by Andrew Lane
Dedicated to: my expert and friendly UK and US editors (Gaby Morgan and Wes Adams), for being incredibly supportive while still taking me to task for errors and overwriting, plus all the editors and translators in the overseas territories who have worked on these books. Thanks are also due to Talya Baker, who copy-edited this manuscript so perfectly. Thanks also to my wonderful and patient publicist, Beatrice Cross. Thank you all – I owe you.
Dedicated also to Peter Darvill-Evans, Rebecca Levene, Andy Bodle and Simon Winstone, for being there at the beginning and giving me a chance to prove myself. I owe you as well.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
Sherlock Holmes leaned forward in his seat, entranced, as the young man on the stage brought his violin up to his shoulder, nestled his chin into the chin-guard and raised his bow until it hovered above the strings. The flickering light from the gas lamps along the edge of the stage illuminated the violinist with dancing shadows, making it seem as if a hundred different expressions were playing across his face within a few moments.
The audience seemed to tense. For a long moment you could have heard a handkerchief flutter to the ground, it was that quiet in the theatre, and then he started playing.
The first note swelled up out of nowhere until it filled the auditorium. It was pure and exquisite, and the sort of note that Sherlock would have given a year of his life to be able to play. It seemed to him almost impossible that something made out of wood and catgut, played by someone human and fallible, could be that close to perfection.
‘He’s playing a Stradivarius,’ Rufus Stone whispered from beside Sherlock, but Sherlock’s attention was fixed upon the young man onstage, and he barely registered his friend and tutor’s words. He concentrated on the music, on the succession of notes and chords that were emanating from the small stage as if they were something absolutely real and it was the theatre and the audience who were insubstantial. Sherlock had never imagined that it was possible to play the violin that beautifully.
For the next forty-five minutes Sherlock listened, oblivious to anything around him, barely even breathing, as the violinist played a succession of pieces. One or two Sherlock recognized from his own exercises – some Spanish dances, and a few well-known tunes from operas – but many were new to him. He suspected that the man had written them himself, he appeared to be that comfortable playing them. Some of them were fiendishly complicated as well as beautiful, requiring the violinist’s left hand to move along the fingerboard so fast that it was a blur.
After a while he became aware that his brother, Mycroft, seated on the other side of him to Rufus Stone, was shifting in his plushly upholstered seat. It was too small for him in the first place, and his elbows were pushing against Sherlock’s arm and the arm of the man on the other side of him. Sherlock could hear him huff every now and then, as if he was unconsciously trying to send a signal out to everyone around him that he was unhappy and wanted to be somewhere else. Or perhaps it wasn’t unconscious. Perhaps Mycroft knew exactly what signal he was sending to the increasingly irritated people around him, and just didn’t care.
After a particularly difficult volley of notes which the violinist threw away as if they were nothing, the first half of the concert ended. The musician bowed to enthusiastic applause, and the curtain came down.
‘Thank the Lord,’ Mycroft muttered. ‘I was beginning to think that I had died and gone to hell. Who did you say this young fiddler was?’
Sherlock glanced sideways at Rufus Stone. The expression on Stone’s face was somewhere in the ambiguous territory between amusement and outrage. ‘His name is Pablo Sarasate,’ Stone said in a carefully controlled voice. ‘He is Spanish, he is twenty-six years old, and he is probably the most accomplished violinist since Niccolò Paganini.’
‘Humph!’ Mycroft said. ‘I would have preferred a brass band in the park. The music would be more tuneful to my ears.’
‘And the deckchairs would be more accommodating to your . . .’ Stone hesitated. Sherlock sympathized – Mycroft was technically Stone’s employer. ‘. . . To your natural sitting position,’ Stone finished smoothly.
‘I feel the need for a large dry sherry,’ Mycroft said as if Stone hadn’t spoken. ‘Do you think we might have time to visit the bar during this welcome break from the caterwauling onstage?’
