Knife Edge

CHAPTER TWO

Galway was a small town with plenty of character. As the carriage clattered along the winding cobbled streets, past shop fronts and taverns, past women in shawls and men in rough corduroy jackets and flat caps, Sherlock kept having to remind himself that he was home — well, nearly home — and not in some far-flung foreign port.

Mycroft was silent for a while after his admission. He seemed to be avoiding Sherlock’s gaze, and instead stared out of the carriage window with a pensive expression on his face.

‘I must confess,’ he said eventually, ‘that I have not told you the entire story.’

‘You surprise me,’ Sherlock murmured. He had already worked out that there was more to Mycroft’s presence in Galway than his brother had revealed.

Mycroft glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. ‘What exactly do you mean?’

‘You once told me that you rarely do anything for only the one reason. You consider it lazy and wasteful of time and of resources.’ Sherlock gazed at his brother, who was attempting to keep a fixed expression of supercilious amusement on his face and failing. ‘I know that you hate travel, and that you hate having your normal routine disturbed. I would have expected you to send someone else to meet me — perhaps Rufus Stone.’ He paused, considering. ‘In fact, now that I come to think of it, Galway is not a port I would normally have expected the Gloria Scott to visit. I recall that we were originally scheduled to make landfall in Liverpool, but the Captain’s plans changed. In fact, I remember that he had a visitor, an Englishman, when we docked at Cadiz. They had a meeting in the Captain’s cabin. Shortly after that he said that we would be changing our itinerary.’ Sherlock felt a small bud of anger begin to unfold in his chest. ‘Mycroft, did you ask the Captain to change his course and call in at Galway just because you had other business in Ireland, in this town, and it was convenient for you to combine your trip here with meeting me and checking that I was all right?’

Mycroft stared at Sherlock for a few moments without speaking, and then said: ‘Well done. I see your mental faculties have not withered to compensate for the obvious over-development of your body. Yes, I have known for a while now that there was… let us say an event… in this area that I would be obliged to attend at this time. I had been tracking the course of the Gloria Scott homeward by means of various agents I have in ports around the world, and predicted that you would arrive in England at roughly the same time that I had to be in Ireland. I cabled one of my agents and told him to meet with the Gloria Scott when it broke its journey in Cadiz and talk with Captain Tollaway. He offered the Captain… well, let us say a small but not insignificant amount of money to change his plans slightly, to dock here, in Galway, and to try to arrange things so as to arrive here at a particular time.’ He raised an eyebrow at Sherlock’s expression. ‘You are angry, I perceive.’

‘Yes, I’m angry.’ Sherlock tore his gaze away from his brother and stared out of the window. ‘I thought for a little while that you had made the effort to come all this way on my behalf, because you had missed me, not because I could be moved around like a pawn on a chessboard because it suited you.’

‘I confess,’ Mycroft said heavily, ‘that I did not take your feelings into account when I made my plans. That was a mistake. I am sorry. Please accept the fact that I am more than happy to see you, and that, had it always been a part of the Captain’s plan to stop at Galway before continuing on to Southampton, I would have done my best to have been here to meet you regardless of any other plans that I had. It merely made things more… convenient… for me to combine separate events into one.’

‘I’m glad that I could help,’ Sherlock murmured bitterly.

The carriage pulled up in front of an ornate hotel. A doorman moved to help Mycroft and Sherlock get out.

‘I have been staying here for a few days,’ Mycroft said as he levered himself out of his seat. The carriage tilted alarmingly as he moved. ‘Fortunately we will be relocating to Cloon Ard Castle, out along the coast road in an area known as Salthill, this afternoon.’

‘For your job.’

‘Yes, for my job.’

‘And am I entitled to know what this job is, or should I just wait patiently until you have completed your work and we can go back to England?’

‘I will tell you everything over lunch.’ Mycroft stepped to the pavement and the carriage rocked back on its springs. ‘I promise.’ He glanced up at the carriage driver. ‘I will not be needing you for a few hours, but please pick us up at four o’clock this afternoon, on the dot. I will have luggage. A lot of luggage.’ He glanced at Sherlock. ‘We will need to get you several sets of clothes, a decent pair of shoes, a carpet bag and some toiletries this afternoon. We cannot have you looking like an itinerant sailor for the rest of your life. I have taken the liberty of contacting a local tailor. He will attend us this afternoon with a range of suits in various sizes. I had considered bringing some of the clothes that you had left behind at Holmes Manor, in Farnham, but I worried that you would have grown out of them.’ He stared at Sherlock as Sherlock descended from the carriage. ‘I see that I was right.’

