Black Ice

CHAPTER TWO

Sherlock rode into Farnham that afternoon, through a light rain that left puddles on the roads and trickled down the back of his neck no matter how much he turned his collar up or tucked it in. He was riding the horse he had ‘liberated’ from Baron Maupertuis – the horse he still had to find a name for, if he ever did.

He just couldn’t understand why people gave names to animals. The animals didn’t care if they had names, or numbers, or nothing, and it implied a level of empathy and equality that shouldn’t exist. Animals were animals and humans were humans.

As his horse splashed its way towards the market town, Sherlock found himself thinking about the strange difference between pets and animals. If you could eat a cow, in the form of beef, then why couldn’t you eat a horse? There seemed to be no logical reason why not – as far as he knew, horse flesh wasn’t poisonous or anything. Alternatively, if cats and dogs were off the menu then why weren’t rabbits safe from being put in the stewpot? It didn’t make any sense. Someone had drawn an arbitrary line through the animal kingdom, saying, ‘All right, the ones over here you can eat to your heart’s content, but the ones over there you take for walks, and stroke, and care for, and bury when they die.’

He wondered, as the water found its way through every gap in his clothes, whether other countries had the same illogical rules. Were there countries somewhere where the inhabitants ate horses and dogs, but maybe considered cows sacred? If there were, it indicated that the whole thing was just subjective, if not random, but if all countries made the same distinctions then maybe there was something about humans that meant they all considered cows as food and horses as friends.

He absently patted the neck of the horse he was riding. Could he ever eat it? Could he sit down to a juicy steak, knowing that a few hours earlier he’d been riding the animal it had come from? Logically, he didn’t see why not, but in practice he could detect a little squeamishness in his mind. Maybe if he was starving. Maybe if the two of them were caught in a blizzard, and the only way to survive was for him to cook and eat his horse. That would make sense.

As the horse clopped through the outskirts of Farnham, a disturbing thought occurred to Sherlock. If he was willing, in principle, to eat his horse, then why not his friends? If he and Matty were caught in a blizzard…

Even the thought made him feel sick, and he quickly squashed it, but a lingering doubt remained. Logically, there was a sliding scale between, say, insects and humans in terms of intelligence and general development. Fish and frogs were closer to the insects, arguably, and dogs and cats were closer to humans. Wasn’t that what Mister Charles Darwin had recently written in his book On the Origins of Species – a book he’d heard his Uncle Sherrinford complaining about over the dinner table some weeks before? Humans were just another type of animal, according to Darwin, with nothing special or God-given about them. But if you factored religion out of the discussion, if you accepted that humans were just animals who could make tools and talk, then why weren’t you allowed to eat people the way you were allowed to eat cows?

Too many questions, and logic did not seem to be any help. Logic was telling him that if this was all right then that was all right as well, but instinctively he knew that there was a difference. There were limits. The trouble was, he didn’t know where they had come from or how to think about them properly.

And all this because he hadn’t given his horse a name.

‘I’ll call you Philadelphia,’ he murmured, patting its neck again.

He smiled. As names went, it had a whole lot of meaning attached to it. Virginia – Amyus Crowe’s daughter – had named her horse Sandia after a range of mountains in America, after all, so he should be able to name his horse after an American city. The train that he, Virginia and Matty had been trapped on months ago, after Matty had been kidnapped by the agents of Duke Balthassar, had belonged to the Philadelphia Line, and the name would always remind him of what they had been through. And the short form of Philadelphia was Philly and ‘filly’ was another name for a young female horse, so it was also a kind of joke. It worked on all kinds of levels.

‘Philadelphia it is,’ he said. The horse made a whickering noise, as if it understood and approved. That, of course, really was just his imagination.

