*
A familiar face greeted Mrs Hudson when she opened the front door of 68b Pall Mall just before mid-day. It was Inspector Lestrade.
“Mrs Hudson,” he said, taking off his hat and twisting it slowly in his hands, “I came as fast as I could when I heard the news.” The tocsin had sounded for the Inspector in the unlikely surroundings of the Scotland Yard canteen, famed for the strength of its tea and the enormous size of its sandwiches. Lestrade had not hesitated for one second. He had written a note to his superiors saying that his wife’s mother was at death’s door and requesting a week’s compassionate leave. He might imperil his career, he might endanger his pension, but Inspector Lestrade knew where his duty lay. Mycroft Holmes must be rescued from the clutches of his enemies and restored to work for the good of the nation.
“There’s some devil at work here, Mrs Hudson,” he told her, sipping at a cup of her finest Ceylon tea and a homemade biscuit, “or my name’s not Lestrade!”
Mrs Hudson told him everything she remembered about that terrible morning. It was already taking on the shape and feel of a nightmare in her mind. Lestrade was quick to seize on one point. Not for him the abstract reasoning beloved of Sherlock Holmes’s elder brother, the Inspector was a man of action. “The dead man, whatever his name was,” he said, “how do you think he got in? You say you weren’t here at the time of his appointment. You say that Mr Holmes would not have let him in. How, in God’s name, did he get through the door? That’s a Yale pinhole tumbler lock you’ve got down there, isn’t it? You couldn’t just give it a shove and expect it to open up, could you?”
Mrs Hudson nodded her agreement. Inspector Lestrade was lost in thought. Twice he seemed on the verge of saying something, twice he refrained.
“Have you had that lock long, Mrs Hudson?” he said at last.
“That’s the other thing, Inspector,” she said. “It’s quite new, that lock. I only had it put in about six weeks ago. The old one had grown very unreliable.”
Lestrade scratched his head. Then he smiled. “I have it, Mrs Hudson! Or I think I have it! I remember the other Mr Holmes, Mr Sherlock, saying once: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth! The lock, don’t you see? Somehow or other the villains must have got their hands on a duplicate key! Tell me who installed the lock, Mrs Hudson, and I will get onto them immediately. There is not a moment to lose!”
As ever, the Inspector was buoyed up by the prospect of action.
“Why, Inspector, the lock was installed by Linklaters of Piccadilly. They are a most respectable firm.”
“Good, Mrs Hudson, I shall report back.”
Lestrade departed at high speed for the locksmiths of London’s West End. Mrs Hudson put on her best coat and hat and headed for Victoria Station.
*
Mycroft Holmes did not really recover full possession of his faculties until early evening on the day of his arrest. His brain took a long time to clear. He surveyed the bleak surroundings of his prison cell, the hard bed, the bucket in the corner, the lack of windows, the grill on his door for the warders to inspect him. He lay down on his bed and shook some flakes of skin off his shoulders. The great brain, which had until the day before patrolled the affairs of all the Government Departments in Great Britain, turned to consideration of his position and how he might begin to rescue himself from his predicament.
*
Some hours before, Mrs Hudson was in a corner seat of the one fifteen express from Victoria Station to Eastbourne. Her mind travelled back as the countryside shot past her window, the speed of the train causing the leaves on the trees close to the track to shiver in the breeze of its passing. Tomorrow, she reflected sadly, was her wedding anniversary. She remembered the day as if it were yesterday, the high tenor voice of the vicar, the choir singing slightly out of tune in the barracks chapel, the tall, commanding figure of Lieutenant William Hudson waiting for her at the altar, his voice deep and solemn as he said ‘I will’, the honour guard of her new husband’s soldiers, swords raised aloft in the sunshine, lined up outside on the path. Nine months and fourteen days of married happiness had followed that blessed day, until Lieutenant Hudson was shot through the heart by a Boer sniper out on the South African veldt. Another, sadder service followed. Mrs Hudson could still recall ironing his husband’s best uniform and polishing his medals when he was laid out for his burial.
She took a cab when the she reached Eastbourne. She was not going to the seaside, Mrs Hudson, but to a small cottage she had never visited before deep in the folds of the Sussex Downs. She wondered at the extent of the domestic chaos she would find when she reached her destination. It was a pretty little house, on two floors, with the remains of bedraggled roses draped round the front door, a couple of handsome, if grubby, windows on either side. There was no reply when she rang the bell. She noticed a path leading to a garden round the back and set out to find the man she had come to see. He was wearing a great smock that had once been white and a visor to protect his face. All around him were beehives and a continuous humming sound that sounded pleasant to Mrs Hudson’s ears, more accustomed to the noise and bustle of the city.
“Mrs Hudson,” said the figure, advancing to greet his visitor, “this is a pleasant surprise indeed. Come inside, pray, and I will make you a cup of tea. You must be in need of refreshment after your travels. I see from the faint stains on your coat that you have been weeping on your journey. I hope the news is not too terrible.”
