The God of the Hive - Laurie R. King [80]
“How on earth did you find that?”
He frowned, then said, “The shelf did not match.”
“What, the wood?”
“No. The contents.” He could see I did not understand, so he tried to explain. “In the forest, a place where there was once a road or a house is betrayed by the varieties of trees that grow there, the shape of the paths cut by animals aware of the difference. Here, a man set out the contents of this shelf with a degree of … distraction, perhaps? As if this shelf had a different history from the others.”
I could recall no particular difference between the books on this segment of shelf and the books on any other, although it did contain a small framed photograph of a thin young man in an Army uniform, all but unrecognisable as Damian Adler. “I hope you have a chance to talk with my husband,” I told him. “You two would have much to say to each other.”
The key was the only object inside this highly concealed compartment. I looked at it under the light, but it was unexceptional, apart from the Greek letter. In the end, I added it to the contents of my pocket, along with the money, the bank account code, and the passports.
Mycroft had no further use for any of them, and with any luck, I could soon hand the collection over to Holmes.
I went to the guest room and changed into some of the clothes I kept there, then went through the other rooms so they bore the same disruption as the rest of the flat. I removed the chair from under the door-knob, noticing with a pang that Mycroft’s walking stick stood in its umbrella stand. He used it mostly for the regimen of afternoon strolls he had begun, following his heart attack; if he’d been carrying his stick that night, would he have had a chance for self-defence?
When we let ourselves out of the secret doorway, the only things left behind were Mycroft’s sixteen political thunderbolts and one considerable mess.
The bobbing light accompanied us along the passageway to Mycroft’s other hidden exit, on St James’s Square. Again, I stowed the candle and peered through a peep-hole to make sure our emergence from a blank wall would not be noticed, then worked the mechanism.
In the outer world, the low sunlight made the autumnal leaves glow; in sympathy, perhaps, a small corner of my mind began to light up, and I fingered the letter in my pocket.
Mycroft Holmes had a Russian doll of a mind. He was a man whose secrets had secrets. Any layer of hidden meaning was apt to have another layer, and one below that.
At opposite ends of the flat, he had left a letter to his brother and an unidentified key. With any other man, one would assume the two were unrelated. With Mycroft, there was the very real possibility that he had left two clues that by themselves were without meaning, that only together—if one persisted in the great hunt of life and found both—created a third message: The key is in the Interpreter. Or a fourth meaning. Or fifth.
There was also the likelihood that I was ascribing to my departed brother-in-law an omniscience he lacked: Even Mycroft Holmes would hesitate to lay out clues that his brother would not think to follow.
I badly wanted to talk to Holmes about this; however, I did have another set of remarkably sharp eyes with me.
“Let’s take supper,” I said, the first words either of us had spoken for at least ten minutes.
Down a side street lay a tiny Italian restaurant where I had once had an adequate meal. They were not yet serving, but were happy to ply us with wine and antipasti. When the waiter was out of earshot, I pulled Mycroft’s letter from my pocket and laid it on the table-cloth before Goodman.
“I found this in a place where not one man in a million would think to look. I’d like you to read it, keeping in mind that its author was the man who designed and arranged those bookshelves. Tell me if anything strikes you.”
He read it, twice, then folded it and handed it back to me. “There is hidden meaning there.”
“Yes,” I said in satisfaction. “I thought so.”
“Something to do with the secretary, I should have said. Who,