The Empty Birdcage Read online

  “Make no mistake, you have always been well put together, but for a while we did fear for your health.”

  “Again, Ma’am, I thank you for your concern,” Mycroft replied, anxious lest she continue to pursue the topic. Thankfully, she did not. Instead, she glanced over at the cold hearth.

  “Forgive the lack of fire,” she said. “There are times when we cannot bear the heat, and this is one. We hope it is not too drafty for you.”

  “The temperature is quite pleasant, Ma’am,” he said amiably, though in fact he was feeling unpleasantly warm, and it had nothing to do with the atmosphere. Simply put, his mind was elsewhere. He was strategizing a compromise with Sherlock that would not get the lad killed.

  The Queen’s foot rubbing slightly against the carpet brought his mind back to full focus. Queen Victoria was more adept at hiding her feelings than was the average person, male or female. Even so, there were indicators over which she had less control. Mycroft had met with her enough times to have calculated how often these involuntary movements occurred: swallowing, blinking, or drawing in air, and what they might portend. It was clear that she was unnerved.

  “Now, Mr. Holmes,” she said. “We have a rather delicate situation at hand. One that perhaps… well, never mind that—did you happen to read the paper this morning? Specifically, The Globe?”

  “I did, Ma’am,” Mycroft admitted, feeling like she had just thrown a spade full of sod onto his grave.

  “You would think that the editor, Armstrong, being fond as he is of Mr. Disraeli, would be equally fond of me,” she fumed. “But no. And so they have published another entry about the Fire Four Eleven,” she continued. “By the by, have you any notion to what those three words refer?”

  “None at all, Ma’am.”

  “Knowing your brilliant mind, I can only assume that is due to a lack of interest, Mr. Holmes, which is exceedingly unfortunate in this case.”

  Mycroft said nothing, so she went on.

  “We have been able to keep the identity of the last deceased from the newspapers, even The Globe, but we cannot do so indefinitely. Now, before we make our dilemma known to you, perhaps you have already an inkling as to what it might entail, for we are quite familiar with the sorts of soothsaying you perform.”

  “I assure you I am no soothsayer, Ma’am. I utilize pure logic. That said, I understand that speaking the name of the deceased out loud might cause you grief. I shall therefore endeavor to tell you what I have assessed from my visit thus far.”

  “We would be most grateful, Mr. Holmes, both to enjoy the mechanisms of your brain, and because it is far from a pleasant subject, and so it is preferable that you discuss it, rather than we.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Now, of all the rooms in which you and I have met, this one is intended for friends and distant relations, rather than for government officials. I assume, therefore, that the issue before us is not a matter of state. And, because of our rather long and profitable association, as well as my loyalty to the Crown, I should think you would be able to trust me with any request, whether personal or political. Yet, this one created, if I may be so bold, a certain anxiety in you, Ma’am. Therefore, I can only conclude that there is something about it that you assume will not be pleasing to me. Do I have that about right, Ma’am?”

  “Go on,” she said, hardly looking at him.

  “There is but one person in the royal family, and so related to you by blood, Ma’am,” Mycroft continued, “of whom I am not fond. Count Wolfgang Hohenlohe-Langenburg. Your first cousin, Ma’am.”

  “I am quite aware who he is, Mr. Holmes,” she responded archly.

  “And, since the count has no living relatives on his father’s side,” Mycroft went on, “and any relative on his mother’s side would also be related by blood to the Crown and would therefore not necessitate a link back to him…”

  Queen Victoria cleared her throat in a manner that intimated a warning.

  “Yes, Mr. Holmes. We can see that you have no need of an encyclopedia of reference and that your prodigious memory knows no bounds. We were, as you surmised, reluctant to broach this particular subject because of your animus, however deserved, for our cousin. Now, although we realize that, by our indulging in this little guessing game, we brought this upon ourselves, we suggest you tread lightly from here on.”

