Mycroft and Sherlock E-Book

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Mycroft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 461

Beschreibung

The new novel by NBA All-Star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, starring brothers Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes.It is 1872, and a series of gruesome murders is the talk of London. Mycroft Holmes—now twenty-six and a force to be reckoned with at the War Office—has no interest in the killings; however his brother Sherlock has developed a distasteful fascination for the macabre to the detriment of his studies, much to Mycroft's frustration. When a ship carrying cargo belonging to Mycroft's best friend Cyrus Douglas runs aground, Mycroft persuades Sherlock to serve as a tutor at the orphanage that Douglas runs as a charity, so that Douglas might travel to see what can be salvaged. Sherlock finds himself at home among the street urchins, and when a boy dies of a suspected drug overdose, he decides to investigate, following a trail of strange subterranean symbols to the squalid opium dens of the London docks. Meanwhile a meeting with a beautiful Chinese woman leads Mycroft to the very same mystery, one that forces him to examine the underbelly of the opium trade that is enriching his beloved Britain's coffers.As the stakes rise, the brothers find that they need one another's assistance and counsel. But a lifetime of keeping secrets from each other may have catastrophic consequences…

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse, and Available from Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

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Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Also by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse,and available from Titan Books

Mycroft Holmes

TITAN BOOKS

Mycroft and SherlockSigned hardback edition: 9781789090475Hardback edition ISBN: 9781785659256E-book edition ISBN: 9781785659270

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: October 20181 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.

Copyright © 2018 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

This story is dedicated tothe many authors who’ve inspired me.

K A J

For la famiglia, con affetto: Zia Mira, Zia Nana, ZioRomano, Zia Maria, Susi, Paola, Marco, Tiziana.

A W

1

London, England, 26 November 1872

MYCROFT HOLMES LEFT HIS TOWNHOUSE AT GREVILLE PLACE in St. John’s Wood and was opening his wrought-iron gate just as a passing neighbor called out a crisp good morning:

“No umbrella for you then, Mr. Holmes? You must be the adventurous sort: the papers predict a downpour!”

Mycroft politely bid him good day and glanced up at the eddying clouds, just as every Londoner had done every morning since time immemorial. But though the oatmeal-colored sky looked ominous, Mycroft was beholden neither to newsprint predictions nor to the common understanding of cloud formations, particularly as the average citizen could not tell cumulus from cumulonimbus. As for the volatile dance of wind and condensed water, he preferred other, surer markers.

His nose, for example.

With one whiff, he could gauge humidity to within a percentage point, and discern certain fragrances that emitted from grasses and plants the moment that percentage point altered.

I could have been a perfumer, he thought wryly, if duty and country had not intervened!

There were other signs. The day before, he’d taken a constitutional in Regent’s Park, a most serene location. Had its lofty pines discerned imminent rain, they would have shut up their giant cones against an eventual deluge so as to protect their seedlings. But they did not.

Now, would any sane man reckon on the inconstant atmosphere? The speculations of an overburdened newspaper reporter, sweating in a darkened cubicle and stinking of pomade, stale cigar smoke and printer’s ink? Or would he rely instead on the sagacity of a pine tree, whose sole job it was to keep account of the weather?

No, it would not rain today.

As for his neighbor, errant waves of hair curling out from under his hat, crystals of sleep on the bottom lashes of his left eye, and a small spot of fresh jam on his waistcoat were all indications that his wife had once again departed in a torrent of tears for her mother’s. Had she been home, she never would have permitted jam on her spouse’s morning toast in such copious amounts that he could spill any portion thereof.

Her absence also explained why the family doctor, arriving promptly each evening with a new salve or patent medicine to combat fluid retention, insomnia or irritability, had not made an appearance since Friday last.

Beyond all that, it was a curiosity, but true nonetheless, that people were forever predicting their own worst fears or most fervent desires. A good drenching would be solace to a man like that, as he could be certain he wasn’t the only poor wretch suffering.

