“Why not?”
“Well, well, the room’s locked, I’m sure of it. The room’s locked.”
“Come, come, Home Secretary, somebody is going to have a key. Butlers in my experience usually have vast collections of keys, enough to secure all the rooms in the Tower of London.”
“I tell you, the thing’s impossible,” cried the Duke.
“Is that your last word?” said Mycroft.
“It is.”
“Very well,” said Mycroft, rising slowly from his chair. Tobias noted another of those glances radiating from the Duchess in the direction of her husband. “Come, Tobias, we have outlived our usefulness here. We are returning to London. I would be grateful, Duke, if you could order a carriage to take us to our special train. Your man will find us by the croquet lawn near the front door. Thank you for hospitality, Madam. Good afternoon to you both.”
With that, Mycroft waddled to the door with as much dignity as he could muster, Tobias falling into step behind him.
*
Tobias picked up a croquet mallet and began lining a blue ball up in the direction of the first hoop.
“What do you think will happen now, sir?” he asked.
“I expect they will come round in a while,” Mycroft replied, picking up a mallet of his own. “We had a croquet lawn when I was growing up, you know,” he said, rather wistfully, “I used to play all the time with Sherlock in the summer holidays. He used to cheat a lot, Sherlock, always trying to move my ball or put it on the wrong side of the hoop.”
From inside they could faint sounds of voices raised in argument, an occasional shout, a very loud bang as if somebody had just banged their fist on the table with considerable force.
Tobias knew he would have to lose at croquet just like he lost at chess. Failure of any kind put Mycroft in a bad mood for days afterwards. Mycroft was through the first hoop and steaming up the lawn towards the second when the Duke came out.
“You’re in luck,” he said. “We’ve just had a telephone call. The Steward’s mother has recovered far earlier than the doctors expected. He’ll be here to see you tomorrow afternoon.”
Mycroft looked up. He had just performed a roquet on Tobias’s ball, that is, he had hit his own red ball into direct contact with his opponent’s blue. Under the rules he was now permitted to place his ball behind the other and send it to whatever part of the lawn he fancied. Tobias’s blue was sent crashing into the flowerbeds at the far end.
“I’m afraid that won’t do, Home Secretary,” said Mycroft, panting slightly from his exertions. He had seen far too many Government Ministers working late into the night or right through it, trying to massage the figures to make them look good to the Auditor of all Government Departments when he called the following morning. Mycroft always referred to it as the Osborne Variant after a Minister in a previous administration had been caught in a desperate attempt to cook the nation’s books.
“Either we see the books now, or it’s the train to London. It’s up to you.”
“Please carry on with your game for the time being. I shall be back directly.” With that the Duke strode sadly back to his huge house, shaking his head as he went.
“I fear, Tobias,” said Mycroft, “that we are going to have to postpone our game for a while. I want you to go with the Home Secretary and ensure that he does not go to the Steward’s room and start messing about with the papers. Desperate men will do anything. And I see the constabulary are to hand. I’ll have speech of this Inspector fellow.”
A posse of six policemen were marching up the drive, led by a tall man with hair the colour of straw and a small well-trimmed moustache.
“You must be Mr Mycroft Holmes,” he said, extending an enormous hand, “I cannot tell you what a pleasure this is! Inspector Hopkins at your service, sir.”
“You are too kind,” said Mycroft.
“I almost met your brother once,” Inspector Hopkins went on. “It was one of those affairs that cannot yet be told. Dr Watson refers to it in one of his stories as the case involving the politician, the lighthouse and the trained cormorant. Your brother had solved the mystery and returned to London before I got there.”
“Really?”
“He was very quick. I have two copies of all the volumes about his exploits in my house, one in the living room and one by my bed in case I need inspiration in the night. But come, Mr Holmes, what can I tell you about the proceedings here? This is an odd case, and no mistake.”
“It is indeed a singular affair,” said Mycroft. “Give me, if you would, the full facts about the pantry door, the one said to have been found open.”
