Mycroft picked up the sugar bowl from the Duchess’s table and emptied it over the tablecloth. Nothing came out except cubes of sugar. He sighed. The two Inspectors looked at each other with a look that said ‘he’s mad as a hatter’. Valentine Delaney looked like a man about to call the police until he realised he already had them less than ten feet away.
Mycroft emptied the larger bowl which was nearly full. Lying across the tablecloth, concealed among the sugar cubes, were two sets of pearls.
“It seemed to me,” said Mycroft, “that under the pressure of the reconstruction, our two friends would behave as they had done the first time.”
Valentine Delaney led a round of applause.
“Do you mean to say,” cried Lestrade, “that the bloody pearls were here all the time?”
“I do,” said Mycroft.
“Well, I never,” said Inspector Bramble.
There was a groan as the Duchess began to come round. When she saw the Romanov pearls on the table in front of her she stared at Mycroft for a moment or two and then fainted clean away. The butler and the Duchess’s waiter were arrested after recovery and taken off to the cells for questioning.
Readers of Dr Watson’s stories will recall that Mycroft’s younger brother Sherlock never claimed credit for success at the end of a case. He always gave the glory to Lestrade or his colleagues Inspector Gregson or Inspector Hopkins. In the case of the Romanov pearls, however, this was not so.
Half an hour after the discovery Valentine Delaney summoned a meeting of hotel guests, staff and police officers in the ballroom. Champagne on the house was served on the sprung floor beneath the great chandeliers. The hotel manager thanked the guests for their patience at this difficult time. He thanked the hotel staff for working through the interruptions to their routine and the inconvenience of police searches of their rooms and property. He thanked the police and, in particular, Inspector Lestrade. That officer, after a brief word with Tobias, was having none of it. He marched to the front of the room and addressed the gathering.
“Thank you very much for your kind words, Mr Delaney,” he began. “But I would like to put the record straight.” It may be a case of Mycroft Redux, Tobias said to himself, it’s also the triumph of the Ferret from Holloway. “We have a saying in the Metropolitan Police, my friends. It was there when I joined as a trainee constable many years ago now, and it will be there long after I retire. It’s quite simple, really. Give credit where credit is due. That’s what I intend to do right now. The credit in the case of the Romanov Pearls belongs not to me or the Brighton Police but to a man who came among us as an invalid in convalescence, but who would seem, thank God, to have regained his powers and be well on the way to a full recovery. Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to raise your glasses to Mr Mycroft Holmes!”
After the toast there was a cry from the back. “Three cheers for Mycroft! Hip Hip Hoorah!” As the last cheer died away, Mycroft bowed low to the assembled company and beckoned Tobias to follow him out onto the sea front.
“Before we go, Tobias, I’d like to take a walk down the pier to that bandstand where you had your conversations with my brother and Mrs Hudson and heaven knows who all else.”
“Of course, sir,” said Tobias, wondering what was coming next.
Mycroft stood beyond the bandstand and leant on the railings, looking out at the seagulls circling round the girders and the grey waters of the Channel.
“You have done well, Tobias, very well. I congratulate you.”
“I don’t understand, sir. What do you mean?”
“You know perfectly what I mean, young man. I am very touched by your concern and all the trouble you have taken.”
“I beg your pardon, sir. I don’t understand.”
“Even when I wasn’t myself, Tobias, I was aware that somebody was trying to jolt me out of my lethargy. Somebody was looking for the trigger, the device that would restore me to health. There was my brother with the Baker Street Chess Cup, Mrs Hudson threatening to close down my apartment, disaster at the Diogenes, the letter from the dreadful Count and all the rest. It took you some time to find what would really work, but you were behind all the ploys and you got there in the end.”
“All those things happened perfectly naturally, sir. It didn’t take anybody to prepare them beforehand.”
“The thing is, Tobias, the attempts came too thick and too fast to be credible as accident or happenstance. And you made a couple of minor mistakes. Quite soon I was on my guard.”
