The Italian Secretary Page 8

  ‘The dentist, I will grant you,’ Mycroft replied (rather testily, it seemed to me), ‘but the staff at the castle? Impossible. They are all trusted servants, persons devoted to Her Majesty who have vindicated the trust they hold through years of faithful service in a household that, I do not think I need tell either of you, has not been the easiest in which to serve, particularly since the Prince Consort’s death.’

  ‘My dear Mycroft, you argue my point, rather than your own,’ Holmes volleyed quickly. ‘Long years of patient service, in certain types of persons, are the fastest route to resentment, rather than loyalty – and this is never more so than when the family being served is royalty. Those who hold their positions “by the grace of God” are not raised to view their desires as ever being unreasonable or capricious; and the rewards of betrayal, in such situations, can be astronomically higher than the usual pilfering of household funds that takes place in the home of, shall we say, some high-handed solicitor.’

  Mycroft was about to fire back; but he paused, put a gloved finger gently to his pursed lips, and considered the matter, finally nodding slowly. ‘I do not like your insinuations, Sherlock,’ he said at length. ‘But I am not so foolish as to believe them without merit. I presume, then, that you desire a list of all persons who are currently employed at Balmoral?’

  Holmes nodded, pulling, to my surprise, a fountain pen and a small notebook from the inner pocket of his jacket. ‘And I assume that you can provide it to me?’

  ‘Of course,’ his brother answered.

  ‘From memory?’ I asked, speaking before I had fully considered the wisdom of it.

  ‘My brother has consigned the secrets of our Empire to the grey matter within his skull, Watson,’ replied Holmes. ‘I very much doubt that the staff of Balmoral will present any great difficulty …’

  And it did not. In fact, although eventually extending into dozens and even scores of names, all that the roster of employees at the Highland castle ever seemed to inspire in the elder Holmes brother was an enormous sense of tedium during its recitation, despite the fact that he accomplished the task even before we had left the urban confines of Edinburgh. This boredom did turn to obvious distaste when, at the conclusion of the exercise, Mycroft finally included the name of the Queen’s dentist in the city; but this indignation was nothing to the outright annoyance and even anger that was sparked when his brother conceded – rather quickly and routinely – the probable correctness of Mycroft’s arguments against the involvement of any royal employees in the recent bloody doings at Holyroodhouse.

  ‘Sherlock!’ Mycroft fairly thundered. ‘Do you think that we have such an abundance of time on our hands that we may fritter it away compiling meaningless lists?’

  ‘Not “meaningless” at all, Mycroft,’ Holmes replied, tearing the sheets of paper from his notebook and handing them to his brother. ‘In fact, it will serve a most useful purpose.’ He leaned closer to his brother and urged me to do likewise, and then spoke in a conspiratorial tone: ‘I have asked for this list, and spun my arguments, only so that we will have some plausible business for our “insurance” agents’ – he indicated the rear of the carriage, where the two intelligence officers were riding – ‘to attend to, while we pursue other, far more likely options. The investigation of the Balmoral staff and the dentist is a task that must be completed, Mycroft – it is simply not, I am convinced, the best use of our time. We have more primary, and certainly more promising, threads to spin out.’

  Mycroft fixed a deeply scrutinising stare, crowned by one of his arched brows, upon his brother. ‘I warn you, Sherlock,’ he said. ‘Do not mistake the nature of the situation into which you have entered. Whatever the appearance of these young officers, and however much you may think this a routine matter of murder, where state affairs are concerned, human life – even yours – loses a considerable percentage of its usual value.’

  ‘And do you imagine, Mycroft,’ said Holmes, his own indignation rising quietly, ‘that the same cannot be said of the dangers faced when battling the great criminal minds of our time?’

  I decided to intervene by diverting rather than wading into the course of their argument. ‘I understand your concerns, sir,’ I said to Mycroft, ‘for your brother is not always the most adroit of men in matters of political complexity.’ Before Holmes could protest, I added, ‘But I believe his point here is well taken: I have seen him adopt this diversionary tactic with local police officers and Scotland Yard many times. And, while I will admit that it gives me some pause to consider employing it with regard to officers who – and I know this from my own years of service – are capable of causing enormous difficulties even for senior military commanders, much less secret investigators such as ourselves, I believe that we may rely upon the essential soundness of the approach.’

