Young Sherlock Holmes: Fire Storm

by Andrew Lane

  ‘Dr Knox? Yeah, he knew, all right, although Burke later swore otherwise. He just didn’t want to disrupt the supply of bodies. He was getting a reputation as being the best anatomy teacher around, an’ students were flocking to his lectures, and payin’ for the privilege. He wasn’t going to give all that up.’ He snorted. ‘Story is that there was one bloke that Burke and Hare killed, name of Daft Jamie, who was well known around the town. When Dr Knox uncovered the body in the lecture theatre, ready to cut into it, some of the students recognized it. Knox said that it must be someone else, but he started the dissection on the face first, to make it unrecognizable quickly.’

  ‘What happened in the end?’ Sherlock asked, as he pushed open the front door. ‘I presume they were found out, otherwise you wouldn’t know all this.’

  ‘Burke and Hare killed a woman in their lodging house named Marjory Docherty, but until they could get rid of the body they hid it under a bed. There was lodgers there, an’ they got suspicious. When Burke was out of the way they checked his room, an’ they found her. So they called the peelers. Burke and Hare got the body out of the house before the peelers turned up, but they took it to Dr Knox’s place, where the peelers found it later. Hare turned Queen’s evidence and testified against Burke in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Burke was hanged, an’ his body was publicly dissected at the Edinburgh Medical College – perfectly legally, of course.’

  ‘And what happened to Hare?’

  ‘Vanished. Never heard of again.’

  ‘So he might still be here, in the city?’

  Matty nodded as he opened his bedroom door. ‘Might well be, although it’s more likely that he went back to Ireland.’

  The next morning there was still no word from Rufus Stone. Disconsolate, Sherlock and Matty ate a breakfast of oat porridge served by a silent maid. It was so thick that Sherlock could have cut it into slices with a knife, and it looked like pigswill, but it was surprisingly tasty, and filling as well.

  ‘What’s the plan?’ Matty asked.

  ‘I’m going to find a bookshop or a library,’ Sherlock replied. ‘I need a map of the city, and I need to find out more about the place. I feel lost here. I can’t find my bearings. Why don’t you go and check the places you used to know, see if there’s anyone who remembers you and can help us. We’re going to need all the help we can get.’ He paused for a second, thinking. ‘That park, up the street from the hotel – let’s meet just inside the front gates at midday.’

  ‘I ain’t got a watch,’ Matty pointed out.

  ‘Then ask someone.’

  Having finished their porridge, they said their goodbyes and went out into the street.

  Sherlock found a library a little way along the main thoroughfare. Inside, the dry smell of the books was comforting. It reminded him of Uncle Sherrinford’s library. He always felt at home with books. Moving to the section devoted to Scotland, he pulled an armful of volumes off the shelf and settled at a nearby table to read.

  Within an hour he had a much better idea of the geography and the history of Edinburgh, and its place within the wider history of Scotland. The town was built on seven hills, he discovered, which he supposed would explain the fact that every direction seemed to be either uphill or down.

  After a while the close black print started blurring as he tried to read it. He closed the book and shut his eyes for a moment. The problem was, he thought, that the kind of information he wanted wasn’t the kind that went in reference books. Where did people go in Edinburgh when they were on the run? How did they avoid detection when someone was looking for them? Who was in charge of the local criminal fraternity, and were they more likely to help a person on the run or the people chasing them?These were the kind of things that Matty was more likely to find out from his contacts, but unless it was written down and kept up to date then it was the kind of information that would just slip away. Sherlock decided that he needed to write down all the little snippets and facts that he or Matty unearthed along the way. Maybe if he kept them on file cards then he could access them the next time he needed them.

  A sudden, disturbing thought struck him, and he shivered. What he was proposing wasn’t that different from what Josh Harkness had done – collect information on dubious and illegal activity and keep it. The only real distinction was that Sherlock wouldn’t be using it for profit.

  He checked the watch that usually hung from a chain on his waistcoat. It was half past eleven. Time to start thinking about meeting Matty.

  As he returned the books to their shelves he noticed that there were maps of Edinburgh for sale at the front desk for sixpence. He bought one and took it back to the table where he had been reading to open it. His gaze scanned quickly across the details: the shape of the city and in which directions the main roads ran. He located the main railway line coming in from London, and traced the route the cab had taken. It had gone along a road named Princes Street – clearly the main road through the city. That enabled him to work out where their hotel was, and where he was now.

  Folding the map up and putting it in his pocket, he set off for the park. He felt more confident that he could navigate his way around now.

  The sun was shining through the clouds, casting beams of light diagonally across the mottled blue and grey as if girders of light were holding up the entire sky. Glancing down side roads as he strolled along Princes Street he caught glimpses of the castle. It no longer looked like a solid grey cloud hanging above the city, but there was something about it that defied geometry and perspective. It looked as if it just shouldn’t be possible that the castle was up there while the town was down here.

  As he passed one particular alley, something in the shadows made a scuffling noise. He stopped, intrigued, and looked sideways. He made no move to get any closer to the alley – that would have been stupid – but if anyone was following him then he wanted to know who it was.

