* * *
Charles Fowler’s naked body was as purple as the purple marble slab on which he lay. He had been placed in a room the size of a small pantry, next to a miniscule kitchen that had been gutted of everything save a wood-burning stove and specially built ice well, which was keenly unpleasant in the dead of winter but essential to preserve the occasional corpse longer than two days.
Dr. Bell explained. “A goodly number of my patients are alive at the time of my visit, though this particular corpse holds a few intriguing mysteries…”
Along with the numerous needle marks, both old and those newly created in Bell’s extractions of blood, Charles bore the signs of incisions where the doctor had taken small samples of flesh.
“In terms of substances,” Dr. Bell said, “morphine, opium, even tincture of opium. This is rare, as young addicts on the needle tend to become connoisseurs, one might say, of one drug or the other—rather than a variety. Then of course there is the difficulty of ensuring ‘standard’ dosages of any injectable drug. I at first assumed your boy here died of an accidental overdose. Now I am no longer certain.”
“What other possibilities are there?” Mycroft inquired, surprised. “He did not do himself in, surely? Nor was he murdered…”
Though why anything should have surprised him at this juncture was truly the question.
“I do not believe in either scenario,” Dr. Bell clarified. “But I discovered a compound I cannot place.”
“Are you saying he injected himself, or was injected, with some foreign substance?”
“Aye, so it seems. I am willing to wager that is what killed him: a foreign substance whose potency or effect may not have been fully known or understood, thus the overdose. Simply put, it sent fluid into the alveoli—the air pockets in the lungs—thereby reducing the oxygen absorption, and he ceased to breathe. You said he was being chased?”
“Yes.”
“There’s the culprit. When one is injected with a powerful narcotic, one should not stress the body after.” Dr. Bell sighed. “I promised your friend Cyrus Douglas that the boy would be left intact, and so he is. I might have learned more, had I been allowed to cut more deeply, but never mind. Time for someone to come and take him off my hands before putrefaction begins in earnest.”
With that, Dr. Bell took up a sheet that lay crumpled on the slab at Charles’s feet and covered the body.
“One moment, if I may,” Mycroft said as he uncovered Charles’s right hand.
“What are you seeking?”
“I realize it is odd, but I would like to make a copy of the ridges in the thumb and forefinger of both hands.”
“Truly? I have just the thing!” Dr. Bell said with more enthusiasm than Mycroft had witnessed up to that point.
Bell walked out of the makeshift morgue and back in again with a long strip of white fabric with some concoction slathered on it. “Invented by a fellow surgeon!” he said brightly. “A touch elaborate, I must admit…”
“Is that India rubber?” Mycroft asked, inspecting it.
“Yes, it is.”
“And… turpentine. Pine gum, litharge, and whatever is this last?” He smelled it, rubbed it between his fingers. “Cayenne pepper?” he hazarded.
Dr. Bell nodded. “Extract of. The entire assemblage does a formidable job of holding wounds together. And if you press the boy’s fingers to it, you will find it makes a fair if sticky copy. You can cover it with a bit of parchment to protect it,” he added. “I have some here someplace…”
It took practice, but within minutes, Mycroft had two clean sets of Charles’s finger ridges, one from the left hand and one from the right.
Dr. Bell led Mycroft to the front door. Mycroft paused on the step.
“I realize there is no need to mention this,” he said, “but not a word to anyone of my condition. Especially to Cyrus Douglas or my brother, should you have occasion to see either.”
“Of course,” Dr. Bell replied. “Though I ache to think either might find you deceased and have no worldly notion why.”
“Though I do not believe ‘cause of death’ has ever assuaged anyone’s sorrow,” Mycroft said, smiling wanly, “were I to drop dead, pray do not let my secret die with me.”
Mycroft lifted his collar against the rain. He wished, more than anything, to walk in it, to be drenched and somehow cleansed by it.
But Huan and the carriage awaited. Whatever happened from now on, Mycroft would exhibit no signs of distress.
