A Taste for Honey (19 page)

“Well,” I protested, with my heart, I must confess, beating quite unpleasantly, for he was driving me onto the defensive when I had been sure I had a case against him. “Well, he could not have taken an opportunity which actually was quite fictitious.”

“The offer,” replied Mr. Mycroft gravely, “had to be—as are all life's offers—in a form in which he could believe and could, if there were no wish in him to serve Life and not Death, refuse. Do you suppose he would have been more likely and more able to accept had I said, ‘You are, of course, a murderer whom the law cannot convict or even recognize. You are now planning to murder us and God knows how many more. If you will abstain I will pay you three or four hundred pounds and get you out of your financial embarrassments'?”

Mr. Mycroft waited a moment, but I was dogged. He was certainly putting his dreadful and very awkward deed in a very clear light.

“Still,” I replied, “I am sorry to appear stubborn and to be precise. The real fact that remains, when all is said, is that he could not have been given the alternative to which you verbally urged him.”

“I am sorry,” answered Mr. Mycroft—and I was alarmed to hear come into his voice actually something of that very same tone which I had heard when Heregrove refused the offer which we were now discussing and Mr. Mycroft used those same words with a curious, ominous conviction.

“Mr. Silchester, I am sorry that we have seen so much of each other and you are yet capable of thinking that I would lie to a man in mortal peril, offering him a spurious escape. As I have said, I could not tell him from whence in actual fact would come the resources which I guaranteed for his deliverance, would he but accept and turn, if only for a moment, from his way. We were his prey. Even if he could have faced the fact that we knew he was a murderer, he could not have believed in our
bona fides
. Man imputes himself. The fact that we were in possession of such knowledge he could only interpret as his nature could understand—that we would for the rest of his life do as he would do to such another who should fall into
his
power—blackmail him. Add to that fact that we come to offer him money, not immediately to extort it, and he can only be the more certain that here is a doubly cunning trap, beside which blackmail is aboveboard business. No; the disguise of form was essential for his one chance of safety, even more than for ours. But the substance, the firm offer was there.

“Because I have learned that expression of emotion is mere sentimentality, Mr. Silchester, I must ask you to believe that that certainly does not mean that I am without feelings, still less coolly irresponsible. By every possible means, I was determined to rescue that murderer and to spare him from the fate he was drawing on himself, if I could. I was as set on that as on saving
your
life at the cost of compelling you more than once to act, when you would much have preferred to procrastinate and dally.

“The offer made Heregrove was a real one. I had arranged that, should he go to the address I would name and which I should see he would think was that of the registered offices and the legal adviser of the Society where he would receive his grant-in-aid, he should be received by a long-trusted solicitor friend of mine, given £200 with his ticket and any other expenses paid to any place he should choose to go, and with a firm offer of another £200 when he arrived at his destination. My friend was to be sufficiently (but not too fully) seized of the case, being told that Heregrove was a blackmailer against whom a charge would be difficult to present and who should be given this chance of clearing out. This friend of mine, as have many fine solicitors in the course of their practice, has dealt across his quiet, brief-covered table with more than one such dangerous man in this effective way. What the large forceps of the law cannot pick up and must leave lurking under our feet, often the steady hand of a wise solicitor can lay hold of and drop out of the window. The plan would have worked, had Heregrove assented, for I have so broken the news—if I may use that phrase—to several unconvictable criminals, that I knew their record and would give them one more chance, and quite a number have made good. But Heregrove was by nature not one of these. I repeat the question, and must ask you to reply, ‘Was not he self-doomed?'”

He was right, just, and generous, I had to allow, but still I could say nothing. This last display of such courageous, thoughtful efficiency, I know, ought to have swept away my last timid considerations and have made me apologize as handsomely as possible, urged by a not less generous trustfulness. Awkward as it was for me to recognize, I could no longer avoid seeing—indeed, I had forced him to prove to me—that he was a wonder, a man ahead of his age in skill and also in justice. His attempt to save the murderer was no less wonderful, patient, and daring than his success in saving the designated murderee.

