The Empty Birdcage

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Mycroft realized that Douglas was providing him an opening with which to redeem himself. But what, in the name of all that was sacred, could he say to this creature that would not have him babbling like a fool?

  “Beyond that, Mr. Holmes, I am here,” Ai Lin resumed in the awkward silence, “because, as I shall never be a physician, this is the next best thing. And because the death rate in Jennings is twice that in neighboring Kensington, and the average life span all of seventeen. So, where else should I be?” she finished with a gentle smile.

  “I…” Mycroft looked down at the table. “I fear for your health, Miss Lin, that is all. No judgment beyond that, I promise.”

  “Thank you. You are kind and thoughtful, as always. By the way, how is your heart?”

  Mycroft sat up. “Sorry…?” he said, though he’d heard her perfectly well.

  “Your heart, Mr. Holmes. You had some disturbing symptoms some months ago—”

  “Ah. Yes. Never better, Miss Lin,” he said quickly. “The herbs you gave me were of tremendous value.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Mycroft noticed Douglas’s baffled expression.

  “Excellent,” she said, though Mycroft could tell from her frown that she was not quite believing it. She took a sip of her tea, then, clearly realizing that she had touched on a delicate subject, changed it. “I am also investigating hog cholera,” she said, “for I wonder if there is any link to humans, and the possibility of cross-contagion, though for now there does not appear to be…”

  Her voice trailed off. For a moment, she looked impossibly sad. Then she reached out and took their hands, a gesture that he assumed was unheard of in her culture, as it was barely tolerated in his. Mycroft did not dare to glance over at Douglas but allowed his hand to be held. And although he did not squeeze back, the touch of her fingers was enough.

  “Mr. Holmes? Mr. Douglas?” she said, looking at each of them in turn. “You are more than acquaintances to me: you are dear and cherished friends. You saved my father and my brother, and for that alone, I owe you my life. So, let me speak plainly. The Shi are an old and noble family, and they bring that ancient nobility to the match. We Lins are neither old, nor noble—”

  “And yet, you can trace your ancestry back fourteen generations!” Mycroft protested.

  “Ah, you remembered!” she said, brightening. “Yes, I suppose by Western standards this would be considered unusual. But compared to the Shi, our pedigree is of little account. Therefore, my marriage to him is necessary for the good of both families. But I must confess that Bingwen Shi’s disappearance, much as it wounds me for the pain it has caused, was a liberation. I now find myself betwixt and between, neither married nor single, in a country with more privileges than has my native land. And, because I am of an age where I can no longer be treated as a child, I have experienced in this interim a sense of freedom that I never fathomed.”

  She paused and then continued: “That said, please believe that I shall do everything in my power to help you find him. And that, if he is still among the living, I shall fulfill my duty and be a good and faithful wife to him for the rest of my days.”

  Mycroft found his voice. “Might you be able to shed any light on your… fiancé’s disappearance? When was the last time that you saw him?”

  Ai Lin let go their hands. “Climbing out of a sleeping car, Mr. Holmes.”

  “Sorry?” Mycroft said, assuming he had misheard.

  “This is where well-bred women usually assure you that it is not what you think, and in fact it is not,” she declared. “You remember the launch of the first sleeper service from London to Glasgow at the beginning of April?”

  “Yes, I… recall that,” Mycroft said. He had read something about it, though it had not held his interest, for the only person he knew in Glasgow was Dr. Bell, and the doctor made frequent trips to London.

  “I was anxious to try it,” she continued, “for Glasgow is one of the few large cities in Britain without a children’s hospital, and so the need for services such as mine, services ‘sans portfolio,’ if you will, are great. But, for my maiden voyage, I chose to be accompanied. I could not ask my brother, and so risk both his studies and his relationship with my father. Nor could I ask the bodyguards, for I already punish them enough, as you have seen. So, I sent word to Bingwen. Would he purchase a ticket on a separate car and take me there and back? I had ulterior motives, of course; for I had met him but once at that point, and I wished to see if he had any sort of progressive bent in regard to women.”

