Watson
I could not read Holmes's face as he stared at the diagram in his hands. There was, however, a vacancy in his eyes that suggested he was at least shocked, and his unusual silence only supported this.
His brother appeared almost pleased with the effect, his mouth curling slightly in satisfaction as he waited for his brother's answer. He had certainly come through with my request; beyond the call of duty, in fact. He had produced a case that absolutely demanded the younger man's attention, a case that he could have no call for objecting to.
The silence stretched for some minutes and Mycroft permitted it, watching his younger brother until at last he came into our focus again and looked up from the paper.
"Do you find it so hard to believe that it is not coincidental now, Sherlock?"
Holmes scowled petulantly and countered with a question of his own. "Are you seriously suggesting that Trevor is sabotaging the Darjeeling tea trade?"
Mycroft calmly resisted the bait for a squabble and sat further back in his chair, raising one eyebrow skeptically. "I am not foolish enough to make such an assumption, Sherlock. And I thought you were wise enough to consider all the factors before settling on a theory."
"What else would you have me assume?" Holmes practically growled and tossed the papers down roughly upon his brother's desk.
I put a hand on his arm and met his responsive glare with a firmly disapproving scowl of my own. He turned to face his brother again with a sigh, schooling his face.
Mycroft hadn't batted an eye, but sat as coolly as a cottage cat.
"I wouldn't have you assume anything, Sherlock. I am engaging you to investigate this case, and the fact that the main suspect is an old school friend of yours should make little difference to a cool reasoning machine such as yourself. It merely should give you additional insight…that is why I am bringing it to you."
It was a rare occasion that my friend should be at such a loss. He honestly seemed torn as he considered the matter, the case, the possibilities that lay before him…not all of them pleasant.
It was indeed a singular matter, which is what he craved, but my friend was a very private creature and concentrated almost exclusively on the here and now; it had taken me years to wheedle the least bit of his history out of him. It would be a galling experience for him to have to drag out matters of his own past, and possibly painful ones at that, to solve a case of the present. And what a memorable part of his past it was; his very first case, the mysterious death of his only friend's father, his only friend being involved at all. I had been rather astounded to learn of the existence of his old school chum, for to say that Holmes did not make friends easily was a severe understatement; for him to dredge up such an old and discontinued association must be difficult in the extreme.
It was certainly a challenge, on more levels than one, and I was further amazed at this show of Mycroft's cunning and sharp mind. Holmes could not afford to pass up an opportunity such as this…the contemplation of it alone would keep him from going anywhere near his precious cocaine.
Meeting Mycroft's satisfied expression myself, I saw that this had been his intention exactly; he had already calculated what his brother's reaction would be - and quite accurately, it seemed. The elder man met my eyes briefly and his lips twitched in satisfaction and triumph before he returned his attention to his undecided brother.
Holmes lurched to his feet in a sudden fit of that singular energy that seized him in the face of such problems. His eyes were alight as I had not seen them for quite a while, and his hands were twitching nervously; it made my heart lighter to see it, for he had been so immobile and lax over the last few weeks.
But he was still obviously torn, his brows furrowed and his mouth a thin line as he strode to one side of the room and back, and we watched him as though spectators at a cricket game, until at last I decided to save Mycroft's carpets the wear my friend was giving them at the moment.
"Any chance of an answer, old fellow? My neck is cramping up from watching you pace like that..."
He stopped then, and looked at me as though only just remembering I was in the room. His contemplative scowl lightened perceptively and he at least held still though he remained standing.
"I do have a number of other tasks awaiting me, Sherlock," Mycroft added. "If you could manage to curb your emotional outburst I can give you the last of the particulars."
The idea that anyone could accuse Holmes of an emotional outburst was greatly amusing, but if anyone could it was the controlled individual seated behind the desk.
Holmes glared at him for a moment more and then, sighing, drew closer. "You'll want it to be a discreet inquiry, I presume?"
Mycroft appeared somewhat offended that the question even needed to be voiced; at least he lost enough control of his set expression that his brows rose so close to his hairline as to be in danger of vanishing altogether.
"Really, Sherlock, will you never acknowledge the ramifications a case like this can have? If this contamination continues and spreads further, not only will the economic crisis be unmanageable, but these sorts of social upsets have a devastating effect upon public morale. Not to mention it could cause a panic if it were to become public knowledge, inflated by a florid press, that there has been a widespread epidemic so to speak of toxic drinking materials. If you have any tact at all, which I doubt on a regular basis, I suggest you exercise it fully."
A sudden thought occurred to me, and I headed off a brotherly retort from Holmes by voicing the question. "You said there has been an epidemic, Mycroft. Just what sort of epidemic?"
