Mycroft Holmes and Murder at the Diogenes Club (The Mycroft Holmes Adventure series Book 5) Read online

  Mycroft Five Revised Version

  Mycroft Holmes and Murder at the Diogenes Club

  “What about this man coming our way with the umbrella?”

  “Very red in the face, sir. The man drinks too much.”

  “What else?”

  “Indian Civil Service, I fancy. A Collector in an Indian state possibly, maybe a Magistrate.”

  “And?”

  “He may have fallen on hard times, our man. Money not what it was, I fancy, sir.”

  “Any more?”

  “Lives in the country, sir. Probably up to London for the day.”

  “You are making progress indeed, Tobias. I am pleased with you.” Mycroft Holmes, Auditor of all Government Departments, and his young assistant Tobias were sitting in the bow window of the Strangers Room of the Diogenes Club in London’s Pall Mall, the only room in the club where you were allowed to speak. This was the third lesson in deductive reasoning as practised by both Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes, a technique that enabled them both to reveal the character of strangers walking down the street or suspects in their investigations.

  “Tell me, pray, Tobias, on what you based your deductions in this matter?”

  “Well, sir, the man had a very red face, some of which may have been acquired in India. But he had great blotches on his cheeks which are usually caused by too much drinking. Claret perhaps?”

  “And the Indian Civil Service?”

  “Why, sir, the man was wearing an Old Haileybury tie. I have been studying those booklets you gave me from that shop in Jermyn Street about Old School and London Club Ties. Even though the school was no longer owned by the East India Company after the Mutiny, it re-opened as a public school with strong links to the Raj. And his bearing was upright and dignified, sir, so I thought he must have been in a position of some authority like a Collector.”

  “Hard times, Tobias?”

  “Well, sir, the suit was old and the material was turning shiny, which shows it is no longer young. And I’m sure his collar had been turned. I used to watch my mother turn my father’s collars when I was a little boy, sir.”

  “Excellent. And your last deduction about the fellow being up from the country?”

  “Why, sir, there was the tip of a train ticket sticking out of his waistcoat pocket.”

  “You could have gone further, Tobias. The ticket was of the type issued by the Great Western Railway. My brother brought out a little monograph about the different types of train tickets similar to his work on the differing sorts of cigar ash. Remind me to give you a copy. And I fancy the blotches on our man’s cheeks may have been caused by whisky and soda rather than claret. Purists would always say that good Bordeaux would not travel well to the sub continent, too damned hot.”

  Tobias always felt like one of the two boys in John Everett Millais’s painting of the Boyhood of Raleigh in these deduction seminars. Two young boys, Walter Raleigh and his brother, in fact the painter’s sons, George and Everett, are listening very closely to an old sailor with a bright yellow shirt and short red pantaloons. A toy sailing ship is lying on the ground. The sailor is pointing dramatically out to sea in the direction, some critics have maintained, of the Spanish Main where Raleigh was to earn part of his fame. The boys are entranced by the old sailor’s words. Tobias often liked to think the sailor figure was actually Mycroft, pointing out across a sea of algebraic calculations to some distant heaven. Tobias had always suspected that Paradise was to be found hiding in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach or in some celestial equation composed of the properties of the stars.

  He had, in fact, been looking at the real Boyhood of Raleigh in a London gallery the previous weekend in the company of Miss Rosamund Bryant, the Assistant Secretary to the Governor of the Bank of England he had encountered in the case of the Bankers Conclave. Miss Bryant was the daughter of a prosperous solicitor in Chancery Lane and had been more than happy to accompany Tobias on expeditions to art galleries and walks in the parks. Tobias was trying to summon up the strength to ask her to the theatre. His attachment had been noted by his aunt, who had pieced the story together with detective abilities Sherlock Holmes himself would have been proud of, a general increase in washing, shirts changed more frequently, moments of gaiety followed by moments of doubt and dejection, a regular inspection of one’s own features in the long mirror in the hall before going out. She had passed on her intelligence to Tobias’s mother in Stratford who had always dreamt of a successful match for her boy, but on this occasion did not reply.

