Knife Edge

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lunch had just finished when — ‘Gentlemen,’ a voice announced.

Sherlock, along with the other representatives — Mycroft, Crowe, von Webenau, Holtzbrinck and Shuvalov — turned to look at the doorway. Sir Shadrach Quintillan was blocking the space with his bath chair, the ever-present Silman standing behind him.

‘Are you ready for the final, the conclusive, the absolutely unfakable test?’ he continued. There was a smile on his face, and he looked relaxed, but Sherlock could sense a tension about him. Maybe it was the way his hands were resting on his lap, with the fingers twisted together.

‘We are, I think, prepared for anything you can throw at us,’ Mycroft said. ‘But we warn you — after the charades of last night, we are in no mood for any more trickery.’

‘There will be no trickery,’ Quintillan promised. ‘You will all be invited to inspect every feature of the demonstration. If you spot any sign of fraud then we will stop immediately, and I will abandon any plans that I have to further persuade you.’

‘Very well,’ Herr Holtzbrinck said. ‘Let us proceed.’

Von Webenau coughed to attract attention. ‘Will the demonstration be in the same room as before?’ he asked.

‘No. We required a special room — an isolated one.’

‘A room, I suppose, that has already been chosen and prepared by you?’ Mycroft said acerbically.

Quintillan grimaced. ‘Unfortunately, for reasons that will become obvious once we get there, the room needs to be on the top floor, where it cannot be observed or overseen by anyone outside, but I am happy for you to choose which room it is yourself. In fact, I anticipated your request.’ He beckoned forward a floor-servant who was holding a bowl containing many slips of paper. ‘I have had my servants chalk numbers on all the rooms on the top floor,’ he said. ‘There are equivalent numbers on the slips of paper in this bowl. Please — will someone take a number?’

The representatives looked at each other for a moment, then at some unspoken agreement von Webenau walked over and took a slip of paper from the bowl. He unfolded it, and read out, ‘Twenty-four.’

‘Is everyone happy for that to be the number chosen?’ Quintillan asked.

‘No,’ Mycroft said loudly. ‘I wish von Webenau to choose another number.’

‘Very well.’ Quintillan gestured to von Webenau, who screwed up the first piece of paper, placed it on the table beside the bowl and plucked another out. He opened it up. ‘Thirty-five,’ he announced.

Quintillan turned to Mycroft. ‘Mr Holmes?’

‘I am content,’ Mycroft rumbled. ‘I merely wanted to establish that the bowl wasn’t filled with slips of paper all of which had “Twenty-four” written on them.’

‘Then if we are happy to use room thirty-five, please — follow me.’

Silman pulled Quintillan out of the doorway, turned the bath chair around and pushed him out of sight. Everybody else followed, but Mycroft paused by the table. He reached into the bowl and removed a handful of slips of paper. He opened them up, one after the other, and glanced at them.

‘What’s the verdict?’ Sherlock asked.

‘They are all different.’ Mycroft threw the papers back into the bowl. ‘I felt that I had to make absolutely sure.’

Out in the hall, Silman pushed Quintillan across to the ascending room. Ambrose Albano was already standing there, looking pale but resolute. The sun, shining from high in the sky, reflected off his false eye and created a blaze of white light on his cheek.

‘We will travel to the top floor,’ Quintillan announced. ‘It will be a tight squeeze, but I suggest that I travel first, with Mr Crowe, Herr Holtzbrinck and von Webenau. I will send the ascending room back down again, and Mr Ambrose can follow with the two Mr Holmeses, plus Count Shuvalov. Does anybody disagree with this intention?’

Nobody spoke out, so Silman opened the door and pulled Quintillan backwards into the ascending room. Holtzbrinck, Crowe and von Webenau followed. The door closed, and the contraption began to rise.

The group left in the hall looked at each awkwardly. No words were exchanged.

