Mycroft Holmes (8 page)

“Four hundred, sir.”

“An excessive use of force,” Cardwell said solemnly. “Still, the Crown
must
preserve its territories.”

“Yes, sir.” Holmes knew that he had to tread carefully with this next move, as its only relevance was to push Cardwell further into high dudgeon. “And of course, with that French Creole problem in Trinidad,” he said, “should France spar with Prussia and prevail…”

Cardwell’s great eyebrows shot up nearly to meet his hairline.

“France! Over
Prussia
?” he cried.

“I only mention the remote possibility of—”

“Never, sir.
Never!
‘Though on the face of it, Britain must remain neutral, I for one shall not lose a wink of sleep if noble, patient, deep, pious, solid Germany should weld itself into a nation over the objections of vaporing, vainglorious, gesticulating, quarrelsome, and oversensitive France.’”

Cardwell, done with quoting Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, stared daggers into Holmes, as if daring him to continue.

“What I am suggesting, sir,” Holmes began, looking properly chastised, “is a diplomatic scout-about to Port of Spain. A steamship leaves the day after tomorrow. Perhaps someone could…”

“No, no, no—not ‘someone,’ Holmes,” Cardwell said. “This requires delicacy. Tact. Who governs Trinidad at the moment?”

Holmes consulted his documents, though he had no need to.

“Baron Stanmore, Sir Arthur Charles Hamilton-Gordon,” he said.

“Hmm. Name sounds familiar. Oxford man?”

“A Cantabrigian.”

“Ah. As are you, Holmes. I know now whom to send.” And just like that, Cardwell was seated again, pen in mouth, tapping his teeth, scattering blue blotches. “You shall travel as my secretary, of course. That should provide you cachet. And do take along a valet of some sort, courtesy of this office.”

As Cardwell bent over his work, Holmes smiled to himself.

“Oh, and I shall importune my dear friend Sir James Clark to give you a thorough going over,” Cardwell muttered as he wrote. “Physician to Prince Albert and all that, retired now.”

“Too kind, sir,” Holmes protested. “But…”

“Tut, Holmes. As a representative of Her Majesty’s Government, we cannot have you traipsing about in ill health.”

Holmes’s smile disappeared.

Moments later he hurried out of Cardwell’s office, and almost immediately encountered Parfitt. The boy’s eyes were wider than ever.

“Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Holmes?” Parfitt inquired.

You can learn to exhale through your nose
, Holmes thought crossly. But what he said was, “No, Parfitt. That is, yes. I shall be leaving for Port of Spain the day after tomorrow. Kindly make the necessary arrangements on the West India and Pacific Steamship line bound for Barbados. Do not put me ’tween decks, for pity’s sake, but take care that the cabin is economically priced. No view, nothing fancy, room for two.

“Oh, and there’s this,” Holmes said as he handed back the research on Trinidad. “One item I found puzzling. Has to do with large sums of money making their way from Luxembourg to Jamaica via Colonial Bank, an adjunct of the Bank of England.”

“Yes,” the boy said, “I noticed it too. Did look a bit odd.”

“Well, there’s no need to make anything more of it, Parfitt. It’s no doubt the usual corruption. Nothing obvious, and nothing much to be done about it. But we don’t want to be caught off guard at a time of incipient war.”

“No, sir, we do not,” the boy agreed solemnly.

“If anything should be amiss, send word to me via the post in Port of Spain.”

“Yessir, Mr. Holmes,” the boy said.

“Oh, and would you be so kind as to see after my horse? You may of course ride him…”

“Yessir, Mr. Holmes,” Parfitt said with a huge grin. “I would be delighted, sir!”

“Well, pray don’t run him into the ground, Parfitt.”

“Of c-course I shall n-not,” the boy stammered nervously, but Holmes was no longer paying attention.

I shall have to purchase a third topcoat in as many weeks
, Holmes thought sourly,
one light enough for the tropics.

