by Andrew Lane
And he suddenly knew where Jude had run to, and what he was going to do.
This wasn’t over yet.
Leaving the burning sign and the barn full of comatose criminals, Sherlock staggered back along the road to where he and Matty had left their horses outside Mortimer Maberley’s house. He remembered dimly suggesting to Matty that Maberley use his horse if he didn’t have one of his own. He now hoped desperately that Maberley did actually have a horse, because otherwise he’d have to go back to the barn and hope that the criminals had left some of their own horses there – apart from the shire horses, of course, which were great at pulling things but not so good at galloping fast.
His thoughts were wandering, and he tried to force them into some kind of order. He realized that he was staggering sideways, so he concentrated on particular features of the road ahead and tried to walk straight for them. Somehow he found himself at the back of Maberley’s house, saddling up his horse, with only a foggy memory of how he had got from the road to there. His fingers were clumsy, but he managed in the end. Pulling himself up into the saddle of the patiently waiting horse, he urged it onward, back to the Westons’ house – where, he suspected, a rather uncomfortable family reunion was about to take place.
In later years, Sherlock could remember nothing of that wild ride but nightmare images, like a set of pictures snatched by some insane photographer – churches flashing past, clouds scudding against the moon, the relentless pounding of the horse’s hoofs on the road. The horse itself seemed to intuit, through some supernatural means, where he wanted it to go. Certainly he was no use in guiding it.
The ride took forever, or only a few moments. It felt like both.
Ferny Weston’s house was as twisted as Sherlock remembered from the first time he saw it. The front gate was open, and the horse galloped up the drive to the front door and then stopped, letting Sherlock half slide, half fall to the ground. He staggered in through the open front door. He didn’t bother checking the ground-floor rooms – he knew where this was going to end. Where it had to end.
When he pushed open the door of Marie Weston’s bedroom, there were three people inside.
Marie was, as before, in bed. Her face was pale, but she looked self-possessed as she pulled the bedsheet up to protect her. Ferny was by her side, half sitting on the bed with an arm around her. He was wearing his leather mask.
Jude – Jude Weston – was standing at the foot of the bed, pointing Ferny Weston’s gun at the two of them. He was burned, blistered, dirty and smeared with creosote, but his whole body burned with a terrible rage.
He swung the gun to cover Sherlock. ‘Yes, of course it’s you. How could it be anyone else? Please, come in and join the family.’
Sherlock walked past Jude to get to the head of the bed. For a mad second he wondered if he could grab the gun from the boy’s hand, but he could see from Jude’s wide eyes and fevered expression that he was on a knife edge. One twitch, one slight move, and the gun would fire.
Sherlock went to stand by Ferny Weston.
‘I solved Mr Maberley’s problem,’ he said brightly, wanting to break the heavy silence somehow. ‘It turns out that the house never moved, but the orchard did. It was all about the Cavalier treasure in the end.’
‘And that’s a conversation that you and I need to have,’ Jude said. ‘But first, I think my father has an apology to make.’
‘An apology?’ Ferny’s voice was low and guttural, full of anger. ‘You whelp! You are the one who left home. You are the one who dishonoured the family name.’
‘You knew he was behind the art thefts?’ Sherlock guessed.
‘I suspected – more and more as time went on – but I never had any proof. The boy was always very clever, but he never had any morals, any scruples. Anything he wanted, he would take. I tried disciplining him, sending him to harsh schools, but nothing had any effect. Worse – he seemed to take them over, by sheer force of personality, turning the pupils against the masters and fomenting rebellion. People would follow him, always, anywhere. He had that kind of personality. He got a scholarship to Oxford, although I suspect he cheated to get it, but when they threw him out he vanished. We never heard from him after that.’
‘Let me see your face, Father, if you are going to talk about me like that,’ Jude said in a mock-sweet voice. ‘Take off your mask, why don’t you? Look me in the eye.’
‘Jude – no!’ his mother cried, but Jude jerked the gun towards her and she was quiet.