Once they were all together again on the top floor, Silman pushed Quintillan along one of the connecting corridors and the other men followed. Each of the doors had a number chalked on it, but Sherlock noticed that they were not in consecutive order. He made a mental note of the numbers as he passed the doors: 15, 42, 11, 49, 27 …

Silman kept pushing the bath chair down the corridor to a room which had the number 35 on it. A key was sticking out of the lock.

‘This is where the demonstration will take place,’ Quintillan announced.

Silman turned the key, pulled it out of the lock and pushed the door open, and Quintillan gestured to the assembled representatives to enter.

‘Why aren’t the numbers in order?’ Sherlock asked.

Quintillan turned to look at Sherlock. ‘I am informed that those who dwell in the spirit world have a dislike of order and organization,’ he explained. ‘They much prefer things to be random — more like nature than mathematics.’

‘It is true,’ Albano confirmed from the back of the group. ‘Many times I have been informed by those who have crossed over to the Other Side that they much prefer things to be disordered.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Sherlock said, but he was remembering the letters on the table for the séances on the previous nights. They had been in alphabetical order, and nobody had made a comment then — not the spirits and not Ambrose Albano. There was something odd here about the random numbers.

The group all entered the room with the exception of Albano. He hung back, saying, ‘For reasons that you will understand shortly, I should stay here. It will make the demonstration even more convincing.’

The room was empty — no carpets, no curtains, no paintings on the wall. There were two openings — the door that they had come through and a window. There was also a hook on one wall where a painting would have hung, and a patch of lighter wall beneath it that showed where a painting had been. The room was so bare that it looked as though it had been pre-prepared for their arrival. Sherlock was about to say something when Count Shuvalov beat him to it.

‘Are all the rooms on this level so bare?’ he asked.

‘This level of the castle is not used,’ Quintillan confirmed. ‘There is, therefore, no point in furnishing them.’

‘Could we check another room?’ Mycroft asked.

Quintillan stared at him. ‘There comes a point,’ he said, ‘when suspicion turns into active insult. You were allowed to choose a room at random, and you were allowed to then change the choice. There was no way I could have known that we would end up in this room. That should be enough for you, Mr Holmes.’

Mycroft subsided, but Sherlock caught a flash of expression on his face. Rather than annoyance, it was a look of amusement. Mycroft obviously had some suspicion that this was still a trick, albeit a more complicated one. Sherlock was of the same opinion.

‘Now, gentlemen,’ Quintillan announced. ‘Please feel free to examine this room from top to bottom and from side to side. Check all of the stones in the wall and the flagstones in the floor for secret entrances. I want you to be assured that there is no way in and no way out.’

While Mycroft, Sherlock and Amyus Crowe stood off to one side, the other three men thoroughly investigated the walls, floor and ceiling. They all conferred for a few moments, and then turned to Quintillan.

‘There is, as you indicate, no way into or out of the room with the exception of the window and the door,’ Holtzbrinck stated firmly. ‘We have also checked for holes through which someone might observe the room or influence what is inside. There are no holes or other gaps, and all the stones are secure.’

‘Excellent,’ Quintillan said. ‘Now, please examine the window. I wish you to assure yourself that nobody could climb up here from outside.’

Von Webenau went across to the window and opened it. He leaned out, looking left and right, up and down. ‘The wall is sheer,’ he said, pulling himself back inside, ‘with no handholds or footholds.’

‘What about ivy?’ Shuvalov asked.

‘No plants of any kind,’ von Webenau confirmed. ‘Nothing that would allow a climber any purchase.’

‘What about upward?’ Mycroft called. ‘Could a climber get down from the roof?’

Von Webenau leaned out again and stared up. ‘There is a considerable overhang,’ he shouted back into the room. ‘I cannot see any way that a person could climb down from above.’

‘Besides,’ Quintillan said as von Webenau pulled his head in and closed the window, ‘I will be demonstrating shortly that nobody could climb down without leaving traces.’ He glanced at Count Shuvalov. ‘Count, could you please confirm that there is no way that anybody outside could see into this room.’