They were in the centre of town by now, and Sherlock left his horse – left Philadelphia – tied up next to the grain market and walked along under the brick colonnades, looking for Matty. He knew Matty’s habits by now – where to find him at any time of day or night. The boy seemed to have fallen into a routine. Rather than move on in his narrowboat, looking for new towns and new opportunities, he had settled in Farnham, at least for a while. Sherlock secretly hoped it was because of him – because of their friendship. He liked Matty, and he would miss him when – if – he left.

Matty was sitting by the river, apparently watching nothing in particular, although Sherlock knew he was waiting for a barge to show up that usually delivered boxes of fish from the coast, laid out on crushed ice. Matty had found that if one of the boxes was dropped and smashed then he could steal a fish or two from the wreckage before anyone stopped him. Sherlock sometimes wondered if Matty occasionally got in the way of the men unloading the boat, making them slip and drop the boxes they were carrying, but he never asked. Best not to know.

‘Hi,’ Matty said. ‘I was wondering if you were going to show up.’

‘I’m going to London tomorrow,’ Sherlock responded. He had meant to make conversation first, find out where Matty had been and what he had done recently, but he couldn’t help himself. He wasn’t good with conversation. ‘I’ve got to go to the station and get the tickets.’

‘Good luck with that,’ Matty muttered.

‘You could come,’ Sherlock said, defensively, but he wasn’t sure whether the invitation from Mycroft extended that far.

‘To the station? Thanks, but I’ve already seen it.’

‘To London!’ Sherlock said in exasperation.

‘You won’t get me back up in the Smoke.’ Matty shook his head. ‘I still remember what happened last time. After you an’ Ginnie were kidnapped by that Baron Maupertuis bloke, I had to travel all the way back here to Farnham with her father. He tried to teach me to read!’ His voice rose aggrievedly. ‘I told him I didn’t want to read, but he kept trying to tell me about “a before e except after c” and stuff. An’ then we had to sail to France to try and find the two of you, an’ he just kept at it. Wouldn’t stop.’

‘I think he just likes to teach,’ Sherlock said. ‘And you were the only audience.’

‘Well, I’m not making that mistake again.’

‘Have you seen Virginia?’ Sherlock asked.

‘Not for a few days now.’

‘You want to go and look for her?’

Matty shook his head, eyes still fixed on the canal. ‘No, I’d rather eat.’

‘I could buy you a pork pie,’ Sherlock offered.

Matty looked tempted, but he shook his head. ‘You won’t always be around,’ he said. ‘I can’t rely on anyone else to feed me. I got to do it myself, an’ that means I got to keep my skills sharp. I got to make sure I can snaffle a cauliflower or a ham hock without anyone noticing.’

‘It’s all right,’ Sherlock said quietly. ‘It’s not charity, it’s friendship.’

‘Feels like charity,’ Matty mumbled. ‘And I don’t accept charity. Not ever.’

Sherlock nodded. ‘I understand.’ He looked around. ‘I’m going to head across to the station. See you later?’

‘Depends on when lunch turns up,’ Matty said gloomily.

Sherlock walked off, not sure where exactly he was going. He felt edgy. He wanted to be on his way to London, but he knew that he had to wait until the next day for that. Mycroft had been very specific.

He wandered along the High Street for a while, past taverns that were already doing a roaring trade, even though it was barely after midday, past baker’s shops with windows piled high with breads twisted into knots and covered with seeds, past shops selling vegetables and fruit, or tools and seeds, or clothing ranging from the rough to the exquisite, pressing through crowds of locals who were buying, or selling, or just standing around idly, gossiping.

‘Sherlock!’ a voice called.

He turned, surprised. For a moment he didn’t recognize the tall, slim man with long black hair who was smiling at him from the other side of the road. Or rather, he knew that he knew him, but he wasn’t sure where from. His gaze scanned the man’s clothes and hands in the way that Amyus Crowe had taught him, looking for signs of his profession, but apart from a worn area on the left shoulder of the man’s patched corduroy jacket and the smattering of orange dust beneath his fingernails, there were no clues.