“I wonder if this whole case doesn’t revolve round that pantry door,” the Inspector was scratching his mop of hair as he spoke, “this is what happened. On the afternoon of the day the pictures were reported missing we went round the whole house. As you can imagine, that takes quite a lot of time. One of my men checked that pantry door. He is young and inexperienced but he is intelligent. I suspect he will progress further in the force than I will. He reported the door to be closed. The following morning the butler informed me that the door had been found open and that it looked as if it had been open for some time. The Duke and Duchess have been trying to tell me ever since that young Constable Foreman was mistaken and that this was how the thieves got into the house, possibly with the assistance of one of the servants.”
“And what did you say when they pressed this charge? And was there any evidence of people coming and going through that door? Footprints? Marks upon the ground?”
“I’ll answer that backwards, if I may, sir. If you speak to any of the farmers round these parts at present, they’ll complain. They always complain about something, mind you, but the latest is about the rain. Or the lack of it. We haven’t had a drop of rain in Derbyshire for weeks now. The ground, the earth, the paths, they’re rock solid. You couldn’t tell if a herd of elephants had trampled all over them. So there was nothing on the ground outside of the pantry door. A very faint impress of dust on the inside. But that could have been left on the second, not the first day. And when they try to tell me the Constable was mistaken, I keep silent, Mr Holmes. I’m not going to let one of my men down, I don’t care who I’m talking to.”
“And I presume you have checked in the locality about strangers wandering about, asked at the railway stations and the hotels and so on?”
“We have, Mr Holmes, all of those and more. We’ve talked to the thieves and the burglars, we’ve even checked with the mental asylum that they haven’t seen any odd people arriving or leaving great parcels in the outhouses. Nothing. Nothing anywhere. It’s all as quiet as the grave.”
“I see,” said Mycroft. “It sounds as if you have conducted a thorough investigation. I must tell you some information, Inspector, that reached me just before my young assistant Tobias and I left London.”
“And what was that, Mr Holmes?”
“It came from a man who is the great expert on society gossip in the capital. He is not a very salubrious character but he is honest and there is no reason to doubt his word. He speaks of serious financial difficulty at Melrose Hall. He has promised a further bulletin but that has yet to reach me. He speaks of deep waters. That could mean anything.”
“This could have a bearing on the case in hand, even if I cannot as yet discern exactly how it would affect the matter,” cried Inspector Hopkins.
“I have the means in hand, Inspector,” said Mycroft. “The Duke, after great resistance, is, I hope, about to grant access to the Steward’s Room where the account books are held. If he does not, I presume you could obtain entry by virtue of your police authority.”
*
Ten minutes later the two men, accompanied by Tobias with his best notebook, were inspecting the Steward’s room. The butler showed them in without complaint. Young Constable Foreman and a Melrose footman were on guard outside the door. Like all the rooms in the Hall this was a tall handsome chamber with elaborate plasterwork and a marble fire
place. Two great windows looked out onto the estate that was controlled from these quarters. One wall was covered with shelving and row after row of files. There was a large kneehole desk between the windows and a safe, helpfully opened by the butler at Mycroft’s request. It was empty.
“Where do we start, Mr Holmes?” The Inspector was scratching his head again.
“Ah, Inspector, I have some experience in these matters. I have spent my life, quite literally, surrounded by files like these. Our steward is a careful and a tidy fellow, I see. The files have the subject marked on the spine as well as on the front cover.”
Mycroft began walking down the wall where the files stood to attention as if he were inspecting a battalion of troops on parade. “These we can ignore,” he said, pointing to a good three feet of wall with files labelled Tenants, Farms and Cottages. “And these.” He marched past another yard or so devoted to wheat prices, sheep prices, cattle prices and Repairs.
“Tobias,” he said, pausing before a group of files all labelled with the single word, Estate, “Could you cast your eye over the contents of that desk there? It might contain something to our advantage.”
Inspector Hopkins was inspecting the empty safe. “Do you attach any significance, Mr Holmes, to the fact that this is empty, that there is nothing at all within?”