  “And did he?” Mycroft asked.

  “Yes and no. Though he agreed to accompany me, he made it clear that after we were married I would cease this sort of activity and dedicate myself to him, to his family and to our future. Which I promised to do. And so we spent the day in Glasgow, traipsing from one makeshift sick house to the next—”

  “Forgive me, I do not understand. Was he not terribly concerned about you?” Mycroft asked. “After all, those places can be contagious.”

  “The Shi family needs the income that my father’s ships provide, Mr. Holmes,” she said evenly.

  Mycroft sat back in his chair. Though she had revealed nothing that he did not already know, he felt as if he had been punched in the gut all the same.

  “I have developed a reputation, which I myself have fanned, as hard-headed. I have taken full advantage of the fact that I am my father’s only daughter. As the Shi have no daughter to offer to my brother, if they wish to join our family, they have no option but me. And if I were to sicken and die, the hope is that I would have the courtesy to do so after a child is born, and not before. Do you understand?”

  “But if you are to marry, and eventually… perform the duties of a normal wife,” Douglas said, “why go to Glasgow at all? Why tempt yourself towards a life you can never have?”

  “Originally, the engagement was to last six months. Not long, I know, to continue on as I have. But if I can save even one life, or ease one person’s suffering, or discover just one small detail that can add to medical knowledge…” Ai Lin blinked a few times and continued: “As to Bingwen’s business affairs, the only light I can shed is this. He said he was a consultant to Vizily Zaharoff. Do you know of him?”

  “We do,” Mycroft acknowledged. “Industrialist, arms dealer—”

  “—and purported merchant of death,” she added ruefully.

  “In what matters did he consult Zaharoff?” Mycroft asked.

  “In truth, I am not certain. Bingwen was loath to speak of it; and the moment I realized he had business with that man, I made it my mission to end it. When I asked, or perhaps I should say demanded, that he sever the link, he demurred at first, but at last he consented.”

  She took a sip of tea, as if bracing herself.

  “I last laid eyes on him the night of the 4th of April, when our train returned to London, just before midnight. Neither my father nor the Shi family are aware of our journey—”

  She was interrupted by the sound of a carriage pulling up outside. Mycroft and Douglas stood as Ai Lin rose.

  “I ask forgiveness for taking up so much of your time,” she said with a small curtsy, “and will now rejoin my patients.”

  Mycroft dared to glance at her one more time before they headed out the door—and was gratified but also pained when she deigned to glance back.

  “Deshi Hai Lin owns four ships, yes?” he whispered to Douglas as he closed the outer door behind them. “Orion’s Belt, on which that contraband was discovered six months ago—”

  “—and also the Maritime, the Latitude, and the Royal Richard,” Douglas enumerated, nodding. “Quite unusual.”

  “In what way?”

  “Very few coal-powered ships of that size are used exclusively for cargo. It is too dear.”

  “The price of coal versus the price of wind? I should say so,” Mycroft replied as he headed up the carriage steps, with Douglas behind him.

  “But wind is slower and more capricious. To have on hand four British-mad
e ships with experienced sailors, well-marked routes, a solid history of delivery, and plenty of storage?” Douglas said. “The Shi family could do worse.”

  Whereas Ai Lin could do infinitely better, Mycroft thought sourly.

  19

  HUAN, MYCROFT’S TRINIDADIAN DRIVER AND BODYGUARD, arrived the following morning, looking hale and hearty and ready for more travel—at least, that was how he appeared to Sherlock. But Mycroft seemed of a different mind.

  “He has barely set foot on dry ground, after a week’s-long journey!” he scolded. “Surely you can allow him a few hours’ rest!”

  “A few hours?” Sherlock repeated, dumbfounded.

  This was to be his first official day of sleuthing, and already his brother was interfering, to say nothing of the fact that it was Mycroft’s whims that had made them short of time to begin with! The Wycombe Railway made a stop in Thame, a little more than six miles from Bledlow and less than five from the Wickham house. By train, it could have been a journey of slightly more than two hours end to end, rather than the four by carriage. Agreeing to the carriage at all had already been a compromise, and now Mycroft wanted more!