Mycroft gazed down his street, at the handsome new houses set well back from the pavement, each one with its proper allotment of trees and greenery, and its languid, vacant air. The architect’s aim was no doubt to create a tranquil atmosphere for the families who resided there, and, on the surface, it did just that. Mycroft’s home was no more than an unmarried man four years from thirty, and of his station, would purchase. It boasted no remarkable possessions, and but a handful of servants to keep the hearths clean, dust off the shelves, and keep the plants watered. As he ate most of his meals out, there was not even a proper cook…

His thoughts were interrupted by his new carriage, which came around the corner and halted at the curb. Huan’s dazzling smile was on full display as he waved from the sprung seat of a contraption so sparkling it all but glowed.

Before it stood a magnificent Irish Cob gelding, with a lustrous roan coat and snow-white mane and tail. However, Mycroft hadn’t yet bonded to him as he had to his Hanoverian warmblood, his dear Abie.

“A most excellent morning, eh, Mr. Mycroft?” Huan said in his lilting, melodic voice.

From the moment Mycroft had persuaded Huan to leave his buggy-for-hire business and his beloved mule Nico in Trinidad and come work for him as driver and bodyguard, Huan had ceased calling him by his Christian name but had added the prefix “mister.” Worse, when speaking about him to a third party, Mycroft would become “the mister.”

It was insufferable, as in Port of Spain he and Huan had become friends, even brothers in arms. But no amount of threatening or cajoling would persuade Huan otherwise: Mr. Mycroft he was, and Mr. Mycroft he would remain.

“Let us hope so, Huan,” Mycroft replied as he climbed aboard.

As for Huan’s “most excellent morning,” it wouldn’t have mattered if the sun were baking bricks or if rain were falling down in sheets. Huan created his own contentment wherever he went.

From within the carriage, Mycroft heard him click his tongue, followed by the clattering of hoofbeats on the cobblestones, the gelding’s rhythmical breath puffing in the morning chill as they proceeded on their way. What he had once found soporific was yet another reminder how much his life had changed—how different from whatever he had supposed it would be.

Of course, it would have been different, had Georgiana remained in his life. But then, what use was speculating? If one omitted Georgiana from his past, one omitted friendship, passion, adventure, heartbreak, and—in the end, he was forced to admit it—fortune.

No, had Georgiana lived, had he been blessed with the family he’d dreamt of, he would have remained what she had disdained: a rather dull government bureaucrat, grappling his way up the ladder one paltry rung at a time…

He glanced out the window and realized they were not heading to his bank (for that was always the first stop on a Tuesday) but towards Pall Mall.

He opened the trapdoor in the cab’s roof. “Huan?” he called out.

“Ah, Mr. Mycroft!” Huan called back. “So you are now awake from your dream state? You see we are going to your place of business?”

“Yes, I do see that—but why?”

“You do not recall? The Mr. Cardwell, he is waiting for you. With a surprise!”

Mycroft closed the trap with a frustrated sigh. There was no work to call him to the office this day, nor for the rest of the week. Indeed, his promotion from assistant to special consul meant that he could come and go as he pleased. Unless of course his employer called upon him… whereupon he would be forced to drop all plans and hurry off to Cumberland House, as they were doing now.

A shameful waste of a morning. He would have to make some excuse so that he could be at the bank before noon, for a visit to Fleet Street and his private deposit had more import.

In the same way that he could smell the rain, he had developed an unerring nose for economic calamities, and one was coming upon Britain faster than anyone could stop it. He speculated that it would reduce the country’s net worth, and that the underprivileged class would move from poor to destitute—which meant more abject misery in the streets.

Mycroft sometimes felt he would better serve his country in a post at the Treasury rather than the War Office. But as it was, without exposing his own wealth to scrutiny, he could not voice opinions in an official capacity—at least, none that anyone would take seriously. For what would a twenty-six-year-old special consul to the Secretary of State for War, with but one foray from his homeland, possibly know of international economies?

