“What about West—what’s his name, Peter James? I went to see him, but he was not at the address Lestrade gave me. I thought he might come to the funeral.”
“West is one of the young men Smith-Cumming brought in after the War, and I’d have thought him of too low a rank to possess that degree of ambition. In another twenty years, perhaps. His boss, Sinclair, would be more likely: Sinclair and Mycroft have never seen eye to eye on what constitutes the greatest threat to the empire, and he’s more than once expressed his disapproval of Mycroft’s parallel and, as Sinclair regards it, amateur Intelligence firm.
“I was rather surprised to see him at the funeral—and, looking less relieved than saddened. Sinclair has taken the widespread conviction that Germany was the ultimate evil and transferred it onto Russia. He maintains the Bolsheviks have to be crushed, instantly and forever, lest they penetrate to our very soul. Mycroft agrees to an extent, but refuses to permit the limitation of interests. Thus far, the powers-that-be have agreed that Mycroft possesses a balanced view, but this has only convinced Sinclair that Mycroft is deluded and obstructive.”
He stretched out an arm for a sterling cigarette case and gaudy glass ash-tray from Blackpool. When the stale cigarette was lit, he slid the case towards Goodman, who did not take it. We sat for a time, meditating on the ramifications of in-fighting among the branches of Intelligence.
“I have to agree,” I said at last, “this entire scheme is convoluted enough to be something Mycroft cooked up.”
“That would be a pleasant dream: my brother and his assistant, smoking cigars and moving pieces around a chessboard whilst his machinery turns.”
“We need to find him,” I said, stating the obvious.
“We need to find all of the missing pieces,” Holmes corrected me. “We need to have a word with Sosa’s mother, to see if he had a favourite refuge. And Brothers, who might be with one of the church’s Inner Circle.”
“I’d suggest we look for Mycroft first.”
“Agreed,” Holmes said. He put out his cigarette and fixed an eye on our guest. “Mr Goodman, where might you look for my brother?”
“At home,” the small man said promptly.
I winced, recalling the state in which I’d left Mycroft’s flat, but objected, “He wasn’t there yesterday.”
“All the more reason for him to be there today,” Holmes said.
Goodman came with us, of course. I could not see that he would either cause, or come to, harm, and although I thought for a moment that Holmes would request him to stay behind, he did not.
We went in through the St James’s Square entrance and followed Holmes’ bobbing candle in single-file through the narrow labyrinth. The faint cracks around the doorway indicated that the light was still on in the study, and Holmes slid the peep-hole aside that I might examine the room, comparing it with how we had left it.
I took my time, then stood back.
“I don’t see his gold pen on the desk-top. I’m pretty certain it was there Saturday.”
Goodman reached for the latch, but Holmes grabbed his wrist. I had to agree. “Robert, he’s right. Last time it only seemed to be a matter of arrest, but now there may be something more dangerous in there.”
“All the more reason,” he said, and before either of us could stop him, his other hand had worked the latch and he was putting his shoulder to the hidden door.
This time, I put my hand on Holmes’ arm.
We waited for this peculiar man to make a second leisurely survey of Mycroft’s flat. No shouts came, no gunshots. In a minute he was back, again holding an apple with a bite missing.
“Someone’s been here,” he commented indistinctly, then dropped into a chair, picking up an abandoned book from the nearby table.
Holmes shoved the door open, and I followed him inside.
At first, I could see no evidence of intrusion past the disorder I had myself left. Then: The chair I had used to prop under the door-handle was not as I remembered leaving it. Lestrade’s note, which I had left in case Holmes came here, lay at a different angle. And the bowl of fruit—surely there was more than one apple missing?
The sitting-room window made it imprudent to turn on those lights, but the kitchen had doors. I made my way there, let the doors swing shut, and switched on a small light.
Yes: Someone had been here since I searched the room the previous afternoon.
In a few minutes, Holmes’ voice came from without. “Was the revolver still in his bedside table when you were here yesterday?”
