Sunday morning, the last day of August, I woke from my cushions beneath the window to the sensation of being watched. Closely watched. By a child bent so low over my face, I could feel her breath on my right cheek. Which was about the only part of me that didn’t ache.
“Good morning, Estelle,” I said without opening my eyes. “Did you want something?”
“I’m hungry,” she said. “And Mr Javitz is snoring.”
The American did have a prodigious snore, which I had been given cause to admire all the night long. I gingerly pushed away the muchabused fur coat that had been my bed-clothes on the window-seat; with motion, all the previous day’s contusions made themselves felt, from wrenched ankle to bruised scalp. The previous evening, mine host had examined the glass cuts along my back, putting three quick stitches in one of them. I did not want to rise up; I did not want to cater to this child. If I moved, yesterday’s headache might return.
“Where is the Green-Mr Goodman?” I asked her.
“Mr Robert went out. And he left me these,” she said, holding her two fists half an inch from my nose. I pushed them back until a pair of carved deer came into focus, a doe and a buck with small antlers.
“Very nice,” I said. “But you shouldn’t call a grown man by his given name. Call him Mr Goodman.”
“But he told me to call him-”
“I know. But let’s be polite and call him Mr Goodman.”
“Should I be polite and call you Missus Russell?” she said, sounding sulky.
“I-oh, never mind, Mr Robert is fine.”
I had to agree, the usual formality did not fall naturally from the tongue when it came to Robert Goodman. She repeated her demand to be fed.
It occurred to me that perhaps I should be concerned by Goodman’s absence, but really, if the man wished to turn us over to the police, he could have done so the day before and spent the night in his own bed. I did not know where he had slept, but a glance at the table showed that he’d been in, leaving a basket of eggs. Odd, that I had not heard him stir about.
Estelle withdrew her hovering self far enough for me to struggle more or less upright. My skull gave a warning throb, but eventually I was standing. I tottered to the bedroom, propping a shoulder against the frame as I studied my pilot. He appeared to be sleeping as comfortably as could be expected, so I closed the door and went to search out the means by which to feed a small child.
I managed toast, although her efforts with the toasting fork were more successful than mine. I then had to scale a foot-stool to reach the pot of honey I could see but not stretch my arm for, then ascended the stool a second time when Estelle informed me that she and her two deer preferred the strawberry preserves. I was interested to see that much of the contents of the hermit’s cupboards were not willow baskets heaped with gathered nuts, dried berries and wild honeycomb, but ordinary store-bought jars and packets.
There was even a tin of aspirin tablets from the chemist, for which I was grateful.
By the time Goodman returned, three hours later, my headache had retreated and I was able to stand with something of my usual ease, walking over to help him unload his rucksack.
He had brought a large bundle of sausages wrapped not in butcher’s paper, but in the week-old news. I looked at it askance, but he mistook my doubt.
“A child needs meat, and your pilot, if he is to heal,” he said. “A neighbour killed a pig two days back. I knew he’d have extras.”
He was right: We had to eat, and last night’s bean soup would only go so far in building the injured American’s strength. Still: “You and I need to have a talk,” I told him.
“Very well,” he replied, taking a large black skillet from beneath the work-table.
I glanced at Estelle, underfoot as usual. “Later.”
“She wants to talk to you without me hearing,” the child explained to him.
Goodman let a rope of sausages spill into the pan, and asked her, “Is that rude, do you think?”
She thought for a moment. “Not very.”
He gave me a green twinkle. “You and I shall go for a walk after we eat,” he said.
We propped Javitz before the fire with Estelle, and I followed Goodman outside. He went to the shed that stood at a little distance, coming out with a hatchet stuck through his belt. He set off briskly across the meadow, to slip into one of the larger pathways that led to the outer world-this one distinct enough that a deer might be able to follow it. I followed. Twenty minutes later, his hand came out to stop me.
“Do you see?” he asked.
I looked at the trail ahead, circling past a rocky outcrop. “See-oh. The branch?”
One branch of a low-growing tree was tied back against the next tree with a piece of strong twine. Careful not to touch, I stepped around Goodman, searching the ground until I saw the fine, dirt-coloured twine: a trip-wire.
It was a booby-trap, not deadly but powerful enough to swat a person backwards down the path, breaking a nose or arm in the process. I looked up from where I was squatting to ask, “Do you have many of these?”
“It is a private estate. This helps keep away visitors.”
“So I should imagine.”
Satisfied that his warning had got through to me, he walked on.
After a time, Goodman slowed, and began to peer at the undergrowth. I decided this was as good a time as any to have our conversation, so I started by expressing my immense gratitude that he had not only saved our lives, but given us shelter as well. He grunted, then pulled out the little axe and laid it to the base of a young sapling, twelve feet tall with an odd bifurcation halfway up, as if something had bitten off its growing tip and driven it to generate twin alternatives.
I raised my voice. “I ought to take my companions away as soon as I can.”
“His leg should rest.”
“Well, at least let me move the others into the main room with me, so you can sleep at night.”
“The shed is comfortable,” he said.
I studied what I could see of his face, wondering at the thoughts underneath all that hair. The precipitate arrival of three demanding strangers into his quiet retreat seemed to trouble him not in the least-apart from a few mild comments, he had been remarkably incurious about our situation, our history, or our plans. One might almost imagine that the dreamy, fairy-tale quality of his surroundings had permeated his mental processes, as well, leaving him incapable of questioning even the most unlikely events.
That approach did not much help me, however. Even if we were welcome to stay here until Javitz could walk, my own mind was by no means dreamy, and worries pressed in on me: What was Brothers up to? Where were Holmes and Damian? What about Mycroft in London? Where could I find safe hiding for Javitz and Estelle near here?
Wherever here was.
“Where are we, exactly?” I asked.
The sapling fell. Goodman chopped off the twin tops, then exchanged the hand-axe for the thick knife he wore, stripping away the branches as he answered.
Exactly, it would seem, was not a term that applied to this location, although it was well short of the Forest of Arden setting I had begun to suspect. We were, as I’d thought, in the Lake District, approximately midway between two villages I’d never heard of. But if one drew a line between Grasmere (the bustling centre of the Wordsworth industry) and Ravenglass (on the Irish Sea), we should be halfway along that. Or perhaps a bit closer to the east. And south, he thought.
“Where do you shop?” I asked him. “When you’re not buying sausages from a neighbour?”
He named a village, adding, “I give the shopkeeper a list of requirements, then pick them up when next I go. I gave him one this morning.”
“What, on a Sunday?”
“He was at home, of course, preparing for church. I told him I’d be back tomorrow.”
I looked at him uneasily. “I wish you’d consulted with me first. It’s not a good idea to have it be known that you are sheltering three strangers. Someone’s sure to have found the wreck by now, even out here.”
He finished reducing the branches to stubs, slid the knife into its scabbard, and sighed. “Very well. Tell me your story.”
“It started when Estelle’s father came to our door in Sussex,” I began. We walked, he listened, with little response apart from a noise of pain when I told him that Estelle’s mother was dead.
“She doesn’t know,” I said.
He gave me a look over his shoulder.
“I haven’t had a great deal of free time in the past thirty-six hours,” I protested. “In any event, I can’t decide if I should tell her, or wait for her father to do so. I rather think it should be him.”
“Yes,” he said. I waited for any further response, but there was none, so I went on. I told him our problem, or enough of it to make him understand the danger: serious enemies with unknown but potentially considerable resources; scattered companions whose situation was unknown; a mad religious fanatic and his acolytes; the remaining threat against us. “We thought Brothers was dead, but by the time I got back to the hotel, it was pretty clear that he had escaped,” I told Goodman. “And, he somehow managed to alert a subordinate in Thurso that we were coming.”
“And that subordinate took a shot at your aeroplane.”
“I do not know who else it might have been.”
“It could not have been an accident?”
“I’d like to think so, but it beggars the imagination to picture a stray bullet cleanly puncturing the centre of an aeroplane two hundred feet overhead. Nor can I accept that the northern reaches of Scotland is so rife with madmen that we could find a religious fanatic and a man who takes pot-shots at passing targets within twenty miles of each other.”
He nodded, conceding my point.
“I have to assume that Brothers is somehow related to the sharpshooter. And if he has two assistants-one on Orkney, one in Thurso-he could have more.”
“Which requires that you keep your heads down for a time.”
“Until I meet up with my companions and we pool information, I cannot know who, or why. Or, I will admit, even if.”
Goodman walked, head-down with the stick across his shoulders, leading me in a wide circle through the untouched woodland as I told my tale-although since I was forced to leave out many of the details so as not to enmesh him in danger, I found it was a story I would mistrust myself, were I to hear it.
At the end, I described the rapid disintegration of the aeroplane mid-flight, and said, “Captain Javitz brought it down in the clearest patch he could see, although it proved not quite clear enough. And you know the rest.”
Back now where we had started, Goodman sat down on a fallen tree, studying the rambling structure on the far side of the clearing: tree in front, shed behind, a glimpse of orchard at the back. After a minute, I sat beside him. Even with a clear head, the meadow resembled the dwelling-place of some mythic creature. Could there possibly be a deed somewhere with Robert Goodman’s name on it? I thought it more likely that the aeroplane had delivered us to another world, one in which official land deeds and telegraph lines did not exist.
“The whole story sounds terribly alarmist and melodramatic, I know. But short of giving you all the details, and the names”-which would absolutely guarantee that you did not believe me, I mentally added-“it’s the bald truth.”
“Good. So you won’t be leaving momentarily?”
“Not if you don’t mind having us, for two or three more days.” If nothing else, I owed it to Javitz to let his leg heal before moving him.
“Good,” he repeated, adding, “‘Dull would he be of a soul who could pass by/A sight so touching in its majesty.’” I stared, then followed the line of his gaze: A hundred feet away stood a magnificent stag, its antlers each showing six or seven points. The creature’s liquid eyes studied us with as much interest as we studied him. Majesty was the word.
Which was, again, that of Wordsworth. “‘Westminster Bridge’?” I asked.
He looked at me as if I were mad. “No, red deer.”