No, all he could do was to warn whoever would listen, and then shore up his own assets to at least ensure that those he cared for would never want for a thing.

He heard Huan open the trap.

“Mr. Mycroft?”

“Yes, Huan?” Mycroft replied, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice.

“Another body on Crutched Friars!”

It took Mycroft a moment. “Ah, yes. You are referring to the Savage Gardens Murders,” he called back.

Thus far unsolved, the killings had been so baptized when the first three nude and mutilated corpses had turned up, one after the other, near or on the small street known as Savage Gardens.

“They find it just this morning,” Huan added.

“Ah. And who is the ‘they’ who found it?” Mycroft asked.

“A publican,” Huan replied. “Closing shop, two in the night it was, good working man, walking home, and he go falling over a body in the dark!”

“Dear, I hope he was not injured,” Mycroft replied.

“Oh no, he was dead. Cut up in four pieces!”

“No, I meant the publican.”

“Ah! No, he was fine. Just startled. But the corpse’s face? No more nose. And below the waist, no more…”

When Huan hesitated out of propriety, Mycroft completed his sentence: “His reproductive organs had been cut off?”

“Yes!” Huan exclaimed. “Fancy way of putting it. Seven men now, murdered in same way.”

“Truly, is it seven? I thought it was five. Must’ve missed a few,” Mycroft replied. Truth be told, he was rather uninterested in the whole sordid affair.

“Not to worry, I let you know the next one!” Huan said cheerfully. “Number six, he was Chinese like the others. But number seven? A white man. Maybe now, they investigate.”

To the present juncture, the victims had all been between twenty and forty years of age, sliced into four parts with near surgical precision, left to bleed to death, and then transported (by water, Mycroft wagered, as the river was nearby) to a poor but well-trafficked neighborhood so as to serve as a warning to others in the vicinity: Cross us, and this too shall be your fate.

In each case, given the small size of the Chinese community in London, the man’s identity had been quickly confirmed. They had all been proprietors or heavy frequenters of opium dens, ne’er-do-wells whom society, Oriental or otherwise, would not mourn. As for the dead white man, he was doubtless in the same proverbial boat: a drug user who most likely owed money to a less-than-sympathetic lender.

“This not something for the War Office?” Huan called out to him.

“In what sense?” Mycroft asked.

“The Chinese, they are angry for the opium! For what it does to their land, they say it’s Britain’s fault—”

“That would be a strange message indeed,” Mycroft countered, “for the Chinese to mangle their own people and display them in our poorer boroughs so as to, what? Protest the ugly consequence of the opium trade in their native land? Seems counterintuitive, does it not? I am hard-pressed to imagine they blame the working classes of Savage Gardens, Crutched Friars, Fenchurch and the like for China’s addiction! No. If one wishes to protest the drug trade and Britain’s substantial profit, best to do so before Parliament, where laws are birthed and enacted. In any event, one quarters a living body and cuts off nose and genitals to humiliate the victim, not the perpetrator.”

“Ah! Make good sense, that. Was it also not your English custom as well?”

“It was,” Mycroft admitted. “Hanging, drawing and quartering, plus the removal of the ‘privy parts’… Though in England’s defense I hasten to add that we discontinued the practice several generations back.” He heard the trap shut again, and sighed. What an ugly, burdensome affair this was.

His shoes felt suddenly tight. He wished he could hurl them off and wiggle his toes, much as he had when he was a child. Instead, he removed his hat, raked his fingers through his blond hair—getting rather long; time for a trim before someone mistook him for a dandy—and leaned back against the padded leather cushion.

He detested surprises. Especially as he always knew perfectly well what they were about.

2

CYRUS DOUGLAS WALKED BRISKLY. THIS WAS NOT SOLELY due to long, athletic limbs and equally long strides, or to the cloak of winter that had settled in the air with drab finality. Nor was it that a man of dark hue, a Negro from the isle of Trinidad, no matter how finely dressed, might be looked upon with suspicion in these nicer parts of the city. No, Douglas walked briskly because it was a brand-new morning, and he wished to get on with it.

