Constable Freeman looked as though he might burst into tears at any moment. Lestrade, always careful to look after his subordinates, put his arm around the young man’s shoulder.
“Don’t you worry, Constable, if they sack you, they’ll have to sack me too, or my name’s not Lestrade!”
The Inspector paused. Clearly his forces were in retreat, in danger of being cut to ribbons by the enemy. He could run or he could fight. Running, he decided, might be the best policy, discretion the better part of valour.
“Sergeant,” he said, “this is a pretty pass indeed. I fear, not that I would wish it, that we will have to release everybody apart from the three in the Library. I can hold them here tonight. Could you present my compliments to all the suspects and say that we would like to see them back here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. I shall tell Mr Holmes myself.”
After a further fruitless session with Fitzpaine Somerset, Lestrade returned to the Strangers Room. He told Mycroft about the opinions of the second doctor. And he said that Mr Holmes was free to go, as long as he and Tobias returned at ten o’clock in the morning.
Mycroft was most interested in Doctor Trelawney’s activities in the lift.
“That lift, Lestrade,” he said, “solve the mystery of the four trips up and down and you may be well on the way to solving the mystery. Mark my words.”
Mycroft and Tobias did not set out for home when Lestrade left. Instead Mycroft had a mission for his young assistant.
“Tobias,” he said, “I want you to go to the library and pick up a few things for me. Somewhere in there is a book with a detailed architectural drawing for the conversion of the Diogenes and another house in Pall Mall from private residences into gentlemen’s clubs. I would like that. And somewhere in the library you should be able to find a recent book, small and cheap, called Gargoyles in the Night, Climbing in the Dark in Cambridge and Westminster. The author describes himself as St Bernard, who is the patron saint of climbing. That would be useful.”
Mycroft Holmes walked slowly back to his apartments in Pall Mall. He was, he noticed, leaning heavily on his walking stick, a present from his brother Sherlock on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. The melancholy that had assailed him earlier in the Diogenes Club had returned. All too often, in recent months, this feeling of lassitude had come over him. He trudged slowly up his stairs and let himself in. Not this evening the solace of the piano, the music that might have taken him out of himself into the sunshine world of Mozart or the anguished travails of Tchaikosky. He sat in his chair by the window. I am now, he said to himself sadly, sixty seven years old, afflicted with psoriasis that will never heal. He thought suddenly of some lines of one of his favourite poems, Tennyson’s Ulysses:
‘You and I are old,’ Mycroft said to himself,
‘Old age hath yet his honour and his toil
Death closes all.’
On the surface the poem tells of Ulysses’ last stand against what he calls that eternal silence, the rallying of his sailors to the oars, the boat being prepared in the port as the lights begin to twinkle on the rocks, his final voyage:
‘To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.’
Mycroft had thought of late that the poem had a different meaning. It was not a call to action. It was not real, it was a hallucination, the last fantasy, the final reverie of an old hero, lying on his deathbed in his great palace in the island of Ithaca, dreaming of one last voyage, not against the Trojans or the many others he had fought in his lifetime, but a final apocalyptic journey against mortality, against time, against his own death. The exultant last lines:
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
These were, for Mycroft, the final dream of an aged warrior tossing on his sickbed, eyes closed, in his last hours on earth, waiting for death to call.
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world….
Maybe we shall reach the Happy Isles,
places, Mycroft remembered, with their soft delicious climate and lovely scenery that gave the poets an idea of a happy abode for departed spirits, and the notion of the Elysian Fields._
Mrs Hudson came in and asked if he would like some supper. She was worried about Mycroft. How often had she seen his brother Sherlock, locked in a daydream, lying on his sofa for hours on end, sometimes out of his mind with the seven per cent solution of cocaine, only returning to normal when a fresh case stimulated his great brain with the problems of reality rather the phantasms brought on by his drugs. She wondered if she should say something to bring Mycroft out of his despair, but she knew his mind moved through a different orbit to hers. She would do what she could, what she knew best, and returned three quarters of an hour later with one of Mycroft’s favourite dishes, an old fashioned English steak and kidney pie. This contained none of the garlic, the French shallots, the exotic flavours to be found in the cuisine of the Diogenes, but it smelt wonderful and the taste was of England, not of metropolitan squares and avenues, but of the countryside, smoke rising maybe from the kitchen of an old English farmhouse in Somerset or Warwickshire as the sun goes down and the animals settle themselves for the night.
Mycroft took a few mouthfuls. It was so hot. He looked briefly at the architectural drawings Tobias had brought. Something struck him. He wolfed down half of his pie and read on. So that was how it worked. He rang the bell to ask Mrs Hudson for a second helping. A second check on the drawings and he felt he was home. He strode to his cupboard and opened a bottle of Beaune to accompany the rest of his meal. Maybe tomorrow, he thought, he and his young squire Tobias could be:
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Shortly after ten o’clock the following morning Mycroft and Tobias were back in the Stranger’s Room. There was not a porter to be seen, apart from the regular in the lodge, and distant voices could be heard coming from the other rooms. Mycroft was wearing a clean suit and a new white shirt for the occasion.