“Yes—is it missing now? Here—hold on a moment,” I said. I dimmed the light to let him in, then turned it on again. “The tea caddy is empty, an assortment of foodstuffs are missing, and the chair Mrs Cowper sits in has been moved a few inches. Also, the pills she puts on his tea-tray every morning? The bottles had more in them yesterday.”
He stared at me, then through me, a look I knew well. “What did you tell me about the key?”
“That Robert found? I merely speculated that the hiding of both key and letter—with the capital I on Interpreter—were intended to combine into a message that the key is in the interpreter. Or as it turned out, the key is the interpreter. Rather, his wife.”
The expression that dawned across Holmes’ face gave lie to his assertions of optimism. His face was transformed, and his eyes rose to the ceiling, as if thanking God. With an almost child-like glee, he rubbed his hands together as his gaze darted around the room, coming to rest on the royal portrait behind the housekeeper’s misplaced chair.
The dumbwaiter, the height of modern amenities when it was installed a generation ago, had proved more trouble than benefit for most of the building’s residents. Mycroft’s renovations this past year had included a panel screwed to the wall over its opening, but he had not blocked the hole entirely, merely hung over it Mrs Cowper’s portrait of His Majesty King George V.
Holmes jerked open the cutlery drawer for a knife, then crossed the room in three broad strides to attack the panel’s screws. Two turns of the wrist and a screw fell away. He bent to retrieve it, holding it out on his palm: The full-sized head was attached to a mere half-inch of shaft. The screw had been sawed off until it was no thicker than the panel.
All six screws had received the same treatment, and none of them had any function but appearance, but when he jabbed the silver blade under the edge of the panel, it did not give. And not, as I first thought, because it had been painted shut: The panel was held in place from the back.
At home, we could instantly lay our hands on a wide variety of tools suitable for burglary or architectural destruction, but Mycroft had never gone in for the practical side of his profession. Still, Mrs Cowper kept a well-equipped kitchen: I hoped I never had to explain to her what we had done to her meat mallet and butcher-knife.
Dish-towels and pot-holders helped muffle the sound of splintering wood, but we had to shut off the lights once to fetch a large pillow from the sitting room, and a second time when the inquisitive Goodman requested entrance.
Finally, the panel’s inner latches came free. Picking away the more vicious splinters, Holmes drew the torch from his pocket and put his head into the dark hole, twisting about to examine all angles.
When he stepped away, he looked as proud as ever a brother could be. He held out the torch, and I took his place.
Where there once would have dangled sturdy ropes joining the box to its pulley device at the top, there was now nothing but a dusty square shaft that reminded me of the emergency exits of some of the bolt-holes. Its roominess surprised me until I called to mind the box that travelled up and down: It had thick, insulated walls, and even then was big enough for …
I twisted about, as Holmes had done, and saw them: narrow boards, some ten inches apart, bolted to the wall beside the entrance and disappearing upwards into the gloom. It looked almost like—
“A ladder!” I withdrew my head and met Holmes’ dancing grey eyes. “Oh, surely not. Mycroft couldn’t c
limb those.”
“Last year’s Mycroft, no. But this year’s model?”
“Good heavens. You don’t imagine …”
“That my brother decided to shed weight in order to use this? It would require considerable determination and foresight.”
Mycroft’s Russian-doll of a mind, renovating a kitchen to conceal the noise and dust of building one secret entrance, at the same time creating another, even more closely hidden one.
Goodman had nudged me aside to look at our find. His height made it difficult to see, so he dragged Mrs Cowper’s chair over to climb on. He thrust his torso inside. In a moment, his hand came back, holding a wide metal strip with a small hook at one end.
Holmes examined it, then bent to fit the hook into the wire mounted on the portrait. “It’s a means of replacing the king before the door is fully shut,” he said.
“Where does the shaft come out?” I asked Holmes, keeping my voice low. “Is the basement kitchen still in use?”
“I believe he was interested less in the depths than what lies above.”
