A man should only wear a sweatshirt while sleeping.”
“And have you been sleeping?” my mother asked. I could feel a gentle rebuke, wrapped in nurturing, all the way across the ocean.
“I am trying,” I said, which was the truth.
“Please keep trying,” she replied. “I hate seeing you like this.”
“Like what?” I asked. I hadn’t been aware I appeared differently to anyone.
I watched both women exchange a look. “Joyless and frustrated,” my mother said.
A dozen standard pithy remarks rose in response. The expression of sincerity reflected on that little screen evoked a tightness in my throat. I wasn’t opposed to happiness, nor was I opposed to ease. The instability and chaos that ensued after my mother’s accident was only conquered with order, security, and preparation. My work—the pursuit of justice—fulfilled those needs perfectly. Joy was reckless and chasing it low on my list of priorities.
“And yet I’m drinking tea with the two people I love the most in my life,” I finally said. “There’s a lot of joy to that.”
My thoughts pinged to Bernard and the email waiting for me. My fingers tensed on the delicate china. Frustrated. Maybe they had a point.
“Of course,” my mother agreed. “We’re only saying… it wouldn’t kill you to let loose a little. Embrace the efforts of your hard work. Maybe bring home a girlfriend.”
I worked to loosen my jaw. “Freya and Delilah gifted me Hawaiian shirts for this trip in the effort to get laid, as they would say.”
The women on the screen shrugged—judgmentally.
“She said it, not us,” Jeanette said.
“And I’ve already reached my limit in talking about this with my family members,” I said. “Drink your tea. I’ll order some tiny cakes so you can get the full afternoon tea experience.”
They oooohed when cake arrived and entertained me for a full hour with stories about the dogs and their recent Bingo nights. I was jet-lagged, tired from the plane, and in a city where I knew not a single soul. But this—this virtual tea-time filled with Pomeranian anecdotes—felt like the closest thing to relaxation I’d come to in months.
An hour later, I was back in my hotel room, setting up multiple screens and laptops on the small mahogany table by the plate-glass doors. Open, they led to a balcony overlooking a bustling London that was darkening beneath a slate-gray sky.
In a few hours, I was attending a lecture called The Final Problem at Reichenbach Falls and How Sherlock Holmes Refused to Die.
It was being conducted by Eudora Green, the president of the Sherlock Society of Civilized Scholars. Bernard was, according to Henry, an absolute fanatic when it came to his devotion to Sherlock Holmes and his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle. Interestingly, Bernard was still listed as the vice president of the Sherlock Society on their website.
The Problem of Reichenbach Falls…
I founded Codex because I believed a firm of private detectives could more successfully recover stolen rare books than the Bureau. Museums and libraries hired us to work quickly and quietly—they trusted us to keep the theft out of the press, protecting their reputation and status with their donors in the process. It never boded well when a museum or library had to step forward and announce they’d lost a priceless artifact. And yet it was happening all across the industry. While at the FBI, I was hamstrung by red tape and frustrated with the bureaucracy. Yet my Codex agents were recovering stolen books left and right. Often working undercover, my team could manipulate known criminals and gain the trust of potential suspects. We had an impressive close rate and an impressive reputation, made more so by Sam and Freya’s infiltration of The Empty House.
The man I’d always believed to be at the top of this pyramid of wide-scale book theft was Bernard.
Didn’t we once meet each other at Reichenbach Falls?
About a year ago, Freya had started picking up the threads of code words used on the website Under the Rose. Book thieves were inserting coded language into their posts to alert others they had stolen goods for sale or were interested in buying stolen goods. The first one she’d ever uncovered was the phrase “Didn’t we once meet each other at Reichenbach Falls?”
Every other code word we’d deciphered had roots in Sherlock Holmes.
I was currently staying in The Langham Hotel, where Arthur Conan Doyle had once famously eaten dinner with Oscar Wilde. In the ballroom off the lobby, the Sherlock Society was about to give a talk with an explicit mention of the