Knife Edge

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

‘Sherlock!’ Matty shouted across the lobby, making heads turn. He rushed across and skidded to a halt in front of his friend. He didn’t seem to know whether to hug Sherlock or shake his hand. In the end he settled for punching Sherlock hard in the shoulder. ‘I wasn’t sure you were ever coming back!’

‘There were times,’ Sherlock admitted, smiling in delight, ‘when I wasn’t sure either.’

‘’Ow long you been away?’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘Don’t have a calendar, nor a watch. There’s been a whole load of snow between you leaving and you coming back, so I reckon it’s been nearly a year.’

‘That much and some more,’ Sherlock said ruefully.

‘Albert’s dead.’ Matty’s face was serious. ‘Just stopped trottin’ one day, fell down and died, right in front of me.’

‘Virginia told me, in a letter.’

‘Got a new ’orse, though, name of ’Arold.’

Mycroft placed his hands on their shoulders. ‘Heartwarming though this reunion is, there are some important matters we need to discuss. Let us make ourselves comfortable and talk.’

Rufus Stone was standing up when Sherlock and the others got over to him. He nodded at Mycroft and at Amyus Crowe, but he shook Sherlock’s hand warmly.

‘Good to see you again, kid. I had visions of you settling down in China and learning how to play one of those abominable stringed instruments that you see in waterfront bars in Limehouse.’

‘Tempting,’ Sherlock replied, ‘but the violin is hard enough. I have been practising, by the way. All the time.’

‘There’s always going to be at least one fiddle player on a working ship,’ Stone said, smiling. ‘The trouble is they rarely practise their scales, despite the proximity of so many fish.’

Sherlock winced at the joke. ‘It’s good to be back,’ he said.

Mycroft gestured at them all to sit down. ‘No doubt you are wondering,’ he said to Sherlock and Crowe, ‘why these two unsavoury characters are here.’

‘You sent them a telegram.’ Sherlock shrugged. ‘It’s obvious.’

‘You did not decode that telegram.’ Mycroft scowled.

‘No, but you asked me to send an urgent telegram after you were attacked, and now Rufus and Matty are here. There’s a clear connection to be made.’

‘Indeed.’ Mycroft didn’t seem mollified. ‘Knowing that I was coming here to Galway, and knowing that I would be meeting you and that we might end up with a situation that we could not handle, I took the precaution of putting Mr Stone on alert. I did not specifically ask him to bring young Matthew, but I did not rule the possibility out.’

‘We relocated to Liverpool,’ Stone said, ‘and waited for further instructions. The minute we got Mr Holmes’s telegram, we set out for Ireland.’

‘But I sent the telegram to London,’ Sherlock said, and then caught himself with an exclamation. ‘Of course — you had someone resend the telegram to the intended recipients.’

‘Never, if you can help it, give away either your intentions or your agents,’ Mycroft said. He clapped his hands together. ‘Now — I need to brief the two of you on recent events.’

Succinctly, Mycroft summarized everything that had happened. While he spoke, pots of tea and plates of sandwiches and cakes were brought to them.

‘You’re taller than you used to be,’ Matty whispered to Sherlock while Mycroft was speaking. ‘And you’re thinner as well. And you’ve got a tan.’

‘You’re smaller than you used to be,’ Sherlock countered.

‘That don’t make any sense. People don’t get smaller as they grow up. That’s why it’s called growing up.’

‘I was joking.’ Sherlock paused for a moment. ‘But you are bigger around the waist. Too many pies filched from the market stalls?’

‘There’s this woman who runs a baker’s,’ Matty explained with a sniff. ‘She’s kind of adopted me. She feeds me stuff all the time, even when I don’t want it.’ A puzzled look crossed his face. ‘I’ve never not wanted food before. It’s a strange feeling.’

‘It’s called “feeling full”,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘Get used to it.’

‘So,’ Mycroft said, glaring at the two of them, ‘we have something of a conundrum. Who killed Sir Shadrach Quintillan, and why?’

