“Cyrus!” Mr. Pennywhistle bellowed so as to drown out his wife’s teasing. “A telegram come for you not a quarter-hour ago!”
“Oh? Who from?” Douglas asked, approaching the long mahogany counter.
If Mr. P. had been standing fully upright, its polished grain top would have reached his sternum. But bent over and peering through his tortoise-shell lorgnette as he scoured the under-counter for the telegram, he was very nearly invisible.
“The subject line said shipment! Or, perhaps ship!” he added brightly. “I placed it right here…”
As her husband scanned past bills and circulars, Mrs. P. hooked her arm through Douglas’s.
“I was just making some tea, dearie, to warm the belly. Here, let me help you off with your topcoat, do rest your elbows a bit…”
“No time, I’m afraid,” Douglas said, pulling away gently as she attempted to maneuver his coat off his shoulders. “I came only for a quick greeting and to ascertain that all is well. In one hour, I am to welcome two new boys, as two more have completed their first year’s training and are now in full apprenticeships: one with a printer, the other at the City and Suburban Bank, both at a fine stipend.”
“Well!” Mrs. P. beamed. “If your skin weren’t the color of a clootie dumpling, I’d say you was blushing! You must be proud to bursting of ’em both!”
“I am, rather,” Douglas said with a smile.
“It was right here…” Mr. P. mumbled again with less certainty.
“You should be proud,” Mrs. P. reiterated. “But be careful out there, dearie, people is gettin’ cut up! Noses alongside other more… masculine parts, if you get my meaning, tossed about like so much gristle! And this mornin’ another one found quartered! Come fair by its name, Savitch Gardens, it does!”
“Mighty queer, this whole to-do,” Mr. P. said, shaking his head, his voice grave. “You listen to me missus, Cyrus! ’Tis a bloody spot you’re in!”
“That ‘bloody spot’ is nowhere near Savage Gardens,” Douglas corrected soothingly. “You would have to cross the Thames to get close. Besides, I doubt they would be after me, Mr. P. From what I gather, all the victims thus far have been Chinese.”
“Last one’s white, I hear tell,” Mr. P. corrected. “Though that still leaves you out, I’d say…”
“But just because they’s Oriental don’t mean their lives is worthless, do it?” harrumphed Mrs. P. “Hardly anyone botherin’ to solve it’s what I ’ear! We is all the same in God’s eyes, says I! Surely they had mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and—”
“Right you are, Mrs. P.,” Douglas said quickly before she could make a list of every last family member of the poor unfortunate departed.
“But what is the goal in all of this choppin’ up, d’you think?” Mr. P. persisted, glancing up from his search. “Nearly one a month it’s been!”
“I assume,” Douglas responded, “that someone is sending a rather stark message to the community of opium users—”
He was interrupted by a loud hammering on the front door knocker, and Mrs. P. let out a yelp.
“All but stopped me ’eart, it did,” she muttered, adding, “Mr. P., tell ’em we ain’t open yet!” as she hurried to the back before she could be seen: an upscale tobacconist was no place for a woman.
Before Mr. P. could intercept him, an older gentleman entered through the unlocked door. Douglas noticed the portmanteau in his hand, which he swung so easily it must have been empty. Anyone who entered an establishment with an empty suitcase was ready to buy.
Unfortunately, the man halted mid-step at the sight of Douglas, his eyes darting from the mahogany and polished interior back to the tall Negro in the middle of the room, as if he couldn’t quite reconcile the setting with the subject. Before he could turn and bolt down the stairs again, Douglas pointed to a ledger on the under-counter and began to speak in a distinctive patois: “Nah nah, it de rot amont y’ia?”
Mr. P. turned to the wavering customer and smiled. “Doors open at ten, good sir, but seeing as how you have found your way in, kindly have a look round, seek your pleasure. I shall be with you in a twinkling.” He peered at the ledger that Douglas was pointing to. Then he stood up to his full height, plus tiptoes, and attempted to look stern. “It’ll serve this time, Cyrus,” he said. “But the next time you bring us four crates of, er, Punch Habanas, the numbers must all be legible, do I make myself clear?”