“What is that?”
“The Melas flat,” Holmes replied with satisfaction. Then his face changed as he lunged past me, too late for the second time in minutes.
“Goodman, stop!” he hissed, his hand locked on the Green Man’s ankle. Goodman did not retreat, nor did he reply, he merely waited, giving Holmes no choice but to let go. He thumbed the torch on and climbed through on the small man’s heels, with me bringing up the rear and praying that the boards had in fact held Mycroft’s weight, and could thus be trusted to hold a series of lesser bodies. It was at least forty feet to the ground, and I had two men above me.
The torch in Holmes’ hand bounced madly, illuminating nothing so much as the soles of Goodman’s shoes. I had only gone up a few feet when everything came to a halt. Trying simultaneously to cling to the wall and peer around Holmes, I saw Goodman’s left hand exploring the wall beside the ladder, a storey above Mycroft’s kitchen. Holmes stretched his arm back so the light fell on the wall; I heard a faint click.
Sudden light flooded the shaft, and Goodman leant forward to place his hand on the lower edge of the entrance.
Then he froze, his weight braced on one hand, suspended above our heads.
Holmes shifted, and said in a low voice, “Mycroft? If that is you, kindly put away your gun and allow Mr Goodman to enter.”
The light dimmed somewhat as a figure appeared through the hole in the shaft wall. “My dear Sherlock. And Mary, too, I see. Yes, reports of my demise were somewhat exaggerated. I trust you brought dinner?”
Chapter 61
Mycroft looked bizarrely thin, as if his features had been grafted onto another man’s body. However, he moved with ease around his borrowed kitchen, playing the host and making coffee despite the sticking plasters on two fingertips of his right hand. The revolver lay on the work-table beside an equally gaunt packet of biscuits.
“Am I to understand that Mrs Melas told you about this flat?”
“She did not,” I answered.
Goodman said to me, “That’s what she was waiting for you to ask.” Mycroft had been more dubious about Goodman even than Holmes, eyeing him as one might a small child in a roomful of delicate knickknacks.
“Yes, I should have known that you would not overlook the usefulness of an adjoining flat.” That I had missed the significance of the renovations might have been humiliating, had Holmes not also failed to see them.
“I was beginning to wonder if I should have to sneak out at night and raid my neighbours’ cupboards.”
“I did make it as far as your own flat on Saturday,” I told him.
He turned with a look of surprise. “That was you, Mary? Thumping about for hours?”
“Hardly hours. And yes, it was I.”
“You left an unholy mess.”
“I know. Sorry.”
“I thought it was the police again—I expect they are the source of the ringing telephone downstairs that has been plaguing me all week-end. Although thank heavens, the ringing seems at last to have ceased. In any event, I kept anticipating that they would find their way up the dumbwaiter shaft.”
“It was well concealed.”
“By that portrait?” he said in astonishment. “How could anyone who ever met Mrs Cowper take her for a devoted Royalist?”
Another failure for which I had no answer.
The coffee was ready, the meagre edibles arranged on a fine plate. Mycroft led us to the Melas sitting room, a dark place furnished when Victoria set the fashion, with maroon velvet curtains so thick we had no worry of escaping light, and laid out eggshell cups and saucers that might have been a wedding gift to Sophy Melas and her Greek-interpreter husband. The coffee was pitifully weak, the milk tinned, the few biscuits stale. Goodman ignored the refreshment in favour of a thorough circuit of the flat, listening over his shoulder as Holmes told Mycroft about Damian’s injuries and the threats he had encountered in Holland and Harwich. I then gave a quick synopsis of my own adventures, during which Goodman lost interest and kicked off his shoes to curl onto a divan in the corner. By the time I finished, a light snore came from his corner of the room.
Then it was Mycroft’s turn.