And so saying, the little blond man set out across his meadow, causing the stag to leap away and me to grin at my companion’s retreating back. The stripped sapling rested across his shoulder like a rifle barrel. Or the first support for a child’s swing.
I thought it safe to leave the two men with the child for a bit longer-indeed, Estelle seemed happier with either of them than she did with me-and the walk had begun to loosen my sore muscles, so I skirted the edge of the meadow and followed what looked like an overgrown horse-track to the west. In twenty minutes, I came to the house that explained the estate.
A square, unfussy Georgian box of a house in the middle of an abandoned garden, weeds growing through the gravel of its drive. The boards across all the ground-floor windows and some of the upper storeys suggested that it was vacant. I circled it, seeing no sign of life.
A broken gutter-pipe had been recently repaired, although not painted-and I thought this might explain Goodman’s presence. A country estate whose family did not wish it to deteriorate entirely would want it cared for; permitting this odd sort of man with a love for simple things to make a home nearby was a sensible precaution.
Although he was an unusual sort of caretaker, I reflected as I turned back towards the meadow. His accent and education spoke of the officer class, but his skills confirmed his claims of ambulance service. One might assume that some physical shortcoming had disqualified him from active service, but he showed no signs of infirmity now.
One of the small objects on Goodman’s wall of decoration was a bronze Croix de Guerre. It could have belonged to anyone, of course-he had not personally worn any of the twenty-three horse-shoes on the wall either-but I suspected it was his, even though governments did not often give medals to lowly ambulance drivers.
In any case, a man living in the deep woods six years after Armistice had probably not had an easy War. But then, I had known that since the moment I saw those old eyes in the young face.
Back on the dead tree, I sat massaging my neck, stiff from yesterday’s violence and the source of my persistent headache. It was just as well he hadn’t agreed that we should leave, I thought: I’d have collapsed before we reached the crash site.
Goodman came down the front steps and went over to the enormous tree, retrieving a garden fork that he had left leaning against its trunk. He absently patted the trunk, a gesture remarkably similar to my mother’s touch on the mezuzah at our door, then headed towards his little walled vegetable garden beside the shed.
My eyes went back to the tree. I had seen no sign of fairies. Perhaps it was instead Yggdrasil, the World Tree where the gods hold court. Although that was an ash, and this an oak. And the dark preoccupation with Norse mythology belonged to Reverend Thomas Brothers, not Robert Goodman.
The name opened a door in my mind and out flowed all the anxiety and speculation that I had kept dammed up when talking to our rescuer. If Brothers was not dead, where had he gone, and who was helping him? Should I have directed a telegram to Chief Inspector Lestrade, to inform him that Holmes’ suspect was at large in the wilds of Scotland? Or would that simply further endanger the child?
Thoughts chased around my head, making my skull ache again, and I was glad when Goodman reappeared around the side of his motley construction with a full bushel basket. I climbed from my perch and went to the house, where I found Estelle setting out another dollies’ tea-party, this time with Javitz, the two deer Goodman had given her, and a two-inch-tall rabbit, crude but rich in personality. She had given the American the porcelain cup of honour, making do herself with an acorn, and was chattering happily about a doll she had at home. I could only wonder at the indomitability of the very young.
I settled to the tangle of dried beans in want of shelling, and she instantly trotted over with two acorn cups, giving me one. I thanked her, and she presented the other to Goodman, watching in anticipation for his reaction. Javitz shot me a father’s amused grin, while I wondered how one was to play the game, but Goodman did not hesitate. He raised his cup to his lips, took a noisy sip, and swallowed, the very picture of satisfaction. The verisimilitude of his act made me glance involuntarily at my own tiny woodland cup and to wonder, for an instant, if his might not contain actual tea.
a ÷ (b+c+d) + e − (½ c)
Mycroft decided on Monday that the election of the Labour government might have a larger role in his current predicament than he had originally allowed; however, because it was not entirely to blame, he only deducted half of it.
He thought it was Monday, although it was difficult to be certain. Distressingly difficult. He had the impression that some of his food and drink contained sedatives-not a lot, just enough to make him drowsy. He hoped so. Humiliating to think that mere solitude might affect the control of his mind.
The room provided only two sources of external stimulation: the window overhead, and the gaolers.
In the roof a dozen feet over his standing head was a sky-light, four feet square, of translucent glass-or rather, regular glass that had been whitewashed at some time in its history, now darkened by decades of grime and generations of passing birds. He rather wished that the man wielding the brush had been less diligent, and thus provide a prisoner with a tiny glimpse of the sky. Instead, he had a featureless square that became visible at dawn then faded at dusk, propelling a diffuse patch across floor and walls in the hours between. (Logically, this prison might be constructed with an outer roof and fitted with an artificial light that rose and fell, confusing his time sense and rending the regularity of his meals false-but that would be elaborate and to what purpose? The very idea was diabolical and intolerable, and in that direction lay a path to madness.)
Yesterday (was it yesterday?) a faint scratching from above had caused his heart to race, but it had only been pigeons. And every so often, if he lay staring up for long enough, a quick shadow would pass across the whitened glass; once it had been an entire flock of birds, which played across his internal vision for a long time.
As for the gaolers, there were two. The younger one with the City shoes came in the mornings. His athletic stride sent brisk echoes down the corridor outside, hard heels making impact on the worn surface. The older, heavier, slower man who wore scuffed boots and had a slight hitch in his stride was in charge of the afternoons and most late-night visits.
In either case, food and drink were placed in a tiny pass-through that was walled about on the corridor side. Mycroft pictured a sturdy metal-lined box fastened against a hole cut in the wall, its top unlatching to deposit the food and refill the cup. One morning he’d kept the cup to see what would happen, and his gaoler-the younger man-had simply poured the water onto the floor of the pass-through and left.
The younger man, twice at the beginning, had trailed a faint aroma of bay rum after-shave. The older man smelt of gaspers and had the phlegmy cough that went with them. Neither responded to his questions, although the younger man would pause to listen.
The younger man interested Mycroft considerably.
The food and drink (drugged or no) were delivered at regular intervals: seven in the morning, three in the afternoon, and eleven at night-he could hear Ben tolling from the Houses of Parliament. The morning delivery in the sharp shoes was timed as precisely as the quick Soot-steps: within two minutes either way of seven. The older man was more lax, especially last thing at night, when the eleven o’clock “meal” often preceded the three-quarter ring of the bells. But no matter the time or the footsteps, what his gaolers brought was the same: a bread roll, a boiled egg, a cup of water, and an apple. That morning, the apple had been an orange. He had spent nearly an hour fretting over the significance before deciding just to eat the dratted thing.
Breaking open the peel had at least improved the smell, for a while.
His prison was in the top floor of an unused warehouse near the river, whose traffic he could occasionally hear. The shade of the bricks combined with the direction of the clock meant that if he was turned loose, he could point directly to his prison. The débris in the corners and the floor-boards indicated that over the years the space had held a variety of goods: tea leaves and turmeric, a palimpsest of dye-stuffs, the gouges of metal parts. He’d found a fragment of Chinese porcelain, which came in handy, and a William IV farthing coin, which was less so.
The district outside was moribund-he could barely discern the vibrations of daytime activity rising from below-and that alone had made him hesitate to attempt breaking the window: If he did manage to break it, no one would hear his calls, and the cold nights pouring in might finish him off. In any event, the only thing heavy enough to do the job was his toilet bucket, and he preferred not to empty its contents onto the floor.
His mind was wandering, yet again. He pulled his thoughts from useless speculation and re-addressed himself to the schoolboy algebra on the wall.
a ÷ (b+c+d) + e − (½ c)
The first letter drew his eyes, yet again. a for Accountant, as a child’s book might have it. Had Damian ever drawn a book of ABCs for the child? Estelle was her name, e for Estelle-no, e stands for Mycroft Holmes, who calls himself an accountant, the man who oversees the books of the British Empire.
In recent years, his bookkeeping-the financial and political balance sheets of nations-had begun to take on elements of the ethical as well. What in earlier years had been a fairly straightforward enterprise, as black and white as numerals on a page, slowly took on shades of grey, and even colour. He had come to recognise that a government bound up in its own purposes required an outside mediator. Even if the government did not acknowledge its need. Even if Mycroft Holmes was an ironic choice for the arbiter of ethics.
He went back to the formula on the wall, staggering a bit as he got to his feet, and scratched another element:
a ÷ (b+c+d) + e − (½ c) − (f)
Absently sucking the bloody patch on his finger-the scrap of porcelain was adequate against mortar, but viciously sharp-he thought about the f. f was the sum of those times when Mycroft Holmes had acted at deliberate cross-purposes to his government. He had always thought of it as acting directly for the king, by-passing the evanescent Prime Ministers, but in fact, the choices had been his alone. Three times in his career, he had stepped beyond the mere gathering of Intelligence, taking into his hands a decision that others were incapable of making; twice he had used his authority to further his own interests.
The third time he would have done so was cut short, four days ago (he thought) by an armed abductor at the very gate of New Scotland Yard.
Not that Mycroft Holmes had any ethical dilemma with playing God. He could look his conscience in the face; if there were elements in his past of which he was not proud, he was content that he walked the line of justice.
No: What had begun to concern him this past year was the face in the looking-glass-the thinning hair, the sagging jowls, the old man looking back, even though he was barely seventy.
It was all very well and good for Mycroft Holmes to play God, but who was to say that the next man, the man who took his place in the accounting house, would have as untarnished a conscience?
On Monday, my headache had retreated to the back of my head, although sudden motion made me queasy. I told myself that another day of rest would not be the end of the world, and put aside any plans for leaping into action.
After breakfast, Goodman presented Estelle with a second lively wooden rabbit and a fully articulated three-inch-tall bear with leather thongs for joints.
In the middle of the morning, he finished making a crutch for Javitz out of the sapling. He had trimmed the split top to make a rest, added rags, then neatly bound the padding with buckskin. It rode so easily under the big man’s arm, the sapling might have been grown for that express purpose.