Yet, somehow, the very supermanly quality about it all put me off, daunted me. I don't want to have to live with mental or moral geniuses. They may always be expecting you to be heroic, and he certainly had landed me in a position which might quite easily at any moment become dangerous.

“I don't know,” I said. “I really don't know. I shall never be sure. Right or wrong, the thing, as it has actually happened, or been made to happen, will always be hanging over me. It might at any time come out, and then in spite of all the fine motives which I don't doubt prompted the actual deed, where shall we be, what will be my position?”

He looked at me again as though he were making up his mind whether to say more or no, whether to tell me something further or to leave things as they were. As I did not believe that there was any answer to my question and so felt pretty hopeless about the whole matter, I really didn't care whether he went on trying to console me, or left me alone. Evidently he decided, in the end, that he could do something for me.

“As to your position,” he said, “I think I can reassure you by telling you one more thing. It, too, is a secret. Mycroft is only one of my family names.”

I could not help wondering, on hearing this opening, to what fresh freak of vanity I was to be introduced. This sudden emphasis upon himself showed how his egotism had to peep out even when the matter in hand was my safety. How could his family names matter to me, much less protect me? We were not in the Middle Ages and he a big baron.

“I have used Mycroft,” he complacently continued, “because my full name was once pretty widely known, and I wanted, when I retired, to be quiet and unmolested. You have been served, and, I may add, if you so wish, you are still under the protection” (the man seemed quite self-assured that I should so wish)—“your case still has as its defense—”

There! I have forgotten the name he gave himself. It was something not unlike Mycroft—Mycroft and then another word, a short one, I think. But I was too bothered to memorize still another set of names, especially as it was quite clear that they could really be no defense to me. I had known him as Mycroft, had known both his capacities and limitations. I could not see how the one would become the greater or the other less by calling him by another name. As Mycroft we had struggled along together through this upsetting business. I suppose he or Destiny had got me out, but only at the cost of leaving me under an abiding apprehension. I could not feel that there was anything magical in either of his names. It came over me again, and this time with complete conviction, after seeing this last proof of what he thought to be adequate defense, that if I were ever to be safe I would be safer and more comfortable by myself.

“Thank you, Mr. ________”; I think I called him by the new name he evidently so much prized, but which awoke no meaning or association in my mind. “Thank you. I am obliged, and you must forgive what may seem perhaps an apparent churlishness. But I think I will again retire into my shell.”

He took my breakaway, I am glad to say, with composure. We were parting without a scene, and I was grateful for that.

“Very well,” was all he said.

I thought, then, that perhaps I ought not to leave it quite there but might give some sort of explanation of my action, of why I could not think our continued alliance would add to my safety.

“You see,” I said, “now that I do know your real name, I have to own I have never heard of you before.”

Then, I must own, he looked amazed—perhaps the only time I had seen him profoundly surprised, and he turned away without a word.

For a moment I felt an immense relief. The feeling grew. I had not anyone to interfere with me any more. I was once more my own master. The relief lasted a couple of days. Then the other darker shadow, the shadow of apprehension, that I was an accessory to murder, if only to counter-murder, settled down on me. That is why I have been driven to write all this. If the worst comes to the worst, after all, Mycroft did it, not I.

Afterword

WHO IS MR. MYCROFT?

John Roger Barrie

So, who is Mr. Mycroft? And does it really matter? Well, yes and no. As Prof. Stacy Gillis opines in her erudite foreword to this elegant Blue Dolphin reissue, “Whether or not this is a pastiche of Sherlock Holmes or a story about his lesser-known brother is not vital …” The Mr. Mycroft saga stands on its own, and ultimately we enjoy it on the basis of its own merit. But that still leaves us with one pressing question, who is Mr. Mycroft?

