The Italian Secretary Read online

  Also by Caleb Carr

  Fiction

  The Alienist

  The Angel of Darkness

  Killing Time

  Non-Fiction

  The Lessons of Terror

  Copyright

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 9781405524601

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public

  domain, are real and any resemblance to non-real persons, living or walking-dead, is purely

  intentional.

  Copyright © 2005 Caleb Carr

  Afterword Copyright © 2005 Johannes Gaensfleisch Gutenberg

  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

  permission in writing of the publisher.

  Hachette Digital Little,

  Brown Book Group

  100 Talisker Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  Contents

  Also by Caleb Carr

  Copyright

  For Hilary Hale

  Chapter I: On Deposit at Cox’s Bank

  Chapter II: A Strange Message, and a Stranger Tale

  Chapter III: Northward to the Scottish Border

  Chapter IV: From Out of the Mist

  Chapter V: Of Royal Games, the Lesser and ‘The Great’

  Chapter VI: Holyroodhouse

  Chapter VII: Poignarder À L’Écossais

  Chapter VIII: The Mystery of the West Tower

  Chapter IX: Of Midnight Visits – and Visitors …

  Chapter X: The March to the Fife and Drum

  Chapter XI: The Secrets of Holyroodhouse

  Chapter XII: ‘The Blood that Never Dries’

  Chapter XIII: The Lines are Drawn …

  Chapter XIV: …And Battle is Joined

  Chapter XV: Strange Doings in the West Tower

  Chapter XVI: Twilight on Baker Street

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  For Hilary Hale

  best of friends, finest of editors,

  without whom I would never have seen

  Holyroodhouse

  and for Suki

  ‘s.w.m.b.o.’

  In the interest of accommodating modern readers, the anachronistic spellings of several words used by Dr John H. Watson have been updated.

  Chapter I

  ON DEPOSIT AT COX’S BANK

  The published compendium of the many adventures that I undertook in the company of Mr Sherlock Holmes contains only a few examples of those occasions on which we entered a variety of service that no loyal subject of this realm may refuse. I refer to cases in which the calls to action were delivered by various government ministries or agents, but in which our true employer was none other than that Great Personage whose name has come to define an age; herself, or her son, who has already displayed some of his mother’s capacity for imprinting his name and character upon his era. To be plain, I refer to the Crown, and when I do, it must surely become more apparent why the greater portion of my accounts of such cases has come to rest – perhaps never to be removed or revealed – in the tin dispatch-box that I long ago entrusted to the vaults of Cox’s Bank in Charing Cross.

  Among this momentous yet largely secret subcollection, perhaps no one adventure touches on more delicate particulars than that which I have identified as the matter of the Italian Secretary. Whenever I joined Holmes in attempting to solve one of his ‘problems with a few points of interest,’ it was an odds-on wager that lives would ultimately hang upon the outcome of our efforts; and during several such endeavours, no less than the continuation in power of one political party or another – or even the physical safety of the realm itself – was also exposed as having been at risk. But at no other time did the actual prestige of the monarchy (to say nothing of the mental peace of the Queen Empress herself) rest so perilously upon the successful conclusion of our exertions as it did during this case. The reasons underlying such a bold claim, I can relate; that those particulars will strike any reader as entirely credible, I can no more than hope. Indeed, they might have seemed, even to me, no more than fevered imaginings, a series of dreams inadequately separated from the waking world, had not Sherlock Holmes been ready with explanations for nearly all of the many twists and developments of the case. Nearly all …

  And because of those few unresolved questions, the matter of the Italian Secretary has always been, for me, a source of recurring doubts, rather than (as has more generally been the case regarding my experiences with Holmes) reassuring conclusions. These doubts, to be sure, have remained largely unspoken, despite their power. For there are recesses of the mind to which no man allows even his closest fellows access; not, that is, unless he wishes to hazard an involuntary sojourn in Bedlam …

  Chapter II

  A STRANGE MESSAGE, AND A STRANGER TALE

  The crisis took place over the course of several unusually cool and volatile September days, during a year in which the state of both our Empire’s and our Queen’s health made it difficult to conceive of either ever declining; yet how close, I now can see, were the onsets of both those maladies! Was the nature of the crime we were summoned to investigate during that late summer a harbinger of those twin twilights? And was the Queen’s subsequent fascination with the matter an indication of some inner awareness of eternity’s approach, of a desire to know what awaited her when finally she cast off the burdens of a long and predominantly lonely rule and was allowed to follow where her beloved Consort had long since gone? I cannot say; nor may I give any greater clue than I already have as to the precise moment at which this case commenced, so great is my concern that the private history of the monarchy remain untainted by scandal or controversy. (Reliable as its officers have always been, Cox’s is ultimately but a bank; and should traitorous or merely thieving hands ever find themselves with entire power over its assets, who can say what use might be made of these secret accounts?)

