Regis McCafferty

The Sherlock Holmes Adventure

iUniverse Inc., 2004.

"You say someone is missing?"
"Me Mum. One minute she was there, the next, gone. Quick as a fart, it was."
"And where was it she disappeared from?"
"Regent's Park. Just an hour ago."...
"You were with her in the park?"
"I were. We were sittin' on a bench talkin' over how bad business has been, when she said she wanted a cuppa from one of those Ducketts wot sells from carts..."
"What part of the Park were you in?"
"Near the lake loop, past Hanover Gate"

'Inquiry agent' Joshua Pitt is interrogating Molly Brick about the disappearance of the 'dollymop wot dint work for no Cash Carrier, did she?' A fee of 'five thickers' agreed on, the couple 'walked towards Regents' to investigate. (Despite the author's heroic attempts to evoke Victorian London, an occasional turn of phrase betrays a transatlantic origin.) Pitt has in the past 'provided assistance to Sherlock Holmes,' and is asked to do so again in the title story:

He'd walked perhaps a quarter mile and was close by the footbridge that crossed one of the fingers of the lake when he decided to sit on a convenient bench and light a pipe. There was a small island just a few feet offshore at this point and the footbridge arched just enough to permit the passage of punts that rowers hired from a concessionaire at the far end of the lake. He was just putting a second match to his pipe when he heard angry voices, one male and one female

The ever-reliable London fog enables Pitt to remain concealed from the 'two dark shapes coming over the bridge,' and overhear their conversation. The mystery surrounding the murder of Artimus Weatherill is eventually cleared up.