A Malversation of Mummies
OK, this is to all of us who felt a certain movie is a Really Bad Idea. Someone somewhere, ladies and gentlemen, is ALWAYS having a much worse day than you are.
And the following tale proves it.
Malversation, by the way, is a noun for misconduct; corruption; misuse of public or other funds.
-
It was a chilly winter day; crime was all but absent in the interests of staying warm and alive…and Sherlock Holmes was housebound, convalescing…and bored. Three words that only managed to strike terror when used together while in the same sentence as 'Sherlock Holmes'.
Dr. Watson regretted that he would have to forego his own warmth in the interests of his lodger staying alive if he was forced to spend ten more minutes in his closest friend's company.
To do him credit, Holmes had not been consciously maddening.
Then again, Holmes rarely is…I can scarce believe I miss his chemical experiments.
"Holmes…I'm going out." Watson said at last, and rose to his feet.
Holmes blinked drowsily from his usual chair. The lassitude of his entire body should have screamed the presence of some infernal drug, but even morphine and cocaine could not compete with the great detective when he was falling into a black mood.
Three days of this while the storm raged about London. Holmes had fretted from his sickbed—a sickbed that was all his own doing. Ignore his body and pay the consequences, and was it truly that important to get the particulars about that French coiner so quickly? It wasn't as though anyone could travel the Channel back to the Continent with blizzard conditions over the waters…
Too late, Watson had realized Holmes' energy had been a frantic way of keeping his encroaching black mood at bay. There was nothing for it now but for the two of them to live with the consequences of hot soup, warm fires, and whatever mental activity that could keep Holmes' brain above the level of the lower orders of the animal kingdom.
Needless to say, Holmes had taken the lack of crime badly; even Christmas was good for some imaginative forays into illegal intelligence, but this was just the plain ordinary sort of bad weather where it made more sense to burrow down and keep warm.
The detective was grossly unappreciative of the lull in murder, assault, kidnapping, theft, and blackmail.
Watson had been the reluctant audience to this since the beginning. He wavered between the wild hope that something would baffle the Yard and they would come…and the knowledge that Holmes' open glee at having a bloody mess to unravel would unravel a tenuous relationship with the police. Police liked to solve crimes; they didn't like to have them. Gregson avoided 221B for months, sometimes years at a time; Hopkins was half-terrified of calling Holmes in on something frivolous. MacDonald was off on a case on the other side of the island (the worst side, in Watson's opinion as his war wounds were no lover of bitter Hebridonian north winds); Morton had been on extended recovery since his malicious wounding by anarchists, and after that, there weren't too many detectives left. Youghal, they'd heard, was undercover over the latest Fenian disaster. Poor man. He lived in England, not Ireland, by choice.
Lestrade still came by, both to visit and to share the news at the Yard—a sort of verbal telegraph station. Holmes wouldn't admit it, but he looked forward to knowing what was going on, even if he scolded the little man for telling his stories backwards, or forgetting important details. Lestrade took it all in stride, which was rather at odds with his general reputation at the Yard itself. Between the two men, the usual rules of conduct were suspended. Watson understood it on a deep level, but was at a loss to explain it.
If only someone could come by with a problem. A non-fatal problem, something bizarre, something out of the ordinary…something urgent. Something that Holmes could solve without taxing his system by going outside…
Gnashing his teeth, Watson yanked the frozen door open with all his strength and found himself staring cross-eyed at a gloved fist that had just managed to stop from pounding the space where his face had replaced the dimensions of the door.
"Good heavens!" Inspector Lestrade gasped. His breath steamed in the cold. "What's wrong, doctor? An emergency case?"
"Yes." Watson sighed. "Do come in, Inspector…" he made room for the small man and made certain the coat-rack had space. "I was about to go get a newspaper."
"I wouldn't bother." Lestrade grimaced. "The newspapers aren't going to be printing for another set of hours at least."
Watson stopped in his tracks. "I beg your pardon?" He stared. "The evening papers always come at…" His voice trailed off. "Has something happened?" He asked at last. Lestrade was not looking his usual self, which was as dapper in demeanor to match his clothing. "And, err…" A strange scent reminiscent of an abandoned leather factory hung ever so faintly about his clothing. "Lestrade…where have you been?"
"That's part of the reason why the papers are delayed." Lestrade answered. He seemed strangely undisturbed, but then, Lestrade always swore he never had the time to read the rags—especially the ones that talked much about the Yard in less than glowing terms. "Is Mr. Holmes in?"