He showed her into a living room where the female hand had not been visible for months, if not years. No woman, Mrs Hudson reflected sadly, could have endured the amount of mess and clutter in the place, the books and papers and pamphlets lying about on all available surfaces, the dust on the tables and the shelves, the odd bee keeping smock, obviously unwashed, draped across the sofa.
Sherlock Holmes returned with two cups of tea in mugs that had seen better days, chipped around the edges, and with smears on their sides.
“Now then, Mrs Hudson,” said Sherlock Holmes, “the facts if you please. Just give me the facts of the matter.”
Mrs Hudson noticed that there were now two patches of white, almost silver hair on either side of her former master’s face. She related the full story as best she could, almost breaking down when she told of the sad transit of Mycroft Holmes from Government Auditor to common criminal, escorted out of his own rooms with handcuffs on his wrists. She mentioned the visitors after the horrid Inspector Robinson from Brighton had left, the Treasury Solicitor and Inspector Lestrade.
“How very curious, Mrs Hudson,” remarked Holmes, staring at her intently as she completed her narrative. “There are a number of interesting points to this affair.
“But tell me, Mrs Hudson, I feel that you may have omitted some detail in your account of the murdered man. You were uneasy at that point as if there was some fact that might have slipped your memory.”
Mrs Hudson looked carefully at her hands. She felt she had failed an exam of some kind and was about to be reprimanded.
“You are quite right, Mr Holmes. I had nearly forgotten. It was the hands of the dead man. The suit was of good cut, the shirt was a gentleman’s shirt, quite new I would have said. They could both have come from one of those fashionable tailors in Savile Row. But his hands were very rough, with callouses and broken nails, as if the dead man had been a workman of some kind.”
“Excellent, my dear Mrs Hudson, you surpass yourself in observation! The problem which you have just told me, although it can admit of but one explanation, has still some distinguishing features.”
Sherlock Holmes sprang to his feet and paced about the room, neatly bypassing the obstacles, principally books and open pamphlets, that lay in his path. He paused by the window and returned to his chair, rubbing his fingers together as he went.
“Of course, Mrs Hudson, there is no need for me to take action in this matter!”
“Why ever not, Mr Holmes? Your poor brot
her is languishing in prison like a common criminal even as we speak!”
“Ah,” said Holmes, “but consider the facts. Consider Mycroft’s position. He is, after all, the Auditor of all Government Departments. No doubt the Prime Minister is aware of the situation. By tea time, unless I am much mistaken, the entire Cabinet will have been apprised of the matter. By tomorrow, no doubt, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Commander in Chief of the Home Fleet will have been informed. Even the birds in the Downing Street garden probably know the news by now. If they cannot secure his release, how can I, a retired consulting detective who has not exercised his powers for years, be of any assistance? I should simply get in the way. Rest assured of it, Mrs Hudson, Mycroft will be released by the week’s end and be back at his desk, consuming those damned Turkish Delights, next Monday. You may depend upon it!”
“Mr Holmes, I am disappointed. I came all this way to lay the matter before you. It is your own brother we are speaking of. Your own brother is in prison. Your own brother may be hanged inside a month. And you propose to do nothing about it! I am very disappointed, Mr Holmes, more disappointed than I can say.”
“My mind is quite made up, Mrs Hudson. I am determined for drift, resolute for inaction. There are allies at work, remember. That Treasury Solicitor, Montague Smith is a capable man, and Mycroft always spoke very highly of his young assistant with the mathematical powers, Tobias.”
“There is Inspector Lestrade too,” said Mrs Hudson loyally. “He has put his career on the line for Mr Mycroft while you do not propose to raise a finger.”
“Good man, Lestrade,” said Holmes, tapping his finger on the side of his head, “dogged, determined, British bulldog perhaps, but not too bright. I fear Lestrade may be rather out of his depth in this case.”
Mrs Hudson was appalled to hear her former employer referring to his brother’s arrest as if it were just another case like The Redheaded League or The Man with the Twisted Lip or A Scandal in Bohemia that he had solved in his pomp years before.
“There is nothing I can do, Mrs Hudson,” cried Sherlock Holmes, picking up his smock and visor. “I reserve my position on one point. This new Inspector, did you say he came from Brighton? You did? If all else fails, Mrs Hudson, send me a wire and I will look into him for you. But it is pointless. You may depend upon it, Mycroft will probably be a free man by the time you reach Pall Mall.”
Mrs Hudson had only shed a few tears in memory of her long dead husband on the way down to Eastbourne. On the return journey she cried so long and so bitterly that an elderly colonel on his way to a regimental reunion at his London club had to lend her his two finest handkerchiefs.
*
In some ways prison suited Mycroft Holmes and Mycroft Holmes suited prison. His had always been a solitary nature, hence the appeal of the silent regime at the Diogenes Club. Solitary confinement, for that was his fate apart from visits to the terrible canteen, which might have been a trial to other men, were less of a problem to Mycroft. His bed creaked under his weight as he lay on it for hour after hour, reviewing the Government’s taxation systems, or thinking about his own predicament. Now was a time, he said grimly to himself, when a man had to look not only to his friends, but to his enemies as well. What a pity the man had avoided capture at the forgery house surrounded by the silver birches months before. For Mycroft was sure that his arrest was the work of the most dangerous criminal in Europe, the man most people only spoke of by his title. The Graf. The Count. This must be his work. The Count was back.
