Mycroft pointed at the morning’s paper, sprawled across the table, with headlines about the attempt on Mussolini’s life.

“Brothers is dead,” he said. “In St Albans.”

The news jerked me out of the stilted conversation in my mind (… what might otherwise be described as blackmail operations). “St Albans? How on earth did he get there?”

“I do not know,” he said, his frustration under thin rein: Mycroft Holmes was not a man who waited to receive his information from the daily papers. “Sherlock decided it was worth the risk of venturing out, to see what he can learn.”

“To St Albans?”

“I believe he will make do with a telephone call to Lestrade. And before you ask, yes, he collected a disguise from downstairs.”

I picked up the newspaper that Goodman had brought us, and found it open to a brief note, little more than two column inches, concerning the identity of a man found dead of knife wounds in St Albans on Saturday.

Knife wounds. I read the sparse information with care, but it was only given space on the page because of the irresistible juxtaposition of an oddball religious leader and a brutal attack. The piquant touch of it being in St Albans rather than London or Manchester helped explain its appearance in a national newspaper.

Mycroft was in the kitchen, carving bread, cheese, and sausage into meticulous slices. “Did Holmes take Goodman with him?” I asked.

“I am not certain when Mr Goodman left, or where he was going.”

That sounded like Robert Goodman. I began to tell Mycroft what I had learnt, or failed to learn, over the telephone, when I was interrupted by a small noise from below. In a minute, Holmes threaded himself through the dumbwaiter hole. He was wearing a stiff collar with a pair of pince-nez on a ribbon around his neck, and had no doubt left the bowler hat downstairs: He’d been dressed as a solicitor’s clerk.

With an addition: He pulled from his pocket a bottle of Bass Ale and set it beside the sink.

Without comment, Mycroft added more bread to the platter and carried it through to the sitting room. I fetched three glasses, holding one under the froth that boiled up when Holmes opened the bottle.

“Estelle and Javitz are at the sea-shore,” I told him. “Damian, I’m not so sure about, partly because of language difficulties. I’m to telephone back to Tunbridge Wells at tea-time, and I’ll try the Dutch hotel again then as well.” I gave him the details of both conversations as he finished pouring and we took the glasses in to where Mycroft sat. Then it was Holmes’ turn.

“Brothers died of a single knife-wound in a nearly empty house in St Albans,” he said. “The police identified him by the distinctive scar beside his eye, although they are puzzled by the presence of both gunshot and knife-wounds on one man, particularly as the bullet wound had been treated and was in the process of healing. The fire had been left on in the room, which accelerated decomposition, but the coroner believes the man died on Tuesday or Wednesday. A neighbour saw two men get out of a taxi at the house on Tuesday afternoon. One of them had his left arm in a sling, which is how Brothers was found. She did not notice when they left.

“That’s Brothers out of the way-and, as far as our opponent is concerned, you as well, Mycroft. He’ll be aiming at Sosa, and I suppose me and Russell, before he can feel quite secure. I wonder how far he will go before he judges that he is free from threat? Will he remove Brothers’ assistant in Orkney? Perhaps a few key members of the church’s Inner Circle?”

“Surely he must at least suspect that you’re alive and Gunderson is dead?” I asked Mycroft. “Gunderson has been missing for five days, and you said yourself that evidence at the warehouse testifies to things having gone awry.”

“Short of digging up the grave, he can’t be certain that Gunderson didn’t deliver my corpse to the mortuary, then lose his nerve and flee. And without knowing what ‘precious object’ he possesses-or claims to possess-Sherlock and I decided it was best not to push our opponent too far. The last thing we want him to do is cut his losses and go invisible.”

“So you’ve changed your mind about going to the office this afternoon?”

“We have,” Holmes answered for his brother. “Russell, about your friend Goodman.”

“Yes, I’d have expected him to return before this.”

“He is a concern.”

“No,” I said flatly. I could tell from his tone what he was suggesting, and I would have none of it. “Robert Goodman would not give us away.”

“How can you know that?”

I turned my face to him. “Because you are Estelle Adler’s grandfather. There is some tie between those two, I can’t begin to explain it. But he would do nothing that would make her lot any worse. Nothing.”

“Then where is he?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s gone to see her.” It was a spur of the moment suggestion, but once it had come to mind, I had to say that it would be very like him, to turn his back on matters of monumental political import to go and play tea-party with Estelle. Had I mentioned Tunbridge Wells in his hearing? I might easily have done.

“Well, if he does return in time, how do you suggest we deploy the man? He is quite effective at the head of a marching band, but would he be of use in a tight place?”

“He would stand up for us, yes. But if you’re asking, would he use a gun?” I thought about the contents of the envelope Javitz had given me. In the end, I had to say, “I shouldn’t want to ask him. And I really wouldn’t want my life to depend on it.”

Chapter 66

We had little more than twelve hours to assemble a foolproof plan to save a life, and an empire. We resolutely turned our minds to the maps and drawings Holmes retrieved from Mycroft’s study downstairs, doing our best to ignore hunger, mistrust, and anxiety.

At four o’clock, I left the building to seek out another telephone. The powerful sense of release brought by hearing Javitz’s voice coming down the line was only somewhat countered by Estelle’s querulous demands that I produce Mr Robert. I assured her-several times-that I was doing the best I could, then distracted her with a question about how Dolly had enjoyed her visit to the sea-shore, and eventually convinced her to return Javitz to the conversation.

“This should be over tomorrow,” I told him. One way or the other.

“It would help if you could get Goodman to ring here,” he said, although I was relieved to hear him sounding resigned rather than desperate.

“I’ve, well, I don’t know where he is. In fact,” I hurried to say, “he may turn up down there. If he does, make sure you don’t let him talk you into coming back to Town before I’ve spoken with you.”

When I had rung off from Tunbridge Wells, it was time to try Holland again. This time, I was at the phone for nearly two hours, achieving two actual if short-lived connexions. A man came onto the line, and we quickly located a common language in French. Our first conversation, which lasted approximately forty-five seconds, determined that “Daniel de Fontaine” and his nurse were still registered at the hotel, although he wasn’t entirely certain where the two were at this time. However, they had placed a series of telephone calls to England for which he very much hoped M de Fontaine’s friends would guarantee payment since-

And we were cut off. I fear I shouted at the exchange operator, which never helps one’s cause, but eventually I was again speaking with the Dutch hotelier. I began by hastily assuring him that all his costs would be reimbursed, and more, by the young gentleman’s generous friends, but that I had to know where he was.

And at that, we reached an impasse. The man wasted a couple of minutes with a delicate description of how unfortunately short of funds these two guests appeared to be running, and was only slowly reassured by my increasingly desperate assertions that money was no problem. Finally, he permitted himself to be steered back into the matter at hand, namely, that the young gentleman had gone out walking on the Sunday afternoon-the two of them often went out walking, M de Fontaine seemed a great lover of the open air, although on this occasion the lady appeared to have chosen-