Stone winced, and opened his mouth to say something cutting, but Sherlock got in first. ‘I think that would be a good idea,’ he said.
Stone caught Sherlock’s elbow as they manoeuvred their way along the row of seats to the aisle. ‘Your brother will be the death of me,’ he hissed, ‘and if it’s not because of the dangerous undercover tasks that he assigns me then it will be because I will punch him in the face if he goes on about how much he hates this music for much longer.’
‘I don’t even know why he wanted to come along,’ Sherlock said. ‘This is not the kind of thing he normally enjoys.’
‘He told me he wanted to talk to the both of us in a comfortable and informal setting.’
‘Even so . . .’ Sherlock looked around the auditorium. ‘There must have been something more to his taste than this.’
Stone grimaced. ‘I may have told him that I was taking you to the theatre without being specific about what we were going to see. Looking back, your brother might have got the idea that we were going to a play rather than a concert recital.’
‘He does like a good melodrama,’ Sherlock conceded. ‘He once told me that Shakespeare’s Hamlet taught him everything he needed to know about Scandinavian politics.’
They were in the aisle by now, heading up towards the bar. ‘What do you think about the concert?’ Stone asked.
‘Incredible.’ Sherlock paused for a moment, recalling the feelings that had poured through his mind as the violinist had played. ‘His technique is flawless.’
‘He is going to be famous,’ Stone confirmed. ‘Just be glad you got to see him early in his career.’
They got to the bar. Mycroft pushed through the crowd like a galleon pushing through rough seas. Within a few minutes they were all settled in a bow-front window and sipping their drinks.
Mycroft took a sip of his sherry, and grimaced. ‘If this is dry,’ he said, ‘then the Thames must be an arid, dusty wasteland by comparison.’ He shook his head ponderously. ‘This is what happens when one leaves the comfortable environs of one’s office, one’s club and one’s rooms. The world becomes unpredictable.’ He glanced up at Sherlock and Stone. ‘I believe I will not return for the second half of the recital. I cannot imagine that the music will become any more listenable or my seat any more comfortable. I do, however, wish to say something before I leave.’ Turning his attention to Sherlock, he went on: ‘You have been staying in London now for a month since we returned from Ireland, and we need to make a decision about your future. The cost of your hotel room and your food is small, in the scheme of things, but not negligible. Sadly, with the death of our Uncle Sherrinford, I see no way that you could return to Farnham.’
‘What about . . . home?’ Sherlock asked quietly.
‘The situation there has not changed.’ Mycroft’s face was grave. ‘Our father is still abroad, in India, with the British Army, and our mother is still confined to bed, to
o weak to move. The only things that pass her lips are the occasional slice of toast and sips of weak tea. I fear for her future.’
‘And . . . our sister?’
Mycroft shook his head. ‘In the absence of any parental guidance, she has, I am informed, fallen under the spell of a most unsuitable admirer. I have tried to speak to her about it, but she will not listen to reason. No, I fear that the family manor house is not a suitable place for you either.’
‘Then what else is there?’ Rufus Stone asked.
‘You could find me rooms in London,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘I have got used to living here now. I love this city.’
‘You are fifteen,’ Mycroft pointed out. ‘I am not going to let you live by yourself in a metropolis this sordid.’
‘I’m actually sixteen,’ Sherlock pointed out, ‘and I have got quite used to surviving and even thriving by myself. I don’t need anyone to look after me.’
‘Indeed?’ Mycroft gave Sherlock a lingering glance, rising from the tips of Sherlock’s shoes to the crown of his head. ‘I see that you have been consorting with that disreputable canal-dwelling friend of yours – Matthew Arnatt – who has apparently relocated his water-borne dwelling place to Camden Locks. I see also that you have together visited many markets in London, as well as travelling on the Thames several times. During those escapades you have got into –’ he paused for a moment, looking at Sherlock’s hands – ‘five separate fights, and you have escaped from trouble over rooftops on three occasions. You have also been stopped and questioned by the police eight times. Is this what you mean by “thriving”?’
