Originally built for Edward the Confessor in 1049, the Palace of Whitehall had been the residence of English monarchs until 1698, a fact that entirely failed to inspire Mycroft Holmes as he strode along little-used passageways to his office. The knowledge that he walked in the footsteps of a thousand years of royalty added not one scintilla of significance to his daily activities. On those occasions when he was in a hurry, he privately cursed the miles of hallways; the corridors of power had absolutely no business being so tediously long. Whitehall today was less a collection of individual buildings and more of a small town, looping its bureaucratic coils around central London from the Royal Courts of Justice in Fleet Street, all the way down to the Palace of Westminster. The profligate lianas of Whitehall stretched as far afield as Southbank and Lambeth. Whitehall preserved an outdated geographical prodigality and Mycroft loathed it with a passion.
The autonomous and relatively anonymous Department of British Security, of which he was Director, lay near the approximate heart of Whitehall, not terribly far from the old War Office building. This fact was doubly ironic since while his department's work was indeed critical and central to the security and wellbeing of Britain, the heart was an organ for which his people had very little professional use. And, despite it being a dreary and antiquated monstrosity, Whitehall was still the most practical and central location for all that needed to be done. Even given his aversion of the place, Mycroft knew every entrance, security door and fire escape on this side of the ancient palace, not to mention the quickest routes to his own office. Everything beyond those details was wearying un-knowledge he was perfectly content to do without. He had considered creating a security 'breach' in order to have reason to move himself and his people out, but that took time, of which he had little to spare. He was stuck, it seemed.
Until a burst water pipe over a long, hot weekend, which led to the inundation of three floors of adjacent rooms, which led swiftly to wet, then saturated, then rotting insulation as the taint of decay spread intricate blossoms of mould across antiquated walls and ancient carpet. At the same time, a minor plague of especially ravenous mice, flooded out of their previously dry and comfortable quarters, made their presence known in a variety of increasingly delightful ways.
"What in God's name is that awful stench?" Monday morning first thing, in before the rest of the team, Andrea set several thick files on Mycroft's desk, staring at him as if he were the source of her olfactory distress. Walking around his office sniffing the air, as if to more precisely pinpoint the cause of the reek, she ended up standing directly beneath one of the high, wall-mounted air vents. There was a noisome quality about the thing. Lifting a hand, she pointed directly at the offending article. "If someone is attempting to gas you, Mycroft, sitting at your desk signing stuff is unlikely to rectify the situation very quickly. What are you doing about it?"
Signing a report with slightly more of a flourish than was strictly necessary, Mycroft said nothing, his eyes glancing up to the offending air vent, as if it might have conveniently decided to vanish in the five minutes since he'd last looked.
"I have already spoken to the Head of Premises," he continued to autograph papers with a blithe disregard, as if such an activity rendered the air around him as fragrant as lilies. "There was a problem with flooding over the weekend as a result of a damaged water pipe," he signed the last of the letters and lifted his eyes to an aggrieved assistant who, even as he spoke, clutched both hands across her face.
"I can't work in this," she mumbled behind the shielding hands. "I think I'm going to be sick."
Throwing down his pen and rolling his eyes, Mycroft picked up the black phone to the right of his desk and called the Head of Premises once more.
"Charles? Mycroft Holmes, again. I suspect there may be a small riot in my department today if I expect people to work in this unsavoury environment. Do you have any good news for me?" There was some faint murmuring, after which a faintly optimistic expression lifted Mycroft's eyebrows. "By tomorrow? That might be acceptable. Where?" Nodding and turning to meet Andrea's still-masked face, he replaced the phone into the handset.
"Come with me," Mycroft stood, buttoning his jacket.
"Where are we going?" Andrea risked uncovering her face long enough to ask the question.
"Premises have offered us the use of the King's Dining Room as a temporary base of operations for the few days it will take to clean up the mess and fumigate the entire area," he said, pausing. "There's only one small problem."
Unwilling to risk a second inhalation of noxious fumes, Andrea left her hands where they were and raised her eyebrows.
"I don't know where the King's Dining Room is."
"Then why are you asking me to go with you if you don't know where we're supposed to be going?"
A small but superior smile curving the ends of his mouth, Mycroft said nothing but beckoned his assistant out of his office and along one of the interminable corridors. "It's this way."
They walked in silence for about twenty feet before Andrea risked breathing normally. "And we are going where?" she asked, turning to look at his face, as if Mycroft's expression might explain everything. It did, sometimes.