‘From the sound of it, there are three different groups of villains involved,’ Stone said, picking up a sandwich. ‘Firstly, you have Sir Shadrach and Mr Albano, supported by the castle staff and possibly Quintillan’s daughter. They were involved in faking the psychic events so they could make a tidy profit from auctioning off Albano’s services, and in arranging the fake kidnapping in order to make him seem more important.’

‘Agreed, and obvious,’ Mycroft said.

‘Secondly, you have the person who attacked you — Count Shuvalov’s assistant, but acting outside his authority.’

‘Again,’ Mycroft said, ‘you state the obvious.’

‘And thirdly, you have the mysterious person or persons who want to sabotage the entire auction process, and have done so by killing Sir Shadrach Quintillan.’

Sherlock frowned. ‘How can you be sure they want to sabotage the auction process? The whole thing was trickery from start to finish.’

‘But from what your brother has said, the knowledge that the third demonstration of psychic powers was a trick is known only to the five of us here. For that reason, it couldn’t have been any of the international representatives who killed Sir Shadrach. They obviously still believe in Ambrose Albano’s powers, and want the auction to happen. They wouldn’t have sabotaged it.’

‘The violinist has a point,’ Crowe rumbled. ‘There’s a third party somewhere here, an’ we don’t know who they are.’

‘We know some things about them,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘We know that they believe in Ambrose Albano’s psychic abilities, we know that they don’t want any of the great international nations to have access to those abilities, and we know that they want to use those abilities themselves.’

‘’Ow do you figure that out?’ Matty asked. He was following the conversation with interest.

‘Because they killed Sir Shadrach, but left Ambrose Albano alive. If they wanted to stop any of the Empires from using the psychic then they would have killed Albano instead.’

Matty nodded. ‘Fair point.’ He frowned, thinking. ‘So why didn’t they kidnap this Albano bloke earlier? If it ’ad been me, I would’ve grabbed ’im first chance I got.’

‘They didn’t grab him earlier,’ Mycroft explained, ‘because your friend Sherlock had exposed him as a fake during the second séance. They were probably getting ready to pack up and go home, knowing that the international representatives were going to do the same thing, when Sir Shadrach staged that miracle come-back using the trick with the painting. That put them on the alert again. We need to arrange an opportunity for them, and not give them enough time to make anything more than a rudimentary plan.’

‘We also know that they have an agent inside the house,’ Sherlock added. ‘They must have, in order to get information on the progress of negotiations, and also to have got Sir Shadrach out without anyone noticing. That gives us an edge.’

Mycroft nodded. ‘We can provide them with false information to bring them out into the open, just by discussing it openly in the house.’

‘Ah see,’ Crowe said. ‘Make them think that there’s a deal goin’ down an’ that Ambrose Albano is about to be whisked away by one of us. They’ll have to move rapidly then to keep hold of him.’

Sherlock frowned. ‘Where is Albano? I haven’t seen him since last night.’

‘He has locked himself in his room,’ Mycroft said. ‘He is terrified that he might be killed next. He was interviewed by the police, but through a locked door. I think we can assume he’ll want to stay there.’ He looked around the group. ‘What I propose is this. First: Sherlock, Mr Crowe and I return to the castle. Second: I brief Ambrose Albano to keep quiet and stay in his room. Third: Mr Crowe makes a big noise about having been ordered by the US President to make a deal with Mr Albano and tells everyone that he and Albano will be leaving within the hour. Fourth: Mr Stone and young Matty hire a coach and horses and get them to turn up at the castle later this afternoon. Fifth: Mr Stone and I work out where, along the route that the coach will take back to Galway, would be the logical place for an attack to take place. Sixth: Mr Stone and young Matty wait there, along with some locals that Mr Stone will have to hire. Seventh—’

‘I think we understand the plan,’ Sherlock interrupted, ‘but how will we make it look like Mr Crowe is taking Mr Albano away if he’s locked in his room?’

‘That,’ Mycroft said, ‘is a very good question.’ He turned to Rufus Stone. ‘Did you bring the things that I asked for?’

‘I did.’ Stone lifted up a case that was beside his chair. ‘Theatrical make-up, wigs, all kinds of stuff to make one person look like another.’