Except…

‘Mister Stone!’ he shouted, at the same moment that his brain supplied the information that the man was a violinist down on his luck, based on the signs on his clothing.

Rufus Stone’s smile stretched wider, revealing the gold tooth that Sherlock remembered from their voyages out to and back from New York, where the man had been teaching him the violin to help pass the time.

‘I keep telling you,’ Stone shouted as he started to cross the road, dodging the carts that clattered past and avoiding the piles of manure that had been left by the horses that pulled them. ‘Only employers call me “Mister Stone”, and there have been fewer of those over the past months than there are teeth in a chicken’s beak.’

‘What happened to you after we docked in Southampton?’ Sherlock tried to keep a petty tone out of his voice, tried to make it just an ordinary question, but he had thought that the violinist was going to head for Farnham after they docked and set himself up as a tutor.

Stone winced. ‘Ah, there I have a confession to make. I was all ready to move my life down to this area of the world, but I got sidetracked and went to Salisbury for a few weeks instead. Suffice to say there was an actress, and a vacancy in the Salisbury Playhouse pit orchestra, and the chance to gaze up at her beautiful face all evening as I played and she acted her little heart out.’

‘What happened?’ Sherlock asked.

‘She parcelled that same heart up and gave it to the leading man, of course,’ he replied, wincing. ‘As they always do, of course, buoyed up by the admiring glances of their followers in the pit. I later found that we’d all joined because of her, and we were all receiving less than standard rates just for the privilege of being there.’ He sighed theatrically. ‘Ah well. We live and learn. So – do you think that this part of Hampshire is still looking for a good violin tutor?’

‘I think so,’ Sherlock replied. ‘There’re a couple of good schools around, and quite a few big houses in the vicinity.’

‘And what about you?’ Stone asked. ‘Have you been keeping up with your lessons?’

‘I’ve been looking around for a cheap violin,’ Sherlock admitted. ‘Which reminds me – where’s yours?’

‘I have secured lodgings nearby. My possessions – such as they are – and my violin are in my room. Which reminds me – I’m on an errand for my landlady and I need to stay in her good books. If I don’t bring back a chicken within the next hour then I suspect I’ll be out on the street – again. Tell me, where can I find you, so we can continue our lessons?’

‘Holmes Manor,’ Sherlock said. ‘Give me a day or two to broach the subject with my brother and my uncle, but I think they’ll be fine about it.’

Stone smiled, and extended a hand. ‘It’s a pleasure to renew our acquaintance, Mister Holmes,’ he said as Sherlock took it. His hand was warm and dry, and Sherlock noticed that he didn’t press hard when he shook. Perhaps he was worried about damaging his fingers. ‘I will see you soon.’

He turned, and within moments was swallowed up by the crowd.

Absurdly pleased to see Rufus Stone again, Sherlock turned and moved off to get his horse.

The station was on the outskirts of the town. No trains were scheduled for that time in the early afternoon, so the place was deserted as he dismounted and approached the ticket office.

‘Two tickets to London,’ he said to the elderly man behind the counter. ‘Leaving on the train at nine thirty tomorrow morning. One adult and one child, second class.’

The ticket seller raised an eyebrow. ‘Afford two second-class tickets, can you?’ he grunted. ‘Or are you going to tell me you’ll pay me tomorrow, after your pocket money comes in?’

Sherlock slid a handful of coins across the counter. Mycroft had been keeping him supplied with postal orders and, as he didn’t spend very much, he’d built up quite a large balance. His brother hadn’t indicated how he should pay for the tickets, or included any additional money in his letter, so Sherlock presumed that Mycroft wanted him to pay out of his own money. Another small step towards adult responsibilities.

‘Two tickets,’ the ticket seller grunted. ‘One adult and one child. Second class.’ He passed two small slips of cardboard across the counter, along with a smaller pile of coins. ‘And change.’

