The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part XI

by David Marcum

  We were interrupted by Mrs. Hudson, showing in our visitor. Now that he was closer, I could see that he was not a gentleman, but far more. He came from that special breed of men that are the backbone of the Empire. Tough, resolute, and convinced of his role in life. I had served with such men in the Army, and there are none finer. Epicurus was in his early thirties and was lightly scarred about the face, as if he had fallen prey to sharp weapons. He was solid and had hard, working hands. Wordlessly, he handed a message to Holmes, who read it quickly and passed it to me. “ ‘Go immediately to Our Lady of Victories, Kensington’.” And it was signed ‘Mycroft’.

  “We must depart,” said Holmes. “Did you ask you cab driver to wait?” Epicurus nodded, and without further discussion we left.

  “Do you know this church, Holmes?”

  “I do. It is the Pro-Cathedral for the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Manning, and the London base of the unofficial yet influential Papal Envoy, Cardinal Luigi Antonio Tosca. Tosca was sent here twelve years ago after Cardinal Pecci was elected Pope Leo, for his own safety I believe.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “Tosca needed to be protected from his friends. There is a story from the conclave that Tosca was Papabile, likely to be voted the next Pope, until he ceded his support to Pecci. His supporters felt betrayed. They saw Tosca, who was from a high-ranking family, as the man who could help them reclaim their lands lost with the Papal States. When he failed them, as they saw it, they were unhappy and threats were made. Pecci, on becoming Pope Leo XIII, moved him to London.”

  Holmes must have seen the look on my face. “Is there something wrong, Watson?”

  “In all the years I have been your friend, I never knew of your interest in Papist politics. Indeed, rarely have I ever known you to be interested in anything not relevant to the most immediate matters at hand. It is as if you have been hiding an entire facet of yourself from me.” I tried not to sound regretful, but sometimes being the great man’s confidante was trying, and to find that there was a part of his life closed off from me was irksome.

  If Holmes noted I was vexed, he said naught. He turned to Epicurus. “My brother told you to go with us. Do you know why?”

  Epicurus shook his head.

  “No matter,” said Holmes. “Doubtless he thought your indomitable nature would be an asset.”

  “And his conversational skills,” I said. “The man has not said a word since we met. Is this more of the Diogenes Club? I know they place great value on silence, but surely they cannot restrict their staff outside their place of work.”

  “They don’t. Just as the club itself is named after Diogenes the cynic, whose philosophy is replicated by the curmudgeons within the walls of their club, the position of Epicurus is so named because, as one of the outward facing members of staff, he is expected to converse with the outside world. In comparison with the members, Epicurus is a chatterbox.”

  “But Epicurus was a philosopher of joy and bonhomie,” I said.

  “I suspect it may be the only time the Diogenes Club has ever attempted anything humorous,” said Holmes. Epicurus sat, rocklike, as we rode through Hyde Park towards the Kensington High Street. If Holmes knew why his brother had sent him with us, he did not say, and indeed the mystery of why we were going to the church seemed to envelop us in the back of the cab.

  We were met at the door by a man of the cloth and a man in a suit of good cloth.

  “Stoutbridge,” he said. “Foreign Office. This is Monsignor Della Chiesa. Please come in.”

  The Monsignor looked ascetically Italian. In a different light he may have been mistaken for a relative of Holmes, until he spoke, whereupon his accent marked his Latinate origin. He looked worried. Stoutbridge on the other hand seemed impatient, until my friend stepped into the light.

  “Why, Mister Holmes,” he said. “I was not made aware of your impending arrival.”

  “Arrival into what precisely?” I asked.

  “Patience, Watson,” said Holmes and he made towards the back of the church as if he knew where he was going.

  There were two rooms behind the altar. To the left lay the sacristy, the room where the vestments and accoutrements of the church where stored and where the celebrants prepared for service.

