Young Sherlock Holmes: Fire Storm

Dedicated to the memory of my father, Jack Lane, who passed away while I was writing this book.

Rest in peace, Dad.

And with grateful acknowledgements to: the lovely people from the Scottish Children’s Book Trust (who kind of gave me the idea of setting a book in Edinburgh without ever actually saying so); the guys from the Book Zone for Boys in Ireland (who probably deserve to have a book set there as well); Helen Palmer for mentioning Mary King’s Close; Polly Nolan for editing so comprehensively and sensitively; Nathan, Jessica and Naomi Gay for being so interested; and to Jessica Dean, who made sure that this series of books got the highest level of visibility.

PROLOGUE

The small Chinaman held the needle in steady fingers and dipped the point in the bottle of ink that sat on the table in front of him. Next to the ink rested the forearm of the sailor who was sitting in a chair on the other side of the table. It was huge – like a ham on a butcher’s slab.

‘You sure you want blue anchor?’ the Chinaman said. His name was Kai Lung. His face was lined with age and the plait of hair that hung down his back was the colour of ash.

‘I told ya,’ the sailor said, ‘I want an anchor! Cos I live on a ship, an’ I work on a ship, right?’

‘I could do a fish,’ Kai Lung said quietly. Anchors were easy. They were also boring. He seemed to spend half his life tattooing blue anchors on the muscular forearms of sailors, sometimes with the name of their sweetheart beneath, inside a nice scroll. The problem was that he seemed to spend the other half of his life turning the tattooed names of former sweethearts into other things – barbed wire, flowers, anything that might disguise the underlying letters. ‘I could do you a nice fish, maybe a goldfish with scales all the colours of a rainbow. You like that idea? Fish tattoo good for sailor, yes?’

‘I want an anchor,’ the man said stubbornly.

‘Fine. Yes. Anchor it is.’ He sighed. ‘You got any special type of anchor in mind, or just the usual?’

The sailor frowned. ‘How many different types of anchor are there?’

‘Usual anchor it is then.’

He prepared to make the first mark with the needle. The ink would flow into the small pinprick in the sailor’s arm and stain the underlying tissue. The skin on the outside of the arm would fade, change and tan over the years, but the ink would always remain there, beneath the skin. With enough small pinpricks and enough different colours of ink he could draw anything – a fish, a dragon, a heart . . . or a blue anchor. Another blue anchor.

The door burst open, pushed hard from the other side. It hit the wall, the handle on the inside leaving a dent in the exposed brickwork. A man stood in the doorway. He was so tall and so wide that there wasn’t much space on either side of him or above his shaven head. His clothes were rough and dirty. They looked as if he’d been travelling in them for some time, and possibly sleeping in them as well.

‘You,’ he growled in an American accent, looking at the sailor, ‘out!’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, just in case the instruction wasn’t clear.

‘Hey! I got an appointment!’ The sailor stood up, clenching his fists ready for a fight. He took a step forward, towards the doorway. The man who had pushed the door open stepped forward. The top of the sailor’s head barely came up to his chin. Without looking away from the sailor’s eyes, the man reached out with his left hand and took hold of the metal handle on the outside of the door. He squeezed. For a moment nothing happened, and then with a sad heart Kai Lung saw that the handle was bending and twisting under the pressure. Within a few seconds it looked more like crumpled paper than metal.

‘Fair enough,’ the sailor said. ‘There’s other tattoo parlours around.’

The newcomer stepped to one side and the sailor pushed past him without looking back.

‘You lose me customer,’ Kai Lung said. He wasn’t scared of the newcomer. He was so old and he had seen so much in his long life that he wasn’t scared of anything much. Death was an old friend by now. ‘I hope you bring me other customer to replace him.’

The man stepped back, out of the way, and another man entered the tiny front room of Kai Lung’s lodgings. This man was smaller and better dressed than his herald, and he was holding a walking stick. A wave of coldness seemed to enter the room with him. A feeling swept over Kai Lung, and it took him a moment to work out what it was.

Fear. It was fear.

‘You want tattoo?’ he said, trying to keep his voice from quavering.

‘I would like a tattoo on my forehead,’ the man said. His accent was American as well. ‘It is a name, a woman’s name.’ His voice was calm and precise. The light from behind him put his face in shadow, but in the meagre illumination from Kai Lung’s oil lamp the head of the walking stick gleamed. Kai Lung thought for a moment that it was a large, rough chunk of solid gold, and he drew his breath in, amazed, but he suddenly realized what it was. The head of the walking stick was carved in the shape of a human skull.

‘You want sweetheart’s name on forehead?’ Kai Lung asked. ‘Most people want sweetheart’s name on arm, or maybe chest – near heart.’

‘The girl is not my “sweetheart”,’ the man said. His voice was still calm, still precise, but there was a tone somewhere deep inside it that made Kai Lung shiver. ‘And yes, I want her name tattooed on my forehead, near to my brain, so that I can remember it. Your work had better be accurate. I do not tolerate mistakes.’

‘I am best tattooist in whole city!’ Kai Lung said proudly.

‘So I have heard. That is why I am here.’

Kai Lung sighed. ‘What is name of girl?’

‘I have written it down. Do you read English?’

‘I read very well.’

The man reached out his left hand. He was holding a piece of paper. Kai Lung took it carefully, trying not to touch the man’s skin. He looked at the name on the scrap. It was printed in a careful hand, and he had no trouble deciphering it.

‘Virginia Crowe,’ he read. ‘Is that right?’

‘That is exactly right.’

‘What colour you want?’ Kai Lung asked. He was expecting the man to say ‘blue’, but he was surprised.

‘Red,’ the man said. ‘I want it in red. The colour of blood.’

CHAPTER ONE

‘Stop it!’ Rufus Stone cried out. ‘You’re killing me!’

Sherlock lifted the bow from the violin strings. ‘Don’t be so melodramatic.’

‘I’m not being melodramatic – another few seconds of that and my heart would have leaped out of my throat and strangled me just to ensure that it didn’t have to experience that cat-squalling any more!’

Sherlock felt his confidence shrivel up like a dry autumn leaf. ‘I didn’t think it was that bad,’ he protested.

‘That’s the problem,’ Stone said. ‘You don’t know what the problem is. If you don’t know what the problem is, you can’t fix it.’

He rubbed the back of his neck and wandered away, obviously struggling to find a way to explain to Sherlock just what he was doing wrong. He was wearing a loose striped shirt with the sleeves roughly rolled up and a waistcoat that seemed to have come from a decent suit, but his trousers were rough corduroy and his boots were scuffed leather. He swung round to look at Sherlock for a moment, and there was a kind of wild bafflement in his face, along with what Sherlock realized with a sickening twist of his heart was disappointment.

Sherlock turned away, not wanting to see that expression in the face of a man he considered a friend as well as a kind of older brother.

He let his gaze roam around the room they were in – anywhere so that he didn’t have to look at Stone. They were in the attic of an old building in Farnham. Stone rented a room on the floor below, but his landlady had taken a shine to him and let him rehearse and practise his violin – and teach the one music student he had so far taken on – in the expansive attic area.

The space was large and dusty, with beams of sunlight penetrating through gaps in the tiles and forming diagonal braces that seemed to be holding the triangular roof up just as well as the wooden ones. The acoustics, according to Stone, were marginally worse than a hay barn, but considerably better than his room. There were boxes and trunks stacked around the low walls, and a hatchway off to one side that led down, via a ladder, to the upper landing. Navigating the ladder with a violin and bow clutched in one hand was tricky, but Sherlock liked the isolation of the attic and the sense of space.

One day, he thought, I will have my own place to live – somewhere I can retreat from the world and not be bothered. And I won’t let anyone else in.

Pigeons fluttered outside, blocking the sunlight momentarily as they roosted. Cold penetrated the attic from the street, fingers of frosty air finding their way through the spaces between the tiles.

He sighed. The violin felt heavy in his hand, and somehow clumsy, as if he had never picked one up before. The music stand in front of him held the score of a piece by Mozart – a violin transcription, according to Stone, of a famous aria called ‘The Queen of the Night’s Song’ from an opera called The Three Oranges. The black notes captured between the lines of the staves were, as far as Sherlock was concerned, like a code, but it was a code he had quickly worked out – a simple substitution cipher. A black blob on that line always meant a note that sounded like this – unless there was a small hash in front of it that raised it slightly to a ‘sharp’, or a small angular letter ‘b’ that lowered it slightly to a ‘flat’. A sharp or a flat was halfway towards the note either directly above or directly below the one he was playing. It was simple and easy to understand – so why couldn’t he turn the written music into something that Rufus Stone could listen to without wincing?

Sherlock knew he wasn’t progressing as quickly as Stone would have liked, and that irked him. He would have liked to have been able just to pick up the instrument and play it beautifully, first time and every time, but sadly life wasn’t like that. It should be, he thought rebelliously. He remembered feeling the same way about the piano that sat in his family home. He’d spent hours sitting at it, trying to work out why he couldn’t play it straight away. After all, the thing about a piano was its relentless logic: you pressed a key and a note came out. The same key led to the same note every time. All you had to do, surely, was remember which key led to which note and you should be able to play. The trouble was, no matter how hard he had thought about it, he had never been able to sit down and play the piano like his sister could – flowing and beautiful, like a rippling stream.

Four strings! The violin only had four strings! How hard could it be?

‘The problem,’ Stone said suddenly, turning round and staring at Sherlock, ‘is that you are playing the notes, not the tune.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ Sherlock responded defensively.

‘It makes perfect sense.’ Stone sighed. ‘The trees are not the forest. The forest is all of the trees, taken together, plus the undergrowth, the animals, the birds and even the air. Take all that away and you just have a load of wood – no feeling, no atmosphere.’

‘Then where does the feeling come from in music?’ Sherlock asked plaintively.

‘Not from the notes.’

‘But the notes are all that’s on the paper!’ Sherlock protested.

‘Then add something of your own. Add some emotion.’

‘But how?’

Stone shook his head. ‘It’s the small gaps you put in – the hesitations, the subtle emphases, the slight speedings up and slowings down. That’s where the feeling lives.’

Sherlock gestured at the music on the stand. ‘But that’s not written on there! If the composer wanted me to speed up or slow down then he would have written it on the music.’

‘He did,’ Stone pointed out, ‘in Italian. But that’s only a guide. You need to decide how you want to play the music.’ He sighed. ‘The problem is that you’re treating this like an exercise in mathematics, or grammar. You want all the evidence set out for you, and you think that your job is to put it all together. Music isn’t like that. Music requires interpretation. It requires you to put something of yourself in there.’ He hesitated, trying to find the right words. ‘Any performance is actually a duet between you and the composer. He’s given you the bulk, but you have to add the final ten per cent. It’s the difference between reading out a story and acting out a story.’ Seeing the forlorn expression on Sherlock’s face, he went on: ‘Look, have you ever seen the writer Charles Dickens reading one of his own stories to an audience? Try it sometime – it’s well worth the cost of a ticket. He does different voices for different characters, he throws himself around the stage, he speeds up at the exciting bits and he reads it as if he’s never seen it before and he’s just as keen as the audience to find out what happens. That is how you should play music – as if you’ve never heard it before.’ He paused and winced. ‘In a good way, I mean. The trouble is that you play music as if you’ve never heard it before and you’re trying to work it out as you’re going along.’

That was pretty much the way it was, Sherlock thought.

‘Should I give up?’ he asked.

‘Never give up,’ Stone rejoined fiercely. ‘Never. Not in anything.’ He ran a hand through his long hair again. ‘Perhaps I’ve been going at this the wrong way. Let’s take a different tack. All right, you approach music as if it’s a problem in mathematics – well, let’s look for musicians who write mathematics into their music.’

‘Are there any?’ Sherlock asked dubiously.

Stone considered for a moment. ‘Let’s think. Johann Sebastian Bach was well known for putting mathematical tricks and codes into his tunes. If you look at his Musical Offering there’s pieces in there which are mirror images of themselves. The first note and the last note are the same; the second note and the second from last note are the same; and so on, right to the middle of the piece.’

‘Wow.’ Sherlock was amazed at the audacity of the idea. ‘And it still works as music?’

‘Oh yes. Bach was a consummate composer. His mathematical tricks don’t detract from the music – they add to it.’ Stone smiled, realizing that he’d finally snagged Sherlock’s attention. ‘I’m not an expert on Bach by any means, but I understand there’s another piece by him which is built around some kind of mathematical sequence, where one number leads on to the next using some rule. It’s got an Italian name. Now, let’s try that Mozart again, but this time, as you’re playing it, I want you to bring back those feelings. Remember them, and let them guide your fingers.’

Sherlock raised the violin to his shoulder again, tucking it into the gap between his neck and his chin. He let the fingers of his left hand find the strings at the end of the neck. He could feel how hard his fingertips had become under Stone’s relentless tutelage. He brought the bow up and held it poised above the strings.

‘Begin!’ Stone said.

Sherlock gazed at the notes on the page, but rather than trying to understand them he let his gaze slide through them, looking at the page as a whole rather than each note as something individual. Looking at the wood, not the trees. He remembered from a few minutes before what the notes were, then took a deep breath and started to play.

The next few moments seemed to go past in a blur. His fingers moved from one string to the next, pressing them down to make the right notes, fractionally before his brain could send his fingers a signal to tell them what the right notes were. It was as if his body already knew what to do, freeing his mind to float above the music, looking for its meaning. He tried to think of the piece as if someone was singing it, and let his violin become the voice, hesitating on some notes, coming down heavily on others as if to emphasize their importance.

He got to the end of the page without even realizing.

‘Bravo!’ Stone cried. ‘Not perfect, but better. You actually persuaded me that you were feeling the music, not just playing it.’ He gazed over at the slanted rays of sunlight that penetrated the loft. ‘Let’s stop it there: on a high note, as it were. Keep practising your scales, but also I want you to practise individual notes. Play a sustained note in different ways – with sadness, with happiness, with anger. Let the emotion seep through into the music, and see how it changes the note.’

‘I’m . . . not good with emotion,’ Sherlock admitted in a quiet voice.

‘I am,’ Stone said quietly. ‘Which means I can help.’ He placed a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder for a moment and squeezed, then took it away. ‘Now be off with you. Go and find that American girl and spend some time with her.’

‘Virginia?’ His heart quickened at the thought, but he wasn’t sure if it was happiness or terror that made it speed up. ‘But—’

‘No buts. Just go and see her.’

‘All right,’ Sherlock said. ‘Same time tomorrow?’

‘Same time tomorrow.’

He threw the violin into its case and half climbed, half slid down the ladder to the upper landing, then thudded down the stairs to the ground floor. Stone’s landlady – a woman of about Stone’s own age, with black hair and green eyes – came out of the kitchen to say something as he ran past, but he didn’t catch what it was. Within seconds he was out in the crisp, cold sunlight.

Farnham was as busy as it ever was: its cobbled or muddy streets filled with people heading every which way on various errands. Sherlock paused for a moment, taking in the scene – the clothes, the postures, the various packages, boxes and bags that people were carrying – and tried to make sense of it. That man over there – the one with the red rash across his forehead. He was clutching a piece of paper in his hand as if his life depended on it. Sherlock knew that there was a doctor’s surgery a few minutes’ walk behind him, and a pharmacy just ahead. He was almost certainly heading to pick up some medicine after his consultation. The man on the other side of the road – good clothes, but unshaven and bleary-eyed, and his shoes were scuffed and muddy. A tramp wearing a suit donated by a church parishioner, perhaps? And what of the woman who passed by right in front of him, hand held up to push the hair from her eyes? Her hands looked older than she did – white and wrinkled, as if they had spent a long time in water. A washerwoman, obviously.

Was this what Rufus Stone had meant about seeing the wood instead of the trees? He wasn’t looking at the people as people, but seeing their histories and their possible futures all in one go.

For a moment Sherlock felt dizzy with the scale of what he was staring at, and then the moment was gone and the scene collapsed into a crowd of people heading in all directions.

‘You all right?’ a voice asked. ‘I thought you were goin’ to pass out there for a moment.’

Sherlock turned to find Matthew Arnatt – Matty – standing beside him. The boy was smaller than Sherlock, and a year or two younger, but for a second Sherlock didn’t see him as a boy, as his friend, but as a collection of signs and indications. Just for a second, and then he was Matty again – solid, dependable Matty.

‘Albert isn’t well then,’ he said, referring to the horse that Matty owned, and which pulled the narrowboat he lived on whenever he decided to change towns.

‘What makes you think that?’ Matty asked.

‘There’s hay in your sleeve,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘You’ve been feeding him by hand. Usually you just let him crop the grass wherever he happens to be tied up. You wouldn’t feed a horse by hand unless you were worried he wasn’t eating properly.’

Matty raised an eyebrow. ‘Just because I sometimes likes to give ’im ’is grub,’ he said, ‘there’s no need to make a song an’ dance about it. Albert’s the closest thing to family I got.’ He shrugged, embarrassed. ‘So I likes to treat ’im sometimes wiv somethin’ special.’

‘Oh.’ Sherlock filed that away for later consideration. ‘How did you know I was here?’ he asked eventually.

‘I could hear you playing,’ Matty replied laconically. ‘The whole town could hear you playing. I think that’s why Albert’s off his food.’

‘Funny,’ Sherlock observed.

‘You want to go get some lunch? There’s plenty of stuff goin’ spare in the market.’

Sherlock thought for a moment. Should he spend some time with Matty, or go and see Virginia?

‘Can’t,’ he said, suddenly remembering. ‘My uncle said he wanted me back for lunch. Something about getting me to catalogue and index a collection of old sermons he recently obtained at an auction.’

‘Oh joy,’ Matty said. ‘Have fun with that.’ He smiled. ‘Maybe I could go and see Virginia instead.’

‘And maybe I could hang you upside down from a bridge with your head under water up to your nose,’ Sherlock replied.

Matty just gazed at him. ‘I was only jokin’,’ he said.

‘I wasn’t.’

Sherlock noticed that Matty’s gaze kept sliding away, down the road towards the market. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Go and pick up some bruised fruit and broken pies. I might see you later. Or tomorrow.’

Matty flashed a quick smile of thanks and scooted away, ducking and diving through the crowd until he was lost from sight.

Sherlock walked for a while along the road that led out of Farnham and towards his aunt and uncle’s house. Every time a cart came past he turned to look at the driver, but most of them avoided his gaze. He didn’t take it personally – he’d been doing this for long enough that he knew the success rate was around one in twenty carts. Eventually one of the drivers looked over at him and called: ‘Where you going, sonny?’

‘Holmes Manor,’ he shouted back.

‘They don’t take on casual labour.’

‘I know. I’m . . . visiting someone.’

‘Climb aboard then. I’m going past the main gates.’

As Sherlock threw his violin up the side of the still-moving cart and clambered up after it, falling into a deep mass of hay, he wondered why it was that he still didn’t like admitting where he lived. Perhaps he was worried that people might change their attitude if they knew that his family were part of the local land-owning gentry. It was so stupid, he thought, that something as simple as inheriting land and a house from your parents could set you apart from other people. When he grew up he would make sure that he never made social distinctions between people like that.

The cart clattered along the road for twenty minutes or so before Sherlock jumped off, calling a cheerful ‘Thanks!’ over his shoulder. He checked his watch. He had half an hour before luncheon: just enough time to wash and perhaps change his shirt.

Luncheon was, as usual, a quiet affair. Sherlock’s uncle – Sherrinford Holmes – spent his time balancing eating with reading a book and trying to move his beard out of the way of both his food and the text, while his aunt – Anna – spoke in a continuous monologue that covered her plans for the garden, how pleased she was that the two sides of the Holmes family appeared to be on speaking terms again, various items of gossip about local landowners and her hope that the weather in the coming year would be better than the one that had just passed. Once or twice she asked Sherlock a question about what he was doing or how he was feeling, but when he tried to answer he found that she had just kept on talking regardless of what he might say. As usual.

