Mycroft Holmes

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Above the mantel was a portrait of a man in his early forties. The black velvet that draped its ornate gold frame had once been black, but had been streaked violet blue by a bright and unrelenting sun.

  When Holmes saw it, he drew a breath. Though Georgiana did not own a daguerreotype of her mother, she did have one of her father. She had shown it with pride, as her father was a handsome, distinguished man.

  And this most certainly was he.

  “Are you quite all right, Mr. Holmes?” Mrs. Sutton asked.

  “Yes, perfectly,” he said, and he nodded. “Is that… Mr. Sutton, then?” he asked, as he did not wish to insult her by saying “your son.”

  Mrs. Sutton nodded. “My husband. Deceased these ten years, I’m afraid.”

  The two men were standing by the divan, which Mrs. Sutton indicated was the preferred spot for guests. She chose a chair across from them, and as she sat, so did they.

  Holmes forced himself to sit up straight and to remain composed.

  You are a gentleman, he admonished himself. Behave as such!

  A moment later, to the shuffling sound of footsteps, a woman appeared. She was a toothless, ageless Creole—she could have easily been forty or seventy. She served them tea and lemon cake from a large silver-plated tray, which had been scrubbed clean so many times that most of its plating was gone.

  “Had to sell all the silver, I’m afraid,” Mrs. Sutton remarked airily. “Well, hard times come and go, don’t they? Though this particular hard time has lasted more than I care for. Please, gentlemen, help yourselves to the tea and the lemon cake. It reminds me that I still do a few things well enough!” Then she picked up a pair of spectacles from an end table, put them on, and peered at her two visitors.

  “Well,” she said, “I am glad to see that the two of you have been in some scrapes. Much better, indeed, than the curse of bad skin. I have some salve that will help with those cuts and scratches,” she added. “Were you set upon by ruffians, then?”

  Holmes nodded vigorously. “On the ship from Liverpool, someone tried to rob us. Unsuccessfully, I am pleased to say.”

  “Oh! Isn’t that frightful! Traveling is so hazardous nowadays! I myself never venture forth. Maria takes the trap into town for victuals, and nothing more. Poor thing is very nearly lame—I know I should shoot her, but I’ve grown quite attached.”

  When Holmes and Douglas eyed her with dismay, she spoke again with a laugh.

  “I meant Dixie, my filly,” she amended. “Not Maria! Good heavens!”

  “That is a relief,” Holmes said, attempting a smile. “As to the salve, we have plenty, thank you.”

  “Then you aren’t particularly faithful in its application!” she chided, adding, “Ah, men!” as if that explained it all.

  “In any event,” she continued, settling into her chair, “you asked about growing sugar. I am afraid that the cost of help, the upkeep of land, and the injuries have proved prohibitive for most of us planters. And with sugar there are so many injuries! To be sure, no one wishes to work hard anymore, not even the locals.

  “Now, some thirty years back, the British government realized our plight, and they tried to send us white indentured workers—Welsh and German and the sort—so it wouldn’t look so much like slavery, d’you see. But all of ’em died, every last one, of some tropical disease or the other. I don’t suppose white folk’re as hardy as the nigras and the coloreds…”

  When she said this last, she smiled at Douglas as if she were paying him an enormous compliment. He smiled back pleasantly.

  “You are built for this sort of work,” she continued, still addressing Douglas. “That is what my husband always used to say. And the best thing one can do for a person is to turn him loose to the work he was born to do.”

  Douglas shot Holmes a look that said, She is no longer of sound mind.

  And indeed, this was more than the “mild histrionics” Georgiana had occasionally mentioned. Mrs. Sutton was clearly no longer all there. It seemed unfair to trick her in this manner, Holmes thought, but the stakes were too great to do much else.

  “Mrs. Sutton, have you heard anything about workers disappearing?” he inquired.

  Mrs. Sutton laughed again. The more she relaxed, the more the sound turned high-pitched and girlish… and a bit eerie.

