by Andrew Lane
Sherlock found that he didn’t want to accept the world the way it was. He wanted it back the way it used to be. He wanted to change the world.
But that wasn’t fair on Virginia. She had made her choice. Trying to win her back would be like pretending her opinions had no validity, that they weren’t important to him, that only his desires had any importance, and that wasn’t a message he wanted to send. He had to let her make her own choice.
‘Is there any chance,’ he asked quietly, feeling the dead weight of unwanted emotion in his heart, ‘that she might change her mind, now I’m back?’
Crowe shrugged. ‘You know how stubborn Ginnie gets. The only thing that can change her mind is her. Best thing you can do is just be around, be a friend, talk to her and let her decide what she wants to do.’ He frowned. ‘But there isn’t too much time. Ginnie an’ me, we’re leaving for the States after these psychic shenanigans are over. Ah’ve been called back, partly because the US Government wants me to report in person about this Mr Albano, but partly because the Pinkertons have got work for me to do. With Bryce Scobell dead, there’s no threat to us any more.’
‘Going back?’ Sherlock whispered. His heart, which had felt heavy before, now felt like it was filled with lead and sinking through his chest.
‘Things change, Sherlock,’ Amyus Crowe said simply.
‘When I grow up, I don’t want things to change. I want to live somewhere that never changes, and I don’t want my friends to change either.’ He knew he sounded petulant, but he couldn’t help himself.
‘Your brother Mycroft feels much the same. That’s why he spends most of his time at the Diogenes Club. That place hasn’t changed since he started it, an’ it never will.’ He paused. ‘Speakin’ of your brother, Ah ought to go and check in with him, see how he is, but before Ah do – tell me about China. What was the place like? Ah hear rumours that you did some great service for the American Navy while you were out there, an’ Ah would truly like to know more about that.’
Sherlock spent the next hour or so telling Amyus Crowe in great detail about his adventures both on board the Gloria Scott and in Shanghai. Crowe was particularly interested in the grotesque Mr Arrhenius, and his feral daughter. Sherlock explained about the USS Monocacy and the plot to blow it up and start a trade war, and the way he detected the location of the bomb and the bomber. At the end of the story, Crowe applauded.
‘You sure don’t have a simple life, Sherlock. Ah’m jealous of the adventures that happened to you, Ah’m proud of the way you used your mind to solve problems an’ get out of danger, an’ Ah’m grateful on behalf of the US Government for what you did. War in the Far East may be to the benefit of certain businessmen, but it’s not somethin’ the President would wish to happen, an’ Ah have that on the highest authority. But Ah’m concerned about the possible involvement of the Paradol Chamber. Are you an’ Mycroft sure that there’s a connection?’
Sherlock shrugged. ‘There’s no real evidence, but the indications are that the Paradol Chamber want a war in the Far East just as little as your President does. Or, rather, if there is going to be a war, then they want it to be at a time of their choosing. I’ll probably never know if I was really working for them or not, but I think it’s likely.’
Crowe nodded. ‘They do seem to be a complicated bunch. Ah hope we’ve seen the last of them, but Ah suspect we haven’t.’ He started to lever himself out of the armchair, which was so small compared to his bulk that it threatened to come up with him, snugly fitting around his hips. He pushed it down. ‘Ah’m goin’ to pay mah respects to your brother now. What about you, son?’
Sherlock looked around, checking that nobody was in the doorway. ‘I’m going to investigate Mr Albano’s room while he’s still safely disappeared. I want to see if I can work out how some of his tricks were accomplished. I need to give some thought to how he vanished, too.’
‘Good idea. Let me know what the results are.’
They left the drawing room together and headed for the ascending room. Sherlock showed Crowe how to operate it, and they rose together to the second floor. Sherlock left Crowe outside his brother’s room, returned to the ascending room and headed for the third floor. He walked along the corridor towards the second tower, where Sir Shadrach Quintillan, Niamh Quintillan and Ambrose Albano had their rooms.
Niamh had already shown him who was in which room, and he stopped outside Ambrose Albano’s door. Nobody was around, and he twisted the doorknob and entered quickly. It was only when he was standing in the centre of the room that it occurred to him that Mr Albano might well have crept back there after his faked kidnapping – if it really had been faked – to hide out. Fortunately the place was empty.
He looked around, mentally cataloguing everything so that he could make sure he left the room looking like it hadn’t been searched. Albano was fastidious and meticulous: everything was in place and carefully lined up. Sherlock started on the wardrobe, where Albano’s clothes were hung. He went through all the pockets, and checked that nothing had been hidden between the garments or behind them, but he failed to find anything. He then went through the drawers in the bureau, but the folded shirts, undershirts, socks and handkerchiefs hid no secrets. Sherlock even knelt and looked beneath the bed, but apart from several pairs of highly polished shoes there was nothing of interest there either.
The next step was to check behind the paintings and framed prints that were hung up on the wall, and then to look on top of the wardrobe. Again: nothing. He pulled the bureau out from the wall and checked behind it, but apart from finding a line of dust on the floor his efforts were wasted.
