Knife Edge

CHAPTER TEN

Before anyone could stop him, and before Albano could dispose of the fake ectoplasm, Sherlock leaned forward and snatched it from the air above the table. The light material was almost weightless in his hands, but he could feel it against his skin. The invisible threads snapped, one by one, and the material floated down and came to rest on the table.

‘Turn the gas lamps up,’ he said, but as the words were leaving his mouth the light in the room suddenly flared into brightness. Glancing over, Sherlock saw that Amyus Crowe was moving from gas lamp to gas lamp, turning them up to full strength.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ Quintillan shouted. His face was livid. ‘You are a guest in my home. This is an intolerable abuse of my hospitality!’

‘The intolerable thing here,’ Sherlock said loudly, ‘is the way you and this man —’ he indicated Ambrose Albano — ‘are using trickery to try to convince us that you can communicate with the dead, and you are doing it just so you can make money from governments who should know better!’ He gathered up the white material on the table and held it out. ‘This is not ectoplasm. It has not been produced by spirits, and it did not appear out of nowhere. It’s just a magical trick.’

Holtzbrinck and von Webenau were staring at him, open-mouthed. Count Shuvalov was less emotional, but he was still paying rapt attention to Sherlock’s words. ‘But — the face?’ he asked.

‘A projection.’ Sherlock pointed to the far side of the room, where he knew the light projector had to be, based on the way the light had shone on the cloth. ‘You’ll find it up there, hidden behind the wall. There will be a hole for the light to shine through.’

‘But… where did the ectoplasm… the material… come from?’ von Webenau stammered.

Sherlock said nothing, but instead wadded the material up, tighter and tighter, until it was a small knot the size of a walnut. ‘Easily hidden,’ he said. He ran his hand across the table until he found the black threads. Letting the material expand out again into a fluffy cloud, he laid the threads across it. They were stark: black against white. ‘Manipulated from outside the room to take a particular shape.’

‘The shape of a woman,’ Holtzbrinck said.

‘A shape which you believed was a woman.’ Sherlock shrugged. ‘Have you ever looked at a cloud in the sky and thought it looked like a dragon? The mind can play tricks.’

‘You accuse me of trickery?’ Albano protested in his high-pitched voice. ‘Ectoplasm, when touched by human hands, becomes manifest as an ordinary substance. Every psychic knows that! You have proved nothing!’ He stared defiantly around the table, his white false eye seeming to stare at everyone at once. ‘I will not listen to these accusations any more!’

He turned to go, but found Amyus Crowe standing directly behind him.

‘Oh, you will stay,’ Crowe said genially. ‘The moment you used mah dear wife’s memory as a prop in your obscene game you lost any claim to bein’ treated with respect. Sit down.’

Albano sat abruptly, white-faced.

‘An’ you,’ Crowe added, pointing at Quintillan, who was quietly ordering a foot-servant to wheel him away, ‘you stay where you are. We have things to say that we want you to hear.’ He turned back to Sherlock. ‘Go on, son. You’re doin’ fine.’

‘The whole thing is a series of tricks, one after the other,’ Sherlock said, ‘designed to convince you that Ambrose Albano can communicate with the dead, so that you would all bid whatever resources your countries had granted you.’

‘Tricks?’ Von Webenau seemed mesmerized. ‘But what about the writing on the slate? How was that done? I am a scientist, and I cannot see how it was accomplished.’

‘Elementary,’ Sherlock said. He walked around the table to where Albano was sitting and reached into the right side of his jacket, to where he knew the white thimble had to be hanging from its elastic. He had a bad moment when it wasn’t where he expected, but after a few seconds of moving his fingers up and down he felt a hard object. He pulled it out into the open. As the elastic tightened it jerked Albano’s jacket out of shape.

‘This thimble has chalk on the end. Albano used it to write on the slate. The elastic snapped it back out of sight when he had finished with it.’

‘But the messages disappeared,’ Holtzbrinck pointed out.

‘Wiped away by his white gloves. White chalk against white gloves — invisible.’