He turned off Swallow Street (a suitable name for a timid flutter of a road) onto Regent Street, one of the finest thoroughfares in London. Its stone façades—not brick, as was most of the rest of the city—seemed cheery, in spite of a crackled sky overhead threatening to fracture into a downpour.

Early hour and fetid weather notwithstanding, humanity had turned out in all its ragged glory. Hansom cabs and workers’ carts clogged the ample road, while the wretched and the well-to-do alike shared the pavements in a blur of moustaches, topcoats, skirts and bonnets.

By evening, young and old, rich and poor, would have had their fill of tribulations, of the wet air and the buffeting wind, and would make their ill-tempered way home, eyes averted and mouths set. But in the relative newness of morning, they still shared hope for a good outcome, a favorable return, a promise unexpectedly fulfilled; and each passed the other with a hearty good day, a smile, or a tip of the hat.

As he strode on with his head slightly bowed, as was his custom, Douglas heard itinerant vendors calling out the merits of prints and tassels, brocade and “rare” Spanish lace, along with the occasional entreaty to God or nature to keep their goods dry until all had been sold. But regardless whether a deity heard, they’d be there again tomorrow, and the day after that. Douglas was forever intrigued and humbled by that indomitable human spirit.

His first stop of the morning was to Regent Tobaccos. His little shop, which he had owned for nigh-on thirteen years, was in good hands. Gerard and Ava Pennywhistle, faithful employees, were now diligent and grateful partners, owning fifty percent of the business, which Douglas had ceded to them when his fortunes—or rather Mycroft’s—had turned for the better.

Even so, he still felt a pang at having abandoned it and them for another enterprise altogether.

Can’t be helped, he thought curtly. The children needed him more, and that was that.

He hurried up the steps that led to the familiar front door with its two arched windows, below a copper sign:

REGENT TOBACCOSImportateur de Cigares de la Havane,de Manille, et du Continent

The doorbell barely tinkled that Mr. Pennywhistle was already calling out from behind the counter: “Oho! Might that be you, Cyrus Douglas?” Then, over his shoulder, in volumes more fit for a seller of herring at Shooters Hill: “Mrs. P.! Come quick! You shall never guess in a hundred years who has come to see us!” Then, back to Douglas: “What’ll you have, m’lad? Drink’s on me!”

As he closed the door behind him, Douglas heard another voice, two octaves above the first, accompanied by hard, quick steps: “Don’t be dotty, Mr. P.! What could our Cyrus possibly wish to imbibe at this hour? And what can you offer him that in’t his already?”

Ava Pennywhistle, as broad as she was tall, hurried past her much shorter husband and made a beeline for Douglas, hands outstretched.

“Let me have a look at you, then!” She took him by the arms, angled him towards the hearth with its crackling fire, and then frowned as if she had just been presented with an inferior side of mutton. “Ah! And what have we done to ourself? Worked ourself to the very bone, says I! What the lad needs is sustenance, which any fool with two eyes can see! Thought that would exclude you, wun’t it, Mr. P.?” she called over her shoulder with a chuckle, referring to her husband’s myopia, presbyopia, and astigmatism.

“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: “Let 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.

“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.

And, as he had now trained Mycroft like a half-daft terrier to fetch whatever he deemed necessary, what need was there for him to change course?

As for his education, he had managed to graduate the upper sixth and was safely if unhappily ensconced at Downing College, Cambridge, Mycroft’s alma mater. In exchange, Mycroft had promised that leisure time would be spent in London, rather than “abandoned to the intolerable doldrums of country life with our dreary progenitors,” as Sherlock so charitably put it.

Mycroft stared down at the financial documents in his hands and frowned. Whatever it was the Queen required, could he perhaps find a moment to broach the subject of incipient economic collapse? If he could but get her ear on the matter…

Mycroft heard Huan’s knuckles rap against the trap door. He looked up from his papers and tried to shake off the feeling of disorientation and nausea that seemed to plague him as of late.