“Really?”
“The letter from the Count, Tobias. I do not believe that was genuine. It was written, I am fairly sure, by a female hand, possibly the writing of that pretty dark haired chambermaid you have been talking to. Your own script is all too familiar to me. And I think youthful exuberance got the better of you. I do not believe that the Count, not even the Count, would put The Fatherland at the top of his letter as if that were his home address. Deutschland uber Alles at the bottom, possibly, Fatherland at the top, No.”
“What else, sir?”
“Well, the letter from the Diogenes Club was a creditable effort. I have been suspicious of that secretary for years now. But the problem is this. The letter was typed on a machine with a damaged lower leg on the K and an M that is out of alignment and only makes a faint imprint on the page. The same machine with the same faults types the menus and other written material in this hotel. A gallant effort, Tobias, but you must remember in your future service with me that typewriters can tell you as much as a man’s handwriting.”
“I see.”
“One last thing, Tobias, and please don’t think that I am not grateful. The letter from the Foreign Secretary. It rang very true but then I remembered that you have read a large number of Granville’s letters since you joined me. True or false?”
“Well, sir, seeing that he is always very busy, I sent him a draft to be amended or changed as he wished.”
“And did he change it? Granville, I mean?”
“He didn’t change a word, sir.”
Mycroft laughed. “Well done, Tobias! Well done indeed.”
“I was doing my duty, sir, all the way through. In my view there is only one way to look at these recent and rather singular events.”
“And what would that be, pray?”
“Why, sir it is just this. Truly the Romanov Pearls are pearls of great price. They have not been cast down before swine. They have brought you back to life.”
If you enjoyed The Case of the Romanov Pearls, try Mycroft Holmes and Murder at the Diogenes Club by David Dickinson, also published by Endeavour Press.
“What about this man coming our way with the umbrella?”
“Very red in the face, sir. The man drinks too much.”
“What else?”
“Indian Civil Service, I fancy. A Collector in an Indian state possibly, maybe a Magistrate.”
“And?”
“He may have fallen on hard times, our man. Money not what it was, I fancy, sir.”
“Any more?”
“Lives in the country, sir. Probably up to London for the day.”
“You are making progress indeed, Tobias. I am pleased with you.” Mycroft Holmes, Auditor of all Government Departments, and his young assistant Tobias were sitting in the bow window of the Strangers Room of the Diogenes Club in London’s Pall Mall, the only room in the club where you were allowed to speak. This was the third lesson in deductive reasoning as practised by both Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes, a technique that enabled them both to reveal the character of strangers walking down the street or suspects in their investigations.
“Tell me, pray, Tobias, on what you based your deductions in this matter?”
“Well, sir, the man had a very red face, some of which may have been acquired in India. But he had great blotches on his cheeks which are usually caused by too much drinking. Claret perhaps?”
“And the Indian Civil Service?”
“Why, sir, the man was wearing an Old Hailey
bury tie. I have been studying those booklets you gave me from that shop in Jermyn Street about Old School and London Club Ties. Even though the school was no longer owned by the East India Company after the Mutiny, it re-opened as a public school with strong links to the Raj. And his bearing was upright and dignified, sir, so I thought he must have been in a position of some authority like a Collector.”
“Hard times, Tobias?”
“Well, sir, the suit was old and the material was turning shiny, which shows it is no longer young. And I’m sure his collar had been turned. I used to watch my mother turn my father’s collars when I was a little boy, sir.”
“Excellent. And your last deduction about the fellow being up from the country?”
“Why, sir, there was the tip of a train ticket sticking out of his waistcoat pocket.”
“You could have gone further, Tobias. The ticket was of the type issued by the Great Western Railway. My brother brought out a little monograph about the different types of train tickets similar to his work on the differing sorts of cigar ash. Remind me to give you a copy. And I fancy the blotches on our man’s cheeks may have been caused by whisky and soda rather than claret. Purists would always say that good Bordeaux would not travel well to the sub continent, too damned hot.”