Watson snorted; it was an automatic reaction. "Yes, I'm afraid so." He rubbed at the tight band at his temples. "I warn you he's in fine fettle, Inspector."
"Really." Lestrade's expression suddenly looked a great deal happier. That was a warning sign if there ever was one. "Is he on a case then?"
"No, quite the opposite. I thought a newspaper would distract him a bit before supper…" For the second time, his voice trailed off. "And now there's a delay." I wonder what the pubs are like right now.
Lestrade only looked happier. "Has his Detective Doldrums? I just might have a cure for that."
"It doesn't involve chess games that turn into vicious scrums afterward, does it?"
"Tsk. Don't dignify what happened at Lord Beckett's as 'scrum' my good man. That was nothing less than total annihilation, and you ought to know; we were both in it." The little man flashed a grin at the doctor. It was the sort of grin that would come from a hard, working-class man who has been suddenly given an outlet for years of frustrations. Not every man would consider a brutal free-for-all with hired thugs a gift from the gods; but when it came to Lestrade…He didn't even take broken bones personally.
Watson caught himself smiling in return. "One of these days we'll have to tell Holmes about that." He confessed. "Do you suppose it would alleviate some of his mood?"
"No, let's save that story for when we really need it." Lestrade smirked. "And I'll use my day's story on our friend upstairs." He paused. "You might want to take notes for this one. It was a snorter, to use MacDonald's favourite word."
Instincts for trouble died hard; Watson pulled his coat back off to join Lestrade's and the two ascended the stairs.
-
Holmes had caught from the murmurs down the stairs that someone had come to visit, and that it was Lestrade. His evening visits were not an uncommon event; Holmes found himself looking forward to the distractions although Watson was just content to have the company.
He was still frustrated at the man; he had some small talent for his work but he was resolutely blind and deaf to the world and its clues. He could recognize when something was amiss…but why it was amiss in the first place he couldn't say. It was maddening.
"…bring up some tea," Watson was saying as he pushed the door open.
"Thank you," Lestrade breathed as he pulled his hat off. "Mr. Holmes. I'm afraid I have some bad news to deliver."
By the time Lestrade had finished speaking; Holmes had shot his eyes to his cuffs, collar, trouser-legs and trouser-cuffs. For this time of year the detective was unusually clean; scrupulously so, which meant he hadn't been sent on one of his usual mud-spattered jobs.
Being clean in London was not an easy task; if there was a personable trait the two detectives shared, it was that they both would prefer to be as clean as cats given the choice…not that they often were! So there was something out of the ordinary already.
As the men moved closer into the room, Lestrade dallied by the fire with his outstretched hands. With that movement a peculiar odor emanated from his clothing. It was subtle; like cologne applied yesterday with only the base notes remaining. Holmes' eyes widened and he sat up. He did not know that odor. For the first time in years, he had encountered something new.
"By all means, Lestrade if you have bad news, best to get it over with." As he spoke his eyes sought clues to the man's new strangeness. So far there were none; a case that had kept him indoors for most of the day. Lestrade was tired; he pressed his weight on his good foot. But he was clean of any traces of mischief. And that odor…
"Well, as I was telling the good doctor, the papers will be delayed a few hours. It can't be helped I'm afraid, and it's partly involved with the work I had to do today—" A memory crossed his face and he gulped hard; his diaphragm clenching for a moment in reflex. "Beg your pardon." Lestrade apologized. "I've had a day that I don't ever care to repeat ever again. Ever. It's been decades since I last dealt with a case of stolen mummies."
"'Mummies?'" Watson blurted—saving Holmes the reflex of repeating that last word. "Lestrade, did I hear you correctly?"
"Lord, yes." Lestrade sank down in the settee opposite from Holmes. "Just a moment…" He fished in his pocket and pulled out two small objects. "Here, Mr. Holmes. What would you make of this?"
It was an instantaneous change. Holmes' grey eyes sparkled, for he had never been able to resist that question when it was posed to him.
Watson vanished from his spot at the library-table and re-materialized at his elbow. Lestrade thought the two men looked rather alike in moments like this; curiosity was not the only glue that bound them together, but it was a very powerful one.
The boxes were opened and arranged side by side in Holmes' lap. The contents were familiar to any doctor.
"Human bones," Watson exclaimed. "fragments of the skull. But they appear to be two different skulls."