  The other room was much larger. Like the sacristy, it had the strong outer walls of the church on two sides and a high, vaulted ceiling which extended back from the church. The other two walls were interior, one shared with the sacristy, the other with the interior of the church. It was ungainly in size, too big to be a room of comfort, too small for a meeting room. It felt like a shop storeroom, and it had clearly been used to keep leftover material from the church construction. Ominous statues lurked in one dim corner, and there were boxes stacked in several places and a shelf laden with supplies.

  There was a table in the middle, and on it a sturdy wooden packing box. It had leather handles attached, as if the maker knew the contents would be heavy and wanted to make the burden easier.

  There was a chair next to the table, and a short rotund man sat there. He wore a fiery red cassock and sash, with black shoes and socks. He had a red zucchetto on top of his bald head as well as a wide-brimmed galero next to him on the table. His complexion matched his dress, and I thought briefly that he looked ready to explode from pressure, so red was his face. Monsignor Della Chiesa rushed to his side.

  “Eminence, you look unwell.” The Monsignor turned to us and clicked his fingers. “Fetch some water.”

  Nobody moved. Holmes walked over to the stone wall and examined it. “Stoutbridge,” he said. “Give Cardinal Tosca some of your brandy. Come, come. There is a flask inside your jacket. It will be more useful than the Monsignor’s request.”

  Stoutbridge did as he was asked. The Cardinal took a decent swallow and it seemed to do him some good.

  “Now, your Eminence,” said Holmes, “pray tell us why we are here.”

  Cardinal Tosca held up his hand, motioning for some more time, and Holmes replied, “No, I’m referring to Cardinal Manning. You may leave the safety of your dim corner sir, and come and join us in the light.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation and then one of the dim statues moved, revealing itself to be the scrawny figure of the Archbishop of Westminster. This once-rugged man, who had played cricket for Harrow and Balliol in his youth, was a shadow of the healthy sportsman he had been. One needed no medical degree to deduce that Cardinal Manning had been unwell for a while, and he did himself no favour with his fashion sense. Unlike the flamboyant scarlet of the Italian prelate, Manning wore a plain black cassock and sash, and the only indicator of his rank as a Prince of the Church was some delicate red piping on the sleeves and hems. The darkness of his cloth seemed to consume him, as did the hollowness of his gaunt face. His eyes, however blazed briefly with anger and colour before a more Christian-like demeanour came over him.

  “Your brother speaks highly of your talent for intrusiveness,” he said. “Despite Cardinal Tosca’s protestations, I insisted they send someone to get to the bottom of this.”

  “Yet you wanted nothing official,” said Holmes. “There are no police here. Indeed, the only government presence is Stoutbridge, who is no high flyer at the foreign office.” As if to prove the point, the comment sailed over the Whitehall man’s head.

  Manning said nothing, gazing evenly at the gathering.

  Holmes gazed at Tosca. “Very well, then. What is missing?”

  “Dio Mio! How do you know it is something missing?” said Tosca. “It has only recently happened. And nobody else knows.”

  “There are two reasons why people hire me in dark of night. Murder or theft. There is no dead body, ergo quod erat demonstrandum. As to knowledge of the event, at least eight people know so far. Stoutbridge, Della Chiesa, Epicurus, Cardinals one and two, Watson, Mycroft, an
d me. This will spread the longer we wait and whatever you want kept secret will be impossible to contain. If no one will tell me what is missing, I’m afraid that I can’t help.” He walked over to the crate and looked in briefly. “My word,” he said. “Are these the cameos?”

  Even Manning was surprised. “What could you possibly know of them?”

  “That is of no consequence,” said Holmes. Pointing at the gap in the box, he said, “Is there only one missing, or are there other surprises lurking?”

  “I’m impressed, Mister Holmes,” said Cardinal Manning. “Even knowing of your distant relative in the church, I am still intrigued by your ability to render something out of nothing.” He gestured towards the crate as if blessing the room and paced gently back and forth. “These are cameos like no other ever seen. Unlike the oval charms that some ladies purchase while visiting the Riviera, these are historical renditions of history rendered nearly two-thousand years ago.”