“Yah, we fine, bredda, I gih ya! I goin’ nah, yah?”
Bowing and waving, Douglas walked past the customer, opened the door and paused just long enough to hear the man say, “A workman so well attired? Never seen his like! Almost thought he was… but of course that’d be absurd, like a – a jabberwocky!” Delighted by his own cleverness, the customer set down his portmanteau while Douglas shut the door behind him and hurried down the stairs.
He hadn’t felt the chill in the air before this. He looked up to see if the clouds had thickened or grown more ominous, but no. The sky was the same: all bark, no bite.
Douglas, you old fool, he remonstrated. Forty-three years on this earth, and still so easily stung?
He lifted up the collar of his topcoat and walked swiftly south down Regent Street, the handsomest thoroughfare in the metropolis, in the direction of Old Pye Street in the Devil’s Acre, where no one would glance at him twice.
3
EDWARD CARDWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR, STARED glumly at the portrait of himself that hung above the desk of his Cumberland House office. If only he could change places with that rather bland likeness on the wall!
Although painted by George Richmond not a year before, it depicted a younger man with docile eyes and a luxuriant shock of copper-colored hair. In life, Cardwell’s hair had been the color of steel wool for longer than he cared to remember, and his eyes were about as docile as a bull that had just been prodded in the gonads by the tip of a spear.
Birthday next, I shall be sixty, he thought as he appraised his own immortal likeness. Friends with better constitutions and less taxing positions had been keeling over like flies; how long could he possibly keep up his current schedule and its concomitant anxiety? One year? Perhaps two?
No more lollygagging. He could not guarantee ascendency, but he could sit at his desk, pick up his pen, and entreat and cajole the powers that be to select someone of his choosing!
Mycroft Holmes is twenty-six, in excellent health, and with notable accomplishments, he began.
It was he who insisted that one’s financial resources should not dictate military advancement, a change that benefited our army to a great degree; he who devised a class of reserve soldiers who could be easily recalled in case of national emergency. Thanks to his ministrations, this office was also able to reduce the Army budget while nearly doubling its strength…
Yes, he would personally groom Holmes for the position, and he and Annie could retire to the seaside. Who would dare stand in the way of such advancement? And Holmes cut a good figure: a strapping lad with fine, perhaps even noble features, intelligent eyes (of an odd gray hue, yes—but surely that would not be held against him!), and a solid handshake. A faded scar from the top of his cheekbone to the tip of his chin gave him the slight aura of a jaunty buccaneer.
By all accounts, Cardwell had found his perfect successor… if he would but agree to “success.” But Holmes was a strange bird. Plaudits and promotions did not move him. He had to see the wisdom of the decision.
Any man of ambition would leap at the opportunity, Cardwell grumbled to himself, especially one with no family or other distractions. But what did he know about Holmes in that regard? Precious little. A bit of gossip of an engagement gone sour, whisperings that something unfortunate had happened to the poor girl… dead, was she not?
Cardwell heard Holmes’s voice in the hall as he greeted young Parfitt, the junior clerk. He hastily covered the letter he had been writing with a blank piece of paper, tamped down his nest of hair, opened the door, and thundered: “L
et us not stand about, gossiping like fishwives! Enter, Holmes! Parfitt, see to a cup of tea!”
Mycroft Holmes strode in.
This should be simple enough, Cardwell thought.
* * *
Mycroft could hear the ding of the front door bell, a signal from young Parfitt in the outer offices that he had two minutes to deflect Cardwell before the young clerk reappeared.
“Well, well, well!” Cardwell began with unfamiliar good humor as his fingers tormented the bristly hairs of his muttonchops. “So here you are at last!”
“Forgive me, am I late?”
“Not at all, not at all,” Cardwell responded, gathering a stack of papers and books from the chair opposite his own, and placing them on the overburdened desk. “Sit! Sit!”