“I attach the greatest significance to that fact,” Mycroft replied, riffling through the pages of his file. “Don’t you see, it virtually shouts aloud the fact that there is something in this room the steward and his people wish to hide from us. Consider it, Inspector. After the paintings have disappeared you must know that the police and maybe other people with suspicious minds like insurance investigators will be prowling about. What could convince them of your complete innocence better than an empty safe? Surely you have nothing to hide, nothing at all.”
“I see,” said the Inspector and took down a large red file called Melrose Hall. This one contained details of all repair work done to the house in the last twenty years. “What would bring joy to your heart, Mr Holmes, here in this room? What sort of document?”
“Why,” Mycroft replied, “mortgages, loans from banks, life insurance policies, other insurance policies on the valuables like the Duchess’s jewellery. Right now I would happily pay a guinea a time for any of those particulars.”
There was a long low whistle from Tobias at the desk. “Sir,” he said, “I think I’ve got something here. This big drawer at the bottom has a false compartment at the bottom. Either the palm of my hand or one of my fingers must have touched the spring for a wooden panel shot back against the rear section. And look what there was inside.”
Very slowly, as if it were an item of great value, Tobias brought forth a large silver ledger with the innocent label ‘Accounts etc’. That was followed by a black safety box, very long and very heavy. Like the safe, it was not locked.
“Well done!” said the Inspector. “Excellent work!”
Tobias could see that Mycroft, seated in a large armchair perusing the ledger was moving into the full scope of his powers. Metaphorically, Tobias thought he could see the cogs meshing, the gears moving smoothly, the pistons thrusting forward and back with ever greater speed, the wheels racing, steam and smoke surrounding the driver and the stoker as the great brain of Mycroft and the Holmes express shot up the long straight tracks of the East Coast line at over a hundred miles an hour.
“My God,” he breathed after less than a minute in the ledger. “The poor man has more debts than the Greek Government and they’re always going bust. Vast loans on the house, on the land, on the furniture even. The interest alone is going to be a King’s ransom every year.”
Now he turned his attention to the safety box. He looked at it very carefully first of all, as if suspicious of what he might find inside. Then he opened it. “Life insurance policies,” he said, “and more life insurance policies.” He paused before what looked like a recent document secured, like a barrister’s brief, with pink tape. “And more loans secured on the insurance. The man would have been worth more dead than alive. There’s a whole bundle of current insurance policies here, different aspects of the estate and the house. Have a look Inspector. I would draw your attention to the one that is not there.”
Inspector Hopkins took a lot longer than Mycroft to read to the end of the packet.
“The one that isn’t there?”
“Consider. It’s why we are here. And what might this be, Inspector?”
Very slowly he opened another legal paper. He read it in a couple of seconds and passed it to Inspector Hopkins. “This goes to the very heart of our current problem,” he announced. “This is yet another loan from the Victoria and Holborn Insurance Society. It is worth ninety thousand pounds. It is secured on two paintings held in Melrose Hall, by the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael, of Pope Leo the Tenth flanked by two Cardinals and Pope Julius The Second. The works of art will be referred to hereafter as The Raphael Popes.”
“God bless my soul!” said Inspector Hopkins.
“Forty five thousand a Pontiff,” Tobias murmured, “that’s not bad, it’s not bad at all.” The Inspector was still working his way through the document.
“But one thing is puzzling me,” said Tobias. “If we believe Constable Foreman that there were no outside thieves breaking in to steal the Raphaels, it must have been an inside job, one way or another. But once the insurance company realises that the paintings have been stolen, they’re going to want their ninety thousand pounds back. They won’t have any security any more. They may not have that money, the people here. It is, I would say, from we have learnt so far, unlikely. But why would somebody in this house want to commit a crime that could push the family over the edge into the bankruptcy court?”
“There’s a visitor for you at the front door,” announced the footman. “And he won’t give his message to anybody except the Tobias person or Mr Holmes himself.”