And just in case anything happens to me
, he continued to himself,
I should probably go round and say goodbye to Sherlock.

But first
, he amended,
that
blasted
physician…

* * *

Clark’s examination room was off the main parlor of an old edifice on Borough High Street. It boasted the frilly architecture meant to suggest the Italian Renaissance, but it was so faded—and its masonry so crumbled—that it looked more like a layer cake left in the sun too long.

Holmes followed a housemaid, who looked nearly as ancient as her surroundings, down a decrepit hall. He had to open his eyes wide to take in what little light could be had. She led him into the examining room and left with a grunt, as if he had importuned her somehow.

Everywhere he looked, boxes of surgical instruments were open and had been left untouched for so long that dust had settled upon them like the sprinkling of some inferior grade of flour. Lining the shelves were moth-eaten books, along with rows upon rows of jars, many with something or other floating within. Even his quick eye and sharp brain couldn’t discern what those uniformly gray masses were or might be.

Sir James Clark—ninety if he was a day, stethoscope in hand—toddled in. With no word of greeting, he set off to explore Holmes’s chest, all the while wheezing in a most unpleasant manner, then stared at Holmes accusingly with his cloudy blue eyes.

“Did you have rheumatic fever as a child?” he asked.

“Aged three,” Holmes replied. “Why?”

“Your heart is not the better for it.” Clark placed the stethoscope in another spot and listened more closely. “Not a pleasant sound at all—like water sloshing in there, Mr. Holmes.” He straightened up with some difficulty. “And you say you are going where?”

“Trinidad,” Holmes replied. “Port of Spain.”

The physician leaned closer, holding up the stethoscope next to Holmes’s lips. “Once again!”

“Trinidad!” Holmes said into the stethoscope.

The physician recoiled as if he had been struck.

“Nonsense!” he cried. “That will not do at all. You must avoid uncivilized places as if your very life depended on it.

“For it does!” he added.

Yet Holmes would not give in. He promised to take every precaution, and accepted Dr. Clark’s quinine compound as a prophylaxis—if not Dr. Clark’s offer to inject it right then and there, for the physician’s hands were trembling so that he could have been put to work churning butter. Then he bid the good doctor a hasty adieu, sprinted back outside into the sunshine with an overly dramatic sigh, and rode on to Westminster to say hello and goodbye to his brother Sherlock.

HOLMES TIED ABIE ALONGSIDE OTHER HORSES LINED UP IN THE
shadow of Westminster Abbey. From there, he crossed the lawn toward the Royal College of St. Peter, where Sherlock was to graduate in a year or so—at least, that was the hope. He was an indifferent student, which aggrieved his brother no end.

It was stunning how dissimilar two brothers could be.

Holmes resembled their mother, with her strange grey eyes and spun gold hair, whereas Sherlock took after their father, all dark lines and angles, as if he were a Gothic building that, while handsome enough, had a few joints out of alignment.

Holmes had embarked upon a civil career because he wanted to be of service to Queen and country, whereas Sherlock had no such notions. He was, Holmes thought with aggrieved affection, one of the most singularly self-centered individuals anyone could ever meet. And while Holmes had been a Queen’s Scholar and was popular with fellow students, Sherlock had few friends—perhaps none at all.

The sole advantage of this last was that Sherlock could always be reliably located in one of three places: the dormitory, for no other boy would be caught dead in such a dank and humid place unless a blizzard threatened; the theater, where Sherlock was sure to be positioned at the back of the auditorium, carefully observing the activities upon stage; or the library, his nose pressed into a book that never had anything to do with his studies.

Holmes settled upon the library, and was successful upon his first try.

* * *

There he was, his long, angular face obscured by James Cowles Prichard’s
Researches into the Physical History of Man
. His spider-like fingers were turning the pages gently but swiftly, as if he were absorbing the information, and not merely reading it. Holmes knew that the click of his steps across the marble floor would make no difference to Sherlock—and indeed, he didn’t even glance up.