  As to the actual beginning of the affair, it took a form that had become familiar, for me, in those latter days of my association with Holmes. I entered the front door of our Baker Street residence one afternoon to be greeted by sonic evidence that something was (in a literal instance of Holmes’s own oft-repeated phrase) ‘afoot’: The house was reverberating to the sound of agitated pacing, coming from the sitting-room on the floor above. It was a staccato, deliberate pounding, interrupted occasionally by another sound, made by a violin but hardly to be called music: the irregular bouncing of a taut bow off the instrument’s strings, which produced a noise that might best be likened to a hoarse-voiced, hungry cat. Stepping further inside, I determined at once to summon Mrs Hudson and see what letter, note, or other communication had arrived that might have produced such obvious signs of cerebral activity in my friend.

  I soon ran almost headlong into our landlady, just outside the door of her own rooms. She was glaring up at our sitting-room door whence the cacophony was emanating, looking rather less alarmed than angry, perhaps even a little injured; and although I was by no means surprised that Holmes was the source of her agitation (rather the reverse, in fact), I was taken aback when the kindly woman announced that she had no intention of serving tea that day – a restorative that I had been eagerly anticipating during my walk home from a day-long medical symposium.

  ‘I’m sorry, Doctor – but I warned him,’ was Mrs Hudson’s contained but no less violent declaration. ‘I stated quite clearly that if he continued in that vein, I would not utter a word to him for the rest of the day, and perhaps not for a few more days, much less serve him anything to eat!’

  ‘Why, my dear Mrs Hudson,’ I replied, ca
lling on the secret sympathy which existed between the two of us, who had suffered more under the sometimes cruel and always caustic force of Holmes’s mercurial moods than had any other two people in the world, ‘I would not urge you to spend a minute more in the man’s company, if he is indeed in one of his offensive humours – but won’t you tell me what particularly he has done to upset you so?’

  Tempted to speak at greater length, the proud lady finally said only, ‘What is laughable to some, Dr Watson, is not so to all. That is all I will say, for doubtless he will explain the rest himself.’ Folding her arms, she allowed her spirited eyes to roll upward, indicating that I should go up. I knew well enough to follow the directive, for Mrs Hudson could be a truly unbending personality – a fact that Holmes and I sometimes bemoaned, but for which we had more often had reason to be immensely grateful.

  Taking the stairs to the sitting-room quickly, I formed a mental picture of the disarray that must lie within – for it was Holmes’s irregularity of habits and periods of something suspiciously close to slovenliness that most often produced objection from our landlady. I was surprised, then, to find that all was neatness and order when I entered, and to further see my friend’s wiry but evidently vigorous and acceptably attired silhouette pacing by the windows that looked out onto Baker Street. He had his violin beneath his chin, but was, as I had suspected, barely aware of what he was doing with it.

  ‘Mrs Hudson, I really do not know what I can do, beyond offering my apologies!’ Holmes called through the doorway as I entered the room. Nodding once at me quickly with an equally brief smile which indicated that he had, indeed, been up to some tormenting mischief, he continued in this vein: ‘If you can recommend any other rite of contrition, I should be happy to undertake it, so long as it is within the parameters of reason!’

  ‘Dr Watson, will you please inform Mr Holmes that he may try all he likes!’ The thin but decisive voice rose from below without hesitation. ‘But he’ll have no service from me today – and I know that service is his sole reason for trying to make amends!’

  Holmes raised his shoulders at me and indicated the door with another movement of his sharp chin, directing me to close it. ‘We shall be left to our own devices for tea, I fear, Watson,’ he said, as soon as I had closed the portal. Laying down his violin and bow and disappearing for a moment into the adjoining chamber, he returned with a large chemical beaker set in a stand, as well as a spirit burner. ‘And, far more disturbingly, for tobacco – have you any? I’ve smoked the last of my reserves while considering this remarkable communication’ – he picked a sheet of telegraph paper from the table on which he had placed the beaker and burner, waving the message in my direction with one hand as he struck a match with the other – ‘which arrived not two hours ago. Our landlady, as you have heard, refuses to perform even so simple a service as an errand …’

  I laid hold of the document, asking, ‘Holmes, really, what have you done to distress the poor woman to such an extent? I’ve rarely seen her so angry.’

  ‘In a moment,’ Holmes replied, as he filled the chemical beaker with water from a nearby pitcher. ‘Give that telegram your full attention, for now.’ He succeeded in producing a healthy ignition of the spirit wick beneath the beaker, after which he glanced about the place. ‘I once secreted a packet of biscuits,’ he mused, on his way to fetching a mahogany tea box and two rather dubious-looking cups and saucers, ‘against just such an eventuality. But where they might be, or in what condition we might find them, I dare not conjecture …’

  From the agitated manner in which he continued to speak and to dart about our various rooms, seeking out such apparently exotic paraphernalia as spoons, one might justly have questioned whether the preparation of his own tea did not present Sherlock Holmes with a greater challenge than most of his scientific and investigative undertakings. But I was by now paying little attention to him, so intriguing was the communication that I held in my hand. When Holmes barked, ‘Tobacco, Watson!’ I did manage to produce a pouch from my pocket, but I then sank into a nearby chair, ever more oblivious to my friend’s incessant commentary.