Shuvalov walked across to the window. Von Webenau moved out of his way. Shuvalov gazed out for a few moments. ‘I can see no way that any person outside could see in,’ he said eventually. ‘The trees and bushes are too low to permit a sight of anything apart from the ceiling, even with a telescope.’

‘Thank you,’ Quintillan said. ‘I think that we are ready to proceed.’

‘What about a curtain?’ Amyus Crowe asked. ‘That would ensure nobody could see in.’

‘Ah,’ Quintillan said, ‘but we must allow a means of entry for the spirits. A curtain could block their access.’

‘Really?’ Crowe look sceptical, but he didn’t pursue the question.

‘Indeed. Also —’ Quintillan smiled — ‘either you or Mr Holmes could argue that someone was concealing themselves in the curtains. If there are no curtains then there is nowhere for anyone to be concealed, yes?’

Crowe shrugged. ‘If you say so, Sir Shadrach.’

A noise at the door made them all turn. Four servants entered, each carrying a large painting in a heavy, ornate frame. One was a painting of a man in military uniform, one of a horse, one a classical scene with men in togas standing and arguing in a temple, and one a landscape with trees and hills. They placed the paintings in a line against the wall with the hook in it, and left.

‘We have four paintings,’ Quintillan announced. ‘Each painting is different from the others. In a moment we will all leave, with the exception of Mr Sherlock Holmes. While the rest of us go up to the roof and I demonstrate that no climber could get down without leaving a trace, young Mr Holmes will choose one, and one only, of the paintings and hang it on the wall. Only he will know which painting he chose. I would also ask Mr Holmes to choose which way he hangs it: normally, upside down, or rotated either to the left or to the right. Mr Albano will already have been blindfolded and will have wax earplugs placed into his ears. He will be completely unable to see or hear anything, and yet, through the aid and assistance of the spirits, he will know which painting Mr Holmes chose to hang on the wall and what orientation he has chosen.’ He looked over at Sherlock. ‘Is your role in this clear, young man?’

‘It is.’

‘And you know why I have chosen you for this important task?’

‘Presumably because I was the one who exposed the tricks last night,’ Sherlock said.

‘That is correct. Of all of us, you are the one who cannot be in league with any trickery.’ He looked around. ‘Now, gentlemen, let us leave young Mr Holmes to make his choice.’ He glanced back at Sherlock. ‘Wait until we have all left and the door is closed,’ he said. ‘Place the key in the lock so that nobody can see in through the keyhole, then choose and hang a painting. Wait until you hear my voice calling from above. Do you understand?’

‘I do.’

‘And do not, on your life, tell anyone which painting you have hung up, or which way you have hung it.’ He paused. ‘Very well.’ He gestured to Silman, who handed the room key to Sherlock then wheeled Quintillan out. The others followed.

Through the open door, Sherlock could see Ambrose Albano. One of the servants had tied a thick piece of material around his eyes. He stood there, blindfolded, head cocked to one side as if wondering what was going on around him.

Another foot-servant appeared from the corridor. She was holding a long wooden pole. She handed it through the door to Sherlock.

‘Keep the pole,’ Quintillan said. ‘You will need it later.’

Mycroft was last out. He turned and raised an eyebrow at Sherlock. Sherlock nodded, and Mycroft left, closing the door behind him.

Sherlock was left alone.

He took a deep breath, and savoured the silence for a moment. Then, remembering his instructions, he placed the pole against the wall and walked across and put the key in the lock so that nobody could see through the keyhole. He also looked the door over to make sure there were no spy holes in it, but it was a solid block of wood.

Glancing at the paintings, he wondered whether there had been any surreptitious words or phrases that Quintillan had used to persuade him to choose a particular canvas. He couldn’t think of anything. He should, he decided, make the choice as random as he could. He thought for a moment. ‘All right,’ he said to himself. ‘How many letters in the name “Virginia”? Eight.’ He started counting from the left-hand painting, restarting when he got to four. That meant that when he got to eight he was pointing at the last canvas: the landscape of hills and trees. He crossed over to it and tried to pick it up. The painting was heavy — probably more because of the large frame than anything else. He turned it until the picture was upside down. He lifted it and placed it on the hook in the wall. Standing back, arms extended in case it fell, he waited for a few moments, but it was stable.