Ferny Weston reached up and undid the catches on his mask. He slipped it off, revealing his scarred, broken face, his jigsaw scalp, his burning eyes.
‘You did this to me,’ he said. ‘You set that trap, in the house that we thought was your hideout.’
‘I did – and now I intend finishing what I started. You interfered with my work then, and you’re still interfering now, by sending this . . . child detective . . . to stop me.’
He swung the gun to point directly at Ferny’s face. ‘Say goodnight, Father,’ he snarled.
‘One question,’ Ferny said quietly. ‘You owe me that.’
‘I owe you nothing, but ask anyway. It might amuse me to answer.’
‘Who in the police force was providing you with the information about our investigation? I could never work it out. Just tell me that, then kill us both, if that’s what you have to do. God knows it would be a blessing for us both.’
‘Oh, I’m not going to kill you both,’ Jude said. He glanced at Sherlock. ‘Tell him why. I know from your eyes, and the way you have tightened your lips, that you already know.’
‘Know what?’ Ferny demanded.
Sherlock sighed. ‘It wasn’t that hard to figure out,’ he said. ‘It’s the same person who told Jude about Mortimer Maberley, and his Cavalier treasure. It’s the person from whom he inherited his criminal tendencies. It’s your wife, Ferny.’
The words hung in the air like the vibration of a heavy bell.
‘But –’ Ferny said, then stopped. His face went through many different emotions, one after another – disbelief, understanding, anger and reluctant acceptance.
‘She masterminded the whole thing, as far as I can tell,’ Sherlock went on.
‘But – the house? The trap? She was caught in it!’
‘An accident, I expect.’ Sherlock glanced past Ferny to Marie, who was watching proceedings with an expression of alert interest. ‘She went in to check that you were actually dead, but she was caught when a beam fell on her. She’s needed you ever since, and with you invalided out of the police force, you weren’t a threat to them any more. She has been in communication with Jude ever since, giving him the praise he needs and giving him his orders, while he has been keeping her informed as to the progress of his crimes.’
‘But – how?’ Ferny spluttered. Sherlock noticed that his hand had come off that of his wife and was clenching on the bedspread.
Sherlock nodded towards the brown paper and string that were still on the bedside table, left over from the package containing the wax body part that he and Matty had tracked, it seemed weeks ago now. ‘It’s the string, isn’t it?’ he asked Marie. ‘There are too many knots, and they’re spaced oddly. I noticed that the first time I saw it. There’s a code there, isn’t there, in the way the knots are arranged?’ He glanced back at Ferny. ‘One of their agents got to the packages before they got here and rewrapped them, encoding their messages into the string. I presume that there was a similar system going out – did your wife get you to post a lot of packages that she had wrapped herself?’
‘Embroidery,’ Ferny murmured, still screwing the bedspread up with his clumsy, broken fingers. ‘She sent embroidery to her friends – all over the world, it seemed. I never understood how she knew so many people.’
‘Ah,’ Sherlock said, ‘embroidery is really just a series of knots, all together, isn’t it?’
‘Enough,’ Marie Weston interrupted in her bright, friendly voice. She sounded like a schoolmistress talk
ing to a class of unruly children. ‘This could go on all day if we don’t put a stop to it. Jude – I don’t want any blood in here. Take the two of them out and shoot them in the garden, then bury the bodies. You may as well move back in. Things are going to change.’
‘What about George?’ Jude asked.
‘He’s still ill upstairs after he stupidly let one of the snakes bite him, otherwise I would tell him to help.’
With his eye Sherlock measured the distance between himself and the boy, but it was too far. Jude would shoot him before he moved. He sensed Ferny tensing beside him, and put his hand on the man’s shoulder, holding him back. They might get a chance as they were going downstairs, or when they got to the ground floor. Might. He wasn’t confident, though. Jude Weston was dangerously intelligent, and he could likely read what Sherlock was going to do even before he did it just from a twist in his shoulders.
‘Up,’ Jude said, gesturing with the gun. ‘Out.’ He backed into the hall so that they could get to the door, but so that they were still far enough away that they couldn’t attack him before he could pull the trigger.