“Where to, Mr. Mycroft?” Huan asked, opening the trap as Mycroft clambered aboard.
“Nickolus House,” Mycroft said. Though he could not share the news of his heart ailment with Douglas, still he craved his friend’s companionship. Not to mention that he had that favor to ask. It was time to start fitting together the pieces of this strange little puzzle.
As the carriage juddered into motion, Mycroft opened the trap again. “Huan?”
“Yes, Mr. Mycroft?”
“Let us first make a detour to The Golden Bottle.”
And after that, to his solicitor’s office, for it was time for him to make his will.
Upon first blush, he’d considered dividing his fortune equally between Douglas and Sherlock, but he realized that would never do. Sherlock would not have the feeblest notion of how to manage it. No, better to leave it all to Douglas, with a generous monthly allowance for—
He heard the trap open again.
“Yes, Huan?” he said.
Please let me not hear of yet another murder, I cannot bear it!
“Sorry, Mr. Mycroft,” he heard Huan say, his voice all apologies. “The bank is not open, for it is Saturday.”
Oh for pity’s sake! Mycroft thought. I really have gone round the bend!
“Right you are, Huan,” he said in a tone as jovial as he could muster. “To Nickolus House, then!”
“Right away, Mr. Mycroft!”
He heard the whip crack smartly in the air, and they were off.
Of all the times to die, thought Mycroft crossly, this is by far the most inopportune.
31
THERE WAS SOMETHING DEEPLY COMFORTING ABOUT THE homely little kitchen with its rectangular wooden table. Though made to fit four, it did no such thing. But for two, with the kettle whistling on the ancient stove, and the rain tapping in rhythm against the windows, it was nigh-on perfect, better even in some ways than the leather armchairs and Armagnac at Regent Tobaccos.
For there was no striving here, no sense that life was somehow more than its most basic necessities: a hot cup of strong tea, shelter from the storm, and conversation with an old and trusted friend. Who could wish for more?
I for one, Mycroft thought grumpily.
He wished he did not have a faulty heart. He wished he could dream of a future that included wife and children. He wished he could keep the anxiety from his brain and the stentorian tone out of his voice, for he was sounding as gloomy and one-note as the rain outside.
“Should you ever come into money, Douglas,” he was lecturing his friend, “I pray I’ve impressed upon you the need to invest in gold. Especially in the next ten years or so.”
Douglas rose to pull the spitting kettle off the stove. “You have impressed it upon me several times this evening,” he said. Douglas’s tone was patient and soothing. It was the sort of tone, Mycroft thought, one would utilize on a frightened child.
“I am simply asking you to remember gold,” Mycroft pressed. “Gold can make all the difference. This country has become fat and irresponsible. British industry is lagging, small businesses have not bothered to keep up with the times or create any incentive to push our goods abroad. We are headed for economic disaster, and no one seems remotely alarmed.”
“What can be done?” Douglas asked. “In this ‘free trade’ era, businesses have no fiscal protection. No protective tariffs, no special rates for transport. Who would risk moving their merchandise abroad, except for mad people such as I? You saw what transpired at Chesil Beach—I very nearly
lost it all!”
“But that is what I mean! Certain laws have to be changed,” Mycroft continued, his fingertips drumming the table. “Demonetization of silver, protective tariffs, foreign competition, throwing money senselessly at the railroads, unproductive foreign loans and investments, antiquated factories. We are being overtaken by Germany and the United States, Douglas! Overtaken!”
“Yes, yes, all right…” Douglas said as he poured water from the kettle into a teapot and waited for the tea leaves to steep. “You make it sound like Attila and his Huns are even now crossing the Channel.”
“The poor understand ups and downs, for they live them every day,” Mycroft went on. “But the rich? The powers that be in this country? They will keep on dancing on this sinking ship until…”
“Mycroft? You said you came here to ask a favor. I certainly hope it is not to hear you bemoan the weakening of Britain’s international economic position, for there is little I can do about it tonight.”
