The Empty Birdcage

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  “—my point is,” Mycroft cut in impatiently, “the ‘anonymous source’ is you. Is your education really so egregious that you would risk your own good name just to have done with it?”

  “Education is beside the point, Mycroft. Neither here nor there. And it is certainly incidental to what I should be studying in order to perfect my skills.”

  “The sleuthing skills, I suppose,” Mycroft said. “But why? I mean to say, why that? Why not, first, proper schooling?”

  “Come now, that is akin to asking a fox hound why it does not care to round up sheep, why it is the sound of the bugle and not the ‘baa’ that entices. I do not know, I cannot say. I can declare only that this is how I am constructed, that it is my constitution. My fate, if you believe in such things. And it does no good preferring that I were this or that or the other.”

  “Sherlock, be sensible. Unless you propose to join the constabulary, whoever would employ you as a sleuth? And if you cannot make a go of it, a young man of your age and station has no options outside of education or the priesthood—”

  “You cannot possibly be suggesting—”

  “Don’t be a ninny. The thought of you as a clergyman is laughable. My point is that you are trained for nothing. And that our particular clan has no business that could absorb you into its bosom. But neither are we of the social stature that you can live your life as a gadabout.”

  “But I shall succeed,” Sherlock retorted.

  “You cannot know that!” Mycroft protested. “And, even if you could, what would be your lot then, eh? An ‘Inspector Bucket,’ as you mentioned? That is not in line with what our people do, who we are! I do not mean to be crass, but such a ‘profession’ is for those of low breeding, with few means and little education.”

  “But there you are describing me to a T!” Sherlock protested. “Breeding aside, you yourself made it clear that I have no means, and certainly less education than what I should have. As for ‘our people,’ surely you could not have been speaking of our mother’s drug addiction or our father’s pathological passivity. For if so, which of those should I emulate?”

  Mycroft, battling his own exhaustion and his deep disappointment, took another moment to think. Sherlock had shut the door on Downing, making certain that it could not be undone, at least not before the end of term. Mycroft could always cut off funds as punishment, but Sherlock would find a way to procure just enough for whatever harebrained scheme he concocted next, and he would doubtless put himself in harm’s way doing so. And trying to talk him out of his plans once he’d made up his mind was, of course, impossible, for he would not be dissuaded.

  “Mycroft, might you cease to rock to and fro? It is giving me nausea.”

  And, in fact, Mycroft had been rocking avidly enough to have moved positions. He planted his feet upon the ground and said, with renewed determination, “I know this is just your ham-fisted way of trying to follow the Fire Four Eleven Murders.”

  “Mycroft!” Sherlock exclaimed. “Do not tell me you have kept track of my vulgar predilections?”

  “Douglas suggested that the case might interest you,” Mycroft admitted. “He guessed that the telegram you sent to the Imperial Hotel was for that very purpose.”

  “Ah,” Sherlock murmured, a shadow crossing his near-handsome face. “Interesting that he should hazard a guess about me that is closer to the mark than yours might be.”

  He still remembers that it was Douglas who saved his life, and not I, Mycroft thought with a pang of hurt and guilt. He still resents me.

  “So, may I go?” Sherlock asked, hopeful. “Might you come to my aid? Shouldn’t cost much; I am training my body to do with a minimum of sleep and sustenance. I have already made quite the remarkable discovery about murders one and two.”

  Mycroft rose to his feet with a groan, that abomination of a rocker fighting him every inch of the way.

  “I am worn to a husk. I need rest,” he declared.

  “Then shall we talk in the morning?” Sherlock asked—sounding, for just a moment, like a hopeful adolescent.

  “No. Quite apart from every other consideration, I cannot have you put yourself in jeopardy. But what we shall discuss, in the morning, is where you are to lodge over the summer, how you shall occupy your time, and how I am to insert you into university again next term. If not at Cambridge, then somewhere else. Anywhere else.”

  Sherlock stared at him blandly, hands folded in his lap, not even deigning to appear the least bit worried about consequences—the little beggar.