  “Why, I surely can, Mr. Holmes. They disappeared the moment we could no longer afford to keep ’em! We were trying to get out of sugar, you see, and into cocoa, but Mr. Sutton—God rest his soul—thought to go a different way, purchasing land off the coast. But his deal took too long to put in place and, alas, it all fell to dust in our hands.

  “My husband’s great-great grandfather and his wife migrated from Britain in 1640,” she said. “Indentured servants, they were, did hard labor for five years. He survived, his bride did not, and he was given ‘freedom dues’ of ten British pounds, plus ten acres of land, on which we are sitting. Now Mr. Sutton always said that if our own ancestors could be slaves, practically speaking, and still make something of their lives, well, so can they all.”

  It was the same story that Georgiana had recounted back at the tobacco shop—one that seemed to be quite important to their family.

  “Mr. Holmes!” she declared suddenly. For an instant, he dared to hope that his name had finally rung a bell. “You have not had so much as a bite of my lovely lemon cake,” she said. “Now do be a good lad and taste it, at the very least.”

  In truth, Holmes was feeling so queasy that he feared that whatever went into his mouth might come right back out again. But he did as he was told, cutting off the smallest possible bite that would suffice without giving offense.

  “Quite delicious,” he said, “with a delightfully subtle lemon tang.”

  “It is an ancient family recipe,” Mrs. Sutton responded gaily. “From the proud state of Georgia! That is where my people are from, on both sides. And though we have been here for a few generations, we named our daughter Georgiana to commemorate that fact.”

  Holmes, swallowing with difficulty, could see no point in prolonging the agony. He dove into the fray.

  “Mrs. Sutton, have you had word of Georgiana?”

  Her filmy eyes grew moist.

  “Do you know my girl?” she asked, surprised. “Do you know my Georgiana?”

  Holmes wondered how he could possibly link himself—a chap from the agriculture department—with a girl who frequented Girton and taught impoverished youths.

  “Well, I…” he muttered, when Mrs. Sutton interrupted him.

  “Because if you do, then you must know that she is in London, Mr. Holmes.”

  “But on her way here, surely…?” Holmes stammered.

  Mrs. Sutton laughed again.

  “Here? Whatever for?” she exclaimed. “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of the child in four years, not since she went off to university. But she’s a good girl. Writes to me faithfully every single week—without fail!” With that, Mrs. Sutton rose and walked over to a roll-top desk on which sat a basket of letters, decorated with a faded red ribbon.

  She brought it over, showing it proudly to them.

  “You see? Without fail!” Holmes noted Georgiana’s return address in the upper left corner. And written carefully in the center, in Georgiana’s writing, was the name of the recipient.

  Anabel Lynch Sutton.

  Her mother.

  25

  THOUGH THE GREATER PART OF HOLMES WAS CONSUMED WITH suffering, a niggling part was still analyzing. As he and Douglas rode back to town in Huan’s cart, cane stalks provided the lesson on the treachery of sentiment.

  He was surrounded by green, tidy sugar cane. Even wild, it was an ordered grass—it did not shoot up randomly, but was upright in its bearing and rather precise in its arrangement. It grew best in soil that was bathed in sunshine, with air perfumed by the sea.

  And yet, were he to give in to his emotions, Holmes could have sworn that he wasn’t passing fields of sugar cane drenched in sunlight, but that he
had, in fact, fallen into a ditch, becoming buried in the mud. That a shroud-like mist hung suspended over his head, while the snaking tendrils of some loathsome weed were insinuating themselves around his chest and arms, creeping ever closer to his exposed throat.

  Threatening to cut off his breath completely.

  When he tried to breathe, he felt a twinge in his chest, like a fist squeezing his heart, then abruptly releasing it.

  “Ah, that one,” he heard Huan say to Douglas. “He looks like his soul has already left his body.”

  Perhaps it was true. Perhaps souls truly could abandon living bodies.

  Douglas put a hand on his arm.

  “Holmes?” his friend said, nudging him. “Are you all square?”

  Far from it, Holmes thought. But he said nothing.

