard-won prize. He had plenty more to smile about in the next half-hour as a dozen or so other books piled up on Renata’s lap.

“He must be trying to rebuild his whole blasted collection,” Lynda said.

“Starting with that, I suppose,” I said, nodding at the Beeton’s concealed in a paper bag in Lynda’s hand.

Just as the last item was sold (a Hound of the Baskervilles scarf that went to Barry Landers), Mac strode into the Hearth Room and up to the lectern. He removed the unlit cigar from his mouth as if to speak, but instead tossed the cigar into the air - where it turned into a yellow rose. He caught the flower and pinned it onto his boutonniere. Will the man never grow up?

“Weekends are always too short,” he commented, “and this one has been shorter than most. Though marred by tragedy, this first annual ‘Investigating Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes’ colloquium has fulfilled all my hopes for a program that would be both entertaining and enlightening. What I mean is, it worked.”

The crowd showed its agreement with applause - a little less thunderous than at other times during the weekend since maybe a third of the crowd had left early. Mac responded with a promise to reprise the program as long as they kept coming back.

“Until next time, then,” he concluded, “I bid you farewell and beg you to remember: There’s no police like Holmes!”

As he moved away from the lectern, he was mobbed by friends. Lynda and I finally cornered him a long five or ten minutes later. Being Mac, he acted like we’d been the ones missing in action.

“I need your report, Jefferson,” he harrumphed.

“Where have you been while we were doing your legwork?” Lynda demanded.

“I was involved in legwork of my own, as it turned out,” Mac said. “For one thing, I procured a verbal summary of the Sussex County coroner’s findings.”

“Oscar told me about that,” I said. “There was a .32 revolver bullet still lodged in the body, no powder burns.” Apparently shot from a distance, Oscar had said.

“Precisely, old boy! It makes the truth about the weapon transparent, does it not? Of course, the TV4 report was already highly suggestive in that matter.”

“TV4?” I repeated. “What did the-”

“We can discuss that later. What did you find out from Gene Pfannenstiel? Molly Crocker? Renata and Woollcott? Noah Queensbury? Reuben Pinkwater?” He spit out the names like shots from a Tommy gun.

For all the talk about Queensbury, we hadn’t actually talked to him, I realized now. But I unloaded everything I had, leaving out only Lynda’s misadventure in Mac’s house. Deliberately, I ended with Molly Crocker’s bombshell about Renata and Matheson as a buildup to our own suspicion of Chalmers.

“I was, of course, aware of that most unfortunate dalliance,” Mac said.

“Of course,” I snapped, peeved at his attitude. “Then maybe you’re also aware that your own house guest is the killer.”