Death on a Pale Horse - By Donald Thomas Page 0,87

he glanced sideways at a passer-by who in his opinion had no business to be there. As Sherlock Holmes once remarked, his brother had a gift of conveying to the rest of the human race that he wished it were anywhere at that moment except in his presence.

Of course, Sherlock Holmes himself cared nothing for public life, let alone for ceremony or public men. The large and reassuring buildings of government and administration left him cold. Early in our friendship, he had promised me that a nation was better led by a rogue than a reformer.

We turned into Downing Street and went up a broad flight of granite steps to another pair of glass doors. Mycroft paused at the top and jerked his thumb towards the prime-ministerial residence at No. 10.

“You may care to know, Brother, that a crossing-sweeper is still employed to clear a path across this street once every afternoon at 3 P.M. It is in order that Sir Robert Peel’s boots shall be kept clean when the Prime Minister approaches his official residence. The fellow receives a lifetime pension to carry out his work—protecting the boots of a Prime Minister who has been in his grave these thirty years.”

“You don’t say?”

“Tradition dies hard, does it not? And a good thing too!”

A uniformed porter pulled open a glass door with his left hand and saluted Mycroft with his right. Within the domed lobby of the great building rose a double circular staircase, deeply carpeted in red to deaden our footsteps. I thought that their Lordships of the Treasury certainly did themselves pretty well.

A second porter was positioned on the landing, outside an entrance of white-painted panels, for fear that Mycroft Holmes should be tempted to over-exert himself by opening his own office doors.

As we stepped inside, I could see why my friend’s brother was content to pass his life in these surroundings. His office was a long and elegant Georgian study with a white barrel-vaulted ceiling. Handsome bookshelves rose from floor to ceiling. Beyond its oriel window, there was a fine view of the park towards Buckingham Palace with the Royal Standard at its flagstaff rippling in a light breeze. The distance from the office door to his wide desk with its green-leather inlay seemed almost the length of a cricket pitch. And if this Permanent Under-Secretary should feel the need of a breath of fresh air, a private balustraded balcony in white Purbeck stone extended outside his window.

The porter carried away our overcoats and hats. Mycroft summoned his three secretaries. One was sent to fetch tea. The second was to inform the Attorney General that, most regrettably, the Prime Minister had found it necessary to postpone their discussion of the Government of India Bill until the next day. The third was to tell the Prime Minister that the Attorney General was unavoidably detained by a deputation of lawyers in the House of Commons on proposed amendments to the Supreme Court of Judicature Act. In two minutes the business of the nation was deftly set aside and Mycroft’s official appointments had been abolished.

When tea had been poured, our host faced us and came at once to the point.

“We have recorded four relevant events in the murders of Captain Jahleel Brenton Carey and the Prince Imperial. If you do not mind, dear Brother, we will take them in reverse order. That is the sequence by which we were alerted to this conspiracy.”

I noticed that this was the first time the elder brother had used the word “conspiracy.” He did not yet say precisely what the aim of such a plot might be. Sherlock Holmes shrugged and Mycroft relaxed.

“First of all there was the discovery of the body of a so-called Private Arnold Levens in the Calcutta Drainage Canal, several hundred miles from where he had last been heard of in Hyderabad. Private Levens was one of the four men in a fatigue party commanded by Captain Brenton Carey at the striking of tents in the 98th Regiment’s depot at Hyderabad.”

“And what took Levens to Calcutta?” I inquired.

“Concealment, doctor. He was signed for as one of three privates and a corporal, unaccountably presenting themselves from a pioneer corps, when Captain Brenton Carey was mortally injured. The only men with a clear view of what happened on that side of the wagon were Levens and another private by the name of Moss. After the tragedy, Levens’s name was taken as a witness. Thereupon, he and Moss absconded. It sometimes happens that