He did notice that Mrs Eglantine – the manor’s darkly glowering housekeeper – was conspicuous by her absence. The maids served the food with their customary quiet deference, but the black-clad presence who usually stood over by the window, half hidden by the light that streamed through, was missing. He wondered briefly where she was, and then realized with a flash of pleasure that he just didn’t care.

Sherlock finished his food faster than his aunt and uncle and asked if he could be excused.

‘Indeed you may,’ his uncle said without looking up from his book. ‘I have left a pile of old sermons on the desk in my library. I would be obliged, young man, if you could sort them into piles depending on their author, and then arrange the individual piles by date. I am attempting,’ he said, raising his eyes momentarily and gazing at Sherlock from beneath bushy brows, ‘to catalogue the growth and development of schisms within the Christian church, with particular reference to the recent creation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in America. These sermons should prove very useful in that respect.’

‘Thank you,’ Sherlock said, and left the table.

Uncle Sherrinford’s library smelled of old, dry books, mildew, leather bindings and pipe tobacco. Sherlock felt the quietness as something almost physical as the door closed behind him: an actual pressure against his ears.

Sherrinford’s desk was piled high with loose papers of various sizes and thickness. Some were typed, some handwritten in various different styles; most were bound with ribbons or string. As he sat down, not without a tremor of nerves, in Sherrinford’s creaking leather chair, Sherlock realized with a sinking feeling in his heart that the piles were taller than he was, and blocked his view of the rest of the library. This was going to be a long and tedious task.

He set to it. The process was simple on the face of it – take a manuscript from the nearest pile, find out who wrote it and when and then place it on one of a number of separate piles on the floor behind him – but of course it wasn’t as straightforward as that. Some of the sermons didn’t have an author named anywhere in them, some weren’t dated, and some had neither date nor name. Sherlock realized quickly that he had to make his judgements based on other clues. Handwriting was one of them. Some of the sermons were obviously written by the same person, based on the jagged, spidery text, and Sherlock could happily place them all in one pile. Other sermons mentioned particular places – churches, usually – which meant he could place them in at least the same geographical area and thus probably assign them to the same person or group of people. After a while he realized that some of the typewritten sermons had the same characteristics – a faded n, a partially raised a – which suggested to him that they might have been typed on the same machine, so he put them together in a pile as well. He didn’t actually read the sermons in any detail – that would have wasted a lot of time that he couldn’t afford – but as he flicked through them looking for indications of ownership and date he still managed to pick up a smattering of details: the ebb and flow of life of the countryside, the unsatisfied yearning for the love of God, the detailed analysis of things that were, in the end, unknowable. He also thought he had an understanding of the characters of the men writing the sermons – one of them serious and dour, terrified of eternal hellfire, another wide-eyed at the beauty of God’s creation, a third focused on details and minutiae and completely missing the wider context. At least one, he thought, was a woman writing sermons for her husband to deliver.

All in all, the work kept him busy for a good hour or two, during which he remained undisturbed.

After a while he decided to take a break and stretch his aching back. He stood up and wandered away from the desk, amazed at the way the piles of papers didn’t seem to be any smaller despite the fact that he had some fourteen or fifteen other piles on the floor around the desk by now.

Sherlock found himself wandering along the shelves of his uncle’s books, letting his eyes idly scan the titles. For a while he wasn’t sure what he was looking for, or even if he was looking for anything at all, but then it occurred to him that he could check to see if his uncle had any books on Bach, or music in general. Maybe he could find out some details on the way composers used mathematics in their music. Although Sherrinford Holmes spent his time writing sermons and other religious tracts for vicars and bishops around the country, his library was more than just a repository of books on Christianity. He had a good selection of works on virtually every subject under the sun.

And, Sherlock reminded himself, Johann Sebastian Bach was a noted composer of religious music. He had certainly written a lot of material for the church organ, and Sherlock was fairly sure that he had seen the composer’s name attached to various hymns in the church hymnals at Deepdene School for Boys, as well as in the local church. It would make sense for a religious author to have books about Bach in his collection.

Sherlock moved deeper into the shadowy lines of bookcases, looking for anything to do with music. He was out of sight of the door when he heard it open. He assumed it was his uncle, and moved back towards the light to tell him how far the work had progressed, but when he emerged from the aisle between two bookcases he was just in time to see the black bustle of a crinoline skirt vanishing behind a case on the far side of the room.

Mrs Eglantine? What was she doing here?

She seemed to know exactly where she was going. Confused, Sherlock edged closer, keeping as quiet as he could. He wasn’t sure why, but he had a feeling that she was doing something covert, secretive, and didn’t want anyone to know. She certainly wasn’t dusting the bookshelves – that task was below her station, reserved for one of the parlour maids.

Sherlock looked around the edge of the bookcase, keeping most of his head and all of his body hidden. It was Mrs Eglantine. She was kneeling down about halfway along the row of shelves, her crinoline skirt spread out around her, pulling out whole handfuls of books and letting them fall to the carpet. A part of Sherlock’s mind winced to see the books so carelessly treated, some of them lying open with their pages bent or their spines creased. Once she had cleared them out she bent even further down, head close to the carpet, and scanned the space she had created. Whatever she was looking for wasn’t there. With a huff of disappointment she quickly stuffed the books back again, apparently not caring what order they had been in or whether she was putting them back upside down or back to front.

She gazed to her left, away from Sherlock. Alerted, he ducked back just as her head began to swing his way. He knew it was fanciful, but he could almost see the intensity of her gaze scorching the carpet and disturbing the dust.

He counted to twenty and looked back just as he heard an irregular thumping noise start up. Satisfied that she wasn’t being observed, she was sweeping another row of books, higher up this time, off their shelf and letting them fall to the floor. Again she looked carefully into the space before grimacing in disappointment and shoving the books back pell-mell.

‘How dare you enter my library!’ a voice cried. ‘Get out of here this instant!’

Sherlock looked up, shocked. There, at the other end of the line of bookcases, was Sherrinford Holmes. He must have come in quietly, without either Sherlock or Mrs Eglantine noticing.

Mrs Eglantine straightened up slowly. ‘You are a fool,’ she said, slowly and distinctly. ‘You have no authority in this house – not any more. I am in charge here.’

CHAPTER TWO

Sherlock felt his breath catch in his throat. How dare she talk to his uncle like that! The feeling was followed by a sudden flash of joy: she could not survive this. She would be gone from the house within the hour, and never mourned.

Sherrinford Holmes’s fist was clenched against his leg, but the expression on his face was not anger. It was more like a powerless frustration than the justified rage of a man who had found a servant riffling through his possessions. Sherlock waited for his uncle to explode with fury, to fire Mrs Eglantine immediately, banish her from the house with no references, but instead he just shook his head while his fist beat ineffectually against his thigh. ‘You have no right!’ he cried.

‘I have every right,’ Mrs Eglantine retorted. ‘I have any right I want in this house, any right I wish to exercise, because you and that insufferable wife of yours know what will happen if you ever cross me.’

‘Y-you are a wicked, evil woman,’ Sherrinford Holmes stammered. He couldn’t seem to meet Mrs Eglantine’s gaze. Instead he stared down at the carpet, and Sherlock was stunned to see his eyes filling up with tears.

Mrs Eglantine stepped very slowly and precisely along the aisle between the shelves until she was standing in front of Sherlock’s uncle. She was smaller than him, but the way he stooped and the way she held herself made it seem as if she towered over him.

‘You pathetic fool!’ she spat. She reached up with a hand and took his chin between her thumb and fingers. Sherlock, watching appalled from the shadows, could see the indentations she caused in his cheeks. ‘You sit here, day after day, writing meaningless words for equally pathetic and deluded fools around the country to repeat like parrots, and you think – you actually think – that you are doing something worthy of praise. It means nothing, old man. I should bring it all crashing down around you, just to show you how little the world would care if it all stopped. I could, you know. With what I know, I could ruin this family.’

‘Then why do you hesitate?’ Sherrinford asked, voice muffled by the fingers that were clenched across his face.

Mrs Eglantine paused and opened her mouth, but no answer came out.

‘You cannot,’ Sherrinford Holmes continued. ‘If you were to reveal what you know then yes, my family would be ruined, but you would lose access to this house, and then where would you be? You have spent a year or more searching it, from top to bottom and side to side. I do not know what you are searching for, but I know how important it must be for you, and I know that you will never do anything that might imperil your search.’

‘I think you do know what I am searching for,’ she said scornfully, releasing him. ‘And I think it’s here, in this library. That’s why you sit here, day after day, like some old hen brooding over a batch of eggs that will never hatch. But I’ve searched everywhere else, and I know it has to be here, in this room.’

‘Get out,’ Sherrinford said, ‘or I will dismiss you, and God protect me from the consequences. I will dismiss you, just to end this nightmare, and to know that I have prevented you from finding whatever pathetic treasure you think might be here.’

Mrs Eglantine stalked past him, heading for the door. As she got to the end of the row, she turned to face him. Twin spots of bright colour burned like coals in the otherwise glacially white surface of her face. ‘You cannot get rid of me without consequences,’ she hissed. ‘And I cannot dispose of you without consequences. The question is, who fears those consequences the most?’ She turned to go, but then turned back. ‘I require you to get rid of that pathetic nephew of yours,’ she added. ‘Get rid of him. Send him away.’

‘Does he scare you?’ Sherrinford asked. ‘Are you worried that he will uncover your true position in this house and do something about it?’

‘What can he do? He is only a boy. Worse than that, he is only a Holmes.’ With that she turned and left. A few moments later Sherlock heard the door to the library open and shut.

‘She is scared of you,’ Sherrinford said quietly. It took a moment before Sherlock realized that his uncle was speaking to him. Somehow he knew that Sherlock was there.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said, emerging into the aisle and the light.

‘There is no reason why you should.’ His uncle shook his head as if it had suddenly become very heavy. ‘Forget what you have seen. Forget what you have heard. Put it from your mind. Pretend, as I will, that there is no trouble in this house and that everything is calm and serene in the sight of God. Pretend that the serpent that is Satan has not slithered into our midst.’

‘But Uncle . . .’

Sherrinford frowned and held up a thin hand. ‘No,’ he said with finality, ‘I will discuss this no longer. It will never be discussed again.’ He sighed. ‘I would ask you how far you have got with the cataloguing of sermons, but I find myself tired. I will rest for a while, here in the peace of my sanctum sanctorum.’ He gazed at the disarrayed books on the shelves and on the floor. ‘Later I will do some tidying up. I would normally ask a housekeeper to do that, but under the circumstances . . .’

Quietly Sherlock retreated from the library. He could hear his uncle murmuring to himself as he closed the door behind him.

Mrs Eglantine was in the hall, and he stayed in the shadows, watching her. She was speaking to one of the maids.

‘Tell Cook that I will be joining her shortly. The menus for the meals this week are totally unsuitable. They will need to be changed. Tell her that I will not be happy until they are completely revised.’

As the maid scurried off, and Mrs Eglantine stood motionless for a moment, lost in thought, Sherlock found his thoughts pulled in an audacious direction. Mrs Eglantine apparently felt free to search the entire house, looking for something. What if he was to search her room while she was occupied? Maybe he could find some clue as to what she was looking for. If he could find that, and then locate the hidden object before she did, then there would be no reason for her to stay at the house any longer. Even if he couldn’t find out what she was looking for, he might be able to work out what power she had over his aunt and uncle. If he could free them from that, then he would have paid them back for all their hospitality.

Mrs Eglantine moved towards the back of the house, presumably to what was going to be a rather fraught meeting with Cook. Sherlock felt a twinge of sympathy. He liked Cook; she always had a slice of bread and jam or a scone and cream for him if he passed through the kitchen. She was the only one of the servants who could stand up to Mrs Eglantine.

With his uncle in the library and his aunt presumably in the sitting room sewing, as she normally did in the afternoons, Sherlock knew that he was unlikely to be disturbed by his immediate family. He also knew that the servants’ schedule meant they would be cleaning out the fireplaces in the main bedrooms at that hour. Nobody would be up on the top floor, where the staff quarters and Sherlock’s own bedroom were located.

He reached the top floor without seeing anybody. His bedroom was the first one leading off the landing. Next to that was an empty room that would normally be occupied by a butler, if the family could afford one. Around the corner was Mrs Eglantine’s room and those occupied by the various maids and the lads who worked in the stables and the gardens, as well as the back staircase, which they used to move through the house without being seen. Only Sherlock and Mrs Eglantine were allowed to use the main stairs.

He turned the corner. The rest of the landing was empty, of course. Mrs Eglantine’s door was closed, but not locked. That would have been a terrible breach of the unwritten contract between employee and employer. In theory the servants’ rooms could be entered by Sherlock’s aunt and uncle at any time, for any reason, and even though that right theoretically extended to Sherlock he still felt his heart accelerate and his palms become moist as he reached out for the doorknob.

He turned it quietly, pushed the door open and entered the room, closing the door quickly behind him.

The room smelled of lavender and talcum powder, and faintly of some heavier floral scent that brought to mind decaying orchids. A threadbare rug was set in the centre of the otherwise bare floorboards. The bed was neatly made, and any clothes had been hung in the narrow wardrobe or folded in the chest of drawers. Apart from a hairbrush on the windowsill, a framed print of a landscape hanging on the wall and a Bible on a shelf by the bed, the room was bare of ornamentation.

There was something so impersonal about the room that it was difficult to believe that anyone actually lived there, slept there, on a daily basis. Given Mrs Eglantine’s aloofness, her almost inhuman stillness, Sherlock could imagine her walking into the room late at night, at the end of her working day, and just standing there, like a statue, unmoving until the sun rose and it was time to start working again. Switching off her fake humanity until she had to pretend again.

He shrugged the thought off. She wasn’t a supernatural creature. She was as human as he was – just a lot nastier.

Sherlock pressed his back against the door. The thought crossed his mind that Mrs Eglantine might have stood just like this in his room before searching it, and it made him angry. If she’d searched the house, as she had said, then she must have searched his room. Damn the woman! What was it she was searching for, and what was it that made her invulnerable?

He quickly memorized the positions of everything he could see – the hairbrush, the Bible, even the way the framed print was hanging at a slight angle and the distance between the top sheet on the bed and the pillows. Given Mrs Eglantine’s eye for detail, Sherlock had a feeling that she would notice if anything was disturbed. He had to make sure that everything was returned to its original position before he left.

He started with the chest of drawers, quickly sorting through the clothes in each drawer. He quelled the sense of guilt he felt by telling himself that Mrs Eglantine had almost certainly done the same to his clothes. When he found nothing, he ran his hand across the floorboards beneath the chest, just in case something had been slid underneath. Still nothing.

He turned away, and then turned back as a sudden thought struck him. Quickly he pulled each drawer completely out and felt underneath it for bits of paper or envelopes that might have been attached there, then looked into the hole left by the drawer for anything that might have been pushed inside, but apart from dust, spider webs and an old lace handkerchief he didn’t find anything.

Leaving the chest of drawers, with a final check to make sure it still looked as it had before he arrived, he turned to the wardrobe, but a noise from outside made him freeze. His heart thudded painfully. Had that been a creak of a floorboard? Was someone standing outside, listening for him in the same way he was listening for them? Had Mrs Eglantine finished her meeting with Cook and returned to her room for some reason?

The noise happened again: a scratching sound, difficult to place. Sherlock looked around wildly for somewhere to hide. Under the bed? In the wardrobe? He took a half-step, hesitant, fearing that a board would creak beneath his feet and give him away.

Before he could move again he heard the noise for a third time, and he recognized it with a rush of relief. It was the sound of ashes being scraped from one of the fireplace grates downstairs with a shovel, echoing through the chimneys. He relaxed, and let his hands unclench.

Now that his attention had been drawn to the fireplace, Sherlock moved across to it. He ran his hands through the cold coals in case anything had been hidden there, and even craned his neck to look up the chimney, but there was nothing to see.

He turned back to his search of the room, checking under the bed, but apart from an empty suitcase there was nothing there. The wardrobe was occupied by a number of dresses on hangers and two hats on a shelf – all of them black, of course. Sherlock wasn’t sure if it was just a housekeeper thing, or whether Mrs Eglantine spent her entire life wearing black. She was a ‘Mrs’, which meant that she was either married or widowed, but Sherlock could only imagine her walking up the aisle in church wearing a black wedding dress. He shivered and pushed the grotesque thought away.

He stood in the centre of the rug and looked around. He’d checked all the obvious places. The room was small enough and neat enough that he could see virtually every hiding place, and there was nothing unusual, nothing that he wouldn’t have expected to see in a housekeeper’s room.

If he was hiding something in his room, where would he put it?

On a sudden thought he stepped to one side and pulled the rug back. Nothing underneath but floorboards. He wasn’t expecting there to be – Mrs Eglantine was nothing if not clever, and hiding something beneath the only rug in the room was too simple and too obvious – but he had to check anyway, just in case.

Looking at the floorboards prompted him to test them with his foot, looking for any looseness. Maybe she’d levered up one of the boards and hidden something underneath. If she had, then she’d fastened it back too well for Sherlock to detect. He’d need a crowbar to lever them up, and that would leave traces.

The picture on the wall kept attracting his attention. For a minute or two he dismissed it, thinking that it was just the way it was hung at an angle that disturbed his ordered mind, but his thoughts kept circling back to it. It occurred to him that something might have been hidden behind the picture. Gently he eased it away from the wall and turned it so that he could see the back.

Only a pencilled price mark.

He sighed and put the picture back at exactly the same angle he had found it.

Hands on hips, he surveyed the room again. If there was a secret in the room, then it was particularly well kept.

If, in fact, the secret was in the room to start with.

On a whim he crossed over to the narrow window that looked out over the gardens to the back of the house. He couldn’t see anybody, so he was safe from observation. The window was open a crack. He pushed it further open and leaned out.

Something was hanging from a piece of twine that had been wrapped around a nail stuck in the wood of the window frame – a package that dangled a couple of feet below the level of the windowsill. It was small enough that it would have been almost invisible from the garden below, unless someone knew exactly what they were looking for.

Sherlock hauled it in and rested it on the windowsill. The twine was tarred to make it weather-resistant, and the package was wrapped in oilcloth. It left a reddish powdery residue on the windowsill. It looked to Sherlock as if the oilcloth had been rubbed with brick dust to make it even more difficult to see from outside. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to hide this package.

With a momentary hesitation, and a shiver of anticipation, he untied the twine and unwrapped the package.

Inside was a folded mass of paper. Sherlock wiped his hands on a handkerchief before unfolding it carefully, making a mental note of which layers were on the inside and which ones were on the outside. It was bad enough that he was in her room; he certainly didn’t want Mrs Eglantine knowing that he had found her hidden papers and was riffling through them.

The papers unfolded into two large sheets. The top one was a set of plans of Holmes Manor – architect’s drawings showing all the rooms on all the floors, all to scale. Many of the rooms had been crossed off in red ink. Most of them had scribbled notes written in them, or arrows pointing to particular features with question marks attached. One particularly thick wall between the dining room and the reception room had a note written beside it which said: ‘Check for secret compartments in the wall. Could be accessed from either side.’

