The God of the Hive

“I…” He could not answer: Either he did not know, or it was not unusual.

“I’m surprised you didn’t break in then and there.”

“I would have, but there was never a time when the building was empty. Who would have imagined mortuaries were so incessantly busy?”

“Holmes, I think you’re being unreasonable.”

“You said yourself, you couldn’t believe Mycroft was dead.”

“That was a figure of speech!”

“Well, mine was not. When I see his corpse with my own eyes, I will believe, but not before then.”

I had found it difficult to use the words death and murder when talking to Lestrade that morning, but this went far beyond any mere aversion to hard truth. In another man, I would have assumed that brother-worship had taken an alarming turn and required physical intervention and a long period of quiet conversation. But this was Holmes, after all: Despite his age, I doubted I could tackle him successfully.

So I kept silent and did my best to keep up with him.

The streets behind Marylebone Road appeared deserted-these were, after all, office blocks, and it was a Sunday evening-but Holmes paused for several minutes at the top of the street so we could survey all of the doorways and windows. When he was satisfied, we made a swift detour through a service entry, came out next to the bolt-hole’s entrance, and in moments, we were inside and invisible.

But not before I had spotted something odd on the ground just outside the entrance. “Wait, is that-” I reached for it and said, “Holmes.”

“Quiet,” he shot back, standing rigid inside. I drew breath, and discovered what had attracted his attention: the odours of cooking, highly unlikely here.

“It’ll be Goodman,” I said. “He left this outside, stuck to the paving stones. An owl feather. His favourite bird, and not often seen in London.”

His eyes gleamed as he studied me in the faint light, then he turned and went on.

When we stepped into the tiny apartment, the first thing to greet our eyes were Robert Goodman’s stockinged feet against the wall. He was standing on his head.

“Hello, Robert,” I said, waiting for him to resume an upright position before I attempted introductions. But he stayed as he was, merely pointing a toe at the table and saying, “Sir, I believe there is an epistle I was instructed to deliver.”

Holmes looked at the table, then back at Goodman, and said, “It is, I agree, a topsy-turvy world.”

Instantly, Goodman let his legs fall to the floor and jumped upright, face pink and hair flattened. He shook his clothing back into place, rescued the neck-tie he had tucked between the buttons of his shirt, ran his hands over his hair, and stuck out his right hand.

“Mine host,” he said.

“Mr Goodman, I presume,” Holmes replied. “I understand it is you I have to thank for the musical interlude during the services for my brother.”

“You needn’t thank me,” Goodman protested, although that was not what Holmes had meant.

“Nonetheless. My brother would have been most… entertained.”

Goodman’s face relaxed into happiness. “I’m sorry your granddaughter couldn’t have been there.”

Holmes’ eyes came to me in silent reproach for the amount this stranger knew of us. “You think the child would have enjoyed it?”

“Heavens no. She’d have had to cover her ears.”

Holmes said dryly, “You think the child a natural music critic?”

“Ah, that’s right-you have not met the poppet. Perhaps you don’t know? Estelle has perfect pitch. She’d have found the discord physically painful.”

Now, Holmes simply looked at him. Goodman nodded as if he’d replied, and said, “She looks forward to meeting you.” He went into the minuscule kitchen, which was more a matter of putting his head into the cubicle.

“Mr Goodman, I believe you have something on the stove for us?”

“I do,” our guest replied. “Although I have to say it was a challenge, coming up with something edible out of that pantry. Perhaps the tins are intended as weapons, rather than comestibles?” he added politely, his head appearing around the door.

Holmes retreated with the letter to the inner room while I took out plates and silver. I was rinsing the dust from some glasses when I heard Holmes say my name, sharply. I looked in at where he sat on the bed.

“Why did you not tell me how Mycroft signed his name?” he demanded.

“How did he sign his name?”

“With the letter M.”

“Is there significance in that?”

“Have you ever seen my brother sign a letter with only the initial?”

“He does all the time,” I protested. I could see it in front of my eyes, that copperplate M curving around a dot.

“In a letter to me?” he persisted.

Now that he’d mentioned it, I had to agree, it was generally Mycroft’s full name, even in telegrams. But I had seen that M as well, and recently. Then I had it: “The letters from Mycroft that Sosa had in his desk. Those were signed with just the initial.”

“Precisely: his business communications. The initial began as his mark to indicate that he had seen a document, and evolved into a substitute formal signature. I believe Smith-Cumming adopted the technique with his letter C on documents, until that letter took on a life of its own and was taken to mean Chief-his successor, Hugh Sinclair, signs with the C.”

“So, what? This letter to you is a business communication?”

“I should say he meant us to understand that he was writing in an official, rather than a fraternal, capacity.”

I could not see that it made any particular difference. “If you say so, Holmes,” I said, and went back to laying the table.

When he came out, he had changed his formal suit for a pair of frayed trousers and an equally working-man’s shirt of a dark colour, which he was rolling up to the elbows. He set an ancient dark-lantern on the floor beside the door: He had not by some miracle let go the idea of digging up Mycroft’s grave.

Goodman had created a kind of bean ragout that he poured over a mound of rice-remarkable, considering the raw materials to hand. Holmes chewed the first bite with careful consideration, then gave a small moue, as if the taste had proved some inner theory. Goodman tucked in with gusto, and launched into the story of how he’d come to locate and hire a band with such absurdly woeful skills, weaving in a great deal of entertaining but questionable detail, aware of, but ignoring, the grey eyes that never left him.

When the plates were empty, I abandoned the men to the washing-up and dug through the stores for a costume appropriate for grave-robbing: trousers and a dark shirt similar to those Holmes had donned, ancient brogues, and the gloves Holmes used when he was driving a carriage. I chose another shirt and took it into the other room. The cook was scrubbing a pot. Holmes was drying the plates and putting them on the shelf. One of them had made coffee.

“Mr Goodman chooses to join us,” Holmes told me.

“I didn’t imagine he could resist.” I held out the shirt. “That white shirt will be too visible at night, if we’re caught. This one should fit you well enough.”

Goodman laid the pot upside-down next to the sink and reached for his neck-tie, undressing with no more self- consciousness than a child. I turned my back. Holmes looked on, bemused.

I had rather hoped that, considering the circumstances, we might find the coffin sitting at the edge of the hole, the interrupted burial having been delayed until the morrow. However, the mound of earth had been filled in, the sod returned to its place. The height of the mound suggested the addition of a substantial volume.

We rolled away the turf and Holmes pulled on his driving gloves, then set to with a spade he had stolen from the workman’s shed. I guided him with the dark-lantern, keeping it low and sheltering it behind my body.

After a quarter hour, Goodman dropped down from his perch on top of a grandiose vault and took the spade. A quarter hour after that, I returned from a wide survey of the surrounds and assumed the gloves and spade.