The Epistles of Inquiry

Reggie Heath is a QC in modern-day London, and he’s just gotten a lease on some office space in Baker Street. The terms, at least from a financial point of view, couldn’t be better. But there is one small hitch. The address which Reggie has leased is 221B Baker Street, and it seems that hundreds of letters arrive addressed to Mr. Sherlock Holmes! Part of the lease involves an agreement in which the occupant of the office agrees to answer the letters with a standard form letter.

Reggie delegates this task to younger brother Nigel, who is waiting to be reinstated as a solicitor; he is about to have a hearing with the Law Society after he performed some well-meaning actions that were misinterpreted. (I’ll leave it to the author to explain; it’s really too delightful to detail here.) And Nigel notices something odd about a few of the latest letters. It seems that one of the letter-writers has written to Sherlock Holmes before, 20 years ago, when she was eight years old! And she is writing once again asking about her previous letter. But something about the tone of the new letters seems suspicious – such as the fact that the signature is identical to the one from 20 years ago… yet what adult retains their childhood signature? Factor in a murder and a disappearance or two, followed by a few more corpses just to keep things interesting, and it seems like the letter was a sinister one indeed...