  “Thank you, Ma’am, I shall try,” Mycroft replied with a slight bow of his head. “What I seek now, therefore, is a person related to the count but not, strictly speaking, to you—which leaves me but one choice. The count’s stepdaughter, Elise Wickham.”

  The Queen suddenly lost her coloring, so much so that Mycroft very nearly offered to come to her aid before thinking the better of it. Instead, he sat perched at the edge of his chair, waiting for her to regain her breath and her composure.

  “Yes, it is Elise,” she admitted in a small voice. She is, or was, the daughter of the count’s wife Anne and her deceased first husband, William.”

  Mycroft nodded. “As I waited for our appointment, I noticed that the miniatures in the curio cabinets were placed according to type: plumbagos first, then enamels, and finally watercolors. All the watercolors were neatly equidistant, except for two. I therefore surmised that one had gone missing. But surely a missing portrait, regardless of circumstance, would have quickly been replaced, or the others rearranged. Unless it had been removed from its case, and recently, by someone with full authority to do so. You yourself removed it, Ma’am. In your folded hands is a miniature watercolor of the girl, Elise,” he declared, pointing.

  When the Queen said not a word but stared at him with those unblinking blue eyes, he continued: “You wished to show me her likeness. Not because you thought I would refuse any request of yours, but because the girl’s amiability might make me more disposed to be of service.”

  The Queen unfolded her fingers like petals to reveal the miniature she held inside.

  It was of a girl in her late teens, with a pleasant if ordinary face, and light hair and eyes, her head at a slight angle, her eyes fixed upon the painter who was at the time immortalizing her likeness.

  “Pretty,” Mycroft said, not altogether meaning it, for she had a vapid look that reminded him somewhat of Sherlock’s friends, the Quince boys. “Because your cousin has long been estranged from his wife, I further speculate that he does not yet know of his stepdaughter’s demise, and that you, Ma’am, were hoping I might have more news to impart before he is so informed.”

  “Well,” the Queen said with all the finality the word could conjure. “You are quite the unique character, Mr. Holmes. We are grateful to you for taking this on.”

  “It is my duty and my pleasure to serve, Ma’am. How long has it been since you saw the girl?”

  “A long time. Her mother Anne and my cousin were together but a few years and have been separated for many more. And you? Still unmarried, Mr. Holmes?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” he replied.

  “Good. I do not at all consider it a misfortune when people are unmarried. For I think unmarried people are often very happy. Though I cannot say that you look happy, Mr. Holmes.”

  Mycroft smiled weakly and changed the subject.

  “When did you first meet the girl, Ma’am?” he asked.

  “The first time Elise came to visit,” the Queen replied, “she must have been four, for I do not approve of smaller children traipsing about; I find them rather dreary. And the last time, she must’ve been six, a quiet child, well behaved. She sent that likeness just last year, to remember her by, she said.”

  The Queen clearly felt the emotion of it, for her small round chin quivered before she went on.

  “Now, we do not wish, nor do we encourage, any contact between yourself and our cousin, the count. It seems the unexpected and unimagined collapse of the Austrian economy left him in quite a state, one from which he has not yet recovered.”

  Neither unexpected nor unimagined, Mycroft thought, had you but listened.

  “He is at a
sanatorium in Switzerland,” the Queen continued, “where he shall remain until he is ready to join society again.”

  Mycroft assumed that the count was not suffering from weak nerves but from a weak spine. Most likely, he was hiding from his principal creditor, Vizily Zaharoff, which was the only detail of this sordid matter that held any interest for Mycroft at all.

  “May I ask who found the girl, Ma’am?”

  “Her mother, from what we gather. A terrible discovery for a parent to have to make. Late afternoon yesterday. And this lack of contact on your part,” she added, reverting to her former train of thought, “must extend perforce to his family, in particular to his estranged wife, Anne. No one must speak to her of this, and that includes you.”

  “Well, Ma’am, as she is the best eyewitness to her daughter’s state, and as the murder is a mystery to be solved, that makes it tricky.”

  “Your mind works in tricky ways, Mr. Holmes, and you have other victims’ families from which to choose. You have my blessing to question them to a fare-thee-well.”

