George Mann - Associates of Sherlock Holmes

An irrational being, however effective it may be in one or more of its modes, risks everything in tearing itself apart when those modes do not suffice and, by working first in high gear and then in low, is always vulnerable to the specks of grit the world may throw into the delicate cogs of the vulnerable mind. Now I amend my path to minimise such dust, and by preserving the mechanism – under glass as it were – ensure its maximal utility. I wake, dress, attend my office, perform such tasks as are necessary, lunch at my club – whose silence suits the rumination over the morning’s data with a view to the creation of the afternoon’s synthesis. The daily task successfully dispatched I spend the evenings in equally splendid isolation. After a quiet sojourn once more at the Diogenes, I return to my lodgings – a grace and favour apartment in Admiralty Arch, courtesy of the Foreign Office – perfectly positioned to minimise unnecessary perambulations. I wash, I sleep – rarely dreaming (so far as I can determine) – and I repeat. All is as it should be. A working mind in a working body.

My brother, as you will perhaps have heard, gads about. He wastes time. He has created a useful tool in the Baker Street Irregulars, and yet he cannot bring himself to rely upon them consistently, but must always be running about in this disguise or that. Such tactics are effective no doubt among the unobserving criminal classes, or the Scotland Yarders, and no doubt there is a minor satisfaction in the perpetual surprise of his Boswell, but there came a time when he ran afoul of one of the bigger fish, who was less taken in by the ribbons of weed wrapped around the caddisfly larva and saw it for the plump dragonfly morsel it was in potential. That bigger fish was your brother – oh please don’t bother to deny it. I know you have protested the professor’s innocence in the newspapers, but between these four walls we both have good reason to look with some alarm at our families’ wilder members, have we not?

My brother too is also unafraid to break the law, for a supposedly good cause – a short-sighted moral position which has required me to intervene on his behalf with the authorities more often than I suppose he supposes. Yours did so for reasons of his own, about which I will not speculate.

That my brother does much that is good is undeniable. That he does the most good he could do is hardly likely. If he were to train his mind to wider questions – to address through support of social legislation by the government of the day towards the underlying causes of crime, to watch as I watch for the broader threat, and the less obvious larceny – he would be, in time perhaps, as indispensable as myself. Still, they tell me I shouldn’t expect old heads on young shoulders.

What has he been up to lately, you ask? Well, certainly – it is the hour when visitors are permitted to discourse here in the Stranger’s Room, and I can perceive you will need time to consider my last chess move. I have no objection to making my observations on my brother more specific.

If you were to believe that the accounts of the ingenious Watson [4] There is some possibility that this is not a compliment; Mycroft’s papers almost never use the term “ingenious” except in the sense it is used in Ambrose Bierce’s story “The Ingenious Patriot” (1899) where it signifies a technically adept individual with no grasp of the long-term consequences of his actions. This does not, however, in itself date the action to after 1899, as this usage of the word – which is essentially sarcastic – did not originate with Bierce. represent the norm or status quo of my brother’s activities, rather than a subset selected by their suitability for publication, you might conclude that the cases that come to my brother’s attention invariably begin with an impassioned plea from a caller at their Baker Street rooms. Perhaps a masked member of the nobility, or a governess singularly attractive for her class. However, Watson has not given publicity to the fact that Sherlock, like a little dog eager for scraps, has taken to calling monthly on the detectives of the Yard in a carefully timed “wander” through their offices that takes in each in turn without permitting the others to observe his interest. Thus he gains an early insight into cases yet to be from his minute observations of their environs and his picking up of casual gossip, to which the common constable is not immune. It is generally at around three-forty or so on the third Wednesday of the month that he calls upon Inspector Lestrade.

The Metropolitan Police detective force has suffered a certain amount of gentle lampooning at the pen of the Good Doctor and his literary agent, but there is no doubt in my mind that they are the best that can be obtained – for the money allocated by a niggardly Treasury. Their offices at New Scotland Yard administer a force that in total amounts now to over thirteen thousand, inclusive of their colleagues who perform the services behind the scenes, without which no substantial organisation can function, and they are no longer the well meaning but ill-organised handful of burly thief-catchers of Rowan and Bayne’s day.

What’s that? Yes, I agree that it is a slight embarrassment that New Scotland Yard was itself founded upon an unsolved mystery. The torso of the woman dug up in the preparation of the foundations in 1888 has, I must admit, never been identified to a degree that would permit a case to be made in law. However, strictly between ourselves: the disappearance, in July of that year, of the Countess of Strathmore’s lady’s maid Jane from the Royal Box at the Wimbledon Championship – together with the Strathmore tiara, valued I believe at over seven thousand pounds for the gems alone – did not, I fear, end well for the cat’s-paw who allowed herself to be persuaded by the honeyed words of her eventual killer. The theft was a well-planned one involving the distraction of the sporting event in which I believe, if I recall correctly, the thirteenth Earl [5] Patrick Bowles-Lyon, thirteenth Earl of Strathmore and Kingshorne. received a substantial defeat in the mixed doubles at the hands of the Renshaw brothers. [6] William Renshaw and Earnest Renshaw defeated the earl and his partner Sir Herbert Wilberforce: 2-6, 1-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-3. I wonder if it was the failure of him and his partner on the lawns or the theft that rankled most when the family sat down to dinner that night. One day the hand of retribution will fall upon the shoulder of the personable Colonel Moran – but forgive me it was not my intent to raise old spectres, and I fear I have allowed myself to be diverted by your remark from the narrative you originally requested. My apologies: I fear even Homer may nod.

On this particular Wednesday, Lestrade was going through reports of the beat officers from the Dulwich area looking for signs of crimes in the making. Indications that known criminals might be congregating, or for unusual spending which might tie any of the men known for such acts to the recent spate of robberies in that part of the city. You can well imagine the sort of thing that an intelligent man can glean from the chaff of the threshing, and Lestrade is by no means unintelligent. That he has not the flashy legerdemain of my brother, nor his accrued collection of bad habits, are both strengths in a man working with a regimented body: the crime solving engine that is the Metropolitan Police.

Knowing that a tool is best used for the types of fastenings with which it is by its forging designed to engage, Lestrade did not attempt to lay before Sherlock any of his diligent work, but immediately handed him the most outré and time-consuming task of the many demanding his attention. The Yard does this now at my suggestion, for a study which I am carrying out concerning the management of time has indicated that the solution of a single high profile case, though often of political importance, does not accomplish as much for the general repose and security of society as the countless smaller crimes which can be solved or even averted by the correct placement of resources. As a self-motivated agent, my brother can be deployed at no formal cost, boasting that he never varies his charges except where he defrays them altogether (a claim I do not expect always holds true, if only because he is inclined to discount the odd princely gift from a grateful nobleman or woman). He is – when bored – perfectly happy to be set upon a goal, and will – at his own expense – dig into anything if it be sufficiently interesting.