Remembering the time he had searched the room of Mrs Eglantine – his aunt and uncle’s former housekeeper, back at Holmes Manor – and found what he was looking for hidden on a rope hanging outside, he opened the window and looked out to see if anything had been hung down from the window ledge, but the stone brickwork of the castle was unadorned by any additions. He pulled up the rugs, but there were no papers beneath them and no areas of the stone flooring that looked like they might be capable of being levered up to reveal a hole beneath.
Coming back to the centre of the room, he looked around again in frustration. He was beginning to run out of ideas.
Glancing again at the bed, he noticed that there was a frilly valance running around the edge of the mattress. It hung in folds halfway towards the floor. Previously he had only looked at the floor under the bed, but he suddenly saw that near the foot of the bed the valance was caught up, as if someone had lifted it and tucked it beneath the mattress and then forgotten to pull it out again.
He got back down to his knees and pulled the valance completely clear, then looked beneath the bed again, this time paying particular attention to the underside of the mattress.
A box was hanging beneath the bed. Hooks at each corner suspended it from the metal springs. Sherlock studied it carefully, to make sure he knew exactly how to put it back again, and then he reached underneath and gently unhooked it. It was about the size of a shoebox. Placing it on the carpet, he undid the catch securing the lid and lifted it up.
Inside was a mass of white material, very fine and very light. The weight of the lid had been holding it down, but with the lid released it puffed up, lifting up with it the other object inside the box, almost as if it were bringing it to Sherlock’s attention.
It took a few moments to work out what the other object was. It was white and small, and it had one rounded end and one that was flat. Something sharp was protruding from the rounded end, while the flat rear appeared to be attached to a length of cotton that finished in a small hook. Sherlock picked it up gingerly, and realized that the bit he thought was flat was actually hollowed out. That, along with its size, immediately told him what it was, and what it was for. It was a thimble, something meant to fit over the end of a finger, and the sharp bit projecting out of the end was a splinter of chalk. The length of what he had taken to be cotton was actually elastic.
He put the thimble to one side and examined the material. He already had an inkling of what it was, but he wanted to make sure. He pulled it from the box and spread it out. It weighed almost nothing – so light that it seemed to float in his hands. He examined it closely, and found several small tears in it.
This was almost certainly the ‘ectoplasm’ that had manifested from Albano’s mouth during the séance. It was so fine that it would crumple up into a small ball, barely larger than the thimble. He must have had it hidden somewhere about his person.
Gingerly, he smelt the material. It had been washed recently – he could still detect the sharpness of carbolic. That was probably a good thing, if his suspicions about where Albano had been hiding it were correct. Sherlock suspected that it had actually been in Albano’s mouth, pressed between his cheek and his teeth. Crushed up that small, it wouldn’t have soaked up much saliva, and it may have been chemically treated to repel moisture. Under the guise of choking, Albano must have pulled it free. He guessed that the material had been soaked in some kind of chemical that glowed in the dark, making it look spookier in the shadows of the séance.
This wasn’t just ingenious: this was brilliant. So simple, and yet so effective.
But how had the material expanded outward and floated in the air, and what about the face that had seemed to materialize inside the shroud? There were still questions to answer, but Sherlock could see the broad strokes of the trick.
Genius.
Sherlock carefully packed the material back inside the box and placed the white thimble on top of it. He re-fastened the lid, replaced the box beneath the bed, and pulled the valance back into position.
He stood up and looked slowly around the room. There was, as far as he could see, no trace that he had ever been there.
Quickly he left. There was no knowing whether one of the servants would enter to turn down the bed or make up the fire or something, and it was obvious now that the servants had to be involved.
Leaving the room and closing the door carefully behind him, he returned to the castle keep and down to the ground floor. He saw nobody on the way. He stood in the hall indecisively for a few moments, then headed out into the open air. He couldn’t stand being cooped up for too long.
The sky was even clearer than it had been earlier. Sherlock walked out of the castle, through the main gate and across the drawbridge. He wasn’t sure where he was heading, but the sight of the wreckage of the carriage used by the kidnappers caught his attention and he wandered across to it. He was aware of the stone bulk of the castle behind him, and also painfully aware that Virginia was behind one of those windows. The thought made him feel self-conscious, and he found himself walking stiffly, unnaturally.
No, he told himself, this is stupid. Just be yourself.
When he got to the wreckage he stopped thinking about Virginia and forced himself to consider the pile of wood instead. He knelt down and started sorting through it, uncertain at first what exactly it was that he was looking for. The wood had been flung in random directions during the fruitless search for Albano, and after a few minutes Sherlock found that he was unconsciously sorting it into more ordered piles, trying as best he could to replicate the overall shape of the carriage. Left-hand door over here, right-hand rear wheel over there, driver’s platform in front, and luggage rack at the back. Those bits of wood that he couldn’t identify he placed to one side until he could figure out where they went.
