Free No Police Like Holmes by Dan Andriacco Page B

almost knocked her camera off the table.
    â€œSorry to intrude,” I lied.
    â€œThen why did you?” Lynda said. I noticed she was chewing gum, apparently a new vice acquired in the past month.
    â€œBecause I wanted to meet Mr. Matheson. Won’t you introduce us?”
    In a rather graceless fashion (“Jeff does PR for the local college”), she complied.
    â€œWhat’s your theory about the Great Sherlock Holmes Theft?” I asked.
    Matheson raised his tailored eyebrows. “Do I have to have a theory?”
    â€œMaybe not,” I said, “but everybody else seems to.” Actually, I hadn’t talked to everybody else, but that’s what came out of my mouth.
    â€œAs a matter of fact, Lynda and I were just talking about that.” I bet you were, pal. “The obvious guess is that some collector did it or, more likely, paid to have it done. You hear about things like that with art masterpieces. Maybe what was stolen isn’t worth as much as a minor Dali, but it would be priceless to a Sherlockian collector. Woollcott managed to assemble about a hundred pages of The Hound of the Baskervilles in Conan Doyle’s own hand - more than anyone else has ever owned since the manuscript was broken up. The other Hound that was stolen, the first edition, was inscribed by Conan Doyle to his friend Fletcher Robinson, who inspired the story. And the Beeton’s Christmas Annual of 1887 , with the first Sherlock Holmes story, is one of only about a dozen known to exist. That alone would make it worth thousands, but this one was the presentation copy inscribed to the author’s mother. That sends its value off the charts.”
    â€œYou sound like you know those books almost as well as Chalmers does,” I said.
    â€œThat’s because Woollcott outbid me on the Beeton’s nine years ago, screwed me out of the Fletcher Robinson Hound , and beat me to the punch more times than I have fingers and toes while he was scooping up all those manuscript pages.”
    â€œThat nice old man?” Lynda said.
    Matheson snorted. “He’s done me the dirty more than a few times over the years, and every time that nice old man went further than I ever thought a person would go just to beat me out.”
    He rattled off a few examples - Chalmers bribing a taxi driver to get Matheson lost on the way to an important auction, Chalmers arriving at the home of a famous but impoverished Sherlockian just a few hours after his death to make the grieving widow a seemingly generous offer for his entire collection, Chalmers canceling Matheson’s wake-up call at his hotel in Sussex, England, on the morning of an estate sale featuring some Conan Doyle letters.
    It was a fascinating insight into the questionable methods of my college’s benefactor, if true, but that wasn’t getting the stolen goods back.
    â€œDo you know a man named Graham Bentley Post?” I asked Matheson.
    â€œI’ve certainly heard of him,” Matheson said. He explained to Lynda about the Library of Popular Culture. “Post has a reputation for being a tiger once he goes after something.”
    â€œHe’s after the Chalmers Collection,” I said.
    â€œReally? But that would be for public exhibit. Stolen books wouldn’t do him any good. You want to look for a private collector.”
    â€œMakes sense,” I conceded, looking at the collector. “Who do you know who would be that devious and determined?”
    â€œOnly one person,” Matheson said. “Woollcott Chalmers.”
    â€œIsn’t there anybody else you can think of?” Lynda said. “Maybe somebody who resented Chalmers’s hardball tactics?”
    â€œIf you put it that say,” Matheson said with a smile, “I suppose I’d make a pretty good suspect myself.”
    I couldn’t argue with that.

Chapter Twelve - Talking in the Library
    The rare book room of the Lee J. Bennish