Mycroft said, “Mrs. Sacker, Miss Stamford, I think it would be best... I think you might want to retire to the drawing room while Ormond and I continue this conversation.”
“Conversation?” Aunt Susan asked, her strong emotions emerging with a howl. “You mean interrogation, don’t you?” she wailed.
“Susan,” Uncle whispered.
“No, Ormond. This is... this is... I don’t know what this is.” She slipped away from Uncle and marched up to Mycroft. “Get out of my house, Mycroft Holmes.”
“Mrs. Sacker,” Mycroft started to say, but she returned his frozen stare. “I said get out.”
Uncle rushed over to her and took her hand. “Susan, it’s going to be all right.”
Mycroft blithely took a seat in a wing chair. “Mrs. Sacker, there have been several recent murders, all men. Each was found in the vicinity of the British Museum. I... we have deduced that the perpetrator of these crimes has medical knowledge and he is sympathetic to their plight. The medical and mental conditions of each man - well, they were all quite ill and unstable and unable to generate income to support themselves or their families. Each one had consulted with physicians, the very same ones that your husband recently sought out. In fact, a sixth body was found just this morning. Poisoned just as the first five men were.”
“A sixth?” Sherlock said, a stunned look on his face. “Lestrade did not tell me.”
“Because you are to have nothing more to do with this matter, Sherlock.”
Mycroft fixed his gaze on Uncle again. “I spoke to Dr. Macewen and he said he had talked to no one about these matters, except you, Dr. Sacker. Your whereabouts since you returned from Scotland have been rather sketchy and-”
Aunt Susan’s vice was shrill now. “He has been at the wharf and attending to patients at the hospital!”
I was finally able to move my feet, which, until that moment, had felt as if they were cast in marble like the foundation of a statue. I dashed to Uncle’s side and grasped his arm. “He has been at the wharf. I have been there each day since the Thames accident. I’ve seen him myself.”
It was a lie, of course. I had never seen Uncle at the steamboat office or in the other temporary mortuary or on the docks. But we kept different schedules. That was all it was.
“These books,” Mycroft continued, as if I were not even present. “In all the years I have known you, Ormond, you have never-” He stopped and sighed. “Ormond, I noticed them when I called upon you to discuss the findings of the coroner after the autopsy of James Dixon. The one in which your niece was the assistant. I went to each book shop in the bookselling district. It seems you have visited all of them and purchased almost every book in London on the subject of Tantric Buddhism.”
He rose and went to one of the bookshelves and removed a book. He showed the cover to Uncle. “And this book of poetry by Edgar Allen Poe. You just purchased it six weeks ago. You have underlined several passages of The Raven, which your wife so eloquently quoted during dinner. Why? Why the new interest in Tantric Buddhism and poetry. Poetry? You, Ormond?”
I looked at Uncle’s face. It was ashen.
Though Mycroft’s deductions were confounding, what if they were true? What if all these men had chosen to end their lives and Uncle had helped them accomplish their goals? The shadow, the chasm between the uncle I knew and the person Mycroft suspected - that I suspected - was overwhelming.
“Please come with me willingly to the Yard, Ormond,” Mycroft said.
Fearing Aunt Susan would take up the poker from the brass fireplace fender and club Mycroft with it, I went to her and tightly gripped her arm.
Mycroft replaced the poetry book on the shelf. “Will you come now, Ormond?”
“Ormond, no,” Susan gasped.
“Uncle, don’t go,” I begged, now more terrified than ever.
“Stop this,” Sherlock said, the vein pulsing at his temple. “Stop this nonsense right now.”
Mycroft’s steel-grey, deep-set eyes, although always subtle in expression, seemed vacant now, totally free of emotion. Nothing revealed what was going on in that dominant mind. “Oh, come now, Sherlock, are you going to thrash me like you did that boy at Harrow?”
Sherlock moved across the room in seconds, took his brother by the lapels and shoved him into the bookcase. They stood nose to nose and Sherlock said in a hushed but frightening voice, “Do not tempt me.” He gave him another shove, stepped back and hissed, “I will get to the bottom of this, Mycroft. I will show you once and for all who has the better mind. Because you have lost yours.”
Uncle donned his coat and hat and took an umbrella from the stand near the door. He followed Mycroft Holmes into the damp, dark night.
I attempted to embrace Aunt Susan but she bolted from the library and ran upstairs. Her absence and my uncle’s permeated the room. Left behind, barely able to focus or breathe, I felt alone, more alone than I had at the wharf when I was often alone, the only one alive among desperate souls.
Sherlock crossed the room and put his hands on my shoulders. “We’ll sort it out, Poppy. You and I. Do not worry.”
“But it’s my uncle, Sherlock. I cannot be involved in the investigation. He is like a second father to me.”
“You must think of it as an autopsy, Poppy. You are not cutting into the person. You are simply attempting to deduce from the remains the cause of death.”
“No! It’s different. It’s Uncle Ormond!” Then I swallowed my grief, looked up at him, and added, “Sherlock, the