  The message had originated in the telegraph office of the Aberdeen railway station, and was composed in such a manner that it would likely have been taken as a mundane or even a nonsensical collection of comments by both the Scots operator who dispatched it and his English counterpart who received it in London:

  YOUSE DONE A SPECIAL ONE, AT NO. 8 PALL MALL – ‘THE SUN BURNS TOO HOT, THE SKY FILLS WITH FAMILIAR EAGLES’ – READ MCKAY AND SINCLAIR, COLLECTED WORKS – KEEP MR WEBLEY CLOSE; HAVE YOUR PALM READ FOR PROTECTION – A PAIR OF BERTHS IS RESERVED ON THE CALEDONIA – MY OLD CROFTER WILL PULL ALONGSIDE AT QUARANTINE.

  I could not pretend to make sense of the entire thing, particularly given the increasing distraction of Holmes knocking about the room looking for the mythical biscuits, all the while erupting with complaints at the mildness of my tobacco; but one initial guess seemed worth hazarding:

  ‘Your brother?’

  ‘Bravo, Watson!’ said Holmes merrily. ‘Mycroft’s rather heavy-handed concealment of his name may be excused by the message’s office of origin – only in Scotland would a reference to an “old crofter” go unnoticed, and only in a message emanating from that country would the reference go unremarked by prying eyes – or listening ears.’

  ‘Ears?’ I repeated, in confusion.

  ‘Certainly, Watson – surely you recall that British telegraphy lines have been vulnerable to electronic eavesdropping, at the very least since that rather unseemly business concerning our friend Milverton, who numbered such a technique among his methods of collecting information concerning those he intended to blackmail – although we only determined as much after you had written your account of the matter.’ He removed his pipe and stared down his long nose at it. ‘I don’t wonder if you have forgotten so important a point, even momentarily, given what must be the appallingly low content of nicotine in this effete tobacco of yours. However’ – he set the stem of the pipe back between his active jaws – ‘we shall have to make do, given our predicament. Ah! Our water is boiling!’

  As, indeed, it was: boiling and rumbling about the bulbous base and long stem of the beaker, producing steam that was lightly and noxiously tinged by trace amounts of chemical agents.

  ‘Fear not,’ Holmes said, opening one compartment of the tea box. ‘The Ceylon component of this blend should eliminate the effects of my last experiment quite adequately.’The tea was left to steep in a worn old pot, with a coiled scarf serving as a cosy, while Holmes kept after me about the telegram. ‘Well? What else can you divine?’

  Trying to focus my thoughts, I said, ‘It’s certainly extraordinary, if it is your brother. As I recall, the last time we three were engaged in an undertaking, you told me that any occasion upon which he varies his daily triangular route from his rooms in Pall Mall to his offices in Whitehall to the Diogenes Club is the equivalent of encountering a tram-car on a country lane—’

  ‘As indeed it is.’

  ‘And yet now he writes from Aberdeen? What can have happened, to make so sedentary a fellow travel so comparatively far?’

  ‘Just so!’ Holmes’s voice contained a hint of the same rather evasive quality that I had noted in it every time we had discussed the subject of his extraordinary brother Mycroft, a senior but anonymous government official to whom even the deepest secrets of state business were known. Although Holmes acknowledged that his kinsman was his superior in mental prowess as well as in years (they were separated by seven), the elder Holmes was nonetheless a pronounced eccentric, whose movements, as I had only just said, rarely exceeded the bounds of a small corner of London and were focused as much on his club as on his shielded but vital occupation. The Diogenes was the favoured meeting place for such men – or rather, I should say, the favoured gathering place, for its members did not go there to meet, but to be left alone among each other. It offered the city’s true misanthropes refuge from the cr
ush and forced informality of the London throng, and a member could be expelled simply for violating the principal rule of the place – silence – just three times.

  Holmes had revealed to me the fact of his brother’s existence many years earlier, but had only told me the truth concerning Mycroft’s occupation and connections very much later (and then only in stages). Now, as he handed me my cup of murky tea that September afternoon, smiling in a manner that was only partially forthcoming and yet obviously proud, I had the feeling I was in for another surprise.

  ‘You will recall, Watson, that following the conclusion of the last matter in which Mycroft sought our assistance – that business about the Bruce-Partington submarine plans – I returned to Baker Street one day from a trip to Windsor, somewhat immodestly displaying a newly acquired emerald tie-pin. You asked where I had got the thing, and I made some remarks about a gracious lady to whom I had offered a small service.’

  ‘Yes – and a rather transparent lie it was, Holmes,’ I commented. Then I frowned deeply at my cup. ‘Good God, this tea really is ghastly – and given the manner of its brewing, quite possibly poisonous …’

  ‘Focus your mind, Watson,’ came Holmes’s reply. ‘The tea may be roughly flavoured, but it will help you, in this regard. Now, then: you rightly suspected that I had received the pin from Windsor’s most illustrious resident, and within the halls of its most ancient domicile – correct?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘But what you did not know was that, when I arrived at the Castle, I found Mycroft already there, engaged in conversation with the aforementioned lady in an attitude of – singular informality …’

  I looked up suddenly. ‘You don’t mean to say—’

  ‘Yes, Watson. He was seated in the presence. In fact, he told me it is a privilege that he has enjoyed for a number of years.’