The second sheet was slightly smaller than the first. It was a set of words and phrases written in the same handwriting as the notes on the architectural plans. They had boxes drawn around them, and the boxes were linked by lines and arrows in a kind of network. It looked as if Mrs Eglantine – assuming it was her – was trying to connect up a series of disparate elements, discoveries or thoughts into a coherent pattern – and failing. Sherlock scanned through some of the notes and found names of members of the Holmes family, as well as names that he didn’t recognize, alongside places that he thought he’d heard of and words that just seemed to be randomly chosen but presumably meant something to Mrs Eglantine. In the centre, like a spider sitting in the middle of its web, the words gold plates had been circled twice in an emphatic hand.

Gold plates? Was that what she was looking for?

Reluctantly Sherlock folded the papers up again, careful to make sure that he used the same fold marks in the same order as he had unwrapped the package. He wished he could keep them for further study, but that would be risky. He couldn’t even copy them – there was too much information there, and it would take too long. He knew more than he had earlier, but he wasn’t sure he was any the wiser.

He wrapped the papers up in the oilcloth, retied them with the twine and carefully lowered them out of the window, first checking that the garden was still empty.

Finally, he closed the window, remembering to leave it open a crack.

He took a last look around the room, partly for anything he might have missed and partly to see if he’d left any traces. To both questions, the answer was no.

After listening at the door for a few moments to check that the coast was clear, he left Mrs Eglantine’s room and slipped along the corridor. For a moment he considered going into his own room, but there was nothing for him to do there apart from rest for a while, and think, and he had other things to do. He headed downstairs.

The heavy oak door leading out into the drive and the gardens thumped closed as he entered the hall. Someone had just left the house. Through a narrow window Sherlock could see a black-clad figure walking to a waiting cart. It was Mrs Eglantine. She had put on a coat, which meant that she was probably going into town. She must have finished her conference with Cook, and a shiver went through Sherlock as he realized how close a call he’d had. If she’d kept her coat upstairs instead of in the kitchen, then she might have found him.

The cart clattered away and vanished through the gates to the road. Sherlock turned and headed back towards the kitchens.

‘Master Sherlock!’ Cook called as he entered. She was a large woman, her cheery face usually red from the heat of the ovens and her hands covered in flour, but today she looked pale and the skin around her eyes was creased as if she was trying to stop herself from crying. ‘I just got some bread in the oven. Come back in a while and you can ’ave a nice hot slice wiv butter fresh from the churn!’

‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘but I was looking for Mrs Eglantine.’

Cook’s face seemed to age five years in as many seconds. ‘She’s gone to town. And good riddance too! ’Parently the quality of the vegetables I’ve been preparin’ for this household is not up to the standards she expects.’ She sniffed. ‘Anyone’d think she was the lady of the house, rather than Mrs ’Olmes, and this was some swanky ’otel rather than a country ’ouse.’

‘She’s certainly a difficult person to please,’ Sherlock said cautiously. He’d learned from Amyus Crowe that general statements, left hanging like that, normally encouraged talkative people to talk even more, and Cook was one of the most talkative people he knew.

‘She is that. I never known such a person to find fault, and ’er tongue’s as sharp as a butcher’s knife. I worked with ’undreds of ’ousekeepers over the years, but she’s got to be the most hoity-toity and the most unpleasant.’

‘What made my uncle and aunt employ her in the first place?’ Sherlock asked. ‘I presume she must have had a good set of references from her previous jobs.’

‘If she did, then I never got to ’ear about them.’

‘I keep seeing her around the house,’ Sherlock said. ‘Just standing there, not doing anything apart from watching and listening.’

‘That’s ’er all over,’ Cook confirmed. ‘Like a crow, just standin’ on a branch waitin’ for a worm.’ Colour was coming back into her cheeks now. She sniffed again. ‘Soon as she arrived she turned this kitchen upside down. Moved everythin’ out into the garden and ’ad the walls an’ the tiles scrubbed. Give ’er credit – she did it herself. Shut the door an’ worked for a whole day, she did. Said she’d ’ad experience of ’ouses wiv mice an’ rats an’ she wanted to make sure there weren’t none ’ere. The nerve of the woman! As if I’d let a mouse in my kitchen!’

‘She’s a strange woman,’ Sherlock confirmed.

‘I got some biscuits I baked earlier,’ Cook confided. ‘Do you want a couple, to keep you goin’ before tea?’

‘I’d love some,’ he said, smiling. ‘In fact, I’d happily miss tea and just eat your biscuits.’

‘It’s nice to ’ave someone who appreciates my cookin’,’ Cook said, beaming. She seemed more cheerful now.

After wolfing down three of Cook’s biscuits, Sherlock headed back into the house. He wasn’t sure that he’d made much progress, but he seemed to have established that Mrs Eglantine had somehow blackmailed her way into the house and that she was searching for something. The gold plates that had been mentioned in her notes? He supposed it was possible, but it sounded a little unlikely. Why would there be gold plates, of all things, in his aunt and uncle’s possession? What would they want such a thing for? He’d been living there for over a year now, and he’d never seen any plates apart from the porcelain ones that were used every day and the bone-china ones brought out on Sundays and when anyone visited. Neither of those sets of plates had any gold at all on them, not even gold-leaf edging.

Suddenly he couldn’t face the prospect of staying in the house for the rest of the day. It seemed to be weighing down on him like a heavy coat. He had to get out. For a few seconds he thought about heading over to see Amyus Crowe – and Virginia – but he felt as if there was more that he could do concerning Mrs Eglantine. If she was in Farnham, sourcing fresher vegetables than Cook had got, then perhaps he could find her and watch her for a while from hiding. After all, perhaps the vegetables were just an excuse. Perhaps she had a different reason for going into town.

He left by the front door and headed for the stables, where his horse was kept. He thought of it as his horse, although he’d effectively stolen it from the evil Baron Maupertuis, back when he’d first arrived at Holmes Manor. Fortunately the Baron hadn’t appeared to ask for it back, and the horse seemed perfectly happy to stay with someone who looked after it and rode it regularly. He’d named it Philadelphia, as a kind of joke. The horse didn’t seem to mind.

Saddling Philadelphia up the way he’d been taught by the groom who worked for the Holmes family, he cantered out of the grounds and along the road that led to Farnham. He’d got pretty good at riding over the past few months, ever since getting back from the eventful trip that he and his brother had made to Russia.

That trip, he reminded himself as the horse calmly trotted along past the tall trees of Alice Holt Forest, had involved the mysterious Paradol Chamber – the international gang of criminals who had also been involved with the colossal schemes of Baron Maupertuis. Nothing had been heard of them since their plan to discredit Sherlock’s brother Mycroft and assassinate the head of the Russian Secret Service had fallen apart, but Sherlock knew that they were still out there, somewhere. He occasionally asked Mycroft about them, but Mycroft professed himself to be as mystified as Sherlock as to what they were up to. The only certainty was that somewhere in the world they were up to something.

The outskirts of Farnham crept up on Sherlock before he knew it: solid red brick buildings with tiled roofs replacing the thatched cottages that had been scattered along the road from Holmes Manor. Rather than ride into the town centre, and risk having Mrs Eglantine see him, he left the horse tied up at a stables he’d used before on the outskirts of town, tipping the ostler a few pence to feed and water it. He walked the rest of the way.

If Mrs Eglantine was telling the truth about vegetables, then she would be at the market. Sherlock headed over towards where it was held, in the shadow of a two-storey building with colonnades all the way around. The marketplace was filled to capacity with stalls selling all manner of foodstuffs, from fruit to fresh beans, from smoked meat to shellfish.

He couldn’t see Mrs Eglantine anywhere, but he did see Matty standing by a vegetable stall. He looked as if he was waiting for something to roll off in his direction.

Matty caught sight of Sherlock and waved. Sherlock saw his friend’s gaze flicker back to the stall, and a look of momentary indecision cross his face before he walked over.

‘Waiting for lunch?’ Sherlock asked.

‘I don’t really separate stuff out into “meals” as such,’ Matty admitted. ‘I just eat whenever I can.’

‘Very wise. Have you seen Mrs Eglantine around?’

‘That housekeeper?’ Matty shuddered. ‘I try to stay away from her. She’s bad news.’

‘Yes, but have you seen her?’

Matty nodded over towards a stall selling fresh trout laid on grass. ‘She was over there a few minutes ago. Said the fish was too small.’

‘Did you see which direction she went?’

He shrugged. ‘Long as she was heading away from me, I didn’t really care. Why? What’s up?’

Sherlock debated whether to tell Matty about the confrontation between Mrs Eglantine and his uncle, but he decided to keep quiet. That was a private family matter – at least for the moment. ‘I just need to know where she is,’ he said. ‘I think she’s up to something.’

‘Shouldn’t be too hard to find her,’ Matty said. ‘She dresses like every day is a Sunday, an’ someone’s died to boot . . .’

As the two boys moved across the marketplace, pushing past the various vendors, customers and browsers who filled the place, Sherlock caught fragments of conversation from all directions.

‘. . . an’ I told ’im, if ’e comes back without it I’m leavin’ . . .’

‘. . . you gave me your word that the deal was already made, Bill . . .’

‘. . . if I see you with that lad again, girl, I’ll wallop you so hard your head will be spinning for a week . . .’

One voice in particular snagged his attention. It was accented, American. He recognized the accent from talking to Amyus Crowe, and from his time in New York. He turned his head, thinking that maybe it was Crowe who was speaking, but the face that he found himself looking at was younger: all sharp planes and hard edges. The man’s hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, and beneath the hair it looked to Sherlock as if his right ear was missing. All he could see there was a mass of dark scar tissue. His clothes were dusty and well-travelled, and he was speaking to a companion who had short blond hair and a face covered in circular scars, the kind you got from a bad case of smallpox.

‘. . . will flay us alive and turn our skins into hats,’ the man with the missing ear was saying.

‘We need to find Crowe and his daughter. They’re our only chance!’

‘Well, we know what’ll happen to us if we don’t find them. Remember Abner?’

‘Yeah.’ The dark-haired man’s face twisted with an unpleasant memory. ‘Don’t do nothing but stare at the wall now, after what the boss did to him. It’s like there’s nothing left inside his head, apart from what he needs to breathe and to eat . . .’

They were walking in one direction and Sherlock and Matty were walking in another, and that was all Sherlock heard before the two men were out of earshot. It sounded serious though. Sherlock decided to go and see Mr Crowe as soon as he could. Crowe needed to know that someone was looking for him.

By the time he had formulated the thought, he and Matty were across the other side of the marketplace.

‘Wait here for a minute,’ Matty said. He dashed away, towards the two-storey colonnaded building on the edge of the marketplace. Sherlock lost him as he vanished into the shadows. He was about to turn away and scan the crowd for signs of a black-clad woman when Matty’s head appeared above the parapet, running along the roof of the building. He waved at Sherlock. Sherlock waved back, amazed at how quickly Matty had got through the building. The scruffy barge boy scanned the crowd with his keen gaze. Within moments he was pointing at something.

Mrs Eglantine? Sherlock mouthed, trusting to Matty’s skill at lip-reading to pick up the words.

Pork pie! Matty replied. Sherlock couldn’t tell if he was actually making any sound or not, but the movement of his mouth was clear enough. Matty grinned. Only kidding! he mouthed. She’s over there!

Sherlock gave him a thumbs-up, and Matty’s head disappeared from the parapet.

Sherlock plunged into the crowd of shoppers and market traders, heading in the direction that Matty had indicated. He scanned the heads of the people in front of him, looking out for Mrs Eglantine’s distinctive scraped-back hairstyle. Within the space of a few moments he had seen virtually every variation of hair and headwear possible: black, red, blond, grey, white and bald; straight, curly, pig-tailed and close-shaven; bare-headed, bonneted, scarved, flat-capped, bowler-hatted . . . everything apart from a woman with black hair pulled back so that it looked like it was painted on her scalp. Finally he spotted her. She was standing right on the edge of the marketplace with her back to him. She was talking to a short man with hair that was long, oiled and brushed back to either side of his head, leaving a parting dead centre. His skin was blotchy, and his jacket was shiny with old dirt and grease at the shoulders, elbows and cuffs. He wasn’t the kind of man with whom Sherlock would have thought Mrs Eglantine would associate.

Sherlock drifted closer, deliberately looking away from the two of them so that they wouldn’t notice they had an eavesdropper.

As he got closer he heard the man say: ‘Time’s gettin’ on, darlin’, and there’s still no sign of the thing turnin’ up. You sure it’s in the ’ouse?’

‘There is nowhere else for it to be,’ Mrs Eglantine said in her cold, precise voice. ‘And you don’t need to remind me how long I’ve been working in that place.’

‘Anythin’ I can do to speed things up?’ the man asked.

‘’You can get rid of that brat Sherlock,’ she snapped. ‘He’s always snooping around, and he’s too clever for his own good.’

‘You want him gone temporary, like, or permanent?’

‘So permanently,’ she hissed, ‘that I want him cut up and scattered over such a large area that nobody will ever be able to find all the bits.’

CHAPTER THREE

Sherlock felt his mouth drop open in shock. He knew Mrs Eglantine disliked him to the point of hatred, but the fact that she hated him enough to want him dead – enough to actually ask someone to kill him – that was a shock. What had he ever done to her? Apart from question her position and challenge her authority, that was.

The man with the oily hair was saying something, and Sherlock concentrated on hearing what it was.

‘I’ll take that into consideration,’ he said, ‘I surely will, but the problem is that I could be seeing a nice return on what I know about that hoity-toity Holmes family, but I’m holdin’ back. Rather than get them to pay me a guinea a week to keep their secret, I’m usin’ that influence to keep you employed by them.’ He sniggered. ‘Let’s face it, who would employ a sour-faced harridan like you if they didn’t have to? I’m losing money on this deal while you get a nice little job and a wage.’

Mrs Eglantine started to speak, but the man held up a hand and she stopped.

‘I know what you’re going to say,’ he said. ‘You’re going to tell me that when you find this treasure of yours that’s hid in the house, you’ll split it with me and we’ll both be rich. The trouble is, that treasure is what’s known as “hypothetical” – I ain’t seen it and I ain’t convinced that it exists. On the other hand, the money the Holmes family could be paying me to keep their secret is real. Cash in hand, if you like – or beer in belly, in my case. So I got to ask myself, am I better off with a smaller amount of real money or a larger amount of hypothetical money?’

Mrs Eglantine sniffed. ‘We had an arrangement, Mr Harkness,’ she said. ‘If you go back on that now, then nobody will ever trust you again.’

‘I’m a blackmailer,’ Harkness pointed out calmly. ‘The only thing people trust me to do is reveal their secrets if I don’t get paid regular.’ He sighed. ‘Look, we’ve had a good thing going over the years, darlin’. You ferret out family secrets wherever you work and bring them to me, and I use them to make a few quid on a regular basis, but since you got wind of this supposed treasure the whole thing’s gone to pot. Why can’t we go back to the way things were?’

‘Firstly,’ Mrs Eglantine said icily, ‘I am not your “darling” and I never will be, and secondly, the trivial way you blackmail the local townspeople over their petty thefts and even pettier romances barely brings you in enough money to fund those big bets you like to place on the horses and the illegal boxing. If you ever want to make anything of yourself, I am your only chance.’

Harkness sighed. ‘You’ve got a sharp but persuasive tongue in your head, Betty. All right – I’ll go along with it for another month. But just a month, you hear? After that I’m getting my hooks into the Holmes family and soaking them for whatever cash I can.’

‘To you,’ she replied, ‘I am Mrs Eglantine. Never take the liberty of calling me by my first name.’ She seemed to thaw slightly, reaching out to touch his arm. ‘I’m near to finding it, Josh – I know I am. I just need a little more time.’ She paused for a moment. ‘And I need that interfering brat Sherlock out of my way. Can you do that for me?’

‘I’ll get some of my lads on it,’ he promised. ‘You got time for a bite to eat?’

She shook her head. ‘That damned family are expecting their evening meal. I swear, Josh, there are times when I just feel like poisoning the lot of them and watching as they writhe in agony on the dining-room carpet. But not just yet. I need to get back.’

‘Stay in touch.’ He laughed. ‘Let me know if you find them golden plates you keep on about.’

‘I will.’ She turned away, then turned back. ‘Oh, I almost forgot. I found this in the room of one of the maids.’ She reached into a hidden fold of her crinoline skirt and withdrew a letter. ‘It is a note from a boy who claims to love her.’

‘I ain’t interested in tittle-tattle,’ Harkness said.

‘You would be if you knew that the boy in question is the eldest son of the Mayor of Farnham.’

Harkness cocked his head to one side in sudden interest. ‘The Mayor’s son, seeing some little hussy of a housemaid? That ought to be good for a few quid. The Mayor’s very particular about the company he keeps. He tells everyone that his son is going to marry into the nobility. He’ll want to keep this one very quiet.’ He frowned. ‘The letter’s in the boy’s own handwriting? And he’s signed it?’

‘With love and kisses.’

Harkness grinned. ‘People never learn, do they? I never commit anything to writing, just in case.’ He reached out and took the letter from Mrs Eglantine. ‘Thanks for this. You want cash now, or shall I add it to the account?’

‘Pay me later. Just make sure you remember.’

‘Oh, I’ll remember. My memory’s razor sharp.’

They parted, Mrs Eglantine heading off in one direction and Josh Harkness in the other. Sherlock almost expected the man to try to kiss her on the cheek, based on that momentary final flash of friendship, but if the thought crossed his mind he didn’t act on it.

Sherlock’s gaze flickered uncertainly between the two of them. Should he follow Mrs Eglantine, or Josh Harkness? It occurred to him that he didn’t have to follow either of them – he could just go and find Matty and spend the rest of the day in Farnham – but he knew that he couldn’t let this thing go. There was more at stake here than he had realized – not just his own safety, but the future of his family. He had to find out what was going on, and stop it. If he could.

After a few seconds he decided that he should follow the greasy-haired man. Mrs Eglantine was heading back to the house – she had said so herself. He knew where she would be and pretty much what she was going to be doing. The man was the uncertain quantity here, and Sherlock needed to find out much more about him. That was the direction that any immediate threat to Sherlock would be coming from.

Harkness now had something incriminating on one of the housemaids in Holmes Manor. Sherlock wondered which one it was. He didn’t know any of them by name, and rarely said anything to them, but they all seemed pleasant enough, and good at their jobs. If one of them had found happiness with a boy who was from a different social class, then what of it? Sherlock didn’t see why either of them should be punished for the fact, let alone the boy’s father.

Not for the first time, it occurred to him that the British system of working class, middle class and upper class people was not only pointless and archaic, but damaging to the very fabric of society.

Checking to see that Mrs Eglantine hadn’t turned around to come back for some reason, Sherlock slipped through the crowd after her friend.

Sherlock stayed well back, just in case Harkness looked over his shoulder. He probably didn’t know what Sherlock looked like, but he seemed like the kind of man who would be constantly checking for pursuit. As the two of them moved through the crowd Sherlock couldn’t help but notice how some of the townsfolk – usually the better-dressed ones – moved out of his way and turned their heads to avoid looking at him. He seemed to be known to a lot of people – and not in a good way. Sherlock couldn’t help but remember some of the older boys at Deepdene Academy who had bullied the younger ones. They had swaggered through the school halls in much the same way, and the kids had moved out of their path like minnows moving out of the way of a stickleback.

Sherlock sensed a presence by his side. He turned his head a fraction, not sure that he wanted to acknowledge whoever it was. Maybe Mrs Eglantine had turned back and seen him. But no – it was Matty. He grinned up at Sherlock, one hand holding a cauliflower which he was eating raw.

‘Wha’s goin’ on?’ he said through a mouthful of vegetable.

‘We’re following someone.’

‘Who? That Mrs Eglantine?’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘No. Some other man she was meeting. Harkness, I think his name is. Josh Harkness.’

Matty’s face seemed to freeze. His eyes widened in concern. ‘Josh Harkness? Small bloke with hair that looks like he washes it in lamp oil?’