  For a moment he could only see a pool of shadow, like liquid darkness, where the sun could never penetrate, but after a few moments his eyes got used to the contrast and he could make out something that seemed to be floating in mid-air, like a pale balloon. It took a moment of concentration before his brain realized what he was looking at – the face of someone dressed entirely in black who was standing there, in the alley, staring out.

  Sherlock took an involuntary step backwards. The face was bone-white, with eyes set so deep that the sockets were just black holes in the face. The cheekbones stuck out sharply, and the lips – if the figure had any lips – were pulled back from teeth that seemed to grin at Sherlock as if the figure was enjoying some private joke. For a long moment Sherlock was convinced that a rotting human body, something close to a skeleton, was standing there, in the alley, looking at him. Had it been ripped from the ground and left there, propped up against a piece of wood, as a warning? And who would do such a macabre thing?

  The figure raised a hand to the side of its face and waved, then drew back into the darkness until Sherlock couldn’t see it any more. Only after it had gone, leaving him cold and shaking, did he remember the man in the tavern, the one who had been sitting alone. Had it been him?This figure had looked even more skeletal, even less alive, but that might have been a trick of the poor light.

  What was going on? He thought back to what his aunt and uncle had told him. Was he going mad, like his father?

  For a few seconds Sherlock wanted to go further into the alley, looking for the figure – looking for the truth about what he’d seen – but he pulled back. Logically, the most likely explanation was that this was a trap, and the figure was bait to lure him in. But was it random, or did someone know that his curiosity often outweighed his good sense? Rattled, Sherlock walked away from the mouth of the alley and he didn’t look back.

  The park was only a few minutes further. When he got there, Matty was already waiting.

  ‘Are you all right?’ his friend asked. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid
,’ Sherlock replied sharply. ‘There’s no such thing as ghosts.’

  ‘All right – keep your hair on.’

  ‘Did you find anything out?’ Sherlock asked.

  Matty shook his head. ‘Most of the blokes and kids I knew around here have moved on. That or they’ve died. I did find a couple of people who remembered me, but they don’t know anything about a big American who’s come through this way. What about you?’

  ‘I could find my way around the city now.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s something,’ Matty said critically. ‘If we was ever planning on moving here.’

  ‘Don’t underestimate the usefulness of geographical knowledge.’

  Matty stared at him. ‘So what’s our next move?’ he asked eventually.

  Sherlock pondered for a moment. He’d been debating this question himself. ‘I suppose we could go back and talk to the ticket collectors and the guards at the station here,’ he said slowly, ‘but they must see hundreds of passengers a day, and there’s no guarantee that they would remember Mr Crowe. Besides, if he continued to be as careful as he was back in Farnham, then he would have got off at an earlier station and maybe hired a cart to bring him and Virginia to Edinburgh.’

  ‘If he’s here at all,’ Matty pointed out. ‘After all, you’ve only got a dead rabbit’s head pointing you here. It’s not much to go on. I still reckon we might have gone off in completely the wrong direction.’

  ‘Despite Rufus vanishing?’ Sherlock asked.

  Matty shrugged. ‘You’ve got a point. The clue was probably a good one, but now that it’s got us here, what do we do? Wait for another one to come along?’

  ‘Matty,’ Sherlock said slowly, ‘I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – you may not be a genius, but you can bring out the genius in those around you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Amyus Crowe left a clue that would bring us to Edinburgh, if we understood it properly. Why did he do that? We’ve not asked ourselves that question yet.’

  ‘Because he wanted us to follow him,’ Matty replied.

  ‘Exactly. He wanted us to follow him. He wasn’t just saying “Goodbye – I’m off to Edinburgh!” He wanted us to know exactly where he was heading, and the only reason for that was because he wanted us to come after him. He wants our help. Now we’re here, he’s not going to leave us dangling. He’ll leave another clue around, one that will lead us right to where he is.’

  ‘Why couldn’t he do that from the start?’ Matty asked.

  ‘Because all he knew was that he and Virginia were heading to Edinburgh. Once he was here he would find somewhere to settle down in peace – somewhere he wouldn’t be detected. Not a hotel then. More likely a cottage somewhere outside the town that he could rent. Once he knew his address, he would find a way of letting us know.’

  ‘But he doesn’t know where we are,’ Matty pointed out.

  ‘So he would leave a message somewhere that we could see it no matter where in the town we ended up.’ He thought back to the newspaper that he had read on the train. In particular he remembered the page of classified advertisements that had so fascinated him: messages from one person to another, or one person to a group of people, either in plain language or in code. ‘He’ll place a classified advertisement in the local newspaper,’ he said with certainty. ‘He knows that’s one of the places I’ll look.’

  ‘But what if we missed it? What if he put the message in yesterday?’

  Sherlock shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t know what day we were going to be here. If I know Amyus Crowe, he would pay for the advert to be in all week.’

  Matty nodded. Either what Sherlock had said made perfect sense to him or he was willing to take it on trust. ‘Then let’s get a local newspaper. Let’s get all of them.’

