“In the satchel, if you’d be so kind, Watson?”
I passed the satchel to Holmes—it was indeed heavier than it looked, and we found out why when Holmes opened it. It was full of files—half-a-dozen brown cardboard folders marked with the official crest of the House of Lords.
“They cannot leave my sight,” Mycroft said. “I might be tried for treason if anyone found out I have shown them to you, but I know you will not drop this case, and you would find out eventually, so …”
Holmes had already begun looking through the files. “Rome, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, Cairo, Philadelphia, Delhi, Jakarta. It is worldwide, then?”
Mycroft nodded. “And all in the last six months, all with the same modus operandi—the brains and spinal cords are surgically removed and the bodies left on display like so much meat. Twenty-three bodies at the latest count. Given the widespread nature of the phenomenon, the pattern might never have been noticed …”
“… if you did not spend most of your time looking for exactly this kind of thing?”
If Holmes was attempting to get a rise out of his brother, it did not work. Mycroft polished off his second port and waved the empty glass in my direction.
“If you please, Watson? Just one more; then I have to be going. There’s some trouble brewing in Prussia.”
“Isn’t there always?” Holmes replied, and got a thin smile in return.
“I cannot leave anything with you,” Mycroft said. “But you have the basics already. Given the distances and time involved for traveling between murders, I believe we are looking at multiple assailants—and given the exactness of the surgery, the attention to detail and the similarities in methodology, I can only surmise we are dealing with a conspiracy.”
Holmes did not reply to that, but studied the files in front of him, one after the other. I knew he was storing it away to be analyzed later, in case there was something both he and Mycroft had missed on their first pass.
Mycroft was finishing up his port as Holmes tidied up the paperwork and placed it carefully back in the satchel. Mycroft pushed himself, with some difficulty, out of the chair.
“We will stay in close touch on this one?” he said.
Holmes nodded. “As you say, given the international nature of the thing, we might have need of your contacts.”
“And I may even have need of some of yours,” Mycroft replied, taking the satchel from Holmes and clutching it to his chest. “Just find me something to work with, Sherlock. We’re all operating in the dark at the moment.”
It was only after Mycroft left that I realized he had not spoken of the sigil or the ring.
“It may be that he does not consider them important,” Holmes replied when I mentioned the fact. “Or it may be that he is still playing some cards close to his chest. In any case, I was not going to mention it if he did not. It may be our only real way to slip between the cracks in this investigation—let us hope so, at least, for there is precious little else to be going on with.”
Chapter Nine
EF
Lestrade, as good as his word, did indeed find time to visit us, late in the evening after our supper and just in time to prevent me from heading for my bed.
He looked weary and harassed—seven bodies all at once had, as Mycroft said, garnered a lot of attention very quickly, and Lestrade had the misfortune to be the public face of the Yard on this occasion. It was not a role he relished.
“I am a policeman, not a bleeding newspaper-man,” he said when he came in. “Why does everyone think I have all the answers?”
I poured him a stiff drink and he gulped it gratefully before joining us by the fire.
He had little to say beyond what we already knew. They had identified two of the bodies so far, but neither gave any clue as to why they had been killed—one was a lady of letters from Wokingham and the other an office clerk at an insurance broker in the city. Lestrade had men looking for any connection between those two and Mr. Green, the memory-man, but I felt in my gut that he would find none—our quarry was proving too elusive, too intelligent, to have chosen victims with a personal connection.
Like Mycroft before him, Lestrade did not immediately mention the sigil, despite its prominence on the crypt wall, and despite having himself seen the ring, but he was too good a policeman to have missed the implication of it showing up at the scene. He brought it up just as he was leaving.
“I’ll leave the business with the ring and the pretty patterns to you, shall I, Holmes?” he said. “I have enough on my plate as it is with the bodies.”
Holmes nodded. “I doubt there is anything for you to find beyond the singular nature of the medical procedures,” Holmes said. “Although it may be worthwhile inquiring as to the nature of the minds of those killed. Mr. Green had a brain like a vast library—if you discover that the others were equally gifted, then we might have another fact to add to the small pile we have gathered.”
“I shall get right on it,” Lestrade said, his tiredness allowing his sarcasm to show as he left.
I left Holmes in the seat by the fire and finally was able to make my weary way to a most welcome bed where, I am glad to say, I slept the sleep of the just through a long, undisturbed night.
3
Holmes wasn’t in the chair in the morning, but any hope I might have had that he himself had partaken of a good night’s sleep was dashed when I heard him shout in the hall downstairs.
“Mrs. Hudson—some cake for these hungry boys, if you please?”
I arrived in the sitting room just as Holmes showed two of his street lads inside, making them remove their shoes before allowing them entrance to the parlor in a rare nod to Mrs. Hudson’s pride in the carpeting.
The boys were wide-eyed and obviously in awe of both Holmes and the surroundings in which they now found themselves. I knew for a fact that some of these children lived hand-to-mouth on the streets, snatching sleep where they could, and living off what scraps they could find and pennies they could beg. Here, inside a house, they were out of their natural habitat, and it showed. They perched on the edge of chairs much too large for them, and looked like a pair of frightened rabbits ready to flee at the slightest provocation.
