Mycroft Holmes and the Edinburgh Affair Read online

  Mycroft Holmes

  The Edinburgh Affair

  By

  Janina Woods

  2018 digital version converted and published by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  First edition published in 2018

  Copyright © 2018 Janina Woods

  The right of Janina Woods to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

  All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Any opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of MX Publishing.

  MX Publishing

  335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive,

  London, N11 3GX

  www.mxpublishing.co.uk

  Cover design by Brian Belanger

  Cover painting by Lou B / diogenes art

  For Philippe, with love.

  Chapter One

  It was hard to come up with a good reason why I should be outside my train carriage in the middle of this freezing winter night, armed with a particularly heavy frying pan.

  Behind me I could hear the excited steps of my pursuers, who had so rudely interrupted my sleep and chased me out of my cabin in the middle of the night. I had secured one of the last sleeping compartments on the train, which made its way over several days from Eastern Europe to the French coast, hoping to get out of the continent without notice, but fate had different plans.

  Of course my attackers hadn’t found anything of worth, as the stolen papers were concealed on my body in a leather wrap, which I carried securely between my waistcoat and shirt. How often this habit had saved me I had never counted, but when you are alone out there you’re always ready to run and leave almost everything behind.

  Nothing and no one to weigh you down - that was just the way I liked it.

  The door to the carriage opened outwards with a bang, kicked down most likely, and crashed into the wall beside me. I didn’t hesitate and swung my improvised weapon of solid iron. It connected with the body of an unfortunate man and produced a satisfying noise. He lost his balance in an instant and screamed as he fell off the train, into the inky blackness of the night. The second man ducked and stumbled backwards. A few moments passed until it was clear that he wasn’t coming after me anytime soon. My hands were already frozen and I didn’t know how much longer I could safely hold my weapon. I needed to get back inside, out of the wind, because my shirt was merely a flimsy shield against the airstream of the moving train.

  “Hand over the papers and you won’t get hurt!”

  The second man shouted from inside the carriage, his voice spilling out of the door like the tentative rays of light from the single lamp that was still glowing in the galley. He spoke German, and now that I could hear him properly, I was pretty sure he stemmed from the vicinity of Munich.

  “Why should I believe you?” I shouted back, also in German, though my accent sounded more like the dialect they spoke near the border to France.

  “Because I have a gun and you don’t have a choice,” the man answered. “Give up the papers and I’ll let you walk through that doorway unharmed. If not, I’ll shoot you.”

  “Then I’ll fall off the train like your friend and the documents will be lost,” I countered.

  “We can collect you from the ditches later. As long as the information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands, everything will be fine.”

  He was apparently someone who liked to hear himself talk. Overzealous patriots usually fell into that particular category. I could put myself in the same group, but of course I knew much better than to let me be distracted by my own words.

  His voice was louder now, much closer to the door. I put my ear to the wall behind me and cursed under my breath as soon as it connected with the metal, because it felt even colder than ice. But this was the only way I could block out the roar of the wind. There was a scratching noise on the other side of the wall. It was low and slow, moving along an uneven surface. It was very different from the clatter the train produced.

  So he was directly behind me, most likely hugging the wall in an effort to surprise me when I deemed it safe to walk back inside. Perfect. With some force I knocked the frying pan against the metal, and as expected there was a small commotion on the other side, as if someone had knocked over a stack of pots. Immediately I pulled a gun from my belt, spun around the corner into the carriage, fired into the direction of the startled man and hit him squarely in the chest.

  The rest of the galley was empty, so I stashed my gun and placed the frying pan on the narrow counter next to me. Then I checked the downed man’s pulse, which I couldn’t find, and rummaged through his pockets. I took his weapon - a beautiful Mauser pistol with its elegant, narrow barrel, almost fully loaded - and his identification papers, so my employers could find out who these people had worked for.

  The man was of no further use to me, so I grabbed him under his shoulders and dragged his lifeless body to the door. A shove later he disappeared into the darkness like his friend. I didn’t bother with the blood stains on the floor, but frowned at the specks that had found their way onto my shoes, only barely visible in the flimsy light.

  Crisis averted, mission saved. I gave myself a pat on the shoulder. It was a superfluous behaviour, even a tad indulgent, but my own approval was an important part of my solitary pursuit.

  No one else thanked me for anything, after all.

  I encountered no other person on the way back to my compartment. Only the rattle of the train and the roaring winter wind kept me company. The metal around me creaked and the floor all but vibrated over a stretch of particularly uneven terrain. To walk along the corridor in the darkness was just a tad unnerving - much more so than the earlier fight. I was used to action, not silence.