‘That’s him.’

Matty shook his head. ‘Best not to get involved with him, Sherlock. I heard things about him. The barge hands on the canal talk about him in whispers. He takes a cut from most of the thieves that work this town. Five per cent of their earnings, he takes, payable every week. If they don’t pay him, he takes five per cent of their bodies – just cuts it off. Fingers, toes, ears, noses . . . whatever it takes until he has five per cent of their body weight. That’s his rule, and he never varies it.’ He shuddered. ‘We had a talk, him and me, a little time after I arrived in Farnham. He took me by the shoulder in the marketplace and said quietly, “I notice that you’re not averse to nabbing bits of food here and there, young ’un. That’s all right – never let it be said that Josh Harkness begrudges a boy his fill. But take a note from a friend – if you ever graduate to taking money rather than fruit and pies, I get a cut. Ask anyone. And if I don’t get a cut –”’ he made a snipping motion with his fingers – ‘“well, one way or another, I get my cut, if you see what I mean.” He’s not a nice man, Sherlock. Even on a scale of people who are not nice, he ranks right near the top.’

Sherlock nodded thoughtfully as the two of them moved through the crowd. ‘I understand. I got the impression that he had few scruples, but he’s got something on my family – some kind of information that he’s holding over their heads.’

‘Yeah, he dabbles in blackmail as well. He collects all the little secrets that people have, and he gets them to pay him every week according to their means for the privilege of keeping it all secret.’ Matty shook his head. ‘It’s a few pence here, a couple of shillings there and a handful of pounds every week, but it all mounts up. He’s making a fortune without working for it.’

‘And he’s cashing in on people’s unhappiness,’ Sherlock said grimly. He found that the thought was making him angry. ‘He’s a parasite on the human race, and someone ought to do something about it. Why don’t they?’

‘The people he’s blackmailing are too scared to go to the police, because if they do their secrets will be revealed. Besides, he’s probably blackmailing half the police in Farnham as well. The last thing they’re going to do is expose him.’

‘Then I suppose I’ll have to do it myself,’ Sherlock said. The words surprised him even as he heard himself saying them, but they sounded right.

Matty was about to say something else, but up ahead Josh Harkness turned a corner out of the marketplace. He was still clutching the stolen letter in his hand. Sherlock gestured to Matty to keep quiet. Together they exited the fringes of the crowd and moved towards the corner. Sherlock sidled up to the edge of the brick wall and looked around it carefully, half expecting to come face to face with the blackmailer, but the man was up ahead, walking along an empty street. Sherlock hung back until Harkness was almost at the far end. If he and Matty started after him while he was still only halfway along, then if he turned, he would see them straight away. They would be the only two people on the street.

Harkness got to the end of the street and turned left. As soon as he vanished from sight, Sherlock pulled Matty into the street and started running.

It only took a few seconds for Sherlock and Matty to get to the end of the street. They did the same there as they had before, Matty hanging back while Sherlock peered around the corner. Harkness was perhaps twenty feet away, still striding along, ignoring everything around him. He was, Sherlock judged, very confident in himself.

A smell began to prick at Sherlock’s nostrils: a sharp smell, like a combination of cleaning chemicals and something darker, like sewage. Sherlock felt his eyes watering as the vapour – whatever it was – began to irritate them.

At the end of the street, rather than turning into another street or an alley, Harkness came to a door and opened it with a key. He stared right and left suspiciously, the stolen letter still held in his hand. Sherlock pulled back so that he couldn’t be seen, trying to suppress a sneeze that kept trying to explode out of his nose. By the time he felt confident enough to poke his head back out, the man had vanished.

‘What’s in there?’ he asked Matty.

Matty poked his head around the corner as well, underneath Sherlock’s. He sniffed. ‘Tannery,’ he said firmly. ‘They get the cow hides coming in from the farms and the abattoirs, and they cure them to turn them into leather.’

‘“Cure” them?’ Sherlock asked. He’d heard the term before, but he wasn’t sure what it entailed.

‘Yeah.’ Matty glanced up scornfully. ‘You ought to get out more. “Curing” is what they do to turn skin into leather. It makes it harder, makes it last longer and stops it from rotting.’

‘And how do they do that?’

‘They scrape as much flesh as they can off the skins with sharp knives, and then they wash them with some kind of chemical stuff.’

Sherlock sniffed again, feeling the bite of ammonia at the back of his nose and throat. ‘Yes, I can smell the chemicals.’

Matty grimaced. ‘You can smell them all over Farnham. The chemicals they use to cure the hides are made from some pretty horrible raw materials.’

Sherlock frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, put it this way – some bloke told me that the chemical was called “urea”.’

Sherlock thought for a moment. Urea. It sounded innocuous. It sounded like . . . oh. Yes. It sounded like ‘urine’. He looked down at Matty, frowning. ‘Are you telling me that they tan leather using urine?’

Matty nodded. ‘That and other stuff, but you probably don’t want to even think about that. Just take my advice – hold your nose whenever you pass by that place.’ He shook his head. ‘I heard a story about one of the blokes who worked in there. He was trying to mix the skins around in the big tank they have, using a long stick, but he overbalanced and fell in.’

Sherlock felt his eyes widen. ‘Fell into the . . . ?’

‘Exactly.’

‘What happened?’

‘He drowned.’

‘Drowned in . . . ?’

‘Yeah.’ He shuddered. ‘When I die I want to die quietly, in my sleep. Not drowning in a bath of—’

‘We’ve got to get in there,’ Sherlock said decisively.

‘What?’

‘I said, we’ve got to get in there.’

‘Are you mad?’

‘Josh Harkness went in there.’

‘Yes. I know. That was my point. Not only does that place smell worse than the wooden outhouse you rescued me from in that American railway station last year – which, by the way, smelled like someone had got stuck and died – but it’s also got inside it the most dangerous man within a hundred miles. There are times when I wonder about you, Sherlock.’

Sherlock sighed. ‘Look, I wish it wasn’t necessary, but he’s got some information about my family. He’s blackmailing my aunt and uncle. They’re nice people. They’ve never done anybody any harm, and they’ve looked after me and fed me for over a year now. I owe it to them to do something.’ He gazed down the street, feeling a grim expression settle across his face. ‘I’ve decided that I don’t like blackmailers.’

‘All right.’ Matty looked around. ‘Going through that door would be a waste of time. Harkness probably locked it behind him, and even if he didn’t we don’t know where it opens out. Might be right into a room full of people. There’s a broken window round the corner. We could probably get in that way.’

‘How come you know there’s a broken window round the corner?’

Matty looked at Sherlock with exasperation. ‘I know where all the broken windows in Farnham are – just in case I need them. You wouldn’t believe the stuff that people leave out on kitchen tables. Although in this case I decided never to use the window as soon as I found out what was in there and who owned it.’

Sherlock frowned. ‘I wonder why Harkness doesn’t get it repaired.’

Matty shrugged. ‘Maybe he knows that nobody in their right mind would ever burgle the place, knowing who he is, an’ all. Maybe it lets some fresh air inside. Lord knows, it needs a stiff breeze running through.’

Sherlock nodded, and led the way around the corner, walking along the street and past the closed door through which Harkness had entered the building. He deliberately didn’t look sideways just in case the door was open a crack and Harkness was looking out, watching for people following him. The confidence with which he’d walked away from the market suggested that he didn’t expect to be followed or didn’t care if he was, but Sherlock couldn’t take the chance. Maybe the man was trickier than he looked.

Sherlock’s skin crawled as he passed the door. He half expected it to spring open. He breathed a silent sigh of relief as he left it behind him and reached the next corner.

Matty was right beside him. Together they turned into a deserted cobbled alley.

The wall of the tannery formed one side of the alley. Sherlock could see the window that Matty had mentioned. It was about eight feet off the ground, and the glass was cobwebby. The lower right-hand pane was missing.

The smell emanating from the hole in the window made Sherlock want to turn around and be sick. Instead, he deliberately clenched his stomach muscles and swallowed a couple of times. He couldn’t afford to let his body betray him. He had work to do.

He glanced at the window: too high for him to pull himself up, and the plaster of the wall looked as if it would crumble under his feet if he tried to get purchase against it. He had to think of another way to get through.

‘I’ll boost you up on my shoulders,’ he said to Matty. ‘You open the window and get in, then you’ll have to pull me up.’

‘Not going to work,’ Matty said firmly. ‘Take it from an expert at getting into buildings. I can get up and in the window, no problem, but I can’t take your weight for long enough to pull you in after me.’ He grimaced. ‘We’ll have to do it the other way round. I’ll bend over – you climb on my back, get in the window and pull me up and in.’

Sherlock’s gaze moved between the high window and Matty’s small form. He nodded reluctantly. ‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘but I don’t want to hurt you.’

Matty shrugged. ‘Stuff happens,’ he said casually. ‘But bruises and scratches heal. Frankly, if your boot in my face is the worst thing that happens to me today, I’ll be as happy as Larry.’

‘Who’s Larry?’ Sherlock asked.

Matty stared at him. ‘It’s just an expression,’ he said. ‘People say it all the time.’

‘I’ve never heard it.’

‘As I said, you should get out more. Mix with people.’ He smiled. ‘Now come on – you’re wasting time.’ He bent over, bracing his hands against his thighs. ‘Get up there quickly. You’re just as thin as you were when we first met, but I think you’ve put on some muscle in the meantime, and muscle is heavy.’

Before he could reconsider, Sherlock put his right knee on to Matty’s back and then brought his left foot up, boosting himself until he was standing upright. Matty grunted, but his back remained steady. Quickly Sherlock reached in through the hole in the window and felt around for the catch. He undid it, then, pulling his hand back, slid the window open. He jumped for the opening, feeling Matty move beneath his feet as he did so. Sherlock’s stomach caught against the window frame, and he wriggled inside. The wood scraped against his skin. Before he could fall to the floor, he caught himself and crouched, looking around.

He was in a small room that was empty of people but filled with boxes. Up against one wall was a wooden chute like a child’s slide, set on its end. The floor was about five feet below the edge of the windowsill – obviously built up a couple of feet from where the ground was. That made things easier. He lowered himself to the floorboards, turned and leaned out of the window. Matty was looking upward expectantly. When he saw Sherlock he extended his hand. Sherlock reached down and pulled him up. His friend was surprisingly heavy, and Sherlock felt the muscles in his back protesting, but he managed to haul the boy in through the window without causing himself permanent damage.

Together they moved past the boxes to where a door interrupted the wall. It was closed. Sherlock turned the knob and edged it open an inch.

Through the gap he saw a large room that occupied the centre of the building. A raised walkway ran around the edge of the room, with several doors leading off and a gap on the right that presumably led to the door to the street, but most of it was at the same level as the ground outside. In the middle of the room were four wooden vats, like the bottom halves of enormous barrels. Inside each one was a liquid. In two of the barrels the liquid was discoloured and lumpy, like soup, with bubbles rising slowly to the surface, but in the other two it was clearer, more like water.

The smell rising from the vats was so strong that Sherlock could swear he saw the air itself rippling above them.

‘I ain’t going to eat for a week now,’ Matty complained in a whisper.

‘Breathe through your nose,’ Sherlock suggested.

‘I am. What I need to do is breathe through my ears.’

There was no sign of Josh Harkness, but there were two other men in the room. They were moving from vat to vat, using wooden poles as long as their bodies to swirl the contents around. Each time they did so, the smell got momentarily worse.

‘I know those blokes,’ Matty said. ‘They go round town collecting cash for Harkness. They’re bad news.’

Sherlock looked at the various closed doors. One of them presumably sheltered Josh Harkness. He didn’t dare explore until he knew where the blackmailer was.

As the thought crossed his mind a door across the other side of the room opened and Harkness emerged. He wasn’t holding the letter any more.

‘Keep stirring them leathers,’ he yelled at the men by the vats. ‘That last batch came out patchy and baggy. I ain’t paying you to stand around doing nothing.’

‘It ain’t got nothin’ to do wiv us stirrin’ or not stirrin’, boss,’ one of the men yelled back. ‘It’s got to do with the quality of them skins. The cows you’re usin’ are’s old as my gran. Their skins are just as baggy an’ just as blotchy. You want better leathers, you get better skins for us.’

‘Don’t give me none of your lip!’ Harkness shouted. ‘If you think you can do it better, then you set up your own tannery! Until then, you work with whatever you’re given!’

The men shrugged, looked at each other and got back to stirring. Harkness glowered at them for a few moments, then stomped along the raised walkway to where some steps led down into the centre. He walked over to one of the vats and looked inside, having to stand on his toes to do so. The smell didn’t seem to bother him.

‘There’s not enough skins in here,’ he shouted. ‘Throw some more in.’

The two men headed over to an area hidden from Sherlock’s view by the vats. Harkness stomped across to join them. For a moment the room seemed empty.

Sherlock took his chance. He quickly and quietly raced out on to the wooden walkway and ran along it to the door from which Harkness had emerged moments before. Matty followed silently.

He got to the door, quickly opened it and slipped inside, closing it behind him before the three men could re-emerge from behind the vats. Part of his mind, the emotional part, worried about how he was going to get out again, but the rest of it, the logical part, told him that if the men had disappeared once then the chances were that they would again. All he had to do was wait. For now, the important thing was to search the room for its secrets.

He looked around. One wall had a set of poles leaning against it. They had hooks on the end – presumably for pulling hides out of the vats. The other walls were lined with shelves, and each shelf had several cardboard boxes on it. Written on the boxes were letters: A, B, C, and so on. He went to the first box, pulled it from the shelf and took the lid off.

The box was filled with paper: newspaper clippings, letters, official-looking documents and the occasional daguerreotype photograph. He scanned a couple at random. The newspaper clippings were a strange mixture of reports on criminal activity – burglaries, stabbings and so on – and reports of a more social nature – births, marriages and deaths. The official documents were much the same – some court reports or witness statements, with a smattering of notarized statements on legal paper, and some certificates of birth or marriage. One or two appeared to have been torn directly from church registers. The letters ranged from handwritten declarations of love or hatred to typed proposals of business, along with a couple of invitations to duels. Some of the photographs were simple, innocent portraits, usually with a note of the person’s name on the back, while others were the kind of thing that made Sherlock suddenly turn them over in embarrassment. In total, the box was a complete cross section of human life.

He thought for a moment. Although most of the stuff in the box – with the exception of some of the photographs – was completely innocent, it presumably meant something more serious if taken in context. The letter to the housemaid at Holmes Manor from her boyfriend – which Sherlock assumed was now in another box somewhere in the room – was just a simple declaration of love on the surface, until you knew who had written it – the Mayor’s son, a man out of the housemaid’s class. The same must be true of everything else. A birth could be a simple birth – or not, if the mother was not married. That would be scandalous. A marriage could be quite innocent – unless the groom had been married before and his wife was still alive. That would be bigamous. Even a death – especially a death – could be suspicious if there were relatives who would inherit money in the will. That might be murder.

He looked around the room grimly. The contents of those boxes could destroy lives quickly if they were made public, but they would just destroy lives more slowly if they weren’t. Josh Harkness would bleed money from the people he was threatening until they were destitute, living on the streets.

His eyes fixed on the box labelled H. Somewhere in there was the secret that Mrs Eglantine had discovered about the Holmes family. He could, if he wanted, quickly take a look. Find out what it was that she knew – a secret so powerful that his aunt and uncle would rather keep the poisonous viper that was Mrs Eglantine close to their bosom than get rid of her and risk its exposure.

Or he could destroy that box, along with all the rest of them, and free hundreds of people from misery.

Put that way, was there even a choice to make?

The only question was: how?

CHAPTER FOUR

Sherlock knew that he had to use the tools to hand to destroy the letters, the photographs and the other documents. There were too many boxes for him and Matty to remove from the tannery, and they’d be spotted quickly if they even tried. No, he had to destroy them on the premises.

But how? He supposed he could set a fire. That would destroy Harkness’s treasure trove of blackmail material, sure enough, but it would also destroy the building, and probably spread to the ones on either side. There was a good chance that people might die, and Sherlock didn’t want that weighing on his conscience. For a moment he felt paralysed, brain whirling as it sorted through the various things that he’d seen in the short time he and Matty had been inside the tannery. Then it struck him: the vats! He could dump the boxes into the vats! If the alkaline chemicals didn’t bleach the ink off the pages or dissolve them into their constituent parts, then they would become sodden and disintegrate of their own accord. There was something poetic about using one part of Josh Harkness’s little empire to destroy another.

‘Right,’ he said, ‘let’s go.’

‘Thank God,’ Matty responded. ‘I’m on the verge of passing out, thanks to the smell.’

‘No,’ Sherlock clarified, ‘I meant that it’s time to destroy all this stuff.’

Matty just stared at him.

‘We can’t let Harkness get away with it,’ Sherlock said insistently. ‘He’s slowly destroying people’s lives.’

‘And he’ll destroy our lives a lot quicker than that if we do anything to cross him.’ Matty shook his head in despair. ‘The man’s an animal! He’s more dangerous than a rabid badger backed into a corner!’

Sherlock shook his head stubbornly. ‘I don’t care. I can’t leave here and then walk around town knowing that every third or fourth person I see is paying him to keep their secrets quiet. People have a right to privacy.’

‘Even if the secrets they’re keeping might get them put into jail if they were known about?’ Matty asked shrewdly.

‘Even so,’ Sherlock said. ‘If a crime has been committed, then there’s a process for that. It gets reported. The police investigate. Evidence gets collected. If there’s enough evidence then people get arrested. Josh Harkness isn’t punishing criminals because he thinks of himself as some unofficial part of the police force – he’s preying on people’s guilty consciences to make money.’

Matty grimaced. ‘It’s still evidence,’ he said. ‘And I think you’ve got a rosy view of the police. Like I told you earlier – the police around here are either taking money themselves or they’re doing their own little petty thefts on the side. Give a criminal a uniform and he’s still a criminal.’

Sherlock thought back to the time, some months before, when his brother Mycroft had been accused of murder. The police hadn’t seemed too interested in collecting evidence then, he had to admit, but even so, the principle was sound.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I admit the system isn’t ideal. I don’t even know what an ideal system would look like. Maybe the police need to be paid more. Maybe people need to be checked out and tested before they’re allowed to join the police. Maybe they need more training. Maybe they need consultants to help them out when they’re investigating difficult crimes. I don’t know. I just know that people like Josh Harkness aren’t the answer. He’s doing nothing to stop crimes – in fact, from his point of view, the more crimes the better.’

‘I ain’t going to convince you to give this up, am I?’

‘No.’

‘And you’re going to do it whether I help or not.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I suppose I’d better help out, if only to keep you alive. My life would be a lot more boring if you weren’t around.’

‘Thank you,’ Sherlock said.

‘I’m not saying that’s a good thing or a bad thing,’ Matty responded. ‘I’m just saying, is all.’ He sighed. ‘All right – what’s the plan?’

‘We take all of these boxes and dump their contents in the vats outside.’

Matty shrugged. ‘Somehow I knew it would mean getting closer to those vats. You know those workers aren’t going to let us come back once, let alone twice?’

‘Then we’ll have to distract them.’

‘With what?’

‘I’m still working on that.’ He thought for a moment. ‘It’s got to be something that will attract them all to one side of the building.’

‘Fire?’ Matty suggested.

‘Too dangerous.’

‘What if I let myself be seen, and they chase after me?’

‘That leaves me having to shift twenty-six boxes by myself.’