Mycroft looked at Sherlock. ‘You, Sherlock, have the general build and the thinness of Mr Albano. With some pale make-up and a black wig you could, at a distance, be an acceptable substitute — and we know that this mysterious third party will be observing from a distance. They have to.’

Crowe shifted in his seat in concern. ‘What about that singular crystal eye of his? Difficult to fake that. Could give the game away.’

‘Ah.’ Mycroft thought for a moment. ‘An eyepatch is probably the only answer. That or Sherlock has to keep his head down.’

‘Not so,’ Sherlock said. ‘Leave it to me — I think I can do better.’

Mycroft looked around the group again, meeting everyone’s gaze. ‘Does everyone know their assigned parts in this? Is everyone reasonably content that those parts can be accomplished?’

‘One question,’ Rufus Stone said. ‘When I and these local thugs that I have yet to hire leap out from hiding and stop the kidnap attempt, what is our aim? I doubt we can make arrests, and I don’t want to get anyone into a fight to the death with a desperate criminal.’

‘I want to flush out whoever is responsible for giving the orders.’ Mycroft’s face was stony. ‘If there is an obvious leader then take them, and let the rest escape. If not then take anyone you can and we can question them at our leisure to find out who they are working for and where they are based.’ He looked around the table. ‘Are we all clear?’

Crowe, Stone, Sherlock and Matty looked at each other, then back at Mycroft. They all nodded at once.

‘Very well, let us begin. I do not need to tell you how important this is, or how dangerous.’

‘Nobody told me this trip was going to be dangerous,’ Matty murmured to nobody in particular. ‘Is it too late to go back home?’

Outside, the carriage was waiting to take Sherlock, Mycroft and Crowe back to the castle. As they got in, Sherlock spotted Rufus Stone and Matty leaving the hotel and heading towards the quayside.

‘Do you think they’ll be able to find enough men to help them?’ he asked.

Mycroft nodded. ‘You can usually find enough men on a quayside to do almost anything, up to and including taking control of a small country. In this case, Mr Stone merely needs five or six reliable men who aren’t worried that they might — actually, that they almost certainly will — get involved in a fight. Or perhaps double or triple that number if, when he examines the map of the local area, he finds several places that would serve equally well as the site of a hijack and kidnapping. The problem he will have is making sure they understand and follow their instructions, but he is naturally at home in their environment, and he talks the same language as the working man.’ A wistful expression flashed across his face, so briefly that Sherlock almost missed it. ‘I doubt that I would have that ability. I would merely get their backs up, while Mr Stone will have them eating out of his hand.’ He paused, considering the words he had just uttered. ‘That was a badly mixed set of metaphors, but I think you understand what I am trying to say.’

The carriage rattled along, taking them back to the castle. As they got closer, Mycroft beckoned to Amyus Crowe, who was staring out of the window, and said: ‘While Sherlock takes Mr Stone’s theatrical make-up kit up to his room and begins the process of disguising himself as Mr Albano, you and I need to stage a loud argument in the hall, so that the agents of this mysterious third party can hear us.’

‘What do we need to say?’

‘You need to tell me that you have made a separate deal with Mr Albano, on behalf of the US Government, and that you will be taking him away shortly. Oh, and that reminds me — you need to ensure that this carriage and its driver wait outside the castle to take you away later. It would be embarrassing if, after making all that noise about leaving, you were not able to do so.’

‘Point noted,’ Crowe said. ‘What else?’

‘I, of course, will remonstrate loudly with you, telling you that you have no authority to make a separate deal. You will respond that, with the death of Sir Shadrach Quintillan, the arrangement as originally struck, with the auction process and the four bidders, is dead, and that you are making your own arrangements. Throw your weight around. Make yourself unpleasant and boorish.’

‘Do you think that will be believed?’

Mycroft smiled. ‘The perception of Americans, especially American businessmen, is that they believe money is the solution to any problem. It isn’t, of course — it is actually the cause of most problems. But that is immaterial — the other international representatives and, more importantly, the agents of the third party, will quite happily believe that an American would go outside the agreed process and make a side deal in a way that they wouldn’t believe about any of the others.’