“Well, Tobias,” he said, settling into his normal armchair and popping the first Turkish Delight of the day, “the architectural drawings you found for me were helpful, the Gargoyles in the Night, alas, were not. Have you had any further thoughts about the murder here?”
“Only this, sir,” said Tobias, studying his notes from the day before. “If all the members stick to their story, we will have a rare mystery indeed. A murder without a visible sign of the murderer, a crime that has been committed, but with no evidence at all as who the perpetrator was.”
“Quite so, Tobias, quite.”
Lestrade’s Sergeant came in to report that his master was conducting a further round of interviews with all the suspects. When that was over he proposed to report to the Stranger’s Room.
“That could take some time, Tobias. We shall just have to wait. Did I ever tell you about Fitzpaine Somerset by the way?”
“No, sir. Has he committed murder in the past?”
“Not as far as I know. He is just another one of the great eccentrics who populate the Diogenes Club. Indeed, I’m surprised he’s still here. I wonder he can afford the subscriptions any more.”
“Why is that, sir?”
“Well, Tobias,” Mycroft stretched his legs and rubbed his shoulders, “he caught a rather rare disease. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Tobias, how some people are prone to addiction, not just to opium or cocaine or drink, but to gambling on the horses or on the fall of the roulette wheel in the great gambling clubs. Betting becomes a way of life, a compulsion. I’ve always thought that collecting things can fall into the same category. Men become hooked on auctions, the raising of the hand, the obsession with the final bid, with victory at the last fall of the gavel and the final words of the auctioneer, ‘Sold!’”
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Tobias tried to imagine Mycroft standing near the back of the sales at one of the famous London auction houses, catalogue at the ready to make another bid. He failed.
“Anyway,” Mycroft went on, unaware that he had recently been transported to Christie’s or Sotheby’s, “Fitzpaine Somerset’s descent into the financial abyss began when he bought a couple of grandfather clocks at a country house sale near Bath. He had them faithfully restored and placed one in the hall and one on the stairs outside his bedroom. Nothing unusual about that, you might say. But then, something strange happened. His wife told friends that he began to fall in love with these clocks, as obsessive people fall in love with Venice or aficionados of fine wine with Chateau Margaux. Two were not enough.”
“Pardon me, sir, were these clocks old? Did they tick and chime and all those things?”
“They did, Tobias, they were well over a hundred years old, and very fine, according to all the visitors to the Somerset household. Then there was a sale of Tompions at Christies. That did for Fitzpaine Somerset. He bought two more of the man’s clocks at vast expense. Then he sold three thousand acres in Warwickshire for another one until his library was virtually full of the things. People said the continuous ticking and striking would drive you mad if you were locked in there overnight. His wife claimed in the divorce papers that she was the only woman in history to have been supplanted not by a mistress but by a grandfather.”
“So Thomas Tompion was a sort of Faberge of clocks, big clocks, sir,” said Tobias, staring at small undistinguished granddaughter clock that stood in the corner of the Stranger’s Room and hadn’t struck a note for years.
“Correct, Tobias.”
A sombre Inspector Lestrade entered the room and sat down at the little table by the window. He was still holding onto his hat. It was motionless.
“Mr Holmes, this is a mystery and no mistake. Let me tell you what happened this morning. I have interviewed every single suspect, some of them at length. My Sergeant, an experienced man, as you know, was with me throughout. We believe them all.”
“You believe them all, Lestrade?” Mycroft managed to lean forward a couple of inches in his chair. “How very unusual. So where does that leave your investigation?”
“I will tell you precisely where it leaves my investigation, Mr Holmes. We’re stuck. We’re going nowhere, my Sergeant and I. Here is the dead man Plunkett. He comes into the library. There are three other people there, one of them asleep. Plunkett goes out just before half past three. Maybe he had an appointment with somebody, possibly his killer, for that time. He does not come back. The two who are awake swear that neither of them or the sleeping one went out after him. They stayed where they were until the police came. None of the members in the other rooms left their positions. So here we have William St John Plunkett, found dead in the marble Reception Area, with nobody else to be seen, and an invisible person or persons unknown going up and down in the lift. Everybody who knew Plunkett said he had been in good spirits recently and was definitely not the kind of man to take his own life. So there we have the mystery, Mr Holmes, young Tobias. What do you say?”
“My first instinct, Inspector, is to repeat the saying of my brother in The Sign of Four: ‘how often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?’”
“What do you mean, Mr Holmes?”
Inspector Lestrade was sucking desperately at one of his Wild Woodbines as if he was in intensive care and his life depended on the flow of smoke.
“Well, Lestrade, consider the facts. The facts are quite clear in this case. Plunkett dies in the Reception Area. None of the members in their various rooms left to go to Reception. They can’t have killed him.”
“I can see that, Mr Holmes,”
Mycroft raised a large hand, “Forgive me, Inspector. It follows, surely, that if the killer was not one of the men already in the Diogenes Club, he must have made his way in by other means.”