  Mycroft nodded, for he knew he would not win this one. “Thank you, Ma’am. And may I say how very sorry I am for your loss.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Holmes,” Queen Victoria replied. “Among the astute observations you have made thus far, we were beginning to despair that you would ever get around to that particular human sentiment.”

  Mycroft could feel himself blush. “My zeal occasionally sidesteps my manners, Ma’am,” he said.

  “At the moment your zeal is more valuable than your manners, although it surely cannot hurt to possess both.” She drew a long breath. “Now, can it be true what I’ve heard, that you are doing without a driver at present? Quite the odd time to dismiss one, just as the weather grows milder, and jaunts abroad become a pleasant diversion, but never mind. Though we are aware that you have no need of financial support, the Crown insists on paying all expenses, and that shall include a carriage and driver. I want this solved, Mr. Holmes. At the earliest. We cannot have a murderer traipsing about, thinking he can kill members of our household with impunity. And I would like him caught not just because he is bold, but because he is clearly heartless.”

  “Might I take on a few assistants?” Mycroft inquired. “My friend Cyrus Douglas, with whom you are acquainted—”

  “You are certain that is wise?”

  “In what way, Ma’am?”

  “He does attract commentary, does he not?”

  The Queen let her deeper meaning hang in the air between them, and Mycroft wondered not for the first time if Douglas, notable accomplishments notwithstanding, would ever be seen for much beyond the color of his skin.

  “I take no issue with secrecy, Ma’am,” he replied evenly. “But I find that, upon occasion, the opposite technique is just as effective; one’s foes know that one is coming for them, and in their desire to get away begin to make mistakes. But, as it so happens, the second man I mean to assume is keen to pursue justice in a more clandestine manner. I refer to my brother Sherlock.”

  “You have a brother, Mr. Holmes? Good heavens. Is he anything like you?”

  Mycroft sighed.

  “I fear that he is, Ma’am.”

  Queen Victoria stared at him, almost disbelieving, after which she allowed herself the smallest hint of a smile.

  15

  SHERLOCK HAD LEARNED THAT WHEN PURSUING A LEAD, it was best to ignore voices to the contrary… even if one of those voices happened to belong to the brother in whose abode he was currently lodged. He had spent the better part of the afternoon securing his Gray’s map—on which he had traced the trajectory of the murders—to the wall of the guest bedroom at Greville Place. Nearby each location, with the use of straight pins, he had attached a note with the name, age, and occupation, if any, of each of the victims.

  On another note beside the first were listed time of death, and whatever details could be had from various newspapers. He’d also used balls of yarn in various hues to create possible links from this card to that. Victims under eighteen years of age, for example, were united by yellow yarn, which the label on the ball called ‘munsel’; females were linked with ‘blush’; males with royal blue; professionals with forest green, and so forth.

  There was the newfound link between Rosalie White of Wales, and victim number two, Manchester banker Cantwell Squire. Sherlock had debated sharing the information with Mycroft, finally erring on the side of caution. Mycroft would no doubt think him foolhardy for having placed himself in harm’s way, thereby lessening any chance that he would be allowed to pursue the case further.

  He stepped back and admired his creation, as glorious to his eye as any work of art, all the while tracing the lines on the map for the thousandth time.

  Who knows for how long the man had stalked his first victim, twenty-eight-year-old widow Rosalie White, before he murdered her? It could have been days, weeks. She had been killed sometime before ten-thirty in the morning, for it was then that an old man walking his dog had spotted her body hunched over on the sand. She had been on her knees and had fallen forward. There were no footprints leading away from her, and the only prints leading to her were her own. In a different environment, the weight of her body would have catapulted her to one side or the other. But the wet sand had formed a sort of wedge for her head, holding her corpse in the position of a Middle Eastern supplicant.

  Her purported father, sixty-year-old banker Cantwell Squire of Manchester, was murdered in his own home between eight and eleven on the morning of Saturday, 5th of April. He had been found in his bed by his housekeeper, face down in his breakfast tray, the ‘Fire Four Eleven!’ note lying over the biscuits.