Tobias always felt like one of the two boys in John Everett Millais’s painting of the Boyhood of Raleigh in these deduction seminars. Two young boys, Walter Raleigh and his brother, in fact the painter’s sons, George and Everett, are listening very closely to an old sailor with a bright yellow shirt and short red pantaloons. A toy sailing ship is lying on the ground. The sailor is pointing dramatically out to sea in the direction, some critics have maintained, of the Spanish Main where Raleigh was to earn part of his fame. The boys are entranced by the old sailor’s words. Tobias often liked to think the sailor figure was actually Mycroft, pointing out across a sea of algebraic calculations to some distant heaven. Tobias had always suspected that Paradise was to be found hiding in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach or in some celestial equation composed of the properties of the stars.
He had, in fact, been looking at the real Boyhood of Raleigh in a London gallery the previous weekend in the company of Miss Rosamund Bryant, the Assistant Secretary to the Governor of the Bank of England he had encountered in the case of the Bankers Conclave. Miss Bryant was the daughter of a prosperous solicitor in Chancery Lane and had been more than happy to accompany Tobias on expeditions to art galleries and walks in the parks. Tobias was trying to summon up the strength to ask her to the theatre. His attachment had been noted by his aunt, who had pieced the story together with detective abilities Sherlock Holmes himself would have been proud of, a general increase in washing, shirts changed more frequently, moments of gaiety followed by moments of doubt and dejection, a regular inspection of one’s own features in the long mirror in the hall before going out. She had passed on her intelligence to Tobias’s mother in Stratford who had always dreamt of a successful match for her boy, but on this occasion did not reply.
“Any further comment on the gentleman with the umbrella, Tobias?”
“Well, sir,” the young man replied, “there is one thing that has occurred to me, but I’m not at all sure about it.”
“What is this thought, young man?”
“It’s this. We don’t actually know, sir, that what you and your brother say about these fellows passing by in the street below is true. When they are visitors walking into 221B Baker Street in Dr Watson’s stories they always admit all the observations are correct, with frequent explanations of ‘how on earth, Mr Holmes,’ or ‘I’m completely baffled Mr Holmes.’ But this never happens with gentlemen like the one just now with the umbrella. Neither you nor I nor Dr Watson or your brother ever goes up to the fellows after the observations to discover if they are true or not. Our friend with the umbrella could have been a country squire, fond of his port, who obtained his colouring by many hours in the hunting fields of Gloucestershire with the Duke of Beaufort’s.”
Nobody will ever know what Mycroft Holmes would have said to this critique of his powers for a distraught Club Secretary burst into the Stranger’s Room without even knocking as the Club rules dictated. Evan Butterfield, late of the Indian Civil Service, brought a torrent of alarm and confusion behind him like a following wind.
“Mr Holmes, Mr Holmes, thank God you’re here,” he cried. “You must come at once! There is a dead body in the Entrance Hall! There is blood all over the floor! I haven’t seen so much blood since my time on the North West Frontier!”
Tobias was watching Mycroft very carefully. Somehow he did not think his employer would wish to be involved in this affair. Mycroft blinked rapidly for a few moments.
“Compose yourself, my dear Butterfield. Death comes for us all in the end. There is nothing I can do. I am the Government Auditor, not the investigating authorities. I trust you have sent for the police and instructed all club members to stay exactly where they are. They cannot be allowed to leave until the police have spoken to them. There. That is all I can do.”
With that, Mycroft began brushing a further drift of psoriasis flakes from his shoulders and resumed his inspection of the street without.
“But, Mr Holmes, everybody knows you are the brother of Sherlock Holmes, the great consulting detective. Everybody says your powers are superior to his. Surely you can lend your assistance to the resolution of this matter in your own club?”