  But then I reached my small room and opened the door, only to find a shadow, which immediately lunged at and threw me back against the windows in the corridor. The impact punched all the air out of my lungs.

  Blindly, I reached into the black mass and found some fabric to hold onto, though which part it was I didn’t know and didn’t care. With the person in my grasp, I tore at their clothes and pulled them to the ground, then turned around on my axis, so that I was on top of them. Without knowing exactly where I would hit them, I punched where I estimated their face to be. My first punch managed to hit the forehead, my second a turned cheek.

  Then something glinted in the darkness and I pushed myself up - backed away from the threat. Metal was always dangerous. I couldn’t tell if it was a knife, a gun, or something else... but being in reach of a blade in the dark was never a good idea. I wanted to avoid using my own gun here, where other passengers could hear it and alert the crew, but my attacker might’ve had other rules of engagement.

  Luckily, I had dragged him from the door of my cabin, so he was no longer blocking it, and I managed to jump into the small space, past his legs. In this way I had effectively trapped and cornered myself, and I hop
ed my pursuer would take his chance. A scuffle on the floor, as he scrambled to his feet, told me that he was very likely to act on his good fortune and my obvious blunder. I reached for my cane, which I had stashed on the upper bed, and twisted the handle just so.

  The unlucky man ran directly into my extended blade, impaling himself quite thoroughly. I couldn’t see the look on his face, but I imagine it would’ve been surprise, and before he could shout out in pain, I dragged him towards me and placed a hand over his mouth, muffling his screams until he hung limp in my grasp.

  Well, now my clothes were completely ruined. And so was the floor of the small room. I let out a weary sigh as my blade slipped out of his body. Only his feet were still in the corridor, so I dragged them in and closed the door after a quick check to see if anyone else had noticed the commotion. The electric light flickered into existence and illuminated the space in a golden yellow. I looked at the man at my feet, clad in ordinary street clothes and a practical leather jacket, bleeding out over my floor. Quickly I pocketed his papers, which were already partly blood-stained.

  The window could be opened, so the man took the same journey as his murderous companions. With the bed sheet I wiped down the sword and concealed it again in my walking cane. Then I cleaned the floor with the same sheet and threw it from the window as well. With a small towel I removed any other stains I could find and discarded it too.

  The information under my waistcoat was still safe and my head was still on my shoulders. But I wasn’t going to get any more sleep that night, so I readied my measly bag of luggage, changed into a fresh set of clothes - the only one I had left - and smoothed down my hair as well as I could. Then I took a deep breath, killed the light and took a seat on the bed.

  With the cane across my legs and a hand on the gun at my side, I waited for morning to come and the train to arrive at the French harbour town, from where I could finally take a ferry back to the homeland.

  Chapter Two

  My townhouse in Kensington was a sight for sore eyes after having spent almost a year abroad. While I never had a very deep, emotional connection to the house, it was still the place I called home. Though I tended to stay at my rooms in the Diogenes Club, and usually didn’t make it back at night, so it might sound strange to call it that. An empty house with no food in storage and a layer of dust even on the bed. There were no servants and no housekeepers, because what was there to keep up? No, we had left those in the manor in Sussex.

  After the excursion to rescue Sherlock from a bunch of lunatic cultists in the Egyptian desert, I had been suspended from my work for a whole year. Well, that was what my superiors had told everyone back home, and for all they knew it was the truth, as I had indeed not set foot in London until yesterday, on a nondescript, bleak November morning.

  After helping Sherlock to get settled with Victoria in Rome to recuperate, I had spent my summer in Milan with a man called Gregorio Taquini. It had turned out to be an indulgent, lazy holiday, during which I totally shut myself off from the rest of my life. But it had only lasted until July, when I had been called to go into Germany and pose as an engineer to spy on the current progress of the military build-up. For months I travelled between cities and collected information, until someone in London apparently decided that I had been punished enough and ordered me back to the island.

  So I obligingly made my way back and travelled slowly under one of my aliases. I had stopped in several places to change transportation and obscure my trail. Still, some people had managed to track me - the daring theft of a particularly incriminating letter from the office of a high-ranking officer apparently justification enough to hunt me down. A stain on my reputation that I didn’t like to suffer, but had to bear.

  With a stack of highly confidential papers, a head full of rumours and a vastly improved knowledge of the German language I had arrived in Charing Cross and merged seamlessly with the London crowd as if I had never left. After reporting my findings to my superiors and delivering the documents, I had made for my home and successfully avoided any and all people who wanted to talk to me.

  There I was, once more in the old, three-floor building, greeted only by stale air and dust motes. I smiled almost indulgently at a spider that fled in terror as I set foot into my study. At least one living thing was still in the house. After I opened the curtains, the tentative light of a grey winter day filtered into the room and illuminated the dust I had stirred up.