After lunch, Goodman returned to the nearby village for the shopping he had requested. He took with him my letter to The Times, enclosing a pound note and the request that they run a message for me until the money was used up. The message was designed to attract the eye of an amateur beekeeper like Holmes:
BEEKEEPING is enjoyed by thousands, a reliable and safe hobby, practiced on week-ends alone from Oxford Street to Regent’s Park.
A telegram was a more complicated proposition. I had not yet decided if the risk of a telegram to Lestrade was worth the slim chance that he would actually issue a warrant for Brothers. Or if one to Mycroft would be the same as one directed to Scotland Yard.
Goodman returned bearing an enormous parcel, which he set with a resounding thump onto the kitchen table. Estelle hopped up and down as our resident St Nicholas unpacked the load: A change of stockings and shirts all around were, I supposed, required, as were the trousers and boots for Javitz, since he’d lost everything in the wreck, but my own pullover was far from unwearable (although the back of it was rather the worse for wear-the blood had washed out, but the darning was clumsy). Certainly I did not require a skirt, particularly one three inches too wide and two inches too short. And for a hermit to purchase not one, but two frocks for a small child was not only unnecessary, but foolish.
He saw my disapproval, and knew the reason. “The village is fifty miles from nowhere.”
“You don’t think the ’plane has been found by now?”
“You needed clothing,” he said firmly. “And here’s your Times.”
He no doubt thought to distract me from the purchases at the bottom of the pack: a set of jackstones, collected in a red cotton bag, and a small soft doll that he slipped into Estelle’s hand. I’d have had to be considerably farther away than the clearing to miss her squeals of pleasure.
I gave up and carried the newspaper outside.
Monday, 1 September. I ran my eyes methodically down what Holmes called the agony columns of small adverts and messages. Two or three posts attracted my attention-one for the health benefits of honey, the other a notice for a ladies’ motoring school, since my skills at the wheel were a longtime source of criticism from my partner-but in the end I decided that neither held hidden meaning.
For lack of better entertainment, I read the paper all the way to the shipping news, paying particular attention to reports of a terrible earthquake in Japan-I hoped the friends we had made there in the spring were safe. I folded it neatly to give to Javitz, thinking that he, too, might appreciate a reminder that the outer world had not faded away.
But when I had finished, there was nothing for it but to go back inside and join my granddaughter’s dollies’ tea-party.
Complete with iced biscuits, bought for the purpose by an unrepentant wild man of the woods.
Tuesday morning, my head was clear and my bruises healing. Goodman was gone when we woke, but returned while the morning was young. Later, he and I set out together in the opposite direction from his previous day’s trek, leaving Estelle in the care of Javitz-or perhaps viceversa. I had spent the evening making adjustments to the skirt, thinking it might render me less noticeable than a pair of trousers with a ripped knee and ground-in soil, but it was not a garment readily suited for a rough walk through the woods, and I was forced to stop every few minutes to disentangle the tweed from a snagging bramble or branch.
I also noticed two more of the bent-branch booby-traps. Robin Goodfellow he might be, but this hermit had no intention of permitting others to come upon him unawares.
After five miles, we came to a high wall with a narrow metal gate. The gate was speckled with rust; the sturdy padlock was not.
“I need to go into the village alone,” I told him, brushing my skirt and checking that my boots were not too caked with mud.
“A woman by herself would stand out almost as much as a woman with me,” he said, pocketing the key and pushing open the gate.
I glanced at him, surprised at this perceptive remark from a man who showed less sign of interest in the mores and customs of the outer world than the hedgehog might have done. “By myself I can invent a reason for being there. With you, there’s no chance.”
“As you wish. How long will you be?”
“An hour at most. You’re certain there’s a telegraph office?”
“There’s a post office,” he replied. “It has a telegraph.”
“If the telegraphist isn’t off fishing or caring for his aged mother, you mean?”
“Buy some milk, for the child. And I think she needs another warm garment-”
“Oh for heaven’s sake,” I said. “Look, you will be here when I return, right?”
“Or in the village.”
“Well, just wait half an hour before you come in. And if you see me, don’t give on that we know each other.”
I stepped out onto the road and marched into the village.
I was, I realised, in luck: The village was on a lake, and the lake was on the Picturesque Sites of Olde England tours. A steamer had recently deposited a load of earnest sight-seers, all of them wearing sensible shoes and clutching guide-books and pamphlets. I did not fit in, precisely, lacking hat, book, and earnest expression, but being one stranger in the vicinity of a dozen others made invisibility easier.
In the village shop, I gathered up three post-cards, a copy of the day’s Times, and a tin of travelling sweets, then stood in the queue to buy stamps. Once there, I enquired about sending a telegram. The rather befuddled but undeniably picturesque woman in charge of the village’s postal service admitted that there was a telegraphic device fitted to the shop’s post office, but suggested that I should be much better off to return across the lake to the town and use their service, because her husband, the man in charge of this daunting machine, had taken to his bed with a touch of the ague and was not to be disturbed.
This message was profusely illustrated with woe and took six long minutes to deliver. The queue behind me was now to the door. I was sorely tempted to clamber over the counter and tap out the message myself, but knew that this would not help my aim of invisibility. Besides which, the sharp sniff coming from her young assistant at the mention of ague suggested that the cause might be something other than germs.
So I waited until the postmistress had dithered to an end of her story, then batted my eyes at her and told her that I truly needed to send a telegram, now please, and it would be such a pity if I found I could not, because I should then have to speak to my uncle in the telegraphs office down in London and let him know that the village wanted attention.
She put up her window and fetched her husband.
I gave them both a sweet smile and let myself into the crowded back of the shop.
The man moved in a cloud of gin, freshly swigged in an (unsuccessful) attempt to steady his hands. I permitted him to run the first part of the message, but in a short time he found himself eased to one side while this chipper female, twittering all the while about how her uncle had been amused to teach her Morse when she was a tiny thing, finished the dots and dashes.
This is the telegram I had decided to send, addressed to Mycroft:
ALL WELL COMING HOME SOON BUT ORKNEY BROTHERS REQUIRE URGENT ATTENTION STOP MESSAGES IN THE USUAL WAY WILL REACH ME STOP RUSSELL
It was a risk, but almost as much as the message about Brothers, I wanted to reassure him (and possibly, through him, Holmes) that we were safe. Besides, it gave nothing away other than its place of origin, and with any luck, we would be far away by the time Scotland Yard came looking.
I thanked the gentleman (who was now looking quite ill indeed) and went to pay his good wife. As I opened my purse, motion out of the corner of my eye had me looking out of the window, at Robert Goodman.
The shopkeeper noticed the direction of my gaze and hastened to reassure her dangerous customer with the powerful London relations. “Don’t worry about him, dearie, that’s just the local loonie. Perfectly harmless.”
One green eye winked at me through the glass. “You’re certain?” I asked.
“Absolutely. Mad as a rabbit, that one, but he pays his bills.”
I did the same, and left, but all I saw of Goodman was the brush of his coat as he went into the next shop.
Well, with Robert Goodman in the village, the residents would take no notice of me.
We met again where we had parted. Over his shoulder was slung another load of foodstuffs and fancies with which to ply his guests. I had The Times-which again had failed to yield a message from Holmes, or even Mycroft-and the post-cards and tin of sweets, bought for disguise.
Also, two small Beatrix Potter picture-books.
By Tuesday, Sherlock Holmes was beginning to feel that a nice cosy gaol might be preferable to his current situation.
On Sunday afternoon, he’d been glad just to reach Holland, having spent the day on deck as Gordon’s crew, a sustained physical effort that made him all too aware of his age. He’d had little conversation with Dr Henning, once the decision was made to take refuge with the man she described as a second cousin, twice-removed. He’d had even less with Damian, who slept.
Their goal was a small fishing village roughly a third of the way from Amsterdam to the Hook of Holland. The place appeared, he had to admit, eminently suited as a hideaway-no one in his right mind would look for Sherlock Holmes there. Rumour of their presence might take months to reach England.
As they neared the coast-line, the doctor had come on deck to direct Gordon. She also informed Holmes that Damian was running a fever.
“Not much of one, yet, but it is essential that we get him to a place of quiet and stillness.”
“I have been trying to do that for two days.”
“I am not criticising, merely saying, he needs quiet.”
“And this cousin of yours can offer that?”
“Well, stillness certainly. Although now that I think of it, the quiet will depend on how many guests are in residence.”
He turned on her a raised eyebrow. “Guests?”
“Never mind. If the main house is full, he’ll put us in one of the cabins.”
“Dr Henning, it is not too late to-”
“No no, it’ll be fine, don’t worry. Eric regards himself as a patron of the arts. He’s very wealthy and quite a character. He’s also an expert on the American Civil War, and he occasionally stages re-enactments of the major battles. However, they never last more than a day or two. Of course, there’s also the artists. When Eric retired ten years ago, he decided the best way he might serve the arts was to provide a congenial place in which they might concentrate. So he bought up half this village, and invites painters and sculptors to live here while they are working.”
“This is most unfortunate.”
It was her turn to raise an eyebrow. “You object to artists?”
“By no means. But have you not discovered in the course of conversation with your patient that Damian is an artist?”
“Half the people in London regard themselves as artists,” she said dismissively. “Those that aren’t poets or playwrights.”
“Damian Adler is the real thing. He is, in fact, rather a well-known painter, among certain circles. A collective of artists is not an ideal place in which to keep him under wraps.”
“I see,” she said.
Holmes rubbed his face in self-disgust. When he was young, lack of sleep had only sharpened his faculties. Now, it only took two or three sleepless nights to turn his brains to cold porridge. He was soft, old and soft, and easily distracted by thoughts of bed and bath and how much he disliked this beard under his finger-nails.
Holland. What other choices were there? He had a colleague in Amsterdam-or not precisely a colleague: The man was a criminal who ran a series of illegal gambling establishments, but he had proved useful once or twice.
But trust the fellow? The temptation to sell Damian to the police might prove too great.
“We’ll have to keep Damian closeted, and avoid using his name,” he told the doctor. “As soon as he can be moved, we’ll be on our way.”
“I am sorry, I didn’t think to mention it.”