  “Any further comment on the gentleman with the umbrella, Tobias?”

  “Well, sir,” the young man replied, “there is one thing that has occurred to me, but I’m not at all sure about it.”

  “What is this thought, young man?”

  “It’s this. We don’t actually know, sir, that what you and your brother say about these fellows passing by in the street below is true. When they are visitors walking into 221B Baker Street in Dr Watson’s stories they always admit all the observations are correct, with frequent explanations of ‘how on earth, Mr Holmes,’ or ‘I’m completely baffled Mr Holmes.’ But this never happens with gentlemen like the one just now with the umbrella. Neither you nor I nor Dr Watson or your brother ever goes up to the fellows after the observations to discover if they are true or not. Our friend with the umbrella could have been a country squire, fond of his port, who obtained his colouring by many hours in the hunting fields of Gloucestershire with the Duke of Beaufort’s.”

  Nobody will ever know what Mycroft Holmes would have said to this critique of his powers for a distraught Club Secretary burst into the Stranger’s Room without even knocking as the Club rules dictated. Evan Butterfield, late of the Indian Civil Service, brought a torrent of alarm and confusion behind him like a following wind.

  “Mr Holmes, Mr Holmes, thank God you’re here,” he cried. “You must come at once! There is a dead body in the Entrance Hall! There is blood all over the floor! I haven’t seen so much blood since my time on the North West Frontier!”

  Tobias was watching Mycroft very carefully. Somehow he did not think his employer would wish to be involved in this affair. Mycroft blinked rapidly for a few moments.

  “Compose yourself, my dear Butterfield. Death comes for us all in the end. There is nothing I can do. I am the Government Auditor, not the investigating authorities. I trust you have sent for the police and instructed all club members to stay exactly where they are. They cannot be allowed to leave until the police have spoken to them. There. That is all I can do.”

  With that, Mycroft began brushing a further drift of psoriasis flakes from his shoulders and resumed his inspection of the street without.

  “But, Mr Holmes, everybody knows you are the brother of Sherlock Holmes, the great consulting detective. Everybody says your powers are superior to his. Surely you can lend your assistance to the resolution of this matter in your own club?”

  “I have no wish to be involved in this case, except in so far as I and my young friend Tobias here must be regarded as suspects as we seem to have been on the premises when the deed was done. I suggest you turn your attention to ensuring that nobody interferes with the body. You must also decide on a policy about the silence to be observed in the quarters of the Diogenes Club. I doubt if the police will take any notice of that rule, in which case the members may be placed in a difficult position.”

  “My God, Mr Holmes! I hadn’t thought of that. I shall go and stay with the body myself. As
for the rule of silence, The Club Rules, section five, paragraph three, clause four, say that the rules of the club about silence can only be changed by a special meeting of the rules sub committee, which needs a week’s notice to convene. God help us all!”

  A distraught Butterfield fled the field. Mycroft sighed deeply and lit one of his foul Virginia cigarettes.

  “I don’t like it, I don’t like it at all, Tobias. Policemen clomping about the place for days, the members irritated beyond belief because their routine has been broken, general confusion.”

  “Do we know who the dead man is, or was, or how he was killed, sir? That would seem to me to be relevant information.”

  “That nincompoop secretary was too distraught to tell us that. Why don’t you go and see what you can find out in the main reception, Tobias? One of the porters will surely know something.”

  Mycroft leant out of the window and watched as his smoke curled upwards and disappeared towards the top of the buildings in Pall Mall. Down below a detachment of Household Cavalry was trotting towards Marlborough House and St James’s Palace, resplendent in their white riding breeches and red tunics. The clatter of the horses’ hooves rattled through the general noises of the street and the long plumes of horse hair hanging from their brass helmets swayed behind them in the breeze.

