A Study in Sherlock Stories inspired by the Holmes canon [Paperback]

USLaurie R. Kingis theNew York Timesbestselling author of fifteen Mary Russell mysteries, five contemporary novels featuring Kate Martinelli, the Stuyvesant & Grey novelsTouchstoneandThe Bones of Paris, and the acclaimedA Darker Place, Folly, Califia’s Daughters(written under the pen name Leigh Richards), andKeeping Watch. She lives in Northern California.YOU'D BETTER GO IN DISGUISE

Alan Bradley

How long had he been watching me? I wondered.

I had been standing for perhaps a quarter of an hour, gazing idly at the little boys in sailor suits and their sisters in pinafores, all of whom, watched over by a small army of nannies and a handful of mothers, waded like diminutive giants among their toy sailing boats in the Serpentine.

A sudden breeze had sprung up, scattering the fallen leaves and bringing the slightest of chills to an otherwise idyllic autumn afternoon. I shivered and turned up my collar, the hairs at the back of my neck bristling against my jacket.

To be precise, the pressure of my collar put a stop to the bristling which, since I had not noticed it until that moment, made the feeling all that much more peculiar.

Perhaps it was because I had, the previous week, attended Professor Malabar's demonstration at the Palladium. His uncanny experiments in the world of the unseen were sufficient to give pause to even the greatest of sceptics, among whom, most assuredly, I do not count myself.

I must admit at the outset to an unshakeable belief in the theory that there is a force which emanates from the eye of a watcher that is detectable by some as-yet-undiscovered sensor at the back of the neck of the person being watched; a phenomenon which, I am furthermore convinced, is caused by a specialized realm of magnetism whose principles are not yet fully understood by science.

In short, I knew that I was being stared at, a fact which, in itself, is not necessarilylSF