The Devil’s Due. Bonnie Macbird

Who gave you this card? Was it one of the two dippers?’

      ‘The pickpockets? Not one of the two boys, no. It was a young lady, barely more than a girl,’ said I. ‘I am not sure she was working with them.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘I … I don’t know. Better dressed, perhaps?’

      ‘Did you get good look?’

      ‘Yes. Long dark hair, blue eyes, quite beautiful, unafraid. Bold even. Hard to tell her age, perhaps eighteen or so.’

      ‘Have you seen her before?’

      ‘No, and I think I should have remembered,’ I said with a smile.

      ‘That lovely?’

      I nodded. ‘She had a mole here.’ I pointed to my right cheek. ‘And truly unafraid. Triumphant, almost.’

      ‘Well, she did manage to plant this card on you. Did she get anything in return?’

      ‘No. I keep nothing in my overcoat pockets.’

      ‘Wise. How did you lose your umbrella?’

      ‘I – I must have dropped it in the melee. Nothing else is missing, I checked, Holmes,’ said I, growing annoyed.

      ‘If you are sure then,’ said he, turning back to examining the card.

      ‘What of that reporter, Holmes? Do you think it a coincidence that Zanders was there?’

      ‘I do not believe in coincidence. I told you that he is having me followed. I shall be more careful. This incident will appear shortly in some rag, no doubt.’

      ‘He is going to a great deal of trouble about you, Holmes. You must have truly infuriated him.’

      ‘Leave it, Watson. He is simply fishing. He will tire of it when a better story comes round.’

      A knock sounded on the front door and in a moment Billy, our page, stood dripping in the doorway, cap in hand.

      ‘Mr Holmes. Dr Watson. I have a message from Mr Mycroft Holmes, sirs. He would like to see you both, er …’ he squinted at a small white paper … ‘Towdee-sweetie?’

      Holmes laughed. ‘Tout de suite? Ah, urgent, is it? Well, Watson, our comfort is short lived. The Diogenes awaits.’

      An hour later, dressed once again in our city finest, Holmes and I sat near the fire in the Stranger’s Room at the Diogenes, the only room where conversation was allowed in his brother’s most unusual gentlemen’s club. It was a masculine, elegant room, designed to impress with a row of antique globes, thick carpeting, and gilt-edged books. A window looked out on Pall Mall, where rain continued to flood the streets.

      It was one of a handful of such meetings I had attended. In each case, I found myself acutely uncomfortable. There was an unsettling discord, a tension between the two brothers that I did not understand. Mycroft wielded great power and influence at the highest levels of government. He and Holmes worked together frequently, but not always amiably. In this very room, I had witnessed Mycroft Holmes once threaten my friend with a gaol term, and worse.

      Today’s meeting had started badly, and it was not sitting well with Sherlock Holmes.

      ‘Mycroft, you are full of advice and admonitions today!’ said my friend, striding around the room. ‘Do not confront this Titus Billings, you say. Steer clear of journalist Gabriel Zanders. Drop my work following the French anarchists. What is it that you do want?’

      ‘I am looking out for your best interests, Sherlock,’ drawled Mycroft Holmes as he fingered a small gold pocket lens dangling from one of two heavy watch chains stretched across his ample girth. He was, as always, impeccably tailored, from his mirror-polished shoes to his professionally barbered countenance, implacable, and mountainously heavy, so unlike his brother. I felt a small pleasure that the Double Albert watch chain was perhaps somewhat tighter across Mycroft’s growing girth than the last time we had seen him.

      ‘First, you must hear a few things, Sherlock. Titus Billings is connected at the highest levels, I believe to a close relative of the Royal Family. One of the Queen’s cousins. Steer clear. He is out of my reach for the moment.’

      ‘Extend your reach quickly then, Mycroft. The Danforth case was horribly bungled,’ said Holmes bitterly. ‘An innocent young woman died as the result.’

      Mycroft sighed. ‘Sit down, Sherlock.’

      ‘And Billings’s aim to arm the police?’ continued Holmes. ‘The man is a philistine. Most of them should not be trusted with their truncheons, much less a gun.’

      ‘In time, I will discover the wedge, but you must be patient.’

      The long thin wedge. I had heard Mycroft speak of it before. It was a metaphor, I suppose, for whatever he did at Whitehall. In the past, Holmes had hinted at his brother’s Machiavellian manoeuvring, but always in service of the greater good. However, it has been my experience that the more power a man has, the more challenging it is to retain the moral high ground. Whatever Mycroft did or didn’t do in service of the ‘greater good’, I only hoped that he shared the admirable code of honour of Sherlock Holmes.

      I was never sure.

      Mycroft Holmes lit a cigarette and offered the box to each of us. We declined and I moved the ashtray closer to him. At last Holmes sat down.

      Despite their differences of physique and temperament, the Holmes brothers did share uncanny skills of observation and deduction, and an astonishing ability to store an encyclopaedic range of facts. And both had developed mysterious, though I wager very different, ways of monitoring the events of their relative spheres of operation. I had no idea how Mycroft knew nearly every move made by his brother. It was not a comfortable idea to contemplate.

      ‘I have asked you here today, Sherlock, primarily to discuss this recent spate of unusual murders.’

      ‘At last. Which exactly?’

      ‘First, give me your further thoughts on that Danforth case.’

      ‘Curious. An act of remarkable violence on the part of the son.’

      ‘Out of nowhere, then?’ asked Mycroft.

      ‘I think not. There were strong signs of Charles Danforth’s instability, the family were aware of it, but the incident must have been set off by something. I do not know yet what that was.’

      ‘Someone gave a push, perhaps?’

      ‘Possibly. I do know that the killer was under the impression that his father’s will had been recently revised to favour the younger brother.’

      ‘Had it?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘That is all you have?’

      ‘I have been busy.’

      ‘And working alone. Perhaps now that Dr Watson has rejoined you, you will be more successful.’

      I could sense Holmes’s suppressed anger. He sprang up again and moved to the bookshelves where he appeared to become unusually interested in the antique globes.

      Mycroft continued to goad. ‘Up and down. Since you were a child. What about that Horatio Anson case? Unsolved?’

      ‘I was away when that came up. Curious, though, that a former shipbuilder was found dead in bed, fully clothed and dry, yet drowned. I intend to look into it further.’

      ‘And Clammory?’ said Mycroft.

      ‘Fellow who made a fortune with a series of barber shops, found with his throat slit with a razor?’ I exclaimed. ‘That was a strange one!’

      ‘Mmm,’ mused Mycroft. ‘Sherlock? You did not investigate that either?’

      ‘Away during that one as well. Upon my return, I found that Titus Billing had blocked my access