A table had been set aside for Mycroft in the restaurant area of the hotel, and the maître d’hotel escorted them across the nearly empty room. When they were seated Mycroft said: ‘The lobster for me, I think. Sherlock, I can recommend the turbot.’ When Sherlock nodded he added, ‘And a bottle of Montrachet.’ The maître d’ made an apologetic motion with his hands. ‘Sancerre?’ Another shrug. ‘Bordeaux?’

‘I’ll have a pint of whatever local beer you stock,’ Sherlock said, surprising himself.

‘And I suppose that I will have the same,’ Mycroft murmured unhappily. As the maître d’ moved away, he added, ‘I wish that the climate of Ireland was more conducive to the cultivation of grapes. As it stands, the constant dampness favours only the growing of hops, potatoes and mushrooms. I understand that the enterprising locals have found a way to make a strong spirit from potatoes. It is called “potcheen”, and I am informed that it is as much use as a fuel for lamps and a means of removing varnish from furniture as it is as a drink. So far they have failed to produce an alcoholic beverage from mushrooms, but they are an inventive people. Give them enough time and they will succeed.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I have often thought that the measure of a good drink is how well it lends itself to being used in cookery. Just think of beef in red wine, chicken sautéed in brandy or champagne trifle. I fear that if you tried to marinate a chicken breast in potcheen it would dissolve in moments.’ He glanced at Sherlock. ‘Beer, eh? You are growing up, and not in a direction of which I necessarily approve. I suppose we can blame the company you have kept for the past year.’

Sherlock took a moment to look around the restaurant. ‘Sailors are rough folk,’ he said eventually, ‘but at least they are honest in their dealings. They say what they mean and they mean what they say.’

‘Unlike me?’ Mycroft inquired. ‘I suppose I deserve that rebuke. So, while we wait for the wonders of the kitchen to appear, tell me all about your voyage. I am agog to hear the details.’

‘Didn’t your agents give you a full account? I’m not sure there is anything I can add to their reports.’

‘Don’t get snippy, Sherlock. You have been through a life-changing experience. I want to know all about it.’ He paused momentarily. ‘Actually, my agents did mention something about a murderously feral child and a plot to blow up an American naval vessel, but I would rather hear the details from you. It seemed so fantastical.’

Sherlock spent lunch telling Mycroft everything that had happened to him on the Gloria Scott, in Shanghai and in the other ports that the ship had visited. Mycroft sat and listened, interrupting every now and then with a pertinent and focused question. As Sherlock recounted the story of his life-or-death struggle with Mr Arrhenius he could see that his brother was getting increasingly tense.

‘Storms I had expected,’ he murmured as Sherlock finished his story. ‘Scurvy, perhaps. But this… this I had no idea about. You are fortunate to have survived.’

‘Now it’s your turn,’ Sherlock prompted. ‘What are you doing here, and what is it that we are expected to see when we arrive at the castle? Some kind of diplomatic meeting?’

Mycroft shook his massive head. ‘What do you know about spiritualism?’ he asked.

Sherlock marshalled his thoughts. ‘It’s the belief that when people die their spirits — their souls, if you like — live on in some immaterial form, and can be contacted by someone appropriately sensitive here on earth. I believe that these sensitive people are called “mediums”. The spirits of the dead supposedly live in a place that’s not exactly heaven, but is more like another plane of existence that we can’t see and that they can’t describe. I know there have been mediums who have claimed to contact famous dead people like Shakespeare or Mozart, and given new plays, or new musical compositions, by them at meetings called “séances”. There’s a lot of table tapping and the use of wooden boards with letters around the edge which the spirits can supposedly use to spell out messages.’

‘You sound sceptical,’ Mycroft said. ‘I approve.’

‘It’s difficult not to be. As far as I am aware there is no absolute proof that these mediums actually can contact the dead, and the kind of messages that come back from the other side are quite generic — the dead are apparently pretty happy, most of the time, and a bit vague about what they do when they’re not making contact with the mediums. And, of course, the mediums take money from the people who attend the séances, which means that the entire process is vulnerable to fraud. It’s a particularly unpleasant form of fraud as well — trading on the grief of the recently bereaved in order to make money.’

‘Do you believe that spirits live on after death?’ Mycroft asked as their main courses arrived.

‘I know that I don’t believe in ghosts,’ he said finally. ‘I had to think about that quite seriously in Edinburgh, over a year ago, when Gahan Macfarlane was using theatrical make-up to get people to think that reanimated corpses were committing crimes on his behalf. He wanted to frighten the locals so they would let him get on with things. I remember speaking to Matty about it.’