Sherlock opened his mouth to say something in his own defence, but Stone spoke first. ‘You can tell all that just by looking at your brother’s clothes, shoes, face and hands?’ he asked. ‘Mr Holmes, I have been impressed by your deductions before, but this is just amazing.’
Mycroft preened, like a large cat being stroked. Sherlock couldn’t help himself, and said, ‘He knows all that because he’s been having me followed and his agents have been giving him daily reports.’
Mycroft’s lips pursed in annoyance.
‘Is this true?’ Stone asked, disappointed.
‘Young Sherlock has a habit of getting into trouble,’ Mycroft grunted, ‘and in our father’s absence it is my responsibility to make sure that he gets to his twenty-first birthday intact in body and mind.’
‘I thought it was me that was supposed to be looking after him,’ Stone murmured, looking away, out of the bay window into the crowds outside the theatre.
‘You have had other things to do for me,’ Mycroft pointed out in a tone of voice that had no apology in it, ‘and besides, Sherlock would have recognized you. His ability to see through disguises has improved markedly over the past two years.’ He glanced at Sherlock and raised an eyebrow. ‘I am, I confess, somewhere between amused, pleased and irritated that you spotted your followers.’
Sherlock smiled at his brother. ‘Not only that, I found a bellboy at the hotel who was my general size and build, gave him a shilling and my coat and got him to walk around London in my place. Your people never noticed.’
‘You are mistaken,’ Mycroft said levelly. ‘They followed you and him both. He went to a music hall; you went to the British Museum.’
‘Oh.’ Sherlock was crestfallen.
‘There is also the question of your continuing education to consider,’ Mycroft said, as if the previous discussion had never occurred. ‘You were removed from the Deepdene School for Boys before your exams, and your experiences since, while they may have taught you a great deal about the way the world works and how to survive in street fights and climb across roofs, have left you woefully under-equipped in the fields of Latin, Greek, the natural sciences and the great body of English literature.’
‘I see no need to know about dead languages or old books,’ Sherlock murmured.
‘You may not,’ Mycroft countered, ‘but the rest of the world disagrees – at least, the bits of it that count. In order to secure a lucrative job in the Civil Service or one of the major banks you will need to learn a great many things that you may not think are important. It is my job to make sure that you do so.’
‘You are sending me back to school,’ Sherlock said, feeling his heart grow heavy. He had dreaded this moment. His life for the past two years had been interesting, exciting and even dangerous. He had travelled to foreign countries and seen things that he would never have believed had he not experienced them himself. He had been thrown on to his own resources, and he had survived. He couldn’t go back to school and meekly do what he was told to do by the teachers. Not now. He was a different person to the one who had left Deepdene School at the end of the summer term two years before, in uniform and with his cases packed.
‘No,’ Mycroft said, surprising Sherlock, ‘that would be looking backwards, not forward, and to do so would be a capital mistake. No, I believe that your future lies at one of the great universities, so I propose that you live either in Cambridge or in Oxford for now, having one-to-one sessions in the important subjects with an experienced tutor, with a view to your entering either of those universities two years hence.’
‘Cambridge is nearer to the family manor house, for when father returns home,’ Sherlock said, feeling his heart lighten just a little bit. This could actually be fun.
‘I have acquaintances in Oxford,’ Mycroft continued, ‘so I propose to send you there. You will recall that I studied at Oxford a few years ago. It was not a happy time in my life, but I value the education I received there and the friends I made. In particular, I knew a man named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who is now a lecturer in mathematics at Oxford, specializing in the field of logic. I will find you rooms in the town, and he will teach you for an hour a day, when he is not engaged on lecturing duties or one of his odd hobbies. There was also a police officer named Weston with whom I shared several very interesting conversations.’