“The fault is mine,” he said in a tired voice, and went down to explain the situation to the patient.
Two hours later, they were nearing the mouth of a small bay. Holmes stood at the rail beside the doctor, watching the approach of a noble white house with several acres of lawn spreading down to the water and six small white cottages back among the trees. The whole resembled a plantation mansion, complete with slaves’ quarters, more at home in colonial Virginia than on the coast of Holland.
“That’s it. We can put in at the boat-house,” she said, and turned to call instructions to Gordon. That was something, at any rate: A boat-house would reduce their chances of being spotted, and of being asked inconvenient questions as to passports and permissions to dock.
When they had tied up, Henning stepped lightly to the boards and trotted off to the big house. When she was halfway across the lawn, a round man in a brilliant white suit came down the steps to greet her. She disappeared inside his embrace, then freed herself, straightening her hat as she gazed up at him. Explanations took but a moment before the man turned to the figures on the terrace behind him to wave orders. Three of the figures turned instantly away to the house, two of them returning with an object that, as they drew nearer, became a rolled-up Army stretcher.
Getting Damian up the boat’s tight companionway was tricky, but the servants managed. They marched away in the direction of the farthest white cottage, the doctor scurrying after.
Holmes, Gordon, and the second-cousin-twice-removed studied each other in bemusement. Holmes put out his hand. “Terribly sorry about this, we had a bit of an accident on this boat we’d hired, and your… Dr Henning said the best thing for it would be to inflict ourselves on you for a day or two, while the lad mends. Our good captain,” he continued, warming to the tale he was constructing-
However, the would-be plantation owner was not interested in the details of their presence. The rotund gentleman, who had been introduced as Eric VanderLowe, cut in, “Would you two mind posing for us?”
“Posing? As in, for drawing?”
“Precisely. I have a group coming in the morning. We’d arranged for two lads from the village, but they’ve been called away. It would help my artist friends a great deal.”
“Er, perhaps we might talk about it tomorrow,” Holmes suggested. “We’re all a bit tired.”
“Of course, tomorrow will do nicely.” And so saying, VanderLowe summoned a manservant to take their few possessions to the guest cottages.
That night, despite the prescribed quiet, Damian’s fever mounted. Holmes and the doctor stayed at the young man’s bed-side, applying wet cloths in an attempt to cool him. Damian thrashed and sweated, cursing in three languages and carrying on broken conversations, in Chinese with Yolanda and in French with his mother.
Finally, towards morning he grew quieter. Gentle snores arose from where the doctor sat, well bundled against the breeze pouring through the open windows. Holmes stood at the foot of the bed, studying his son’s resting face.
An hour later, Dr Henning stirred, then jerked upright at the silence. “He’s sleeping,” Holmes said in a low voice before she could react further.
She stood, to feel the pulse on Damian’s free wrist and tug his bed-clothes back up to his shoulders, then rolled her neck and shoulders with a grimace.
“You go and sleep,” Holmes told her. “I’ll fetch you if anything happens.”
She nodded, although she seemed in no hurry to move away from her patient. “Twenty days, you’ve known him?”
“Today being Monday, it is three weeks.”
“Who was his mother?”
“A woman who out-smarted me. More than once.”
“Does he resemble her? The way you look at him…”
“He does now.”
Monday was endless; Holmes had discovered early that there was not a copy of The Times within twenty miles.
Damian slept. Holmes turned the sick-room over to Dr Henning and took to his own bed at last, but in the afternoon he gave in to the pleas of his host and sat for ninety minutes while half a dozen oddly assorted artists-four men, one woman, and a person of indeterminate gender-bent over their drawing tablets. Gordon took his place for an hour, and when he escaped (outraged at their request to shed his clothing) he stalked away to scrub down the boat.
At five o’clock, Holmes leant against the cottage’s open doorway, listening to Damian’s steady breathing and feeling the inner seethe of frustration. Shadows inched across the lawn. He found himself wishing for soldiers of grey and blue, blasting at each other with antique firearms: Pickett’s Charge or the Battle of Antietam would provide a nice distraction. Instead, there was music coming from the house that made his fingers twitch for a violin; the tobacco in his pouch was running low; and the doctor’s bag sat on the table beside Damian’s bed, its open top an invitation, tugging at his attention every time he went through the room.
He had no intention of using the narcotic distraction it offered; he had long outgrown that habit. But the mere fact that he noticed the bag was irritating.
“You don’t need to stay in shouting distance,” the doctor’s voice came from behind him. “He’s sleeping nicely, and I have a book.”
He did not answer, but eyed the half-mile of lawn between the cottage and where Gordon was working, shirt off and head down over the boat’s decking.
“Go,” she urged. “Physical labour will help you to sleep tonight.”
He opened his mouth to ask why she imagined he might have trouble sleeping, then changed it to, “My friend Watson could tell you that I have never been good at following doctor’s orders.”
“Then think of it as a friendly suggestion.”
He glanced down at her, and had the disconcerting impression that the wee thing had overheard his inner dialogue with the black bag. Quite impossible. She must have picked up on his general agitation-although that was a bad enough sign in itself, that he was giving himself away to a near-stranger.
Still, she was right. There was nothing like hard labour to take one’s mind off of frustration.
He gave a glance back at the sleeping Damian, then set off across the lawn, rolling up his shirt-sleeves as he drew near the dock.
Work helped. But still, Monday was endless.
So it was that on Tuesday, shaking off the sensation of prison, Holmes trimmed his beard, changed some pounds to guilders at the house, put on his only suit (miraculous, that he had managed to retain his valise during the past week’s eccentric travels), and asked Dr Henning if, seeing as how he was taking the train to Amsterdam, there was any person to whom she might like a telegram sent.
Surely Wick would have noticed by now that their doctor was missing?
The train to Amsterdam was small and antique. In a country more tolerant of dilapidation, this rural transport would have devolved into a threadbare state, but here it was so scrubbed it could only be considered worn.
Two other passengers boarded at the tiny station, a long-married couple (two wedding rings, worn thin) that Holmes would have dubbed “elderly” had he not suspected they were younger than he. They waited for him to enter, he gestured for them to go first, and all three might have stood on the platform being polite until the train pulled away had the conductor’s whistle not broken the old woman’s nerve. They took seats at one end of the car, and Holmes walked to the other, settling behind his newspaper.
It was a Dutch paper, bought as much for camouflage as to provide him with distraction during the journey, but the reaction of the old couple was telling: They had known him for a foreigner without him opening his mouth.
Three stops up, Holmes folded the paper and joined the disembarking throng of two office workers (one had the chronic stains of an accountant’s ink on his cuffs, the other’s fingers betrayed long hours on a typing machine). He followed the two as far as the station’s news stand, saw at a glance that the offerings here were no more sophisticated than the station at which he had begun, and returned to the train. At the last minute, he changed direction to fall in behind a louche young poet (the scrap of paper sticking from his pocket betrayed a sonnet) ambling towards the next car up, and boarded that one instead: not that he expected anyone to trace his movements, but Holmes had not lived to grow grey by neglecting to lay false trails.
He shook open the paper, making an effort to damp down his simmering impatience. There was no point in leaping from his seat at every stop to search for a copy of The Times. No point whatsoever. He would soon be in Amsterdam, and given a wide choice of international newspapers.
They would, he knew, contain nothing of interest. It was, after all, only Tuesday. Taking into account the presence of a child, and the sparse provisions of transportation out of Orkney, Russell might well still be working her way down from the northern reaches of Scotland.
The probability of finding a message from her in The Times agony column was decidedly thin.
On the other hand, there was Mycroft to account for. Holmes still found Russell’s report of a Scotland Yard raid on his brother’s flat hard to credit. Could it have been a false rumour? Chief Inspector Lestrade was obdurate, but the man had never before displayed signs of outright insanity.
This, thought Holmes, half ripping a page as he turned it, this was why he’d avoided family ties for so much of his career: It made matters so much more difficult. He felt a bit like the boat whose hull he’d attacked the previous afternoon, thick with barnacles and sea-washed débris. If he didn’t have Damian on his hands; if Russell didn’t have the child-
He grimaced, and violently folded away the newspaper. One might as well say that Russell was a drag on his progress. Or Mycroft. Which was not the case. Or, rarely the case.
He spent the rest of the journey listening to accents, accustoming his ears to the peculiarities of the language and rehearsing the shape of a few key phrases.
When the train pulled into central Amsterdam, Holmes made his way, with deliberate Dutch politeness, down from the train and towards the news stand. As he suspected, the only Times the man possessed was Monday’s. Still, he bought that and a copy of a Paris newspaper, enquired when the Tuesday editions of both would arrive, and walked down the street until he found a clothier with a French name.
One does not need to be invisible, merely explicable.
He left with his English clothing in a parcel under his arm, looking for the barber the salesman had recommended. When he had finished there, he carried his purchases down the street to a small café, requesting een kopje koffie en een broodje, alstublieft in a thick French accent. He lit a French cigarette, passed a manicured hand over his newly trimmed hair (both hair and beard trimmed into the latest Parisian mode), and sat in his new Parisian collar and Lyonnaise neck-tie, the very picture of a monsieur in Amsterdam. Only when the tiny cup and roll were placed before him did he open the English paper.
He’d been deciphering the grumbles and whispers of the agony column for more than a half century; his eyes knew its texture the way a sculptor’s hands knew a lump of stone. One glance told him that there was nothing of interest among the close-packed print. Still, he read his methodical way down each column before he permitted himself to be certain: Neither Russell nor Mycroft had left their mark there.
He dropped some coins and both newspapers on the linen cloth and set about the day’s tasks.
His first stop was a post office. There he mailed the letter to The Times that he had prepared early that morning: a notice for the agony column that began, “Bees may thrive in foreign lands.”
However, the untoward actions of Scotland Yard made him question the wisdom of depending on the Royal post. Letters were too easy to open. What he required was a private and less easily breached means of communication: a telephone. And there was, on the surface of it, no particular reason why he could not go into a public telephone office to make his trunk call.