  Home. A strange feeling.

  I was often on assignment away from the city, but rarely as long and never with such an emotional baggage to carry. One reason why I had to distance myself from the merry trio in Rome, was the time I needed to myself. Time to process the fact that I had almost lost my brother. It was hard for me to think and clear my head while being around people - especially people, who doted on me. Gregorio didn’t know of my problems and had respected my requests for solitude. Of course I had told him an abridged version of our adventure, after I stumbled into the cathedral in Milan, almost two months after our first meeting, but he had been the man I had judged him to be: amiable and curious, but content to leave things be for the sake of thoroughly enjoying oneself.

  I shook my head. This was all in the past, and now was time for the future. In that moment I decided to busy myself by cleaning the townhouse from top to bottom. I didn’t expect any guests, but it felt wrong to leave it in such a bad state. Yes, I rarely spent time there, and it had ultimately been an inheritance that I had only reluctantly accepted, but I held my personal life to certain standards, and that included the place I had to call home.

  Frankly, I felt much more at ease in my office at the Diogenes Club. No wonder I didn’t have many friends, seeing that I never made or received any social calls beyond the occasional offer to share a drink with one of my fellow agents. I was aware of these facts and honestly, they suited me just fine.

  Still, I wondered - not for the first time - if some lodgings closer to the Diogenes might improve my willingness to go home for the night... and other aspects of my life.

  After a few hours I let myself fall exhausted into the armchair beside the fireplace. Most of the house, and especially the sitting room, bedroom and my study had been suitably tidied and I had even briefly stepped outside to stock the most necessary items for the kitchen. I always got funny looks as a single man of obvious status, when I was browsing the markets, but I had never let that stop me. The cleaning work had felt almost meditative, and with every room that was now in order, I had felt a little more settled in my old life.

  My eyes fell on the cupboard, in which I stored my spirits and I decided that I had earned some of my favourite whisky in celebration of my return. First I snatched a glass from a cabinet, regrettably dusty despite having been locked up, then the bottle. As I picked it up, a small piece of paper fluttered to the floor. For a second I was locked in place as the light paper turned about in the air and settled gracefully on the carpet. Carefully I set the bottle and the glass down on a nearby table and reached for the note.

  There was nothing out of the ordinary about it. It was light and coarse, evidently ripped from the edge of a newspaper, but it was completely blank, so it had to be from a larger sheet that had yet to be touched by ink. There wasn’t a border large enough in any paper I knew that would produce such a big, empty piece. No, they were usually crammed so full of advertisements that every last bit was printed on. But there was something on the paper in my hand: Meticulous handwriting, clearly written to be legible. It was a warning, of sorts. I frowned at the words.

  Be careful!

  While I couldn’t place the writing immediately, the curious slant of the letter ‘L’ in the second word drew my attention. It had a graceful curve, and the ink was of a peculiar thickness that you could only achieve by holding a pen in a certain way. I had known only one man to write like this, and it was all but impossible for him to have left the note here.
Though I had to find out more before I could rule out the possibility completely.

  I placed the paper next to the glass and proceeded to pick up the other bottles, checking underneath even the ones I hadn’t touched in years. Nothing. Then underneath the glasses and other objects in the cabinet. Also nothing. A very deliberate placement, then. My favourite bottle would’ve been easy to recognise for weeks after I had left the house, but as time had passed, it would’ve been covered by dust like the others. Either someone had left the note just after I had disappeared last winter, in which case the warning would be dreadfully out of date by now, or very recently, in which case they would know me very well.

  It was indeed left in a place that I would very probably discover within days of returning home, and where someone else wouldn’t bother to look. So I tried to remember when I had last touched this particular whisky. Even before the outing to Egypt, I hadn’t been at the house in a while. Not during the engaging affair of the Bruce-Partington plans, and not for a few weeks prior.

  It was a puzzle, that much was clear. It was probably prudent to find out who had left the small piece of paper, when he or she had left it, and most importantly: what it was exactly that I should be careful of. I mulled over the list of people who knew my address and also knew me well enough to choose that particular bottle.

  My parents are deceased. Any extended family did not exist, or had never visited me. Sherlock would tell me about any danger outright and not leave cryptic messages. As would the only two of my colleagues, who had ever been at my house: Hawkins and Lou. There was the maid my mother had pushed on me after I had moved my household to London, but she had left fairly quickly. Leaving her alone at the house for a month had done the trick. The only other person had been... Songbird.

  I took a deep breath and decided to postpone the inquiry. The note was probably old enough for me to discard, and most importantly I had no desire to open up that particular part of my past again.