The Empty Birdcage

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  “Be on the lookout. You especially,” the barman added, pointing to Huan, who was drying himself by the fire. “The Chinamen, they perceive things that we cannot,” he explained to Sherlock with an expression of earnest wonder.

  While Huan sat down at a little table and dug into his meal, Sherlock rolled a cigarette, lit it, and then pulled the pile of letters from his coat pocket.

  “What is that you have there?” Huan asked, eyeing them.

  “They belonged to Miss Montgomery,” Sherlock confessed on the exhale.

  “You stole them?”

  “Not at all. I borrowed them.”

  “But… Master Sherlock, you must return them!”

  “To whom? Their owner is deceased! Besides,” he mumbled as he rifled through them for interesting tidbits, “there is nothing terribly relevant here.”

  Beyond the fact that the nephew’s affection for her seems genuine, he thought.

  From the little he could piece together, Harold had lived with his aunt for some months as a child, though he did not mention when, or why.

  “Harold Navarro Rogers,” he said aloud. “Clearly, either the father or the mother did not hail from these parts. And clearly, Harold did not expect a reply from his aunt, for the return address has listed only his name. My guess is, he did not wish to burden her with the need to reply, for he knew that she could not.”

  Her neighbor’s vituperative words had brought to Sherlock’s mind something that he had read. A psychiatrist in Berlin, Carl Westphal, had coined an interesting term: agoraphobia; ‘agora,’ from the Greek meaning ‘place of assembly,’ and phobia, or fear. Westphal had used it to indicate the state of persons who, possibly through no fault of their own, were loath to leave the confines of their own abode.

  “Navarro is a common enough surname in Trinidad,” Huan said, looking up from his meat pie. “It too is Spanish. Like the Via Esmeralda.”

  “There we are again, eh? We seem to have a link, however tenuous.”

  “Wonderful!” Huan said with an expectant grin, as if Sherlock were about to reveal something of import.

  Sherlock sat back in his seat and drew a breath. He suddenly felt inadequate to the task, as he had when he had discovered the cactus thorn in Elise Wickham’s neck. Even if he were sitting not at The Fountainhead but at one of the world’s finest libraries, with the most comprehensive research at his fingertips… for what would he even begin to search?

  He fought off an unexpected shiver.

  “Do you believe in ghosts, Master Sherlock?” Huan asked, eyeing him, as he took a sip of ale.

  “No, Huan, I do not. Though I confess I am feeling rather haunted at the moment.”

  Sherlock stared glumly at the flames in the hearth. He took out the killer’s note again. Three inches by five. Why create a note so small and symmetrical? Sherlock weighed it in his hand and inspected it for the hundredth time, especially around the edges, looking for something in particular, something he surmised but could not yet discern.

  In a corner of the paper, he noticed a light creasing that he had at first attributed to it being mishandled. Now, looking at it again with a new perspective, it did not seem to be that at all. Could it have been made by a beak? Surely a trained bird could carry a three-by-five note and place it wherever the killer wished—thus explaining the lack of human footprints!

  Lady Anne had heard a crow caw. The old man near the stables had seen a small crow-like bird that he swore he had never seen before. And now a parakeet had been found dead in its cage, spots of blood indicating that the death may not have been natural. Might some sort of tamed, crow-like bird have attacked the parakeet inside its cage? But if so, would it not have been a messier demise? And yet, Miss Montgomery’s neighbor did not recall any traces of blood on the little avian corpse.

  As for Percy Butcher’s dog—it was, for all intents and purposes, blind. Sherlock had dutifully tossed a few sticks towards it to see if it might have noticed a bird flying by, but of course it had not.

  Young Will Jury’s dog, on the other hand, was quite active, playing with his young master in life and licking the boy’s face in death. Could a barking, hysterical dog have kept the bird at bay? Is that what had caused the killer to add the note for his third victim at a later date?

  As for the eighth victim, Abigail Sykes, her mother was close by the entire time. Surely a bird flying in through the window with a note in its beak would have drawn her notice. Her constant presence must have been why the killer had to return on the day of her funeral, when he—and, purportedly, his trained bird—would not be so easily spotted.