  A seven-year-old boy named Will Jury had been felled in his garden while playing with his dog. The killing of a child seemed to Sherlock to be more a matter of waiting, perhaps not beyond a day or two, for the right opportunity, for—apart from walks to school and back—a child could not be counted upon to adhere to routines, and certainly not in a garden, unless compelled to do so. Jury’s mother had come home to find the dog anxiously licking the boy’s inert face. The note had appeared in the garden three days later, on the spot where his body had been found.

  Why three days? Had the killer perhaps attempted to leave it but the dog had kept him at bay? But whether then or later, how could he deposit the note without also leaving prints? In any event, he did so and then arrived in Glasgow with time enough to kill fourteen-year-old Bart Swinton, of whom nothing was yet known… other than he came from a family who could hush up his murder.

  On Monday, 14th of April, the killer struck again, his victim Phillip Rider, chaplain of middle years from Plymouth. All but impoverished, Rider had been dusting books in his rented room when he’d succumbed. The note had been left upon the desk that faced his open window. At noon, his landlady, who lived upstairs, heard a crash. It turned out to be his body colliding with the floor. No stalking required there, simply opportunity.

  But the sixth victim, elderly barrister George Greyson, had been taking an early morning stroll. A man of past eighty would hardly alter his routine from day to day. Still, it could have required several days’ watching until Greyson happened upon a secluded spot with no witnesses.

  As for thirty-year-old Percy Butcher, the proprietor of a stable, his habits were formed by his work and could be easily discerned. He had been grooming a brood mare. The note was found inside the stall, though the newspaper account did not say where, or specify a time beyond midday, and the date, Friday, 25th of April.

  The eighth occurred four days later, in Kingston upon Hull. As had been repeated ad nauseam in the press, ten-year-old Abigail Sykes had been at the kitchen table, learning a song. No note had been found at the time but had appeared on the 1st of May, when the servants and family were all away, attending her funeral. Then there was the ninth victim, Penny Montgomery of Chichester, killed on the 8th of May.

  Those who had been murdered before noon were connected, on Sherlock’s board,
by yarn labeled ‘sunrise,’ while magenta was reserved for those victims whose notes were found later.

  All but three—Will Jury, Percy Butcher and George Greyson—had fallen forward. Young Jury had been found upon his back. Butcher and Greyson had crumpled to one side: though none of the papers reported which side, as if that detail were wholly incidental. Could Penny Montgomery have also been an exception? News accounts had not been clear in that regard. None of the victims had any signs of trauma from the attack itself, though Abigail Sykes was found to have splinters on the back of her neck, purportedly from the kitchen table.

  Sherlock returned to the second victim, banker Cantwell Squire. So as to make the smallest bit of headway, he had to assume certain facts. For instance, that the bed had a headboard, and that the headboard had been situated against a wall—a most typical state. Given those parameters, there was no earthly way that the impact of the blow could have originated from the back of Squire’s head. Which further meant that said impact had no bearing on the trajectory of the body, for Squire had fallen forward.

  It was maddening that he could not examine the headboard to see if it had sustained trauma, if Squire’s head had ricocheted off of it before dropping.

  He was busy pinning another piece of yarn from one spot to another when he heard a timid knock upon his bedroom door. He ignored it, but it occurred again, and then a third time.

  “Enter!” he commanded.

  The door opened to reveal the housekeeper, Mrs. McAllister, squinting. Sherlock realized that the room had grown dark and that he had quite neglected to put on a light. When she continued peering about like a half-blind owl, Sherlock prompted: “How can I help you, Mrs. McAllister?”

  The woman squared her shoulders and declared, as if reading a proclamation: “Master Sherlock. I am here on behalf of Gladys—”

  “Sorry, I am not acquainted with—”

  “—the housemaid, sir. She is at sixes and sevens, for she claims you molested her skeins!”

  “I did… what?”