  “Like the Grand Camée de France,” said Holmes.

  “Indeed,” Manning replied. “Until these were recently found in the vaults in Rome, the Grand Camée was considered the best example of its type. It celebrates a point in Tiberius Caesar’s reign when the dynasty seemed established, as the young Nero is a prominent part of the artwork.”

  “And what do these cameos display?” asked Holmes.

  “We don’t know,” said Manning. “At least not with any certainty. They were undiscovered until a year back, when they were found by a monk in an obscure part of the Vatican archives. Normally they would be studied with great intent and diligence for many years before they would ever see the light of day, and while our own scholars have some theories, they are not definite as to what exactly is depicted.”

  “Then why are they here?” I said.

  “They are an act of good faith,” said Cardinal Tosca. “Once they were discovered, I was able to prevail upon the Holy Father to have them transported to the British Museum so that they could be shared with the British public, even as the scholars from both lands investigate them.”

  It was a clever idea. The Roman church had a foothold in our society but were still viewed with some suspicion. Sharing such undiscovered greatness would stand the Papists in good stead.

  “Tell me what transpired,” said Holmes.

  “The crate arrived today,” said Monsignor Della Chiesa. “It was carried in by two men and placed on that table. Then, when they left, the Cardinal and I opened the crate to ensure the contents. That was when we found that one was missing.”

  We all peered into the crate. The two remaining cameos were each made of a glasslike substance and were some eighteen inches by twelve in length and breadth, while an inch thick. Holmes picked up the bill of lading and I read it with him. It showed a delivering weight of the crate as a hundred and twenty pounds. He turned to Epicurus, whispered to him, and watched him leave whence we had come in. When Holmes turned back to us, the bill of lading was no longer to be seen.

  “This time tell the truth please, Monsignor.” There was an uneasy silence. “Very well. When you opened the box, all three of the cameos were there. You then left the room, and when you came back one was missing.”

  The Monsignor’s fallen expression said it all.

  Cardinal Manning filled in the gap. “Now that we have tried your way, Don Luigi, maybe we can do this properly?” He turned to Holmes. “Monsignor Della Chiesa is very loyal and is trying to protect the Cardinal.”

  “Indeed,” said Tosca, “and I allowed myself to be persuaded.” He stood up and stretched himself into a man of importance. “These cameos are most important to me and to the tetchy relations between the church and your country. What has happened here must be covered up. We need to let the British Museum know that there are only two cameos and that the other will not be coming.”

  “I care not for your games,” said Holmes. “I want only the truth. Somebody here is going to tell me what happened.”

  “What makes you think something did?” said Manning. He asked out of the genuine curiosity of a scholar.

  “Because you do not hunt a rabbit with an elephant rifle,” I said. “If it was merely a missing cameo during the delivery, you’d have called the police, not my colleague. That you have arranged for his services means that only his services will suffice. Otherwise it would be excessive.”

  Holmes nearly smiled. “Thank you, Watson. That was an eloquent précis.”

  “I alone was here,” said Tosca. He was interrupted by the return of Epicurus, who handed Holmes a note. Holmes read it then placed it in his pocket.

  Tosca continued. “I wished to check the cameos for myself, make sure they were not damaged. I opened the crate and saw that one was missing.”

  “No,” said Holmes. “Epicurus here has just verified with the shipping company. The weight of the box they delivered is consistent with how heavy three cameos and a crate would be. Each cameo is about thirty pounds, and the crate would be similar. A hundred and twenty pounds all told. This box is a quarter lighter, I’ll wager. Epicurus?”

  Epicurus picked up the box by the handles, tested the weight in his arms, and then put it down. “Eighty-eight, mebbe eighty-nine pounds.”

  “Which means that the box came here with all three of them packed, and one of them went missing in this room.”

  “And why should we believe this man’s parlour trick?” said Stoutbridge, pointing at Epicurus.