Holtzbrinck and von Webenau exchanged glances. They seemed genuinely shocked. Sherlock had the impression that, for whatever reason, they had really wanted to believe in Albano’s powers.

Count Shuvalov leaned forward. ‘You are very convincing about the writing on the slate and the ectoplasmic materialization. The information about Herr Holtzbrinck’s brother Fritz and —’he glanced apologetically at Amyus Crowe — ‘my American colleague’s wife could have been obtained by standard investigation beforehand. I work in intelligence — I know how these things are done.’ He paused, staring intently at Sherlock. ‘But the disappearance of Mr Albano from the carriage before it crashed — surely you must admit that such a thing would be impossible to fake. That was no trick. The man really did disappear.’

‘There was a disappearance,’ Sherlock said quietly, ‘but it wasn’t by Mr Albano.’ He glanced at the four foreign dignitaries. ‘The carriage crash was faked to give Mr Albano an opportunity to make himself look even more powerful — to make it look as if he was so valuable to the spirits on the astral plane that they would transport him there and back if he was threatened. But there was no kidnap.’

‘We all saw four kidnappers,’ Holtzbrinck pointed out.

‘No, we saw three kidnappers — the driver and the two men who got out and grabbed Mr Albano. The fourth figure we saw was just a shape — a silhouette inside the carriage. It was easily accomplished by hanging up a coat with a black scarf bundled up to form a head.’

‘Four men ran away,’ von Webenau said.

‘Yes,’ Sherlock agreed. ‘And one of them was Mr Albano.’ He stared at the men, one after the other. Shuvalov was already ahead of him, as was Crowe, but he had to persuade von Webenau and Holtzbrinck. ‘When Albano was thrown inside the carriage, he quickly put on the coat that was hanging up there, and wound the scarf around his face. When the coach crashed, which it was supposed to do, he ran away with the other three men.’ He turned to Quintillan. ‘Were they servants, or did you hire them from the village?’

Quintillan just stared at him darkly.

‘It doesn’t really matter,’ Sherlock continued. I was just interested to know.’ He turned to Amyus Crowe. ‘Have I left anything out? I think I’ve covered everything of importance.’

‘The attack on your brother?’ Crowe prompted.

‘Ah yes.’ He looked from von Webenau to Holtzbrinck and then to Shuvalov. ‘That was nothing to do with the séance, or the attempt to get money from your governments. That was an attempt to reduce the playing field. I presume someone thought that the British Government, being the closest and perhaps the one with the most resources, was most likely to win the auction for Mr Albano’s services, so they decided to take my brother out of the running.’

‘An’ do you know who?’ Crowe asked.

‘I originally suspected that the attacker had gained access to the library from a secret passage,’ Sherlock said, ignoring the question. ‘However, I now suspect there was a much more prosaic explanation. I believe that the attacker was hiding behind the curtains in the library.’ He glanced around at the group. ‘You are all intelligent men, and the attack was clumsy — badly thought out and badly managed.’ He turned suddenly, and pointed at Count Shuvalov. ‘Count — why did you dismiss your manservant earlier?’

Shuvalov stared at Sherlock for a long moment. ‘He was incompetent. He did not meet my standards. I sent him back home, in disgrace.’

‘You mean he attacked my brother without being ordered to, therefore risking an international incident? He acted independently of you, thinking he was helping you, and so he had to go.’

Shuvalov shrugged. ‘You may believe what you wish,’ he said, ‘but believe this — I would never order an attack so clumsy, especially against a man for whom I have much friendship. There are other, better ways to ensure that the Russian Empire succeeds in this auction for the psychic’s services —’ he gazed at Quintillan — ‘if the psychic’s powers are real. I think our friend here has convincingly demonstrated that they are not, and I thank him for it.’

Quintillan stared at Crowe and Sherlock, and then scanned his gaze across the other delegates.

‘I realize how this looks,’ he said slowly. ‘I understand that you think you have been duped — that you believe Mr Albano and I are conspiring to get you to pay us money for something that does not exist. But it does exist. I assure you, Mr Albano’s powers are real.’