But why should that phrase, on the surface of it, make him think of an incident that had taken place this past spring, late one evening in the midst of the Pacific Ocean? He’d been at the rails in conversation with Russell, idly tracking a bit of flotsam off the bow, paying no conscious attention to the object except that the back of his mind kept nudging his eyes towards it. Only when the insistent pressure reached forward, making him aware of the unlikelihood of a floating object keeping pace with a ship, did his eyes suddenly give the thing a shape and an identity: the dorsal fin of a disturbingly large shark.
He needed to concentrate on the Brothers case, but Lestrade’s uncharacteristic audacity kept protruding from his thoughts like that bit of flotsam from a moonlit sea.
It might be that a trap was being laid. Granted, it was equally plausible that Lestrade had lost first his mind and then his job, and that Mycroft was even now settled at his desk in that anonymous governmental office, savouring a morning coffee and considering the state of the world.
He shook his head: one matter at a time. Once Damian was free from danger, there would be time enough to focus on Mycroft. Still, there was no harm in being cautious. Without data, he might be jumping in for a swim beside a shark the size of a motorcar.
He found what he wanted twenty minutes from the station, a grand hotel that showed signs of renovations aimed at a modern traveller. He asked for, and received, a suite of rooms that was not the most expensive the hotel offered, but close to that, and informed the manager that his bags would follow by evening. To be certain, he enquired after their facilities for international telephone calls, and was assured that they had installed the most up-to-date equipment, and that if the exchange could handle the call, the hotel could support it.
Satisfied, he allowed himself to be escorted to the room, high up in the east wing, giving the bellman a tip that compensated for the lack of bags. He took off his hat, sat at the desk before an elaborate arrangement of fresh flowers, and lifted the earpiece.
A trunk call from this address did, as he’d expected, receive priority treatment. Within a quarter hour he was speaking with a familiar Cockney voice, the line crackling and occasionally dropping words, but tolerably clear as these things went.
The two men had known each other more than thirty years, since the eight-year-old Billy had introduced himself by attempting to pick Holmes’ pocket. On being caught, the young thief’s cheeky intelligence led Holmes to hire him on the spot, eventually to appoint him the most unlikely page-boy ever to grace Mrs Hudson’s kitchen. More importantly, Billy had become Holmes’ liaison with the street-boys he had dubbed his “Irregulars.” Now, the two men exchanged the sorts of greetings designed to communicate that they were both alone, and as secure as might be expected. Then Holmes got down to business, avoiding as always the unambiguous meaning and the personal name-one could never tell when a bored exchange operator might be listening in.
“I need you to get into touch with my brother,” Holmes began.
“You know he’s been arrested?”
“Arrested? My-” He bit back the name before he could finish it; the Bakelite earpiece creaked in his grip.
“You didn’t know?”
“I’d heard there was a raid, but an arrest? For what?”
“Truth to tell, the arrest’s speculation, like. Only, I heard he was picked up Thursday and taken in for questioning, and he hasn’t been seen since. You want me to go by his place and check?”
“No.” He tried to imagine what on earth could be going on, to result in the arrest-arrest!-of Mycroft Holmes. That was taking the game of cat-and-mouse to an extreme. It had to be some Scotland Yard brainstorm: A play for power amongst the Intelligence divisions would be more subtle. Whatever the reason, it was most inconvenient. He’d been counting on the use of Mycroft’s connexions.
“No, I think you should steer clear of his apartment, and do not make any approach to Scotland Yard. If you hear that my brother is at home again, you might give him a ring from a public box, but don’t go beyond that. I’ll be back in a few days, I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding.”
“I hope so.” The Cockney voice sounded apprehensive: Billy thought Holmes had meant that the arrest was due to a misunderstanding, not that Billy had misunderstood Mycroft’s absence to be an arrest. Still, there was no point in correcting him. In any event, if the Dutch operators were anything like the English, he risked being cut off soon. However, he had to venture another question before getting down to business.
“What about… the rest of my family?”
“Your wife?”
“Yes.” No one but Mycroft and Russell-and now Dr Henning-knew who Damian was.
“Haven’t heard from her. You want me to ask around?”
“Don’t worry, she’s been out of town. I expect she’ll get into touch before long.”
“Anything you want me to tell her when she does?”
“To keep her eyes open. The same goes for you.”
“I understand.”
“I need you to do something.”
“Anything.”
“A man who calls himself Reverend Thomas Brothers, who runs a somewhat shady church called the Children of Lights on-”
“The Brompton Road, yes.”
No moss grew on Billy when it came to the goings-on in London, that was for certain. “See what you can find out about Brothers, and about his assistant, a felon named Marcus Gunderson, who did time in the Scrubs.”
“Marcus Gunderson,” Billy repeated. “Thomas Brothers. Anything in particular?”
Holmes had had time to think about the ill-fitting elements in the Brothers case, and here was the place where the design was most baffling-and although it would have been far better to investigate it himself, Billy would make an adequate stand-in. “I want to know how Brothers managed to create a new identity for himself in such a short time. He stepped foot off the boat from Shanghai last November, and in no time at all had a new identity, a house, an assistant like Gunderson, and a building to start his new church.”
“You think he had friends before he came here?”
“I think he was in touch with the criminal underworld, yes. I want to know how.” He did not say to Billy that such information might provide Lestrade with a more attractive suspect than an artist who wakes up one morning and decides to murder his wife in cold blood. Brothers’ death would be a complication. However, with both Gordon and Dr Henning at hand to bear witness to Damian’s injuries, the police might quietly decide that to have lost a man like Brothers was not entirely a bad thing.
“And, Billy? Brothers is dead, although it is possible no-one knows that yet. Watch how you walk: I don’t know what ties he might have had to the crime world, so I don’t know if it was merely a business matter or if they would be out for revenge.”
“I had this teacher, once, schooled me always to keep my eyes open.”
“Good man. You remember the place where my family and I leave messages for each other? Don’t say it.”
The lengthy dim crackle down the line was Billy reflecting on the likelihood of this conversation being overheard. However, whatever Holmes suggested…
“I remember,” the younger man said.
“I want you to visit that place for a few days. If we need you, we’ll leave a message there.”
There came a longer pause, while Billy worked it out.
“In the morning, right?” Billy asked.
Holmes smiled in relief: The Times was a morning paper. “Correct. And if you have any message for me, you can do the same. Although I’m sure you’re a busy bee these days.”
“A busy-ah, right you are, Gov. And if there’s anything else, anything at all, don’t hesitate to ask.”
“We won’t.”
Holmes returned the earpiece to its hooks. After a minute, he took it down, then hung it up again, and sat thinking. No, he decided: He might get into touch with the Dutch gambler tomorrow, but not today. Instead, he plucked a white rose-bud from the floral arrangement on the desk to thread into his button-hole, put his (new, French) hat back on his head, and left the hotel.
Half an hour’s walk later and a mile to the north, he stepped into a telegraph office to send reassurances to Wick and to Thurso, for his inadvertent companions.
The rest of the day was given over to the tedium common to so many investigations, with time crawling as the apprehension gnawed at the back of his mind. He told himself firmly that Russell and little Estelle were sure to be fine, that Damian was as safe in the artists’ community as anyplace on earth, that he would soon be back in London where Mycroft would tell him what the deuce was going on. That an enforced holiday did no one any harm. He walked the canals, visited a museum, ate a leisurely luncheon he did not want, and addressed everyone in the purest of French. He shopped, including a change of clothing for the doctor-who had been forced to borrow an ill-fitting frock the previous day-and for Damian-whose choice of apparel was distinctly bohemian and thus far from invisible. In the window of a stationers, he spotted a handsome sketch-book, and added that and a set of pastels to his parcels: They might keep the lad occupied, once his arm began to heal. And down the street, a shop sold him French cigarettes and English pipe-tobacco.
The newsagent had said the foreign papers would arrive by three o’clock. At twenty minutes past the hour, Holmes returned to the small shop near the station, and asked for both papers. The French one was in, the English one was expected any time. He gave the man a very French shrug, bought the one, and went back to the café.
It was after four when he spotted a small delivery van pulling up to the news stand. He finished his long-cold second cup of coffee, leaving a tip to acknowledge his long occupation of the table, and strolled back to the shop. Wordlessly, the man held out the day’s Times. Holmes tucked it under his arm and walked to the station, passing the time until his train arrived by examining its front pages.
He had not actually expected to find a message, had he? So why should he feel so let down?
The train came, and he began the voyage back to the village by the sea. With every mile, he pushed away a growing conviction that he needed to be heading out of Holland, not settling more deeply into it.
Peter James West looked down at the figure in the chair. Curious, he thought, how small the dead become.
“He put that knife right in your hand,” Gunderson said in astonishment. “Never occurred to him you might use it.”
“Remarkable, considering how ruled Brothers was by his imagination.”
“Deluded to the end, he was.”
The two men glanced at each other, a quick and unspoken dialogue passing between them.
You’d better believe it’s occurred to me, Gunderson’s eyes said.
So you’ve told me, replied West.
Which is why I also let drop about that little insurance policy I set up. Just in case you ever think I’m no longer useful.
But West turned away before Gunderson could see his reply: Yes, and I’m glad you mentioned that letter, my friend, since it allowed me to take care of it. It wouldn’t do, to leave that sort of thing lying about.
The criminal classes were such refreshing employees: Money and fear were what men like Gunderson understood. Of money, it took surprisingly little to purchase muscle and a modicum of brain-power. One had only to remember that money might buy service, but not loyalty: For that, one required fear.
After tonight, Gunderson would think twice about betrayal.
West took off his suit coat and gloves, then rolled up one sleeve of his shirt, methodical as a surgeon, before retrieving the knife. Blood welled, but, without the heartbeat to propel it, there was neither gush nor splatter. It was a lesson to remember: A quick death leaves little mess. He wiped the blade on the victim’s trouser leg, then pulled a clean handkerchief from Brothers’ breast pocket to finish the job, tucking the scrap of linen back into place when he was finished. He held the vicious blade to the light.
“I understand he thought this to be meteor iron.”
“That’s what he said.”
