The God of the Hive - Laurie R. King [58]
He did not know where Sherlock Holmes or his wife was.
He did not have any idea where Damian Adler or the other principals in the Brothers case were.
He had not even been able to prove that Damian Adler the painter was in any way related to Irene Adler the singer.
What he did know was, Mycroft Holmes was dead, and the last person known to have talked to him, a week ago, was Chief Inspector John Lestrade.
Chapter 31
Peter James West re-read the obituary with a smile:
Mycroft Holmes, OBE
Mycroft Holmes, long-time employee of His Majesty’s Accounting Office, was found dead late on Wednesday evening outside of a club that had been the subject of numerous recent police raids. Scotland Yard report that he died of knife wounds, and ask for help from anyone who may have been in the vicinity of The Pink Pagoda late on Wednesday evening. His Majesty’s Government have issued no comment regarding the site of Mr Holmes’ death, but private statements indicate that Holmes had been unwell in recent months, and evinced a number of changes in his interests and way of life. Mr Holmes was presented the OBE in 1903 for his long service in uncovering incidents of fraud and corruption. Private services will be held Sunday afternoon at St Columba’s cemetery, London.
A neat piece of fiction, West thought with satisfaction. Poor Mycroft, getting on in years and suddenly discovering the wilder things in life (and the things for which The Pink Pagoda was known could be extremely wild). Reading between the lines (his lines, in fact), Mycroft was something of an embarrassment to his government, a busybody (“incidents of corruption”) on the surface and something more distasteful below.
Yes, Gunderson had done a neat job of it, disposing of the meddler while Peter James West was in clear public view, all that day and into the night. It had made for a fraught fifteen hours, every moment of it spent tensed for news that his plan had gone awry, but the new day had come and all was well. Holmes was dead, Gunderson had placed him for display and then spirited him off, and was now on the train north to deal with the stray ends in Orkney. And when the brother and his American wife appeared at the funeral, if Gunderson hadn’t returned, he and Buckner would manage.
Then, Peter West could get on with his work.
He closed the morning paper and gazed at the adverts and notices, a bleating chorus of the city’s personal concerns.
Bees and beekeeping, indeed.
BOOK THREE
Thursday, 4 September–
Sunday, 7 September
1924
Chapter 32
You don’t understand,” I said to the two men. It was dark outside, had been dark for a while, although I had no idea what time it was. The hours between reading Mycroft’s obituary and walking back into Goodman’s cabin were already lost, a time spent on the fallen tree at the far side of the clearing, watching the sky go from robin’s egg to indigo to black.
It was impossible. Unimaginable. Mycroft was a force of nature, not a man to be killed at whim. Why couldn’t these two grasp that? And why could they not see that I had to be on the first train south in the morning? Alone.
I struggled to gather my thoughts. “Mycroft Holmes is—was—enormously important in the government. In some ways, he has—had—more power than a Prime Minister, who comes and goes at the whim of the voters.”
“But this obituary says he was an accountant,” Javitz protested.
“That’s somewhere between a joke and a figure of speech. He was an accountant in the sense that it was his responsibility to account for—” I broke off: I had no right to divulge what I knew of the nation’s Intelligence machinery, nor could I reveal that one of its key members answered to no authority beneath His Majesty. What Mycroft accounted for went far beyond guineas and pence. And anyway, telling them who I was married to and getting them past their disbelief had already eaten up far too much time.
“It doesn’t matter. Mycroft was powerful and he was family, and I must return to London immediately. I cannot take you and Estelle with me; I am forced