Quickly going over Mycroft’s proposal – well, more of a fait accompli than a proposal, Sherlock thought – he found there were several things that caught his attention. A lecturer in logic sounded fascinating. Sherlock’s mind had always worked in a logical manner, and he found the trust that other people appeared to put in luck, faith or superstition quite odd. His former tutor and friend, Amyus Crowe, had done a lot to make him think in a rational manner. He thought he might enjoy studying logic.
‘What does this Charles Lutwidge Dodgson do that is so odd?’ he asked.
‘For a start, he is interested in this new-fangled thing called photography. You are familiar with it?’
Sherlock frowned, trying to remember things that he had read, or overheard. ‘It’s a way of capturing the details of a scene not in a painting or a drawing, but by letting the light from that scene fall upon a chemically treated glass plate and recording the image directly, is it not?’ he said.
‘Indeed. The chemicals involve a nitrate of silver that changes colour when light touches it, or so I understand. I find myself in two minds about photography. On the one hand, the final result is much less pretty than a painting, and is only represented in shades of grey. On the other hand, it does represent what is actually there, rather than what the artist thinks is there, or hopes is there, or wants you to believe is there. It is either a fad or it will supplant portraiture and landscape painting and also help considerably in the investigation of crime – I do not yet know which. I used to talk with my police acquaintance about that.’
‘You said, “On the one hand . . .”,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘What are his other hobbies?’
‘He is apparently, in his spare time, a writer of children’s books under the pen name “Lewis Carroll”. In particular, one with the title Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has caught the public imagination and sold rather well. It is published by Macmillan and Co, who are themselves a reputable publisher. It is even said that Her Majesty Queen Victoria has read it and let her approval be known.’
‘A chil
dren’s book?’ Sherlock said, rather sniffily.
‘Indeed, and a rather odd one. On the face of it the book is a tale about a girl who falls down a rabbit hole and finds a fantasy world inhabited by talking animals, or who may just have fallen asleep and dreamed the whole thing, but it is possible that there is a deeper meaning and that the entire thing is a satire on various mathematical and logical concepts.’
‘You’ve read it?’ Rufus Stone asked.
‘Certainly not,’ Mycroft huffed, but he wouldn’t meet Sherlock’s or Stone’s gaze, and Sherlock wondered if he was telling the truth. ‘But we are moving away from the point, which is that I have already written to Mr Dodgson at his rooms in Christ Church College, and he has agreed to take you on as an extraordinary – in all senses of the word, Sherlock – student. I am currently seeking accommodation for you in Oxford, probably at some boarding establishment close to Christ Church and beyond reproach.’
‘And will you have anyone following me around Oxford the way you have in London?’ Sherlock asked.
‘Will I need to?’ Mycroft countered.
Before Sherlock could say anything, Rufus Stone said, ‘Almost certainly.’
A bell rang, indicating the end of the intermission.
‘I shall leave now,’ Mycroft said, but he made no move away from the bay window. ‘Or perhaps I will stay for one more dry sherry. You two head back in and listen to the rest of that infernal racket. Sherlock – I will send you a note within the next few days outlining where you will be living, when you will be moving and when your tutorials will start.’
Sherlock opened his mouth to argue, but one look at his brother’s face made him shut it again. Once Mycroft made his mind up about something, there was no changing it.
As a second bell rang out, Sherlock and Stone headed back into the auditorium. Sherlock glanced back briefly over his shoulder. Mycroft was still there, sitting in the alcove – filling the alcove, to be more precise – and sipping at his sherry. As Sherlock watched, a man in a faded jacket and trousers that were too short for him approached the bay window and hesitated, holding back. Mycroft looked up and nodded to him. The man took an envelope from his pocket and handed it over. Mycroft took a small knife from his pocket and slit the envelope open. Taking out the letter inside, he read it briefly, then sighed. Sherlock was too far away to hear any words, but he could distinctly see Mycroft’s lips forming the words ‘The Mortimer Maberley problem again – I don’t know what he thinks I can do!’