Since John hadn’t been in London since his holiday of debauchery with his college buddies two decades ago, Rachel suggested they do whatever he wanted to do but hadn’t gotten around to back in the drunken day.

They did a mini-Beatles self-tour with the obligatory stop at the Abbey Road crosswalk where some teens took their picture. John convinced a couple of them to help form a quartet with Rachel taking the Lennon lead and Frankel bringing up the Harrison rear. After that, it was off to Savile Row, the London street famous for selling posh men’s suits, specifically building No. 3, the former home of Apple Records where the Fab Four recorded the second half of Let It Be in the basement, then performed a forty-five-minute concert on the roof. John couldn’t get over the fact that that had been their last live performance and it had been broken up by local constables for causing too much noise.

“If I’d been on duty that day, I’d have let them play till the sun went down.”

Later, Rachel accompanied him to Baker Street where he was disappointed to discover there was no actual 221B, the address that reputedly belonged to Sherlock Holmes. There was a hotel and museum at a different address (with the 221B shingle on the door) that was set up to recreate Holmes’s flat where he’d lived and conducted his consulting detective business with Dr. John Watson. Rachel was amused to see John soak in each artifact like the Holy Grail.

“I read all his cases when I was a kid,” he told her. “It’s the main reason I wanted to become a cop.”

“You do know that Sherlock Holmes was a fictitious character and those were stories, not cases.”

He bent and nuzzled her ear.

“Indulge an eight-year-old boy’s fantasy.”

She gave him a mock sexy look. “Right here?”

“That’s the thirteen-year-old boy’s fantasy,” he said, nuzzling her other ear. “Maybe we can investigate that later.”

“Whatever you say, Detective.”

It was a welcome moment of lightness on a day when their moods were anything but.

By the time they returned to the hotel, after eating fish and chips in a pub that John swore he’d been drunk in before and a West End play through which they took turns snoozing, Rachel was increasingly convinced something was wrong.

It wasn’t that she could fault the sex; John had lived up to his Baker Street promise and had delved into, investigated, and brought The Case of the Passionate Lovers to more than a satisfactory conclusion, exactly what one would have expected from a Master Consulting Detective.

But something had changed.

She was looking forward to heading to Switzerland more than ever.

Sunday.