‘Then why the tricks?’ Sherlock asked.

Quintillan raised a hand to his forehead. ‘It is… embarrassing to explain.’ He gestured to Ambrose Albano. ‘Would you mind?’

Albano stepped forward. ‘I confess,’ he said, ‘that there have been tricks, but they were intended not to fool you, but to protect me. My powers are —’ he shrugged — ‘fragile. They come and they go. When Sir Shadrach arranged this demonstration I was physically in good health. I was able to demonstrate my powers at will, whenever I was called upon to do so.’ He sighed. ‘But in the intervening time I have suffered a fever. I was confined to bed for several weeks. The doctors feared for my health. I was on the verge of death. I recovered, thanks to the care of my good friend Sir Shadrach, but while my strength has returned, my ability to summon spirits and to cross to the Other Side has not. Not perfectly, anyway. I can sometimes receive messages from the other side, but not reliably. I begged Sir Shadrach to call off the demonstration and the auction, but he said that it had taken so long to arrange that we could not cancel now. He also pointed out that if I were to fail at some or all of the demonstration, then you would go back and tell your respective governments that I had no powers, that I was a fraud and a fake, and not a very good one either. So, yes, we cheated. We concocted a series of magical illusions that gave the impression of a successful séance. I am truly sorry for that.’ He held his hands out, seeking forgiveness. ‘We let panic persuade us into a foolish course of action.’

‘So your case,’ von Webenau said, ‘is that you do have psychic powers, but that you cannot actively control them. You do not know when and if they will work.’

‘That is exactly the case,’ Albano said. ‘What I can add is that my powers have been gradually coming back to me, and that I fully expect, within a month, to be back at my full psychic strength.’

‘And we should take your word for that?’ Crowe said heavily.

‘Absolutely not,’ Quintillan answered quickly. ‘We understand that this explanation, whilst every word is true, may not be very convincing, and so I would suggest two things. Firstly, given that Mr Albano’s powers are returning by degrees, we arrange a final demonstration that cannot be faked. Everything can be inspected beforehand for evidence of trickery, and that inspection will leave you convinced that the only answer is that psychic powers are involved. Secondly, you will be convinced by the fact that the auction is conducted on the basis that we are proposing Mr Albano as a partial psychic, not a complete psychic, and that the money bid by you on behalf of your governments reflects this.’ He looked from person to person. ‘Is this acceptable, gentlemen?’

Crowe shook his large head. ‘It is not acceptable. We have a name for people like you in America. We call you “flim-flam men”. You are confidence tricksters, nothing more, and this is just a rather pathetic attempt to stop us from leaving.’

‘The British Government agrees with the American Government,’ Sherlock said, feeling a thrill run through him as he said the words. He liked the idea that he was speaking directly on behalf of the British Government, and he was sure that his brother would have said the same thing, albeit probably with a lot more words.

‘I understand,’ Quintillan said sadly. ‘And I thank you, gentlemen, for your honesty.’ He turned to face von Webenau, Holtzbrinck and Shuvalov. ‘And what about you, gentlemen? What is your answer?’

Von Webenau and Holtzbrinck looked at Count Shuvalov, as if he was the leader of their little group. He nodded once, gravely. Von Webenau turned back to Quintillan. ‘We will see your final demonstration,’ he said.

‘But we are sceptical,’ Holtzbrinck added, ‘and we will be looking at you with critical eyes. You will need to provide a demonstration that is completely convincing to us. If you can do that then the auction can go ahead.’

‘With a reduced number of bidders,’ von Webenau said. He glanced at Sherlock and Amyus Crowe and shrugged apologetically. ‘I’m sorry, but if you are out then you are out. You cannot come back in if the demonstration is convincing.’

‘Suits me,’ Crowe rumbled.

Sherlock nodded. ‘Agreed.’