‘Oh.’ Matty’s expression brightened. ‘What if we wait until it’s dark, then we come back, break in and destroy them for good in peace: undisturbed, like?’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘This place is so important that Harkness will have it guarded at night. We were only able to sneak in now because it’s daylight, and there’s a lot of activity in the tannery. At night, in the quiet, any guard will hear us or spot us straight away, so that rules out hiding here until the sun goes down. No, it’s got to be now.’ He thought for a moment, ‘I suppose,’ he said slowly, ‘we could pull up some floorboards. This room is built up above ground level. Maybe we could hide the boxes beneath the floorboards. Harkness wouldn’t know what had happened to them.’ He frowned, thinking through the obvious problems. ‘No, we couldn’t lever the floorboards up without leaving splinters and marks. Harkness would guess straight away what we’d done.’

‘Well, I’m stumped,’ Matty said. ‘Let’s just call it a day, shall we?’

‘Let’s not. There has to be a solution.’ He let his mind go blank, hoping that the various pieces of the puzzle that were whirling around his head would settle down into some meaningful pattern. Gradually they did. ‘Right – here’s what we’ll do. You’re going to sneak around the vats to the far side and make a hole in one of them.’

‘With what?’

‘Have you got a knife?’

Matty reached into a pocket and took one out. The blade was folded into the handle. ‘I got this.’

‘Use it to carve out a hole in the wooden slats that make up the side of the furthest vat, or put it between two of the slats and prise them apart. Do it without being seen.’

‘All right. Assuming I’m not seen, what happens then?’

‘The stuff inside the vat starts leaking out. When they spot it, they’ll call everyone over to help seal the hole and mop up the stuff on the floor.’

‘So they’re all distracted for a while. That’s when we take the boxes out and throw them in the nearest vat?’

‘That’s right. Except that we need to find a faster way of doing it. You remember when we came in, we saw a wooden chute leaning up against the wall?’

‘Yeah,’ Matty said dubiously.

‘That’s probably what they use to get the cow hides into the vats. I can’t imagine they hoist them up on their shoulders and throw them in one by one – that would be hard, and very messy. I think they just slide them down the chute. While they’re distracted, I’ll get the chute and run it down from here to the nearest vat. We can slide the boxes down.’

‘It’s a plan,’ Matty said. ‘Not sure it’s a good one, but I can’t think of anything better.’

‘Right – let’s go.’

Sherlock moved to the door and opened it a crack. The eye-watering, nose-grating sewer smell of the tannery intensified. Gazing out, he noticed that the room was still deserted, although he could hear voices. Whatever Josh Harkness was doing with his workers, it was taking time.

He turned his head to see Matty. ‘All right – go!’ he hissed.

Matty squeezed past him and through the door. Moving quietly, he made his way along the raised wooden flooring to a set of steps that led down into the central area of the room, past another of the wooden chutes. He slipped across the room, moving from vat to vat, using each as cover, until he vanished from Sherlock’s view.

The next few minutes were nerve-racking. Sherlock waited, hardly able to breathe, not knowing whether Matty was actually making a hole in the furthest vat. Maybe he was desperately trying to carve his way through wood that was too hard for his blade? Maybe he had been caught by Harkness or one of his men?

A movement off to one side attracted his attention. One of the men with the long hooked poles was coming around the side of a vat. He stopped and started to roll a cigarette one-handed. Sherlock’s gaze flicked across to where he’d seen Matty vanish, but the boy wasn’t visible. The worker didn’t look as if an intruder had just been discovered, so Sherlock had to assume that he was still safe.

Just as he was about to look away, he saw a head peeping out from behind one of the vats. It was Matty. From his position, Matty couldn’t see the man with the hooked pole, but if he moved forward a few feet he would be in the man’s line of sight. Sherlock desperately willed Matty to look his way, but his friend seemed to be nerving himself up to run back to the steps.

Sherlock was preparing himself to make some noise that would attract Matty’s attention when the boy looked up at him. Sherlock gestured to him to stay where he was. Matty shook his head. Sherlock nodded towards the place where the worker was standing and made a walking movement with his fingers. Matty nodded in understanding.

Sherlock stared over at the worker again. He had lit his cigarette and was strolling forward, hooked pole held over his shoulder like a rifle. Another few steps and, if he looked to his left, he would see Matty.

Sherlock didn’t know what to do. If he attracted the man’s attention away from Matty, then he would expose himself, but he couldn’t let Matty be discovered.

Someone shouted from the other side of the vats. It sounded as if it might have been the worker who had argued with Josh Harkness. ‘We got a leak!’ he shouted. ‘You know the drill! Marky – get some sheets to mop up the stuff. Nicholson – you and me need to caulk that hole with some hemp quick and then nail a patch across it!’

The man with the pole ran to help. Sherlock beckoned Matty, who raced across to the steps. Sherlock ran to join him.

‘You start hauling the boxes out,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the chute.’

Matty disappeared back into the storeroom and Sherlock quickly moved to where the wooden chute was leaning up against the railings. It was heavier than it looked, and it took all his strength to manhandle it back to the storeroom and then from the railing to the edge of the nearest vat.

By the time Sherlock was ready Matty had stacked four boxes. While he went back for more, Sherlock took the boxes one at a time and pushed them down the chute. The angle wasn’t steep enough to allow the boxes to slide by themselves, but Sherlock found that he could use the second box to push the first, and then the third box to push the other two. In less than a minute he had all four boxes on the chute, and he was straining against the last one, trying to get all four to move.

The first box was teetering over the vat now. Sherlock took a step back and then ran forward, hitting the last box in the same way he’d tackled players on the rugby field at Deepdene School. The box jerked forward, transmitting its force down the line to the first one, which tumbled into the vat.

Too soon for congratulations. As Matty kept delivering the boxes, Sherlock kept stacking them on to the chute and ramming them forward. Box after box tumbled into the vat. Sherlock could see them floating in the poisonous, noxious mixture before it filled them up and they sank. Hopefully into oblivion.

On the other side of the vats he could hear raised voices and the sound of hammering.

The work fell into a repetitive routine. Pick up box. Put box on chute. Push box as hard as possible. Pick up another box. His muscles ached with the strain.

Eventually he became aware that Matty was standing beside him, helping push the boxes. ‘Last ones,’ Matty said. He looked exhausted. Dust coated his hair and his face.

‘What the . . . ?’ a voice shouted.

Sherlock looked down into the centre of the room. Josh Harkness was staring up at the two boys. His face was a mask of outraged disbelief.

‘Quick,’ Sherlock said. ‘Let’s get the last boxes in there!’

‘I saved the lightest for last,’ Matty said. ‘You can probably throw them.’

He was right. Sherlock picked up the box marked Y and, balancing himself like a shot-putter, launched it towards the vat.

‘Oi!’ Harkness yelled. ‘Stop that!’

The box hit the edge, and for a moment Sherlock thought it was going to topple backwards, but fortunately its momentum carried it forward and over.

‘Get them!’ Harkness yelled. Two of the workers Sherlock had seen earlier ran from the far side of the room. They hesitated slightly when they saw the boys, but the vicious anger in Harkness’s face propelled them forward. They swung their hooked poles forward like lances.

Sherlock grabbed Matty’s shoulder and pulled him along the raised platform, towards the room where they had entered. Behind them he heard the clattering of feet on the wooden stairs.

Matty got to the door first. He turned to say something to Sherlock. Before he could, Sherlock pushed him backwards and ducked. A pole sliced the air above his head, and a sharp-edged hook embedded itself in the door frame.

‘Get out!’ Sherlock yelled. ‘Quickly!’

Matty scooted backwards into the room on hands and feet. Sherlock swung around to confront the man who had attacked him. He was tugging at the pole, trying to free it from the door frame. His friend was about ten feet behind him, approaching with violence in his eyes. Harkness had grabbed a ladder from somewhere and was climbing up the side of the vat into which the boxes had been dumped, obviously hoping that he could rescue something from the mess that Sherlock had made of his raw blackmail material.

Sherlock offered up a rapid prayer that he would fall in, before quickly following Matty inside the storeroom. He slammed the door shut, knowing that it would only buy them a few seconds.

Matty was already over by the window. He turned, saw Sherlock and made a step with his hands: palms up and fingers interlaced. ‘You get up,’ he said. ‘Pull me after you.’

The door behind Sherlock shuddered as something slammed into it.

Sherlock took three steps across the room, bent, grabbed Matty’s legs and hoisted him up to the window. ‘Get out!’ he said. ‘I’ll follow.’

Matty looked as if he wanted to argue, but he was already half out into the street. Sensibly he struggled forward rather than backwards.

The door burst open. One man was framed in the doorway, with the other man visible behind him.

‘You little whelp!’ the first man snarled. He stepped forward, pole upraised.

Sherlock grabbed another pole from the bundle that had been stacked against the wall. He stood, pole held diagonally across his body, feet planted apart, knowing that it was going to come down to a fight. It sometimes seemed to him that he could use all the logic in the world and things would often still come down to a fight.

The man was average height, with a paunch, but the battered nature of his ears, and the bend in his nose, suggested to Sherlock that he had a history of boxing – probably illegally, in rings set up in fields, rather than using Queensberry Rules. He stepped forward, holding his pole diagonally as well, but the other way. He smiled.

‘I’ll be Little John,’ he said, ‘and you can be Robin Hood.’

‘This isn’t a kids’ game,’ Sherlock said.

‘Too right,’ the man said. He suddenly struck out with his pole, trying to smash Sherlock’s knee with the bottom end. Sherlock blocked with his own pole. The sudden shock as they clashed vibrated up his arm and made his teeth ache.

The man nodded, acknowledging Sherlock’s unexpected manoeuvre. He lashed out again with the bottom end of his pole, but it was a feint. He reversed direction suddenly, bringing the top down towards Sherlock’s head. Sherlock raised his pole with both hands, preventing the man’s weapon from knocking him out and probably splitting his skull, but before the poles could touch the man had reversed his strike again, bringing his pole up towards Sherlock’s groin. Sherlock twisted to one side, but the pole struck his right hip. He fell to one knee just in time to see the pole scythe sideways an inch above his head.

Desperately Sherlock climbed back to his feet, ignoring the spasms of pain that shot from his hip down towards his knee. The man was off balance, and Sherlock reached out with his pole and caught the back of the man’s shoe with the hook on the end. He pulled, and the man fell backwards, swearing. He hit the ground with a thud that sent a vibration through the wooden flooring.

The second man stepped over his fallen comrade. He was more cautious, weaving his pole from side to side in an attempt to deceive Sherlock as to the direction the first strike would come from. He feinted once, twice, then drew the pole back and lashed out at Sherlock as if he was holding a spear rather than a quarterstaff. As Sherlock jerked backwards he realized that the sharp hook on the end could be just as lethal as a spear point.

The man pulled his pole back again. Instead of attacking Sherlock he turned his head slightly and spoke to his companion. ‘Get up, you moron! Go outside – get that other kid if he’s still around, and stop this one getting out of the window if he’s not.’

The man shook his head as he climbed to his feet. His expression was a mixture of sullen and furious. ‘I want this one, Marky. I really want this one. You saw what he did.’

‘I saw you fall over on your fat rump,’ Marky snarled. ‘Now get outside. This ain’t a time for bruised muscles and bruised feelings. The boss will want to talk to this one, and knowing you like I do, you’ll slit his throat for making you look stupid, and then the boss will take it out on both of us.’

The man – presumably Nicholson, based on the names Sherlock had heard earlier – backed away and turned towards the door to the outside. He cast a last, baleful glance at Sherlock before he left.

‘You don’t want to go through the window,’ Marky said, smiling at Sherlock. ‘If Nicholson catches you, then the chances are you’ll be dead before your feet touch the ground, despite what I told him. He don’t like being embarrassed. Really don’t like it at all.’

‘So what’s my alternative?’ Sherlock asked, keeping his eyes fixed on Marky’s eyes, looking for some indication that the man was about to strike with his hook-tipped pole.

‘The alternative is that you put that pole down and come with me. The boss wants to talk with you, is all. Just a little talk.’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘Based on what I’ve done, I think I’ve got a better chance with your friend outside than with Josh Harkness. At least I’d die quickly.’

Marky shrugged. ‘I see your point, I really do. It’s a conundrum, isn’t it? Go out of the window and you die straight away, but quickly. Come with me and you stay alive for a little longer, but your death is more painful and slower.’ He dropped his voice, trying to lull Sherlock into relaxing. ‘You know, kid, if I were you, I’d –’

Without warning he lashed out with the pole, trying to get the hook past Sherlock’s shoulder so he could catch it in the flesh and muscle over Sherlock’s shoulder blade and pull him forward, but Sherlock had noticed the slight widening of his eyes that meant he was about to do something physical. It was one of the things Amyus Crowe had taught him – how to predict from small movements what people were going to do. ‘Body language’, he had called it. Sherlock swept his pole left and right across his body, intercepting Marky’s weapon as it flashed towards him and deflecting it sideways.

‘So that’s the way you want it then,’ Marky said, pulling back again. ‘A stand-off, right? Except that when the boss arrives it’ll be two against one, and you won’t stand a chance.’

‘There’s always a chance,’ Sherlock said with as much bravado as he could muster.

‘Two ways to escape,’ Marky pointed out, ‘both of them covered. Unless you can magically walk through walls or disappear through the floor, you ain’t got a hope of escaping.’

‘I do if –’ Sherlock caught himself before he said Matty’s name – ‘if my friend escaped before Nicholson got to the window. He’ll have gone straight to the police. They’ll be here in a few minutes.’

Marky shook his head scornfully. ‘The local peelers don’t dare make a move against the boss. He knows too much about them.’

‘But how’s he going to prove it?’ Sherlock asked. ‘All his blackmail material has just been destroyed.’

Marky frowned, thinking.

‘Once the police know that all the letters and documents Harkness was holding over their heads have vanished into the tanning vats, they’ll know he can’t blackmail them any more. What will they do then?’ Noticing Marky’s perturbed expression, he pressed on more urgently. ‘Firstly they’ll want to come out here and make sure it’s true, and secondly they’ll pay Harkness back for everything he’s done to them. Once he’s lost his power, he’s just like any farmer or brewer in Farnham – with the exception that they hate him. He’ll be lucky if he makes it to the cells in one piece.’

Sherlock could tell from the way Marky’s shoulders slumped that his points had hit home.

‘How’s he going to pay you?’ he asked. ‘All the material he’s been using to blackmail people has gone, one of his tanning vats is contaminated and another one is leaking. One of his businesses is finished and the other one is in trouble. If I were you, I’d be looking for other employment.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Unless he’s got something on you as well, but if that’s the case then the proof’s in the vat along with everything else. All Josh Harkness has is word of mouth, but that’s not going to get him very far. Nobody’s going to believe a story with no proof.’

‘You’re a smart kid,’ Marky acknowledged. He nodded thoughtfully. ‘You’re right – Harkness is finished. If the police don’t get him, then some of the landowners around here who he’s been blackmailing will soon take the law into their own hands. He’ll end up as compost on someone’s fields before long.’ He relaxed, letting the pole drop. ‘If anything happens – if I get caught – you’ll put in a good word for me. Tell the peelers I let you go.’ He nodded once, decisively. ‘Time for a career change,’ he said, and then he turned and vanished through the doorway.

Sherlock couldn’t believe what had happened. He’d been expecting to have to fight his way out. He’d been talking in order to distract Marky, to give himself time to catch his breath and work out a plan of attack, but he seemed to have actually talked himself out of trouble.

He gazed at the window. It was tempting, but the other man – Nicholson – was probably underneath by now, and after what had happened earlier Sherlock didn’t think that the man would be amenable to argument.

Reluctantly he headed for the door back into the tannery.

He looked around, alert for Josh Harkness’s presence, but he couldn’t see the blackmailer. The only sign that he’d been there was the pile of damp, stained paper and cardboard boxes that slumped beside the nearest vat in a puddle of brown liquid. The smell was worse than it had been earlier – probably because Harkness had been stirring the stuff in the vats around while he was trying to rescue his blackmail material. One look at the papers and Sherlock knew they were useless for anything. What little printed material was still visible through the stains was smearing into incoherence.

He headed around the wooden walkway towards where the main door had to be, hoping that Harkness had already left.

He was wrong.

The blackmailer stepped out from behind one of the vats. His hair was sticking up wildly, and his eyes were so wide they were nearly popping out of his head. He held a knife in each hand. The light reflected off the wickedly sharp curve of the blades.

‘Flensing knives,’ he said casually, although his expression was anything but casual. ‘Used for cutting the skin off cow carcasses. Very sharp. Very sharp indeed. As you are about to find out.’

‘There’s no benefit in killing me,’ Sherlock pointed out calmly, despite the sudden rapid thudding of his heart.

‘No benefit at all,’ Harkness agreed, ‘apart from the fact that it’ll let me sleep a little better tonight. You’ve ruined me. You’ve stolen the food from my mouth and taken the roof from over my head.’

‘I’ve saved a whole lot of people from ruin and despair,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘It seems like a fair bargain to me.’

‘Nobody asked you.’ Harkness shifted position. ‘Half an hour ago I was a man contented with his lot. Now I’m destitute. I’ll have to start all over again.’

‘If the people around here let you.’ Sherlock walked casually down the few steps that led to the central part of the room. He was too exposed on the walkway. ‘When they find out your power over them has gone, some of them will come looking for you. Best thing you can do is run.’

‘You’re right,’ Harkness nodded. ‘But I’m going to take as much of your skin with me as I can cut off, and when I find a place to settle I’m going to have it tanned and made into a waistcoat so that people will be able to look at me and know what happens if you cross Josh Harkness.’

Before Sherlock could say anything in response Harkness drew his right hand back over his shoulder and jerked it suddenly forward, throwing one of the flensing knives at Sherlock’s head. The knife seemed to spin lazily in the air. Sherlock ducked, and the blade embedded itself in the wood of the nearest vat.

Harkness hefted the remaining knife, tossing it from left hand to right. ‘You can’t run forever, son. But by all means try. It’ll make things sweeter for me.’

Sherlock turned and tried to prise the knife out of the vat, but it was stuck fast. A sudden intuition made him jerk his head to one side, just as the second knife whistled past his face. This one hit the vat handle-first, bounced and clattered to the floor. Sherlock bent to pick it up, but Harkness was rushing towards him, arms outstretched, and Sherlock converted the duck to a spring and a forward roll to take him out of Harkness’s way.

The blackmailer scooped one knife off the floor and pulled the other one from the vat with extraordinary strength. He turned to face Sherlock. ‘The longer you fight,’ he snarled, ‘the better that waistcoat will look on me.’

‘Dream on,’ Sherlock said. ‘The only new clothes you’re going to get are a prison uniform.’ He reached to one side, to the ladder that Harkness had used to get up to the rim of the vat. Grabbing it by the rungs at the top end, he swung it around until the other end pointed at Harkness. The man’s eyes widened even further. He pulled his right hand back again, preparing to throw a knife, but Sherlock rushed at him, hitting him in the chest with the bottom rung, pushing him backwards. Caught by surprise, Harkness staggered backwards, arms flailing. Before he could catch his footing and push back, his right heel caught in the slushy papers and cardboard that he had pulled from the vat. His foot skidded, and he fell. His head hit the wooden floor with a solid crack. His eyes rolled up in his head.

Before Harkness could recover, Sherlock threw the ladder to one side and dropped on to the man’s chest, his knees pinning the man’s arms to the floor. He scooped the knives from Harkness’s nerveless hands and held them up, poised, with the blades pointing at Harkness’s face. Harkness was horrified. Before he could struggle free, Sherlock brought the knives flashing down, one on either side of the man’s neck. The knives embedded themselves into the wood, pinning the material of his jacket to the floor.

Sherlock climbed to his feet and stared down at the man. ‘This is where the police will find you,’ he said. ‘Remember that sometimes the rabbits fight back.’

He turned and ran towards the door.