*
Inspector Lestrade was a frustrated man. Five days before he had set out for the locksmiths Linklaters in Piccadilly, full of hope. The prospect of witnesses to interrogate always cheered him up. Linklaters were more than helpful. They explained their procedures. They showed him exactly how that particular lock worked. They had offered to lend him one, exactly the same as the model at 68b Pall Mall, to take away if he wished to conduct further experiments. They complained bitterly about the unreliable lock of the rival company which had broken down. They gave him the address of their locksmith who had installed the new device. Oliver Highsmith lived north of Holloway, not very far from Lestrade’s own villa, as his wife Carrie referred to it. But the man was not at home. His wife was not at home. His children were not at home. The neighbours had seen him going off to work the week before, but now they thought about it, they had not seen him or any member of his family in the last three days. A mother in law was mentioned, who lived in deepest Kent, not far from Folkestone. Reluctant to involve the local force, in case his activities were accidentally reported back to his superiors in Scotland Yard who had given him compassionate leave, Lestrade had taken to the railways and found the mother in law in a comfortable suburban street with one of the largest collections of cats Lestrade had ever met. He thought there must be over twenty-five of them. He wondered briefly about the cost of feeding the brutes, for Lestrade disliked animals of every kind, only succumbing after months of determined opposition to a vigorous campaign by his daughters and his wife for the acquisition of a hamster. But neither the mother in law, nor any of the cats, had seen Oliver Highsmith. The old lady mentioned a Highsmith brother who was a solicitor in Totnes. When approached on a bad telephone line, he too confirmed that he had not seen Oliver once in the last six months.
*
Thomas Montague Smith brought great bunches of flowers to Mrs Hudson every morning. He thought they might help to keep her spirits up. He was preparing his case for the committal hearing and the request for bail for Mycroft Holmes. With great reluctance he agreed with the hiring of a barrister often used by his department because he was cheap. Gervase Morrel was, at fifty-two years of age, still a junior in a respectable firm of barristers in Grays Inn. In the last half of his last term at his undistinguished public school he had been made a house prefect, an appointment that had more to do with his age as the oldest pupil in the school than to any qualities of leadership or command. He was, Montague Smith had decided long ago, probably the most obsequious advocate in London, fawning and over respectful to the judges he appeared before. In spite of that, the Treasury Solicitor was hopeful that bail would be granted, even on a murder charge, because all the senior members of the Government had pleaded for their Auditor to be released.
*
Tobias had established that the Count was not in any European country that belonged to Mycroft’s Underground Library. But that, as Tobias reminded himself, did not mean very much. The man might be in the United States, or in Canada. Tobias rather wished the Count had indeed travelled to the New World and had stayed there, out of harm’s way. But he could not be sure. The Graf might just as easily be in Stamford, Lincolnshire, or in Tonbridge Wells, or even, God forbid, in Chelsea. Tobias had transferred his attentions to the dead man, whose name and last known address were included in the court papers.
*
By his fifth day in Wormwood Scrubs Mycroft Holmes was making something of a comeback. Once the other prisoners discovered that he could write letters for them, or, better still, give advice on money matters, he became one of the most popular figures in the jail. Word spread quickly around the cells and the dire canteen – Mycroft would already shudder at even the thought of the place – that the fat old geezer who just came in could sort out your finances, Old Snowflakes as they called him, because his psoriasis produced regular falls of dry skin from his head to his shoulders. Indeed, the convict who actually ran the prison, a bald fifty-year old called Chalky The Shotgun White, serving fifteen years for armed robbery, took Mycroft under his wing. His appointments with convicted clients were put on a regular footing at a tariff of three cigarettes for a session lasting a quarter of an hour, and a discounted rate of five cigarettes for half an hour. Some years before Mycroft had been involved in a series of international gatherings where the law officers of various countries tried to work out how to introduce procedures for the repatriation of known criminals who had fled their own lands to avoid trial at home for the
ir evil deeds. A few countries signed up for the plan, but most, in a campaign orchestrated by the French, turned it down. Mycroft’s advice on where to go when you were on the run and did not want to be sent home, was especially highly prized. One villain, who had already planned his next major burglary at a West End jewellery, was co-ordinating the hour of his crime with the timetables of the Continental trains leaving London from Victoria station. Mycroft consoled himself with the possible illegality of his counsel by only giving advice in hypothetical situations. If you should ever find, he would say defensively, and it is obviously highly unlikely, that you needed to leave the country in a hurry; Spain might be a good place to head for. On the fifth day of his incarceration, one of Chalky The Shotgun White’s tame warders gave him a small parcel, wrapped up and sealed with string. It was, the warder assured him, a thank you message for his efforts. As Mycroft opened the package, lying on his bed, he found it was a box of Turkish Delight. He had mentioned he was missing his delicacies to a serial burglar with a large fortune salted away the day before.
*
The Mycroft Holmes Omnibus Page 6