  ‘Perverse though it may be?’ Mycroft said to me, drawing back.

  ‘Yes, sir. Perverse though it may be.’

  Whether or not Mycroft Holmes had been thoroughly or only temporarily satisfied by his brother’s and my own arguments, I did not know – nor did time allow me to ascertain as much; for by now we had passed out of the city proper and through the elaborate south-western gate of the great royal park that surrounded Holyroodhouse. Looking out of the window of the brougham at the lovely grounds through which we passed, I could see ahead the first rays of direct sunlight creeping over the gigantic, sloping hillside known as Arthur’s Seat – which was, in fact, no hill at all, but another of Edinburgh’s massive, prehistoric stone formations, its surface disguised by a thin layer of soil and grass. The name matched the deceptiveness of the spot’s appearance. The place was unconnected to the legendary king of the same name, but its title was another example of the Scots’ seemingly endless desire to relate themselves to all persons and developments of romance and importance in the British Isles. (Indeed, to hear the tales told in the pubs of Edinburgh and Glasgow, as well as their country counterparts, there is little of value in the entire history of the British Empire that does not hinge in some way on the participation of some Scottish laird, regiment, or man of genius – a claim that, to be fair, is not as outlandish as many Englishmen would have the world believe.)

  As dawn moved quickly on towards morning, we kept up a quick pace around the curving drive along the western edge of Holyrood Park. Mycroft began to tell us just who we should meet during our stay at the palace – for, he was clear in saying, we would be staying at the palace itself, both as a mark of appreciation from Her Majesty and to keep gossip within the comparatively small city to a minimum, once the rumour that Sherlock Holmes had arrived to investigate the already-celebrated deaths was released into the city through the same system that had made common knowledge of the royal tooth extraction: household gossip. Few members of the palace’s staff, said Mycroft, had exhibited behaviour that could, in his opinion, be fairly called suspicious, since the time of the first murder; but those few would have to be investigated, along with any others that we ultimately deemed worthy of attention.

  From this and other directives, I was given the impression that Holmes and I would not only be guests at Holyroodhouse, but that we would have virtual run of the place – a thought that almost redeemed the train journey we had endured, to my way of thinking. But not, apparently, to Holmes’s: He listened soberly as his brother rattled off the names and essential character traits of palace staff members, engraving each upon his cortex and clearly exercising his own talent for the mental organisation and systematisation of disparate information, which, if it was not as powerful as Mycroft’s, was nevertheless extraordinary.

  And yet, as I listened to the siblings go through this rigorous mental exercise, a question began to form in my mind, one that grew steadily more pointed as we continued along the drive to the palace: Why was Holmes taking such an interest in stories concerning the servants of Holyroodhouse, when he had so readily dismissed the notion of any of the staff at Balmoral being involved in any plot against Her Majesty? The obvious a
nswer was, of course, that Holyroodhouse had been where the crimes had taken place (or at least, it was where the bodies had been discovered). But the fact remained that, in an average year, the Queen spent no more than a few nights at the Edinburgh palace: hardly enough time for members of the household staff to develop murderous fixations, whereas the servants of Balmoral endured many weeks’ worth of royal whims every year. And the trip from Aberdeenshire to the capital would not have been a difficult one for any young, fit malcontent – thus, I conjectured, the two sets of staff members must surely be considered as, at the very least, equally worthy or undeserving of suspicion; but not, apparently, to Holmes.

  The puzzle had no answer that I could see, and that was not a fact calculated to ease my anxieties about Holmes’s behaviour. The same doubts and questions about his state of mind that had first troubled me at Baker Street and gone on to be deepened by his often-inexplicable talk and behaviour on the train had been displaced, for a time, by conversation with the eminently reasonable Mycroft; but here in the carriage, in the midst of Holmes’s uncharacteristically inconsistent analyses of the possible roles played by royal servants in the murders, they made their presence felt again, and were indeed worsened by the fact that I felt unable to put them to Holmes in the presence of his brother, out of consideration for my friend’s reputation as a rational thinker.