‘Thank you.’ Sherlock dropped the tickets into one pocket and the coins into another, and turned round. He was just in time to see a figure in dark clothes step into an alley that ran alongside the station. He thought it was a woman.

A chill ran down his back. Was Mrs Eglantine following him, checking up on him? Had he humiliated her so much that she was looking to take some kind of revenge? He moved quickly down the slope to the hotel, stepping out into the road before he got to the alley, just in case whoever it was was waiting there for him, but when he got past the corner of the building the alley was empty. He checked the walls, but there were no doors the figure could have gone through. It had apparently vanished.

Had he imagined it? Had his brain conjured up a figure out of thin air? Or was there a simpler explanation – a local woman who had decided to take a short cut around the hotel to wherever she was going?

Sherlock moved into the alley, and bent down to check the ground. There were footprints, leading away. The toes were pointed and the heels small, judging by the impressions left in the mud. And there were no traces of patches or holes in the soles, indicating that they were either new or well cared for, or both.

He checked over the ground again, and walked a few yards further down the alley, but there was nothing else to see.

Thoughtfully, he mounted Philadelphia and set off for Amyus Crowe’s cottage to give him his ticket.

There was activity inside the cottage when he arrived, and Virginia’s horse was in the paddock, cropping the grass. He felt his mood lighten as he dismounted and approached the open door.

Virginia wasn’t in the main room, but Amyus Crowe was sitting in an armchair, looking through a book. He glanced up as Sherlock came in, gazing at the boy over the top of his half-glasses. ‘Did you get the tickets?’

‘I did.’ Sherlock paused. ‘I met Rufus Stone,’ he added. ‘He was in Farnham.’

‘Obviously.’ Crowe pursed his lips. ‘Strange that he should turn up here, just where you happen to be living.’

‘I’d told him where I live. I’d said he might want to come to Farnham to teach the violin.’

‘Very charitable of you,’ Crowe conceded, his faded blue eyes studying Sherlock. ‘Ah can see what you get out of that, but ah fail to see the advantage to Mister Stone.’

‘He has to live somewhere,’ Sherlock pointed out, uneasy at Crowe’s obvious lack of pleasure at the news that Rufus Stone was in the area. ‘And he’s better off living where there are people who want to play the violin.’

‘As you do.’

‘As I do.’

Crowe put his book on his lap and removed his spectacles. ‘Music is a distraction, Sherlock,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘It ain’t a fit pastime for a man who is tryin’ to fill his brain with things of use. Just think how much space in your brain would be taken up by learnin’ all the notes for some fancy piece of music. That space could better be used for memorizin’ the marks left by animals, or the shapes of people’s ears, or the traces left on their hands and their clothes by whatever it is that they do to get through the day. Not music, son. Music ain’t no use to anyone.’

‘I don’t agree,’ Sherlock said, feeling strangely disappointed by Amyus Crowe’s dismissal of something he was finding himself more and more interested in. He remembered his thoughts while riding into town, about the difference between animals and humans – or the lack of difference. ‘Yes, I could memorize all those things – I could learn all about edible fungi, and telling about the state of a man’s marriage by the stains on his hat, but why? What’s the point? That just turns me into some kind of super-predator, able to track its prey through nearly invisible signs. Surely it has to mean something? Surely there has to be more to life than just being a better kind of animal?’

‘And music is the thing that separates us from animals?’ Crowe asked, eyes guarded.

‘One of them.’

Crowe shrugged. ‘Can’t say ah’ve ever had much time for it. For me, bein’ human means lookin’ after my kin, lookin’ after myself an’ tryin’ to ensure that the people around me look after each other. If that makes me just another animal, then that’s what ah am.’

‘But what’s it all for?’ Sherlock found himself asking. ‘If there’s nothing that makes us feel…’ he struggled for the right word, ‘uplifted, then what’s the point in doing anything at all.’