  ‘How many are there?’ Sherlock asked, wondering if they were going to have to plough their way through ten or twelve newspapers, or whether Amyus Crowe would have put the advertisement in all of them.

  ‘Three,’ Matty said. He turned to go, then turned back. ‘You’ll have to read ’em,’ he pointed out, ‘cos I can’t read. And I ain’t got any money on me, so you’ll have to buy ’em as well.’

  They found a newspaper vendor just outside the park and bought copies of all three Edinburgh newspapers for that day, then went back into the park and sat on a bench where Sherlock could read them. He couldn’t help but notice that the Edinburgh murder story – the one he’d seen in the copy of The Times on the train – was the front-page story on all three papers. The first one – the Edinburgh Herald – was representative of them all:

  Edinburgh police this morning arrested a suspect in the murder by poison of the eccentric businessman Sir Benedict Ventham. Sources close to the police have told us that the suspect in question is a Miss Aggie Macfarlane, cook to the late Sir Benedict and – this newspaper has discovered – sister to the notorious criminal and leader of the Black Reavers Gang, Gahan Macfarlane. It is believed that she slipped poison into his food, for reasons that only she knows at the moment.

  The Black Reavers? The name of the gang struck a chord in Sherlock’s mind. It made them sound dangerous, even sinister. He was about to move on to the classified section of the newspaper when he spotted the name again, this time in a report directly beneath the paragraphs on Sir Benedict Ventham’s poisoning:

  FIRE DEVASTATES LOCAL GREENGROCERS

  The premises of Messrs MacPherson and Cargill, greengrocers, of Princes Street were burned down last night in a fearsome conflagration of apocalyptic proportions. Bystanders fought the blaze for nearly three hours with buckets of water taken from the nearby river, with little success. No casualties are reported, as the blaze occurred during the hours of darkness. MacPherson and Cargill’s had been a local fixture for over fifty years. Our reporter was informed, by several members of the local populace, who wished to remain anonymous, that the greengrocers had recently become a target of the notorious Black Reavers – a local criminal gang of grim repute who demand money with menaces from local businesses . . .

  He moved on to the classified section. It wasn’t as large as the one in The Times – barely half a page. Most of the advertisements seemed to be from households requiring a maid, a cook or a butler (‘references essential’), with a handful advertising lost property (‘Found in King’s Street, a lady’s brooch – emeralds set in gold. Prospective owners must apply in writing with full description of item before collection can be arranged’). Nothing struck him as being the kind of thing that Amyus Crowe would have written.

  Just in case, he checked the letters pages as well. These mostly seemed to be complaints about factual inaccuracies in previous editions of the paper, or comments on the lack of manners of the lower classes, but one letter in particular caught his eye, and he read it out to Matty:

  SIR,

  I write with reference to the spate of sightings recently of men and women within the city limits who can only be described as ‘deceased and yet still moving’. Such events are an affront to God and speak to the perilous moral state of the population of this city. I draw to the attention of your readers the following biblical quotations:

  Isaiah 26:19: ‘Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.’

  Revelation 20:13: ‘And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.’

  I ask them to consider: does this not indicate that Armageddon is near, and that God will soon judge us all? Repent your sins, before it is too late!

  Yours faithfully, Geo. Thribb Esq.

  The letter made Sherlock think about the two skeletal figures that he’d seen – the one in the tavern the night before and the one in the street only half an hour ago. Was this what the letter was referring to? Was there a spate of people who looked like dead
bodies walking the streets and, if so, what did it mean?

  He pushed the thought aside. Interesting though these speculations were, they didn’t help with the immediate task – finding Amyus Crowe and Virginia, or Rufus Stone.

  In the Edinburgh Star the classified adverts were skewed more towards notifications of upcoming dances (or ‘cèilidhean’, as they seemed to be known), lost pets and horses for sale. One in particular caught his attention: ‘Parakeet missing, can recite entirety of Hamlet and selected poems of Tennyson. Reward paid for return.’ A parrot that could recite the whole of Hamlet? Sherlock couldn’t believe it.

  It was in the Edinburgh Tribune that he found what he was looking for. Nestled among the usual set of advertisements was one that immediately stood out.

  ‘That’s it,’ Sherlock said, pointing to the advertisement.

  ‘I can’t read,’ Matty explained patiently.

  Sherlock read the advert out to Matty, who frowned. ‘Bit long-winded,’ he said, ‘and a bit creepy as well. Don’t strike me as the kind of place ordinary people stay.’

  ‘It’s not a real hotel,’ Sherlock said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  Sherlock indicated the first three words. ‘The Sigerson Hotel. My father’s name is Siger – Siger Holmes. That makes me Siger’s son. The advert is aimed at me.’

  Matty looked dubious. ‘Could be a coincidence. Maybe there is a Sigerson Hotel.’

  ‘Possible,’ Sherlock conceded, ‘but these adverts are paid for by the word. There are a lot of words here – more than you need to tell people how good your hotel is, but enough to contain a hidden message.’

  ‘So Mr Crowe and Virginia are in Kirkaldy Town.’ Matty scowled. ‘That’s miles away. I thought they were supposed to be in Edinburgh.’