Page 3 of The Locked Room

He caught her meaning, as she knew he would. ‘One who knows exactly what they want,’ he said dryly. ‘But it could be a coincidence.’

‘It’s a classic locked-room mystery,’ Harry pointed out. ‘What better way to catch the eye of the world’s greatest detective?’

‘You may be right but it doesn’t actually matter. Impossible crime or not, it’s in the hands of the police now.’

Harry swallowed a sigh. She’d known this would be his position. As a lawyer, Oliver dealt in facts and evidence and certainties. He had no time for gut feelings or intuition. ‘Then why did you call me?’

Now it was Oliver’s turn to sigh. ‘Because I know you, Harry. I wanted to make sure you weren’t about to hare off to the scene of the crime.’

She shifted uncomfortably. Berkeley Square was no distance at all from Hamilton Square – it would only take her a few minutes to walk there. ‘So what if I am? There’s no law against it.’

‘No, there isn’t,’ he said, and she could picture him frowning. ‘But with the greatest respect, this is not your business, Harry. As a lawyer and your friend, I advise you in the strongest terms to let Scotland Yard handle it.’

The worst of it was, she knew he was right. The cases she had investigated so far had involved serious crimes but they had not been under investigation by the police. Meddling in the business of Scotland Yard was something Sherlock Holmes did all the time but Harry did not have the same freedom. ‘Has anyone ever told you you’re no fun, Oliver Fortescue?’

‘One or two people,’ he conceded. ‘But I can live with that if it prevents you from taking unnecessary risks.’

He certainly erred on the side of caution, Harry thought as she recalled how often he had frowned over her recklessness since she’d first asked for his help. But he had also knelt at her side in a rat-infested hovel, kept her role in foiling a criminal gang from the police, and stood by her side knee-deep in freezing fen water as they eavesdropped on unseen enemies. On each occasion, she’d been very glad of his company. ‘You are an excellent lawyer and friend,’ she replied, ignoring the sudden warmth in her cheeks. ‘Your advice is always welcome.’

Oliver snorted. ‘I doubt that. But I like to think it’s worth listening to.’

Harry pondered the conversation for some time after saying goodbye, turning the peculiarities of the crime over and over. No matter how hard she tried to disassociate the theft of the diamond from the advertisement in the agony column of The Times, she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had gone to a lot of trouble to create the perfect opening of a Sherlock Holmes adventure. Holmes himself might acknowledge that such a coincidence was possible, but he would satisfy his mind one way or the other by examining the data, and Harry was forced to admit she did not have a shred of evidence there was any connection between the stolen diamond and Moriarty’s letter. There was one thing of which she was certain, however. It would not hurt to keep a watchful eye on the investigation at Berkeley Square.

Quaglino’s restaurant, tucked away beneath the St James’s Palace Hotel on Bury Street, would not have been Harry’s first choice for a discreet conversation about a delicate family matter. Famed as a place to see and be seen, it was frequented by a glitzy crowd – darlings of radio and stage, artistic types with fashionably loose morals and, of course, the very wealthy. Lord Mountbatten was a regular, along with his wife Edwina, despite scandalous rumours of her affair with the bar’s much-vaunted singer. It was one of Seb’s favourite haunts, so Harry wasn’t especially surprised when he suggested it for dinner that evening, but he had been at pains to reassure her it would be quiet. ‘Nothing gets going until eleven o’clock at the earliest. You’ll be home long before things get wild.’

‘Then why not go to Brownings?’ she had asked, thinking of the old-fashioned booths and discreet service the restaurant offered.

‘Because the menu is dull and the clientele is even duller,’ Seb replied. ‘It’s a ghastly business poking around in a sibling’s affaire de coeur, but I don’t see why we can’t take the sting out of it with some decent oysters.’

Harry couldn’t argue with that. She knew very little about the woman their youngest brother had become involved with, other than their mother’s fear that she was more interested in his allowance than his affections, but the fact that the alarm had been raised was not a good sign. ‘I want to be in bed by ten o’clock at the latest,’ she’d warned Seb. ‘I have work in the morning.’

‘Of course,’ Seb had responded dryly. ‘I wouldn’t want to deprive the bank of its most over-qualified secretary. Entire fortunes might fall.’