Mycroft sighed. “Forgive me, but you are the only person with whom I can discuss this with any degree of comprehension,” he said as Douglas poured the tea. “Oh, there shall be economic upticks, but they will be short-lived. In the meantime, the troughs will be longer and longer until the end of the century, at which point the problem shall be something else entirely, one that I cannot as yet predict.”
“No? You cannot see thirty years into the future? I am chagrined,” Douglas said, taking a seat opposite his friend.
“This is why gold is the key,” Mycroft concluded, not yet ready to be teased out of his fretful mood.
He took a sip of his tea while Douglas appraised him.
“You are as wound up as a mechanical monkey,” Douglas told him. “A spot of brandy? There are dregs in the bottle, I am sure…” he added, rising again.
“Thank you, no,” Mycroft said with a shudder, recalling the last time.
“Then kindly tell me what you are really about,” Douglas said, resuming his seat.
The trickle of fear Mycroft had felt when predicting Britain’s impending economic sorrows had grown into a tsunami, but enough of that. “It is of no consequence, Douglas,” he replied, changing course. “How are your boys? McPeel and Ducasse. They all right?”
“I had to tell them in no uncertain terms that their tenure depended on following the rules of Nickolus House to the letter. I doubt I put fear of God into them but I am hoping that the fear of Smythe will keep them reasonably compliant for a while.”
“I am dismayed that my brother is the cause of any troubles that have come your way,” Mycroft said. “But I do have some news in that regard.”
He proceeded to share with Douglas all that Sherlock had discovered, at least insofar as he had been told… for he continued to have the niggling suspicion that he’d not been told it all.
“Did you perhaps recognize the corpse on Narrow Street as being one of the men who assaulted Charles?” Mycroft asked when he was done.
“Not at all,” Douglas admitted. “The night was dark as pitch, and I do not have the cat eyes your brother seems to possess. Besides, I rather flew over him too quickly: I was more intent on nabbing the blackguard who had Charles by the arm. Why, did Sherlock identify him as such?”
“No, he did not.”
“Well then, it seems rather a leap, does it not?” Douglas said.
“Possibly not. I saw something in my brother’s eyes when I caught him staring at the body, in that half-second before he noticed me. Recognition has its own expression, after all, and it did not alter one iota from the dead man to me; it was the same look of surprised familiarity.”
“But if he recognized the body,” Douglas protested, “surely he would have told you, for it is a matter of some import!”
“Indeed. And were I to wonder if this last death had something to do with Charles,” Mycroft added, “might you accuse me of entirely too much imagination?”
“Perhaps we have been associates for too long,” Douglas replied. “For I too felt some link between Charles and the dead body. After all, here is a boy who traipses about in a blighted neighborhood in brand-new garb—a mark for thieves if ever there was one—yet goes blithely along. It is not out of the realm of the possible that young Charles was being protected, that he knew he was, and so did George, but that his assailants were not aware of the fact until they found out the hard way.”
“Yes,” Mycroft said. “The man who died was of no account. His was a body long used to neglect. But if his murder was meant to impart a lesson, then why are not all three men dead who assaulted you?”
“More tea?” Douglas inquired.
“Please,” Mycroft said, finishing the last of his cup.
Douglas rose, picked up the tongs to move the glowing cinders about, and set the kettle once more upon the stove.
“When Sherlock and I came upon them,” he said to Mycroft, “Sherlock’s assailant was third in line, thereby assuming the least risk. Yet, he was certainly the most fierce. When first I landed in their midst, the two in front glanced quickly behind them, a foolish move unless one is awaiting orders.”
“But you gave them no time to rally,” Mycroft guessed.
“No, the element of surprise being a powerful weapon in itself. In any event, I marked him the leader of his small crew of miscreants.”
Mycroft joined his hands, tapping his index fingers together. “And naturally my mind went immediately to Beeton the chimney sweep.”