Mrs. Hudson’s delivery of freshly baked cake helped to keep them still, although did little for the conversation while they coated their lips—and chins—liberally with cream and jam. All too quickly they were ready for more, but Holmes withheld a second helping just out of their reach.
“So you have found something, have you? Something worth another piece of this splendid fancy?”
The boys nodded in unison, their eyes never leaving the plate.
“It were over in that old church on the edge of Russell Square,” the bolder of the two spoke up. “St. Columba’s, I fink they calls it—it’s been empty for years. Right creepy place it is too—we don’t go there much in the dark. But there’s been stories, see, these three weeks past.”
“And we know you likes stories, Mr. Holmes, sir,” the other butted in, their confidence growing as their excitement rose.
“So we goes over there and hung around last night, waiting, like. And the boogers came, just after midnight.”
“Who came?” Holmes asked softly.
“The mad monks,” the smaller boy said, his eyes wide. “Ten of them, with long cloaks and ‘oods over their heads, singing and chanting and all kinds o’ stuff and nonsense.”
“There was them lights too, Mr. Holmes, high up inside the old church—green and blue and red and shining—fair hurt my eyes to look at them, so it did.”
“And the monks went inside?”
The boys nodded.
“And what then?”
It looked as though the older boy might not reply, until the smaller one dug an elbow, sharp into his ribs.
“We went closer and had a look,” he said, barely above a whisper. “Tiny here nearly peed himself, but he’s a brave lad and watched my back as I went to the window. And there it were, bold as brass
, up on the wall—that thing you showed us on the ring.”
Holmes took out the ring and swiveled the jet face forward. “This? You are sure?”
The boy went pale, and nodded.
“And then what?”
“Then we felt right queer, like summat had got inside our heads and was poking around in there, and we legged it, sharpish like. I’m telling you no lies Mr. Holmes, I ain’t going close to that place again, cake or no cake. It ain’t natural.”
“And it smells too,” the younger lad said. “Stinks o’ piss and vinegar.”
3
The boys were more than happy to be paid for their information with more cake, although Mrs. Hudson did not share their joy.
“That was for Doctor Watson, after his supper,” she said, with the kind of indignation only a Scottish landlady of a certain age can muster convincingly as we met her at the foot of the stairs and Holmes handed her the empty plate. Holmes was unmoved.
“Then it has not gone to waste,” he replied. “For I am afraid we may not be back for supper this evening, Mrs. Hudson. We have more pressing matters to attend to.” He was already on his way to the door, lifting his heavy overcoat and hat from the coat rack. “That is, if you mean to join me, Watson?”
I gave in to the inevitable, took down my own coat and hat, added a scarf to the ensemble for good measure, and joined Holmes out on the pavement.
3
Holmes was all for heading directly to the church in Russell Square, but this time I was not ready to comply so meekly to his whims.
“I missed my bally breakfast yesterday. I insist on getting some hot food inside us if we’re going to be creeping about in this cold again.”
He laughed, and gave in to my demands—he was in a better humor after the boys’ story than he had been the night before. The merest inkling of a clue had been enough to raise his spirits considerably.
He even kept me amused over a full breakfast in the Quality Chophouse with a tale of his younger days at University he had never before related. It proved to be a most humorous story featuring a bishop, a prostitute and a policeman that would cause quite a public scandal if the details were ever made public.
We were both in fine spirits as we hailed a cab for Russell Square, but my feelings of well-being lasted only as long as it took the weather to change and sleety drizzle to set in for the duration. I was of half a mind to leave Holmes to it and ask our driver to take me straight back to Baker Street, but if truth be told, the boys’ story had me intrigued enough to want to know if there was anything to it.
The carriage eventually dropped us off at the corner of Russell Square after having to take several detours north of Blackfriars due to impassable roads. The inclement weather had driven most people off the streets, and there was no one else in the vicinity as we approached Saint Columba’s church.
I knew the building well—I even remembered it when it had last been in use some ten years past, having attended a Forces funeral that filled the old place with the skirl of pipes and heartfelt hymns. The intervening decade had not served the building well, and it was a sad shadow of its former glory. The only saving grace was that once we pushed open the doors and headed inside we were sheltered from the worst of the sleet—but not all of it, for the roof had partially fallen in on the western side.
Half a dozen pigeons noisily noted our presence as we picked our way through broken timbers and shattered pews. It was obvious as we approached the altar that some attempt had been made at clearing this area. I was about to mention it to Holmes, when I saw that he had stopped, and was staring up at the expanse of empty wall above the lectern.
Someone had been busy with paint—busy and rather hasty, for the strokes had run and streaked in several places, but the image portrayed was clear enough—we had once again come face to face with the radiating rays of the unfathomable sigil.
Holmes immediately started a search of the surrounding area. I stood back, far enough to keep out of his way and to give myself some shelter from the elements, and had a smoke. I have known Holmes to peruse locations for hours on end, lost in his quest for minutiae that might shed light on the task at hand. I was used to waiting, and had prepared myself for more of the same, but on this occasion I did not have to wait long.
