Mycroft and Sherlock Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse, and Available from Titan Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

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  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Also by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse,

  and available from Titan Books

  Mycroft Holmes

  TITAN BOOKS

  Mycroft and Sherlock

  Signed hardback edition: 9781789090475

  Hardback edition ISBN: 9781785659256

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781785659270

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: October 2018

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.

  Copyright © 2018 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse. All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  This story is dedicated to

  the many authors who’ve inspired me.

  K A J

  For la famiglia, con affetto: Zia Mira, Zia Nana, Zio

  Romano, Zia Maria, Susi, Paola, Marco, Tiziana.

  A W

  1

  London, England, 26 November 1872

  MYCROFT HOLMES LEFT HIS TOWNHOUSE AT GREVILLE PLACE in St. John’s Wood and was opening his wrought-iron gate just as a passing neighbor called out a crisp good morning:

  “No umbrella for you then, Mr. Holmes? You must be the adventurous sort: the papers predict a downpour!”

  Mycroft politely bid him good day and glanced up at the eddying clouds, just as every Londoner had done every morning since time immemorial. But though the oatmeal-colored sky looked ominous, Mycroft was beholden neither to newsprint predictions nor to the common understanding of cloud formations, particularly as the average citizen could not tell cumulus from cumulonimbus. As for the volatile dance of wind and condensed water, he preferred other, surer markers.

  His nose, for example.

  With one whiff, he could gauge humidity to within a percentage point, and discern certain fragrances that emitted from grasses and plants the moment that percentage point altered.

  I could have been a perfumer, he thought wryly, if duty and country had not intervened!

  There were other signs. The day before, he’d taken a constitutional in Regent’s Park, a most serene location. Had its lofty pines discerned imminent rain, they would have shut up their giant cones against an eventual deluge so as to protect their seedlings. But they did not.

  Now, would any sane man reckon on the inconstant atmosphere? The speculations of an overburdened newspaper reporter, sweating in a darkened cubicle and stinking of pomade, stale cigar smoke and printer’s ink? Or would he rely instead on the sagacity of a pine tree, whose sole job it was to keep account of the weather?

  No, it would not rain today.

  As for his neighbor, errant waves of hair curling out from under his hat, crystals of sleep on the bottom lashes of his left eye, and a small spot of fresh jam on his waistcoat were all indications that his wife had once again departed in a torrent of tears for her mother’s. Had she been home, she never would have permitted jam on her spouse’s morning toast in such copious amounts that he could spill any portion thereof.

  Her absence also explained why the family doctor, arriving promptly each evening with a new salve or patent medicine to combat fluid retention, insomnia or irritability, had not made an appearance since Friday last.

  Beyond all that, it was a curiosity, but true nonetheless, that people were forever predicting their own worst fears or most fervent desires. A good drenching would be solace to a man like that, as he could be certain he wasn’t the only poor wretch suffering.

  Mycroft gazed down his street, at the handsome new houses set well back from the pavement, each one with its proper allotment of trees and greenery, and its languid, vacant air. The architect’s aim was no doubt to create a tranquil atmosphere for the families who resided there, and, on the surface, it did just that. Mycroft’s home was no more than an unmarried man four years from thirty, and of his station, would purchase. It boasted no remarkable possessions, and but a handful of servants to keep the hearths clean, dust off the shelves, and keep the plants watered. As he ate most of his meals out, there was not even a proper cook…

  His thoughts were interrupted by his new carriage, which came around the corner and halted at the curb. Huan’s dazzling smile was on full display as he waved from the sprung seat of a contraption so sparkling it all but glowed.

  Before it stood a magnificent Irish Cob gelding, with a lustrous roan coat and snow-white mane and tail. However, Mycroft hadn’t yet bonded to him as he had to his Hanoverian warmblood, his dear Abie.

  “A most excellent morning, eh, Mr. Mycroft?” Huan said in his lilting, melodic voice.

  From the moment Mycroft had persuaded Huan to leave his buggy-for-hire business and his beloved mule Nico in Trinidad and come work for him as driver and bodyguard, Huan had ceased calling him by his Christian name but had added the prefix “mister.” Worse, when speaking about him to a third party, Mycroft would become “the mister.”

  It was insufferable, as in Port of Spain he and Huan had become friends, even brothers in arms. But no amount of threatening or cajoling would persuade Huan otherwise: Mr. Mycroft he was, and Mr. Mycroft he would remain.

  “Let us hope so, Huan,” Mycroft replied as he climbed aboard.

  As for Huan’s “most excellent morning,” it wouldn’t have mattered if the sun were baking bricks or if rain were falling down in sheets. Huan created his own contentment wherever he went.

