Laurie King - The God of the Hive

“How did he sign his name?”

“With the letter M .”

“Is there significance in that?”

“Have you ever seen my brother sign a letter with only the initial?”

“He does all the time,” I protested. I could see it in front of my eyes, that copperplate M curving around a dot.

“In a letter to me?” he persisted.

Now that he’d mentioned it, I had to agree, it was generally Mycroft’s full name, even in telegrams. But I had seen that M as well, and recently. Then I had it: “The letters from Mycroft that Sosa had in his desk. Those were signed with just the initial.”

“Precisely: his business communications. The initial began as his mark to indicate that he had seen a document, and evolved into a substitute formal signature. I believe Smith-Cumming adopted the technique with his letter C on documents, until that letter took on a life of its own and was taken to mean Chief -his successor, Hugh Sinclair, signs with the C.”

“So, what? This letter to you is a business communication?”

“I should say he meant us to understand that he was writing in an official, rather than a fraternal, capacity.”

I could not see that it made any particular difference. “If you say so, Holmes,” I said, and went back to laying the table.

When he came out, he had changed his formal suit for a pair of frayed trousers and an equally working-man’s shirt of a dark colour, which he was rolling up to the elbows. He set an ancient dark-lantern on the floor beside the door: He had not by some miracle let go the idea of digging up Mycroft’s grave.

Goodman had created a kind of bean ragoût that he poured over a mound of rice-remarkable, considering the raw materials to hand. Holmes chewed the first bite with careful consideration, then gave a small moue, as if the taste had proved some inner theory. Goodman tucked in with gusto, and launched into the story of how he’d come to locate and hire a band with such absurdly woeful skills, weaving in a great deal of entertaining but questionable detail, aware of, but ignoring, the grey eyes that never left him.

When the plates were empty, I abandoned the men to the washing-up and dug through the stores for a costume appropriate for grave-robbing: trousers and a dark shirt similar to those Holmes had donned, ancient brogues, and the gloves Holmes used when he was driving a carriage. I chose another shirt and took it into the other room. The cook was scrubbing a pot. Holmes was drying the plates and putting them on the shelf. One of them had made coffee.

“Mr Goodman chooses to join us,” Holmes told me.

“I didn’t imagine he could resist.” I held out the shirt. “That white shirt will be too visible at night, if we’re caught. This one should fit you well enough.”

Goodman laid the pot upside-down next to the sink and reached for his neck-tie, undressing with no more self-consciousness than a child. I turned my back. Holmes looked on, bemused.

I had rather hoped that, considering the circumstances, we might find the coffin sitting at the edge of the hole, the interrupted burial having been delayed until the morrow. However, the mound of earth had been filled in, the sod returned to its place. The height of the mound suggested the addition of a substantial volume.

We rolled away the turf and Holmes pulled on his driving gloves, then set to with a spade he had stolen from the workman’s shed. I guided him with the dark-lantern, keeping it low and sheltering it behind my body.

After a quarter hour, Goodman dropped down from his perch on top of a grandiose vault and took the spade. A quarter hour after that, I returned from a wide survey of the surrounds and assumed the gloves and spade.

A faint rain began to drift across us, a mist rising from the ground to meet it. A faint half-moon occasionally looked through the clouds, catching on Goodman’s pale hair, the gleam of his teeth, the glitter of Holmes’ eyes.

The advantage of overturning a fresh grave is obvious, and this one was as fresh as they get. Halfway through our second circuit of diggers, with Goodman in the hole, the spade hit wood. To my surprise, he dropped the handle and scrabbled his way out of the hole as if he’d felt a hand on his leg.

Holmes let himself down and began uncovering the coffin.

It emerged quickly, its former polish somewhat scraped and dented. Holmes tossed out the spade and pulled a screw-driver from the back pocket of his trousers. When he had worked his way around and the fastenings were loose, he traded the screw-driver for a length of light-weight rope, knotting it around the handle. He picked it up; Goodman interrupted.

“Allow me,” he said with exaggerated politeness, holding out a hand. Holmes laid the rope’s end across his palm. Goodman wrapped it around his fist, waited until Holmes and I were standing across the grave from him with the lamp shining down at the wood. Then he pulled, working against the weight and the press of remaining soil against the hinges. The wood came up; the air went heavy with the stench of corruption; the light wavered and went still; and we looked down into the silk-lined coffin.

The face below us was nestled into a pale satin pillow.

The face was that of a large man, his dead features slack and beginning to swell.

Not Mycroft.

Holmes could not quite stifle his grunt of relief; however, his only words were to tell Goodman to hold the lid. He let his long legs down until his shoes rested on the edges of the coffin, and I shone the light on the corpse’s upper body as Holmes tilted it, but as I’d thought, the coffin was not deep enough to contain two.

He had been killed, not by a knife as the newspaper had reported, but by gunshot: three shots, in fact, one of which had stopped his heart and brought an end to his bleeding. He had not been embalmed; no autopsy had been performed; he had been dead for several days.

Holmes pulled himself back onto the grass, his legs dangling, while I continued to direct the light over the man’s face. Death obscures the features and drains away the personality, but the fresh pink scar along his left eyebrow tugged at my memory: I had put it there myself two weeks earlier.

“You know him,” Holmes said.

“Marcus Gunderson.”

Silence held for a solid minute, before he murmured, “Curioser and curioser.”

“Our opponent is clearing the field,” I said. “Removing anyone who can tie him to this whole business. He’ll find Sosa next.”

“Perhaps Sosa is in hiding with Mycroft.”

The blithe illogic of this was so startling, I could feel even Goodman’s scepticism from the darkness. Just because Mycroft wasn’t here didn’t mean he wasn’t dead elsewhere.

“If Mycroft is hiding, why did he not get into touch with us?”

“Have you finished?” asked a voice from across the grave. Holmes hastily retracted his legs. The coffin lid came down; the rope sagged loose; Holmes screwed down the lid again, then reached for the spade. The air grew sweeter.

“Is there any information you have not given me?” Holmes asked as he began to fling soil back into place.

“Nothing that comes to mind,” I said.

“Why, then, is Gunderson here in place of my brother?”

“He sounds irritated.” Goodman’s voice from the darkness was amused.

“Not that it doesn’t please me immensely,” I said, “that he isn’t here, but honestly, what does this mean?”

“Think, Russell. Who would be capable of this? Who could trace you to Scotland and have a sniper waiting for you overnight in Thurso? Who could learn from the telephone exchange where a trunk call had originated, and two days later have armed men in Amsterdam? Who would have the authority to remove a body from the purview of Scotland Yard, produce a false identity and falsified autopsy results, and package it for burial with no trace of official protest?”