  Ten minutes later Tobias was back, looking rather pale.

  “Tobias, my dear boy, you look distinctly unwell. Can I get you anything? Brandy? Glass of Armagnac?”

  “Sorry, sir,” said Tobias. “It’s just I’ve never seen a dead body before. I’ll be all right in a moment, sir.”

  “Are you sure I can’t get you a drink, Tobias?”

  “Well, sir, maybe a brandy would be helpful.” Tobias flopped into an armchair by the fire and brushed his hair off his forehead. He wondered suddenly how he was going to describe what he had seen to the fair Rosamund next time he was with her.

  A porter appeared bearing two large glasses of brandy. “Drink up, Tobias,” said Mycroft in his unaccustomed role of ministering angel to the afflicted, “take your time.”

  Tobias spluttered slightly as the brandy went down. Then he composed himself.

  “The dead man’s called Plunkett, William St John Plunkett, sir. Member here for over ten years. He’s lying near the foot of that great curving stair case, sir. There’s blood and what might be brains everywhere, sir. I saw one of the porters carrying off a rag or a tea towel that looked as though it was covered in blood to put it in the bin. It looks as if Mr Plunkett’s head was smashed open, or he could have fallen, or been pushed over the stairs from one of the higher floors. The Head Porter is telling anybody who would listen that he’s been warning the club officers for years that them stairs and reception area with all that bloody marble on the floor are a death trap, but nobody takes any notice. There are two porters on watch, sir, and a police sergeant arrived just as I was leaving, licking his pencil and waving his notebook about.”

  “Dear me,” said Mycroft sadly. “Funerals Plunkett gone. How sad.”

  “Funerals Plunkett, sir?”

  “What you have to remember, Tobias, is that the Diogenes Club contains in its membership one of the greatest, if not the greatest, collection of eccentrics in England. Funerals Plunkett’s favourite occupation was going to funerals. It didn’t matter if he knew the dead or not. He frequented three churches as far as I know, St James’s Piccadilly, St George’s Hanover Square and St Margaret’s Westminster. He had large boxes at his home full of the orders of service which he would peruse at his leisure, clad, as you might expect, in funereal black.”

  “Did he go the final interment as well, sir, the coffin lowered into the earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, all that stuff?”

  “No, he did not. He slipped away after the main service as soon as the coffin had been carried out of the church, Tobias. They say he had paid informants, vergers possibly, in all three places of worship.”

  “Let’s hope he gets a good turn out for his own, sir.”

  “His own what, Tobias?”

  “Why, his own funeral, sir. It would be a shame of he had swelled the attendance at all those other services and didn’t have a big congregation for his own.”

  Tobias began writing notes in his black book. “One other thing, sir. I nearly forgot. I found these two little pieces of silver lying on the ground in a corner of the Reception area. I don’t know if they’re important.”

  Mycroft examined them carefully and placed them in his waistcoat pocket.

  “You have done well, Tobias,” he said, and continued his examination of the street outside.

  The reader will forgive me at this point if I digress onto the particular lay-out of the Diogenes Club, for this topography was to have an important bearing on the case. In the basement were the Kitchens, the Cellar with a trapdoor leading onto the street above, Servant’s offices, the Club Secretary’s Office and Plato’s Cave. Plato’s Cave was, in fact, a small classical library with many philosophical volumes in the original Greek and Latin. New members were told in their written notes of introduction to the Club that they would have to take an examination into the thinking of the ancient philosopher Diogenes after one year of membership. Strange to relate, the dates of the examinations never seemed to arrive.

  On the Ground Floor, next to the Porter’s Lodge was the Stranger’s Room where members were allowed to speak. Then, to the left of the Great Marble Staircase and Reception, silence ruled in the Dining Room, directly above the kitchens and connected to each other by an ingenious system of lifts. Just off the Dining Room was the Secundus the Silent Room, named after a second century Athenian philosopher in the time of Hadrian who lived without speaking. This was a small private dining area with tables laid for one. On the right of the Great Staircase were the Bar and Morning Room, filled with comfortable armchairs where members could sleep off their lunches or their dinners without being disturbed.