‘Survival,’ Crowe said simply. ‘We live to survive.’

‘And that’s it?’ Sherlock asked, disappointed. ‘We keep going so that we can keep going? We live to survive and survive to live?’

‘That’s about it,’ Crowe confirmed. ‘As philosophies go it ain’t pretty, but it has the advantage of bein’ succinct and largely undeniable. Now, you stayin’ here for food or you goin’ back to your kin?’

Sherlock suppressed the arguments he had been marshalling, disappointed that Crowe had changed the subject so abruptly but also glad that the two of them weren’t going to have a confrontation. He liked Amyus Crowe, and he didn’t want them to fall out over something as simple as music lessons. ‘Is Virginia around?’

‘She’s out back, gettin’ water for Sandia. Go lookin’ for her, if you want.’

As Sherlock turned towards the door, Crowe’s voice rumbled: ‘Might interest you to know that Rufus Stone is also the name of a village near Southampton. Maybe it’s a coincidence… or maybe he was short of a name at some point, and settled on one that was floatin’ around his mind cos he’d seen it on a road sign somewhere. Just a thought.’

A thought that Sherlock found unsettling. He also thought it was rather petty of Amyus Crowe to have raised it.

He found Virginia outside. She had bought a bucket of water around, and Sandia was drinking from it enthusiastically.

‘What has your father got against Rufus Stone?’ he asked.

‘And hello to you as well.’ She glanced sideways at him. ‘You really telling me you don’t know?’

‘I really don’t,’ he admitted.

She shook her head. ‘I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: for a clever lad you can be really stupid sometimes.’

‘But it doesn’t make any sense!’ he protested. ‘I thought your father would be glad that I was making new friends and finding new interests.’

Virginia turned full on to him and stood, hands on hips. ‘Let me ask you a question. If your father were still in this country, instead of being in India, what would he make of my father? Would they get on?’

Sherlock frowned, thinking. ‘I doubt it,’ he said finally. ‘They come from different social strata, for one, and…’

He trailed off, unsure how to put the thought into words.

‘And what?’ she prompted.

‘And in a way, your father is doing what my father would be doing if he were here.’ Sherlock felt awkward just voicing the words. ‘Teaching me stuff. Taking me out for walks. Giving me advice.’

‘Right. He’s acting like a father to you.’

He smiled at her uncertainly. ‘You don’t mind?’

She smiled too. ‘It’s nice having you around.’ She looked away, then back again. ‘An’ you’re right – your pa would be jealous that you were spending time with someone who was treatin’ you like their son. Especially if that person was teachin’ you things that he couldn’t teach you.’

A bright light of understanding seemed to explode like a star in Sherlock’s head. ‘And your father is jealous of Rufus Stone because he thinks Rufus is acting like a father to me?’ The thought was so big, so momentous, that it seemed to fill his entire mind. ‘But that’s stupid!’

‘Why?’

‘Because Rufus is nothing like a father. He’s more like a much older brother, or a young uncle, or something. And besides, me learning the violin from Rufus doesn’t mean I don’t value your father’s lessons any the less. The two things are completely separate. It’s just… illogical!’

She gazed at him, and shook her head. ‘Emotions ain’t logical, Sherlock. They don’t follow rules.’

‘Then I don’t like emotions,’ he said rebelliously. ‘They don’t do anything but cause confusion and hurt.’

The words hung between them for a long moment, vibrating like a struck bell.

‘Some emotions are worth having,’ she said softly, turning away. She bent down and picked the bucket up. ‘At least I think so, even if you don’t.’

She walked off, towards the rear of the house. Sherlock stared after her until she vanished around the corner. He felt like something big had just happened, but he wasn’t sure what it was.

After a while, he walked over to his horse. He hadn’t even told Virginia that he’d named it Philadelphia, he brooded. Maybe he didn’t know very much about emotions, but he knew enough to suspect that this wasn’t the time to go back and tell her.