  Sherlock traced the slash above the “i” with his forefinger. It suddenly seemed a spiteful little gesture to the world at large. Again, a trained bird could surely make such a mark, utilizing its beak!

  “Huan? What do you know about crows?” Sherlock asked.

  Huan smiled. “Master Sherlock, the islands of Trinidad and Tobago are famous for their many colored birds! Hundreds and hundreds we have, all different, and so beautiful. But no crows. I know nothing of crows.”

  “I know somethin’ of crows!” a voice announced.

  It was the black-haired barman. There were few people in the pub and, apparently bored, he had gone from one table to the next, cleaning as he went, moving closer and closer to their conversation.

  “They are a portent of evil, so they say. But I do not believe it, lest he tells me different,” he declared, staring at Huan with the same wide-eyed wonder.

  “Do you happen to know how many types of crows there are?” Sherlock inquired, which seemed to leave the man at a loss. He tilted his square head, rubbed the back of his thick neck with the rag that he had been using on the tabletops, and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Now, I don’t know as to how many types in all. But me mam found a small one, one what had felled out of its nest. She began to feed it breadcrumbs and scraps and such. They is very bright, with the gift of recall, and they learn tricks too!”

  “What sorts of tricks?” Sherlock asked.

  “Fetching! They can fetch, like a dog!” the barman said. “Not just big objects. Tiny ones! They’ll pick out a mote of dust among many if you train ’em right!”

  “Do you recall it ever utilizing tools?” Sherlock asked.

  “Tools?” the man repeated. “Like a hammer and such?”

  “No, more like a stick.”

  “Nah. Like I say, it would pick up things for me mam.”

  “Is the bird still around? Might we see it?” Sherlock asked, rising.

  The barkeep brushed the back of his neck with the towel again.

  “Nah. Our da didn’t care for the cawing. Killed it two years back. Me mam couldn’t bear to see it dead and had me bury it. When I saw it up close, I could tell it wan’t no proper crow. It was smaller, with rough feathers. A rook!” he concluded proudly.

  Sherlock thought back to the old man, and his description of a bird that had the look of a crow or a rook but was neither.

  Holding up the killer’s note but keeping it face down, he said: “And what of this? Do you suppose your mother’s bird could have carried something of this dimension in its beak, and perhaps deposited it where she wished?”

  The barman scratched his chin. “Never seen that, specific. But if you’re asking could it pick up and carry, aye. I’ve seen it carry bigger and heavier, for they are attracted to shiny things… Be something amiss with your pie?” he asked, and it took Sherlock a moment to realize what he was referring to.

  “No, no, nothing,” he said, picking up his fork.

  He was saved from having a bite when another patron came through the door, and the barman excused himself to take his order.

  “Perhaps you should eat and not smoke only,” Huan chided him.

  “One keeps me awake and one puts me to sleep, Huan. Which of the two do you suppose I need more at the moment?”

  “I think you can rest a little, for you have made great progress already, Master S
herlock!” Huan announced.

  “Oh, undoubtedly,” Sherlock replied. “Now all I need to find is some sort of traveling clerk or other bureaucrat with a murderous bent who keeps a trained crow that is not a crow but something else entirely.”

  “There, you see?” Huan answered, grinning. “As I say! Progress!”

  28

  MYCROFT CROSSED THE STREET TOWARDS THE OFFICES of the Secretary of State for War in time to feel the first rain of the morning. Though he knew that it would come, and that it hailed from the southwest (he could sniff out the changes in the air), he had renounced the umbrella that the driver, Carlton, had held out for him. In truth, it was preferable that he arrive upstairs slightly disheveled, as if the journey had cost him—if not dearly, then at least decidedly.

  It had been six months since he had quit his employment at the Cumberland House offices. His employer, Edward Cardwell, had not yet replaced him and would probably never, for it was Cardwell’s intent to retire within a year at most, which made the hiring of new personnel superfluous, and also allowed him to make Mycroft the scapegoat for the paucity of manpower.