Tobias knew there was no point asking Mycroft to go. That was one of the many things Mycroft didn’t do.
Waiting outside the front door was Jaikie.
“Jaikie!” said Tobias, “what on earth are you doing here?”
The ragamuffin looked very out of place on the steps of Melrose Hall in the depths of Derbyshire. His knees and arms looked as though they had not encountered soap or water for days, if not weeks. Mind you, Tobias said to himself, any member of Jaikie’s gang of juvenile criminals known as the Du Cane Road Irregulars would seem out of place here.
“Well,” said Jaikie, “it’s that geezer what sits in the bow window of that Hypocrites Club place, Trout or Perch or Tench, whatever he’s called,”
“Pike,” said Tobias, “Langdale Pike.”
“That’s him. I knew he had something to do with fish,” said Jaikie, “anyway, he hands me this letter and he says it’s so important it can only be delivered hand to hand fashion. ‘No butler,’ the fish fellow says to me, ‘no footman, no serving maid, no pantry person, only Tobias or Mr Holmes.’”
Jaikie paused while some animal cry arose out of the woods to their left. He shivered slightly.
“I didn’t know what to do, Tobias. The geezer told me he would be sending an account later, the information was so important. Even said, so he did, that his letter would help Mr Holmes solve his investigation.”
“So what did you do, Jaikie?”
“Well,” the boy replied, “I did what I often do when life seems hard, Tobias, I went to see Mrs Hudson.”
A dreamy, almost a poetic look, passed across the urchin’s features. “She give me a slap up tea, so she did, proper sausages, not like them filth in Shepherd’s Bush market, tomatoes, scones, two slices of her best fruit cake. You ever tried that fruit cake?”
Tobias admitted that the pleasure still awaited him. He wondered if the key to the salvation of Jaikie might not lie with the taste buds and the gastric juices rather than the power of reason and argument.
“Anyway, she says to me, ‘if that’s what
the man Pike says, Jaikie, that’s what you’d better do. Mr Sherlock brought him to Baker Street once or twice, I remember. He had a passion for chocolate éclairs.’ She give me some money, Mrs Hudson. So I gets on the train and my friend the cabbie brought me here.”
There was another of those strange sounds of the natural world from among the trees. “Gawd,” cried Jaikie, looking rather agitated. “What was that? I think it might have been a howl. They have howls in these parts, Tobias?”
“Howls?”
“Grey things like birds. Fly about. Big wings. Too whit Too whoo, that means get out of my manor in howl speak. My auntie had a book with stuff about birds and beasts. Lion on the front cover. Big teeth,”
Jaikie gave what Tobias thought was a creditable impersonation of a lion’s roar. Tobias wondered if his messenger friend burgled his way into London Zoo at the weekend.
“Owl,” said Tobias kindly, “not howl. But your lion was very good, Jaikie.”
“Bet there’s all sorts of terrifying beasts round these parts,” said Jaikie suspiciously, waving a small and grubby paw in the general direction of Nottinghamshire across the county border. “Wolves, hunting in packs. Hyenas, I expect, vultures, I shouldn’t wonder, bearded vultures, them was the most frightening thing in Auntie’s book.”
“None of those,” said Tobias, “none at all. Now see here, Jaikie, Do you need a bed for the night? I’m sure the people here could fix you up.”
“No thanks, I nearly forgot.” Jaikie drew a rather battered envelope from the remains of his trouser pocket. “Here you are, message from the fish fellow. Thanks for the offer, but I’m not stopping round here. Too bloody dangerous if you ask me. I won’t feel safe till I’m back in Du Cane Road with the rest of the gang. Why else do you think I asked the cabbie to wait?”
“Do you need any money?”
“Naw, I’m fine,” said Jaikie happily. “When I was little,” – Tobias thought Jaikie wasn’t much above four feet six now – “the Chief gave me a good tip about trains.”
“What was that?”
The Mycroft Holmes Omnibus Page 12