"They are stained differently." Holmes agreed. "I see that the one on the left is very black and shiny. Bitumen, perhaps? I would conduct a chemical test to be absolutely certain. The other is more ochrous in colour, softer in appearance and…he peered closer. "Would that be pitch?"
Lestrade had been smiling through this exchange, with the air of a man who has accomplished something. "Very good. Which one would you say is the genuine Egyptian mummy fragment, and which one would be the forgery?"
"Lestrade," Watson protested as Holmes promptly dived into the challenge. "Why would someone go through the trouble of forging a mummy? Surely the museum would not pay so much for the genuine article."
"You're right, they do not. Museums will not pay for something they can get for pennies from their cousin living abroad who knows a nice grave-robber down the road." Lestrade's voice was somewhat sarcastic. "One of our former men in the Yard, Inspector Tomlinson, I don't know if you've ever met him—"
"Wounded in the line of duty at the wharfs by a man who did not know he was ambushing a policeman in the dark." Holmes interrupted. "1880, March I believe…forced to take an early retirement from the Metro."
Lestrade nodded, respect tinged with regret at the memory. For someone who said so few good things about his professionals, Holmes had every incident committed to his memory. That was something even the Home Office didn't do.
"Quite so. But he was hale enough to find work as a commissionaire; he'd done some early service for the Queen before taking the badge…and he operates at the British Museum. They put him in the Natural History section right enough. The stuffed sharks don't bother him like they do some of the other Johnnys, and soon enough he was trusted with the truly valuable exhibits."
Lestrade hesitated as Mrs. Hudson tapped on the door with the tea-tray. He shut his mouth with a loud click and waited on tenterhooks as Watson thanked her for her time. Holmes made no notice of his housekeeper; he was busy studying the bones.
"Do go on, Inspector."
"Well, it was a sordid enough little story. Someone entrusted with responsibility he didn't deserve had been taking advantage of his access within the vaults of the Museum. Research project, he said. What he was doing was taking advantage of what was lying forgotten in storage…thank you." Lestrade took his tea gratefully. "Thank you very much. This is the first thing I've felt like ingesting all day."
That suggested un-pleasantries to Watson. He glanced at Holmes, who was thinking along the same lines. A loss of appetite…mummies…corruption…none of this appeared to be a savoury sort of stew.
"I hate cases that involve people who have been dead for more than three hundred years," the little Yarder muttered into his cup. "It's all so dreadfully complicated. The paperwork alone…"
Watson cleared his throat. He sympathized entirely. "Why were you picked for the case, then?" He wondered. "I understand you can turn down a few cases if you feel you're out of your depth."
"Depth had nothing to do with the mess, doctor!" Lestrade cried indignantly. "I was the last one on the staff qualified to identify the mummies as forgeries…it isn't something you actually take a course in at the local Academy."
"I would imagine not, which is a shame." Holmes mused. "A little education never hurt anyone."
"You never met my parents." Lestrade answered gloomily. "They saw education ruin their first two children…they weren't going to repeat their mistakes a third time..." He downed his cup. Watson was ready with the teapot…and something stronger to go with it.
"Who else, might I inquire, would be qualified to identify forged mummies—and for that matter, how does one add that experience to one's portfolio?" Holmes laced his long fingers together, leaning forward slightly in his interest.
"You have to rather be involved in previous mummy-forging cases to really get the experience…" Lestrade shuddered. "I was a Bobby on the beat back in 1871 when I had my time. Inspector Davids was the man on that case."
"Ah, The Wonderful Welshman," Holmes smiled, oblivious to the grimace on Lestrade's face. "One of the brightest minds of his generation."
"That he was. He needed help from the uniforms, and when there was time, he'd show us what he was doing. It was a shabby little business, with the ordinary sort of smuggling relics." Lestrade took a drink of 'doctored' tea and visibly relaxed. "Every time I see a canopic jar, I have a bad start. Saw too many of them…with their original contents."
"Who else besides yourself has had experience with identifying mummies?" Watson wanted to know. That old curiosity gleamed in his eyes. He did love a good story, and this was threatening to be quite the tale.
"Normally there's enough of us around, but. Well. This case…Gregson has a rotten sinus infection…Morton has some experience but he's down with a bad case of the influenza…and Inspector Brown has the ordinary common cold. I'm the only one left on duty that can take Inspector Davids' training to all of this. I'd planned to show Hopkins and Youghal the ropes, but Inspector Brown gave them what he has, and that's that. I'm hoping these samples will be enough for when they recover. It's really better when you're dealing with a complete mummy, not just the bits and pieces left over."