He crossed to the window and stared out at the countryside. As von Webenau had said, there was no way that anybody could see inside the room from outside: the window was too high, and there were no tall trees that Sherlock could see. The tower that he had seen a couple of times before, from various points around the castle, might have provided a suitable platform for an observer, but he couldn’t spot it. It must have been on a different side of the castle — it was difficult to tell, sometimes, as the landscape tended to look the same in all directions apart from towards the cliffs.

He opened the window, leaned out and stared downward. The castle grounds were down below, along with the wall that marked the boundary between the grounds and the outside world. The wall was too low for anyone to get a view inside the room.

‘Mr Holmes!’ a voice called from above. ‘Can you hear me?’

Sherlock turned his head and looked up, but the overhang of the roof prevented him from seeing anyone. ‘Yes, I can hear you!’

‘Can you fetch the wooden pole, please?’

Sherlock crossed the room, picked up the pole and returned to the window. ‘I have it.’

‘Now, please push the pole out of the window whilst keeping hold of one end.’

With some difficulty, Sherlock balanced the pole on the windowsill and slid it out, keeping enough of it inside the room to stop it from falling. ‘Done!’ he called.

From somewhere above, Sherlock heard Quintillan say: ‘Gentlemen, please confirm that you can see the pole below us, thus proving that we are directly above the room you saw earlier.’

There was a brief pause, followed by a quiet murmur of voices agreeing that yes, they could see the pole.

‘Forgive me,’ Mycroft said, ‘but you might have led us to a point above a different room, and that pole might be in the hands of one of your servants. We need to establish that it is Sherlock who is holding the pole.’

‘What do you propose?’ Quintillan asked.

‘Sherlock!’ Mycroft called. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘I can hear you!’

‘I am going to call out some letters, chosen at random. When I reach the letter that is the first letter of the first name of a friend of yours who is not here, and who lives on a canal, then pull the pole back in. Do you understand?’

‘I understand.’

‘Very well. “A”, “T”, “L”, “V”, “F”, “G”, “M”—’

When he heard Mycroft say ‘M’, Sherlock pulled the pole back in.

‘Are you satisfied?’ he heard Quintillan’s voice ask his brother.

‘Reasonably,’ Mycroft responded.

‘Mr Holmes!’ Quintillan called down. ‘Please stay where you are until you see us on the grass down below the window, then leave the room, lock the door and stand guard outside. I will send a servant for you in due course. Do you understand?’

‘Perfectly!’ he shouted.

He stayed at the window for what must have been half an hour. The room behind him was quiet, and the landscape that he was looking at was stunning in its beauty. The sun was low in the sky, and the shadow of the castle boundary wall lengthened on the grass.

Eventually a door opened in the castle wall below, and he could see a group of figures emerging. One of them was in a bath chair, and another was being led by a servant.

‘Mr Holmes!’ Quintillan called up. Distance made his voice very quiet. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Barely,’ Sherlock called back.

‘Can you confirm that the room has remained undisturbed since we left?’

‘I can. Nobody apart from me has been in this room, and nobody has tried to see in.’

‘Very good. Please now go outside, lock the door and wait for a servant to come and fetch you. We will maintain watch from here.’

With one last glance to check that there was no way of seeing into the room from outside from any vantage point in the landscape, Sherlock left, taking the key from the lock and locking the door behind him from the outside.

The corridor was empty. He stood there, back against the door, key in his pocket, looking first left, and then right, and then left again, making sure that nobody approached him. He also listened, in case he could hear anyone moving around inside the room, but it was perfectly quiet.