  From within the carriage, Mycroft heard him click his
tongue, followed by the clattering of hoofbeats on the cobblestones, the gelding’s rhythmical breath puffing in the morning chill as they proceeded on their way. What he had once found soporific was yet another reminder how much his life had changed—how different from whatever he had supposed it would be.

  Of course, it would have been different, had Georgiana remained in his life. But then, what use was speculating? If one omitted Georgiana from his past, one omitted friendship, passion, adventure, heartbreak, and—in the end, he was forced to admit it—fortune.

  No, had Georgiana lived, had he been blessed with the family he’d dreamt of, he would have remained what she had disdained: a rather dull government bureaucrat, grappling his way up the ladder one paltry rung at a time…

  He glanced out the window and realized they were not heading to his bank (for that was always the first stop on a Tuesday) but towards Pall Mall.

  He opened the trapdoor in the cab’s roof. “Huan?” he called out.

  “Ah, Mr. Mycroft!” Huan called back. “So you are now awake from your dream state? You see we are going to your place of business?”

  “Yes, I do see that—but why?”

  “You do not recall? The Mr. Cardwell, he is waiting for you. With a surprise!”

  Mycroft closed the trap with a frustrated sigh. There was no work to call him to the office this day, nor for the rest of the week. Indeed, his promotion from assistant to special consul meant that he could come and go as he pleased. Unless of course his employer called upon him… whereupon he would be forced to drop all plans and hurry off to Cumberland House, as they were doing now.

  A shameful waste of a morning. He would have to make some excuse so that he could be at the bank before noon, for a visit to Fleet Street and his private deposit had more import.

  In the same way that he could smell the rain, he had developed an unerring nose for economic calamities, and one was coming upon Britain faster than anyone could stop it. He speculated that it would reduce the country’s net worth, and that the underprivileged class would move from poor to destitute—which meant more abject misery in the streets.

  Mycroft sometimes felt he would better serve his country in a post at the Treasury rather than the War Office. But as it was, without exposing his own wealth to scrutiny, he could not voice opinions in an official capacity—at least, none that anyone would take seriously. For what would a twenty-six-year-old special consul to the Secretary of State for War, with but one foray from his homeland, possibly know of international economies?

  No, all he could do was to warn whoever would listen, and then shore up his own assets to at least ensure that those he cared for would never want for a thing.

  He heard Huan open the trap.

  “Mr. Mycroft?”

  “Yes, Huan?” Mycroft replied, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice.

  “Another body on Crutched Friars!”

  It took Mycroft a moment. “Ah, yes. You are referring to the Savage Gardens Murders,” he called back.

  Thus far unsolved, the killings had been so baptized when the first three nude and mutilated corpses had turned up, one after the other, near or on the small street known as Savage Gardens.

  “They find it just this morning,” Huan added.

  “Ah. And who is the ‘they’ who found it?” Mycroft asked.

  “A publican,” Huan replied. “Closing shop, two in the night it was, good working man, walking home, and he go falling over a body in the dark!”

  “Dear, I hope he was not injured,” Mycroft replied.

  “Oh no, he was dead. Cut up in four pieces!”

  “No, I meant the publican.”

  “Ah! No, he was fine. Just startled. But the corpse’s face? No more nose. And below the waist, no more…”

  When Huan hesitated out of propriety, Mycroft completed his sentence: “His reproductive organs had been cut off?”

  “Yes!” Huan exclaimed. “Fancy way of putting it. Seven men now, murdered in same way.”

  “Truly, is it seven? I thought it was five. Must’ve missed a few,” Mycroft replied. Truth be told, he was rather uninterested in the whole sordid affair.

  “Not to worry, I let you know the next one!” Huan said cheerfully. “Number six, he was Chinese like the others. But number seven? A white man. Maybe now, they investigate.”

  To the present juncture, the victims had all been between twenty and forty years of age, sliced into four parts with near surgical precision, left to bleed to death, and then transported (by water, Mycroft wagered, as the river was nearby) to a poor but well-trafficked neighborhood so as to serve as a warning to others in the vicinity: Cross us, and this too shall be your fate.

  In each case, given the small size of the Chinese community in London, the man’s identity had been quickly confirmed. They had all been proprietors or heavy frequenters of opium dens, ne’er-do-wells whom society, Oriental or otherwise, would not mourn. As for the dead white man, he was doubtless in the same proverbial boat: a drug user who most likely owed money to a less-than-sympathetic lender.

  “This not something for the War Office?” Huan called out to him.

  “In what sense?” Mycroft asked.