He pulled out a long rod that was almost certainly an axle. There was no way of knowing whether it was the front or the rear axle, of course. The second axle was buried further under the wreckage, but when he finally managed to excavate it he discovered that it was in several pieces. It must have been broken in the crash. He juggled the lengths for a few seconds, trying to work out how they would fit together. The bits where the wheels would have gone were obvious – they were worn and rubbed smooth by the constant rotation – and that gave him a head start on arranging the other pieces, but as he did so he realized something strange.
The broken ends weren’t broken at all – they looked as though they had been cut.
He stared at the axle for a few moments, thoughts whirling around his head. The carriage had been deliberately sabotaged. The axle had been sawn through so that it would snap if put under pressure. Albano had probably given the driver a particular manoeuvre to carry out that would do the trick at exactly the right time.
Sherlock stood up, and sighed. Crowe might think it easy to work out, but Sherlock still didn’t know how Albano had arranged his own disappearance from the carriage. He suspected, however, that it was also a form of magic trick.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sherlock headed upstairs to check on his brother, but Mycroft was asleep and Sherlock didn’t want to wake him. He looked pale and weak, lying there in bed with a bandage around his head. Quintillan had arranged to have a footman – female, of course, given the role-reversal in the Quintillan household – standing outside Mycroft’s room at all times, making sure that nobody tried to attack him again. Given Sherlock’s suspicions about the servants, he wasn’t sure whether that was a good idea or not, but apart from Sherlock or Amyus Crowe standing guard themselves in shifts, night and day, he couldn’t think of an alternative. Besides, if Mycroft was attacked again, while a servant was supposedly guarding him, then suspicion would automatically fall on the castle staff and therefore Quintillan himself. Presumably Sir Shadrach wanted to avoid that happening if at all possible, which meant that Mycroft was probably safe. At least, that’s what Sherlock hoped.
‘Has anybody been in to see him, apart from me?’ Sherlock asked the woman standing stiffly to attention outside the bedroom door.
‘The doctor, sir,’ she said, staring somewhere up above Sherlock’s head. ‘And there was a man – a large man in a white suit. He spoke with an accent.’ Given her own thick Irish accent, Sherlock found that momentarily amusing.
A big man in a white suit? Almost certainly Amyus Crowe. He had said earlier that he was going to pop in and see Mycroft.
‘Nobody else?’
‘No, sir.’
Sherlock turned to leave, but the woman cleared her throat as if she had something else to say. He turned back and raised an eyebrow inquiringly.
‘Forgive me, sir, but is it true?’ she asked.
‘Is what true?’
She glanced left and right, checking whether anybody else was within earshot. ‘About the gentleman inside being attacked.’
‘Yes, he was attacked.’
‘By the Dark Beast?’ Her gaze momentarily flickered down to meet his. ‘The same one that killed poor Máire, God rest her. That’s what they’re saying down in the servants’ area.’
Sherlock couldn’t help laughing. ‘No, he wasn’t attacked by the Dark Beast, and your friend died of a seizure, or a heart attack. That’s all there is to it.’
‘But it’s true that nobody knows who attacked the gentleman?’
‘Yes.’
‘So it might have been the Dark Beast.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘But the Beast has been seen. Three of the servants have spotted it, moving around outside the castle. Máire saw it, and now she’s dead, God love her!’
‘Tricks of the light, I think,’ Sherlock said. ‘Maybe some kind of big animal, moving in the mist. That’s all it is.’
‘Yes, sir. Of course.’ There was something in her tone of voice that suggested she didn’t believe him. As Sherlock walked away, he r
emembered the shadowy figure that he had seen in the castle ballroom, moving back behind the curtain. There certainly seemed to be something moving around in the shadows, and if it was inside the castle now, then it was unlikely to be an animal. But it couldn’t be a supernatural beast. That would be against all logic and sense.
It was late afternoon now. Lunch was a distant memory, and dinner was still a while away. Sherlock wandered back to his room to wash and to change out of clothes that were muddy and crumpled after his adventures outside. He found an envelope on his pillow. It contained a handwritten note from Sir Shadrach Quintillan stating that dinner would be at eight, and that in the absence of Ambrose Albano the séance planned for that evening would have to be postponed. Based on his discussion with Amyus Crowe, Sherlock had his suspicions that Mr Albano would make a surprise reappearance at dinner so that the séance could go ahead with added excitement and interest, but only time would tell about that.
He wandered downstairs again, feeling at a loss about what to do next. He had examined Albano’s room, and the wreckage of the crashed coach, so there was nothing more to do there. He supposed he could sit down somewhere quiet and try to think through how Ambrose Albano had managed his own disappearance, or alternatively he could try to work out how Mycroft had been attacked in the library.
He decided to take the latter course. That, at least, would require some kind of action – looking for secret entrances and evidence that someone else had been in the library. He wanted to be doing something active, not just sit around thinking. That was Mycroft’s forte, not his.