The Mycroft Holmes Omnibus

by David Dickinson

  “What have we got? We’ve got precious little. You say the man Mycroft would not have opened his own front door to let the victim in. No jury is going to believe that for a second. There’s a locksmith who hasn’t yet been interviewed. That’s worth bugger all, if you’ll pardon my French. The dead man may not have actually resided at the address in Bishop’s Stortford found on his person. That doesn’t add up to a row of beans. You talk about the character of the accused and the invaluable work he’s doing for the Government. I tell you, my friend, that won’t mean a thing to the jury once they’ve been told he was found on his bed with a corpse in the next room, fully clothed, with blood all over his waistcoat and his jacket, reeking of drink, and a bloodied poker beside him.”

  Pugh rose and strode over to his great windows, looking out over the lawns. “Is there no hope at all, Pugh?” asked Thomas Montague Smith, “Your only counsel is despair?”

  “With the ammunition we’ve got, Mr Montague Smith, a four year old child with a pea shooter could blow us right out of the water. Unless some fresh evidence turns up fast, Mycroft Holmes is going to hang.”

  “What would you have us do?”

  “Pray,” said Pugh, leaning back in his chair and putting a pair of expensive boots onto his desk, “watch and pray.”

  “Have you no words of hope? None at all?”

  “None at all,” said Pugh, shaking his head, “I tell you what though, I’m seeing Powerscourt this evening. He’s just back from Russia, I think. I’ll let you know if he has anything to suggest.”

  *

  Early the following evening Inspector Lestrade called at the house of Oliver Highsmith, the locksmith who installed the new Yale device from Linklaters at 68b Pall Mall. Highsmith, a tall thin man of around thirty years, opened the door himself, carrying a baby of about six months in his arms.

  “Do come in, Inspector. This is Leo,” he pointed to his son as he spoke but Leo was fast asleep.

  “I would like to talk to you about the new lock you installed a couple of months ago in Pall Mall for a Mr Mycroft Holmes. You would probably have dealt with his housekeeper, Mrs Hudson.”

  “Is there something wrong with the lock, Inspector?”

  “No, there isn’t,” Lestrade replied, “but I wonder if there is anything unusual you remember about the installation?”

  “Is there something funny going on here?” demanded Oliver Highsmith. Leo was beginning to make little gurgling noises.

  “No, no,” said Lestrade, reluctant to reveal the true reasons behind his questions just yet.

  “I tell you what,” said Highsmith, “I’ll just go and get my diary. It’s next door. I always keep a record when new locks are being installed. You never know what might happen these days. Just keep an eye on Leo for me.”

  With that Oliver Highsmith dumped the baby in Lestrade’s lap. The Inspector eyed the child with deep suspicion. Anything might happen, he said to himself. He and his wife Carrie had two girls. He knew little about boys like Leo.

  Relief was swift. Highsmith reclaimed his son and began looking through the back pages of his diary.

  “That’s curious,” he said, going back over his entry again, “I wonder if this might explain why you’re here. You develop a very suspicious mind being a locksmith.”

  Inspector Lestrade looked curious. “What is it?" he said.

  “It’s this, Inspector. I nearly didn’t put this in. I was on my way to Pall Mall, coming from the Athenaeum end if you follow me. There were a lot of people about on the street that day. It must have been about half past four in the afternoon. There was a whole crowd of men who seemed to be pushing me. I fell over and hit my head on the pavement very hard. I must have been out cold for about five or ten minutes. Somebody was loosening my shirt and tie when I woke up. I was alright after a few minutes. I remember Mrs Hudson gave me a cup of strong tea.”

  “I see,” said Lestrade. “Did you have the new lock about your person at the time?”

  “I did, it was loose, I mean it wasn’t in a box or anything, it was in a little bag I carry with me. The bag’s never locked.”

  “Do you think, Mr Highsmith, and I would ask to consider this very carefully before you reply, do you think that somebody could have made an impression of the lock while you were knocked out and returned the lock to its original position so you would know nothing about it?”

  Oliver Highsmith looked carefully at Lestrade. He looked down at Leo as if he might know the answer.

