Moriarty Returns a Letter by Michael Robertson Page B

afternoon, he was greatly relieved to discover that she had returned home.
    The same thing happened the next day. And the next day as well—but this time, when he returned from his boat, she was not already there at their home. He had to wait. And the next night, he had to wait even longer.
    He would ask her where she had been, and she would tell him, but without much editorial comment at all:
    She had been to the British Museum. She had taken the bus all the way out to the National Archives. She had taken the tube to Baker Street and gone for a walk.
    Did she see anything she liked at the British Museum? He had never been there himself, except once in a group trip in primary school.
    She shrugged.
    Why did she go to the National Archives? Not much to see there, really, was there? He had never been there, either, but it sounded like just a lot of dusty old paper.
    She shrugged. She said it was a very large place and she wanted to go back there again.
    What did she see on Baker Street?
    She looked down at her fried flounder, put a bit of it on her fork and then in her mouth, smiled slightly—and shrugged.
    She hadn’t quite said so, but he was almost certain now—she was remembering who she was.
    What all the consequences of that would be he didn’t know. But he knew what one of them would be—she would leave or she would be found out, but either way, he knew she would soon be gone.
    He began to wonder how he would endure such a loss again.

 
    6
    A FEW DAYS LATER, IN BAKER STREET
    “I’m tired of places with bright sun and warm turquoise water and fine white sand that pleasantly tickles one’s toes without sticking to them,” said Laura Rankin. She was sitting on the mahogany desk in Reggie Heath’s law chambers office, she had her shoes off, her red hair on the verge of being undone, and she wiggled those freckled toes as she said it. “I’m ready to go someplace dour.”
    “Your aunt’s manor house in Newquay certainly qualifies on that account,” said Reggie. He supposed he could understand why Laura was bored with white sandy beaches; she had been on a location shoot in the South Seas for several months during the past year. But he had not.
    “It’s not a manor house; it’s a genuine castle,” said Laura. “I mean, not the type intended for repelling military invaders and such, but imposing enough to intimidate poor peasants who dared to hunt deer in the woods. Though my aunt Mabel says she’s pretty sure the original Earl of Darby never once tried to stop them. Just in case he ever did, she volunteers her time now for lots of good causes. But anyway, it is a castle, and if you don’t believe me now, you will when you realize there’s still no indoor plumbing on the top floor. And the estate has its own trout streams. You can fly fish.”
    “I don’t know how to fly fish,” said Reggie, “and I don’t plan on spending our engagement trip with trout.”
    “Well, I suppose that’s not what I have in mind for you, either,” said Laura. “But my aunt is my last living relative, and there is this family tradition to uphold. We have a coat of arms bolted in above the main fireplace, with a Latin or Gaelic motto, I forget which, inscribed at the bottom, that says: ‘Everybody has to get engaged in the castle and get drunk after.’ I mean, words to that effect, anyway. It’s all very imposing, almost as much so as my aunt, and I really can’t fly in the face of either one. Don’t pretend you didn’t know this about me.”
    Reggie did know that about her. But as much as he would have preferred tickling her toes on the white sands of the beach she had just described, his expressed annoyance at the prospect of traveling instead through dark and foggy moors in the dead of winter was almost completely feigned, and mostly just for her entertainment.
    The fact was, after coming so close to losing Laura in so many ways in the past two years, he was now so relieved to have it all settled—he was now