  Sherlock turned to Huan. “Are you in need of rest?” he asked, and Huan grinned.

  “I am here to serve!” he announced in his soft lilt while raising his hands to the sky.

  Sherlock lifted an eyebrow towards his brother and spun upon his heel, with Huan dutifully following behind.

  “Sherlock!” Mycroft commanded. “You are to wait until your admittance arrives.”

  “My admittance to what?” Sherlock asked.

  “The funeral!”

  Sherlock tried to keep his composure.

  “Mycroft. Who in his right mind would attend a funeral he had no need to attend?”

  “The deceased is related, however tenuously, to the Queen,” Mycroft explained. “What if you journey all the way there, only to be refused entry?”

  “It has been nearly a week since the last murder. Already, we are hamstrung by our mode of transport, and now this?”

  “You agreed to this arrangement,” Mycroft retorted calmly. “We shook on it. I now insist that you prove yourself docile in the execution, or Huan will be instructed to go home and rest, and we shall be done with it.”

  “And what am I to do with this… this admittance, once it arrives? Do not tell me that I am there to represent the monarchy or any such foolishness—”

  “Why would anyone choose you to represent the monarchy? You are not to mention it at all! It is only to be brought out should anyone remark upon your presence there.”

  As always Mycroft had his way. So, while they used up half of the morning awaiting a black-ribbon admittance, Sherlock smoked and fumed in the garden and kept his distance from the study where Mycroft was holding court with a half-dozen Oriental men who had come to greet Huan and to partake in the rum that he’d brought back from Jamaica. Although Mycroft had made a perfunctory offer that Sherlock join them, nothing sounded less appealing than a long recounting of musty adventures in faraway places. As for rum, he had no interest, though a glass of Vin Mariani might hit the spot.

  He rummaged through Mycroft’s cache of wines in search of it, but he recognized none of the labels. And, in utilizing his admittedly limited knowledge of German, French, and Italian, not a one of them had been suffused with cocaine.

  At long last, the Queen’s messenger arrived with the dispensation—or admittance, or whatever it was—for the funeral, and their trip was underway.

  Sherlock deposited his traveling bag and vielle inside the coach. Then, instead of taking a seat in the back, as expected, he climbed up beside Huan at the reins.

  “What in heaven’s name are you doing now?” Mycroft demanded, for he had emerged to see them off.

  Although squeezing into the sprung seat was not ideal, Sherlock despised the notion of riding within, like some cosseted passenger.

  “You insisted that I utilize the carriage,” Sherlock grumbled. “You did not specify which part.”

  “There is nothing worth noting along the road, and it threatens to rain!” Mycroft declared.

  “If Huan can endure, then so can I,” Sherlock countered, folding his hands upon his lap and staring straight ahead. “Huan? Proceed,” he commanded, and a moment later they were on their way.

  Sherlock was aware that he was acting impetuously, that his own agitation and passion would need to be brought to heel before they cost him mistakes he could ill afford. But he was not about to let Mycroft know that he had guessed his state of mind. And although he was loath to admit it even to himself, sometimes Mycroft’s readable doubts about his current abilities could be demoralizing.

  Besides, there was something about Huan’s presence that helped to steady his nerves. Huan was a humble, congenial fellow; he seemed always cheerful, energetic, and content to be of service, while at the same time capable of weathering anything.

  Before long, however, Sherlock was rethinking his impulsivity. The sprung seat was brutally hard, and the Irish Cob’s endless high-stepping and mane-tossing were beginning to grate on him, as did the mean little breeze that stung his cheeks and deposited dust from the road directly into his eyes, nose, and mouth.

  After another hour, his body had gone quite numb. He was no longer feeling the cold, or much of anything.

  To distract himself from the discomfort, he permitted his mind to freely roam over the case and to explore the very edges of possibility. From his pocket, he retrieved a map of Buckinghamshire, tracing and retracing its confines with his finger.

  “What is it that you are doing?” Huan asked.

