I’d called Kane about a week before to set up a telephone interview with Maggie Barton of the Erin Observer & News-Ledger, our local outpost of the Grier Media Corp. empire. It had worked out great from my point of view. The resulting story about the symposium was picked up by the Associated Press and used by a lot of other papers. The “Red Maddox meets Sherlock Holmes” angle had gone over big.

“Frankly, I don’t understand why you agreed to talk to these Sherlock Holmes fanatics,” I told Kane in a low voice as I grabbed an hors d’oeuvre off the dining room table. “The science of deduction doesn’t exactly figure in the adventures of Red Maddox.”

He shrugged. “Mac asked me to do it.”

Sebastian McCabe, the Lorenzo Smythe Professor of English Literature and head of the popular culture program at St. Benignus College, has more friends than I have rejections from publishers. Apparently their ranks include just about the entire membership of the Mystery Writers of America as well as something like 4,374 people on Facebook. You probably know that Mac himself is the author of the popular Damon Devlin mystery series, Devlin being a magician who solves murders on the side. When I tell you that my brother-in-law was once a professional conjuror before he settled down to get a college degree as a non-traditional student, you don’t need to be Sigmund Freud to see this as wish fulfillment. I don’t think much of these tales, and I don’t believe for a minute that Devlin or any other amateur could out-sleuth my Max Cutter in real life. But they sell.

“I’ve read all your books, including The Baker Street Caper,” I said to Kane, “and these Sherlockians are going to eat you alive for that one.”

Kane took a drink of what appeared to be bourbon, then set down his glass on the dining room table. “That story satirizes the Baker Street Irregular types, not Holmes himself. I respect Holmes as the protagonist of the modern-day private eye of fiction. What I don’t like is the game some people play, pretending that Holmes is real and Conan Doyle was nothing more than a literary agent.”

“But of course Holmes is real!”

That didn’t come from me, you may be sure. The fellow with the Basil Rathbone nose, the one I’d seen in the living room, had butted into the conversation. He introduced himself as Dr. Noah Queensbury, Official Secretary of the Anglo-Indian Club. That’s the Holmes group in Cincinnati, about forty miles downriver from Erin, to which Mac and many of the other colloquium participants belonged. Apparently the group took its name from a club mentioned in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

“Perhaps you missed my monograph on ‘Ten Proofs for the Existence of Sherlock Holmes,’” Queensbury said.

Kane gave me a “What the hell?” look.

“Proof number one.” Queensbury held up a finger. “There used to be a Metropolitan Line train on the London underground called The Sherlock Holmes. The British do not name trains after fictional characters.”

I abandoned my unfinished Diet Coke and opened the Samuel Adams Light. This was not to be endured without fortification. My sister, still hovering over the cheese ball, gave me a weak smile as I swallowed the brew.

“Proof number two,” Queensbury droned on. “In 1988, I wrote a letter to Mr. Holmes at 221B Baker Street, London. It was answered by a secretary. Fictional characters do not have secretaries. Proof number three-”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Sherlock Holmes has to be a fictional character. It says so on Wikipedia.” I just assumed that, having never looked it up.

Queensbury snorted. “That almost proves my case. Everyone knows Wikipedia is unreliable.”

“You’re impossible,” Kane growled.

“Proof number three-” Queensbury persisted, unruffled.

I’d intended to press Kane on the state of detective fiction for an article in the alumni magazine, but that obviously would have to wait. I had to get out of there before I started screaming. I edged past Queensbury, who didn’t seem to notice, and into the now-crowded hallway.

For a minute I felt trapped there amid the dozen or so lunatics gibbering about Sherlock Holmes. Then I spotted Mac on the other side of the hall, sitting by the unlit fire in his thirty-foot living room.

“Ah, Jefferson,” he said as I approached. “Driven you to drink, have we?”

He thought he was joking. I know that because he laughed, his bearded chins wobbling above a polka-dot bow tie. With his whale-like body settled in a wingback chair, he looked innocent enough. There was no indication, for example, of his predilection for marching down the college quadrangle clad in a kilt and playing the bagpipes on the first day of every spring semester. There was nothing to tell you that he enjoyed writing a blog critiquing the faulty grammar in official communications around campus, delighting the undergrads and putting half the faculty and administration in an uproar. And there wasn’t the slightest hint that he fancied himself a Great Detective lacking only a case. He’s my best friend, and the biggest thorn in my side. When we’d first met as college students at St. Benignus he was already something of an enfant terrible. Now, pushing forty (three years older than me), he’s no longer an enfant, but still terrible.

“Come and meet Woollcott,” he said, waving me into a nearby couch.

Woollcott Chalmers, sitting at the end of the couch closest to Mac, looked to be in his mid- to late-seventies, if the whiteness of his hair and thin mustache weren’t deceiving. His eyes, enlarged by lenses in his black-framed glasses, were blue and penetrating. He was impeccably dressed in a black suit and red foulard tie. He held a cane loosely between his legs. I knew from Mac that he’d inherited a few million dollars, increased it about ten-fold during a career of investing money for himself and others, and had never been shy about spending goodly quantities of it on pet arts projects or his collection of Sherlockiana. Said collection was the third largest still in private hands, and he was donating it all to St. Benignus - a big coup for a college our size. Some local corporations were putting up the money to maintain it.

Chalmers rose and shook my hand, exuding the sort of charm you’d expect from a guy who looked like a retired British admiral. His skin was as soft as a baby’s. He had a pleasant smile, showing teeth that were too perfect to be real.

“Delighted to meet you at last, young man,” he said. “I’ve heard much about you from your admiring sister. I should very much like you to meet my wife.” He leaned forward on the cane, looking toward a small knot of people at the other end of the living room, and raised his voice. “Renata?”

One of the women disengaged herself, flashed a brilliant smile at the group she was leaving, and joined our corner of the universe. Chalmers unnecessarily pronounced my name and his wife’s.

“We’ve sort of already met,” Renata Chalmers explained to her husband as she shook my hand.

“I’m afraid I drank most of that light beer you asked for,” I said.

“No worries.”

What the hell, then. I gulped down the rest of it.

Chapter Three - Night Work

Renata Chalmers had to be a good four decades younger than her husband and prettier than your average beauty queen. A cynic might look at the estimated girth of the old man’s investment portfolio and draw conclusions, but whoever accused me of being a cynic?

“Jefferson is a cynic,” my brother-in-law declared by way of further introduction. He stuck a long, green cigar in his mouth. In years gone by he would have fired it up with a lighter shaped like a hand grenade. Nowadays he mostly uses the cigar as a prop, yielding to Kate’s no-smoking zone inside the house and sometimes to my protests about second-hand smoke outside of it.