  But did he truly believe that all normal investigative procedures were to be discarded, because the disembodied spirit of a man horribly butchered three centuries earlier had played a key part in the murders of Sinclair and McKay? He had said he believed there to be a ‘spiritual’ connection between the various dark deeds – had he actually meant to assert that the recent deaths were the work of some bloodthirsty, vengeful ghost?

  Such queries were bizarre enough; yet new considerations of the same stripe soon arose. By the time we reached the point along the lightly wooded park drive at which the Palace of Holyrood first became visible, Mycroft had drawn us into a conversation that was perhaps even more macabre than anything I had yet heard:

  ‘The royal prerogative,’ he announced in a businesslike, sombre tone, ‘can be made to over-rule all questions of local authority and procedure in these cases, so long as it does not give the appearance of actually obstructing justice. Such being the case, I have asked for and received permission to keep the body of McKay on the premises of the palace until you both have had a chance to study it. There is an old ice chamber in one of the cellars, and I have had it stored there. In all important respects, it may be taken as representative of the condition of Sir Alistair’s remains, as well. The wounds are nearly identical – certainly, just as grievous and mortal. Indeed, there seems to me only one important difference, overall, between the two crimes: Sir Alistair’s body was originally found, by a chambermaid, in the room where he had been staying – guest chambers in one of the newer sections of the palace, “newer”, of course, merely connoting those wings built in the seventeenth century. The remains of Dennis McKay, however, were discovered on the lawns behind the palace and among the old abbey ruins. Though in plain view from the Queen’s bedchamber, it was far from any windows or doors, and there is no question of its having been thrown there from within the building – even had the killers ejected it from the upper dormers of the servants’ quarters, it would have fallen well short of its actual position. Thus it stands to reason that it was placed there during the night, perhaps with the intention of provoking in Her Majesty a severe – indeed, at her age, a perhaps fatal – shock, should she have glimpsed it before any of the staff discovered the thing in the morning.’ Mycroft leaned in close, once more assuming his most confidential manner: ‘And it is for this reason, Sherlock, that I believe some one or more members of the staff to have been involved. For all gates to the royal park are chained and locked at sunset, when Her Majesty is in residence, and the inner fence of the palace’s immediate grounds – ten feet of wrought and spear-tipped iron, as you can see from here – is watched carefully throughout the night.’

  ‘Who keeps the keys to the inner fence’s gates?’ asked Holmes.

  ‘There are three sets of keys – one is kept by Lord Francis Hamilton, the resident member of the family that has been charged, for better than two centuries, with the stewardship of the palace. The old duke keeps to their far more expansive and luxurious manor outside town, and appears only when the Queen summons him. The butler, Hackett, has one of the remaining sets of keys, as does the park ghillie, Robert, who is another of Her Majesty’s favourites. It is he who selects the most trustworthy men to – ah!’ Mycroft suddenly abandoned all discussion of bodies, killings, and keys, as we entered the palace forecourt and he became aware of someone moving across the yellow-white gravel towards our carriage. ‘Here is Lord Francis, to greet us …’

  The Hamilton clan (Lord Francis was the third son of the current duke) had first been entrusted with the care of Holyroodhouse by the ill-fated Charles I, son of the same James – the Sixth of Scotland and First of England – who had once been the precious child that lay hidden within the womb of Queen Mary as she watched her faithful servant David Rizzio dragged from her side to be murdered. That Charles I had met the same end as his grandmother Mary (beheaded following a long struggle, Mary’s against an English queen, Charles’s against an English parliament) was a coincidence that had never occurred to me, before the moment that we stepped from the brougham and I had my first detailed look at the edifice of Holyroodhouse. The fact that it occurred to me at all at such a time may strike some as incongruous: why think of severed heads when getting your first close look at a lovely royal residence, one made all the more appealing by the contrast between its grand style and its intimate scope?