From the window he spied the National Standard Theatre, where he and Sherlock had arranged to meet. The area was both down-at-heel shabby and oddly genteel, crowded with public houses, pleasure gardens, shops and bazaars.

“Your brother, he cares for theatre?” Huan called out.

“He is fond of it, in his manner,” Mycroft said. “Although when I took him to see The Bells at the Lyceum, he mentioned neither the acting nor the writing, but went on about the costumes and makeup!”

As the carriage drew nearer and Huan fought for preeminence among cabs, carts and brewers’ drays, Mycroft could see three figures underneath the theatre’s great colonnade. One he recognized immediately: the profile reminiscent of a bird of prey, the tall, angular, even consumptive frame. If his identity had been in doubt, the instrument case that lay nearby—which Mycroft knew held a vielle, the five-string precursor of the violin, and Sherlock’s latest passion—would have clinched it.

The two shorter, well-planted fellows were Sherlock’s best and likely only friends, a strange set of twins named Eli and Asa Quince. They had longish hair the color of wet sand, and features so punctiliously carved that they could have been mistaken for ventriloquists’ dummies.

Despite the frigid November morning, there they were—the three eccentrics of Downing College in their shirtsleeves—practicing a combat of their own design that incorporated boxing but which also involved a short staff. They were using the columns as obstacles and barricades. And although the theater would not open for several more hours, why the proprietor was not coming after the boys with the pointy end of a broom was a mystery to Mycroft.

Sherlock was beating the stuffing out of them.

His limbs might’ve recalled a scarecrow, had he been less subtle in his dealings and less deadly in his aim. At nearly nineteen, he had become a rather ferocious athlete.

Mycroft watched his brother, uncommonly pleased to see how well he tucked his chin in and kept his wrists slightly bent to avoid injuring himself in a hit. Even his elbows were remaining closer to his body.

“Master Sherlock, he has gotten stronger, no?”

“Yes, Huan, it seems he has.”

Sherlock must’ve distinguished the sound of the carriage from amongst all the others because he whisked round to look—just as one of the twins attempted to brain him with a short staff. But Sherlock was too quick. He ducked out of the way, pivoting to avoid a right hook, then with a side pass managed to land his own staff in the vicinity of the twin’s spleen, while a left hook to the second twin’s jutting chin sent him sprawling atop his brother.

“Ah! You see the jabs coming fast,” Huan was declaring all the while. “Long reach, feet move, quick mix, good mind! Well done, Master Sherlock!” he bellowed upon the final blow, punctuating his praise with a round of applause.

Sherlock glanced blankly down at his vanquished friends. Then, instead of extending his hand in a sportsmanlike gesture—as Mycroft had dared to hope—he gathered up his vielle case, his short staff and his jacket, which lay on the ground along with the rest. Slipping it on, he removed the briar pipe from the pocket, packed and lit it.

At last, pipe between his teeth, and without a word of goodbye, he sprinted towards the waiting carriage.

5

“THERE THEY ARE!” SHERLOCK SAID BY WAY OF GREETING as he slid inside Mycroft’s carriage. In one long move, he deposited instrument and short staff, reached across Mycroft, snatched the newspapers off the seat and propped them on his jutting knees.

“No farewells to friends?” Mycroft asked.

“No need,” Sherlock said. “We meet Friday at Kensington to prepare for those dreary Latin orals. The language perished nearly two millennia ago—what need is there for me to resurrect it?”

“Now you are being a dunderhead,” Mycroft exclaimed. “There are treatises of law, medicine and crime that you would do well to become familiar with, for surely they fall within your realm of interests—and they are most certainly in Latin.”

“I follow the trail of my passions,” Sherlock opined. “If said passions happen to lead back to Latin, I shall thank Providence that I learnt it once upon a bygone time. Until then, it occupies a necessary chamber of my brain, for which I thank neither it nor Providence, but simply wish it to go on its un-merry way.”