‘Marie . . . ?’ Ferny said plaintively. He reached out to take his wife’s hand. She patted his with her other hand, smiled at him and said, ‘Don’t worry, dear. Jude will be quick. This is just business to him, and to me. Just business.’
Ferny stood up, and he seemed to Sherlock to have shrunk into himself. He was a broken man now, emotionally as well as physically.
Sherlock walked out into the hall, with Ferny following. Jude had backed along the hallway, away from the stairs. He kept the gun pointed at Sherlock’s forehead. ‘Now downstairs,’ he said, ‘and slowly. If you move suddenly, or even turn around, I will put a bullet through your head.’
Sherlock turned to face the stairs. He couldn’t think of a single thing to do. Jude had worked out all the angles, all the moves. He could predict Sherlock’s every likely move, and counter it.
Despair filled him as he took his first step towards the stairs and towards his own death.
Something rose up from where it had been hidden in the first few treads of the stairs.
It was Matty. He had something in his hand. Something bright red.
‘Duck,’ he said.
Sherlock dived to the ground. As he did so he saw Matty pull back his arm and throw the red object as hard as he could. From behind, Sherlock heard Jude shout, ‘What the—’ The words were cut off by a wet thud! and a choking noise.
Turning, even as he dived, Sherlock saw Jude Weston standing there, at the back of the hall. There was something red sticking out of his mouth. He was still holding the gun, but he didn’t seem to know what to do with it. His hand was dropping to his side, taking the gun with it. His eyes were wide open, frenzied, and he was gurgling.
He fell forward like a tree that had been chopped through at the base and hit the carpet hard. His father watched, incredulous.
Sherlock turned to Matty, climbing to his feet. ‘What did you do?’ he asked.
His friend’s face was pale and sweating. ‘Got to the barn,’ he said, raw pain in his voice. ‘Saw the sign. Followed you here, cos people had seen you ride past like a bat out of hell. Got here an’ couldn’t work out what to do. Didn’t ’ave a weapon, so I scooped up one of Ferny’s poison frogs from a tank downstairs. Thought it might not be poisonous to the touch, just if you got the poison inside you. That’s why I threw it at ’im.’
He held up a blistered and weeping right hand.
‘Think I was wrong,’ he said, and collapsed into Sherlock’s arms.
EPILOGUE
The sun was shining out of a perfect blue sky, reflecting off the shiny brass instruments of the military band as they sat on the bandstand. The musicians all faced the uniformed conductor in the centre, watching as he raised his baton. He brought it down dramatically, and they all started playing a rousing march.
The park was filled with people – couples walking together, parents with children, and the occasional older man in black suit, top hat and cane strolling in the sunshine. Most of the deckchairs surrounding the bandstand were occupied, but Sherlock and Mycroft had managed to find two chairs together that were in the shade and were also separated from everyone else by an empty row.
‘This is the life,’ Mycroft said. He was holding an ice-cream cone in his hand, occasionally licking the drops of melting ice cream as they trickled down the cornet. ‘Family, sunshine, ice cream and a brass band. I do think that England has the best martial music in the world. The Italians have Verdi and Rossini, the Austrians have Mozart and the Germans have several generations of Bach, but we have brass bands and rousing marches. I think we have the better part of the deal.’
‘You kept me in the dark,’ Sherlock said quietly. He desperately wanted to be angry with his brother, but he was holding an ice-cream cone too, and that made it difficult.
‘I suspect that the United States of America will overtake us with regard to marching music,’ Mycroft went on as if Sherlock had said nothing. ‘I am already hearing good reports of a young composer there named John Philip Sousa. However, at the moment we are still pre-eminent in the field. You cannot beat a good military march.’
‘Mycroft—’
‘How is your little friend Matthew?’ Mycroft interrupted.