"The Head of Premises assured me the King's Dining Room was a large, rectangular space, easily capable of hosting our entire department for the next week. Apparently, it's in this general direction ..." Mycroft waved vaguely into the distance.
"Then, let's go," Andrea had no time to waste, even if he did. They proceeded at a smart pace along the corridor, peering at each brass-plated door they saw.
"Perhaps it's down here," Mycroft took a right down a completely empty hallway. "If it was once a dining room, it presupposes it might be near a kitchen of some kind. It's very probably in this area, as I happen to know there was a large kitchen-type space around here ... somewhere ..." Pausing, Mycroft looked around. There were no doors in the featureless walls. Nor were there any indications of either a disused kitchen or a large, rectangular chamber. Not much, in fact, of anything.
"Since we came down that way," Andrea gestured at the passageway behind them, "then surely, we need to continue in this direction, if the room's along here?"
"Of course," Mycroft moved with assurance, striding out once more in the quiet early morning of Britain's central government edifice. Following the endless corridor as far as it went, they arrived at a dead-end in what appeared to be an ancient pre-war cloakroom. Turning around, they were faced with two utterly identical passageways, only one of which had any visible doors.
Ah.
"Not only do you not know the whereabouts of this big room you want me to see, but you're probably lost now, aren't you?" Andrea folded her arms and gave him a Look.
"I am most certainly not lost." Even though he was completely lost, Mycroft knew how important it was to preserve the image of confidence. "The specified location has to be down here," he nodded to himself, setting off down the wider of the two identical passageways towards a wide doorway in the middle of a long blank panelled wall. After the uncertainty of the last few minutes, it looked tantalisingly possible.
"And here we are," Mycroft paused outside the unexpectedly imposing double-doors.
"You're guessing," Andrea's tone held more than a note of scepticism.
"Voilà." Throwing open both doors simultaneously, Mycroft stepped into a gloriously overwhelming room ... no, not a room, a stateroom of such extravagant wondrousness that it was impossible to limit one's gaze to a single spot.
"A bit grand, isn't it?" Andrea wandered towards the centre of the great chamber, the vast gold-and-scarlet carpet beneath her feet, as fine and vibrant as the day it had been laid, glowing with early sunshine through the east-facing windows, stained glass windows, as tall as a house. And it was, indeed, a magnificent hall.
With the tall windows to the east and an enormous open fireplace in the north and south ends of the chamber, the upper heights of all three non-windowed walls were host to a splendid array of gold-framed oil portraits of royals and heads of noble families; the aristocracy of many generations filled the space of the great room almost to the fabulously carved and gilded ceiling high above their heads.
As Andrea took her time walking around the place, absorbing the ambiance, Mycroft was assessing the space in terms of security and confidentiality, neither of which seemed at all possible, even as a temporary measure, in an open plan environment such as the King's Dining Room might provide. He shook his head, no; this would not do at all. The place was too big, utterly bereft of any privacy whatsoever. A security nightmare, this would be an impossible workspace. Just one more Whitehall extravagance he could well do without.
"Mycroft," Andrea stood in the far corner, almost directly beneath one of the massive windows. She was staring at one of the large paintings, heavily framed in thickly gilded plaster. It portrayed a man, well-dressed, ornamented and clearly important, sitting on a big black horse, holding an unsheathed sword in his right hand and a sealed and beribboned scroll of paper in his left. Impressively groomed and robed, the man's dark hair and beard was elegantly trimmed, a great cape hanging from one shoulder and a generous Elizabethan-style ruff shielding his neck. Though it wasn't the man's outfit that had caught Andrea's eye, but the uncanny likeness to a certain individual, right down to the dark blue gaze. "Come and have a look at this one," she beckoned. Standing directly beneath the large painting, Mycroft knew at a glance who the man was, having a similar, though smaller portrait, at home.
"Sir Rodger Holmes-à-Court, 1589 to 1659," he nodded. "My many times Great Uncle Rodger."
For once speechless, Andrea simply turned and stared.
"Used to oversee Queen Elizabeth's messenger pigeons," Mycroft smiled. "The first Elizabeth."
"So it runs in the family, then?" Andrea remained gazing upwards.
"I suppose it does, in a way," Mycroft raised his eyes once more to his ancestor some fifteen generations removed. It seemed suddenly fitting that he should be in this place.
"I think I'll have my desk in this corner, in that case," he smiled, tapping his phone into life.