"I use the term not in its literal medical sense, Doctor," the man hastened to reassure me. "But in this area of the city especially, people have been coming down with what appear to be influenza symptoms, save that they are not as severe and not accompanied by any head congestion or such; looks rather more like food poisoning. I should not have taken any notice of the fact that half the staff and a goodly portion of the West End has been down, save for the fact that reports of symptoms and recovery times were all nearly identical."
"Nausea, vomiting, low-grade fevers, general aches and weakness, lasting for a day or two?" I inquired.
"Yes, Doctor. Actually that is how my attention was first drawn to the matter – the Minister of…well, a high official found himself at a loss to explain his sudden illness, until the next few days when half the staffing went down with the same thing, and far too rapidly for it to be influenza," Mycroft growled irritably. "It stands to reason, even had I not been able to trace the source, that the tea should be responsible, as there is no other common link among the victims that I have been able to trace."
"And because Darjeeling is the highest quality of tea one can purchase in the country, the 'champagne of teas,' and therefore would be the one your governmental associates use. Yes, yes," Holmes interjected boredly, waving a thin hand and absently fingering his pipe with a cautious glance toward his brother.
"Do not interrupt, Sherlock. And again, no, you may not smoke in here! Why do you ask, Doctor?" Mycroft Holmes turned back to me.
"Merely because I was working near Charing Cross this morning, and we were positively swamped with a rush of patients complaining of influenza, though I thought at the time it looked more like they'd merely eaten some bad fish or such," I said thoughtfully. "The strange factor was that a good many of them were rather above middle class, and that type usually does not contract common food poisoning; that coupled with the suddenness of their all contracting the same thing seemed to rule out food poisoning."
"But this tea catastrophe fits the bill admirably," Mycroft agreed. "The matter is spreading all over the district already, despite my men's efforts to find the contaminated tea before it is even unloaded. We have been able to prevent any new bad shipments from being unloaded onto the docks, but the stuff that had already got through is being circulated as we speak. And of course we dare not advertise warning people to be watchful, for fear of their getting wind of how serious a matter it really is."
"You realise this is also going to raise the price of the decent tea that is left," Holmes mused, flicking a glance at me. "I foresee we shall be drinking quite a lot more coffee, or at least highly inferior Ceylon, in the next few weeks, Doctor."
"And that is all you need, to subsist more on coffee than you do now," I snorted, sitting back in my chair and favouring him with a medical glare.
Mycroft's large face twitched in a suppressed combination cringe and laugh, and he merely turned his attention back to his scowling brother. "Now then, Sherlock. Do endeavour to put aside both your childish sense of humour and your personal connections to this case for a while, and -"
"My personal connections, as you term them, happen to be twenty years old and therefore no longer active. I've not even seen the man since he left England for Terai in…'77," he muttered after a moment of thought.
"That does not mean he is the same man you knew at Cambridge – or that he is any different," Mycroft calmly continued as his sibling's sallow face flushed with a sudden burst of indignation.
"But you are suggesting I find out, by any means necessary; is that it, brother mine?"
"In a vague sense, yes – but you need not act as if I am ordering you to be a spy in the man's household or something equally unprincipled, Sherlock," the older man retorted, obviously nettled by the younger's defensive attitude.
"Ordering, no – but you're implying it!"
"Gentlemen, if I may," I interjected loudly over the thick tension. "Perhaps if you told us a bit more about the specific details and just what you are asking of Holmes, Mr. Holmes –" I stumbled briefly over my words, realising how odd that had sounded.
The older Holmes chuckled and waved a hand at me. "Do call me Mycroft to eliminate the confusion, Doctor. Pray continue."
"Perhaps if you would kindly outline just what we are being asked to do, Mycroft. And as to this man's legal or illegal connection to the affair, that certainly does not need to be, nor is it logical to be, thrashed out in this room right this minute without all the facts, now is it?"
Holmes stared for a moment at me before quirking a small smile and seating himself more calmly back in his chair. "Quite so," he intoned, stretching out his long legs and obviously considering his chances of survival if he were to rest them upon Mycroft's desk and finally deciding the risk was not worth taking. "As the good Doctor pointed out, brother – details are quite necessary at this juncture, and I shall not give a verdict until I have heard them."
"The only problem with that, Sherlock, is that I have precious few to give you," the older man sighed ruefully. "I have specifics as to which shipments we have traced and where they came from, but obviously my men can only do so much when the core of the problem lies in Nepal."
"Does it?" Holmes asked, cocking an eyebrow curiously at his brother. "It seems to me that perhaps someone is purposely seeking to target the upper class with this, contaminating the Darjeeling teas which are of course bought by higher level individuals and establishments."
