Mycroft Holmes

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  “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.

  9

  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 rec
ant, 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.”

  Sherlock frowned, sat down again, and fell into a sullen silence.

  “But before you get on with that,” Holmes added, “how about a nice round of boxing? It’ll put some color in those sallow cheeks.” Sherlock didn’t look any happier at the prospect. If anything, he looked less pleased.

  “Have you not read, dear brother,” he said in that slightly annoyed cant that he always affected, “that ‘bodily exercise profiteth little’?” Nevertheless, he shut the book with a definitive clap and stood to depart without protest.

  Holmes smiled.

  Sherlock was rarely so amenable.

  I have had an impact on him, he thought, secretly pleased.

  * * *

  The two brothers faced each other within a rectangle of ropes set up on the main floor. Their hands were wrapped in strips of leather so musty that they threatened to turn to dust.

  “Hands high,” Holmes commanded. “Elbows low, head moving. And for pity’s sake, chin down!”

  As if to emphasize his point, he thwacked Sherlock on the jaw.

  Sherlock put his chin down but continued to study his brother, as he had been doing since they’d first entered the gym.

  “And now that you have solved my riddle,” he said, “I think it only fair that I solve yours.”

  “And what riddle might that be?” Holmes asked.

  “What, pray, is that fervor in your eyes?” Sherlock demanded. “Surely it’s not simply from buffeting me about. Is it some intrigue or other that disquiets you? Perhaps an undertaking having to do with human suffering, along with the possibility of circumventing it? If so, it would be the least inspiring subject I could imagine…”

  “Speak less, box more,” Holmes said.

  “…which leads me to assume that Georgiana has something to do with it. Did you not announce, some months back, that you are beginning to look at social inequities not as curiosities to be catalogued, but as wrongs to be righted?”

  “It’s true,” Holmes said evenly. “I do owe that to Georgiana.”

  “She has made you weak, brother mine,” Sherlock sneered.

  Why, you ungrateful ninny! Holmes thought. Here, I solve your insipid crime, and you insult me? He jabbed his brother a bit too hard on his exposed septum. Sherlock flinched—but was on the scent and would not be deterred, even by a cuff to the nose.

  “Yes, perhaps it is love that… aha! You see there? You pursed your lips! As if not wanting some secret to escape.”

  “I pursed my lips because I would like you to shut up and box,” Holmes said dourly.

  “Nonsense, you are disquieted,” Sherlock shot back. “Discomfited. Why, I would even go so far as to say that this secret distresses you.”

  “Rather than alliterate, kindly practice turning your body into the punch, not away.”

  “I am turning away so you do not hit me!” Sherlock protested. Still, he was not about to let it go. “Wait,” he mused. “Has something gone awry with the sainted Georgiana?”

  With that, Sherlock began to hum “La Donna è Mobile” from Rigoletto. Holmes was familiar with the opera, and knew precisely what Sherlock was inferring.

  And he didn’t like it one bit.

  “You must use height and reach to your advantage,” he said in a vain attempt to take control of the subject. “Utilize your entire body, not just your arm. Like this!” He demonstrated, catching Sherlock in the ribcage. The boy expelled his breath, but was again undeterred.

  “Yes!” he gasped. “The problem is with Georgiana. Perhaps one of her street urchins is in mortal danger. Forced to use a present negative subjunctive when a plain old subjunctive would do!”

  “You are insufferable.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Sherlock said, “more times than I care to recall. Though I do, unhappily, recall each time.”

  “Short uppercuts and hooks, short rights, long jabs,” Holmes said, trying to keep the conversation on track. “Not short jabs—and long everything else!”

  “Tell me, Mycroft, why’d you appear today? Surely not for a boxing lesson. And why did you comment, as we strolled here, that you shall be ‘frightfully busy this summer,’ when I have not seen you in weeks? June, July, and August could easily slip by without my noticing your absence. What need would there be to announce it?”

  “Curiosity is a good thing,” Holmes countered. “Pray be judicious about it, and not simply sarcastic. And breathe out when you punch. Eye your target. Chin down!” Holmes tapped Sherlock a little harder than necessary on his jutting chin, and Sherlock once again lowered it.

  “Let us not forget that I am not, like you, ambidextrous,” Sherlock said.

  “Not naturally, no,” Holmes said. “But you can practice to become so.”

  “If that is an attempt to sidetrack me, it will not work. Summer is a slow season for the War Office, as even subversives need a respite now and again. Odds are, you won’t be ‘frightfully busy’ at all. So why say it, other than to excuse a long absence? Or to draw attention to it.”

  “Nicely done,” Holmes admitted, though he sighed to himself. Why had he always been so keen on helping his brother develop his observational skills when he wasn’t at all certain that Sherlock would use them wisely?

  Because his mind is a Stradivarius, he quietly reminded himself. He simply needs to pick it up and learn how to play it.

  “Now, think of everything,” Holmes said. “Odors, clothing, carriage… good God, why are your eyes darting about? I meant my carriage, Sherlock, how I comport myself. For pity’s sakes, keep focused!”

  “Odors, yes,” Sherlock mused, sniffing the air. “Formaldehyde. Either you’ve bee
n pickling mice, dear brother, or you’ve had a visit with a physician. You are hale, I take it?”

  “Never better,” Holmes responded tightly. “What else?”

  “Your hair smells faintly of tobacco. Or, rather tobaccos—surely more than can be smoked by one man, even you. Most likely that means long hours at the tobacconist, scheming something up. With your friend Douglas, or someone else?”

  “I shall concede Douglas,” Holmes admitted. “Now put it together.”

  Sherlock frowned, a movement that caused his nose to drop down toward his lips so that he looked like a perturbed hawk. “It’s not very sportsmanlike, this game you have played with me since I was a child,” he protested, “as you already know the answer.”

  When Holmes did not reply, Sherlock’s frown deepened.

  “Mycroft, can you not simply tell me?”

  “Oh, for the love of heaven, don’t stand around waiting for me to hit you. Throw something, even if it does not land. And no, I will not ‘simply tell you.’ You need to work it out.”

  Sherlock began to flail about, with little conviction.

  “Very well,” he said. “In truth, you seem out of sorts. Sad, as if you’ve lost your wallet. No, not your wallet, something closer to your heart, although I strain to imagine what that could be, if not your wallet. And that new traveling coat,” he added, pointing his very vulnerable chin in the direction of the hook on which the coat now hung. “Dull but practical—bargain-priced, no doubt, light enough for the tropics.

  “The tropics… Wait. There is something! The tropics, and Douglas, whose origins are in Trinidad. And… given Georgiana’s family background—yes! Something’s afoot in Trinidad, and that is precisely where you are heading. Mycroft, you have come to say goodbye!”

  Just as Holmes swung, Sherlock lowered his guard. Holmes tried, but could not pull his punch in time. He hit his brother squarely in the nose. Sherlock buckled to his knees, and though he arose quickly enough, he was bleeding profusely.