It was a source of considerable bemusement among Harry’s family members that she had a job at all. When she had first voiced her intention to work in London, her mother had been nonplussed. ‘But you don’t need to earn money, darling. You have everything you need here.’

On the surface that was true and Harry was well aware of the privileged life she had been born into. The granddaughter of a baron, who would in the fullness of time become the daughter of a baron, might indulge in charitable work but she was not expected to enter paid employment. And while there were many worthy causes to choose from, Harry found herself chafing at the restrictions of both her class and sex. She wanted to do more than attend charity luncheons and make polite conversation with women who moved in the same stultifying social circles as everyone else Harry knew. She dreamed of independence, the freedom to make at least some choices for herself, to stretch her wings a little. Eventually, her parents had given in to her steadfast determination and agreed to an apartment in the right part of London. Lawrence and Seb had been tasked with keeping a brotherly eye on her but, as Seb had once remarked, she was so boring that she made the Archbishop of Canterbury look Bohemian and they mostly left her alone, which was exactly the way Harry liked it. ‘Ha ha,’ she said to Seb. ‘Pick me up at seven-thirty.’

Quaglino’s was busy, even for a Tuesday, which was a testament to the charm and business savvy of its owner, the eponymous John Quaglino, who greeted every arrival by name and presented female guests with a flower as though they were the most captivating creature he had ever seen. The bar was draped with elegant drinkers, all hopeful of securing a table before the night’s festivities got underway, while a saxophone solo soared from the band tucked away in one corner. Harry and Seb were seated at a table among the other well-dressed diners, where white-suited waiters danced attendance upon their every whim, and Harry wasn’t surprised to note that her brother seemed to know everyone. ‘That’s the novelist Aubrey Wells over there, with his mistress, Gertrude King,’ he said, flicking his gaze between the tables. ‘It appears Beatrice Barber has given her awful husband the slip once again. And goodness, Lord and Lady Furness are dining together in public. The Prince of Wales must have given her the night off.’

It was common knowledge in elevated circles that Thelma Furness was Edward’s mistress, meaning Harry always felt a little sorry for her husband. He did not look happy now, but nor did Thelma. Neither appeared to have much to say. Harry turned a stern eye upon her brother. ‘You really are a terrible gossip.’

Seb raised an eyebrow. ‘On the contrary, I’m a terribly good gossip. What I don’t enjoy is being the subject of other people’s tittle-tattle. Which brings us neatly onto our dear brother and his paramour, the delightfully named Serafina Eccleston.’

Harry took a sip of champagne. Holmes would undoubtedly deduce purely from her name where in the country the girl was from, and what her parents’ occupation had been, but it meant little to Harry. ‘I don’t think I know her. Where did they meet? More importantly, when did they meet? Rufus has been in the wilds of Scotland for months.’

‘Excellent questions,’ Seb replied. ‘I’d be very surprised if you did know Miss Eccleston, given you never venture into Soho, but it seems she was part of the reason for sending Rufus away in the first place. You recall the unfortunate night he was arrested in Piccadilly?’

Harry did, although she hadn’t witnessed his drunken antics for herself. She’d heard about it from Oliver, who had been summoned to the police station in order to smooth things over. ‘Yes.’

‘Once Fortescue had arranged his release, he took him to Lawrence, who demanded to know what the blazes he’d been thinking and the truth came tumbling out.’

‘I thought they’d been drinking in a nightclub and someone had dared him to climb the statue of Eros,’ she said, frowning.

‘Which appears to be what happened,’ Seb agreed. ‘But the reason he took the dare was to impress a young lady. Enter Miss Serafina Eccleston, a beauty of unparalleled grace and goodness with whom Rufus declared himself to be helplessly and eternally in love.’

‘Ah,’ Harry said, as the pieces began to fall into place.

‘The following morning, he announced that he planned to propose to her,’ Seb went on. ‘Unable to get much information out of Rufus, beyond descriptions of lustrous hair and shimmering eyes, Lawrence decided to approach the friends he had been drinking with. One of them revealed she is a dance hostess at the Hot Spot Club on Gerrard Street. That’s where she met Rufus, some weeks earlier.’