Young Sherlock Holmes: Fire Storm

by Andrew Lane

  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 straig
htforward 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 thin
k 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.’