‘The perception of an Englishman, of course,’ Crowe added, ‘is that he’d still take part in an auction if he was the only bidder, and happily bid against himself, just because he’d given his word that an auction would be the way things were done.’

‘And quite right too.’ Mycroft nodded firmly. ‘If we were all to renege on our agreements, what kind of world would this be? We English have to provide a good example for others to follow.’

‘It’s a good thing Ah know you’re jokin’ with me, Mr Holmes.’

Mycroft raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

As the carriage entered the grounds of the castle, Sherlock reached down to check that he still had the theatrical make-up box with him.

‘Are you happy with being left to apply your disguise on your own?’ Mycroft asked him.

Sherlock nodded. ‘Yes. After the time you and I spent in Moscow, when I completely failed to recognize a dining room full of disguised Paradol Chamber agents, even though I had spent the past few days with them, I spent a while studying the techniques of theatrical makeup. There’s a theatre in Farnham, and I used to go down there and watch the actors putting on their make-up. They ended up teaching me a lot about the things you can do with putty, greasepaint, hair and spirit gum. I got pretty good at it.’

‘Did they ever offer you a job on stage?’

Sherlock smiled. ‘I did a couple of walk-on roles in some plays they were doing. I really enjoyed the experience. I’d like to do it again.’

Mycroft shuddered. ‘The theatrical life is not one for a Holmes to live. Too Bohemian. I still see you in banking, Sherlock.’

‘I wouldn’t enjoy banking, but I could make it look like I did.’

‘Yes, very funny.’

The carriage clattered across the drawbridge and into the central area of the castle. As it drew up to the main doors, Sherlock realized that he had been using humour to disguise his own feelings of nervousness. It had suddenly dawned on him that he was going to put himself in danger, disguised as a man who was of interest to some mysterious gang who were quite happy to commit murder to further their own aims. This was not what he had thought he was coming back home to do.

It did, however, seem to be the kind of thing that kept happening to him.

He thought about what his brother had said, about him taking up a career in banking. He honestly couldn’t see that happening. He wasn’t going to go into the Civil Service, like his brother, either, and he certainly wasn’t going to join the Army like his father. But what did that leave? Going back to sea? Setting up a trading company and importing foodstuffs and silk from China?

It suddenly occurred to him that the past few days, when he had been set a series of problems to solve and had pretty much solved them all, had been some of the best fun he’d had for ages. He liked solving problems. It satisfied an itch inside his brain. He had particularly liked seeing the expressions on the faces of von Webenau, Herr Holtzbrinck and Count Shuvalov when he explained how the séances had been arranged, and the expression on his own brother’s face when Mycroft had seen the cardboard model of the tower. It had been a thrill, and he wanted to see if he could get that thrill again. The problem was that he didn’t see how he could make that into a career. The closest he could come to it would be joining the police force, but he really didn’t see himself in uniform, and his experience of the police, albeit limited so far, was that they turned up at the scene of a crime, said some things that were already obvious to everyone, and arrested the nearest suspicious-looking man.

Mycroft and Amyus Crowe got out of the carriage, and Sherlock followed with the box of theatrical make-up. While Mycroft strode into the hall and Crowe talked to the carriage driver, Sherlock headed for the stairs.

He went directly to Ambrose Albano’s room, making sure that he was not observed by any of the servants. Fortunately the corridor was empty when he arrived, and he knocked on the door.

Albano’s voice came from inside: ‘Go away! I’ve already told you — I don’t intend coming out of this room until I have a police escort that will take me to safety! It’s dangerous out there!’

‘It’s Sherlock Holmes. I wanted to ask you a question.’

A pause, then: ‘You may ask any question you like, as long as the answer doesn’t involve me opening that door.’

‘That could be a problem. I wanted to borrow one of your suits, and your hat.’

‘On the face of it, that would require me to open the door, so the answer is “No”.’