‘With one proviso,’ Count Shuvalov said. He spoke quietly, but he spoke so rarely that everyone listened. ‘This young man has a good mind, and has exposed trickery that might have fooled some of the more credulous amongst us.’ He smiled. ‘And I count myself amongst that number. I insist that he be allowed to watch the final demonstration, and to look for any evidence of trickery. I also insist that Mr Crowe be present as well, on the basis that the more eyes watching this demonstration, the better. They do not take part in the auction, if there is an auction, but they watch everything.’

Quintillan looked at Albano, who nodded.

‘Yes,’ Quintillan said, ‘your conditions are acceptable.’

‘And I,’ Sherlock said boldly, ‘insist that the demonstration is held tomorrow, in daylight, not at night. Daylight is a great exposer of hoaxes and trickery.’

‘Again,’ Quintillan said, ‘your condition is acceptable.’ It seemed to Sherlock, however, that he didn’t seem particularly happy about it.

‘Now I need to rest,’ Albano said, ‘in order to conserve my energy for the demonstration. I propose that it occurs after lunch.’

‘We will reconvene tomorrow, after lunch,’ Quintillan said. ‘Until then, gentlemen, you must amuse yourselves.’

He gestured to Silman, who had been standing behind him all the while, so stationary that everyone had forgotten she was there, and she wheeled him out. Ambrose Albano followed.

‘Very clever,’ Crowe said, approaching Sherlock. ‘He’s managed to turn defeat into a qualified victory. Those fools —’ he gestured to where von Webenau, Holtzbrinck and Shuvalov were clustered together, talking in low voices — ‘want this thing to be true, and so they’re willin’ to let this pair of tricksters have another bite of the cherry.’

‘At least we won’t be wasting British or American money,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘And we get to watch, and to see exactly how the trick is done.’

‘Ah suspect that this trick will be the granddaddy of all tricks,’ Crowe warned. ‘We’ll need to watch carefully.’ He seemed to notice some expression in Sherlock’s face. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘I was just thinking,’ Sherlock said, ‘that Sir Shadrach’s daughter isn’t going to be best pleased with me.’

Crowe nodded. ‘That’s the problem with the truth, son. It don’t please a lot of people, because it upsets the neat little applecart of their world. Don’t mean that you should avoid the truth, though. You should never do that. You just need to be aware that you’ll have fewer friends because of it, but also that the ones who stay will be better friends.’ He turned towards Shuvalov, von Webenau and Holtzbrinck. ‘Ah suggest we get a good night’s sleep. Let’s think on what has happened tonight, an’ talk it over tomorrow mornin’. Are we in agreement?’

The three other men nodded.

‘What about Mr Holmes?’ Count Shuvalov asked. ‘Will he be in agreement with this plan?’

‘Ah’ll go an’ brief him now.’ Crowe glanced across at Sherlock. ‘Ah’m sure he’ll be interested to know what his brother has accomplished this evenin’. Ah’m sure he’ll also be relieved to know who it was who clocked him from behind.’ He gazed levelly at Shuvalov. ‘It was your man, wasn’t it?’

Shuvalov made an ambiguous gesture. ‘Let us say that it will certainly not be happening again. Mr Holmes is not in danger any more.’

Crowe looked at Sherlock. ‘You comin’, Sherlock, or am Ah doin’ this alone?’

Sherlock thought for a moment. He knew that his brother would want to go exhaustively over everything that had happened, but he wasn’t sure he had the energy for that. Not at that moment, anyway. ‘You brief him,’ he said. ‘You were an independent witness, anyway, so he’ll put more faith in what you say. I can answer any questions he has tomorrow morning.’

‘Fair enough,’ Crowe said, nodding. ‘In that case, goodnight, gentlemen, an’ sleep well.’

‘I, for one, feel the need of a stiff brandy,’ von Webenau said. ‘Will anybody join me?’

Holtzbrinck and Shuvalov nodded their agreement. Crowe and Sherlock left the other three men there and shared the ascending room up to the floor where their rooms were located.

‘Ah meant it,’ Crowe said as they left the ascending room. ‘You did good work there, an’ you saved me from doin’ somethin’ Ah might’ve regretted later. Ah thank you for that.’