He headed back to Holmes Manor, his head spinning with conjectures about Amyus Crowe, Virginia, Rufus Stone and his father, now so far away. He didn’t like these conjectures. They were complicated, grown up and illogical. Emotional.

When he got back he sought out his Uncle Sherrinford, and told him about Mycroft’s letter. He didn’t exactly ask permission to go to London, but he didn’t exactly tell Sherrinford that he was going regardless of what was said. He just left the impression that it was a fait accompli. Fortunately, his uncle was in the middle of drafting another of the religious sermons which he sold to vicars all around the country for a few shillings apiece, and his distraction meant that he was more than happy to accept what Sherlock wanted to do, as long as it was what Mycroft wanted as well.

The next morning, when he awoke, the sun was just clearing the trees and the sky was blue from horizon to horizon. The worries of the night before seemed trivial in the bright sunshine. He quickly dressed and, after a rushed breakfast of porridge and toast, asked if one of the carts could run him to the station. It was better than leaving his horse tied up there for hours while he was in London.

Amyus Crowe was waiting for him on the platform, impressive and almost monumental in his white suit and white hat. He nodded to Sherlock.

‘Think we got off on the wrong tack last afternoon,’ he rumbled. ‘Ah regret if ah sounded a mite terse an’ unreasonable.’

‘It’s all right,’ Sherlock said reassuringly. ‘If you believe something, you ought to say it. Not doing so is hypocritical.’

Crowe made a sound deep in his throat. ‘Ginnie’s mother liked opera,’ he said quietly. ‘Big on a German named Wagner, she was. After she died, ah could never stand the sound of an orchestra, nor the sound of a singer.’

‘I understand,’ Sherlock said quietly.

‘Then you’re a wiser man than ah am.’

Fortunately, the train arrived before the conversation could get any more awkward.

The two of them sat in a decent compartment by themselves. The seats were upholstered and comfortable. Steam from the engine rushed like low cloud past the window, and Sherlock watched through gaps as the countryside unfolded before them.

A ticket collector checked their tickets just past Woking. As he left the compartment, sliding the door shut as he went, Crowe said: ‘What did you make of the man that just left?’

Knowing the way Crowe’s mind worked, Sherlock had been expecting a question like that.

‘His shoes were freshly shined,’ he said, ‘and his shirt had been ironed. Either he’s got a maid or he’s married, and as I don’t expect a ticket collector to be able to afford a maid to iron his shirts then I assume it’s more likely that he’s married.’

‘Good so far,’ Crowe rumbled.

‘His wife is older than him,’ Sherlock ventured.

‘How can you tell?’

‘He’s in his thirties, but his collars are of an old-fashioned design. They’re like my uncle’s. They aren’t worn, so it’s not as if he’s been wearing them for years. It must be that whoever is responsible for his clothes prefers the older style of collar, so if it’s his wife then she must be older than him.’

‘You forget the possibility that he may have a younger wife who hails from an old-fashioned family, but yours is the most likely explanation,’ Crowe conceded.

‘And he is slightly blind in his right eye,’ Sherlock finished triumphantly.

Crowe nodded. ‘Indeed. What gave it away?’

‘He has shaved the left side of his face and neck carefully, but the right side still has stubble visible. I deduce that he has difficulty in seeing out of his right eye.’

‘Excellent. You are picking up the skill of observation very nicely.’

‘Did I miss anything?’ Sherlock asked, smiling.

Crowe shrugged. ‘Several points, in fact. The man has been married before, but his wife died. His current marriage is childless, which causes his wife some distress. Oh, and I believe he is pilfering money from the railway company, but that is a stretch.’

Sherlock couldn’t help laughing. ‘How can you tell all that?’

‘Practice,’ Crowe said, smiling. ‘That and natural talent. One day you’ll be able to do it too.’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘I doubt it,’ he said with a laugh. ‘I really doubt it.’