Mycroft did as instructed, removing his hat and placing it upon his knee while glancing at the older man’s mouth. No blue splotches, not yet. Cardwell had not escalated to nervously tapping the nub of his fountain pen against his bottom teeth—though his cuticles were in a sorry state, as both temper and boredom caused him to gnaw at them.
He noticed a blank sheet of paper on Cardwell’s desk, absorbing fresh ink from some document below. Cardwell had been careful not to stack anything atop it. It was obvious, too, that he had been composing something that required all his concentration, judging from the smudge of ink on his thumb, and the red mark below the first knuckle of the right index finger, where he’d been holding too tightly to the pen as he labored.
As he’d taken care to obscure the document, Mycroft assumed that it pertained to him. He kept another sigh at bay. Once upon a time, he could have conceived of nothing more glorious than to rise to the post of Secretary of State for War. Now it felt like a strait-jacket, a tedium of paperwork and interdepartmental bickering.
“Thought this would be as good a time as any for a little chat,” Cardwell began.
“Happy to oblige, sir,” Mycroft replied benignly. “And how is your dear Mrs. Cardwell faring?”
He saw from Cardwell’s expression that he had caught him off guard. Not once in four years of working together had either man mentioned their home life. Mycroft could all but hear the gears in Cardwell’s brain turning: they were men of business, after all!
“My… wife?” Cardwell repeated, as if he had misheard.
“Yes, sir. A touch under the weather, eh? ’Tis the season! Kindly give her my regards, along with my hope that the cough will improve quickly. And you are correct: sea air would do her a world of good.”
“But how… That is…” Cardwell cleared his throat. “Regardless, that is not what I called you here to—”
A knock at the office door interrupted him.
“Who is it!?” Cardwell spit out.
“It is I, sir, P-Parfitt,” came the meek response.
“Yes, damnation, Parfitt, I know it is you—what is it you want?”
The door opened and Charles Parfitt, nineteen, and as red-faced and damp as if he’d run a marathon, responded: “It’s a message, sir, for Mr. Holmes. An urgent request, sir. Highly confidential.”
“From whom?” Cardwell demanded, undeterred.
This was not a question that Parfitt seemed to have been expecting after declaring it highly confidential. Nor was he a liar of any notable worth. “Who from, sir? Why, it is from… Her M-Majesty the Queen!” he blurted out.
Mycroft felt his cheeks go a tad rosy. He stood and placed his hat upon his head before Cardwell could utter a sound. “Forgive me, sir,” he said, “but may we continue this conversation at a later date?”
“Yes, yes, by all means!” Cardwell agreed, rising to his feet and motioning distractedly to the door, as if Holmes could perhaps not find it without assistance.
As Mycroft followed Parfitt out of the office, he reviewed the events of the last few minutes. That Annie Parker Cardwell had come down with a cough had been simple to discern. She and her husband had no progeny, yet in the jungle of items on Cardwell’s desk he’d spied Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup in its telltale cylindrical bottle, moniker etched in glass and partly visible. As he knew Mrs. Cardwell to be a teetotaler, she no doubt felt that a child’s portion of opium and ethyl alcohol could do no harm; never mind that most people would then take a double dose, all the while admiring their own self-restraint.
The syrup had been placed beside a folder marked “Torquay,” the lovely seaside town in Devon. Mycroft guessed that within were pamphlets and illustrations of the perfect spot in which to retire, something Cardwell would wish to take home with him as a distraction for his ailing wife.
Draped on the coat rack had been Cardwell’s thickest winter scarf. Nothing like it to remind a man of his own fragility, to make him pause at every sniff and regard the slightest cough with foreboding. Given such watchfulness, it was a wonder his employer had managed to stave off his own infection for as long as he had. Mycroft assumed some minor influenza would strike Cardwell himself inside a week.
In any event, Cardwell’s approaching birthday, combined with his wife’s winter cold, underscored his need to settle on a successor: thus, the unfinished document—no doubt a letter to his superiors—and the formality of the meeting.