Sherlock smiled, and said nothing.

It seemed to Sherlock that he fell asleep somewhere between taking his shoes off and removing his shirt. He awoke the next morning still half dressed, and lying diagonally across his bed. The events of the night before seemed like a bizarre dream.

When he got down to breakfast the other foreign representatives were already there. Mycroft was also there, dressed and with his head still swathed in a bandage. He was looking better: there was colour in his cheeks. He glanced over as Sherlock entered the room and nodded gravely, then went back to his discussions.

Sherlock stacked up a plate with food from the sideboard, sat down, and stared at it. A foot-servant filled a cup with coffee, but he didn’t feel in the mood for anything. The events of the night before had left him elated and exhausted, and now he felt like a candle that had burned too brightly and too long, and which had been blown out to leave only a trail of smoke.

A movement at the doorway attracted his attention. Niamh Quintillan entered, saw him, and stopped dead. She glared at him with venom in her eyes.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You’ve spoken to your father.’

She just kept staring at him for a painfully long moment, and then she turned and headed out of the dining room again.

‘Not hungry, I guess,’ Sherlock murmured to himself.

He had just forced himself to eat some toast and marmalade when Virginia entered the room. She saw her father, and smiled, and then saw Sherlock. The smile faded, replaced with an expression he couldn’t read. It wasn’t the anger that had been on Niamh’s face. This was more like… embarrassment? Fear? He wasn’t sure.

Virginia, like Niamh before her, turned and left without sitting down.

‘You got a way with women, son,’ Amyus Crowe called from the other end of the table.

‘Yes, but it looks like the wrong way,’ Sherlock rejoined.

When he had finished his toast and coffee, the meeting at the other end of the table was still going on. He wondered whether or not to join in, but Mycroft looked up, met his gaze and shook his head. Instead, Sherlock walked out into the hall. He stood there for a moment, irresolute, wondering whether he should go back to his room and just lie down for a while, waiting for the adults to decide what to do next. Eventually he wandered down into the hall of the castle, and then out into the open space outside the keep.

Virginia was standing there, in the fresh air, staring up at the sky. She was talking with Niamh Quintillan. The two of them seemed to be getting on surprisingly well. The weather was cloudy, but dry, and the clouds weren’t the grey that he associated with coming rain.

Sherlock watched from the doorway, not wanting to interrupt them. Eventually Niamh smiled, nodded, and walked away. Sherlock waited for a few moments, then approached Virginia.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hi,’ she said softly.

‘You were talking with Niamh,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you two had much in common.’

‘She has horses. Well, Connemara ponies, they’re called. She said she’ll take me riding later, if I want.’

Sherlock couldn’t think of anything to say in response. The silence between them grew to almost unbearable proportions. In order to break it, Sherlock said: ‘Do you want to take a walk outside?’

‘Is there anything to see?’

‘There’s a beach.’

Virginia nodded. ‘All right. Let’s walk.’

Sherlock led the way out of the castle, across the moat and off towards where he remembered the cliffs as being. He remembered that Niamh had told him about a way down to the beach, and it only took a few minutes of searching to find the steep path down the side of the cliffs. The two of them made their way down, sometimes using the steps that had been crudely carved into the cliff face and sometimes just scrambling down the mud and the rock. A wooden banister ran down most of the path, giving them a handhold in case they slipped, but sometimes it just wasn’t there — swept away by landslides or weathered and broken by storms, Sherlock guessed. There wasn’t any chance of talking while they were descending — the exertion took all of their energy and all of their concentration.

Far below them, but getting closer, Sherlock could see grey-green waves topped with white foam crashing against the sand and pebbles of the boulder-strewn beach. Seagulls soared around them, eyeing them with beady menace and uttering raucous cries. Sherlock hoped that the two of them didn’t go anywhere near any seagull nests. He suspected that those cruelly hooked bills could cause a lot of damage if the seagulls wanted to defend their eggs.