In order to find an answer, we'll examine some of Mr. Mycroft's personality traits, nuances of character, idiosyncrasies, physical attributes, and personal history, occasionally comparing them with the brothers Holmes. Although there are three Mr. Mycroft novels and two short stories in the Mycroft canon, we will restrict ourselves to the facts revealed in H. F. Heard's first offering,
A Taste for Honey
. Here we learn that Mr. Mycroft's visage reveals “a serene face”; his comportment betrays “a long-practiced calm” (14, 24). He possesses “keen eyes … thin lips” and a “long nose” (16, 80). (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle writes that Sherlock Holmes' “eyes were sharp and piercing”; he had “thin lips” and a “hawk-like” nose.) Mr. Mycroft's writing style is capable of producing “quite beautifully spaced and shaped Roman letters” (13). He is sophisticated: “My host knew about food and also about wine” (25). (Sherlock has detailed knowledge of fine wines.)

Brimming with a self-confidence that teeters on arrogance, Mr. Mycroft displays “a glint of superiority” (27). (Humility and meekness were never among Sherlock Holmes' weaknesses.) He berates his own shortcomings, almost chiding himself for nearly ignoring a clue: “‘
Am
I getting senile!' he exclaimed. ‘Would I have overlooked that twenty years ago?'” (32).

Mr. Mycroft is retired. The novel's persnickety protagonist, Sydney Silchester, speculates that Mycroft's pre-retirement career might have been that of a doctor (69) or an actor (111). (Sherlock did in fact impersonate a number of persons, from a priest to a plumber.) But Mycroft provides sufficient clues to dispel both conjectures, at least superficially. He is “an old hunter … a veteran adventurer” (78). “All my life I have been estimating human intelligence not by its books or words but by its tracks” (18). He further confesses, “I know something of mortal risks …” (93). “I know more of bad men than of bad bees” (31).

In fact, Mr. Mycroft knows quite well the criminal mind. Referring to the novel's villain Heregrove, Mycroft declares, “I have known murderers as ingenious and far less careful” (86). Moreover he observes, “He murdered his wife with a simple ingenuity which I have myself not met with elsewhere in the records of homicidal crime” (69). He is well versed in the law: “I know something of the rules which men have made in attempting to save the innocent and helpless from the ruthless strong” (135).

Mr. Mycroft possesses a well-honed manner of investigation: “… the clever criminal is just the man who makes a complete, amnesic slip every now and then, so that you have only to dog him long enough for him to let an utterly damning clue fall into your hand” (91). He proclaims, “… cases such as these I have found can only be grasped—and caught” (he added after a pause) “if one understands much detail which at first sight seems irrelevant” (24–25). (Near the end of
The Adventure of the Lion's Mane
, Sherlock describes himself as having “a strangely retentive memory for trifles.”) Mr. Mycroft further notes, “… like all copyists or forgers of signatures or handwriting, I copied it upside down. That is the only safe way of preventing tricks of one's own handwriting from appearing in the letters and words which you wish to render facsimile” (126). (Not unsurprisingly Sherlock is an expert cryptanalyst. In
The Adventure of the Dancing Men
he relates to Watson, “I am fairly familiar with all forms of secret writings.”)

In order to thwart Heregrove, Mr. Mycroft administers his own brand of preventative justice. (Sherlock, too, would occasionally break the law if it helped him solve a case.) Mr. Mycroft tellingly divulges, “A man like that gets the habit, the taste for malicious power. It grows, and it is harder to break than an addiction for morphia. I know” (32). (Once in a while Sherlock took to using cocaine and morphine.) And finally, Mr. Mycroft confesses, “… when I was working, I often found that it helped to talk over a problem with an interested if less absorbed mind” (17). (In our Sherlockian parallel, one wonders if this “interested if less absorbed mind” might have been a certain doctor late of the Army Medical Department …)

Why did Mr. Mycroft retire? “I came down here to study bees. Honey to me is simply a by-product I must dispose of” (17–18). (This is a revealing admission. For in
The Second Stain
, we find Sir Arthur's famous detective having retired to a life of beekeeping, even writing a book on the subject—
Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen
.) Mr. Mycroft owns a laboratory (18, 97). (Sherlock was a chemist.) Mycroft repeatedly demonstrates a keen knowledge of botany: “… he prattled about flowers and used a lot of technical terms” (112). (In A
Study in Scarlet
, Holmes is said to possess knowledge of botany, although he “knows nothing of practical gardening.”)