  Whomever could I dig up to replace you, Holmes? he would announce each time they met, in the vaguely accusatory tone of the jilted suitor, accompanied by a hangdog expression and a mournful shake of the head. Since his surgery, Mycroft would have happily done hand to hand combat rather than make a social visit to Cardwell.

  Then again, he was also thoroughly aware that his association with his former employer was the quickest, most expeditious way to gain access to Vizily Zaharoff. One word from Cardwell, and Zaharoff’s doors would spring open to him… if not in welcome, then at least in grudging acknowledgement of his existence. For, in spite of Zaharoff’s impressive power and notoriety, no arms merchant worth his salt would wish to be on the wrong side of Britain’s well-regarded Secretary of State for War.

  From the relative safety of the building’s overhang, Mycroft watched the rain start to fall down in sheets, accompanied by a volatile wind that blew the drops first this way and then that. He pulled out his pocket watch, almost as if to delay the inevitable, when he saw young Charles Parfitt arrive at a gallop astride his chestnut Warmblood, Abie. Parfitt, reins in one hand, umbrella in the other, tossed the reins to an awaiting groom with more practiced aplomb than Mycroft had ever beheld, unhooked a cake box from the saddle, and then hurried as quickly as he could towards the front entrance… only to skid to a stop when he noticed Mycroft loitering in the doorway.

  “Ho, Parfitt! Let us go up together!” Mycroft called, at which point Parfitt smiled broadly.

  “I went to fetch cakes, sir!” he called back, holding up the box as proof. “Mr. Cardwell is quite particular about his cakes—”

  “Yes, and the temperature of the tea too, as I recall. Hurry out of the rain, for pity’s sake. Hello there, old boy,” Mycroft murmured as the groom turned Abie around and past him on their way to the mews. “And how is this one getting on?” he asked Parfitt, giving Abie a steady scratching on the bridge of his nose, a move which Mycroft knew he favored, for the gelding had once belonged to him.

  “Oh, splendidly, sir! He is well cared for.”

  “I can see that.”

  Abie’s ears came forward and he exhaled a breath, a signal that he recognized and was relaxing under his former owner’s touch.

  “He remembers you still, Mr. Holmes!” Parfitt said, beaming.

  “Yes, well…”

  Mycroft pulled his hand away and motioned for the groom to walk on. He was not keen to acknowledge the regret tinged with melancholy that Abie produced in him.

  “You received my note, Parfitt?” he inquired as he and Parfitt opened the outer door, removed their damp overcoats in unison, and made their way to the second-floor offices. “You were able to ferret out the information I requested?”

  “Oh yes, sir. I made notes on Via Esmeralda, as well as on the German gentleman you inquired about. I have not yet been able to secure a list of investors in Via Esmeralda, as the Board of Trade has been quite intractable.”

  “I may have to do some smoothing of feathers,” Mycroft said with a sigh.

  “Yes, sir. As for your latest inquiry, it was just as you surmised: fascinating, really, though I still do not comprehend why you would point me to Somerset House, of all places.”

  “Lucky guess, Parfitt,” Mycroft replied quickly, a lie that he could tell did not fool Parfitt in the least, while also knowing that the lad would not pursue it. If Mycroft found himself face to face with Zaharoff, as planned, it would be to Zaharoff that he would reveal the whys and the wherefores of Parfitt’s latest investigation.

  “I believe you will be quite pleased with my discoveries, sir, if… if I am not too bold to say so.”

  “Good lad, Parfitt. Good man, I should say.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” Parfitt replied, his cheeks reddening at the compliment.

  For Parfitt had, not so very long before, been an inexperienced boy with bad skin and a painful stammer whom Mycroft had persuaded Cardwell to hire as a favor to his former landlady, Mrs. Hudson. Bringing her nephew into the fold had, as it turned out, been a savvy favor indeed. For Parfitt, now nearing twenty years of age, was a quick learner with a keen memory and a prodigious gift for unearthing the arcane but useful tidbit.