‘He’s recovering.’ Sherlock winced, thinking about how close Matty had come to dying. Only the quick reaction of Ferny Weston in scrubbing Matty’s hands with charcoal and injecting him with a drug that counteracted the poison in the frog’s skin had saved him. Once he was stable, Sherlock had moved him to Mrs McCrery’s house, where there was a spare bed. Mrs McCrery seemed to have taken a shine to Matty, and so he was tucked up warmly there and being fed on an almost hourly basis. Sherlock expected that Matty would have put on a lot of weight by the time he returned from London.
‘Good. He is a brave and resourceful boy. A world without him in it would be a poorer world.’
‘He wouldn’t have been in danger in the first place if you had been honest with me!’ Sherlock snapped. Annoyed with himself for the emotional reaction, he licked at his ice cream.
Mycroft sighed heavily – which was, Sherlock reflected, about the only way his brother could sigh these days. ‘It is not as if I was deliberately withholding information. I merely did not wish you to be overburdened by it when you first arrived in Oxford. My intention was to send you a letter after a few weeks mentioning in passing the Mortimer Maberley situation and suggesting that you take a look as you were in the vicinity. I would have told you about Ferny Weston as well, in the fullness of time. I just—’
‘You just wanted me to think I was a free agent, rather than one of your agents, for as long as possible,’ Sherlock said.
‘Indeed.’ Mycroft’s face was unreadable. ‘The best agent is the one who does not even realize he is an agent.’
‘Was Mortimer Maberley the whole reason you sent me to Oxford in the first place?’ Sherlock asked.
‘Absolutely not. Oxford is the best place for you to be at this point in your life. The fact that my attention had been drawn to Mr Maberley’s predicament by an anonymous letter from Ferny Weston was purely coincidental. What I had not anticipated was that you would be so quick to discover the problem and to solve it. Or that young Matthew would be so badly hurt in the process.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Sherlock, be assured that if I had sent you to Cambridge instead, there are matters there that beg some investigation as well. In fact, wherever you might go in England there are questions and mysteries to be solved that the local police force seem incapable of addressing.’
Sherlock shrugged. ‘Then it looks as if the whole of England needs some form of detective who is better informed and more tenacious than the police.’
‘A thought you might do well to bear in mind for the future.’ Mycroft licked his ice cream. ‘Ferny Weston thought he might be that detective, but much as I respect the man, he does have a policeman’s brain. His thoughts travel
in straight lines. It does not handle corners easily, whereas yours does.’
‘What about his wife? What will happen to her?’
‘The more we investigate, the more we find,’ Mycroft said enigmatically.
‘We?’ Sherlock challenged. ‘I thought you were with the Foreign Office, not the police?’
‘Last year an American railway entrepreneur died while eating soup in a very expensive restaurant, the day before he could sign an important business deal. Initially a heart attack was suspected, but further investigation revealed the presence of a fast-acting poison in his lobster bisque – a poison derived from the box jellyfish. Two days later a Russian company signed the business deal instead of him. Three months after that a judge in Italy died while drinking a glass of wine, just before he was about to begin presiding over the trial of a Vatican official for bank fraud. Again, a heart attack was suspected; again it proved to be poison – this time derived from a rattlesnake. The trial subsequently collapsed, as no judge would step into the breach. I could draw your attention to twenty, perhaps thirty, similar cases around the world in the time since Ferny Weston and his wife suffered their “accident”.’
‘She was supplying poisons to criminals around the world?’ Sherlock was aghast.
‘She was,’ his brother confirmed. ‘Poison is a woman’s weapon. The spread of cases around the world, and the destabilizing effects on politics and on governments, make it a Foreign Office matter.’
‘She was so nice.’ Sherlock remembered the conversation he’d had with Marie Weston, in her bedroom. ‘And she was pretty.’
‘“One may smile, and smile, and be a villain”,’ Mycroft said softly. ‘Or so William Shakespeare said in Hamlet. I have said it before and I will say it again: the solution to any political problem can be found somewhere in Hamlet.’
‘But she couldn’t have been providing the poisons on her own – someone must have been helping her, and I refuse to believe that it was Ferny.’