CHAPTER FIVE

After leaving the police station, where he had given the police an edited version of what had happened, Sherlock stood breathing the fresh air. It was like diving into a sparkling river when you were covered in mud. He could feel the horrible smells of the tannery being flushed from his lungs. He knew the air outside wasn’t particularly fresh, but compared to the stench inside the tannery it was as pure as could be.

He had a feeling that his clothes had become impregnated with the smell, and he decided that he needed to change as soon as possible.

He found Matty standing beneath the window of the tannery. His friend breathed a visible sigh of relief when he saw Sherlock.

‘Wasn’t sure what had happened to you,’ he said. ‘I thought Harkness might have got you.’ He frowned. ‘What happened to Harkness? You didn’t . . . kill him, did you?’

Sherlock shook his head wearily. ‘We had a little talk,’ he said. ‘I left him there and told the police where to find him.’

Matty shrugged. ‘It won’t make any difference. When the big fish in the pond gets caught,’ he said, ‘the next biggest one takes over. That’s the way things go.’

‘I know,’ Sherlock said, ‘but I can’t do anything about that. Not right now. At least we’ve got Harkness out of the way, and destroyed his blackmail material. That’ll make a lot of people happy.’ He frowned, looking at the way Matty was casually standing in the middle of the alley. ‘What happened to that man who got sent out – Nicholson?’

‘The bloke with the beer belly? He came out and just stood here. Didn’t look happy. Looked like he’d tear someone’s head off as soon as talk to them, in fact.’

‘Where were you?’

Matty indicated a pile of crates on the other side of the alley. ‘When I heard him coming I hid there. He wasn’t exactly keeping quiet. There was curse words he used that I’d never heard before.’

‘So what happened?’

‘He stood there for a few minutes, then his friend came out.’

‘Marky,’ Sherlock confirmed.

‘Yeah, him. He grabbed the other bloke by the arm and said something to him. Next thing I knew they were both heading off down the alley.’

Sherlock nodded. ‘I managed to persuade Marky that, with Harkness’s blackmail material gone, the town was going to become a very unfriendly place for them to be. I think they’ve decided to try their fortunes elsewhere.’

‘Where to now?’

‘Let’s go home,’ Sherlock said.

‘I ain’t got a home, apart from the narrowboat.’

‘I meant Holmes Manor.’

Matty shook his head forcefully. ‘I don’t like that housekeeper,’ he said, ‘and she don’t like me. If you don’t mind, I’d rather stay here.’

‘I think,’ Sherlock said, ‘that you’ll find Mrs Eglantine’s influence over the Holmes household will diminish rapidly within the next hour or so. I’m sure you’ll find yourself welcome at the manor from now on.’ He glanced critically at his friend. ‘Well, if you dust yourself off and comb your hair, you will.’

With Matty perched behind him on Philadelphia’s back, Sherlock cantered along the familiar roads towards Holmes Manor.

‘Do you think I could get something to eat when we get there?’ Matty called over Sherlock’s shoulder.

‘I think that can be arranged,’ Sherlock called back.

It took about half an hour to get to the manor house, and when they turned in through the main gate and headed up along the drive to the house Sherlock could feel Matty tensing behind him. Bypassing the front door, he trotted around to the stables and left the horse in the care of one of the grooms.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’m eager to see this matter closed.’

He entered through the main door, Matty behind him. The shadowy hallway seemed empty, but he knew that appearances were deceptive.

‘Mrs Eglantine!’ he called.

A part of the shadows detached itself and stepped forward. The temperature in the hall seemed to drop by ten degrees. ‘Young Master Holmes,’ said a voice in a tone so cold that icicles could have formed. ‘As you seem so determined to use this house as a hotel, coming and going when you please, perhaps you ought to be paying for the privilege of staying here.’

‘I would expect the quality of the housekeeping staff in a hotel to be considerably better than here,’ he rejoined.

The expression on Mrs Eglantine’s face didn’t change, but Sherlock felt the atmosphere in the hallway become even colder.

‘Make your quips, child,’ she hissed. ‘Enjoy them while you can. Your time in this house is limited.’

‘If you are expecting your friend Josh Harkness to do something about me, you are going to be disappointed. Mr Harkness is in custody, and won’t be getting out in a hurry.’

‘You are lying,’ she said through clenched teeth, but Sherlock could tell that she was suddenly on the defensive.

‘I never lie,’ he said simply. ‘I leave that to people like you.’ He paused for a moment, working out his next move. ‘Please tell my aunt and uncle that I wish to talk to them in the dining room.’

‘Tell them yourself,’ she said. Her voice could have cut glass.

‘You are the servant here, not me. Pass on my request. Do it now. Please be so good as to ask Cook for a plate of sandwiches and a jug of lemonade as well. My friend and I are hungry and thirsty.’

The housekeeper stared at him with an expression on her face that indicated that she was re-evaluating him, and didn’t like what she was discovering. She turned and disappeared into the shadows.

‘Come on,’ he said to Matty. ‘Let’s get ready.’

He led the way across the hall to the dining room. It struck him that he could have chosen to have the confrontation in the reception room, where guests were entertained, but he wanted to do this somewhere more formal, less comfortable.

The table in the centre of the dining room was bare apart from two candlesticks and a bowl of fruit. Matty helped himself to a pear while Sherlock sat in a chair on the far side, with the light of the windows behind him. Matty followed him around the table and stood behind him eating the pear.

Sherlock tried to quiet his breathing. He knew what he wanted to achieve over the next few minutes, but he knew that he was dealing with people, not chess pieces, and people sometimes did what you least expected them to do. What if Mrs Eglantine had more influence over his uncle and aunt than just her possession of some incriminating material? Perhaps they would defend Mrs Eglantine, despite what had already gone on in the house. Perhaps the three of them would join forces against him.

The door opened and Sherrinford Holmes entered, with Aunt Anna close behind him.

‘It is unusual for a man who is master in his own house to be summoned by his ward,’ he said mildly.

‘I apologize if Mrs Eglantine gave the impression that I was summoning you,’ Sherlock replied quietly. ‘I merely wanted to talk to you both about something serious.’

‘Is this related to what happened in the library earlier today?’ Sherrinford Holmes asked. ‘If so, I distinctly remember saying that we would speak no more about it.’

‘This concerns a man named Josh Harkness,’ Sherlock said, ‘and his influence on this family.’ He felt that he should ask his aunt and uncle to sit down, but that would have been rude. It was their house and their dining room: he didn’t want to be seen as being arrogant.

Before Sherrinford could reply, Mrs Eglantine entered the dining room. Two maids followed her; one carried a plate of sandwiches while the other held a tray with a jug and four glasses. They put them on the table.

‘Please,’ Sherlock said to Mrs Eglantine as the maids left, ‘stay for a few moments. This concerns you as much as it concerns my aunt and uncle.’

She opened her mouth as if to say something, but then closed it again. She seemed edgy, uncertain. Even scared.

‘You haven’t introduced me to your friend,’ Sherrinford said. He pulled out a seat at the dining table for his wife. She sat, and he followed.

‘This is Matthew Arnatt,’ Sherlock said. ‘He lives in Farnham.’

‘A gypsy,’ Mrs Eglantine said. ‘Of no worth.’

‘I told you before,’ Matty said from behind Sherlock, ‘I ain’t no ’Gyptian.’

Sherrinford Holmes tapped the table briefly. ‘Even if you were,’ he said, ‘not only are the Egyptians a noble and ancient race who are often mentioned in the Bible, but you are also named for one of Jesus Christ’s disciples and the author of one of the four Gospels. You are welcome in my house, Matthew.’

‘Cheers,’ Matty said.

‘Are you hungry?’ Sherlock’s aunt asked. ‘Perhaps you would like a sandwich and a glass of lemonade.’

‘Don’t mind if I do,’ the boy said, and reached over Sherlock’s shoulder to grab a couple of sandwiches.

‘So,’ Sherrinford Holmes said, ‘what is so important that you have convened a family conference, and what does this have to do with the man you mentioned – a man whose name I cannot bring my lips to form.’

Sherlock took a deep breath. ‘Josh Harkness is a blackmailer,’ he said. ‘He collects facts about people – facts that they would rather did not become public – and he threatens to expose them if they don’t pay him money on a regular basis.’

‘Are you implying,’ Sherrinford said, a quiet note of warning in his voice, ‘that this criminal has somehow discovered a secret about this family? I am a respected biblical scholar, and my wife is a pillar of the local community. What secrets could we possibly have that would attract the attention of a villain of this calibre?’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter what he may or may not have discovered. The important thing is that all of his files – his entire collection of documents and letters – have been destroyed.’

Mrs Eglantine gasped, and brought a hand up to her mouth.

‘Are you sure?’ Sherrinford Holmes asked, leaning forward. ‘ “But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.” James, chapter three, verse eight.’

‘Absolutely sure,’ Matty interrupted through a mouthful of sandwich. ‘We did it together.’

‘You saw it?’ Sherrinford asked. ‘You saw it yourself?’

‘I did. The contents of every box have been rendered unreadable.’

Sherrinford Holmes leaned back in his chair and ran his right hand across his brow. With his left hand he reached out and patted his wife’s arm. ‘Then the nightmare is . . . over.’ He sighed.

There was silence in the room for a minute or so. No noise, no movement, but something changed. It was as if a cloud had moved away from the sun. The room seemed lighter and warmer than it had before.

‘You have done this family, and many others, a great service,’ Sherrinford Holmes said. ‘I can see the same mark of character in you that I see in your brother, and also in your father – my brother. I am in your debt.’ He turned to face Mrs Eglantine. ‘And I am no longer in thrall to you, evil woman that you are. Whatever you were looking for in this house, you will never find it. Pack your bags. If you are not out of this house within the hour then your possessions will be placed in a pile and I will personally set light to them and then horsewhip you into the bargain. I wish never to see your face or hear your voice for as long as I live. You are not welcome here.’

‘I still know what I know!’ Mrs Eglantine proclaimed, stepping forward. ‘You will not get rid of me so easily.’

‘Nobody will believe you,’ Aunt Anna said. She stood up, her diminutive form seemingly towering over the tall housekeeper. ‘England is full of former housekeepers with a grudge. Nobody believes their stories, and for good reason. “Gossiping and lying go hand in hand,” as they say.’

Sherrinford nodded. ‘“Thy voice shall be a rebuke unto the transgressor; and at thy rebuke let the tongue of the slanderer cease its perverseness,”’ he quoted softly. ‘Leave here now, woman, while you still can.’

Mrs Eglantine glared at the four of them – Sherlock, Matty, Uncle Sherrinford and Aunt Anna. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, as if she knew she wanted to say something but she didn’t know what exactly. Then she turned and slipped out of the room like a shadow banished by the opening of a curtain.

‘Can it be that simple?’ Sherrinford asked. He reached out to take his wife’s hand.

‘You’ll have to watch out for her,’ Sherlock replied. ‘She may try to take something. She may even try to slip back into the house when there’s nobody around. There’s something here she wants, and I can’t see her giving it up easily. But it’s going to be a lot more difficult for her now. Her power base has been taken away.’

‘I almost can’t believe it,’ Aunt Anna said. ‘She has been such a malign presence here for so long that I almost cannot imagine life without her.’

‘Do you have any idea what she was looking for?’ Matty asked.

Sherrinford shook his head. ‘She never said. It was some time before I even realized she was searching for anything. She applied for the job of housekeeper three years ago, and since her references were impeccable I gladly gave her the job, but she was sullen and the staff did not take to her. Eventually I asked her to leave, but she revealed that she knew . . . certain facts about this family that I would not wish to be revealed. She forced us to let her stay, and she forced us to make payments to her that she transferred on to that odious man Joshua Harkness.’ He sighed. ‘One day I found her searching our bedroom. I demanded to know what she was doing. She told me to mind my own business. I told her that she was in my house and it was my business to know what she was doing. She laughed scornfully, and said that it was her house now.’

‘We became aware that she was searching every room, one by one,’ Aunt Anna said quietly when it became apparent that Sherrinford wasn’t going to continue. ‘But we never found out what she was looking for. It’s not as if there are many valuables in the house.’

‘She had blueprints of the house,’ Sherlock remembered. ‘They’re in her room, hanging outside the window. You should get them back, before someone else finds them.’

Sherrinford shook his head, and smiled. Sherlock couldn’t remember ever seeing his uncle smile before. ‘I believe that I have a bottle of Madeira which I have been keeping for a special occasion,’ he said. ‘This is probably as close to a special occasion as I will get in my life. I appreciate that you are both barely more than children, but I feel that God and your families would forgive me if I offered you a glass. A small one, of course.’

Sherrinford Holmes peered sideways at his wife and raised an enquiring eyebrow. She nodded, and he went to the sideboard to get a bottle and some glasses.

‘I feel that we owe you an explanation,’ he said as he returned and sat down. ‘Mrs Eglantine has made your life here unpleasant, to put it mildly, and after what you have done for us the least we can do for you is tell you what it was that she knew.’

‘Sherlock shook his head. ‘It’s not necessary,’ he said. ‘All families deserve to have their secrets.’

‘But this secret affects you,’ Sherrinford said. ‘We have kept it from you for long enough.’ He squeezed his wife’s arm, and she patted his hand in reassurance.

Sherlock felt as if the ground beneath his feet was sliding slowly sideways. A secret that involved him?

Sherrinford opened his mouth to say something, but hesitated. He gazed at Matty, frowning. ‘Perhaps . . .’ he ventured, ‘this should wait until later. When we can discuss things between ourselves.’

Sherlock looked over at Matty. ‘Whatever it is,’ he said firmly, ‘I don’t want to keep it secret any more. Matty is my friend. There isn’t anything I don’t want him to know about me.’

Sherrinford looked unconvinced. ‘Even so, Sherlock, this is a family matter. Is it appropriate that others find out? Perhaps your brother should be consulted before we speak in front of others.’

‘Others have already found out.’ Sherlock’s gaze moved from his uncle to his aunt and back again. ‘Look, I once heard Mycroft say that sunlight is the best cleaning agent. I thought he meant it literally at the time, that rooms with the curtains drawn get dusty and cobwebby, but I’ve come to realize that he was speaking figuratively. What he was trying to say was that hiding things away just makes the situation worse. Knowing the truth, letting everyone know the truth, is usually the best course of action.’

Sherrinford sighed. ‘Very well,’ he said slowly, pouring the Madeira into the glasses. ‘This involves your father. It goes back to when we were children together. Siger – your father – was a strange child, even then. Some days he would be bright and full of energy, able to climb any tree and jump any fence, bolting his food and speaking faster than people could understand. Other days he would just lie in bed or mope around the house, listless and uninterested. Our father said that he would grow out of it. Our mother was less sure. She called in various doctors to give a diagnosis. The ones who came when he was running around and not stopping for breath said that he was naturally boisterous. The ones who saw him when he took no interest in anything around him said that he was sensitive and maudlin in nature – melancholic. When the melancholia or the mania became too much for our father and mother to manage, he was taken into an asylum and looked after there.’

‘My father was . . . is . . . insane?’ Sherlock whispered.

‘I would never have used that word to describe him,’ Sherrinford said sternly. ‘He was . . . is . . . my brother, and there were days when you could not tell there was anything wrong with him.’ He paused. ‘But on other days he would become so excited that he could be dangerous, or so maudlin that he talked of ending his own life. I say he was “looked after” at the asylum rather than “cared for”, because I visited him once, and I will never forget the abject horror of his surroundings. They left their mark on him, I am sure.’ He paused, staring at the table, but Sherlock suspected that, in his mind, he was seeing things from long ago. ‘One physician in particular who saw him when he was living at home, in between visits to the asylum, was particularly well read. He had heard of a Frenchman who had described a disease which he called folie à double forme, or ‘ “dual-form insanity”. Well, this particular physician tried various remedies – a tincture of black hellebore to induce vomiting, a decoction of foxglove, and hemlock juice. They had some effect, but not enough. The only thing that truly helped was morphine.’

Morphine! The word struck Sherlock like an icy dagger through the heart. He’d had his own experiences with morphine. Baron Maupertuis’s men had drugged him with laudanum, which was morphine in alcohol, and the Paradol Chamber had later used a similar drug on Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft. Was the whole family’s history tied up with the horrible stuff?

‘What exactly is morphine?’ Matty asked.

‘It is a substance which can be derived from opium, which is itself the dried sap of the poppy plant. It is an evil chemical, of which I will say no more, except that it did stabilize Siger’s extreme mood swings.’ Sherrinford laughed humourlessly. ‘It is named for the Greek god of dreams – Morpheus.’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘I’m not sure I understand. My father was ill, and this drug made him better. What’s the problem?’

‘The problem,’ Sherrinford answered, ‘is that our society is not tolerant of those who have . . . problems of the mind. With his morphine treatment Siger grew up tall and strong, with nobody outside the family knowing that anything was wrong. He married into a good family, and joined the Army. If it was discovered that he was ill in the head, then he would be cashiered from the Army. His friends and neighbours would withdraw from him. Shame would be brought on the family – not that I care particularly about that, but he and your mother would lose everything. Not only that, but the stigma would attach itself to him, to her, and to you and your brother. You would be labelled as the sons of a madman. People would assume you were likely to go mad yourselves.’

‘How did Mrs Eglantine find out about this?’ Sherlock whispered.

‘She was a maid at the asylum,’ Aunt Anna said quietly. ‘This was when she was young. She must have seen Siger one day, quite by accident, when he was older and wearing his Army uniform. She realized the scandal that would attach itself to the family if it were known that he had spent time in an asylum and was dependent on drugs for his sanity, and she started blackmailing us.’

Sherlock frowned. ‘That’s what I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Why blackmail you? Why not blackmail my father, or my mother, or Mycroft?’

‘Perhaps she was,’ Sherrinford said simply. ‘We never asked.’

A thought occurred to Sherlock. He paused before saying anything, turning the thought over and over in his mind, examining it from all angles just in case he’d missed something. It was a big thought, and he wanted to make sure he’d got it right before he said something embarrassing.

‘From what you’ve told us,’ he said eventually, and carefully, ‘the family secret that you were keeping concerned my father, and my father’s side of the family. It occurs to me that if the secret got out, the family shame wouldn’t reflect on you. It would be us – and in particular him – who would face problems.’

Sherlock’s Aunt Anna smiled at him and reached out across the table to pat his hand. ‘Bless you, Sherlock,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t let that happen to Siger. He’s family. He and Sherrinford grew up together. We couldn’t stand by and let him be shamed in that way. I remember how proud he was when he got into the Army. It would be quite wrong to take that away from him.’

‘But your lives have been affected badly by Mrs Eglantine’s presence in this house.’

‘The Good Lord puts us all through the fire at some time in our lives,’ Sherrinford said. ‘He tests us, and we must not be found wanting.’

‘What else should we have done?’ Aunt Anna asked, more practically. ‘Should we have told that odious Mr Harkness that we were not going to pay, and then watched as our own kin was humiliated in public? That would not have been right.’

Sherlock glanced from his aunt to his uncle. He found himself thinking about them in a different way. They weren’t fusty old relics of a bygone age to him now; they were living people, with feelings and cares and concerns. He tried to visualize Sherrinford and his father playing together as boys. He tried to visualize his aunt as a younger woman, in her finest dress, perhaps attending the wedding of Siger Holmes and Sherlock’s mother. For a moment he found that he could.

‘Thank you,’ he said simply. ‘On behalf of my mother and my father, neither of whom can say this themselves for different reasons, thank you.’

‘It was the least we could do,’ said Sherrinford.

‘It wasn’t,’ Sherlock replied. ‘That’s why it was such a noble and self-sacrificing gesture.’

