He got to the end of the page without even realizing.
‘Bravo!’ Stone cried. ‘Not perfect, but better. You actually persuaded me that you were feeling the music, not just playing it.’ He gazed over at the slanted rays of sunlight that penetrated the loft. ‘Let’s stop it there: on a high note, as it were. Keep practising your scales, but also I want you to practise individual notes. Play a sustained note in different ways – with sadness, with happiness, with anger. Let the emotion seep through into the music, and see how it changes the note.’
‘I’m . . . not good with emotion,’ Sherlock admitted in a quiet voice.
‘I am,’ Stone said quietly. ‘Which means I can help.’ He placed a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder for a moment and squeezed, then took it away. ‘Now be off with you. Go and find that American girl and spend some time with her.’
‘Virginia?’ His heart quickened at the thought, but he wasn’t sure if it was happiness or terror that made it speed up. ‘But—’
‘No buts. Just go and see her.’
‘All right,’ Sherlock said. ‘Same time tomorrow?’
‘Same time tomorrow.’
He threw the violin into its case and half climbed, half slid down the ladder to the upper landing, then thudded down the stairs to the ground floor. Stone’s landlady – a woman of about Stone’s own age, with black hair and green eyes – came out of the kitchen to say something as he ran past, but he didn’t catch what it was. Within seconds he was out in the crisp, cold sunlight.
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
‘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
