Jewel of the Thames (A Portia Adams Adventure) by Angela Misri Read Free Book Online

her eyes before speaking again.
    “You do not have any predilections towards medicine, do you, Portia?” Mrs. Jones asked.
    I shook my head at the sudden change of subject. “No, I have not. As I told you on the ship, ever since I was a little girl I had thought of law as a career that interested me, though I had no means with which to pursue my studies in that.”
    “Somerville College offers studies in law,” she mused. “And I suppose those are the two compulsions in your blood — medicine and an overwhelming moral drive towards justice.”
    She snorted at the end of this sentence, and then, catching my eye, added, “Oh, not that I am laughing at the dead, my dear, but your grandparents were just so earnest about right and wrong. You really must correct that in yourself if it turns out to be an inherited trait. Most unappealing.”
    I laughed aloud, and after a moment, she joined me.
     
     

     
     
     
    Chapter Four
     
    I spent the next three weeks learning all I could about my famous grandfather, filling my lonely hours with this new family member. I knew of course that this was a very emotional reaction to the loss of my mother and the hurt at her keeping this secret from me. Over and over I asked myself why she had felt the need to keep her father’s name hidden from me. I knew how much it had frustrated her that her own mother was so secretive about it, so it would seem logical that she would want to spare her own child that frustration. Were other truths being kept from me? Other family secrets that I deserved to know? I was alone in the world, with no real purpose, and no one to come home to. Keeping myself busy learning about my newly discovered relations meant less time spent sadly staring out the window missing my old life. I would fill my empty heart with as much data as I could about Dr. John Watson.
    To do so, I read every one of his handwritten journals cover-to-cover, one right after another in chronological order. I paused only long enough to walk the streets and get to know my new city (maps were a favorite subject of mine, and I pinned several to the walls of my new apartment with small brass thumbtacks).
    The map next to my front door was one of the subways and inner streets of the downtown core and was posted on a corkboard I had brought with me from Toronto. It allowed me to stick pins in the places I had been and mark the places I wanted to investigate next.
    Upon reading the journal that included the casebook entitled “The Adventure of the Illustrious Client”, I set out to see the west-end restaurant where Holmes had been attacked: the Café Royal. The French restaurant was everything I imagined it would be from Watson’s description, situated on Regent Street and flanked by private members’ clubs and other fine restaurants. I stood on the sidewalk looking in, imagining the scene described in the journal, rubbing my hands together in the March cold.
    The map of southern England was more for reference than actual travel, and that I pinned to the wall behind my bed for the same reason my mother had hoarded all those travel brochures — as a little expression of ambition toward travel. Now that I was here, I might as well explore my new home country.
    To read the journals, though, was as much an education on Dr. Watson as it was on Sherlock Holmes. The depth of trust and friendship between these two men was obvious and warmed my heart even as the hearth we had all shared in different centuries warmed my body.
    I digested case after case voraciously and searched for corroborating material in the textbooks and written notes on the shelves. The number of mysteries these two had solved in their seventeen years together was amazing: everything from murders to grand theft, and working for royalty and chimney sweeps alike.
    It was no longer a consideration to sell the townhouse at Baker Street. Quite on the contrary, this discovery had given me new purpose — learning about my famous family