Sherlock thought rapidly. ‘What if you were to bundle a suit and your hat up and drop them out of the window? I could go downstairs and catch them when you dropped them.’

‘That would work,’ Albano replied. ‘But I would need to know why you wanted them. It sounds as if you intend something suspicious, and I don’t like suspicious things.’

‘I can’t tell you what I’m doing,’ Sherlock said patiently, ‘but I can assure you that it’s intended to ensure your safety.’ He paused, then said: ‘It’s misdirection, of a sort. You should appreciate that.’

Albano seemed to think for a while, then he said: ‘Then the answer is “Yes”. You have a quick mind, agile fingers and a natural ability with magic tricks. I can see you making a fine magician, one day. If your misdirection distracts attention from me then all the better. So, yes, I will lend you a suit and my hat, and I will await with interest the results. You will come back and tell me what you’ve done?’

‘I will,’ Sherlock promised. ‘Give me five minutes to get downstairs, then open your window and look for me.’

It all went perfectly smoothly. Sherlock made his way outside the castle and waiting on the grass until a window opened far above him. He gestured to Albano to wait until he had checked left and right for watchers, and then indicated that the psychic should throw down the bundle. It fell straight into his arms, wrapped in a belt. He waved his thanks and heard the window close above him.

Part of him had wanted to tell Albano that he had figured out how the trick with the paintings had been done, but he knew that would have been a bad idea. He knew he hadn’t been observed getting the clothes, but there was no knowing who might be listening, and it would have destroyed Mycroft’s plan if it had become common knowledge that the last demonstration of Albano’s powers had been as fake as the first two.

He headed back into the castle, and up to his room.

Once there, he locked the door and set to work making himself look like Ambrose Albano. He used a white foundation layer on his skin, and then brushed it with powder to make it even whiter, using the reverse end of the brush to make a series of pockmarks in the make-up. His face was thin enough to match Albano’s, but he did insert a couple of pads between his gums and his cheeks to bring his lips away from his teeth and to emphasize his incisors in the same rather horsey way as Albano, and he put some springy material inside his nostrils to make them flare in a similar fashion. There was a selection of wigs in the box as well; he picked one that more or less approximated the length, straightness and colour of Albano’s hair, greased and brushed his own hair back so that it was flat against his scalp, and slipped the wig on. He examined himself critically in the mirror. It wasn’t a bad likeness, he had to admit. The only problem was that his eyebrows were too dark, so he carefully covered them with fake strips of hair in the same colour as the wig, attached to his own eyebrows by spirit gum. If he was doing this for longer, or if he was going to be observed close up, then he might have cut his own hair short, and perhaps shaved his eyebrows off, so that the illusion would be better, but he only had to look like Albano from a distance.

He stripped off his own clothes and dressed in Albano’s suit. It was slightly too large, but it wasn’t going to make him look like a child dressing up in his father’s clothes.

The last thing he did was to take a ball of theatrical putty from the box and mould it into a curve, like a fragment of a hollow sphere. Using a bright white make-up that was usually used for Oriental characters, he coloured the outer surface of the putty. Once he was happy with the result, he closed his left eye and pressed the putty against his eyelid, pushing hard around the edge so that it stuck.

Now he really did look like Ambrose Albano, fake eye and all. At least, from a distance.

As he was slipping the hat on to his head there was a knock on the door.

‘Who is it?’ he called.

‘Amyus Crowe. Your brother an’ I have caused all kinds of ruckus downstairs. He’s now talkin’ about breach of contract an’ all kinds of stuff in the drawin’ room, so we can get down the stairs an’ out without any close observation. You ready?’

‘Ready as I’ll ever be,’ Sherlock muttered. ‘Yes,’ he called, and headed for the door.

Crowe looked him up and down critically. ‘Ah’m no judge of the dramatic arts,’ he said, ‘but Ah’d be convinced, if Ah saw you on a stage from a distance, that you were Albano.’

They went down in the ascending room, as it removed the chance of them meeting someone on the stairs. When they got to the bottom, Crowe hustled Sherlock towards the door. Sherlock saw that the carriage was still waiting outside. As they got to the doorway, Sherlock heard his brother shouting out, ‘There they go! That Yankee rogue is taking Albano away!’