Eventually the descent levelled out, and they half ran, half fell the last few feet to the beach. They were both covered with scratches and mud. Looking back up the side of the cliff, Sherlock wondered how they would ever be able to get back. If they couldn’t climb then they would have to wander along the beach until they found an easier route up. Or starved.

He scanned the cliff for signs that the tide might come all the way in and drown them if they didn’t find a way off the beach in time. There was no line of seaweed on the cliff face marking the high tide point. Turning and looking at the beach, he noticed that it sloped down noticeably, and there was a line of seaweed about ten feet away from the cliff face. The pebbles on one side of the seaweed line were damp, and the ones on the other side, closer to where Sherlock and Virginia stood, were largely dry. That would be the high-tide point, he decided.

The cliff face was pockmarked with dark holes — some just a few feet across, but some large enough to drive a horse and carriage into. These must be the caves he had heard about — the ones used by smugglers in the past. He realized with a thrill that some of them must connect up with the cellars and tunnels beneath the castle, which meant that they did have another way off the beach if they needed it. The problem was that he had no idea which caves led to the tunnels and which ones just ended blindly. He would have to try and work out a way of telling which was which.

He stared at the cliff face for a while, trying to imagine it not as it appeared — a solid mass of rock — but as something honeycombed with tunnels that wound around each other and headed up towards the top of the cliff.

He turned, to find Virginia staring out at the sea.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘In Albuquerque, the only sand we had was desert sand. I still can’t get used to the idea of sand and water together.’

‘Oh.’ He wasn’t sure what else to say.

‘Come on then,’ she said, turning and heading off along the beach. ‘If we’re going to walk, let’s walk.’

‘Your father said you’re going back to America,’ he said after a few minutes, more to break the silence than for any other reason.

‘He says we have to go to Washington DC,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘It freezes in the winter and it boils in the summer, but that’s where Pinkertons have offered him a post, liaising with the Federal Government. That’s kind of what he’s doing right now — the new job. They really want him back.’

‘Oh.’ He paused, framing the next few words carefully. ‘You’re old enough that you could stay here, in England, you know. I’m sure he’d let you. He might not like it, but Mr Crowe knows that you know your own mind.’

‘Travis wants to go back to America as well,’ she said.

‘Ah. Travis.’

Virginia stopped and stared out to sea. Sherlock stopped behind her. Without knowing what he was going to do, he reached out and touched her shoulder, pulling her around to face him.

Her cheeks were wet with tears. Her violet eyes brimmed with them. As he watched, more spilt out and ran down her face.

He stepped forward and took her in his arms. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his chest.

‘It’s no good,’ she said, her voice muffled. ‘It’s all wrong. Everything is wrong.’

‘It can be fixed,’ he said, hoping against hope that it could.

‘No, it can’t. You don’t understand.’ She balled one of her hands into a fist and hit him on the shoulder. ‘I didn’t know if you were ever coming back. I had to make a decision — did I wait for you forever, or did I move on with my life? So I decided.’

‘I’m here now. I’m back.’

‘But it’s too late. I made a promise. I have to keep it.’ She pushed him away, to arm’s length, and stared up at him. ‘Travis loves me; at least he says he does. And I love him, I suppose. Maybe not in the way I love you, but it can grow, with time. Travis will look after me. He’ll provide for me. We’ll have a good life. His dad is a powerful businessman — he’ll be a useful contact for Father to have.’

‘Is that enough?’ Sherlock asked bleakly.

‘What else is there?’ She stared up at him, waiting for an answer, but he wasn’t even sure he understood the question. ‘Maybe a year ago we might have had a chance,’ she said eventually, ‘but not now. We’ve grown in different directions. We’re on different paths.’

‘I’m not even sure which path I’m on,’ he admitted.

‘And that’s part of the problem, Sherlock. Travis knows who he is and what he wants to be. He has a plan for his future, and he wants me to be a part of that plan. He intends going into politics. He wants to be a senator, and maybe a governor. What do you want to be? What’s your plan?’

He shrugged uneasily. ‘I’m still trying to work that out.’

‘I hope you do.’

‘Is there anything I can say to change your mind?’ he asked quietly.

