Moriarty Returns a Letter by Michael Robertson

thought Cheeverton—perhaps it would help him decide what to do.
    But all she did was ask questions:
    “Where am I?” she said. “Who are you? How did I get here?”
    Those questions seemed natural enough, at first. But when he told her that he had fished her out of the river and then she asked, “How did I get in the river?”—well, then he began to wonder a bit. She should remember how she got in the river.
    “Don’t you know?” he said.
    But she had not answered; she just stopped talking and lay back and closed her eyes.
    As she lay there, Cheeverton studied her calm face and he wondered if perhaps she was not the person from the news reports at all. Or even if it was her, perhaps the telly reports might have gotten it all wrong. Perhaps she was not the criminal that they all said.
    Perhaps she was just misunderstood.
    Later that morning, Cheeverton went out and got a newspaper, brought it back, and then he fixed another breakfast for her.
    While she ravenously devoured the toast and bacon and tea that he brought her, Cheeverton opened up his morning copy of The Daily Sun .
    And then he quickly shut it. He stared across at her, just to be absolutely sure, and then he opened the paper again, but this time more carefully, below the table, out of her line of sight.
    It was all right there in the paper. Her name, her color photo, and everything. More than Cheeverton really wanted to know. This was her.
    Her name was Darla Rennie. She was twenty-five years old, according to the tabloid. It had dubbed her a schizophrenic savant, because although she clearly had some difficulty distinguishing personal fantasy from reality, she was also a sort of genius at learning things. But she had gone off her meds, believing and proclaiming herself to be the great-great-granddaughter, on her mother’s side, of someone named Moriarty—yes, the paper said, that Moriarty, the Professor Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes stories. And while under that delusion, she had become obsessed with a barrister, one Reggie Heath, who currently occupied the location at Baker Street where 221B would be, if it truly existed, and whom she believed to be Sherlock Holmes and therefore responsible for the death of her ancestor Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls, and as a result of that obsession she had murdered one of Reggie Heath’s clients and had made an apparent attempt to abduct Laura Rankin—ending, as everyone now knew, in Darla Rennie herself plunging from the Tower Bridge into the Thames.
    “What is in the paper?” said Darla Rennie, wiping her mouth and looking up at Cheeverton.
    “Nothing,” lied Cheeverton. He tried to glance down and look at the paper he was holding beneath the table, because there were more details there—something about how the client was murdered, and other things, which Cheeverton felt in his gut he probably should read.
    “Are you sure?” she said.
    “Yes,” said Cheeverton, without finishing the article. He quickly closed the tabloid, and tossed it out of reach onto the kitchen counter. “How are you feeling this morning?”
    “Better,” she said. “I was so hungry. May I have coffee?”
    He brought her coffee. And now she began talking eagerly, in a torrent. But still none of it was about her. It was all questions—first about Cheeverton, and then about the village nearby, and then about pretty much everything else in the world, seemingly at random. He had never known anyone who asked so many questions, and he had never answered so many in his life. She might as well have been a mermaid, for all she seemed to know of the world.
    And suddenly Cheeverton understood, so clearly—from the things that she asked and the things that she could not respond to when he asked questions back—that she simply did not know who she was.
    Within a few days she seemed to be completely recovered physically, and quite aware mentally—very bright in fact—even if she didn’t know her own identity.
    It had