With that, he lay back, opened up the Daily Telegraph, removed his pipe from between his teeth, and exhaled a long, bilious cloud of smoke.

Mycroft coughed. “It is even more acrid than those cheap cigarettes you used to smoke,” he complained, waving a hand in front of his nose.

“A pipe is more efficient,” Sherlock said, without taking his eyes off the newspaper. “Saves me an average of forty-seven seconds’ preparation.”

“We could stop at Regent Tobaccos. You will find many aromatic options from which to choose—”

“Dependent on some pretentious tobacconist? No thank you. My shag, I can pick up anywhere.”

“A finer quality pipe, then.”

“Briar has an inherent ability to absorb moisture, and a natural resistance to fire…”

“Now there’s a shame,” Mycroft said sourly. “But surely,” he continued on a different tack, “as nearly every man smokes, being able to tell one scent from the other, possibly even one ash from the other, could be a helpful tool for someone keen to develop the art of deduction…”

When a concept penetrated, Sherlock would execute a hardly perceptible jerk of the head, as if he’d just thrown a thought into the uppermost drawer of his mind to be extracted when needed.

“So. What have we here,” he murmured. “The Daily Telegraph, Daily News, Daily Chronicle…” He turned to Mycroft. “Next time perhaps add The Illustrated, as well as The Graphic. Even a week old, it serves.”

“Is that all?” Mycroft asked acerbically.

As Sherlock perused the crime column in the Daily News, he frowned. “Heard it, solved it, insipid, yet another theft in St. Giles, imagine that; some days are barely worth opening one’s eyes for—wait, there is something!” he declared. “‘Shocking discovery,’ Russell Square, throat slit… promising!” He carefully tore the column out, pocketing it.

“I take it the Savage Gardens Murders do not interest you?” Mycroft asked.

Sherlock’s expression was full of disdain. “The executions are altogether too overwrought. Someone has set out to make a point or to teach a lesson, which makes the motive pedestrian. And the only reason he, or most likely they, have not been apprehended as of yet is that no one much cares for the victims! Is it too much to ask that a motive be chock-full of intrigue, that killers show a modicum of finesse, and that victims be, if not noble, then at least somewhat worthy…?”

Mycroft sighed. He detested hearing his own unfiltered thoughts coming out of his brother’s mouth. “You are not saying, because they are Oriental, that they have no value, I hope?” he reproved Sherlock.

“I am saying it probably has to do with lucre or some battle over territory and the like. In other words, a colossal bore.” Sherlock was about to turn a page when something appeared to occur to him. He glanced out of the window. Then he looked over at Mycroft.

“We are not moving,” Sherlock said.

“No,” Mycroft replied. “We are not.”

“Why?”

“Where is your overnight bag?”

Sherlock eyed him, perplexed. “To what purpose?”

“To the purpose of remaining ten days in the city!”

“But I have all I need. My music, my short staff, my hat, my shag…” He patted the waistcoat pocket that held his tobacco.

“An overcoat?” Mycroft asked, incredulous. “Latin texts? A change of clothing? An umbrella?”

“Mycroft, do not be histrionic. You know perfectly well that it will not rain today. After that, should it get a bit wet, surely the Quinces have all the umbrellas I might need, to say nothing of Latin textbooks, as each twin has his own…”

“Tell me you brought a shaving kit, at least.”

“Whiskers have returned all the rage, and if need be, I can borrow yours, should you invite me to dinner—”

“No, you most certainly cannot. There,” Mycroft indicated the sign of a shop just down the road. “Go purchase a small shaving kit. Or return to Downing.”

The threat hit its mark. There would be no more arguing.

Sherlock opened the door of the cab and walked towards the shop, a ribbon of charcoal smoke trailing in his wake.