‘Get in the carriage.’ Crowe muttered. ‘Fast, before they can see anything more than your back.’

Sherlock climbed in and settled back into the seat, pulling the hat down over his eyes. Crowe climbed in beside him. From the corner of his eye Sherlock could see a group of people clustering in the doorway of the castle. He thought he could spot Mycroft’s impressive bulk at their head, but he didn’t dare turn his head to look in case they glimpsed his face.

‘Go!’ Crowe called to the driver, who cracked the whip over the horse’s head. The carriage set off with a jolt. Sherlock felt himself pushed back into the padded seats. Somewhere behind them he could hear voices shouting, but he was more concerned now with what was ahead of them. Somewhere in the next few minutes, on the way to Galway, there would be an attack on the carriage, with the intention of kidnapping him, and it was up to Rufus Stone and whatever rag-tag band he’d managed to hire in the past two hours to stop them.

The carriage approached the castle gates. Sherlock braced himself for a sudden right turn as they went through.

Instead, they turned left.

Sherlock, braced for a turn in the opposite direction, felt himself sliding to one side. Crowe, similarly braced, fell into Sherlock. As they turned, Sherlock glanced out of the window to his right, looking down the road that they should have taken. He saw another carriage, similar to theirs, that had been hidden by the wall. It started off in the opposite direction.

‘Hey!’ Crowe shouted up to the driver. ‘Wrong way!’

The driver ignored him. The speed of the carriage increased as it cleared the turn.

Crowe grabbed at the door handle and tried to turn it. He couldn’t. It was fixed in place. Sherlock tried the handle next to him, but that didn’t move either.

‘Did you see that other carriage?’ he asked breathlessly.

‘We’ve been taken,’ Crowe snapped. ‘They switched carriages on us. Damn it, I should’ve checked out the driver’s face!’

‘It might have been the same driver,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘They might have given him so much money that he went along with their plans.’

‘No.’ Crowe shook his head firmly. ‘They might well have paid off the driver, but it’s a different carriage. The one waitin’ outside the gates was the one we were supposed to get into. That way, when it gets to Galway it’ll look like a real mystery. The driver’ll swear blind that we got in, an’ Stone an’ the kid’ll swear blind that it cantered past them with no problems.’

‘Just like the supposed disappearance of Ambrose Albano,’ Sherlock pointed out grimly.

‘Whoever’s taken us has a sense of humour.’ Crowe’s face showed that he was anything but amused. ‘They’re turnin’ Quintillan and Albano’s tricks back against them.’ He stood up and gestured to Sherlock to do the same. Sherlock tried to hang on to the ceiling of the carriage to keep himself upright, while Crowe tore at the padding that covered the seats at the back, hoping to find some panels that he could tear out so they could escape through the back. Not that jumping from something travelling at the speed they were going would be a safer option, Sherlock thought. They could well break bones if they misjudged the jump.

He looked out of the window, but couldn’t see anything apart from bushes and trees rushing past.

‘It’s no good!’ Crowe slammed his fist against the carriage door in frustration.

The carriage came to an abrupt stop, throwing Sherlock and Crowe forward. As they picked themselves up, the door opened. They waited for a long moment, but nobody appeared.

‘Well, Ah ain’t one to wait around on a promise,’ Crowe said, and got out of the carriage. Sherlock sighed, and followed.

The carriage had stopped in a clearing in the middle of undergrowth and trees. Sherlock could smell the salty tang of the ocean nearby, and he could hear waves. There were probably ten men standing around the carriage, but it was the two in front that caught Sherlock’s attention. He felt his mouth fall open in shock.

‘Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us,’ the first man said in a thin, whispery voice that made Sherlock’s hair stand on end.

‘Do you want to introduce me to your friend?’ Crowe asked.

‘Amyus Crowe,’ Sherlock replied, his voice almost as thin and whispery as the man who had spoken. ‘May I introduce Baron Maupertuis? He works for the Paradol Chamber.’