  “Well,” he said finally, “it’s possible. I don’t deny it’s possible. But I don’t think it’s very likely. Whoever took the impression would have had to have some kind of wax imprint device on their person. They could have been spotted by a passer by.”

  “Not if you were surrounded by members of the same gang, standing close around you to block the view,” said Lestrade. Even as he spoke the words he could hear the prosecution barrister tearing him to shreds.

  *

  “I might have been, I suppose. I can only say it might have happened, not that it did happen, Inspector. Is that helpful?”

  Lestrade was too experienced a detective to give the honest answer.

  “Every little helps,” he said cheerfully as Highsmith showed him to the door and waved him down the drive. Master Leo Highsmith remained completely unaware of the Inspector’s visit. He was still fast asleep in his father’s arms.

  *

  The Treasury Solicitor had bad news for the evening meeting at Pall Mall. The case due to be heard before that of Mycroft Holmes at the Old Bailey had collapsed. The defendant, according to Thomas Montague Smith’s information, had broken down and died in his prison cell the night before. His family were blaming the prison warders, saying they had beaten the man to death. Whatever the facts of the case, there was now little over a week to go before Mycroft’s trial. Charles Augustus Pugh was present at the meeting, consuming large numbers of Mrs Hudson’s finest scones with home made blackberry jam.

  “Gentlemen and ladies,” Pugh bowed to Mrs Hudson, “my reading of the situation we find ourselves in is not good. I have here a note from my friend, the leading investigator Lord Francis Powerscourt. I outlined the facts of the case to him yesterday evening and he sent me his thoughts this morning. He believes, as I think we all do, that the whole event has been organised by the Count, intent on revenge for the exposure of his plans to debase the currency. Powerscourt suspects that the body was not that of the real Jobson. He believes that the most likely place for the Count’s gang to get hold of a suitable corpse would be a workhouse with links to a teaching hospital where the bodies of the dead may be handed over for purposes of medical research. He also believes that the dead man could have been brought to Mycroft’s rooms earlier in the day when Mrs Hudson was out doing her errands perhaps, and concealed in the spare bedroom. He goes on to say, however, that even if evidence for those events could be found, the prosecution could still argue that their case was unaffected. There might have been a mistake in the identification process, but murder had still been committed. The dead man by the fire has not gone away.”

  Pugh paused to butter another scone. Nobody spoke.

  “Powerscourt says in conclusion that if the Count is behind all this – and Powerscourt remains convinced that he is – Inspector Robinson must be the key to the affair. Has he been bribed? Suborned in some fashion we do not know? Finding proof of that would be very difficult in the time left available.”

  Charles Augustus Pugh paused again and looked round his little audience. “Powerscourt’s final sentence, if I may.” He put on a pair of gold framed reading glasses and peered at his letter. “Short of a miracle in Pall Mall, or in the unlikely surroundings of Wormwood Scrubs, Mycroft Holmes will be hanged within the next fortnight!”

  Inspector Lestrade was twisting his hat in his hands. Mrs Hudson was wiping her eyes with a pink handkerchief. Thomas Montague Smith was staring into the fire. Tobias was doing mental arithmetic to calm his nerves.

>   “Well,” said Mrs Hudson at last, “I’m going to send a telegram to Mr Sherlock first thing in the morning. Now at last he may decide to leave his bees and save his brother’s life!”

  “I shall have to report back to the Prime Minister,” said Montague Smith, “they’re not going to like this one little bit. They’ve got a man in the Attorney General’s Department seeing if there’s any way the trial could be stopped.”

  “I’ve got to send a great heap of stuff from the Government Departments that Mycroft ordered up to the Scrubs this evening,” said Tobias. “There is one thing that is odd, though, very odd. Mycroft sent a letter addressed to the steward of the Diogenes Club earlier today. I’m afraid to say I opened it out of curiosity.”

  “What does it say, Tobias?” Inspector Lestrade was first out of the traps.