‘I would think that young Matty believes in ghosts. I find that either the poorer or the richer a person is, the more likely it is that they will believe in the unexplained. Those of us who are fortunate to have an adequate but not excessive amount of money tend to be more sceptical. Or perhaps either excessive bad luck or excessive good luck in life means that people seek explanations that lie outside the ordinary.’

‘Matty told me that he has seen some things in his life that he hasn’t been able to explain in any other way than by resorting to the idea of ghosts. As for me — I worry about the simple things, like the fact that they are supposed to be able to walk through walls but they don’t fall through floors or stairs, and the way all ghosts seem to lose their minds after death. They might be great conversationalists in life, but as soon as they are dead they seem to resort to groaning and moaning and clanking chains to get their point across. Why only come out at night — why not walk about in daylight? It doesn’t make any rational sense. And,’ he added, ‘from a personal point of view, when I die the last thing I want to happen is that I’m forced to hang around the place where I died with no aim other than to scare people. If anything of my character or personality lasts after death then I want to be able to move around, travel a bit, and visit some places I haven’t seen before.’

‘Like the centre of the earth?’

Sherlock gazed quizzically at his brother.

‘If, as you logically point out, a ghost that can walk through walls as if they weren’t there should fall through the floor, then it seems logical to conclude that all ghosts will end up at the centre of the earth. If, of course, they are bound by gravity. Perhaps that’s why the Church teaches that hell is beneath us, and heaven above.’

Sherlock nodded decisively. ‘The whole thing is based on a series of premises that make no sense.’

‘So that disposes of ghosts. Very well. What about the concept that something of a person — call it their spirit or their soul — survives after the death of the body? That is, you will admit, a slightly different prospect.’

‘Didn’t someone once say that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, although energy can change forms, and energy can flow from one place to another? I think I read that somewhere.’

‘A German physicist and physician — Hermann von Helmholtz. Very precise and methodical, the Germans. That is why they make such superb engineers. Lord help us if they ever decide to take over the world — their single-mindedness and determination would virtually guarantee their success.’

‘So, if a person’s consciousness is defined as a form of energy within the brain, then it makes sense that the energy isn’t destroyed when the brain is destroyed. It either flows to another place or is transformed into a different type of energy.’

‘An excellent point,’ Mycroft conceded.

‘Why so much interest in souls and the persistence of character and memory after death?’ Sherlock asked, intrigued. ‘And what on earth does it have to do with the reason you are here in Galway?’

‘You will be aware that my job in the British Government involves collecting information from a number of agents located around the world. I trawl this information in, as a fisherman might trawl mackerel, and then I sort through it all, seeking fish hidden in the catch that are considerably rarer than mackerel, or perhaps looking for two or three mackerel whose markings by themselves appear random but which can be put together to form a bigger picture.’ He frowned. ‘I believe I will abandon the fishing metaphor. It isn’t helping me make my point. Anyway, my job is frustrated by three things — communication, perception and death.’

‘You are going to need to explain that a little more, if you don’t mind. Without recourse to fishing.’

‘Of course. Communication is a problem because it takes weeks or sometimes months for my agents to get information to me, and by the time it arrives on my desk it is often out of date, superseded by events. The man who invents a means of communication that enables someone to speak to another person on the other side of the world as though they were in the next room will, I guarantee, become a millionaire. Perception is a problem because I expect my agents to look at each scrap of information that comes into their possession as though they were me, but they aren’t. I have a feeling that they often throw away scraps of information that they believe are unimportant but which, if I saw them, would lead me to come to important conclusions. Death is important because a significant number of my agents have a habit of ceasing to exist before they can give their reports to me.’ Sherlock glanced at Mycroft, shocked, and his brother continued: ‘I do not wish to sound callous. I know they have loved ones, and families who will miss them. The problem is that the nature of this business means that many of them work in dangerous, out-of-the-way places where accidents often happen to people or where they catch strange foreign diseases. Others have a habit of getting caught while infiltrating government buildings in various capital cities around the world and being killed either while trying to escape or, shortly afterwards, by hanging or by firing squad. It is, regrettably, a risk that the job entails. They all know that it might happen.’

Sherlock found a vision of his friend Rufus Stone flashing in front of his eyes. He knew that Rufus had been, and indeed still was, an agent of his brother. Had Rufus been sent into some of these dangerous situations that his brother was talking about? Was there a chance that he could have been, still might be, killed? He decided not to ask.

‘I suppose that the problem there is that when they die, the information in their heads dies with them?’

‘Indeed. It happens all too often.’

