Laurie King - The God of the Hive

Goodman’s arm came out of the dark and appropriated the spade, which Holmes had been leaning on during this speech. Holmes moved to one side, and the hole continued to fill.

“Mycroft could have done all of that,” I pointed out.

“Granted. Although my brother might hesitate to send a sniper after his sister-in-law.”

I ignored the levity, although Goodman made a quiet Ha! “Anything Mycroft was in a position to effect, I imagine his secretary could have duplicated with forged orders. Certainly until Wednesday, when Mycroft was found. Or, not found,” I added.

“Either side could have done this. But it was definitely intended to be taken as Mycroft.”

“But Holmes, if Mycroft was alive, surely he’d have got us a message?”

“Perhaps he’s in Kent with your Mr Javitz and-”

He caught my sharp gesture even in the near-dark, but too late. The sound of digging stopped.

“You moved them?” came the voice from the grave.

With a wrench, my brain shifted direction: Our preoccupation with governmental misdeeds and assassinations meant nothing to Robert Goodman compared with the welfare of a child. “I did. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I talked to Captain Javitz after you left this morning and he had… concerns, so it seemed best to send the two of them away. They’ll be safe.”

“What concerns?”

How to answer him? By saying that his family’s servants had betrayed him to the American? That the pilot now suspected our eccentric rescuer was not only truly insane, but friends with a homosexual murderer as well? That I had to depend on Javitz to watch Estelle, and had no choice but to do as he asked?

“It’s complicated.”

“He knows,” Goodman said flatly.

I felt Holmes’ gaze bore into me, but I dropped onto my heels, stretching a hand out to the small man’s shoulder. “Robert, I owe you so much. May I ask one more favour of you? That we not have this discussion just now?”

For the longest time, the glitter of his eyes in the faint light did not shift. Then he said, “Does she know?”

“No.”

“Do not tell her.”

“I won’t.”

And without another word, he returned to his shovelling.

I could feel the question yearning from the man at my side: Know what? Another would have asked. Holmes said merely, “That my brother is not in his coffin suggests that this entire episode could have been in service of his needs. That he wished to appear dead.”

“For the third time, why not leave a message?”

“I could think of a hundred reasons,” he snapped. “He is held captive. His post to The Times was intercepted. He decided that a message was either inadvisable or unnecessary.”

“Unnecessary? How were we to guess the newspaper report was false?” I used the word guess deliberately, knowing it would raise his ire.

“ I knew there was something wrong the moment I read his obituary.”

“Well, yes!”

“Wrong with the report, that is. The general public does not know Mycroft Holmes from Adam, so why should The Times print a formal obituary? And in any event, even if a man has been old and ill, how often does his obituary appear the very next day?”

I started to protest, then stopped: Javitz had noted just that thing, and I had dismissed it. Still: “And you think Mycroft would have expected us to make a whopping great leap of ratiocination based on a too-quick obituary?”

“I think when we find him, he will be amused that we had to dig up his coffin to be certain.”

“‘Amused,’” I repeated darkly, looking at my filthy clothing and blistered hands. “Will he also be amused when his misplaced confidence in our deductive abilities gets us arrested for grave-robbing?”

“We have not actually stolen anything,” Holmes pointed out mildly.

“Tell that to the arresting constable. Are you ready for the turf, Goodman?”

We tamped down the soil as best we could and shifted the turf back over the grave. In a day or two it would look much as it had, particularly if the rain continued, but even if the grave-diggers noticed that it was not as they left it, what would they do? Dig it up and find precisely what they had left there?

We darkened the light, left the spade in the shed, and crept unnoticed from the silent graveyard, taking our filthy selves through the wet streets to the bolt-hole.

Peter James West returned the telephone to its cradle and walked across the room to stretch his reflection across the dark, rain-swept city. And only an hour ago, he’d been ready to call an end to it and see what he could salvage from the rubble of his carefully constructed plans.

The knock on his office door that afternoon had summoned him half an hour early to the taxi, which had meant an extra half hour sheltering in the damp recesses of the vault, waiting for the mourners to arrive. And there he had stood, growing ever colder, as his plans melted away like the mud at the edges of Mycroft Holmes’ grave. Now, hours later, he could acknowledge a grudging respect for the two-pronged attack on his careful plan. Buckner hadn’t a chance-although he couldn’t see that Gunderson would have done any better.

The blond man in charge of the band must have been Moreton, the mad woodsman of Cumbria. The question was, had the woman only met him last week, or had she deliberately sought him out? He’d thought the man a pet she’d picked up along the way, as she had picked up (or so it appeared) the pilot and the child. If so, it showed a degree of sentimentality he’d not have expected of the young wife of Sherlock Holmes. If not-if the band-leader’s inclusion had been planned-it indicated a degree of forethought that could prove dangerous.

Could that even be where Sosa had got to, as well, sheltering beneath her wing? And if not with her, where was he? Had his employer’s death brought him face to face with the consequences of treason, and driven him to flee the country? If so, he hadn’t taken his ill-gotten gains with him. And if the man tried to gain access to his accounts, West would hear about it. In any event, Sosa would surely be picked up soon-he lacked the nerve or the skill to go to ground for long.

But all the gloom and despair faded with the telephone call. There was a move in chess (idiotic game, a pale imitation of reality) where a lowly pawn could be made into a queen, and turned against the opponent with devastating consequences.

The telephone conversation had been to say that his pawn had been queened. He now had the tool with which to prise out the last remaining remnants of the old age, and make it new.

Painstaking, untiring, scientific method backed by modern technology: This was the new age of Intelligence. The age of Peter James West.

It was fortunate that the building was empty at night, because during the work-day, someone would surely have noticed the volume of water running through unseen pipes. I claimed the first bath, which meant that Holmes’ water ran cold. I felt no regret for his discomfort.

My hair was dry by the time he came out, his skin resembling a fish’s pale belly. Goodman placed a steaming bowl of soup before him along with the plate of fresh-cooked scones he had apparently summoned from the air, and I let Holmes finish his meal before raising my questions.

“So, if Mycroft could have orchestrated this entire affair, but did not, who else is there? Who is in a similar position?”

“As you said, Sosa comes to mind. He has always been more an assistant than a mere secretary. And, he might well expect to inherit some portion of Mycroft’s authority.”

“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.”