“One might almost believe him. It’s a handsome thing.” West bent again to free the scabbard, then slid the knife into the leather and the whole into his coat pocket. “You failed at the aeroplane, then.”
“Looks like. I thought I’d hit it, but I haven’t heard anything about it coming down. Have you?”
“No. Never mind, it was a slim chance and not our last. Do we know if the woman was in it?”
“MacAuliffe heard that she and the child were both in the ’plane.”
“Leaving the men to their fishing boat, I suppose. Any idea how much nosing around she got up to before she left Orkney?”
“Far as I know, none at all. There wasn’t a word of her between the time she and the American landed and when they took off.”
“Good.”
“However, Brothers left his passports behind. In that hotel he had MacAuliffe set fire to the week before.”
“What, he and Adler were staying there?”
“That’s right.”
“Idiot. Well, the passports are clean, never mind. What about the others in Orkney?”
“What about them?”
“Don’t act the imbecile, Gunderson, it doesn’t suit you.”
“They’re still breathing, if that’s what you mean.”
“Was that wise?”
“Tiny place like that, three bodies would’ve been noticed-getting rid of MacAuliffe and his woman might’ve been explainable, but adding to it the doctor who patched Brothers together seemed risky. I didn’t think you’d want a trail of bodies pointing at you.”
“What about the telegram I sent?”
“Burned.”
“Perhaps we ought to consider the telegraphist as a fourth candidate for attention. A clever investigator might ask all kinds of questions, and find it odd that a man like MacAuliffe would send a wire to London.”
And the brother, Sherlock, was nothing if not clever. And tenacious.
“So you want me to go back up there and take care of them all?”
“Not yet,” West said. Gunderson tried to hide his uneasiness, but it was there: For some reason, the man disliked killing women. He could send Buckner-but no, Buckner had the wits of a turnip. Cleaning Orkney required a deft touch. However, there was no rush: Even after Brothers was found, and identified, it would take days for news to trickle north to alarm MacAuliffe. After tomorrow night, Gunderson would be free; then he could go north and finish things up.
Gunderson started around the room with a handkerchief, wiping down surfaces. West joined him, taking care to cover the same places Gunderson had treated, on the off chance the man might think to set him up. At the end, they went through Brothers’ valises, transferring several items into a worn rucksack.
When it was fully dark, Gunderson left, taking the rucksack with him. West watched him closely, then shut the door, satisfied: Gunderson had avoided meeting his eyes whenever possible. The lesson of fear had got through.
He climbed the stairs to open a window on the back of the house, returning to sit in the chair opposite the dead man. The room was quite cosy now.
“Once the flies get inside, I’m afraid there won’t be much left of you,” he told the would-be god. “It’s a shabby way to treat a friend, Brothers, but I’ve no doubt you would have done the same to me, had it proved necessary.”
The two men sat together for another hour, one man cooling while the other grew uncomfortably warm. The warm man spoke from time to time. He found the dead restful: They never argued, rarely raised any objection to one’s actions, and encouraged the sort of calm reflection that was difficult around the living. At the end of their conversation, both agreed how appropriate it was that the archaic madness that had driven Brothers would help unseat the dinosaur of Intelligence, and free it to become a piece of modern machinery.
Eventually, Peter James West buttoned his overcoat and took his leave of the man who had, all unknowing, been so useful to him. He turned the gas down a fraction, switched off the lights, and locked the door.
On the way to the train station, West paused to slip the house’s key into a storm drain.
Just in case.
The train reached King’s Cross shortly after ten-thirty Tuesday night. West was one of the last to disembark, and he walked past the left luggage office where Gunderson would have stored the rucksack. He would send another to retrieve it.
Just in case.
He had the taxi take him to the office, deserted but for the night staff. There he checked his mail, made a few notes for his secretary, and read the reports that had come in since the afternoon. Among them was one concerning the disappearance of Mycroft Holmes.
When his desk was clear, he walked on to his more private office in the shadow of Westminster Cathedral, where he read with greater interest the unofficial reports from the British and European ports. He then sent three coded telegrams and placed a long telephone call to Buckner, giving him the change in the next day’s orders.
Back on the street, a light drizzle had begun to fall. He lit a cigarette in the portico of the building, then set off on foot in the direction of the river.
He was damp through by the time he unlocked the door of the quiet modern apartment in its deceptive warehouse. He hung his coat and hat to dry, and stuffed newspaper in the toes of his shoes before adding them to the airing cupboard.
He bathed, and ate. It was one o’clock Wednesday morning before he took up his god-like post at the window, drink in one hand and cigar in the other.
It was not that West enjoyed killing. During the War, of course, it had been part of the job-although it was hard to compare that hellish cacophony with the calm execution he had performed hours earlier in St Albans. Still, he had to confess (to himself, in that quiet room, alone) that on the few occasions when he had been required to end a life, the exercise of ultimate power had brought him a certain frisson of satisfaction. And without a doubt, death was a process that held considerable fascination for a thoughtful individual such as himself, transforming a complex, breathing machine, the image of God and little short of the angels, into so much cold meat.
No, Peter James West only killed when necessary. For the most part, he merely ordered a killing. But it was good to know that when the personal touch was required, his hand did not hesitate.
He put down his drink and laid the half-burnt cigar into its cut-glass bowl, to take up the leather scabbard that Brothers had worn against his skin. The oily texture of the leather was repugnant, but the knife itself was a thing of beauty. The blade, whether or not of meteor iron, was the work of a true artist, shaped to perfection and beaten until the surface shimmered with depth. The hilt might have been carved to fit his own hand, the warm ivory coaxing his fingers to wrap around it and hold the blade to the light.
It was the kind of knife that whispered, Use me.
A year ago, he would not have considered using a knife on Mycroft Holmes. Now, however, the old man had dropped a tremendous amount of weight: A six-inch-long blade would easily pierce his vitals.
Would it, West wondered, feel like regicide?
He regretted talking so much, in St Albans before Gunderson left. That was the problem with an audience of nonentities: One tended to overlook their capacity for action. Yes, the criminal classes could be bought and be kept in line by fear, but the moment they imagined they had the stronger weapon, they could turn vicious. Which would be inconvenient.
Not that he had given away any secrets-if he’d been stupid enough to do so, he’d have been forced to leave Gunderson lying on the floor next to Brothers. Which might have been a bit tricky. However, once this was over, Gunderson would have to be removed.
Let it be a lesson to you, Peter James: Never talk before the staff.
But he was grateful for the knife, a unique object in so many ways. An unexpected gift. But then, wasn’t this entire affair an unexpected gift? He’d never have thought it possible, three years ago, when the Secret Intelligence Service budget was being pared to the bone, Smith-Cumming was so ill it was a surprise to see him each morning, every man was snarling to defend his small corner, and the distasteful “arrangement” was being imposed on them, weakening every aspect of the Service. The one person without a look of panic on his face had been Mycroft Holmes, who wandered the halls as fat and as enigmatic as ever. And only he, West, had thought to question why.
Mycroft Holmes, the ethical, the incorruptible. Who had laid a façade of virtue over a foundation of corruption, constructing a massive edifice almost entirely hidden by the grit and grief of lesser enterprises. Who answered to no higher authority than the face in the mirror.
It had been a hard two years, knowing the flaw but being unable to use it. Two years, before he’d heard of a letter from Shanghai.
Holmes called himself an accountant. Well, every accountant should know that there comes a day of reckoning.
West felt he’d played with the man long enough: drugs in his drink, disguised footsteps every morning, carrying a cloth dabbed with bay rum cologne. A private game, childish, perhaps, and at the end of its run. Time for Mycroft Holmes’ final service to his country.
West finished his drink, crushed out the cigar, and took himself to bed.
As he slept, the curved knife lay on the bedside table.
The next morning, he put it into his pocket before he left the flat.
And carried it with him as he made his way to the attic prison of Mycroft Holmes.
a ÷ (b+c+d) + e − (½ c) − (f) = g
g, Mycroft decided on Wednesday, was The Opponent. g was the one who kept him here, who had granted him a neck-tie for a belt, who (this last was hypothesis, but he felt it a strong one) came down the prison’s corridor on City heels and smelt occasionally of bay rum.
Mycroft’s December illness had damaged his heart, but cleared his vision. He’d grown so accustomed to power, it took a spell of weakness to make him see just how immense his authority was. His job did not exist; his position was largely outside the government and therefore essentially without oversight. His was a power based entirely on ineffable agreement and hidden secrets: Mycroft Holmes is unshakably ethical; he is the nation’s moral authority; all sides that matter accept him as the ultimate authority and mediator; he may have whatever he requests, to get his job done.
Three decades ago, he had made a decision that was not his to make. A decision that made everything possible. A decision that only he and one living man knew had been made. Before December, he’d managed to all but forget it, himself.
It was a beautiful thing, and a fragile thing, to place an empire’s moral welfare in the hands of one man. Six months ago, he had come face to face with the knowledge that it was also a terrifying thing, and foolish beyond belief.
a ÷ (b+c+d) + e − (½ c) − (f) = g
A koan, a conundrum, now beginning to disappear with the setting sun. If g was the man who had put e here, then it followed that g wanted to replace e. That g had looked at the rôle of the accountant and lusted after its authority-rather, its perceived authority, since the power behind e remained well hidden. And as soon as the g had been scratched onto the wall, Mycroft could only wonder that he was not yet dead.
Not that e objected to the delay of his death. Mycroft was actually growing accustomed to the hunger, and the cold, and even the stupefying boredom.
However, one possible explanation of his continued immobility was that in the outside world, g was busy assembling his weapons. That he was pulling together-call them m and s and n and i: Mary and Sherlock and Nephew and Infant. Adding to g’s side of the equation. Making e into a tool of his own.
Which raised the further question: Was this person e-this most ethical and moral of men-required to act on his suspicion? Was he obligated, as a servant of His Majesty, to remove a potential tool from enemy hands by using this bent nail to open a vein in his own wrist?
His grim thoughts broke off: a sound, where customarily there was none. It was too early for his evening visitation, too heavy for one of the pigeons, too near for street noise. He grabbed the solitary brick that his chip of porcelain and farthing coin had between them freed from the wall, then scrambled to his feet. Tightening his silken belt, he faced the approaching sound.