  “Well, you may find this hard to believe, I certainly did. It’s the menu he wants the chef to prepare for a celebratory dinner on the day he’s released, lots of stuff about lobster and truffles and a special kind of foie gras de canard from Strasbourg, and there’s to be a Puligny Montrachet with the lobster and a Chateau D’Yquem with the desert.”

  Everybody shook their heads. Nobody said it, but they were all thinking that Mycroft had lost his wits. The more perceptive among them, like Mrs Hudson and Tobias, reckoned that it was the food, the endless oatmeal porridge, the oxhead and barley soup at lunch time that had finally driven him over the edge.

  *

  Tobias found Jaikie waiting for him in the shadows outside 68b Pall Mall.

  “I’ve got a pile of letters to go up to the Scrubs right now,” said Tobias, “will that be all right?”

  “Course it will,” said Jaikie, “I’m not some bloody weakling who can’t carry a couple of letters, am I?”

  “Any news from the Scrubs, Jaikie? Chalky The Shotgun White in good form, is he? Still terrorising the warders?”

  “I tell you what,” Jaikie moved close to Tobias and whispered. In Jaikie’s world you never knew who might be listening. “There’s a big meeting up there tomorrow night, Chalky and your friend the fat geezer they call Old Snowflakes!”

  “Really?” said Tobias.

  “You can tell it’s important,” Jaikie was still whispering, “’cos they’re going to hold it during choir practice!”

  “What’s so special about choir practice, Jaikie? What do they sing, for God’s sake? Hymns? Sacred oratorios?”

  “The point about the singing and stuff is that nobody will be able to hear what they say. That chalky White, he’s well paranoid about warders listening in. Paranoid the right word, Tobias? The Chief uses it a lot but I’m never quite sure what it means.”

  “Paranoid is fine, Jaikie, if you’re excessively and unreasonably worried about something.”

  “They sing all sorts of things, them prisoners, music hall songs, bits of Gilbert and Sullivan. They’re very fond of that song about a policeman’s lot is not a happy one. That always goes down well, so I’m told. The boys from the docks know a whole lot of songs with rude words in them, really bad, The Chief says.”

  Tobias thought it better not to enquire how The Chief had heard the choral efforts of the Wormwood Scrubs Choir. Maybe he had been smuggled in through some secret entrance. They had now reached the Government Offices and Jaikie was loaded up with Mycroft’s correspondence from Government Departments.

  “I didn’t tell you, Tobias, the best bit about the singing an’ all that up the Scrubs.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, they say they’re rehearsing the hymns for the next Sunday Service. They are too. Sunday Service is one of the most important events in the Wormwood Scrubs week.”

  “The convicts are praying for repentance and forgiveness of their sins, I expect,” said Tobias.

  “Don’t be daft,” said Jaikie, “that’s when they hand all the dope round, the cocaine and that opium stuff some of them like. During prayers they do it, when everyone’s meant to have their eyes closed.”

  *

  The little gathering in Pall Mall would have been astonished to learn that Mycroft and Chalky The Shotgun White were enjoying a glass of Chateau Lafite before the choir practice. Mycroft had read the correspondence brought by Jaikie the day before very carefully. Chalky kept a wine cellar in a forgotten cell in a basement corridor, replenished by regular deliveries from Berry Bros and Rudd to a holding address in nearby Acton. Mycroft expressed the view that this must be one of the finest Lafites he had ever enjoyed. Chalky thought the famous 1870 vintage, which he had tasted after a very successful bank raid some years before had greater body, but he didn’t think it worth arguing about.

  *

  There are certain aspects of this adventure that must remain secret for the foreseeable future. Indeed, it has taken eighteen months for the Treasury and the Government Law Offices to give permission for any account of the events described in these pages to appear at all. The most severe penalties have been proscribed for any authors or newspapers who contravene the terms of the Government Injunction that covers the events of the next twelve hours. The restrictions, by and large, only relate to this particular evening and not to the events that followed on subsequent days. It has been my firm belief that the readers of my humble tales would prefer to have some account, however imperfect, of what transpired than no account at all.