Holmes tilted his head, peering sharply at the relics, and then back at Lestrade. "You have failed to mention why the mummies in the British Museum were of interest in the first place."
"Just a moment." Lestrade lifted a finger, reached around, and pulled his hip-flask out. "No offense, but I've been around enough things today that there's no sense in keeping any uninvited guests alive in my bloodstream," He warned. "All right, where was I? The mummies." He coughed slightly. "An even twelve in all. Some sort of minor priest's family, name's got a vowel in every other letter…at the risk of sounding sacrilegious, every generation had a priest in the family, and they went to their glory in style." He shrugged. "They'd been stripped of their gewgaws before any of us were ever born, but still, people convince themselves there's something left to steal if only they can find it. They'll make off with the whole thing and smash it open with hammers, looking for what, I don't know." Lestrade shuddered again. So did Watson.
"The bloomin' fool in charge of the department had come across something in the archives that was about as worthless as worthless gets. A crate of forged mummies that had been bought by the Museum by a curator who had gone senile in stages."
"Oh, no." Watson's eyes were large as shooting marbles. "Lestrade are you saying there was a case of switching the mummies?"
"Who was going to look at the embarrassment of a crate of fake mummies?" Lestrade shrugged practically. "One by one, they were switched out and when there was time…well, that's when he started on his real work—selling the mummy parts in pieces." With a rather jaded flourish he pulled out his shorthand notebook. "Good thing Gregson's paperwork isn't affected by his sense of smell. He's putting together quite the little collection of cults and bizarre little clubs staffed by people with more money than sense. D'you have any idea what the little fools will pay for a skull? A week's wages for a Constable. And they don't even know if they have the real article or not!"
Holmes chuckled. It would seem such thoughts had occurred to him in the past, and they still amused him. "The difficulties of being wealthy." He noted.
Lestrade snorted. "That's merely one particular headache I'll never have to nurse." He said with feeling. "By the time Tomlinson saw what was going on, about half the mummies had been switched, and half of those had been broken up. Do you want to know the good news?" He didn't wait for a response. "We couldn't press the man on selling the false mummies, merely transfer it into a count of fraud—"
"Why, for heaven's sake?" Watson demanded.
Lestrade shook his head sadly. "Couldn't upset the Board." He told them. "The orders were down from the Home Secretary. One more delicate case that no one wants to touch." A sudden thought crossed his face, making it darken with a sour emotion. "I swear they're trying to get rid of me," he said under his breath. Watson mixed another cup of tea. "Thank you." Despite the already ingested amounts, Lestrade was barely flushed. It made Holmes wonder about the quality of Lestrade's day…
"They were all in a box that was dropped—by accident, I was told."
"Do you believe it was an accident?" Holmes' eyebrows belied his own belief.
"Anything's possible. I wasn't there when it happened."
"Ah. Do go on."
"Not much more to tell." Lestrade suddenly cleared his throat again; that nauseated look was back in his eye. "I had to sort out the genuine mummy from the imitation mummy, so we could have a better idea of how many charges of forgery, fraud, and theft we were dealing with."
Holmes studied the boxes a moment. Mrs. Hudson emerged with the supper tray. With more optimism than the thrift borne of experience, she had put out a plate for Watson, Lestrade, and Holmes.
"Holmes, do try to eat something." Watson urged, at the risk of humiliating the man before Lestrade.
"You're assuming he'll want to eat after this." Lestrade said darkly. "It's been ten hours since I last had anything. I'm only just starting to feel human again."
Watson gave them both his best stern expression. "You both need to eat." He directed. "Holmes, because he is recovering; Lestrade, because you don't want to be where Holmes is right now."
"That's a devil of a bedside manner, doctor."
"I learned it in Afghanistan."
"Well," Holmes lifted his head. "From the physical examination of the samples you have shown me, I would presume that a simple chemical test would determine if the mummy is genuine, for I would suspect the forgeries can be quite clever."
"Genuine mummies were full of bitumen," Lestrade agreed. "But that's only one of the tests. False mummies smelt of pitch when they were lit."
"Hmmmn, one could hardly test the British Museum's property by setting a flame to it!" Holmes smiled. "And one could hardly test all the broken-up pieces, as you described."