“I think,” Mycroft began, “this all began in June, fifteen months ago, when Cumming died.” He took in the uncomprehending looks on half his audience, and explained. “Sir George Mansfield Smith-Cumming was the head of the foreign division of the SIS. In 1909, Intelligence was divided into domestic and foreign divisions—although the Navy and Army still had their own Intelligence services, of course. Cumming did some good work during the War, but afterwards the combination of his ill health and questionable decisions shook the service badly. In November 1920, you will recall, the IRA executed fourteen of his men. A catastrophic blow—and one which may have contributed to the next year’s decision to reduce drastically the SIS budget.
“After Cumming’s death, Hugh Sinclair took over, and although I find him somewhat single-minded on the dangers of Bolshevism, he is a competent man, who does what he can with limited funds.”
He cleared his throat, and dribbled another dose of coffee-flavoured water into his cup. “However, economics is not the point—or not the particular point I have in mind. Intelligence in this country—the gathering of information on potential enemies—has a tumultuous history. In general, spying is seen as an ungentlemanly pursuit that becomes an unfortunate necessity in times of war. Each time conflict starts up, the country scrambles to generate spies and procure traitors, ending up with information that is incomplete or even wrong, and some highly questionable employees. Without method and forethought, we are left dangerously exposed.
“After the War, the various Intelligence divisions combined, shrank, or in a few cases, split off entirely. Vestigial elements remained, rather as my own department does. Military and civilian forces were thrown together: Names changed, power was grabbed, and the only thing the government could agree upon was, as I said, that the Intelligence budget wanted cutting. And cuts were made, insofar as the public record was concerned.
“In point of fact, several of the military and civilian bureaux, instead of being absorbed into the overall SIS, have continued blithely along their own lines. When Sinclair took over last year, he had a devil of a time finding which of those wartime groups had actually disbanded. Cumming had been willing to put up with these ‘Intelligence Irregulars,’ one might say—little more than private clubs or Old-Boys networks, really—because their information was occasionally useful. Sinclair, however, wanted them disbanded.”
I frowned and was about to ask how these various groups were funded if the central agencies were being cut back, when Holmes spoke up.
“You’ll have to tell her, Mycroft.”
My brother-in-law shifted as if his chair had become uncomfortable; I would have missed the giveaway gesture had I not been looking directly at him. Goodman’s rhythmic breathing continued without interrup
tion; Mycroft lowered his voice, and began.
“Some thirty years ago, I found myself in a position to change this … impermanent nature of the empire’s Intelligence service. It was towards the end of the war between Japan and China, in 1895. A considerable amount of money had been … circumspectly allotted to influence the war in favour of China. There is no need to go into the series of events first delaying the funds and then obscuring their presence, but suffice it to say that when war had ended, much of the money was still there, in limbo, threatening to become something of an embarrassment were Japan to discover it.
“Those responsible for committing the funds assumed they had been spent, either during the war or as a portion of the indemnities. I was one of the few capable of tracing them precisely. To ask for their return would have opened up a can of worms that the Prime Minister did not wish to see opened. So I … removed the potential source of international chagrin by making the money disappear.”
“What? Wait—you stole government funds? You?”
“I stole nothing. I merely relocated them. With the Prime Minister’s full knowledge, I may add, although nothing was put to paper. The amount was considerable, and I invested it sensibly. The annual return keeps my operations running.”
I looked at Holmes, who was diligently studying the end of his cigarette, then back at his brother. I couldn’t believe it. Embezzlement? Mycroft?
My brother-in-law went on, as if he had confessed to taking home the office dictionary. “As I said, in the months since Cumming’s death, power has shifted in several directions. My own rôle in the Intelligence world has always been primarily that of observer, and although I do have direct employees, generally speaking I commandeer men from elsewhere when I require them.
“My illness came at a bad time. Decisions were being made with great rapidity last December, after the election but before Labour took over. One might even describe the mood as ‘panicked.’ The outgoing Prime Minister together with Admiral Sinclair set a number of Intelligence elements into stone, then brushed away the dust and presented the incoming Labour party with a fait accompli. And since Labour had been on the outside of policy, they could not know that this was not how things had always appeared.