  I can only confess, in my own defence, that the baroque opulence that was the ‘new’ palace (those wings executed by Charles’s son, the Second of the same name) proved powerless against my anxiety, for no greater or lesser reason than that I became overwhelmed by a strange pull, one that I soon realised was being exercised upon my spirit by the pitted fifteenth-century turrets of the palace’s western tower: the wing in which the unfortunate Rizzio had been shredded by noblemen’s daggers, and which was now the only part of Holyroodhouse that seemed utterly devoid of life, light, or activity.

  ‘I see you know your history, Dr Watson,’ said the fair-haired, clean-shaven Lord Francis, in a pleasant, indeed a sympathetic, tone. He had caught me staring to my left, at the heavily shuttered windows of the infamous turrets. ‘The west tower,’ the fellow went on, in mock but good-natured apprehension. ‘Queen Mary’s chambers! It’s interesting, is it not, that when her great-grandson rebuilt the rest of the palace, he tried to balance the façade by creating an identical tower on the eastern end – and yet its turrets have none of the same sinister effect.’

  ‘You refer to the effect of bloodshed, Lord Francis,’ Holmes declared; and it seemed to me that his tone was rather deliberately provocative. ‘As Dr Watson can tell you, it marks a structure for all time.’

  ‘As do repeated waves of conquering armies, Mr Holmes,’ Lord Francis replied gamely, looking Holmes full in the eye as he did so and making me instantly like the fellow. ‘Most of those “marks” of which you speak were the result of Roundhead musket-balls – for Cromwell himself was only one of your countrymen whom we have entertained, over the centuries.’ Perhaps worried that he might be alienating the famous detective, Lord Francis quickly assumed a rather more serious and conciliatory air. ‘And yet, yours is an interesting thought, Mr Holmes; interesting, and doubtless true – for the rest of the palace, as you shall see, is quite free of the oppressive atmosphere of the west tower.’

  Holmes looked at the man quizzically, then glanced at Mycroft. ‘But surely I have heard that the old tower is closed to outsiders, my lord? And has been these three centuries?’

  Lord Francis laughed off Holmes’s probing remark. ‘Oh, you shall not be outsiders here, Mr Holmes! Her Majesty will not have it, and I certainly have no
desire to contest with her, on that score – there is so very much I wish to discuss with you!’

  Mycroft Holmes – seeming as disconcerted as was I by his brother’s renewed interest in the murderous events that had made the west tower famous, and desirous of restoring a businesslike tone to the conversation – rushed in to say, ‘Lord Francis will forgive your rather too quickly delving into an unfortunate episode in the history of his home, Sherlock, I am sure. And now – shall we go in and give these gentlemen some sustenance, my lord? And then, some rest – they have had rather an exhausting journey, I fear.’

  ‘But of course you are correct,’ said our host. ‘Do forgive me – Andrew! Hackett!’

  From just outside the Doric revival entryway to the palace and its central courtyard appeared two strapping men, one about twenty, the other in his middle years, though no less powerful for it. A strong similarity of features suggested an immediate family relationship, a suggestion soon confirmed by Lord Francis: The young footman called Andrew was indeed the son of the older man, Hackett, who (as Mycroft had mentioned in the carriage) was the palace’s butler. Because of what Lord Francis referred to as ‘the recent misfortunes,’ however, most of the rest of the palace’s staff had apparently been given temporary leave, and a ‘skeleton crew’ was all that would be available to serve us – a fact that I found not only bizarre but unacceptable, and about which I assumed Holmes would lodge an extreme objection: He might be able to argue the irrelevance of the Balmoral staff, but he had already and rightly concerned himself with the staff at the murder scene itself. And yet, not for the first time that morning, his reaction was at shocking variance with what I would have expected: In fact, when Mycroft Holmes was forced to point out the potential difficulties involved in allowing so many possible witnesses (he did not say ‘and accomplices,’ although the words certainly hung on the air) to have left the scene of two hideous crimes, Holmes immediately rushed in to assure a rather contrite Lord Francis that he was certain no serious harm had been done.