  “Mycroft, sooner or later you shall have to see it my way, for I warn you in advance that I have no other plans, nor do I mean to unearth any. I am afraid it is this or nothing.”

  “It might have to be nothing, then,” Mycroft said quietly as he closed the door behind him.

  13

  WHEN MORNING CAME, MYCROFT SENT WORD TO DESHI Hai Lin, at his residence in Pimlico, that he and Douglas would accept the charge of finding Bingwen Shi, Lin’s future son-in-law. Then he had breakfast with Sherlock; or, rather, Mycroft had breakfast, while Sherlock hardly deigned to glance at the bountiful offerings, though he did appear to be greedy for cocoa. He poured cup after cup, and then asked for more.

  “I have been researching chocolate,” he explained when Mycroft raised an eyebrow. “Good for brain function, and for the heart, though I have no need of the latter.”

  “No need of a heart?” Mycroft parried.

  Though he did not care for cocoa, Mycroft nonetheless ordered a cup of his own, and drank it to the dregs.

  Rather than speak of Sherlock’s future, as Mycroft had suggested the night before, they kept to themselves, reading the newspapers: Sherlock his crime columns, Mycroft the world news and financials. It was as if each were waiting for the other to broach the subject, which neither seemed keen to do.

  While reading, Mycroft must’ve made a small noise in his throat, for Sherlock looked up at once.

  “Yes…?”

  “What? Oh. Nothing. Well, not nothing; it is, in fact, cataclysmic. The failure of the stock market in Vienna is surely a harbinger for England and the United States,” he declared, indicating the article he was reading. “But of course, no one wishes to utter a peep, as if silence alone could prevent the demise of—”

  He paused when Sherlock yawned.

  “Never mind,” Mycroft said.

  “It is not the conversation,” Sherlock replied.

  “Isn’t it?” Mycroft asked.

  “Well, yes, I suppose it is, in the sense that I have nothing of import to add to matters of economy, and so it seems particularly one-sided. But surely you have not ‘invested,’ or whatever it is that people do, to the extent that you might be adversely affected by this downturn?” he added, suddenly looking concerned.

  Mycroft was about to reply that, no indeed, he had not invested in any losing propositions, and that Sherlock’s paltry needs were but a drop in the ocean of his bank account. But that would have entailed sharing his economic status. Sherlock was the last person to whom he wished to divulge any youthful indiscretions that may have resulted in his present fortune.

  “So far, so good,” he replied vaguely.

  Sherlock disappeared behind his columns, and Mycroft behind his. A moment later, Sherlock’s two fingers appeared at the top of Mycroft’s paper, pushing it down until they were eye to eye.

  “How is it possible that you have not yet noticed that the Fire Four Eleven murderer has claimed a tenth victim?” he demanded.

  “Perhaps because I have not yet perused the crime columns!” Mycroft replied in his defense.

  “It is on the front page! Of the very paper that you now hold in your hands! I can see it from here!”

  Mycroft took a look at the front page. “A tenth victim? I gather there is more within?”

  “No! That is the infuriating part. There must be a reason.”

  “Perhaps they do not have enough facts?”

  “A reporter arrives, pad and pen in h
and. There is the location. There is the body. There is the subject, male or female, along with an age. Then, if one does his job even passably, there is the position of the body; the means of disposal, if visible; the hour of demise, if noted. Surely it is not so difficult!”

  “Sherlock, keep your voice down, there is nothing to shout about…”

  “Details? Ha! None! Nonexistent!” Sherlock continued. “Neither location nor gender of the victim is provided, much less time of day! I know more about victim number four, Bart Swinton, aged fourteen, from Glasgow—which is all I know of him—than I do of this latest!”

  “Swinton? Well, there you are!” Mycroft said. “The Swintons are an old line of feudal barons. No doubt many of the locals are employed by them, and are too needful of their employment to speak out of turn—”

  “Well there you are! You are making my point!” Sherlock exclaimed.