Sherlock had a sudden sense of where Mycroft was heading. ‘And if there were some means of contacting them after their deaths, you might be able to retrieve the information they have learned and make use of it?’ he asked. He was taken aback by the scale of Mycroft’s vision. Was it likely that something like that could be done? Was it even conceivable?

‘I understand your scepticism. Nobody has ever managed to demonstrate communication with the dead in conditions other than a badly lit room when everyone is holding hands and facing into the centre. The trouble is that the British Government has been approached by a man, a medium, who currently resides in Ireland. His name is Ambrose Albano, and he claims that he can find any recently deceased spirit and establish a two-way communication with it. If his claims are true, and I do appreciate the enormity of what lies behind the word “if”, then the government which controls, or even first exploits, that means of communication would have an advantage over the rest of the world that would be difficult to eradicate.’

‘And that is why you are here — to look into his claims?’

‘Indeed. I am sceptical, and my lords and masters know that, but when I protested about being sent all the way here they pointed out that if a sceptic such as me could be persuaded then the claim must be true. Sadly I could not argue with their logic.’

‘Couldn’t this medium have travelled to London? He could demonstrate his skills in front of a much larger audience then.’

Mycroft nodded. ‘I did make that point, along with the associated point that his insistence on being examined in Ireland strongly suggested that he wanted to control the environment in which he was tested, but my arguments fell on deaf ears. He does not travel, we were told — something to do with a head injury he once received and which is connected in some strange ways with his spiritualist skills. No, despite my well-known dislike of travelling I found myself forced into planning a little jaunt across the Irish Sea.’

‘How did he end up at Cloon Ard Castle?’

‘I understand that Sir Shadrach Quintillan, whose castle it is, has become his protector and patron.’

‘I’ve never heard of him.’

There is no reason why you should have — the title is not hereditary, and was awarded for services rendered to the Royal Family. He is, however, an interesting man, as you will discover when we meet him — which will be this afternoon when we travel up to the castle.’

‘And what is my role in this likely to be?’

‘You are an intelligent boy, and a keen observer of details. I would value your opinions as a backup to my own. In addition, there may be occasions when you see things that I am not in a position to see.’

‘We are staying at the castle?’

‘Indeed. I am assured that Sir Shadrach’s hospitality is unrivalled — at least, in the West of Ireland.’

Sherlock stared for a moment at his brother. ‘What do you want to get out of this, Mycroft? Do you want it to be true, or not, that this medium can communicate with specific and named dead people?’

‘Whether or not I want it to be true is immaterial. I am here to establish whether or not it is true. Personal preferences must be ruthlessly filtered out of the consideration; otherwise they may affect the final decision.’ He sighed. ‘But for myself, I hope that it is not true. I am aware that a number of my agents suffered quite substantially before their deaths. There are, sadly, many regimes around the world less considerate than Britain. I would prefer to think that death was an escape from suffering, rather than just a bump in a longer road.’

‘And,’ Sherlock ventured gently, ‘you wouldn’t want to talk to them if you thought they might blame you for what happened to them.’

‘Indeed. And they would. I feel sure that they would.’

That thought stopped them both from speaking for a while. There was a dessert of some kind of cream flavoured with alcohol, but Sherlock hardly tasted it. He was still thinking through the implications of what Mycroft had told him. If it was true that the spirits of the dead could be made to speak then the world would be revolutionized. The implications were immense!

After finishing their desserts, Mycroft took Sherlock up to his room. His luggage was already neatly packed. A few moments after they entered there was a knock at the door. A man entered, well-dressed but deferential, with several shirts and suits. He handed them to Sherlock, who stared in bemusement. He hadn’t worn anything so formal since Shanghai, and that had been a long time ago.

‘Try them on in the bathroom,’ Mycroft suggested. ‘I have already taken delivery of various sets of undergarments for you. I left them on a shelf in there. Please try them as well.’

When Sherlock finally emerged from the bathroom, feeling uncharacteristically constrained by the unfamiliar clothes, another man had arrived. He had a large box in his hands.

Mycroft looked Sherlock up and down. ‘Yes,’ he said critically, ‘that will do.’ Indicating the new arrival, he added: ‘This gentleman has brought several pairs of shoes in different sizes. Please select the ones that fit you best while I settle up.’

A few minutes later Sherlock was fully outfitted. Or at least he thought he was. Mycroft gazed at him and said, ‘A cravat, I think, will set the whole ensemble off. I have taken the liberty of selecting one for you.’

Back in the bathroom, Sherlock stared at himself in the mirror. It was like looking at a painting — he hardly recognized himself any more. The image in the mirror bore no relationship to the image of himself that he had in his mind.