  After their visit with Mrs. Sutton, he had stumbled back into the cart. He had sunk into the pillows, hands grabbing the sides—not to secure a bit more comfort on the ride, but to keep himself as steady as possible… so as not to vomit.

  Echoing in his head, over and over, was the litany of Georgiana’s lies. Her “prosperous” plantation. Her father, long deceased, to whom she would speak “in person” about their engagement.

  There are none so blind as those who will not see.

  But there was more to it, he reminded himself silently.

  The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.

  He said as much to Douglas, who shook his head.

  “You are being entirely too hard on yourself, Holmes. Surely being poisoned, sickened, and beaten does nothing to sharpen your deductive powers.”

  “It was Georgiana,” Holmes said dully, interrupting Douglas, “traveling incognito as Anabel Lynch, who did not wish me killed…”

  “Yes, yes, so you have said. Rest your mind a moment,” Douglas instructed.

  “Rest my mind?” Holmes scoffed. “My mind has been entirely too much at rest! When we came unexpectedly aboard, she and her… accomplices were forced to improvise, hoping we’d be frightened by the thought that there were murderers who’d stop at nothing to—”

  “But there were murderers aboard,” Douglas objected.

  “Yes, but I’m not certain that…”

  Holmes paused.

  Were the words he was about to utter led by blind emotion, or did he know at least a little something of Georgiana’s nature?

  For what seemed the millionth time, he mulled over his final encounter with her.

  “Are you telling me children have died?” she had demanded. “How many?”

  When he’d given her the number—three at that juncture—she’d turned ghostly pale. She’d opened her mouth, then quickly covered it with her hand, as if…

  As if trying to keep a secret from spilling out. He recalled Sherlock’s words in the gymnasium.

  She had seemed to him unnerved. Now he was of the opinion that she’d been terrified.

  He finished his thought out loud.

  “I am not certain she knew those men were capable of murder,” he told Douglas. “And as I intimated before, perhaps they did not yet know it themselves—perhaps they were still humoring her. In any case, someone was protecting us. The captain said as much. And I doubt it was the American. So who would be left if not… Anabel Lynch?”

  He felt the tendrils tighten around his chest, continuing their inexorable advance toward his throat.

  “She had always planned on leaving me, Douglas!” he said suddenly. “Your confiding in me frightened her, put her plan into motion sooner than she had intended.”

  “You cannot know that for a fact,” Douglas said. “Besides, we still have no notion of conspiracy, other than the acronym ‘Aaron Burr’—”

  Suddenly, the contraption in which they were riding lurched to a halt, cutting him off and sending Douglas and Holmes skittering forward. They gripped the sides harder to keep from being pitched to the ground.

  Nico had stopped of his own accord. He was braying indignantly at an obstruction in the road some four hundred meters away.

  Peering out from where they sat, the three men discovered the cause.

  It was a body, lying face down in the dirt.

  * * *

  The lad was stretched out on his stomach, forehead pressed to the ground in a most unnatural pose. Holmes leapt out first, and recognized the clothing immediately.

  “Duffer!” he said. The young pickpocket.

  Cart and horse tracks led to the body, then cart and horse tracks doubled back. Whoever had done this had ridden away, depositing him there.

  Douglas knelt by the boy’s side and gently turned him over. He was as gray as the dust he lay on. His eyes were staring. His shirt had been torn open. Blood was pooling at his stomach.

  There were perpendicular slices in the soft flesh of his abdomen.

  Huan reared back.

  “Lougarou!” he cried.

  The moment Nico heard his master’s cry, he bared his big yellow teeth and brayed even louder. Holmes looked up, sheltered his eyes from the sun, and frowned at them.

  “Nonsense!” he said. “Come here this instant and have a proper look. Nico! Be quiet!”

  Nico obeyed.

  Huan crept forward, looking askance at the corpse.

  “Closer,” Holmes commanded with an exasperated sigh.

  Huan moved a few more inches.

  “To begin with,” Holmes said, pointing at the boy, “lougarou are vampire mosquitos, are they not?”