He is getting more difficult, Mycroft grumbled to himself. Perhaps he let Sherlock get away with too much. Perhaps instead of allowing him to lounge about with his nose buried in agony columns and tales of murder, his briar pipe polluting the rooms like a bad spell of winter fog, what he needed was a dose of how the other half lived. Being made to volunteer even a few hours at Cyrus Douglas’s school might be the ticket.

I could take him to Douglas, make my appointment with the Queen, then have a bite to eat before retrieving him.

Mycroft was particularly fond of that last notion. Even breaking bread with Sherlock had become a chore. Either he ignored the food laid before him and said not a word, or else would criticize everything, from chewing to digestion, in minute detail.

The Albion might have an open spot, Mycroft mused. I haven’t dined there in a fortnight…

He stared out of the window again. The twins had by that time picked themselves up and hobbled off. But just then, hurrying towards the Standard, Mycroft noticed a rather pinched and austere little man in a much-mended overcoat.

Mycroft knew him by sight: Sherlock’s chemistry tutor, Professor John Cainborn, the only instructor that, to his knowledge, Sherlock admired. When it comes to biologics, Sherlock had once crowed, the man is an alchemist! It was Cainborn who had given Sherlock a new perception on the study of matter; Cainborn who allowed Sherlock the liberal use of the Cambridge chemistry laboratories; Cainborn who had suggested that he take up the vielle as a form of meditation so that his analytic brain might have the rest that sleep or lesser distractions could not give.

Cainborn who smoked a briar pipe, which had doubtless sparked Sherlock’s own interest.

Cainborn and Sherlock passed one another on the street. Sherlock gestured towards his transport as a foray into polite conversation, and as he did, Mycroft witnessed a strange metamorphosis in his brother. Sherlock drew into himself, no doubt so as not to give offense by his greater height, his long body bent to greet the smaller man, his head nodding in agreement with whatever the professor was saying. And the handshake, when they parted, seemed genuine from both men.

A pang of jealousy took Mycroft unawares.

Both continued walking in their opposite directions, but then Cainborn turned his head to look back at Sherlock, almost as if he wished to be certain he was gone. Not a moment later, a Chinese gentleman of middle years approached the professor. He wore the traditional Han garb of green silk with deep blue brocade, decorated with Chinese dragons.

He and Cainborn shook hands as if their meeting was by happenstance, but their body language betrayed them. Mycroft could not help but notice how tense their limbs were, how strained their smiles, how white Cainborn’s knuckles as he held his pipe aloft.

Why would two grown men in a casual encounter whisper to each other in a fractious back and forth upon a busy thoroughfare? And what business could a rich Han merchant possibly have with a university professor of chemistry?

It was Cainborn who seemed in charge, from the manner in which he leaned forward, insistent, while the other man leaned back like a recalcitrant dog on a leash.

Then Cainborn turned and looked directly at the cab and at Mycroft. The Chinese man followed suit, his expression suddenly fretful. He whispered something to Cainborn, who whispered back; then both men hurried off in opposite directions.

Mycroft watched the Chinese gentleman cross the road and climb aboard a canary-yellow landaulet. By the time Sherlock walked out of the shop, it had darted away.

Curious, Mycroft thought. Nonetheless, he determined that he would not inform Sherlock of what he had seen. He refused to undercut whatever his brother found to admire in education, even if it happened to be a strange little man in a much-mended overcoat.

6

THE DEVIL’S ACRE WAS A PATCH OF MALODOROUS SWAMPLAND off the River Thames that comprised Old Pye Street, Great St. Anne’s Lane, and Duck Lane. Douglas had to admit that it was fit for nothing beyond “indescribable infamy and pollution,” as Charles Dickens had once described it. The fact that it lay more or less between the three pillars of British society—Westminster Abbey representing the Church, Buckingham Palace the Crown, and the Houses of Parliament the State—did nothing to soften the blow of being born, raised, or forgotten in such a dismal place, this haunt of unimaginable squalor.