He wished that he might have been permitted to shave, before they came for him.
On Wednesday, Goodman tried to teach Estelle jackstones. However, mature as her mind might be, her small hands lacked sufficient coordination to toss, snatch, and grab. She grew increasingly frustrated, and was not far from tears when he bundled the game back into its cloth bag and brought out his knife and a chunk of pine instead, asking her what kind of animal she wished him to carve next.
We were all relieved when she permitted herself to be distracted, to decide on a hedgehog.
So he carved Estelle a family of hedgehogs.
When I looked for him after lunch, he had disappeared again. Estelle and I gathered fallen apples from his orchard and managed to cook them without burning the place down. We helped Javitz hobble out to the garden, and had a fierce contest on who could spit a plum-pit the greatest percentage of their height (Javitz won). Fortunately, our host reappeared before I was driven to assemble an evening meal, bringing with him a Times, half a dozen fresh-baked scones, a bag of fresh-ground coffee, a jar of bilberry preserves, a piece of beef (which he would cook for us but not eat, as he had not eaten the sausages), a tiny silver hair-brush, and a diminutive pink pinafore.
My BEEKEEPING message was in the agony column, but no other.
On Thursday afternoon, our host walked to the lakeside village and returned with a box of soft chocolates, three varieties of cheese, two packets of biscuits, and that day’s paper.
My message was there-and, halfway down the far right side, another:
BEES may thrive in foreign lands yet, lacking protection, meet peril close to home on Saturday.
I nearly danced in relief: They were safe, Holmes and Damian both, somewhere far from London or Sussex, and he would post our meeting-place in Saturday’s column.
Things were moving, at last! Tomorrow I would make my way to a train, and be in London when the Saturday papers hit the streets. The only question was whether I should remove Javitz and Estelle from this rustic establishment, or return for them once Holmes and I had joined up. And that decision, I knew, would have to wait until I could speak to Goodman without being overheard.
At the moment, he was instructing the child on the art of the plum crumble, she standing atop a stool at the sink measuring sugar into a bowl, her tiny form enveloped in one of his shirts as a stand-in apron, he beside her, buttering an oven bowl. I helped myself to a second cup of the stewed tea he’d made when he came in, and took it into the afternoon sunlight for a leisurely perusal of the rest of the day’s news, which had rather begun to resemble distant drum-beats heard from a jungle fastness.
I read about the status of the German economy and the doings of the Royal Family, followed by an article concerning a film actor and a scientific report on a new radio device. I casually turned over a page, read a follow-up on the earthquake in Japan, and turned the next. With one swallow of bitter tea yet in the cup and the light fading from the sky, the page with the obituaries came into sight.
A name leapt off the page at me, electrifying my brain and driving the breath straight out of my chest:
Mycroft Holmes, OBE
Tuesday night, the wind that had shoved against the European coast-line for the past week finally died away. Before Wednesday’s sun cleared the eastern horizon, Gordon cast off from the private dock and slipped into the North Sea, a generous bank draught tucked into his pocket.
To Holmes’ surprise, Dr Henning had declined to accompany Gordon. She claimed that she’d scarcely got the smell of fish out of her hair, and said that she would wait for a nice large steamer for the return trip. She seemed in no hurry to be home, or to abandon her patient.
Following a luncheon brought over from the house, Holmes resumed the French clothing that he had bought the day before and arranged to have the VanderLowe driver take him to a different, more southerly train station. There he bought a packet of Gitanes and a day-old Paris newspaper, was greeted by the ticket-seller in French, and inhabited the stance and accents of his French persona as he rode the train to Amsterdam, arriving shortly before three in the afternoon. Holmes made his way to the same news stand; this time, the day’s Times had arrived. He sought a café in the opposite direction from the one he had patronised the day before, spread out the pages with a snap of impatience, and felt a great burden lift:
BEEKEEPING is enjoyed by thousands, a reliable and safe hobby, practiced on week-ends alone from Oxford Street to Regent’s Park.
“Safe”: Russell and the child were well, and she proposed a rendezvous on the week-end in the bolt-hole that lay between Oxford Street and Regent’s Park-more precisely, in the back of a building that opened onto Baker Street. She would no doubt see his own message in the agony column, possibly tomorrow, or for certain on Friday; when no contradictory message followed, she would read that as an agreement.
He folded the paper, saw by his pocket-watch that he had half an hour before the return train set off, and used that time to buy the good doctor another change of clothing. This time he had a closer idea of her taste, and the frock he paid for was considerably less dowdy than the brown skirt and white shirt he’d taken her the day before.
The following day, Thursday, Holmes made his third trip to Amsterdam, and found them waiting for him.
Had he gone earlier in the day when the two men were fresh, they might have had him. Had he relented from his obsessive and life-long habits of vigilance, had he been less rested or more preoccupied with the telephone call he wished to place, he might have walked straight into their arms.
Had he not looked at flotsam and seen a shark, he might even have approached them openly.
As it was, his train was one of dozens the two men had watched pull in that day, and he was both alert and unremarkable, one of a thousand men in dark suits and city hats.
He spotted the first watcher while the train was slowing to a halt, a big man tucked into a niche near the exit, giving close scrutiny to every passing male, and to those females of a greater than average height. Holmes went still, his grey eyes boring into the nondescript figure on the far side of the crowded platform, instantaneously considering and discarding a hundred minute details of dress, stance, hair, attitude. There came a brief gap in the stream of passengers, and two things happened: The man shifted, as if his feet were sore, then he glanced across the station. The watcher had a partner.
Police? Not that the nearer man had trained as a constable, or even as a soldier-no man who’d pounded the pavements would fail to wear comfortable shoes for day-long surveillance. Plain-clothes detectives? But they were not local: No Continental tailor had cut those suits, and Holmes could place the source of both men’s hats to a specific London district.
Mycroft’s men? He was conscious of a sudden taste of optimism in the air; nonetheless, he kept his seat in the emptying car. Certainly the two had the look of the men his brother employed, quiet, capable, and potentially deadly. And the cut of the first man’s coat suggested a gun, which Mycroft’s agents had been known to carry.
However, these two were actively looking for him, searching for his face among the crowd. If Mycroft had wished to throw his brother a link, wouldn’t he have instructed his men simply to take a stand in some prominent location and wait for Holmes to approach them?
This pair was not offering themselves to Holmes: They were hunting him.
Ten seconds had gone by since he’d seen the first man, and although he wanted nothing better than to sit and explore the meaning of it, he had to move. He discarded the day’s paper and made a number of small adjustments to hat, collar, and tie that changed their personality, then moved smoothly to the door, where an ancient hunched dowager hesitated to commit her ivory-handled cane to the descent. “Kan ik u helpen?” he asked politely. The old woman peered up at him with suspicion, adjusting her fur collar with a diamond-studded hand. In the end, she either decided that she knew him, or that he was better than nothing, and tucked one gnarled hand through his arm. He helped her down from the car, bending his ear (and thus his spine) to her querulous and incomprehensible monologue, punctuating his nods with the occasional Ja! or Het is niet waar? as they went. They tottered down the platform, adding a finishing touch to the picture of an elderly couple, shrunk by age and forced by reduced circumstances to make their own way into an inhospitable city. Not at all what the two English agents had been told to watch for.
At the taxi rank, Holmes handed the woman into a cab and let it pull away.
He was sorely tempted to double back and turn the tables on the man with the gun. All it needed was a moment’s distraction for him to slip a hand inside the coat and make the weapon his. A short walk to a quiet place, and he could ask who had sent the two men.
But there were two. And Holmes did not know the city intimately, nor did he speak the language with anything approaching fluency. If it weren’t for Damian… but no, getting himself arrested would leave the lad dangerously exposed. Discretion never felt less a part of valour; on the other hand, walking away permitted the formulation of a plan.
What he required was a place to ruminate. Were he at home, he would settle into a nest of cushions with some shag tobacco and stare into nothingness, letting his mind chew its way through the facts and inferences. Here he had neither cushions nor shag, nor even a violin. He could, however, achieve the nothingness.
The cinema house was only half full, its patrons caught up in a romantic farce that would have been every bit as impenetrable in English. He threaded his way to a seat in the back, slid down against the upholstery, and lit his first cigarette.
The lights rose and faded twice while he sat, motionless but for the act of smoking.
The sight of the Englishman in the train station had hit his mind like the reagent in a chemical experiment: When the fizz of reaction subsided, what remained was not the same substance.
Two days ago, he had been investigating the Brothers case (albeit at a remove of some 200 miles across the North Sea) only to be confronted with a new puzzle: Why should Scotland Yard move against Mycroft Holmes? But, intriguing as his brother’s problems might be, his son’s welfare came first. Once he had evidence sufficient to convince Lestrade that Damian was innocent-or, at any rate, guilty of nothing more than extreme naïveté in his choice of wife-then he could risk approaching Lestrade.
But the Brothers case had abruptly become something much larger.
It was a rare investigation that achieved one hundred percent solution. Human beings are untidy, and the evidence they leave behind is equally complex: One of the main tasks of an investigator is to know which small facts are incidental and which are revealing.
The Brothers case, like many others, had minor points that had thus far escaped explanation. Holmes had no doubt that, once he was given the leisure to pursue the investigation unhindered by arrest warrants and emergency surgery, he would come to a solution that would prove satisfactory even to the official police.
It was one of those apparently peripheral gaps that he had asked Billy to look into for him: how it was that Brothers so readily slipped into a world of fairly sophisticated criminal activity. False identities and thuggish assistants are not everyday needs for the majority of individuals, and yet, before coming to England, the only obvious criminal tendency Brothers had evinced was the methodical fleecing of his flock of believers. Before coming to England, the man’s beliefs seemed to have been entirely theoretical; as far as anyone knew (and by anyone he meant Mycroft’s gifted agent in Shanghai, Captain Nicholas Lofte) only when he came to England did Brothers flower into homicidal mania.
Which came first, the criminality or the belief?
