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“All the more reason,” he said, and before either of us could stop him, his other hand had worked the latch and he was putting his shoulder to the hidden door.
This time, I put my hand on Holmes’ arm.
We waited for this peculiar man to make a second leisurely survey of Mycroft’s flat. No shouts came, no gunshots. In a minute he was back, again holding an apple with a bite missing.
“Someone’s been here,” he commented indistinctly, then dropped into a chair, picking up an abandoned book from the nearby table.
Holmes shoved the door open, and I followed him inside.
At first, I could see no evidence of intrusion past the disorder I had myself left. Then: The chair I had used to prop under the door-handle was not as I remembered leaving it. Lestrade’s note, which I had left in case Holmes came here, lay at a different angle. And the bowl of fruit-surely there was more than one apple missing?
The sitting-room window made it imprudent to turn on those lights, but the kitchen had doors. I made my way there, let the doors swing shut, and switched on a small light.
Yes: Someone had been here since I searched the room the previous afternoon.
In a few minutes, Holmes’ voice came from without. “Was the revolver still in his bedside table when you were here yesterday?”
“Yes-is it missing now? Here-hold on a moment,” I said. I dimmed the light to let him in, then turned it on again. “The tea caddy is empty, an assortment of foodstuffs are missing, and the chair Mrs Cowper sits in has been moved a few inches. Also, the pills she puts on his tea-tray every morning? The bottles had more in them yesterday.”
He stared at me, then through me, a look I knew well. “What did you tell me about the key?”
“That Robert found? I merely speculated that the hiding of both key and letter-with the capital I on Interpreter-were intended to combine into a message that the key is in the interpreter. Or as it turned out, the key is the interpreter. Rather, his wife.”
The expression that dawned across Holmes’ face gave lie to his assertions of optimism. His face was transformed, and his eyes rose to the ceiling, as if thanking God. With an almost child-like glee, he rubbed his hands together as his gaze darted around the room, coming to rest on the royal portrait behind the housekeeper’s misplaced chair.
The dumbwaiter, the height of modern amenities when it was installed a generation ago, had proved more trouble than benefit for most of the building’s residents. Mycroft’s renovations this past year had included a panel screwed to the wall over its opening, but he had not blocked the hole entirely, merely hung over it Mrs Cowper’s portrait of His Majesty King George V.
Holmes jerked open the cutlery drawer for a knife, then crossed the room in three broad strides to attack the panel’s screws. Two turns of the wrist and a screw fell away. He bent to retrieve it, holding it out on his palm: The full-sized head was attached to a mere half-inch of shaft. The screw had been sawed off until it was no thicker than the panel.
All six screws had received the same treatment, and none of them had any function but appearance, but when he jabbed the silver blade under the edge of the panel, it did not give. And not, as I first thought, because it had been painted shut: The panel was held in place from the back.
At home, we could instantly lay our hands on a wide variety of tools suitable for burglary or architectural destruction, but Mycroft had never gone in for the practical side of his profession. Still, Mrs Cowper kept a well-equipped kitchen: I hoped I never had to explain to her what we had done to her meat mallet and butcher-knife.
Dish-towels and pot-holders helped muffle the sound of splintering wood, but we had to shut off the lights once to fetch a large pillow from the sitting room, and a second time when the inquisitive Goodman requested entrance.
Finally, the panel’s i
When he stepped away, he looked as proud as ever a brother could be. He held out the torch, and I took his place.
Where there once would have dangled sturdy ropes joining the box to its pulley device at the top, there was now nothing but a dusty square shaft that reminded me of the emergency exits of some of the bolt-holes. Its roominess surprised me until I called to mind the box that travelled up and down: It had thick, insulated walls, and even then was big enough for…
I twisted about, as Holmes had done, and saw them: narrow boards, some ten inches apart, bolted to the wall beside the entrance and disappearing upwards into the gloom. It looked almost like-
“A ladder!” I withdrew my head and met Holmes’ dancing grey eyes. “Oh, surely not. Mycroft couldn’t climb those.”
“Last year’s Mycroft, no. But this year’s model?”
“Good heavens. You don’t imagine…”
“That my brother decided to shed weight in order to use this? It would require considerable determination and foresight.”
Mycroft’s Russian-doll of a mind, renovating a kitchen to conceal the noise and dust of building one secret entrance, at the same time creating another, even more closely hidden one.
Goodman had nudged me aside to look at our find. His height made it difficult to see, so he dragged Mrs Cowper’s chair over to climb on. He thrust his torso inside. In a moment, his hand came back, holding a wide metal strip with a small hook at one end.
Holmes examined it, then bent to fit the hook into the wire mounted on the portrait. “It’s a means of replacing the king before the door is fully shut,” he said.
“Where does the shaft come out?” I asked Holmes, keeping my voice low. “Is the basement kitchen still in use?”
“I believe he was interested less in the depths than what lies above.”
“What is that?”
“The Melas flat,” Holmes replied with satisfaction. Then his face changed as he lunged past me, too late for the second time in minutes.
“Goodman, stop!” he hissed, his hand locked on the Green Man’s ankle. Goodman did not retreat, nor did he reply, he merely waited, giving Holmes no choice but to let go. He thumbed the torch on and climbed through on the small man’s heels, with me bringing up the rear and praying that the boards had in fact held Mycroft’s weight, and could thus be trusted to hold a series of lesser bodies. It was at least forty feet to the ground, and I had two men above me.
The torch in Holmes’ hand bounced madly, illuminating nothing so much as the soles of Goodman’s shoes. I had only gone up a few feet when everything came to a halt. Trying simultaneously to cling to the wall and peer around Holmes, I saw Goodman’s left hand exploring the wall beside the ladder, a storey above Mycroft’s kitchen. Holmes stretched his arm back so the light fell on the wall; I heard a faint click.
Sudden light flooded the shaft, and Goodman leant forward to place his hand on the lower edge of the entrance.
Then he froze, his weight braced on one hand, suspended above our heads.
Holmes shifted, and said in a low voice, “Mycroft? If that is you, kindly put away your gun and allow Mr Goodman to enter.”
The light dimmed somewhat as a figure appeared through the hole in the shaft wall. “My dear Sherlock. And Mary, too, I see. Yes, reports of my demise were somewhat exaggerated. I trust you brought di