Twenty minutes passed. Nothing happened, and Sherlock found his mind racing, trying to work out how Quintillan and Albano were going to manage their trick — because it had to be a trick. The problem was that he couldn’t think of any way it could be accomplished. Quintillan seemed to have covered all of the possibilities, and eliminated them.

Eventually, a servant entered the corridor from Sherlock’s left. ‘The master says would you follow me downstairs.’ She handed him a small cloth bag. Sherlock glanced inside. It was filled with blue chalk dust. ‘The master says to please scatter this powder around outside the door, so that any entry to the room will be spotted.’

Sherlock did as he was instructed, scattering the dust not only in front of the door but also down the corridor in both directions. Even if someone tried to sweep it up, get in the room and then replace the chalk with more chalk, there would be traces left — of that he was sure. The corridor would have to be washed down to remove chalk traces from all the cracks between the flagstones.

Sherlock followed the foot-servant down the stairs to the hall, and then through various corridors which he had not seen before to a door that led outside, into the open air. The foot-servant gestured to Sherlock to go through. ‘Please, sir — the master is waiting for you outside.’

The five international representatives, along with Quintillan and the blindfolded Albano, were standing outside. The sun was so low that it was nearly behind the boundary wall.

Sherlock crossed to where Mycroft was standing. ‘What’s been going on?’ he asked.

Mycroft shrugged. ‘Lots of theatrics,’ he said. ‘We went out on to the castle roof, above the room you were in. The roof is, as you know, a very unpleasant and possibly dangerous place. We looked over the edge, to where you were in the room. The business with the wooden pole persuaded me that we were in the correct place. After that had been done, Sir Shadrach had von Webenau sprinkle blue chalk powder all over the roof. I do not think it can be removed easily without leaving traces, and so I am reasonably content that nobody can get on the roof and lower themselves to that room without us knowing. Not that I think it will be attempted: we came straight down here, and you were still in the room. Since you left the room, we have been watching the window and the roof, and nobody has attempted any descent. What happened up in the room?’

Sherlock told him.

‘Gentlemen,’ Quintillan called. ‘May I have your attention, please? Are you of the opinion that the only way into or out of that room is by the door or the window?’

There was a general nodding and murmuring of ‘Yes.’

‘And are you of the opinion that there is no way anybody could get into that room via the door, or via the window, without leaving traces in the chalk dust?’

Again, there was general assent.

‘And are you of the opinion that the window is so high, and the surrounding landscape so low, that nobody could look into the room from outside and see the painting that young Mr Holmes placed on the wall?’

Everyone agreed that was the case. ‘They could only see the ceiling,’ Herr Holtzbrinck added. ‘The wall would be too low for them to see.’

‘Then I believe we can place ourselves in the hands of Mr Albano.’

One of the servants tapped Albano on the shoulder. He stepped forward, still blindfolded. He reached up and plucked two small balls of wax from his ears and threw them away, then he spread his hands out in a gesture of openness. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Friends, if I may call you that. To my eternal shame there has been a degree of deceit in our dealings with you thus far. I deeply regret that deceit, but Sir Shadrach was not sure that my physical and mental state was strong enough for me to successfully carry off two convincing séances. Perhaps we should have tried regardless. Perhaps we should have postponed the demonstration and the auction until I was stronger. However, as a very wise man once said, “We are where we are”, and we cannot go back and change time. I hope that by exerting my powers to their utmost now, in an environment where you have exhaustively searched for signs of trickery without finding them, we can persuade you that what has occurred has been an unfortunate but minor event in an otherwise successful demonstration. Now, you have agreed, have you not, that no human agency could know which of the four paintings young Mr Holmes hung on the wall?’

Holtzbrinck, von Webenau and Shuvalov agreed, yet again. Crowe and Mycroft just glanced non-committally.

‘The mark of the confidence trickster,’ Crowe muttered, low enough that only Mycroft and Sherlock could hear him, ‘is to get his audience to agree with him as much as possible. That puts them into a frame of mind where, when he says something untrue or unprovable, they will be more likely to agree with him again.’