  “The Chinese, they are angry for the opium! For what it does to their land, they say it’s Britain’s fault—”

  “That would be a strange message indeed,” Mycroft countered, “for the Chinese to mangle their own people and display them in our poorer boroughs so as to, what? Protest the ugly consequence of the opium trade in their native land? Seems counterintuitive, does it not? I am hard-pressed to imagine they blame the working classes of Savage Gardens, Crutched Friars, Fenchurch and the like for China’s addiction! No. If one wishes to protest the drug trade and Britain’s substantial profit, best to do so before Parliament, where laws are birthed and enacted. In any event, one quarters a living body and cuts off nose and genitals to humiliate the victim, not the perpetrator.”

  “Ah! Make good sense, that. Was it also not your English custom as well?”

  “It was,” Mycroft admitted. “Hanging, drawing and quartering, plus the removal of the ‘privy parts’… Though in England’s defense I hasten to add that we discontinued the practice several generations back.” He heard the trap shut again, and sighed. What an ugly, burdensome affair this was.

  His shoes felt suddenly tight. He wished he could hurl them off and wiggle his toes, much as he had when he was a child. Instead, he removed his hat, raked his fingers through his blond hair—getting rather long; time for a trim before someone mistook him for a dandy—and leaned back against the padded leather cushion.

  He detested surprises. Especially as he always knew perfectly well what they were about.

  2

  CYRUS DOUGLAS WALKED BRISKLY. THIS WAS NOT SOLELY due to long, athletic limbs and equally long strides, or to the cloak of winter that had settled in the air with drab finality. Nor was it that a man of dark hue, a Negro from the isle of Trinidad, no matter how finely dressed, might be looked upon with suspicion in these nicer parts of the city. No, Douglas walked briskly because it was a brand-new morning, and he wished to get on with it.

  He turned off Swallow Street (a suitable name for a timid flutter of a road) onto Regent Street, one of the finest thoroughfares in London. Its stone façades—not brick, as was most of the rest of the city—seemed cheery, in spite of a crackled sky overhead threatening to fracture into a downpour.

  Early hour and fetid weather notwithstanding, humanity had turned out in all its ragged glory. Hansom cabs and workers’ carts clogged the ample road, while the wretched and the well-to-do alike shared the pavements in a blur of moustaches, topcoats, skirts and bonnets.

  By evening, young and old, rich and poor, would have had their fill of tribulations, of the wet air and the buffeting wind, and would make their ill-tempered way home, eyes averted and mouths set. But in the relative newness of morning, they still shared hope for a good outcome, a favorable return, a promise unexpectedly
fulfilled; and each passed the other with a hearty good day, a smile, or a tip of the hat.

  As he strode on with his head slightly bowed, as was his custom, Douglas heard itinerant vendors calling out the merits of prints and tassels, brocade and “rare” Spanish lace, along with the occasional entreaty to God or nature to keep their goods dry until all had been sold. But regardless whether a deity heard, they’d be there again tomorrow, and the day after that. Douglas was forever intrigued and humbled by that indomitable human spirit.

  His first stop of the morning was to Regent Tobaccos. His little shop, which he had owned for nigh-on thirteen years, was in good hands. Gerard and Ava Pennywhistle, faithful employees, were now diligent and grateful partners, owning fifty percent of the business, which Douglas had ceded to them when his fortunes—or rather Mycroft’s—had turned for the better.

  Even so, he still felt a pang at having abandoned it and them for another enterprise altogether.

  Can’t be helped, he thought curtly. The children needed him more, and that was that.

  He hurried up the steps that led to the familiar front door with its two arched windows, below a copper sign:

  REGENT TOBACCOS

  Importateur de Cigares de la Havane,

  de Manille, et du Continent

  The doorbell barely tinkled that Mr. Pennywhistle was already calling out from behind the counter: “Oho! Might that be you, Cyrus Douglas?” Then, over his shoulder, in volumes more fit for a seller of herring at Shooters Hill: “Mrs. P.! Come quick! You shall never guess in a hundred years who has come to see us!” Then, back to Douglas: “What’ll you have, m’lad? Drink’s on me!”

  As he closed the door behind him, Douglas heard another voice, two octaves above the first, accompanied by hard, quick steps: “Don’t be dotty, Mr. P.! What could our Cyrus possibly wish to imbibe at this hour? And what can you offer him that in’t his already?”

  Ava Pennywhistle, as broad as she was tall, hurried past her much shorter husband and made a beeline for Douglas, hands outstretched.

  “Let me have a look at you, then!” She took him by the arms, angled him towards the hearth with its crackling fire, and then frowned as if she had just been presented with an inferior side of mutton. “Ah! And what have we done to ourself? Worked ourself to the very bone, says I! What the lad needs is sustenance, which any fool with two eyes can see! Thought that would exclude you, wun’t it, Mr. P.?” she called over her shoulder with a chuckle, referring to her husband’s myopia, presbyopia, and astigmatism.