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pretty much finished in here. Lots of prints, a drinking glass and an ashtray, nothing else obvious. You want me to collect all the stuff in the desk?”
    “Let’s go over it first, see if there’s anything there.” Anything like a threatening letter or evidence of a crime, but she didn’t think Philip Gilbert had been a white-collar crime lord. “Mostly I’d just like Tamsin to record the safe when we get it open, then as far as I’m concerned, you guys can go.”
    Kate went back downstairs and said to the lawyer, “We can go up now.” She held out her arm to indicate that he could lead the way, and he did.
    “You seem to know the house fairly well, Mr. Rutland,” Williams commented as they trooped upstairs.
    “Sure. I’ve been here a lot, for business and the occasional dinner.”
    “This is with the dinner group you mentioned, or just as Mr. Gilbert’s guest?”
    “Usually with them. Once or twice we ate here after I’d brought him some papers to sign—nothing formal then.”
    “Your dinner group meets regularly?” Kate asked.
    “Once a month. We call ourselves the Strand Diners. We’re, well, devotees of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Not a BSI scion, although some of us belong to one or another; we’re just an informal group.”
    “BSI?” Williams asked.
    “Oh, sorry. Baker Street Irregulars. That’s the biggest worldwide organization of Sherlockians, or Holmesians as they call themselves in England.”
    “Mr. Gilbert seems to have been a real fan.”
    “The place is really something, isn’t it? Sherlockians don’t usually go quite so far, but it was Philip’s livelihood as well as his passion, so it made sense, in a way.”
    “How do you mean, livelihood?”
    “Philip was one of the world’s leading experts on Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle. He had universities drooling to get their hands on some of the things in his collection, and private collectors would kill—” He stopped suddenly on the stairs, looking back over his shoulder. “I don’t mean that literally, of course not. But some of the things Philip has—had, were without parallel.”
    “So who inherits?”
    Instead of answering, the lawyer continued up the last flight of stairs and headed for the study. He glanced curiously at the closed door of the bedroom as he went past, where Lo-Tec and Maria were checking out the walls and furniture, then went ahead into the study, pulling the desk chair over to the low lion’s claw table and leaving the chair and sofa to Kate and Williams. He laid his leather case on the table and took out two stapled sheaves of paper, handing one to each of them.
    “This is Philip’s will. Normally I’d need to wait until you had notified his family, but really, as you’ll see there’s little point in delaying. Basically, Philip wanted his collection to remain intact and attached to his name. You’ll find that I am executor of his estate, and that I am to offer the house and its contents to a number of institutions for bidding. Not to sell outright, but to go to the institution that offers the best support to the collection, in archiving, preserving, and making it available to the public. That last will be the biggest problem, because this house is in a residential area, and the neighbors aren’t going to permit a lot of traffic going in and out. Philip had enough headaches just holding the occasional meeting here.”
    “So his relatives get nothing?” Williams asked, flicking the pages but clearly not intending to settle in and read the entire document there and then.
    “Small bequests, but they were not close, and his two nieces are neither interested in the collection nor are they exactly poor. Their mother, Philip’s sister, married into oil.”
    “What about the ex-wife?”
    “They were married for barely two years, more than twenty years ago. I shouldn’t think she has expectations of much.”
    “When did you last see Mr. Gilbert?”
    “On the fourteenth, a Wednesday.