  “Because he’s a Gunner.” I said. “He served in the Royal Artillery and had a distinguished career, winning medals and fame, including the highest glory of them all. But even more importantly, the men who man the guns learn about weights and measures. It is their life, and if they are wrong it is their death. After a thousand loads, most gunners can tell the weight of a charge to the nearest half-pound just by picking it up and putting it in the cannon. If he tells you that box weighs eighty-eight pounds now, you may trust him.”

  “Don Luigi misinformed you, because the truth is so much stranger,” said Cardinal Manning.

  “Non mi dire!” said Tosca. “It is such a strange tale I feared you would not believe me. It is true they were delivered here for our inspection to make sure they had travelled safely, and the cathedral has this safe storeroom where they could be kept overnight. There is only one entrance, and only one key. I opened one of the cameos and laid it out on the table, but the exertion was too much for me. They are heavy, and as you can see, well wrapped. I left the room, locking the door behind me.”

  “You are sure of that?” said Holmes, interrupting the Cardinal.

  “I am sure,” he said.

  “And when you came back, it was missing?” Holmes seemed disinterested, and as Tosca was answering he whispered to Epicurus, who again took his leave.

  When Tosca had finished lamenting the loss, Holmes addressed Manning. “And it was you, Eminence, who decided to call for diplomatic help instead of the police. No doubt you have the ear of half the cabinet and all the Mandarins of Whitehall, my brother included.”

  “You are correct, Holmes. I walked in on Don Luigi as he was unlocking the door. We discovered the theft together. Don Luigi did not want a fuss, but I insisted. Eventually we compromised. No police due to the diplomatic delicacy. But how did you deduce that?”

  “You are English, sir, and your sense of fair play shines through your cloak of religious purpose. You are a man who will always try to do what is right, but you are worried that you may damage the career of your friend Tosca, as well as embarrass the Pope. So you called in a favour. What you could not have known is that you are the only one playing fair this evening. No one wants this solved, least of all Cardinal Tosca.” He chose this moment to walk away in a flurry of coat and hat, leaving me to flounder in his wake.

  “Then what will you do?” said Manning to his departing back.

  “I
will solve it,” he said, “and then we will see what the politicians and bureaucrats think when they are faced with the truth.”

  “What is going on Holmes?” I said as we settled into the cab.

  “We are in the middle of a delicate game, Watson. There is much afoot.”

  “And a locked room mystery as well,” I said.

  “The room was locked,” said Holmes, “but there is no mystery. There is, however, more to this than stolen artwork. Let me drop you at home, lest your wife worry about the company you are keeping. If you wish, come round in the morning. We shall break our fast together and then there is someone I want to meet. I think you will find him interesting. He is a distant cousin, and by some way the most intelligent man in the country. Even Mycroft will attest to that.”

  “I thought the Diogenes Club would be our next stop?” I said. “Your brother put you up to this after all.”

  “Yes,” said Holmes. “Then he sent the drunken halfwit, Stoutbridge, to represent the government - surely a sign they wish to have nothing to do with this. There is no point talking to Mycroft. Whatever game he’s playing has already run its course in his head. Now he’s waiting for the pieces to fall into place.”

  “But he also sent Epicurus with us,” I said. “As if he knew we would need him. Why would he do that?”

  “Aside from his ability as a scale? Epicurus is also brave and resolute. I do believe that he was sent with us as a protector. Mycroft, in his own unfeeling manner, used Epicurus to warn us that the solution to this theft is fraught with danger.”

  “Where is Epicurus? Where did you send him?”

  “Outside, to stay and watch the cathedral. I shall ask Wiggins to relieve him later.”

  I would have asked why, but Holmes lent back into the cab with a look I knew so well and he said nothing more save, “Good night, Watson,” when he dropped me at home.

  The next morning, I arrived at 221b Baker Street early to find Mrs. Hudson waiting for me at the door. “There’ll be no breakfast here,” she said. “He’s been up all night, pacing and slamming books. He’ll be rushing you out the door.” My stomach rumbled in protest then she pressed a packed meal in a bag into my hand.