In fairness, Holmes would leave his mind open to the possibility of coincidence. It was unlikely, but within the realm of possibility, that there were two separate cases here, one involving Brothers, the other the shark moving through the waters, all but unseen until a swirl of motion-Mycroft’s arrest-gave him away.
Mycroft: arrested. Nearly as unthinkable, the warrants issued for himself and Russell. The ease with which James Harmony Hayden had slipped into the skin of Thomas Brothers, and the ease with which Thomas Brothers had found a man to be his bulldog. Finally, two armed and hard-eyed Englishmen in the Amsterdam station. All points that a lesser mind might dismiss as coincidence, but made Holmes reflect that a man capable of issuing a command to Scotland Yard might also send agents to Holland.
And what of Mary Russell?
If it hadn’t been for her message in the paper, he’d have begun to feel uneasy.
Was Thomas Brothers the shark whose fin stuck above the moon-dark sea? Had his true self been concealed beneath the façade of a religious nut-case? Was the speed with which he slipped into England related to the speed with which the two men had located Holmes?
Had Holmes, all unknowing, been trailing blood in the waters for the shark to follow, from Scotland to Amsterdam? A shark who was both incredibly fast-deploying men to Amsterdam at the drop of a hat-and powerful-having the men to deploy in the first place.
How long before they thought to search the private docks along the Dutch coast?
He dropped his cigarette on the floor, pressed past the knees of the cinema-goers, and turned towards the town centre, away from the train station. Let those two watch the mouse-hole until their feet wore off; it was more urgent to get Damian away than to question one of them. As for ’phone calls, well, any further information he might obtain from Billy would have to wait.
He found a copy of Thursday’s Times at a news stand near the tram stop, and tucked it under his arm as he trotted towards the approaching tram.
Forty minutes later, much jostled and aware that he was on edge, he forced himself to pause on the steps of the latest in a series of tram-cars and survey the street. There appeared to be no-one watching-no-one even standing still, at this time of day. Pedestrians and bicyclists wove along the streets and pavements, intent on their evening meal; the only stationary person in sight was a small boy hawking paper twists of warm peanuts.
Since the two men at the central station possessed three times the peanut-seller’s bulk and had shown no inclination for disguise, Holmes thought he was safe enough.
He made his way up the street to the train station, several stops from the town centre. A cautious survey of the platform was similarly reassuring: Either they (whoever they might be) were sanguine that he would appear in central Amsterdam, or their numbers were too limited to cover the outer reaches of the town.
Which might have been reassuring had it not been for the inner voice that whispered, They’re searching the coastland instead.
He bought a ticket for the next southerly train’s final stop; unfortunately, the train would not be here for an hour. An inn directly across the street had a promising-looking restaurant, but he would not sit in a well-lit room a stone’s throw from a station; instead, he walked back the way he had come, to a tiny hotel as neat as anything else he’d seen in this country. This place, unlike the larger hotels, required that he pay before he was given the key, although they, too, accepted without question his statement that his luggage would catch him up later that evening.
He was given a quiet room overlooking a row of gardens and clotheslines. He laid his hat and coat on the bed and dropped into a soft chair, stretching out his tired legs. After a time, he opened the paper.
During his tram-journeys, he’d scanned the agony columns and seen that his own message was there-“BEES may thrive in foreign lands…” He’d also noted the repetition of Russell’s, but that was as far as he’d got. Now, he went over the columns more closely, on the unlikely chance that he had missed a message placed by Mycroft at his most diabolically subtle. But there was nothing.
He let the paper collapse onto his knees, glowering down at the serried gardens. Mycroft was the cleverest man he knew, but it was stretching the bounds of credibility to think that his brother could have found him by deduction alone. He’d have had to know not only that they’d been in Wick, but why; then extrapolate that they would choose the path of least resistance because of Damian’s wounds; and after that, make a close enough analysis of winds and tides to plot a likely course over the waters to Holland. His brother was a genius, but he was not god-like. And for someone other than Mycroft to have done the calculations? Even Russell couldn’t have done it.
Ergo, whoever was responsible for those men had known where he was.
And none of his companions could have given his location away. Had it been Gordon or the doctor, the big Englishmen would have knocked on the VanderLowe front door, not stood for hours in a draughty train station.
No, the betrayal had been his own. And his only points of contact with the world had been the trunk call to Billy-whom he’d as soon mistrust as he would Russell-and the telegrams to Thurso and Wick.
It was true that the men had the look of Mycroft’s agents. Was it possible that he had mistaken their aggressive attitude? That their scrutiny was not due to hostile intent, but, in fact, desperation? Were they trying to keep him from some unseen threat?
Holmes stared at the darkening window, trying to construct an hypothesis to explain Mycroft’s having sent the pair, but it was only wishful thinking: His data were insufficient to fill in the too-large gaps in his model. Until he could reach London, he had to assume that an unknown enemy lay out there. Someone who swam in the murky depths beneath Thomas Brothers. Someone with authority over both Scotland Yard and the SIS. Someone who had decided the time was ripe to sink his teeth into Mycroft Holmes.
Whatever had driven Lestrade to issue the warrants and make the arrest, it had not been bribery: Of that Holmes was sure. But any man with family was vulnerable-as he was learning-and it would not take much to nudge Lestrade’s self-righteousness into outright action.
A criminal gang who could not only intercept telegrams or telephone calls (perhaps both) but also move a man like Lestrade to their whims was a dangerous thing indeed.
He could only pray he was a step ahead of them.
First he would make Damian safe. Then he would set his face to London, where all desires are known, from whom no secrets are hid.
He took out his pocket-watch: twenty-three minutes to waste before leaving for the station. He got up to twitch the curtains shut, then turned on the light and picked up the paper.
He read with care every mention of criminal activity, but he could discern no pattern, and found none of the expected indications of a powerful gang pushing for dominance.
Again he took out his pocket-watch to check the time: four minutes. He put it away, turned the next page, and felt his heart stop:
Mycroft Holmes, OBE
Inspector Lestrade turned the page, hiding the obituaries. He felt sick, as if the king himself had died. Worse, died on Lestrade’s watch.
It was not his fault-of course it was not. He’d been more than fair to both Holmes brothers all his career, but just because he’d respected the two men did not mean that he should change the law of the land for their convenience.
When Mycroft Holmes had vanished last week, he’d given the man until Monday, because any man had the right to a week-end away. But when Lestrade had telephoned to Whitehall again early Monday morning and been told Holmes was still missing, he’d put out a bulletin about the disappearance.
Now the man was dead, and Lestrade did not know why. Or even how. Nor would he-or apparently any other member of the Metropolitan Police-be permitted to find out: When the body was discovered, His Majesty had ordered it seized before it could undergo the usual examinations. Word was, the petty meddling of one of the Yard’s detectives was the reason.
Thursday had been the most hellish day in his career. It had begun with a ridiculous incident involving a missing person in Mayfair, some middle-aged Mama’s boy who hadn’t come home, and Mama knew the sorts of high-ranking officials who could demand that a chief inspector of New Scotland Yard turn out to do a constable’s job. Then the minute he’d walked into his office-ten minutes late because he’d had to stop in Mayfair-Lestrade had been called upstairs. There, he’d been unofficially reprimanded for searching Mycroft’s flat the week before and taking the man-albeit briefly-into custody. His protests that it had not been an arrest, and that he had been more or less ordered to carry through with it, had fallen on deaf ears. Mycroft Holmes had held a high position in the shadowy world of Intelligence, far above the reach of a lowly Scotland Yard inspector, and Lestrade was lucky the victim’s employers might be willing to forgo an official enquiry into the matter.
The underlying message being: Your job would be at risk if Whitehall didn’t want to avoid drawing further attention to the matter.
Then to top it off, he’d crept back to his desk like a caned schoolboy, and the first telephone call he’d had was from the biddy in Mayfair, blithely saying that her boy had come home and not to worry.
A note of farce to end the morning, leaving him to sit and stare impotently at the obituary.
He did not know where Mycroft Holmes had been for six days, or what he wanted to tell Lestrade that he could not have said in the office.
He did not know where Sherlock Holmes or his wife was.
He did not have any idea where Damian Adler or the other principals in the Brothers case were.
He had not even been able to prove that Damian Adler the painter was in any way related to Irene Adler the singer.
What he did know was, Mycroft Holmes was dead, and the last person known to have talked to him, a week ago, was Chief Inspector John Lestrade.
Peter James West re-read the obituary with a smile:
Mycroft Holmes, OBE
Mycroft Holmes, long-time employee of His Majesty’s Accounting Office, was found dead late on Wednesday evening outside of a club that had been the subject of numerous recent police raids. Scotland Yard report that he died of knife wounds, and ask for help from anyone who may have been in the vicinity of The Pink Pagoda late on Wednesday evening. His Majesty’s Government have issued no comment regarding the site of Mr Holmes’ death, but private statements indicate that Holmes had been unwell in recent months, and evinced a number of changes in his interests and way of life. Mr Holmes was presented the OBE in 1903 for his long service in uncovering incidents of fraud and corruption. Private services will be held Sunday afternoon at St Columba’s cemetery, London.
A neat piece of fiction, West thought with satisfaction. Poor Mycroft, getting on in years and suddenly discovering the wilder things in life (and the things for which The Pink Pagoda was known could be extremely wild). Reading between the lines (his lines, in fact), Mycroft was something of an embarrassment to his government, a busybody (“incidents of corruption”) on the surface and something more distasteful below.
Yes, Gunderson had done a neat job of it, disposing of the meddler while Peter James West was in clear public view, all that day and into the night. It had made for a fraught fifteen hours, every moment of it spent tensed for news that his plan had gone awry, but the new day had come and all was well. Holmes was dead, Gunderson had placed him for display and then spirited him off, and was now on the train north to deal with the stray ends in Orkney. And when the brother and his American wife appeared at the funeral, if Gunderson hadn’t returned, he and Buckner would manage.
Then, Peter West could get on with his work.
He closed the morning paper and gazed at the adverts and notices, a bleating chorus of the city’s personal concerns.
Bees and beekeeping, indeed.