‘Now,’ Aunt Anna said, ‘I must go and see to hiring another housekeeper. This place won’t run itself, and the maids are so flighty that they need someone looking over their shoulder all the time, otherwise who knows what will happen.’

‘And I have a library to tidy,’ Uncle Sherrinford said. ‘That could take some time.’

They both stood. With a final smile from Sherlock’s aunt, and an absent wave of the hand from his uncle, they left the room.

‘Nice people,’ Matty observed.

‘Nice doesn’t anywhere near cover it,’ Sherlock replied.

‘So, what do you want to do now?’

Sherlock thought for a moment. ‘I was thinking of going over to Amyus Crowe’s cottage. I think he ought to hear what’s happened. We should also probably let him know about those American men who were looking for him in the market earlier. They did mention his name.’

Matty shrugged. ‘He might have some advice on what to do if Josh Harkness decides to hang around and take his lost money out of your hide,’ he said. ‘And I suppose it would be nice to see Virginia again.’

Sherlock stared at him, but Matty just gazed back innocently.

‘You don’t have to come,’ Sherlock said evenly. ‘I thought maybe Albert might need feeding.’

‘He’s a horse,’ Matty said, shrugging. ‘Where I left him, he’s surrounded by food. It’s like leaving me in a pie shop. He’ll eat grass until he’s full, and then he’ll sleep.’

‘Do you think horses get bored?’ Sherlock asked him. ‘I mean, just standing around in fields all the time.’

Matty raised an eyebrow. ‘Never really thought about it. I don’t suppose they mind. P’raps they spend their time thinking deep thoughts about the world and the things in it, or p’raps they can’t think much beyond what’s at the end of their nose.’ He frowned at Sherlock. ‘You think too much. Anybody ever told you that?’

They headed out into the late-afternoon sunshine. Sherlock managed to borrow another horse from the stables, and together they rode across the fields towards where Amyus Crowe and his daughter lived.

As they rode, Sherlock found his thoughts flipping between two extremes – a nervousness at the thought of seeing Virginia again and a confusion over what he felt about his father: a man who had always previously seemed like a force of nature to Sherlock, with his loud laugh and his love of the outdoors, but who he saw now as someone much more complicated.

He couldn’t help but wonder if the folie à double forme that his father suffered from was hereditary, like a birthmark, or just a disease that could be caught, like influenza.

As they rode up to the small cottage, Sherlock noticed that Virginia’s horse wasn’t in its field. ‘Sandia’s missing,’ he pointed out. ‘Virginia’s not here.’

‘You want to go looking for her?’ Matty called.

Sherlock glared at him. ‘Let’s go inside,’ he said darkly. ‘It’s been half an hour since you ate – you’re probably hungry again by now.’

‘I probably am,’ Matty agreed.

They dismounted and tied their horses to the fence outside the cottage. Something was bothering Sherlock as they approached, and it took him a moment to work out what it was. The usual clutter of objects outside the cottage – axes, muddy boots and so on – was gone.

The door, unusually, was closed. Sherlock knocked, feeling an unaccustomed premonition that something was badly wrong. His mind returned to the conversation he’d overheard in the market. He’d assumed the two Americans had wanted Mr Crowe’s help. Had he been wrong?

There was no answer from inside.

He knocked again. Still no answer.

He looked at Matty, who was standing beside him. Matty stared back, a frown on his face.

Sherlock pushed the door open.

The room inside was empty of any personal possessions. Not only were Amyus and Virginia Crowe not there, but there was no sign that they ever had been.

CHAPTER SIX

Shocked, Sherlock pushed the door fully open and entered the room. The size, the layout, the furniture – everything was familiar to him, but at the same time everything was different. The absence of the usual clutter made the room look much larger than he remembered.

The amount of bare wall disturbed him – he was used to seeing it covered with sketches and maps. The plaster was marked with pinholes where things had been fastened, which was reassuring because it meant that he was actually in the right cottage, not one the same size and shape just down the road that he had mistaken for Amyus Crowe’s residence.

‘They must’ve upped and left in a hurry,’ Matty said, following Sherlock inside.

‘Perhaps they left a note.’ Sherlock indicated the downstairs area. ‘You look down here – I’ll check upstairs.’

‘There’s nothing obvious here,’ Matty said. ‘If they’d left a note, they would have left it in plain sight.’

‘They might not have wanted it to be found by anyone who wandered in. Maybe they’ve hidden it.’

Matty looked at him critically. ‘You’re clutching at straws,’ he said. ‘Face it – they’ve just upped and left. Done it myself too many times to count. Someone’s after you for the rent so you do a midnight flit. Pull up roots and plant yourself somewhere new where nobody knows you from Adam.’ He frowned. ‘Wouldn’t ’ave figured Mr Crowe for a runner though. Whoever’s after ’im must be pretty fearsome for ’im to up sticks just like that.’

‘You’re forgetting those two Americans in the market,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘They said they wanted to warn Mr Crowe about something.’

‘Maybe they was the ones he was runnin’ away from.’

‘But he wouldn’t have done that,’ Sherlock protested. ‘Not without telling us.’

Matty shrugged. ‘Maybe you thought they were better friends than they actually were,’ he said callously. ‘In my experience, stuff like friendship gets thrown away when times are tight and money is scarce.’

Sherlock just stared at him. ‘Do you really mean that?’

Matty wouldn’t meet his gaze. ‘It’s a hard world, Sherlock. You’ve always had it easy. Wait until you’re cold and hungry and poor – see how much friendship is worth then.’

‘You’re my friend.’ Sherlock felt as if the world he depended on was suddenly slipping away from him. ‘I’ll never forget that. I mean it – I’m not lying!’

‘I know you mean it, but your stomach is full and you’ve got money in your pocket. Tell me that again when you’ve lost it all.’ He shook his head. ‘Look, I’ll check for a note. Nobody will be happier than me if I find one.’

As Matty began to check in drawers and behind cushions Sherlock headed up the narrow wooden stairs, nearly bumping his head on the low ceiling. He felt sick, partly because of the disappearance of his friends but partly at Matty’s words. Was friendship really that disposable? Did Matty think Sherlock would just drop him if things got tough?

Would he?

He felt a shiver run through him, and he pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind. He had more important things to worry about right at the moment.

Upstairs was as unoccupied as downstairs. Amyus Crowe’s bed was neatly made, and his wardrobe was empty of clothes. The bathroom didn’t contain so much as a toothbrush or a hairbrush.

Sherlock stood in the doorway of Virginia’s room, shifting nervously from foot to foot. He’d never seen her bedroom before, and even though she was obviously not there, he felt as if he shouldn’t go in. As if it was somehow forbidden territory.

No, this was stupid, he told himself. It was just a room.

He went in. Like her father’s room, the bed was neatly made and the wardrobe was empty. No personal possessions sat on the dresser or the windowsill.

He thought he could detect a trace of her perfume in the air. Strange – he hadn’t even known she wore perfume, didn’t think she was the kind of girl who would wear perfume, but if he closed his eyes he could imagine she was standing just behind him.

Just as he was about to leave, he caught a flash of colour from her pillow. He turned, and bent towards the bed.

There, on the pillow, was a single strand of her copper-red hair.

Something caught at his heart and squeezed it, hard. He suddenly felt as if he couldn’t breathe.

‘Anything?’ Matty called from downstairs.

‘Nothing,’ Sherlock called back, feeling the grip on his heart relax. His voice sounded high-pitched to his own ears. ‘You?’

‘Nothing. No food in the kitchen cupboards or the pantry. Washing-up’s all done. That means they took the food wiv ’em. In my experience that definitely means they’re not comin’ back.’

Sherlock descended the staircase, having to duck to avoid hitting his head. As he re-entered the downstairs room his gaze focused again on the pinholes in the plaster of the opposite wall. He hadn’t realized there had been that many things pinned to the wall.

‘Not a trace,’ Matty said. ‘They’re gone for good. Good riddance to them.’

Sherlock shook his head violently. ‘Amyus Crowe wouldn’t just up and leave without saying goodbye. Even if something urgent happened and he had to go straight away, he would have left a message. And Virginia . . .’ He stopped, not wanting to finish the sentence. He still wasn’t sure what feelings Virginia had for him, although he was becoming increasingly aware of his feelings for her. ‘Well,’ he finished lamely, ‘she would have said something as well. We need to keep looking.’

Before Sherlock could move, Matty articulated Sherlock’s greatest worry. ‘Yeah, it must have been those two blokes in the market. They must have come here and taken Mr Crowe and Virginia. Either that or Mr Crowe somehow got wind that they were on their way, and he and Virginia scarpered. But why would someone be after Mr Crowe?’

Sherlock thought for a moment, remembering the little snippets that Amyus Crowe had let slip about his past life in America – hunting down escaped criminals after the War Between the States. ‘I think Mr Crowe made a lot of enemies in America. That might be why he came here with Virginia. Maybe something in his past has caught up with him.’

‘Must be something really scary if he ran away rather than face up to it. You know how big and how fierce he is. I can’t imagine Mr Crowe taking fright at anything less than a rampaging elephant.’

Sherlock gazed across at him. ‘When have you ever seen an elephant?’

Matty scowled. ‘I seen pictures, ain’t I?’

‘No, something is definitely wrong.’ He slammed his balled fist into his thigh angrily. ‘I just need to work out what it is.’

‘Maybe outside?’ Matty suggested.

‘We could take a look,’ Sherlock agreed. ‘Let’s restrict ourselves to the walls of the cottage and a couple of feet out, otherwise we’ll end up searching the whole countryside.’

They headed out of the door, Sherlock automatically turning right and Matty turning left. Sherlock scanned the brick walls of the cottage and the straw roof, his gaze tracking up, down and up again as he walked. He passed two windows and a wisteria vine that was growing out of the ground and up the wall, but he couldn’t see anything that looked out of place. He wondered if anything had been tucked into the straw of the roof, either from inside or outside, but he rejected the idea. If Amyus Crowe had left a message then he would have put it somewhere easier to access, somewhere he knew that Sherlock would look.

About halfway around the building he nearly tripped over something lying on the ground. For a moment he thought it was a snake, and he stepped back hurriedly, but it wasn’t moving, and it was too dusty and brown to be a snake. He bent down to take a look. It was a tube, made of canvas but strengthened with hoops of something inside to stop it from collapsing. It ran from a hole in the cottage wall towards a clump of grass, and vanished. Some experiment that Amyus Crowe was conducting? It was the only thing he could think of, but it didn’t give him any clues as to where Mr Crowe and Virginia had gone.

He and Matty met again on the far side of the cottage.

‘Did you find anything unusual?’ he asked.

‘Nothing.’ Matty frowned for a moment. ‘Apart from a dead rabbit. Well, most of a dead rabbit. The head was missing.’

‘Where was it? Just lying on the ground?’

Matty shook his head. ‘It had been buried under a pile of logs. Looked like it was deliberately put there, but I can’t imagine why.’

Sherlock let the thought chase itself around his head for a while. ‘A dead rabbit without its head?’ he said eventually. ‘I have to confess, if it’s a message then it’s a very cryptic one.’ He sighed. ‘Come on, let’s keep going. We’ll meet again by the front door.’

‘But you’ve already done this next bit,’ Matty complained, ‘and I’ve already done the bit you’re about to do!’

‘Two pairs of eyes are better than one. I might have missed something that you’ll pick up, and vice versa. Come on – it’ll only take a few more minutes.’

They separated and recommenced their search. Sherlock found nothing that Matty had missed. He stopped and stared at the dead rabbit for a while, as it lay sprawled on the grass by a pile of split logs that Amyus Crowe had probably intended for the stove, but it didn’t tell him anything. Apart from the fact that its head was missing, it was just a dead rabbit. The countryside was full of them.

Matty was already waiting for him when he reached the front door. He raised his eyebrow enquiringly. Sherlock shook his head. Matty shrugged, indicating that he hadn’t found anything that Sherlock had missed. ‘Saw some kind of tube thing,’ he said, ‘but that was it.’

Disconsolately Sherlock led the way back inside. He looked around the bare room, hands on hips. ‘I keep getting the feeling that I’m missing something,’ he said in a frustrated tone.

‘If you’re missing something, then there’s no chance I’ll get it,’ Matty said.

‘Don’t belittle yourself. You’ve got a good eye for detail,’ Sherlock said. He stared once again at the wall with the pinholes in it, trying not to look at the details – the individual holes – but the entire thing. ‘Matty, I think there’s some kind of message there.’

Matty stared at him, then at the wall. ‘You’re seeing things.’

‘Yes, I am. Have you got a pen?’

‘Do I look like the kind of bloke who goes around with a pen in his pocket?’

Sherlock sighed. ‘A pencil then?’

‘The same.’

‘A knife?’

‘That,’ Matty said, ‘I can help you with.’ He reached into a pocket and brought out the knife he had used on the tanning vat earlier. ‘Here. Don’t break it.’

‘I won’t.’ Sherlock walked over to the wall. He stared at it for a few moments, trying to recreate the things that had been pinned there in his mind. ‘There was a big map over here, wasn’t there?’ He pointed with the blade at part of the wall.

‘I s’pose.’

‘All right.’ Using the blade like a pen, scratching the surface of the plaster, Sherlock joined up four pinholes in a rectangle that was, as far as he could judge, the right size, shape and position. ‘That’s the map. There were two bits of paper over here, to the right.’ Quickly gaining confidence, he selected two sets of four pinholes and joined them up as well. He now had three separate rectangles on the wall. ‘I remember there being some things up here. Pictures, I think.’

‘They were at an angle,’ Matty pointed out. Sherlock picked out four pinholes that seemed to match his memory, but Matty shook his head. ‘’Bout an inch to the left,’ he said. ‘No, not there – down a bit . . . Yeah, that’s it.’

Progressively, Sherlock connected up the various pinholes until he had a recreation of everything that had been fastened to the wall. Some items had been attached to the plaster with just one pin rather than four, and in those cases Sherlock put an X to show that he had taken the whole item into account.

He stood back to look at his handiwork. The plaster was now covered with a series of overlapping scratches and Xs.

‘You’ve missed some,’ Matty pointed out.

‘No,’ Sherlock replied, ‘I haven’t. Those pinholes are new.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m very sure. Look closely at them.’

Matty moved towards the wall, squinting.

‘No, Sherlock said, ‘move backwards. Try and look past the wall, and ignore the holes that I’ve marked.’

Matty shook his head, but he complied. His eyes suddenly widened in surprise. ‘It’s an arrow!’ he cried.

‘Precisely,’ Sherlock said. He followed Matty’s gaze. There, marked out in pinholes that had no connection with anything that had been pinned to the wall – new pinholes that had presumably been made especially – was an arrow pointing towards the window.

Both boys followed the direction of the arrow and stared through the window at the green landscape outside. ‘Is that the way they went?’ Matty asked dubiously. ‘If so, I’m not sure it’s much help.’

‘Closer than that,’ Sherlock said. ‘That’s the window leading out to the paddock where Virginia kept Sandia. Mr Crowe is telling us to look out in the paddock. He’s left a message for us there.’

Matty shrugged. ‘Seems a lot of palaver to go to when he could have just left a note pinned the wall.’

‘Like you said, if he’d left a note, then anyone could have found it,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘He’s left a clue pointing to a note.’ He held out Matty’s knife. ‘Here, thanks.’

Matty shrugged. ‘Keep it,’ he said. ‘The way things go, you’ll probably need it more than I do.’

Together the two boys headed out of the cottage and into the open. Sherlock led the way to the fenced-off area of ground that had been visible through the window. They climbed over the gate.

‘Where do we start?’ Matty asked, looking around the grassy area. ‘I don’t see anything obvious.’

‘It won’t be obvious,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘Mr Crowe would have hidden it so it wouldn’t be found.’ He thought for a moment. ‘If I had some string we could mark off a grid of squares and search each square individually, so we knew we’d covered all the ground. Without that, there’s a risk that we’ll miss something by accident.’

‘Tell you what,’ Matty suggested, ‘let’s you and me start at opposite sides and walk forward, looking at the ground, until we meet. We take a step to the side, turn around and each walk towards the fence again. Then we turn around, take a step to the side, and do it again. That way we’ll work in strips across the field and we won’t miss anything.’

‘Sounds like a plan.’ Sherlock nodded. ‘Let’s do it.’

So for the next half hour they progressively moved together and apart across the field, each one meticulously examining the ground as they walked, checking each clump of grass, each rabbit hole and each pile of manure that Virginia’s horse had left behind. Sherlock’s back began to ache after a few minutes, thanks to the uncomfortable position that he was forced to adopt: bent over and taking small steps. He imagined that from some distant vantage point he and Matty looked like chickens checking the field for corn.

‘I’ve got something!’ Matty exclaimed.

‘What is it?’

Matty lifted something from the ground and held it up. It was made of a grey metal.

‘It’s a fork,’ Sherlock pointed out.

‘I know it’s a fork. Could it be important?’

Sherlock shrugged. ‘Leave it where you found it. We may have to dig if we can’t find anything else.’

Five minutes later it was Sherlock’s turn to make a discovery. ‘Matty – over here!’

Matty stuck the fork into the ground, and then ran over to where Sherlock was crouching. ‘What is it?’

Sherlock indicated a root-edged hole that led away at an angle into the earth. ‘I think it’s a rabbit hole.’

‘Congratulations. I’ve already found five of them.’

‘But this one has something in it.’ Sherlock reached into the hole, to the object he’d caught sight of in the shadows. His fingers encountered something that was simultaneously furry and sticky. Taking a grip, he pulled it out.

It was a rabbit’s head, the severed neck covered in blood.

‘A rabbit’s head in a rabbit hole,’ Matty commented drily. ‘Ain’t that an unexpected turn of events? Are you trying to tell me that a fox took Mr Crowe and Virginia away?’

‘You see,’ Sherlock replied, ‘but you do not understand. Look at the neck.’

Matty considered it, then nodded in understanding. ‘It’s been sliced off with a sharp blade, not bitten through or ripped off.’ He thought for a moment. ‘This must be the head that goes with the body we found back at the cottage. Even so – it could have been taken off a kitchen table by a fox or a stoat and just . . . left here.’

‘I don’t think so. An animal, if it had stolen this thing, would have eaten some of it. There would be teeth marks. As it is, it looks like someone has just cut it off and put it straight in this hole.’

Matty turned his attention from Sherlock back to the rabbit’s head. ‘Pretty fresh,’ he admitted. ‘Probably less than a day old.’

‘It’s a message,’ Sherlock said thoughtfully, ‘but the question is, what kind of message is it?’ He paused for a moment. ‘No,’ he went on, ‘the real question is, are there any more messages apart from this one?’

Matty looked around and sighed. ‘You mean we have to finish searching the field?’

‘We do. Just because we find one thing, it doesn’t mean there aren’t other things to find.’

‘I was afraid you might say that.’

Leaving the bloodied head where it was, Sherlock and Matty continued their search, combing through the grass for anything that might have been left or dropped. It was another three-quarters of an hour before they found themselves searching along the far fence.

‘Nothing?’ Matty asked as they walked back to the cottage.

‘Nothing,’ Sherlock agreed. ‘Either it’s the rabbit head, or there’s nothing here.’

Matty looked over to where they’d left the head. ‘I can’t see how there can be a message there, unless Mr Crowe’s written it on a small piece of paper and shoved it in the thing’s mouth. That would just be sick.’

‘It’s not the head itself,’ Sherlock replied, ‘or, at least, I don’t think it is. It’s more likely to be something to do with its placement, or just its existence. I don’t think Mr Crowe had time to do anything complicated, like write a note. He just had time to make some pinholes in the wall pointing out here, and then throw the head into a hole.’