Discerning why Parfitt would blurt out that Mycroft had been called to an audience with the Queen, on the other hand, was not only more baffling but more troubling. Mycroft had grown to rely on Parfitt as an ally. The boy’s loyalty was unequivocal, his research skills without peer. But that was of no account if his judgment was at issue.
“Of all the possible names you could come up with… the Queen?” Mycroft scolded as they retreated into the main hall.
“But, Mr. Holmes, that part be—is—true!” Parfitt replied, amending his grammar. “Her Majesty the Queen sent an emissary with this note!”
The lad held it out to Mycroft, who took it, surprised. “It is sealed,” Mycroft said, stating the obvious. “So how would you know she wished to see me?”
“That is the p-portion I invented. I thought you wouldn’t mind, under the c-circumstances…”
“No…” Mycroft said absently as he broke the seal. He had asked Parfitt to “do his utmost” to get him away from Cardwell, and that was exactly what Parfitt had done.
As for the note, though the Queen’s penmanship resembled smudged daggers, the content was brief and direct:
A nettling matter has come to our attention.
Kindly discuss five this afternoon.
Victoria R
Mycroft glanced at his pocket watch. Nine thirty. The bank would have to wait.
As they passed Parfitt’s desk, the lad grabbed a folder of documents, along with a stack of newspapers. “Here you are, sir,” he said. “French reparations, the expansion of railways in the United States, specifically those funded by f-foreign investors, and of course your newspapers, all nice and p-pressed.”
“You are a marvel, Parfitt. And how is Abie?”
“Right as rain, sir, and more than pleased for a visit. As would my aunt be, sir…”
“Yes, well, I shall certainly try, Parfitt. Give Mrs. Hudson my best.”
Tucking the newspapers and the folder under his arm, Mycroft bolted out the door and back toward his carriage to pick up Sherlock.
4
HUAN AND THE CARRIAGE WERE WAITING OUTSIDE Cumberland House. Huan’s face, as burnished and round as a penny, lit up with a smile the moment he saw Mycroft. He waved enthusiastically, as if the latter had been away for days rather than minutes. And though Mycroft thanked Providence for such faithful employees and friends as Parfitt and Huan, all he said as he crossed towards the carriage was: “To Shoreditch High Street, if you please. And kindly alert me to any more ‘surprises’ I may have forgotten.”
“Of course, Mr. Mycroft,” Huan replied pleasantly.
No one would ever guess what deadly skills he hides, thought Mycroft as he climbed into the cab.
“You do a bit of reading today?” Huan commented, as he swung into the driver’s seat.
<
br /> “The folder is mine,” Mycroft said through the trap. “The newspapers are for Sherlock. He has begun collecting agony columns from various periodicals. He enjoys the personal advertisements, says that they reveal human nature. He seems riveted by news stories of murder and mayhem.”
The sorts of stories that Mycroft found distasteful were the latest in Sherlock’s long string of obsessions.
“He is following the Savage Gardens Murders, yes?” Huan asked as they commenced their journey.
“I would consider it a perfect miracle if he weren’t,” Mycroft responded glumly.
“You are very good to the boy.”
“I do my best,” Mycroft said, not altogether convincingly.
“But young Sherlock, he cannot buy the papers for himself?”
“No, Huan, he cannot,” Mycroft responded sourly.
“Ah. No money!” Huan said brightly.
“No, he has money. He simply chooses to misuse it.” Mycroft shut the trap and lay back against the seat. He was generous with his brother, within reason, for he had not yet confided in Sherlock about his great fortune. A heady secret such as that would have been impossible to keep, were it not for Sherlock’s utter lack of interest in the subject.
No, Sherlock’s absence of ready cash stemmed solely from the fact that he did not understand the point of it. He would misplace it, or confuse a half crown for a halfpenny, leaving giddy vendors in his wake and himself insolvent. And paper currency was even worse. In the throes of some other pursuit entirely, he would pull a banknote from his pocket and clean out the horrid little briar pipe that he’d recently substituted for his hand-rolled cigarettes. Or, he would scribble upon it some equation or random thought, so that the denomination was all but obliterated.
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