  One floor above stood the Library, well represented with books on history and philosophy and enjoying a reciprocal loan arrangement with the London Library in St James’s Square. To the rear were the Smoking Room and the Coffee Room where light refreshments were available for most of the day.

  The Second floor was remarkable for an enormous space called The Study, which contained all the daily newspapers you could find in London, including many from the Great Powers of Europe and the United States. The cynics, of whom there were, alas, far too many in the Diogenes Club, used to say that if the Morning Post didn’t send you off to sleep, the New York Times certainly would, containing, as it boasted, all the news that’s fit to print. There was also a very small room off the Study which was only available to members with the permission of the Club Secretary. Just one member was allowed in at a time. It was known as the St John the Silent Room and had been funded by a Protestant Bishop who was a founder member of the club. The original St John the Silent spent many years in silent contemplation in an Armenian monastery in the fifth century, and the Bishop, an ascetic and spiritual churchman who leant heavily in the direction of Rome, intended to endow a room where individual members could retire for contemplation and meditation and the care of their immortal souls. Unfortunately, the chamber was little used for those purposes. The regularly inebriated found it an excellent place to sleep off their hangovers without being called up for snoring or other disreputable behaviour in the public rooms.

  Above were two floors of members’ bedrooms, the top floor right underneath the roof. Beyond the Great Staircase there was a lift to the upper and lower floors at the St James’s Palace end of the building. There was also a narrow staircase to the fifth floor at the opposite end to the lift, and, hidden from view, a servants’ staircase which enabled them to move about without disturbing the members.

  Loud footsteps could be heard approaching the Strangers Room.

  “Policeman’s boots, I fancy, Tobias,” said Mycroft, popping another Turkish Delight.

  “Mr Holmes! Young Tobias! How
nice to see you both!”

  Inspector Lestrade’s suit was no cleaner than before, the hat was still being twirled round in his hands, but the smile on his face would have lit up Piccadilly Circus.

  “Now then, Mr Holmes, this is a pretty state of affairs! I’ve got officers in all the rooms guarding the members here and they’re not leaving until I give the word. Some useless doctor is on his way to examine the body, a man called William St John Plunkett, they tell me. Why anybody would want to christen one of their own children St John beats me, Mr Holmes, but they say it takes all sorts. I’ve just popped in to invite you to accompany me on all my work here, talking to the bloody doctor, interviewing the people and so on. And I need your advice, urgently. I remember from the Silver Birches business that you are only allowed to speak in here in the Stranger’s Room where we are now. That’s no use to me in my profession, Mr Holmes. I need two rooms for the Sergeant and myself to interview all these silent people. What do you say?”

  “I’m grateful for your invitation, Lestrade,” said Mycroft, waddling slowly to the window to check that normal life continued outside. “I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly sit in on any interviews with other members of the club. It would put me in a most unfortunate position. I do have one suggestion about the interview rooms, Inspector. I am, as you will recall, a founder member of this establishment. I was involved in the drawing up of the singular constitution and so forth, the definition of the rules of silence - like some bloody monastery half way up a mountain as the first Chairman put it. I can tell you that Plato’s Cave, the small library in the basement, was established after the constitution was finalised. It could be argued that it is therefore outside the provisions of the original dispositions, and that you could take it over for interviews in this case.”

  “Capital, Mr Holmes. I shall go and seize it in the name of the Metropolitan Police Force!”

  Tobias coughed rather loudly as Lestrade was on his way to the door. “Please sir, Inspector Lestrade, sir, could I come with you for some of the time? Not for the interviews, of course, but for the other stuff like talking to the doctor? Working for Mr Holmes has given me a taste for investigations, sir, Inspector, sir.”