“But how?” The Inspector was running his hand through what was left of his hair now. “The porter has no records of anybody else coming into the building. We know nobody could have gained entrance through the basement. The thing’s impossible!”
“Impossible perhaps, but let us consider the improbable, Inspector. I would ask you once again to remember the lift.”
“The lift?”
Mycroft Holmes began assembling a series of items in front of him. By his left hand he placed the slim book with the architectural drawings. In front of him he drew a battered, scrunched up tea towel that had seen better days from his jacket pocket. To his right he placed the silver fragments Tobias had found in the corner of the Reception Area. Inspector Lestrade was looking at him with great sympathy, as if Mycroft might be carried off to the lunatic asylum by a couple of stout warders at any moment. Tobias was glad that his master was not as gloomy as on previous days, but he wondered how long it would be before depression returned to claim him once again.
“Bear with me, Inspector. Indulge an old man in what may prove to be the final exercise of his powers. Let me talk you through these exhibits here, if I may.” Mycroft picked up the book of drawings and opened it at a page that must have been selected beforehand.
“If you look carefully here, Inspector, this is the top floor of the Diogenes Club.” Mycroft had taken a long pencil out of his pocket and was pointing it at the relevant sections. “Stairs here, lift over there, bedrooms all around. But if we look closely here at the junction of the little hall on the top floor and the corridor with the sleeping quarters we see this floor length window. You have it, Inspector? And by the signs to the side of the drawing it is clear that this window was meant to open onto the roof if required. Locks and catches are present, no doubt, but the key fact is this: if he knew what he was about, a man on the top floor could get out onto the roof. Or he could come into the Diogenes from the roof and nobody would know he was there. Do I make myself clear, Inspector?”
Mycroft turned a few pages of the book. “And here, Lestrade, we have a view of the outside, the rooftop view if you like, of the top of Pall Mall where the Diogenes is situated. You will see,” Mycroft’s pencil was helpfully showing the way, “that there is no entrance to the first four houses to the right up here. But look closely at the fifth, converted by the same architect as the Diogenes, and we see the other side of that same floor to ceiling window with locks and catches marked on the side of the page as before.”
“What is that building, Mr Holmes?” Lestrade’s hat was on the move once more.
“Why, it’s the Alexander Club, Inspector, set up in honour of the Macedonian Emperor and said by the cynics to be home to all those who want to conquer the world without leaving the comfort of their armchairs.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr Holmes. I’m just a poor police officer here, trying to keep up. Are you saying that a man could have climbed out of the Diogenes fifth floor window and climbed back into the Alexander a hundred or so yards away?”
“Or he could have done the journey the other way round. Or indeed, maybe he made the trip both ways. Let us not get bogged down on the rooftops, Inspector. I would draw to your attention my second exhibit.”
Mycroft held up the battered tea towel and waved it about.
“This, I must confess, is not a Diogenes tea towel. I prevailed upon Mrs Hudson to let me borrow it. She was most reluctant, saying she would be ashamed if one of her tea towels was put on public display in an unclean state, but I won out in the end. The point is this, gentlemen. This tea towel is similar to the one Tobias saw being picked up and put in the bin in Reception by one of the porters. Only Tobias thought the one he saw might have been bloodstained.”
“I fail to see,” Inspector Lestrade’s hat was moving through his hands at Olympic speed now, “the significance of a dirty tea towel on the floor. Surely the fellow was right to put it in the bin. Carrie, my wife, is most particular about these things. I must ask wher
e all this is leading, Mr Holmes.”
Mycroft turned towards the Inspector and blinked slowly. “Wormwood Scrubs?” he said very quietly, “Pentonville? Newgate? The condemned cell?” He paused for a moment. “Let me finish, please.” He moved the pieces of silver to the centre of the table. From another pocket he produced a powerful magnifying glass. Then he peered briefly at the remains.
“At first sight these might just seem to be broken pieces of silver. Their shape at the edges, however, would indicate that they might have come originally from a pair of cufflinks. They both contain fragments of an inscription or motto of some kind which was inscribed on them. From the little we can see through the glass, I deduce that the message must have been Dieu le Ward, God guard it.”
“Guard what, for God’s sake, Mr Holmes! These damned conjuring tricks of yours have gone on long enough! We’re not in a bloody circus after all!”
“Take your time, Inspector. Good things come to those who wait.”
Tobias suddenly thought that Mycroft was looking tired again, as if his exposition was wearing him out. He thought he could just discern the connection between Mycroft’s three objects, but it was like looking for a distant vessel in the fog.
Mycroft paused to light one of his villainous Virginia cigarettes. Tobias though he was gathering his strength for one last push.
“If I am right, Inspector, Tobias, the cuff links belong to a set of Old Ampleforth enamel cufflinks. Ampleforth, as you know, is a famous Catholic public school in Yorkshire. Their owner may or may not know that these fragments have broken off.”
Mycroft looked round his little audience like a famous actor waiting for applause from the stalls and the circle. There was none.
Mycroft Holmes and Murder at the Diogenes Club (The Mycroft Holmes Adventure series Book 5) Page 4