“Sherlock,” Holmes said when he finally stood just inches away from his brother.

He looked up with an expression as casual as if they’d only seen each other minutes before, rather than weeks.

“It’s fascinating,” Sherlock said, nodding to the book in his hand.

“Yes,” Holmes responded. “I read it years ago.” For that was how the brothers greeted each other, eschewing hellos.

“
Naturally
you did,” Sherlock countered. “When one has a seven years’ advantage from birth, it is not a fair fight now, is it? You will therefore recall Prichard’s theory of moral insanity. He posits that there are some human beings devoid of the common thread of human decency. I posit that our mother might be one of them.”

“And I posit that you might be another,” Holmes replied, taking a seat across from him. “The question remains as to why you are reading Prichard. Something propelled you to investigate moral insanity. What was it?”

“William Sheward is
torturing
me,” his brother exclaimed dramatically. “That fifty-seven-year-old tailor who sliced his wife’s throat with a straight razor, cut her up into manageable chunks, boiled the pieces, then scattered them all over Norwich… a thumb here, a foot there, her entrails clogging up some poor innocent’s drain. And of course they never did manage to locate her head…”

“Why the gruesome and the macabre fascinates you so, I cannot fathom,” Holmes interjected. He had heard of the story, of course—everyone had, as it was strange indeed. The murder had occurred some eighteen years back, and the man had escaped punishment. In subsequent years he’d not only remarried, but had become the proprietor of the Key and Castle Public House in Norwich.

In spite of that, on the first of January, 1869, he’d walked into a London police station, confessed to the murder of his first wife, and had promptly been hanged for his trouble.

Sherlock leaned across the table. “If there is moral insanity,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper, “then there may be the reverse, a moral sanity, if you will, that comes upon one suddenly, like a fever. In thrall to this moral sanity, Sheward may have been compelled to come clean. It was, after all, the first of the year—a time for resolutions and whatnot. Later, when the fever passed, he tried to recant, but by then it was too late.”

“You look a mite feverish yourself. Do you really believe that?” Holmes asked, smiling.

“Of course not, it’s perfectly daft,” Sherlock responded sourly. “Nonetheless, the facts of the case are even more absurd than my theory. I’ve been wracking my brain, trying to conjure up a reason for his behavior.”

“Well, you’ve been wracking it too thoroughly,” Holmes said. “Think more simply. What grieved him? What prompted arguments with his wife? It was in the papers…”

Sherlock shrugged. “What prompts most arguments amongst couples? Money.”

“Yes. But you dismissed that clue out of hand, because you yourself dismiss money as beneath you. You allowed your feelings to get in the way of your deductions.”

“I did no such thing…” Sherlock protested, but his tone betrayed him.

“And the time of year?” Holmes went on. “What of that? Once again you dismissed a clue because you are not fond of holidays and celebrations.”

Holmes watched his brother’s face and could almost see the gears in his brain turning.

Sherlock’s eyes opened wide.

“The Key and Castle!” he exclaimed. “Perhaps it was undergoing financial difficulties… Perhaps their New Year’s Eve was not up to snuff, did not meet expectations…”

Holmes nodded his encouragement. “Go on,” he said.

Sherlock did so, his excitement building.

“He was now remarried,” he said, “and found himself in the same situation again, bickering with the wife over money. He’d had too much to drink the night before—perhaps had been drinking all night. He knew perfectly well what he was capable of, yet perhaps he loved her and did not want her to meet the same end as her predecessor. With age comes regret, and he was older and wiser.

“So, in order to stop himself from doing her great bodily injury, he confessed… and then he sobered up! Once again in control of his faculties, he tried to take it back, but it was too late.”

He stood up, very nearly vibrating with energy. “All I need do is make a quick trip to Norwich and ascertain how the business was faring a year back,” he continued. “Interrogate the wife about whatever bickering they did—”

“Though I am certain she would love nothing more,” Holmes interrupted, “you have your studies to think of.”