“I have no wish to be involved in this case, except in so far as I and my young friend Tobias here must be regarded as suspects as we seem to have been on the premises when the deed was done. I suggest you turn your attention to ensuring that nobody interferes with the body. You must also decide on a policy about the silence to be observed in the quarters of the Diogenes Club. I doubt if the police will take any notice of that rule, in which case the members may be placed in a difficult position.”
“My God, Mr Holmes! I hadn’t thought of that. I shall go and stay with the body myself. As for the rule of silence, The Club Rules, section five, paragraph three, clause four, say that the rules of the club about silence can only be changed by a special meeting of the rules sub committee, which needs a week’s notice to convene. God help us all!”
A distraught Butterfield fled the field. Mycroft sighed deeply and lit one of his foul Virginia cigarettes.
“I don’t like it, I don’t like it at all, Tobias. Policemen clomping about the place for days, the members irritated beyond belief because their routine has been broken, general confusion.”
“Do we know who the dead man is, or was, or how he was killed, sir? That would seem to me to be relevant information.”
“That nincompoop secretary was too distraught to tell us that. Why don’t you go and see what you can find out in the main reception, Tobias? One of the porters will surely know something.”
Mycroft leant out of the window and watched as his smoke curled upwards and disappeared towards the top of the buildings in Pall Mall. Down below a detachment of Household Cavalry was trotting towards Marlborough House and St James’s Palace, resplendent in their white riding breeches and red tunics. The clatter of the horses’ hooves rattled through the general noises of the street and the long plumes of horse hair hanging from their brass helmets swayed behind them in the breeze.
Ten minutes later Tobias was back, looking rather pale.
“Tobias, my dear boy, you look distinctly unwell. Can I get you anything? Brandy? Glass of Armagnac?”
“Sorry, sir,” said Tobias. “It’s just I’ve never seen a dead body before. I’ll be all right in a moment, sir.”
“Are you sure I can’t get you a drink, Tobias?”
“Well, sir, maybe a brandy would be helpful.” Tobias flopped into an armchair by the fire and brushed his hair off his forehead. He wondered suddenly how he was going to describe what he had seen to the fair Rosamund next time he was with her.
A porter appeared bearing two large glasses of brandy. “Drink up
, Tobias,” said Mycroft in his unaccustomed role of ministering angel to the afflicted, “take your time.”
Tobias spluttered slightly as the brandy went down. Then he composed himself.
“The dead man’s called Plunkett, William St John Plunkett, sir. Member here for over ten years. He’s lying near the foot of that great curving stair case, sir. There’s blood and what might be brains everywhere, sir. I saw one of the porters carrying off a rag or a tea towel that looked as though it was covered in blood to put it in the bin. It looks as if Mr Plunkett’s head was smashed open, or he could have fallen, or been pushed over the stairs from one of the higher floors. The Head Porter is telling anybody who would listen that he’s been warning the club officers for years that them stairs and reception area with all that bloody marble on the floor are a death trap, but nobody takes any notice. There are two porters on watch, sir, and a police sergeant arrived just as I was leaving, licking his pencil and waving his notebook about.”
“Dear me,” said Mycroft sadly. “Funerals Plunkett gone. How sad.”
“Funerals Plunkett, sir?”
“What you have to remember, Tobias, is that the Diogenes Club contains in its membership one of the greatest, if not the greatest, collection of eccentrics in England. Funerals Plunkett’s favourite occupation was going to funerals. It didn’t matter if he knew the dead or not. He frequented three churches as far as I know, St James’s Piccadilly, St George’s Hanover Square and St Margaret’s Westminster. He had large boxes at his home full of the orders of service which he would peruse at his leisure, clad, as you might expect, in funereal black.”
“Did he go the final interment as well, sir, the coffin lowered into the earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, all that stuff?”
“No, he did not. He slipped away after the main service as soon as the coffin had been carried out of the church, Tobias. They say he had paid informants, vergers possibly, in all three places of worship.”
Mycroft Holmes: The Case of the Romanov Pearls (The Mycroft Holmes Adventure series Book 6) Page 4
