A Study in Sherlock

She knew her father was changing the subject. She let him.

But once at home, she had to know if her mother was aware of this extraordinary thing about her father. “Did you know Daddy was married before?” she asked her mother when she came home. “To someone named Chloe Beezer?”

“Yes,” her mother said. “I did know that. You did, too. We told you, years ago.”

“I might have known, but I guess I forgot.”

Her mother looked at her father, who was reading his Wall Street Journal at the breakfast bar. Because he had to come home early with Sheila, they were going to have takeout from City Diner. “Why is this coming up now?”

Before Sheila could answer, her father said: “She found an old piece of paper in a box of my stuff. I told her she should respect our privacy more and she said she would. Right, Sheila?”

“Right,” she said, although she didn’t remember agreeing. “And a photograph. There was a photograph paper-clipped to it.”

“Do you want sweet potato fries, Sheila?” her mother asked.

“Yes, with cinnamon sugar.”

That night, as her mother put her to bed, Sheila was thinking about lying. She wasn’t supposed to do it even when it made sense. But what about when someone else repeated one of her lies? Her father was the one who said she found the card in his boxes, but it had been in the jewelry box, which she was specifically forbidden to touch. Didn’t her mother remember it was there? It was right on top, in clear view. She would see it tomorrow morning. Her mother went to that box every workday, pulling out golden chains and silver bangles. Her mother was very particular about her jewelry. She spent more time on selecting jewelry than she did on making up her face. “An old face needs an ornate frame,” she said, laughing. It was an old face, even as mother’s faces went. Sheila wished this wasn’t so, but it was. She could see that her mother had been at least medium-pretty once, in the same way that she had been medium-popular. But she wasn’t pretty now. It might help if she were. Trista’s mother was pretty.

“Mom, I went into your jewelry box.”

“I figured that out, Sheila. That’s okay. It’s good you’re being honest about it with me. That’s the first step. Telling the truth.”

“Why did you have that card?”

“What?”

“The card, with the photograph.”

“Oh, you know how hard it is to keep things in order sometimes.”

Yes, on her father’s side of the closet. But her mother’s side was always neat, with shoe boxes with Polaroid pictures of the shoes inside and clothing hanging according to type and color. Everything was labeled and accounted for on her mother’s side.

“Daddy thought it was in his boxes.”

“It probably was.”

“Do you snoop, too, Mom?”

She didn’t answer right away. “I did. But it’s wrong, Sheila. I don’t do it anymore.” She kissed her good night.

Two days later, Sheila disbanded Sheila Locke-Holmes. She left the deerstalker cap on a hook in her closet, put her almost-blank notebook down the trash chute, and took apart the utility belt that she had created in homage to Harriet the Spy. She told her mother that she would like to wear the charm bracelet, after all, that charm bracelets were popular again. She wore it to school the first day, along with her mother’s T-shirt. Sixth grade was better than she thought it would be and she began to hope she might, one day, at least be medium-popular. Like her mother, she had shiny hair and a nice smile. Like her father, she was dreamy and absentminded, lost in her own world. There were worse ways to be.

Sheila’s mother was not dreamy. She did not indulge conversations about why people did what they did. She did not stop movies and show Sheila the color of the sky or explain how Dr. Horrible could go down wearing one thing and rise up wearing another a second later. But she was sometimes right about things, as Sheila learned with each passing year. At thirty, Sheila would sigh with envy over her twenty-year-old face. At forty, she would look longingly back at thirty.

She would never yearn for that summer when she was eleven. Whenever someone brought up the time that she wore the deerstalker cap and started her own detective agency, she changed the subject but not because she was embarrassed. She could not bear to remember how sad her mother looked that night, when she confessed to snooping. She wanted to say to her mother: He saves everything! It doesn’t matter! She wanted to ask her mother: Why did you take the card? Did you want him to know you took it? Why did you put it somewhere you would have to see it every day? She wanted to ask her father: Why did you keep it? Do you miss Chloe Beezer? Aren’t you happy that you married Mommy and had me? What was in those orange drinks?

But all these things went unsaid. Which, to Sheila’s way of thinking, was also a kind of lying, but the kind of lying of which grown-ups approved.

Laura Lippman purchased a deerstalker cap in London when she was fourteen and still owns it, although she will never be an expert in all things Sherlock Holmes and, in fact, made a really embarrassing error about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s work in her Tess Monaghan series. A New York Times bestseller and winner of several awards for crime writing, past president of the Mystery Writers of America, she has published sixteen novels, a novella, and a collection of short stories. She lives in Baltimore and New Orleans.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE CONCERT PIANIST

Margaret Maron

The bell rang at two o’clock precisely that early April afternoon and when my maid showed him into the parlour, my caller was, as I expected, Dr Watson. Although heavy mourning had somewhat gone out of style for men, he still wore a band of black velvet on the sleeve of his brown tweed jacket, which indicated to me that his grief for Mrs Watson had not fully abated despite the months that had passed.

“So good of you to come,” I said.

“Not at all, Mrs Hudson.” He handed Alice his hat and stick. “Indeed, I should have called upon you sooner. Your kind expression of sympathy upon my Mary’s passing touched me immensely, and I—” He broke off and looked around the parlour with undisguised pleasure.

“So many changes in my life and yet nothing has changed here.”

I smiled and did not correct him. Whilst he lodged here before his marriage, Dr Watson had taken tea with me several times. Mr Holmes had joined us here but once before his tragic end, yet I daresay he would have immediately noticed my new curtains. In most respects, a very noticing man, Mr Holmes.

Tea had been laid in anticipation of the visit, and when my guest was seated in the chair on the other side of the low table, I poured steaming cups for both of us and passed the scones, still warm from the oven.

“I suppose you have let his rooms to a new lodger?”

“Not as yet,” I replied, offering him gooseberry jam.

“After all this time?” He was clearly surprised. “You have left your best rooms vacant for nearly three years?”

I nodded.

“Forgive my presumption, Mrs Hudson, but does this not represent a financial hardship?”

“Perhaps not as much as you may think, Doctor. Mr Holmes had paid through the end of his year before he left London. Moreover, after your marriage, he insisted on raising that rent to compensate for the damages.”