  Might do to talk it through, Sherlock thought, even if he would be all but conversing with himself, since he supposed that Huan would understand little of it.

  “As I have done with every other murder site,” Sherlock began, “I am following the confines of Buckinghamshire to see what it might manifest. If perhaps this outline could be reimagined as a letter of the alphabet, say, or a number.”

  “Ah! And can it?”

  “No, it cannot. However, if one were to anthropomorphize it, then it looks remarkably like a standing griffin, or perhaps a little dog, begging on its haunches.”

  “Ah, but that is lovely! Such imagination!” Huan replied.

  “Yes, well, if every shire resembled some beast or other, then perhaps it would be useful. But as Buckinghamshire is the only one thus far, that particular conjecture is far off the mark.”

  “I am very sorry to hear it,” Huan replied, sounding as if he truly was.

  “No need. We are but at the beginning of our journey and have a way to go. Besides, it is always best to exhaust every simple explanation first, before one moves on in complexity.”

  “Your brother calls that the ‘Occam Razor,’” Huan said, nodding.

  “He does indeed,” Sherlock confirmed with some surprise. “He has spoken to you about it?”

  Huan shrugged. “Sometimes. Mostly, I hear things. When I cannot help it.” After a pause Huan said, “Is it that maybe the ages of the victims create a code?”

  Sherlock stared at him. “A code? What sort of a code?”

  It was one thing to regurgitate the name of a problem-solving principle, quite another, for a man whom he knew to be functionally illiterate, to use the principles of induction on a puzzle.

  “I have heard,” Huan went on, clearly mistaking Sherlock’s bewilderment for a lack of comprehension, “that numbers sometimes can be like letters. Yes?”

  “Yes,” Sherlock confirmed. “Divination, for example, uses certain numerical substitutes for letters. But it could also be more straightforward, such as ‘A’ equals ‘one,’ and so forth. And yes, I did think of it. I have tried the various ages of the victims both in sequence and in reverse. I even speculated that a code might be had from missing numbers—”

  “What do you mean, missing numbers?” Huan asked.

  “The children, for example. Their ages at death were
seven, ten, and fourteen, or, in order of death: seven, fourteen, ten. The missing numbers are therefore eight, nine, eleven, twelve, and thirteen. But nothing has coalesced, you see. Unless you think ‘HIKLM’ might be a useful clue, it is all gibberish.”

  Huan shook his head and sighed. “This thing that you do, it is so very difficult.”

  “It is not difficult in the way that you mean it,” Sherlock said. “I have seen you do battle, Huan. To land a blow perfectly, to learn complicated maneuvers, to control one’s breath and heart, one’s muscles and nerves, all the while avoiding being pummeled? Most would consider that difficult, if not impossible. But for you it is like taking a stroll, is it not?”

  “A sometimes painful stroll, but yes,” Huan admitted with a grin.

  “That is how this is for me. I see this case as a very large puzzle, with many pieces still to be found. My objective, do you see, is to find and then to arrange the pieces to ascertain what might be revealed. This I must do without predetermining the final picture.”

  “Years of practice, they help,” Huan offered.

  “They do. Just as you are a cannier, more adept fighter today than you were at nineteen, I expect to be better at puzzle-solving ten years from now, or twenty. It is not the perfect analogy, I confess,” Sherlock amended, laughing a little, “as physical prowess tends to accompany youth.”

  Huan nodded. “I am not faster. But I am smarter. Save more energy now. Get to the point more quickly.”

  “The simplest answer is that the victims, however unknown to each other, have a link to the killer,” Sherlock said, shifting back to the problem at hand. “And although I am perfectly willing to be persuaded otherwise, thus far it fits. Unfortunately, it also does not tell us much.”

  “Not yet! But you are very wise, Master Sherlock, smart as your brother perhaps. You will catch him!” Huan said, his grin firmly in place.

  Although Sherlock did not care overly much for the word ‘perhaps,’ he had to admit that it felt salubrious to be praised, however undeserved or premature the plaudits might be. In spite of the numbness and the cold—try as he might—he could not help but smile in return.