"Targeting for what, Sherlock, a forty-eight-hour case of upset stomach?" his brother exclaimed. "We are not talking about a medical emergency, brother, but an economic one."
"But it takes no genius to see that there are multiple theories to explain the matter that do have a medical complication, brother," Holmes retorted. "The tea could be used for smuggling narcotics or any number of things; the East has been giving you fits for years with the drug traffic and so on."
"No, no, no, Sherlock – the symptoms are not that of any narcotic poisoning, are they, Doctor?"
"It is rather hard to say with certainty after the fact, but the patients I saw to did not appear to have all the indications of, say, opium poisoning or some such," I ventured cautiously. "If they did, they were the most mild cases I've ever seen, and without a noticeable increase in pulse or temperature." I did not see it necessary to add that with one particular drug I had seen every case from mild to severe and had become a modest expert on the subject over the years.
"And, Sherlock, there has been absolutely no attempt by any persons to get at the confiscated shipments," Mycroft continued, his brow furrowing darkly. "Surely if the problem lay here in London we should have had some indication of it. And besides, if someone were smuggling narcotics or something else into the city, surely they would not do so in tea targeted specifically for the upper class? How the deuce would they get hold of the stuff after it was unloaded?"
"I was not putting that as a definitive theory, Mycroft, merely pointing out that the thing might have more of a medical affinity than you were so dismissive of."
"We mustn't completely rule out the illness as a serious factor, no matter how grave or coincidental it is now," I ventured somewhat timidly, a bit hesitant to add my small trickle into the torrent of brainpower flooding the office. "Because if someone is contaminating these shipments so easily with whatever this toxin is, then it could at any time be substituted with a deadly poison; think of the ramifications among the upper echelon of society then."
"It is certainly possible, but I doubt that it would reach that extremity, Watson," Holmes mused, "because most tea's toxicity stems from improper preparation in drying and processing, not from added foreign ingredients. This could very well be a mere complication of poor management in the plantations, were it not that the problem has become so widespread. There are easier ways to inconvenience the government and upper classes without giving them a two-day illness."
Mycroft nodded in corroboration. "Another reason we believe the key to the matter lies in Terai, not in London; the tea could very easily just have been poorly processed. But whatever the reason and motive, it must be stopped. Which brings us back to the original question, Sherlock – will you take the case, or let the British and Nepalese governmental authorities take over the investigation in their usual efficient and thorough and quite impersonal manner with your old acquaintance and the other plantation owners?"
I cringed inwardly at the very pointed statement, for I well knew Mycroft was aware of the exact locations of Holmes's armor chinks, and he had just shot a barb straight into one. And in the natural reaction of a wounded tiger, the man lashed out at once, glaring at his sibling in a petulant fit of anger.
"I do not appreciate being guilted into accepting a case that falls under your jurisdiction, not mine, Mycroft!" Holmes snapped crossly, again regaining his feet and pacing nervously about the room.
"Of course not, but frankly I have not the time nor energy to await your settling of your emotional state into normality before having an answer from you," the man retorted, purposely riling the detective's temper even further.
Mycroft shot me a reassuring look when I fidgeted uneasily, worried that Holmes was going to do something we all would regret were he driven to the edge of his temper's taut leash; but I subsided, realising that the man in all probability knew exactly what he was doing with his younger sibling.
"You are going to have to wait for it, brother dearest, for I have little to no intention of disrupting my life to go and spy upon a man I have not even spoken with in twenty years, all without his knowledge," Holmes growled, smashing his hat down upon his head. "I shall give you an answer by tomorrow morning, and not before. Good morning, brother."
"Holmes?" I asked in some mild alarm, as he stalked past me toward the door.
"I shall meet you back at Baker Street, Watson; I have a few inquiries to make of my own, privately. Where can I access those informational details you spoke of, Mycroft?" he asked briskly.
"My secretary has already been told to have them in readiness for you," his brother replied instantly, motioning toward the waiting, be-spectacled young assistant outside the open door. "Do consider carefully, Sherlock. Weigh the odds. If you do not take over the investigation, an official force will, much as I loathe the idea of moving my men to tackling a problem of tea trade."
Holmes growled something slightly rude that I really was rather glad his brother did not appear to hear, snatched the file and papers from the startled secretary, and then stalked regally through the stately corridors of Whitehall, without waiting for or inviting my presence.
I quashed a pang of irritation with the man, in favour of being pleased that at least his anger directed brother-ward would keep him from reverting to his black mood, for however long it lasted.
And having Holmes remain out of that depression, for whatever reason, was well worth the stiflingly warm walk back to Baker Street, alone.
To be continued.