"But what's left?" Watson wondered. "If it isn't by sight…and it isn't by chemical test, how does one determine the false from the true?"
Lestrade winced. "I…are you certain you want to know, doctor?"
"How bad can it be?" Watson wondered—just before he caught on to Holmes' expression. "Holmes?"
Without saying a word, Holmes rose gracefully to his feet, gently deposited the boxes on the chemistry-table, and went to the little drawer where his private stock was kept. Before his silent audience he selected a bottle that Watson knew was only for the most strident of occasions, and wordlessly filled Lestrade's flask with it.
"Err…thank you." Lestrade said hesitantly. A 200-year old brandy was rather out of his usual league.
"Not at all." Holmes said firmly. "Have some supper. Mrs. Hudson has a way with curried chicken."
Watson was primed to explode.
Holmes tucked his hands inside the pockets of his mouse-coloured dressing gown and exhaled to the ceiling. "Our friend can tell us if I am correct in my deductions…but you said earlier that Gregson, who was qualified, had a sinus infection. Later on you said that Gregson's paperwork was not affected by his sense of smell, but I get ahead of myself. It merely reinforced the suspicions I began to gather when all the other Inspectors you mentioned were either disqualified from identifying the mummies, or were un-trainable because they had common colds or something similar."
Horror dawned reluctantly upon Watson's face. "Lestrade," he croaked. "Did you have to…smell the mummies?"
Lestrade ran his finger around his collar. "It's the forgeries that have that the bad odor," he admitted. "The real articles…they almost smell pleasant." He suddenly shrugged and took another drink. "Almost. It's not like you can forget what it is you've got in your nose."
"Oh…" Watson spoke in a voice that was far too small for a man of his size.
"Sort of earthy, which is hardly surprising; almost fresh. But there's a bit of an ammonia fume underneath it all. Those pitch-soaked imitations are the ones that take off your head."
Watson worked saliva into his mouth for a really good swallow. "I see." His voice cracked, just slightly. "I agree, Holmes. Supper is the least society can offer after a day like that."
Lestrade shrugged, pleased but not fully comfortable with being given something like food and sympathy all at once. "Don't feel sorry for me." He cautioned as they rose. "But you'll excuse me if I re-treat my hands with strong lye soap before I join you at the table."
Holmes lifted the cover off the nearest tray and sniffed. "Watson, you're rather quiet."
"I don't think Lestrade's finished telling his story, Holmes."
"Oh?" Holmes quirked an eyebrow as he portioned up equal amounts of chicken, rice, and whatever vegetables Mrs. Hudson had found on the market. A moment later he blinked. "By Jove, you're perfectly right. And you're perfectly right about my health. I deserve to be incarcerated in my rooms if I've overlooked something as simple as that."
"Simple as what, Mr. Holmes?" Lestrade had returned, with hands so clean they looked blistered. He'd given his face the same treatment, which was hardly surprising.
"The newspapers." Watson blurted. "What in the world did the mummies have to do with the newspapers? There wasn't a blackout of the press was there?"
"Goodness, no." Lestrade breathed out a quick prayer to whatever gods were sympathetic to the Yard. "It's just that…well…it's inevitable that we would find a few paper-trails…the buyers of the mummy parts." He paid his plate a quick obeisance and took up a forkful of rice. "The majority of them, outside of the young geese who want a skull collection…well…there was the group or six that was into human ingredients for satanic cults…strange worship…and art forgers."
"Art forgers?" Watson repeated. Watson really was handy for that; he didn't worry about sounding idiotic when he was astonished.
"Art forgers. Powdered mummy was a vital ingredient for ink and a form of water-colour back in the day." With a poise that would have impressed the most war-bitten regiment, the Inspector went through a few enjoyable bites of his free meal. "Went out of favour when word got out what it was made of."
Holmes had lowered his forgotten fork. "Lestrade, you're telling the story but not in true storytelling fashion. What would art forgeries have to do with the newspapers I read?"
They watched as the decision to just up and tell them flittered across his face. "One of the addresses turned out to be the leading supplier of printer's ink for the rags of London. As soon as we arrested him, he refused to tell us where his mummy ink is being kept. As we caught him in the process of trying to destroy some rather decent Rembrandt copies…we have a suspicion he's buried some of his evidence in those rather large vats of ink in his factory." Lestrade smiled wryly as the reactions to his story ricocheted around the table. "Mr. Holmes, are you going to eat that?"