Virginia just stared at him, tears still brimming in her eyes. He had a feeling that she wanted to say ‘Yes’, but then she would expect him to know what it was that she wanted to hear, and he didn’t. He had no idea. He could work almost anything out, given the evidence, but not that.

‘Let’s get back,’ she said eventually, looking away from him.

They headed out along the beach, away from the castle and away, as far as Sherlock could tell, from Galway itself. Sherlock kept an eye on the cliffs above them, and was relieved to see the boundary where the limestone cut across the blue and white of the sky moving closer to them. The sea had to be at the same level, so the logical solution was that the cliffs were getting lower. Maybe there would be a chance to scramble up them soon.

‘How’s Matty?’ Sherlock asked after a long period of silence.

‘I haven’t seen much of him,’ Virginia admitted. ‘He stays in town, mostly, and I spend my time out in the countryside. I think he’s scared of my dad.’ She hesitated. ‘He never says anything, but I know he wishes you were around.’

‘I thought he might leave Farnham, once I’d… once I’d gone. He seems to prefer travelling to staying in one place.’

‘I think he’s hoping you’ll come back, one day.’

‘And here I am, back again,’ Sherlock murmured, but if Virginia heard his response then she gave no sign.

After a while, Sherlock realized that the cliff edge was low enough for there to be a realistic prospect of getting back up. The boulders were smaller here and speckled with orange algae. He looked for a suitable spot, but it was Virginia who saw one first. As with their original point of descent, crude stairs had been cut into the rock and the dirt to provide footholds.

‘Do you want to go back to the castle?’ Sherlock asked.

Virginia stared at him for a moment. ‘What do you want to do?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m getting hungry. Shall we head back?’

‘If that’s what you want.’

A path left by who knew how many generations of feet led back towards the castle through thick furze that grew to a level that was mostly over their heads, with the occasional copse of ash trees rearing from it. It was uphill, but not steeply so. The two of them walked in silence, with Sherlock taking the lead and pushing the undergrowth back so that Virginia could get through without getting hurt. Every now and then there was a gap in the bushes, through which either the sea or the distant castle was visible.

After an hour or so, Sherlock realized that he could see something above the undergrowth — something artificial. It was the tower that he had seen a couple of times before — the folly that he knew was near the castle but which he could sometimes not see from places where it should have been easily visible. Now that he was close, he knew that he had to take the opportunity to investigate it. The chances were that he might never be able to find it again if he left it now.

‘I need to look at that thing,’ he said, pointing. ‘Is it all right if we divert our course a little so that I can take a look?’

Virginia shook her head. ‘I’m tired,’ she announced, ‘and I’m hungry, and I need a bath and a change of clothes before I go riding with Niamh. I’m going to head back.’

‘All right,’ Sherlock said, glancing at the tower again, ‘I’ll come with you.’

‘I don’t need an escort,’ she said angrily. ‘I can find my own way safely.’

‘Look,’ Sherlock suddenly snapped, ‘I didn’t choose to go away. I was kidnapped. I was drugged, and when I woke up I found myself on a ship heading for China. It wasn’t my choice! ’

‘I know.’ She nodded, then said again, ‘I know. But you never wrote to me. You never bothered to get in touch.’

‘I was on a ship headed for China,’ he repeated, more softly. ‘It wasn’t like there was a scheduled postal service.’

‘You wrote to your brother,’ she pointed out. ‘But you didn’t write to me.’

‘I didn’t know what to say.’

‘That’s the problem.’

She turned and walked away. Sherlock watched her go, feeling torn. On the one hand he wanted to go with her; on the other hand he wanted to take a look at the folly.

His mind flashed up a memory from over a year ago: her sleeping in a rough stone hut on the Scottish moors while he, awake, watched her. He remembered the firelight making her face and her hair glow. He knew that he would never forget that sight, and the feelings that had filled him then, but also that he would never be in that situation again.

Sighing, he turned and followed Virginia. Women, he decided, were not logical and they were not predictable, and they seemed actively to encourage that behaviour in men. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to play that game.