‘He had time to catch and kill a rabbit,’ Matty pointed out.

‘I think it was already there. I think he probably caught it earlier and was preparing it for a meal – taking the head off, gutting it and skinning it. I think that something happened to make him want to leave, and after clearing out the cottage of everything he and Virginia owned he only had a few moments to come up with a message.’

Matty sighed in frustration. ‘Yeah, but what is it? I think he had more faith in us than was warranted.’

‘A rabbit’s head in a hole,’ Sherlock mused, trying to provoke some movement in his head, some sudden revelation that might only occur if he kept on repeating the obvious.

‘Burrow,’ Matty murmured as they entered the cottage.

‘Sorry?’

‘It’s a burrow, not a hole. Rabbits have burrows, foxes have dens and badgers have setts. You’re normally the one who likes to get words right – you need to learn these things.’

‘A rabbit’s head in a burrow,’ Sherlock corrected. That elusive thought in his head finally started running. ‘A head in a burrow. Matty, you’re a genius!’

‘I am?’ the boy said, surprised.

‘Well, technically you’re not a genius, but you have an amazing ability to bring out the genius in others. It’s so obvious!’

‘It is?’

‘Remember when you’d been kidnapped by Duke Balthassar’s men and taken to New York, and we tracked you down?’

Matty nodded, mystified.

‘Do you remember when I found you in that building? You tried to get me to understand that they were taking you on the train line to Pennsylvania?’

Matty smiled. ‘Yeah, that was clever, wasn’t it?’

‘You mimed using a pen, then touched the windowsill, then pointed to a weather vane on a nearby building. It took me a while to put it together, but I did.’

‘Yeah, I remember, but so what?’

Sherlock sighed in exasperation. ‘Don’t you see? That’s what Amyus Crowe is doing here. A head in a burrow. He and Virginia are going to Edinburgh!’

Matty frowned. ‘That’s a bit of a coincidence,’ he said dubiously. ‘Him having a rabbit’s head and a nearby burrow to put it in, and knowing he was going to Edinburgh.’

‘I think it happened the other way around,’ Sherlock said. He could feel the pure, cold flame of triumph flashing through his body, burning away the tiredness and the aching muscles. He’d done it! He’d cracked the code! He knew he was right! ‘I’m not saying it’s the best clue in the world, but Mr Crowe had to work with whatever he had to hand. He could use the pinholes in the wall to point us out here, he had the rabbit’s body lying around and he knew there were burrows out here in the paddock. He used the ingredients to hand to make a clue, and then he took Virginia to Edinburgh because that was the only destination he could build a clue for!’

‘But why has he let us know that he’s going to Edinburgh?’ Matty asked.

‘He must want us to go after him. There’s no other reason. If he didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye, he could have left a note saying just that: “Goodbye”. It wouldn’t matter who found that. But it clearly does matter that nobody knows he has gone to Edinburgh. I think he’s in danger. I think he wants our help.’

‘We’re goin’ to follow him, aren’t we?’ Matty said gleefully.

‘Well,’ Sherlock answered cautiously, ‘there are other options. Perhaps we should tell my brother.’

‘How long will that take? And what’s he going to do? Knowing your brother, I doubt he’ll be getting the next train to Scotland. He’ll just send lots of telegrams out, getting people to search for Mr Crowe, but they won’t know what he or Virginia look like.’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘We’ve never been to Edinburgh,’ he said. ‘We won’t know anything about the place. How can we help them if we’ll be practically lost there ourselves?’

‘I’ve been there,’ Matty said cheerfully. ‘My dad took me and me mum there on the barge. Took weeks, it did. We stayed there for a month or more while he looked for work.’

‘Even so – the two of us, just kids, alone in Scotland?’

‘You went to America. And Russia.’

‘I had Mr Crowe with me in America.’

‘Until you ran off with Virginia.’

‘That was an accident,’ Sherlock protested. ‘The train left the station before we could get off. I also had Mycroft with me in Russia.’

‘Before he was arrested.’

‘But that wasn’t part of our plan. Anyway, Rufus Stone was with us. He helped.’ A bright light seemed to go on in his head. ‘What if we asked Rufus Stone to come with us?’

‘Would he?’ Matty asked dubiously. ‘I didn’t think he and Mr Crowe got on.’

‘They don’t,’ Sherlock admitted. ‘They’re like a cat and a dog locked in the same room, but . . .’ He thought for a minute. ‘But I’m pretty sure that my brother is paying Rufus Stone to hang around Farnham and make sure I don’t get into trouble. Mycroft still thinks that the Paradol Chamber are going to take some kind of action against me. If I tell Rufus that you and I are going to Edinburgh, then he’ll have to come with us, won’t he? If he’s supposed to stop me getting into trouble, then he won’t have any choice.’

‘Won’t he just stop you from getting on a train?’

Sherlock smiled. ‘You know Rufus Stone. You know what he’s like. Given a choice between stopping me going to Scotland or coming with me and having an adventure, what do you think he’ll do?’

‘Fair point,’ Matty admitted. ‘When do we tell him?’

‘Let’s collect a bit more information first. I want to check the station in Farnham. If Mr Crowe and Virginia are heading for Scotland, then they’re not doing it on horseback, or in a cart. They’d be too vulnerable. No, they’ll go by train.’

Matty frowned, carefully thinking through what Sherlock had said. Watching him, Sherlock felt a sudden flash of kinship. Matty had become a part of his life in a way he had never expected. The boy was his opposite in so many ways – instinctive where Sherlock was logical, emotional where Sherlock was cold, impulsive where Sherlock would always think through his options – but he had a quick mind, and he was fantastically loyal. He was the closest thing Sherlock had to a best friend. Sherlock wondered if he always would be.

‘If Mr Crowe bought two tickets to Edinburgh from the ticket office at Farnham Station,’ he said slowly, ‘then he’d be leaving a trail. If the Americans are chasing him they could just check at the ticket office and find out where he went. It’s not as if he’s inconspicuous.’

‘No,’ Sherlock agreed. ‘So what would he do?’

Matty shrugged. ‘I dunno.’

‘He’d probably buy two tickets to an intermediate station – say, Guildford, but he and Virginia could get off earlier – maybe at Ash Wharf. He could then buy two tickets through to Edinburgh from there. If anyone was following then they’d go from Farnham direct to Guildford, and there they would lose the trail, because nobody at the ticket office in Guildford would remember him.’

‘Clever,’ said Matty approvingly.

‘In fact,’ Sherlock went on, ‘if I were him, I would buy two tickets for Guildford, get off at Ash Wharf, buy two tickets for London, then when I got to London I’d buy two tickets for Edinburgh. That confuses the trail even more.’

‘You’re sure that’s what he’d do?’

Sherlock nodded. ‘He’s a hunter. He knows the kinds of trail that prey can leave, and he’ll be careful not to do the same thing.’

‘So what now?’

‘Now we go to Farnham.’

The two of them rode from the cottage towards the centre of Farnham, not without a twinge of guilt in Sherlock’s mind. He hated leaving the cottage empty and unguarded. Who knew what might happen to it before Amyus Crowe and Virginia came back? They would come back, he was sure of it. He would make sure of it.

The ticket-office clerk at Farnham – a tall elderly man with fluffy white sideburns – confirmed that a bigman in a white suit and hat, accompanied by a girl dressed like a boy, had bought two tickets the day before. Sherlock was pleased to note that the tickets had been bought with Guildford as the destination. So far his deductions were bang on target.

‘Look,’ Matty said, pointing across the road. In a small triangle of field next to a barn a horse was cropping the grass. It was tied by a long halter to a fence.

‘That’s Sandia,’ Matty said.

‘Are you sure?’ Sherlock asked.

‘Very sure.’

‘At least we know he’s all right. Virginia has probably paid someone at the station to keep an eye on him. If she had time to do that, they can’t have been taken forcibly. They must have found out that somebody was after them. If I know Mr Crowe, he will have managed to keep one step ahead of them.’ Suddenly Sherlock felt an awful lot better.

‘Are we going on to Ash Wharf now?’

Sherlock thought for a moment. There was a point at which extra evidence did nothing more than confirm what you already knew. He was confident enough in his deductions. ‘No, let’s go and find Rufus Stone. We need to tell him what we’re going to do, and then we need to talk to my aunt and uncle.’ He remembered the events of earlier that day. ‘I think there’s enough residual goodwill there that they won’t raise any objections to me going away for a few days, especially if they know that Rufus Stone is going with me.

Matty turned to go, but Sherlock reached out a hand and stopped him. Matty turned back enquiringly.

‘What?’

Sherlock hesitated, wondering how to ask the question. Wondering if he should ask the question. ‘That stuff you said earlier, about friendship getting thrown away when times are tight and money is scarce – did you really mean it?’

Matty looked away. His lips tightened for a moment before he answered. ‘I’ve had friends before,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t have them now. They left, one by one, when it suited them. So I learned that’s the way things work.’

‘Not with me,’ Sherlock said. ‘And not with Amyus Crowe or Virginia.’

Matty nodded reluctantly. ‘At least you’ve convinced me they didn’t want to go. That’s a start. Now come on. Time’s slipping away.’

They found Stone where Sherlock had expected him to be – in his lodgings, practising by himself up in the attic space. The two boys could hear him faintly from the street, playing what sounded like a wild dance. As they climbed the stairs the music got louder and louder, until they entered the attic where it seemed to fill the entire space, whirling and spinning with the lanky figure of Rufus Stone sawing madly with the bow in the centre. If he heard them enter then he gave no sign. Eyes closed, he pulled wilder and wilder notes from his instrument until, with a final flourish, he finished. The air appeared to quiver like a jelly for a split second before collapsing back to normal.

‘That’s a hell of a tune,’ Matty said approvingly.

‘Very kind,’ Stone said, turning and grinning at the two of them. ‘Although I have to say, it sounds even better played by the light of a campfire in the middle of a forest at midnight. The trouble is that the older I get, the more I find I prefer the comfort of a warm, dry house.’ He gazed from one boy to the other. ‘Something has happened, hasn’t it? Tell me.’

Between them, with Sherlock sketching in the facts and Matty filling the gaps with vivid descriptions, they told Rufus Stone the story. His face grew grimmer and grimmer as they spoke. When Sherlock finished by telling him exactly what the two of them planned to do, he stood for a moment, thinking.

‘You really both intend going to Edinburgh?’ he asked finally.

‘Yes,’ Sherlock answered.

‘And there’s nothing I can say to change your minds?’

‘No,’ Matty replied.

He sighed. ‘Then it’s a good thing I keep a bag packed and ready by the door. It won’t be the first time I’ve had to leave a place at a moment’s notice.’

‘The difference is,’ Sherlock said quietly, ‘that we’ll all be coming back. With two extra people.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was the next day before the three of them could set out for Edinburgh.

After talking Rufus Stone into accompanying them as a responsible adult – a task that was surprisingly easy, Sherlock thought, all things considered – Matty had headed off to make arrangements for Albert to be looked after while Sherlock rode back to Holmes Manor to talk to his aunt and uncle. As he expected, they were still dazed and distracted from Mrs Eglantine’s fall from grace, and the personal freedom they had suddenly gained as a result. He presented the trip to them as a fait accompli and, as he expected, they went along with it. After all, they had previously agreed to him travelling to America and Russia. Compared to that, Edinburgh was just down the road. Or up it.

Uncle Sherrinford did nearly throw the whole plan into chaos when he asked to be introduced to Rufus Stone. ‘I cannot,’ he proclaimed, ‘in all conscience, let my nephew travel to the far end of the country with a man I have never even met. I know nothing about him.’

Remembering Rufus Stone’s bohemian taste in clothes, his earring and his gold tooth, Sherlock suppressed a grimace of concern. If Uncle Sherrinford ever met Rufus Stone in person he would probably forbid Sherlock from ever associating with him again in Farnham, let alone travelling with him to Scotland. Sherlock had developed a lot of respect for his aunt and uncle – a respect that bordered on familial love – but they weren’t exactly the most understanding of people. Grasping at straws, he said, ‘If it helps, Mycroft has known Mr Stone for several years, and is currently employing him to be my violin tutor.’

‘Ah,’ Sherrinford said, nodding his head. ‘In that case, I waive my requirement. Your brother is a perspicacious man, and I trust his judgement when it comes to character.’ He peered sideways at his wife. ‘You know, I recall that Mycroft said that there was something wrong with Mrs Eglantine the first time he met her. Perhaps I should have told him what she was doing to us. He might have been able to help.’

‘What’s done is done,’ Anna said, patting his hand. ‘The Good Lord does not place a burden on our shoulders that is too heavy to carry, and each burden makes us stronger.’

Sherlock dined with his aunt and uncle that night. The food wasn’t up to the usual standard – the shock waves from Mrs Eglantine’s disappearance seemed to have echoed down to the kitchen staff – and there was little conversation. Uncle Sherrinford and Aunt Anna seemed subdued by the magnitude of what had happened. Even Aunt Anna’s usual constant stream of opinion, gossip and commentary on the day’s events was absent. As soon as the meal was over, Sherlock excused himself and headed for bed. He’d had a busy day, and he needed to regain his strength for what lay ahead.

Sherlock, Matty and Rufus Stone met up at Farnham Station early the next morning. Each of them had a bag of clothes, toiletries and other travelling necessities.

‘This,’ Rufus Stone said with a grim face, ‘is a remarkably bad idea. My initial flush of enthusiasm has dissipated like a rain puddle soaking into the earth. Edinburgh is a big city, with a lot of people in it. What you intend doing is a bit like searching an ant’s nest for one particular ant. It won’t be easy.’

‘Nothing easy is worthwhile,’ Sherlock pointed out.

‘Touché.’ Stone smiled.

Rufus Stone paid for the tickets. He bought them from Farnham to London, on the basis that they could buy the next set of tickets, from London to Edinburgh, once they had arrived, and because it would be embarrassing and potentially dangerous to leave a trail behind them when Amyus Crowe hadn’t. Sherlock offered to use some of the money that Mycroft had sent him, but Stone shrugged. ‘Your brother pays me a regular salary for teaching you the violin,’ he pointed out. ‘One way or the other, it’s his money which is buying the tickets. It doesn’t really matter which one of us hands it over.’

There wasn’t a train for another hour, so Rufus suggested having a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich before they left. The boys agreed enthusiastically. The nearest tea shop was just across the road, but while the three of them were eating Sherlock stared through the shop window and noticed two men standing in front of the station and looking around. One of them had black hair pulled back into a ponytail; the other had smallpox scars across his cheeks and forehead.

‘Are those the two you think are looking for Amyus Crowe?’ Rufus asked, following the direction of Sherlock’s gaze.

Matty nodded.

They watched as the men approached the ticket office and asked the clerk a question. He shook his head. One of the men asked him something else, and slid some money across the counter. The clerk tore two tickets from a strip and passed them over.

‘They’ve bought tickets,’ Rufus pointed out. ‘That means they’ll probably be on the same train as us. Either they know about Edinburgh or they are moving the search to Guildford. Whatever the reason, we need to stay out of their way.’

Finishing their sandwiches and tea, they headed back across the road to the station. A few minutes later the train heaved itself alongside the platform: a behemoth of black iron shrouded in steam and hissing like some biblical demon. The three of them found a compartment to themselves. Sherlock kept an eye out for the two Americans, but he couldn’t see where on the train they got on – if they had got on at all.

Sherlock was used to train journeys by now. For a while he let himself become entranced by the scenery flashing past, but when that grew too boring he waited until they arrived at the next large station – which turned out to be Guildford – and quickly left the train to buy a newspaper from a seller on the platform. It was a London edition of The Times, presumably brought down as part of a large bundle on an early train.

The train was venting steam in a white cloud across the platform when he turned away from the newsvendor’s stall. As he moved back towards the long wooden wall of the train carriages, an errant breeze pushed the steam away and he spotted one of the Americans walking across the platform. It was the taller man, the one with the black hair shot through with grey and the gnarled scar tissue where his right ear should have been. He was coming from the direction of the ticket office. His companion – the man with the pockmarks across his cheeks – was standing by the carriage door, holding it open so that the train couldn’t leave before his friend was back on board. As the black-haired man approached his companion he shook his head. Whatever he’d been looking for – which Sherlock suspected was some news on Amyus Crowe’s movements – he was disappointed.

As they got back on to the train, and as Sherlock headed for his own carriage, he wondered whether the men knew about him and Matty and Rufus Stone. Rufus hadn’t spent much time with Mr Crowe, but Sherlock and Matty were regular companions of his. Most people in Farnham would have seen Sherlock and Mr Crowe together at one time or another, and people in small towns were inveterate gossips – something that Josh Harkness had traded on. It would only take a few pence changing hands, or the purchase of a pint of beer, for them to find out that Amyus Crowe spent time with people other than just his daughter. If they had descriptions of Sherlock and Matty, then they might recognize them on the train. The three of them would have to be careful.

Sherlock got back to his carriage just as the guard on the platform blew his whistle, warning passengers that the train was about to leave. He settled himself back into his seat. Matty was apparently asleep, and Rufus Stone was busy memorizing a musical score, the fingers of his left hand automatically making the shapes of the notes in the air as he read. Not wanting to interrupt them, Sherlock settled back into his seat with the newspaper.

The pages were filled with politics and reports of international events. Having heard his brother Mycroft speak disparagingly about newspaper journalists, and how little they really knew about the real reasons for things happening, he only skim-read the articles. Mycroft had once said that reading a newspaper piece about politics was like reading a book review written by a man who had never read the book, but had been told about it by a couple of people that he had bumped into in the street.

Sherlock did scan the pages for reports of the British Army’s presence in India, but there was nothing. He hadn’t heard from his father for a while now. He knew that things were busy out there, but he worried. He couldn’t help himself.

The front page was filled with personal advertisements and he was about to skip over them when his eye was caught by something unusual and he found himself drawn into reading them. They were small pieces, usually ten or twenty words – written by readers of the newspaper who paid for them to be printed – but Sherlock found that they opened little windows on to a world he would probably never know anything else about. ‘Dog missing, Chelsea area, answers to the name of Abendigo. Will pay handsomely for return, dead or alive.’ Sherlock supposed that he could understand someone loving a pet enough to pay money to get it back if it went missing, but what kind of person would name their dog after an obscure biblical character, and would want it back even if it was dead? It didn’t make any sense. And what about ‘Footman required urgently, good references essential. Must be able to play ocarina’? People needed good staff, obviously, but why would they need a footman with musical ability, and with such an unusual instrument to boot? Each personal advertisement was a slice of life, and he wanted to know more about the circumstances behind them. Some were obviously in code – apparently random collections of letters and numbers – and he tried to use the skills that his brother and Amyus Crowe had taught him to unlock their secrets. With some of them he was actually successful. Most were arrangements for furtive meetings, probably of people who loved each other but couldn’t, for whatever reason, meet in public, but others were stranger. One in particular made his blood run cold. After he had decoded it, the words said simply: ‘Joseph Lamner, you will die tomorrow. Set your affairs in order. Prepare to meet your Maker.’

Sherlock turned reluctantly away from the personal advertisements before he became too obsessed with them and skim-read the rest of the newspaper. Two pages contained little snippets of news from around the country, and Sherlock found his gaze snagged by one report in particular, which involved the city to which they were travelling.

EDINBURGH. Prominent businessman Sir Benedict Ventham was found dead last night at his house on the outskirts of the city. Police have stated that murder by poisoning is a distinct possibility, considering the contorted expression on his face and the colour of his tongue, and have said that they are close to an arrest. Sir Benedict had made a number of enemies through his aggressive business techniques over the years. He had lived recently in a state of fear for his life and only ever ate food prepared by his faithful and trusted cook, who had served him for almost two decades.