  This much, I think, we can say. There was a meeting between Mycroft and Chalky The Shotgun White during choir practice. Mycroft requested a specific course of action. Chalky’s first reaction was incredulity. Argument by argument, sentence by sentence, Mycroft convinced the prison boss that this was what he wanted. His life, after all, depended upon it. He then placed considerable restrictions on the extent of the activity to be carried out. He emphasized repeatedly that there was to be no violence. He stressed the need for secrecy. Mycroft is believed to have given certain assurances, though we do not what they were, or if they were given at all, about future policy at the prison in the event of his release.

  When the choir had dispersed, Mycroft and Chalky polished off the bottle of Chateau Lafite. “I give you a toast,” said Mycroft, “to the venture we have discussed this evening. May fortune smile upon it and on all those involved.”

  “Devil take the hindmost,” said Chalky, “I’ll drink to that!”

  *

  The following afternoon a remarkable advertisement appeared in the Brighton and Hove evening paper. ‘Citizen concerned for Justice wishes to learn more about the activities of one Inspector Ebenezer Robinson, until recently a member of the Sussex Police Force.’ There was a box number for any replies and the advertisement was left in for three days in succession.

  The main players in The Adventure of the Naval Engineer spent the days before Mycroft’s trial in very different ways. Inspector Lestrade plunged into the shadowy world of workhouses with links to hospitals with medical schools. Mrs Hudson took refuge in baking cakes. Fruit cakes, Madeira cakes, Dundee cakes, éclairs, profiteroles all poured forth from her oven, many of them happily transported to the Montague Smith residence and the grateful mouths of the Montague Smith children. Tobias initially took great comfort from his transatlantic correspondence with Henry J Cooke, Senior Vice President of Pinkertons in Washington DC, about the whereabouts of the naval engineer Cornelius Jobson. Initially Cooke was hopeful. Yes, he was sure Jobson was still alive. Cooke himself had met him at a naval reception at the White House several months before. Two days later he reported again, with the news that Jobson was not at his usual post in the Fore River Shipyard at Quincy, Massachusetts where they build ships for the US Navy. He had gone to give a course of lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cooke enclosed the telegraphic address of the hotel where Jobson was staying. But there was no reply for three consecutive days. Then Tobias was plunged into despair after a conversation with Charles Augustus Pugh.

  “It’s no good now, I’m afraid,” said Pugh, “chasing round the Eastern seaboard of the United S
tates for this Jobson person.”

  “Why not,” asked Tobias. “If he’s a naval engineer called Cornelius Jobson and he’s alive and well, then the body by the fire in Mycroft’s rooms can’t be him.”

  “That’s as maybe,” said Pugh, “but the prosecution could argue that there are two Cornelius Jobsons who are both naval engineers. Maybe the name of Jobson predisposes a man to a career in designing Dreadnoughts and destroyers. Who knows? Maybe the dead man, if he is not Jobson, merely happened to have some papers on his person to or from Jobson when his body was found. I have papers in my pocket from the Treasury Solicitor but that does not mean I am Thomas Montague Smith. Any way the man’s too far away.”

  “What do you mean, he’s too far away?”

  “Well,” said Pugh, “the laws of physics that determine how fast Jobson’s warships can travel also say that he couldn’t get here for Mycroft’s trial which starts in three days times. It’s not possible, however fast the liner. I’m not sure he would have done much for our cause if we could have produced him, a living, breathing Jobson in court. When he’s three thousand miles away on the far side of the Atlantic, he’s virtually useless.”

  *

  Very early in the morning the day before the trial a group of tattered youths gathered outside the offices of the Treasury Solicitor in Whitehall. Jaikie was there and Wee Robert who was nearly six feet tall, and a friend of Jaikie’s called Tammas and The Chief himself. Wee Robert was carrying a parcel which would have seemed to an outsider to possess the powers of a sacred relic or the Shroud of Turin, so carefully was it watched and guarded. Jaikie was to tell Tobias later that the mission was so important that The Chief had a gun in his pocket, fully loaded, which the leader of the gang told his followers he would happily use if anybody tried to interfere with them or their parcel. Two passing policemen eyed the ragamuffin band with some suspicion but left them alone when Jaikie declared they had an appointment with Mr Montague Smith.