The God of the Hive - Laurie R. King [91]
He finished making the tea in silence, fetched a bottle of milk in silence, brought two mugs to the table in silence.
I blew across the hot surface, thinking. Then: “Why were you at Richard Sosa’s flat?”
“Who?” His face showed a moment of incomprehension, followed by puzzlement, as if he’d recognised the name but couldn’t think why I had brought it up.
“Richard Sosa. In Mayfair? You left your card on the table?”
“I leave my card on a lot of tables. It’s a steady drain on the finances, it is.”
“But why were you there?”
“Oh, for—” He threw up his hands and reached for the sugar pot, flinging in two spoonsful, clearly irritated by a non sequitur. “He’s a government employee with a busybody of a mother who is friends with the sorts of people you might imagine, living in Mayfair as she does. She got all in a tizzy when little Dickie didn’t come home one night, and got onto the PM’s office and he himself rang to me—at home, mind you—the next morning asking if I’d do him a favour and look into this missing-person case. Ridiculous—and to top it off, the son hadn’t even been gone a day! But I went past on my way in, got the key from Mama, who lives upstairs, made sure her darling boy wasn’t lying in a puddle of blood, left my card on his table, and told her she could report him as a missing-person the next day. Friday. Two hours later I’m in my office after one of the most unpleasant meetings I’ve ever had and the telephone rings and it’s the butler—the butler!—ringing to say never mind, the boy’s home. Not even Mama herself, and nothing resembling an apology. Biddies like her cause us a lot of trouble. Now are you going to tell me why you want to know about him, or are we going to go on to another completely unrelated crime?”
“Richard Sosa is Mycroft’s secretary.”
He stared at me. “Mycroft Holmes’ secretary?”
“His right-hand man. Which may be a better explanation of why you were asked to look into his disappearance than a mother’s connexions.”
“Jesus,” he said.
“You’re certain he was home on Thursday?”
“Like I said, the butler rang. I did then ring back the house—Mrs Sosa’s number—to make sure the call actually came from there. When the same voice answered, I let it go. Why, is he still gone?”
“I think someone broke into his house recently, causing him to panic and run.” I described briefly the netsuke I had found, well aware that I was delivering myself up to yet more charges. How many books was one permitted in a gaol cell? I wondered.
“He’s not staying there, and you say his mother has not seen him. Without going into too many of the sorts of details you might prefer not to hear, I can say that Sosa has information about Brothers in his safe, and his bank book records some hefty payments of nice round sums. Including one for five hundred guineas dated the day after Mycroft disappeared. One must ask oneself what the man knows.”
He sat back in his chair, frowning. “That’s a considerable sum.”
“Mycroft was a considerable man.”
“You think the secretary was paid to give him up?”
“I think you might like to talk to Sosa. And although the mother obviously frets when he doesn’t come home, and one might ask if she made occasional gifts to her son, something Mycroft once said about Sosa indicated that he and his mother don’t get on very well.”
He looked thoughtful, rather than convinced. However, I had another question for him. “Chief Inspector, can you tell me if you’ve had news of a death in Orkney? Specifically, at the Stones of Stenness.”
“A death? When?”
“A week ago Friday.”
“No. Although there was an odd report from up there. What was it? A prank? That’s right, some boys set a fire that sounded like gunfire, but when the local constable arrived he found only scorch-marks. Why? Who did you think had died?