“The Irregulars were telling the truth—at least as they saw it,” Holmes said. “There have indeed been many people wearing robes in the vicinity—you can clearly read their movements by the scuff-marks in the dust.” He pointed at an area of flooring that looked just like the rest to me. “They mostly congregated around the daubing on the wall, in a tight group. And what’s more, there’s a lot of those blasted insect-like scratch marks too—the same as the ones we saw in the crypt. Whatever is going on here, it is most definitely linked to the event in Hackney. And we finally have a clue—something I can work with. I found this.”
He held up an inch long stub, the remains of a cigarillo that still had a gold band two-thirds of the way down along its length. He sniffed at it and nodded.
“Moroccan,” he said. “As I would have surmised from the color and texture—and it is fresh, smoked at the same time as the gathering here, I would wager.”
“Does it really get us anywhere, Holmes?” I asked.
He smiled. “It may get us a long way, Watson. I know of only one supplier of this particular brand in the city. These are expensive—far out of the pocket of your common criminal classes. With luck we may even be able to find the man who bought it.”
Holmes put the stub away in an envelope—he kept some at hand at all times for just these occasions—and tucked it in his pocket before continuing.
“There are yet other marks in the dust but they are most perplexing, as there are no indications of its coming or going, as if something just appeared, and then left again as mysteriously as it had come. And as to the nature of whatever ceremony took place, I am as yet at a loss. A cigarillo stub is not much to be going on with—but if the case demands that we must move in small steps, then that is what we shall do.”
The drizzly sleet abated somewhat, and it was only then that I noticed the Irregulars had been right about something else.
The odor of vinegar pervaded the whole place.
Chapter Ten
EF
A trip to a tobacconist in the Strand with the cigarillo stub yielded the first clue of any note to turn up in the case—or rather, two clues, for the tobacconist remembered two recent purchasers of the Moroccan cigarillos.
“I only remember as they both asked for them specifically—I hear they are a fine strong smoke, although I never touch them myself—I’m more of a Virginia man—indeed, I have some new leaf just arrived if I can interest you in …”
Holmes cut the man off. “The cigarillos—could you tell me the names of the buyers?”
“I might,” the man said, and I recognized the look that came to his eyes only too well. After the inevitable haggling, he gave us the names; it cost Holmes a crown, but he considered it money well spent. I recognized one of them—Sir David Patrick was a surgeon in the higher echelons of that career in the Royal Hospital—I’d never met the man, but had also never heard a bad word said against him. The other name, John Mains, was unfamiliar to me—but not to Holmes.
“He’s in shipping,” Holmes said. We had been caught in a heavier bout of sleet immediately after leaving the tobacconists in the Strand, and so combined sheltering with lunching in the George over a pint of porter and a splendid pork pie. “Most of his business is done through Glasgow, and comes in from the Southern Hemisphere—timber and spices mainly, although there have been rumors that large quantities of opiates are often among his cargoes, which is how he came to my attention. I believe he maintains a house in town—it should not be too difficult to track him down.”
Holmes left me to my pie and went to the bar. More coins passed hands as Holmes went from table to table. I was struck yet again with the ease with which Holmes could drop into conversation with any
one, from the poorest laborer to the richest banker, yet find common ground. It took him less than five minutes in the bar to find someone who knew Mains’ address and was willing to divulge it. This time, it only cost him the price of two pints of ale to find out that the man had a place within two streets of the church in Russell Square.
“It seems we have found our man—or one of them, in any case,” Holmes said on his return to the table. “Shall we beard him in his den, Watson?”
“And say what, old chap? We have no real evidence with which to attack him—we do not even know whether this thing in the church is not just some mummery—fun and games for rich men with too much money and time on their hands.”
“Oh, it is more than that, Watson—I am sure of it. We will know soon enough. But first let us return to Baker Street—I have hopes that my man in the British Library will have come up with something for us by now. We may yet find something we can use to coax Mains to talk to us.”
3
As fate would have it, Holmes’ hopes were justified. On our return to Baker Street, we found an envelope on the coat-rack in the hallway, addressed to Holmes in a neat but cramped hand. It contained three sheaves of paper, with writing on both sides.
We went upstairs, and I had a smoke while Holmes perused the letter. By the time Mrs. Hudson brought us a pot of tea, he was done. He handed it to me.
“Well, it is certainly something, Watson,” he said. “But I am not sure it is pertinent to our case today.”
It took me several seconds to become accustomed to the man’s writing style, it being both cramped and rather too flowery in language for my taste, but that was soon forgotten. It quickly became clear that Holmes’ man in the Library had indeed uncovered the history of the sigil—a long and involved one at that, albeit one cloaked in secrecy. His notes told of a sky-god cult that dated back into pre-Roman antiquity, being particularly prevalent in the area now known as the Scottish Borders, and having been added by the Romans themselves to the long list of cults and myths incorporated into the soldiers’ worship along Hadrian’s Wall.
Sherlock Holmes: The London Terrors by William Meikle Page 5