‘You agree too that I, having been blindfolded since before young Mr Holmes made his choice, cannot have seen anything, or have been passed any message. I have been in your sight all the time.’ He pulled the blindfold off with a theatrical flourish. ‘In which case I do not need this any more. The choice has been made, the die has been cast, and it remains for me to determine which choice was made. I will now commune with the psychic plane,’ Albano continued, ‘and persuade one of the spirits resident there to materialize in the room above. Please — be as quiet as you possibly can. This is a very delicate and easily disrupted operation.’

He looked at each man present for a few seconds. When his gaze turned to Sherlock, the boy felt transfixed by the way Albano’s false eye seemed to glow white in the light of the approaching sunset.

The silence was almost unbearable. Eventually it was broken when Albano clapped his hands together, then turned around and walked away from the group, towards the boundary wall. He stood there, staring out into the gathering shadows. He extended his arms, threw his head back, and started to chant softly.

‘It occurs to me,’ Mycroft said quietly, ‘that even if he guesses, he has a one-in-sixteen chance of getting it right. There are four paintings, and four ways to hang each painting.’

‘Those are pretty steep odds,’ Crowe pointed out. ‘It’s not like he can repeat these shenanigans another fifteen times with different international representatives until he manages to guess right. He has one go at this, and he has to get it right first time if anyone is to believe him.’ He paused. ‘Not that Ah’m inclined to believe him even if he gets it right. Ah know there’s still a trick involved — Ah just don’t know what the trick is.’

‘I agree,’ Mycroft said. ‘There has been a large degree of theatricality about the proceedings — the chalk, the waving of the wooden pole, the blindfold and the ear plugs. I suspect that is meant to distract us from the more unusual parts of the proceedings.’

‘Which are?’ Sherlock asked.

‘Why don’t you tell us?’ Crowe said.

Sherlock collected his thoughts. ‘Well, the whole thing about hanging paintings on a wall is strange. He could have chosen a whole range of different things. Why use something so large and heavy?’

Mycroft nodded. ‘Good so far. Continue.’

‘The random numbering of the rooms is strange as well. I don’t believe that stuff about spirits not liking ordered things. The letters on the séance table were ordered alphabetically.’

‘Again, a good point, and I suspect that the trick depends on that random numbering. We were always meant to end up in that room, I believe.’

‘The third point is the room itself. You mentioned the lack of curtains, Mr Crowe. Sir Shadrach’s explanation didn’t really make much sense. The trick must have something to do with the fact that the window is not blocked, but even so I can’t see how.’ He indicated the room, several storeys above, with a nod of his head. ‘There really is no way to see in from ground level, or from anywhere outside the walls. It’s impossible.’

‘And yet,’ Crowe murmured, ‘it is going to happen.’

They talked quietly for a while longer, as the sun settled towards the horizon and the sky turned from blue to purple, from purple to red and from red to black. The warmth was sucked out of the air, and Sherlock found himself shivering. A servant emerged from the castle with a blanket, which Silman put over Quintillan’s legs. All the time Albano stood out in the open, alone with his hands outstretched, muttering to himself, apparently communing with the spirits.

Eventually Albano turned around and walked back towards the group. Everybody clustered around him — three eagerly and three with some scepticism.

‘I have managed to persuade a spirit to accede to my request,’ he said. ‘It is my old friend and spirit guide, the one who now calls himself Invictus. He has returned from the room above, and he tells me that the answer is…’ He paused dramatically. ‘The painting of the landscape has been hung in the room, and it has been hung upside down.’

Everyone turned to Sherlock.

‘Is that true?’ Herr Holtzbrinck asked breathlessly.

For a moment Sherlock had the almost overpowering desire to lie, but he couldn’t do that. He knew there was a trick here, but he had to be completely honest.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I hung the landscape on the wall, and I hung it upside down.’

Albano threw his head back and laughed, while von Webenau, Holtzbrinck and Count Shuvalov applauded wildly.