  “I am making no one’s point,” Mycroft protested. “And you are much too involved!”

  “I am going for a walk.”

  With that, Sherlock excused himself from the breakfast table and marched out, paper still in hand.

  Mycroft barely had a quarter hour’s peace when one of the Queen’s equerries arrived at the door, with a note.

  Mr. Holmes,

  We desire a brief conference this afternoon at 2. Inform my equerry if that is amenable, and a carriage shall be sent for you at the proper hour.

  Victoria R.

  Mycroft wondered if perhaps she wished to discuss Austria’s collapse. But then why such short notice? He asked the housemaid to draw him a bath and went upstairs to his wardrobe, but he could not find what he was searching for.

  “Ah, there you are, Mrs. McAllister,” he said when the housekeeper replied to his ring. “Have you seen my latest purchase from New & Lingwood?”

  “I have indeed, sir,” she said. “It is being pressed. Shall I go and fetch it?”

  “If you would… But why is it being pressed when I have only just purchased it?”

  Mrs. McAllister swallowed and glanced at the floor. “I believe that Master Sherlock may’ve borrowed it.”

  “He’s gone nowhere! For what?”

  “When I… came upon him, he informed me that he was testing various fabrics, sir, to see what odor they emit when burned. Apparently, ‘a silk warp with a weft of worsted yarn’ emits a very particular odor.”

  “He burned my shirt?” Mycroft exclaimed.

  “No, sir, no! A small singe at the hemline! Hardly noticeable, easily repaired!”

  Mrs. McAllister looked so woebegone that Mycroft gave her leave to go. As she was exiting, Sherlock appeared, still holding the newspaper, and began to pace about.

  “What do you mean by burning my shirts?” Mycroft demanded.

  “I burned nothing. I singed a tiny, insignificant piece of—”

  “Why does everyone seem to think that singeing shirts is insignificant?” Mycroft shot back. “You have been here but a few days, and already even the servants’ standard for decent behavior has plummeted!”

  “I saw the Queen’s equerry drive off. Has she sent for you?” Sherlock demanded.

  “Surely that is not an uncommon occurrence,” Mycroft replied, baffled. “What of it?”

  “This! This!” Sherlock bellowed, slapping the newspaper into the palm of his hand with equal parts elation and outrage.

  “I cannot hear the litany again,” Mycroft warned.

  A knock upon the door, and Mrs. McAllister returned with the shirt. She handed it to Mycroft as if she’d been personally culpable of setting it on fire.

  “I must get ready,” Mycroft began.

  “No one is stopping you,” Sherlock said in a huff, clearly intending to remain precisely where he was.

  Mycroft decided against the bath, discarded his robe and put on the shirt, taking care to button it before he turned around again so that Sherlock would not notice the scar upon his chest.

  “Clearly, it is a conspiracy,” Sherlock muttered.

  “If you must continue to stand about and be a nuisance, make yourself a useful nuisance at least,” Mycroft said as he handed Sherlock his cravat. Once in a while, Mycroft would experience odd symptoms, such as tingling fingers, and at the moment he was having a difficult time with his tie.

  “Chin up!” Sherlock commanded as he worked. “Do you not see how I am needed?”

  “Tying ties, you mean? Yes, perhaps you could become a valet, if you were not so impatient.”

  “I am not in the mood for your juvenile humor, Mycroft. This is a serious matter.”

  “How could you be needed if there is no story?”

  “No story as yet, you mean. Even you, the eternal skeptic, must find it odd that this ‘non-story’ would emerge at this particular juncture!”

  “What—Sherlock! Loosen it up slightly, it is a cravat, not a garrote! What particular juncture are you referring to?”

  Sherlock sighed, as if the answer were obvious. “Three hours after the paper’s release, the Queen asks of your availability. Sends a carriage to fetch you—”

  “Yes, for that is what she stated that she would, in fact, do.”

  “Clearly, whoever perished must be of some import to her, so as to merit this combination of circumspection and haste! There!” he exclaimed with a flourish.