“Ah. Now there, I do not follow. Why would that be?” Douglas asked.
“At a certain point, that nasty little man stopped beating both Charles and George. Sherlock and I guessed that Charles’s money might have gone in part to protect his little brother, but now I wonder if Charles’s newfound affiliation made him untouchable, in that he was now the ‘property’ of someone else.”
“Knowing the streets, that would be the most likely scenario,” Douglas said, nodding. “Then bruises on the boy would no doubt be inconvenient.”
“Precisely,” Mycroft said. “Let us continue to suppose that Charles was being utilized to test the strength of new batches of drugs for upper-crust users such as Madame de Matalin, to ensure the poor old dear would not suffer an overdose. We’d then surmise that a client of that caliber would not want to see a boy purple with welts and contusions from a beating. It is a matter of aesthetics! But, bad as it may be, I am hard pressed to think what any of it has to do with us.”
The kettle whistled again.
* * *
Douglas stared into his cup, the second round of tea already forming an oily ring of brown against the white porcelain. Tiny fragments of leaves, not properly strained, created a smudge at the bottom, and he wondered what a gypsy might read in the patterns they made.
“This house, named after my son, takes in some of the poorest, most unfortunate creatures that ever walked the earth,” he said softly. “It offers them safety and security for the first time in their lives. Now someone has murdered or was responsible for the death of one of the creatures in my charge. Last night, I held a sobbing eleven-year-old boy in my arms, and I expect to do so again tonight and every night until his sorrow abates so that he can get a decent night’s sleep. Now, to hear you and Sherlock tell it, his brother was being used in the most appalling way—”
“Again, we are speculating—”
“Even so, it has much to do with me. But I am not equipped to tackle it alone. I would be unmoored. And so, though I do not yet know what favor you are to ask of me, I ask one of you. I would dearly appreciate whatever continued assistance you can give me.”
“Of course,” Mycroft said. “No need to even ask. What say we start with the symbols? Might you have them translated? I could do so through the War Office, but not without raising eyebrows…”
“No need. I believe I can get it done.”
“As soon as Monday, perhaps? For if Sherlock is correct and they are collected once per month, we haven’t much time to get to the bottom o
f this.”
“I have a handful of contacts I can get in touch with to see if any are amenable,” Douglas said. “We are at full staff here again; I can most likely be spared.”
“Wonderful. And you will allow Sherlock to accompany you?”
Douglas looked at Mycroft askance. “I feel as if I have been led into a trap by the nose. May I ask why?”
“Because we will need him,” Mycroft said. “And not only for the fact that he beat us to the punch, but also because I cannot take away from him what he has already discovered… though I shall do my utmost to keep him from danger.”
“We might well be battling people who would sacrifice a child in order to sell their product to a wealthy addict,” Douglas reminded him.
“He returns to Cambridge on Friday. I shall have Huan accompany him on the train, remain with him while he presents his orals, then escort him back to London.”
“So you are determined to tell him the whole truth?” Douglas asked.
“What about?” Mycroft shot back.
“The Chinese gentleman?” Douglas said, puzzled by Mycroft’s reaction. “Cainborn? The landaulet?”
“Ah. Not yet, but possibly as the links grow stronger.”
“And so ‘the fates lead the willing, and drag the unwilling,’” Douglas said.
“You needn’t sound so sour about it,” Mycroft remonstrated. “Have some faith in us. For I do. ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,’” he quoted.
“Well. If you are to parry Seneca with Julius Caesar,” Douglas replied, “then pray recall the rest of the verse: ‘Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries—’”
“But we have the tide!” Mycroft protested.
“‘On such a full sea are we now afloat,’” Douglas continued, smiling sardonically, at which point the two completed the quote together: “‘And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures!’”
With that, they clasped hands—and it seemed to Douglas much too late to turn back.
32
Mycroft and Sherlock Page 16