At five to four Mycroft called for a valet to carry his bags down to the carriage. He had bought a carpet bag for Sherlock to carry his meagre possessions. Just as they were about to leave the room he suddenly raised his hand and slapped his forehead. ‘Idiot! I almost forgot.’ Bending down on the other side of the bed, not without some difficulty, he retrieved a strangely curved case and held it out to Sherlock. ‘I thought you might find a use for this.’

Sherlock took it in wonder. It was a violin case! With unsteady fingers he opened it. Inside lay, as he knew it would, his old violin — the one he had bought from a trader in Tottenham Court Road.

‘Something to connect you to your previous life,’ Mycroft said. ‘I retrieved it from Holmes Manor on my last visit.’

‘That was… very thoughtful,’ Sherlock said quietly. ‘Thank you.’

They made their way down to where the carriage was waiting. Within a few minutes they were clattering through the cobbled streets of Galway, heading north, parallel to the coast. The road gradually began to slope upward, and Sherlock was soon looking down on the glittering grey ocean.

Sherlock couldn’t be sure, but based on the size and the number of masts, he had a strong suspicion that a ship he could see at the quayside was the Gloria Scott. He felt a sudden and unaccustomed pang of regret. She had been hard, but she had been home. He would miss her.

He hoped he would get the opportunity to travel abroad again, at some point in his life.

It took half an hour for the carriage to make its way from the town of Galway to Cloon Ard Castle. The sky was grey with low clouds, and a fine drizzle washed the landscape. Everything that Sherlock could see from the window appeared to be coloured in various shades of green and grey.

The carriage abruptly turned left, through a stone gateway in an eight-foot-high stone wall that appeared to surround an estate of some kind.

‘Say as little as you can when we arrive,’ Mycroft cautioned. ‘But keep your eyes and your ears open. I would be very interested to know what impression you form of the people and the situation that we are joining.’

Cloon Ard Castle, when they finally arrived, was smaller than Sherlock had imagined. It was essentially a squat, four-storey tower of grey stone in the middle of one side of a forbidding three-storey wall. There were windows in the wall — narrow slots that glowered down on to the landscape — indicating that they were thick enough to contain rooms and corridors, and were not just narrow defensive features. The corner of the wall that faced them as they approached had a similar but smaller tower built into it. Sherlock couldn’t see if there was a matching tower on the other side. The whole thing was surrounded by a wide moat. A drawbridge crossed the moat to a wide arch set into the wall.

As the carriage pulled around the side of the castle to get to the drawbridge, Sherlock looked out of the other window, the one facing away from the castle. He realized that the far side of the moat was only a few yards from a cliff edge. Over the edge of the cliff, several hundred feet below, were the grey waters of the Atlantic.

The sound made by the carriage’s wheels changed from wood on earth to wood on wood, as they crossed the drawbridge and entered the castle through the arch. The carriage halted and, seconds later, the driver jumped down and opened the door for them.

Sherlock emerged first, and helped his brother down. The air was fresh and cold, and smelt of the sea. The area inside the walls was paved with large slabs of moss-dappled stone. Gulls wheeled overhead.

Sherlock looked around at the inside of the castle. It was pretty much as he had imagined from outside: a square formed by the walls, with a large block in the middle of the side facing the Atlantic — presumably the main accommodation — and a smaller tower on one of the two nearest corners.

A door set into the main block opened. Sherlock and Mycroft turned to face it. Instead of a set of steps leading up to the door, Sherlock noticed that there was a stone ramp. Odd, he thought.

From the darkness of the doorway, a figure emerged — a man in a three-wheeled bath chair being pushed by a severe-faced woman wearing a black jacket, grey waistcoat and, strangely, striped trousers. Her hair was pulled back into a severe bun. For a horrible moment Sherlock thought it was Mrs Eglantine, his uncle and aunt’s poisonous former housekeeper, but although this woman was similar in build and features she was not the same. The man she was pushing was in his fifties, handsome, with tightly curled grey hair, but what struck Sherlock particularly was that he was black.

He smiled down at Mycroft and Sherlock, and threw his arms open wide. ‘What a pleasure to welcome you to Cloon Ard Castle. Please, come in, come in!’

A movement in the shadows of the doorway attracted Sherlock’s attention. It was only when a third person stepped forward that he could see that it was a man of about his own size and build. He was wearing a black suit and a black hat, and his unfashionably long black hair cascaded down on to his shoulders. His right eye was bright blue, and stared at Sherlock with piercing curiosity.

His left eye was a sphere of cloudy glass that seemed to glow with its own internal light.