  “Do you happen to have those notes upon your person?” Mycroft asked.

  “Oh yes, sir. I haven’t let them out of my sight! Would you like them now, sir?” he whispered as the two crossed the outer suite and stood at the door to Cardwell’s private office.

  “If you don’t mind,” Mycroft replied with a smile, at which point Parfitt slipped them out of his inner jacket pocket, his eyes darting about as if he half expected constables with manacles to appear from behind the bookcases.

  * * *

  Some half an hour later, Mycroft and Cardwell were seated at the conference table by the large windows with a splendid view of Pall Mall below. That is, it would have been a splendid view, had the day not continued to be wet and dreary. Mycroft’s own dampened state had gone all but unnoticed, as Cardwell had insisted upon the windows remaining wide open so as to provide a ‘nice lungful of healing air’—along with the occasional gust of moistened wind, which made it feel as if they were attempting to have tea in a monsoon.

  “Our reserves have at last been raised to thirty-six thousand men!” Cardwell announced with some pride.

  “Well done, sir. They were a mere thirty-five hundred when you assumed the post, I believe.” Mycroft wiped his cheek and forehead after the latest onslaught and repocketed his handkerchief.

  For the past half hour, Mycroft had been awaiting a natural pause into which he might inject Zaharoff, but he had found none. Instead, Cardwell had recounted, in minute detail, each victory and setback during his five years in office, including the two during which Mycroft had been at his side.

  Still talking, Cardwell rang a bell, and Parfitt arrived with the teapot.

  “More tea, sir?” he asked Mycroft.

  “Thank you, no, Parfitt,” Mycroft began, but Cardwell cut him off.

  “Nonsense, a second cannot but do you good,” he announced, “provided that it is served at the correct temperature! You have stomach issues, do you not, Holmes?”

  “No sir, I do not believe I do—”

  “Ah. Well, this shall remedy whatever ails you.”

  Cardwell held up his cup and pointed commandingly to Mycroft’s, and Parfitt dutifully poured more tea into both.

  “And take a cake, man!” Cardwell thundered. “I had them bought specially. Parfitt, put one on his plate. Make it two! As I was saying,” he added, “a tenfold increase in troops is nothing to sneeze at. There is even talk of raising me to the peerage. Annie is quite pleased at the prospect. Of course, the moment I am ennobled, I can no longer serve as a politician,” Cardwell opined, frowning.

  “Ah, well. Handy then, that you were planning on retirement.”

  Ca
rdwell sighed. “Yes. I did dearly hope that a Holmes would assume my post,” he muttered, assuming the hangdog expression that Mycroft so detested. “You have a younger brother, yes? Perhaps he might choose to go into service when he is older…”

  Sherlock as Secretary of State for War? Mycroft thought with some amusement.

  “I failed to retain you, Holmes, the regret of my career, for now I shall leave office without a general staff system, something I am all but certain you could have helped me install, for although you have no political clout, you are clever, Holmes, very clever. This government needs you, man.”

  “At the moment, sir, I am needed elsewhere,” Mycroft said, seizing his opportunity.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, sir. I happen to be in the unenviable position of needing from you an introduction to Vizily Zaharoff.”

  As injections went, it was hardly well executed. Cardwell reared back in his chair.

  “A terrible man! Why should you wish to have to do with him?”

  “As a favor to a friend, sir.”

  “Hm. Must be a good friend indeed. I would not go near that bloodthirsty Ottoman on a bet. Now, I have no qualms with arms dealers, but this one is not above selling faulty products to one country if a second, rival country greases his palm. He will also entice a country into buying the very latest weapons at a nice discount, and then terrify its enemy into buying the same for twice the amount—”

  “I understand, sir, but I have made certain promises—”

  “Ah. As you did to me,” Cardwell complained. “That you would remain in my employ, for starters—”

  “Sir?” Mycroft interrupted so as to remain on the subject. “Have you heard tell of a kidnapping some weeks back? A Chinese native named Bingwen Shi was taken from a London street and spirited away to China.”