Yet Douglas loved it, as much as he loved Regent Street, albeit for different reasons. Regent Street was a place of possibilities, of striving. Its grand buildings and imposing promenade assured humanity that hope sprang eternal; that Providence could still be kind. The Devil’s Acre offered no such assurances. There was nothing salubrious about its choleric streets. Its buildings, like its residents, tended to be hollow-eyed, grimy, and thin. But if one paid attention, from out its refuse-filled labyrinths one could pluck, here and there, a wildflower.

Hurrying to keep his appointment, Douglas stepped gingerly around horse dung, broken cobblestones, sleeping sots and stagnant pools of dubious origin as he recalled the first time he and Mycroft Holmes had spoken of this strange new fever dream of his.

Though summer, that day had been nothing of the kind: drizzly and cold, with wind gusts that set one’s teeth on edge and that only London could concoct. They’d been back but a month from the stifling wet heat of Trinidad. With Regent Tobaccos closed on Sunday, he and Mycroft had made themselves at home. They had dragged their favorite leather chairs as close to the hearth as could be managed without setting themselves ablaze, and had opened an Armagnac, a twenty-year-old Favraud.

At the time, Douglas was still convalescing. He could feel, or imagine he felt, the bullets lodged near his heart: two tiny pellets that could mean instant death, should they shift one eighth of an inch to the left. And although he had kept up with his capoeira exercises, engaging in mock battles with Huan each day to remain flexible, his days of brute labor, of packing and unpacking heavy shipments of tobacco and spirits, even for his own little shop, were ended.

He and Mycroft Holmes had been discussing alternatives.

His first thought had been to open an orphanage for colored children, to be named after the four-year-old son he had lost. But in the final analysis it seemed statistically less helpful than aiding slightly older boys (of whatever hue) to secure the sort of apprenticeships that could care for them and their families for a lifetime.

“It is not enough to provide them with just any employment,” he had told Mycroft. “We must keep them from the factory and the chimney and the mines and any other toil that destroys body and soul.”

“How many boys would you take in?” Mycroft had asked mildly.

“Fifteen? Twenty?” he’d replied with a shrug.

He hadn’t fully considered the logistics. It was still a dream fueled mostly by ideals and twenty-year-old Armagnac.

“There are thousands upon thousands in the city who are in need,” Mycroft had countered. “Changing the fortunes of but twenty at a time seems a fool’s errand—”

“Not to those twenty whose fortunes are changed,” Douglas had retorted.

“Then why not more? Why not fifty? One hundred? Two hundred at a sitting? Surely I can afford it.”

“But I cannot,” Douglas had countered. “I cannot maintain two hundred boys, as well as a staff. Even if I could, I do not care for the institutional setting; it is not what I envision.”

“The poetry in your soul may not envision it, Douglas, but I urge you to rethink for their sakes. If twenty boys ‘whose fortunes are changed’ are happy, surely two hundred would be happier still!”

But Douglas had been firm in his resolve. “We would need to ascertain that the boys were instructed properly and paid a decent stipend to boot.”

“And what do their employers receive in exchange?”

“Intelligent, willing apprentices, along with a temporary subsidy for their upkeep—another expense I wish to take on myself.”

“I see,” Mycroft had said. “And where are we contemplating locating this establishment?”

Douglas told him.

“The Devil’s Acre?” Mycroft had laughed. “All attempts at slum clearance have merely sloshed the poverty around like so much curdled milk. Even a stray dog knows better than to seek therein a scrap of food, lest he become someone’s supper. And if you dare to build something,” Mycroft had gone on, seemingly enjoying himself, “come first nightfall the Deserving Poor will cart off everything of value, down to the last nail!”

“Holmes, please,” Douglas had protested—for he still called him Holmes then, as there was not yet the muddle of a younger Holmes to contend with. “You are sounding like a phlegmatic old country squire. Besides, I would not be alone in this. Urania Cottage is in Shepherd’s Bush. And there are the ragged schools—”

“Yes,” Mycroft cut in, “but let us not forget, in the consumptive heart of the place, the master classes in pickpocketing that your boys will most likely attend.”