  Mycroft eyed the cravat. His younger brother, who in the past several months had begun to grow punctilious about his own wardrobe, had tied the thing lopsided.

  “Look,” Mycroft said, “if there were some remote connection between Her Majesty and this haphazard killer, she possesses her own police force. She would not need me. Besides, I am neither interested in, nor am I adept at, such plebeian endeavors.”

  “Fine. Then might we make a small wager?” Sherlock said as Mycroft placed his watch into the pocket of his waistcoat and headed for the door. “If I am correct, and this audience has to do with the murders, you will bring me on as a consultant and pay me a living wage. If not—”

  “If not, you shall never broach the subject again. Not ever. Not this mystery, nor any other cockamamie ‘mystery’ that might follow in this one’s wake. And you shall pass the summer in suitable and safe employment, as a clerk somewhere, and when the new term begins at Downing, provided I can persuade them to take you back, you shall remain there until you are well and fully educated.”

  “Ah. And here I thought you were so brilliant,” Sherlock said, smiling. “Then you go and make such a poor wager as this?”

  With that, Sherlock stepped out and went down the hall to his own room. A moment later, Mycroft could hear him playing upon his vielle, a little ditty that sounded—as did everything that came out of the vielle—vaguely medieval. And he wished with all his heart that Sherlock were not such a strange bird. For life tended to be less kind to those who did not quite fit in.

  14

  IT TOOK NEARLY THREE HOURS TO TRAVEL BETWEEN St. John’s Wood and Windsor Castle. The spring afternoon was chilly and gray, all the better to set off the myriad greens of the massive grounds, and the honey-colored Bagshot Heath stone of the palace. Though altered here and there over the years, it was still ‘an exceeding profitable and commodious spot,’ as William the Conqueror had once described it—and indeed it was one of Mycroft’s favorite works of architecture in all of England.

  He attempted to keep his focus on the architecture, rather than upon the jumbled thoughts that leapt through his mind, including, oddly enough, food.

  His appetite, which had been beggarly for more than a year, had returned with a vengeance. It was all he could do to not think of eating every moment. He lay a hand on his abdomen to assure himself that he had not put on weight, and indeed he had not.

  Not yet, he mused. But the sedentary lifestyle does not bode well…

  Even so, he could not help but to smile a little. A few months before, he hadn’t expected to have any sort of a life, never mind a lifestyle. And although it would probably not be long enough to permit him a f
amily, the sudden concern about a growing belly seemed a peculiar blessing.

  The carriage halted, and he alighted at Windsor Castle’s south range, near the tower. From there, he was ushered into the Queen’s private audience room, where Prince Albert himself had supervised the decor. Above his head, surrounding a chandelier so long that it reached nearly to the top of the door frame, was a high and elaborately decorated plaster ceiling cove that bore the bas-relief busts of English rulers from William the Conqueror to the Queen herself. The walls were covered in a trellis pattern, over which St. George rode majestically upon horseback. It was lovely, but also a bit dizzying; and Mycroft realized not for the first time—Bagshot stone notwithstanding—how unadorned and almost severe his own tastes tended to be.

  The Queen was late, as usual, and Mycroft tried not to fret. Attempting to talk to her about the economy, however essential, was a losing proposition unless she herself brought it up. As for the rest, he’d already had a few indications that he might lose his wager with Sherlock, specifically from two display cabinets on either side of the door. Inside were miniature portraits of various royal relatives, from watercolors to enamels and plumbago drawings, but their alignment and order were altogether wrong.

  Before he could explore further, the Queen made her entrance. Mycroft turned and bowed. Victoria did not extend her hand, as was her habit, but stood rather stiffly with them cupped at her waist. A slight nod of her head shooed away the secretary who’d accompanied her. Then she sat at a small sofa while indicating a lyre-shaped chair across from it.

  Mycroft did as commanded, leaning slightly forward so he did not sink into the too-soft cushion.

  “Mr. Holmes,” she said, appraising him. “You appear less pale than the last time we spoke.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.”