  Huan nodded, his head still keening to one side.

  “Then they would have a very large proboscis—a nose—and the cut would look like a puncture wound, would it not?” His tone demanded a reply.

  Huan nodded again.

  “These”—Holmes indicated the lines on the boy’s stomach—“are not puncture wounds at all. They are uniform slices. In two sets of four. No, this was clearly the work of a scarificator.”

  “Who is that?” Huan asked in a quavering voice, glancing here and there as if it might descend upon him any moment.

  Douglas laid his fingers against the boy’s eyes, pressed his lids shut and answered quietly.

  “It’s not a who,” he said, “it’s a what. A medical instrument used for bloodletting. I have never actually seen one—”

  “Carries eight lancets in two sets of four,” Holmes interrupted. “Spring loaded. Each set of the four blades is parallel one to the other. Quite handy for small bloodletting, but, because the incisions are rather superficial, they are not usually deadly in and of themselves. So first they cut open the boy’s aorta, you see there?” He indicated a large gash just below Duffer’s breastbone.

  Huan peered down through squinted eyes.

  “Now that was done with an ordinary kitchen knife, one meant for cutting steak. That is, of course, what killed him. His murderers allowed blood to drain from the aorta into his abdomen—which it did fairly quickly, eight minutes or so, as I recall from my time with Dr. Bell. After that they simply sliced the abdomen with the scarificator, turned him over, and let him bleed out—again, a matter of minutes.”

  Huan turned to Douglas.

  “It is not a lougarou?” he asked, stating the obvious.

  “No,” Douglas said. “It is only unnatural in the sense that there are human beings who can do this sort of thing to other human beings.”

  Huan breathed a sigh of relief, and Holmes appraised him.

  “I confess I do not know you well,” he said, “but you do not seem the fearful type. It is the supernatural, then, that causes you unease?”

  Huan shrugged. “I do not like what I cannot fight. You are certain…?” he asked.

  “Yes. As Douglas said, unnatural. Not supernatural.”

  * * *

  Douglas enjoyed hearing the imperious tone in Holmes’s voice. It was as if his friend was coming back into himself, and he was glad of it—until Holmes brushed the dust off his knees and climbed into the back of the cart again.

  �
��What are you doing?” Douglas asked.

  “What we should be doing,” Holmes said. “Getting on with it.”

  Such a degree of coldness seemed unusual, even for him.

  He is still in shock, Douglas mused, giving him the benefit of the doubt.

  “We cannot simply leave him, Holmes,” Douglas protested, pointing to the boy. “We must take him back to town.”

  “Back to town?” Holmes repeated. “So that while we wait for burial documents and sigils and stamps, whoever wishes to murder us might do a proper job of it? This is what they expect us to do! Even now, there’s a welcoming party for us at the coroner’s office. And what a very convenient place to do us in, wouldn’t you say?”

  Douglas stared at Holmes, incredulous.

  “So fear should keep us from—”

  “He is deceased!” Holmes shouted. “On our account, on my account! Because I was on that ship, I disrupted whatever plan Georgiana and these… gentlemen had concocted. The boy knew too much, the boy broke under pressure, the boy was murdered by people so heartless that they would draw all the blood from his body and abandon him in the roadway like an old cur!”

  Douglas rose to his feet. A few long strides, and he was inches from Holmes.

  “He had breath in him once,” he declared. “He is to be treated with respect, no matter the cost.”

  “Now is not the time for empty ritual,” Holmes thundered.

  “Now is precisely the time!” Douglas thundered back. “When we ourselves are empty, it is the ritual that turns us human again.”

  Holmes looked as if he’d been struck.

  “That boy,” he said with difficulty, “will be tossed into a pauper’s grave. And we shall be ambushed and murdered.” He held back sobs. “Know this, Douglas—I believe fervently in an afterlife, and I am not afraid to die. Nevertheless, I find great confidence in facts, in the rational mind—most particularly in my rational mind. And no matter how I try, I cannot make… sense… of any of this!”

  He struck his temples with the palms of his hands.