‘You’re welcome, I s’pose,’ Matty said, shifting uncomfortably. He wasn’t used to praise, or to being the centre of attention.
Crowe turned to Sherlock. He gazed at him for a long moment, then shook his head. ‘Sherlock, whenever ah think ah’ve gotten you figured out, you manage to surprise me. Ah’m not sure which one of us is the student and which one is the teacher any more. Ah suspect that it’s more a partnership of equals now, but ah’m not uncomfortable about that. Ah’m not too old to learn.’ He paused and swallowed. ‘Fact is, Virginia an’ I would be dead or on the run now, if it weren’t for you. Ah owe you more than ah can say.’
Sherlock glanced away, out at the bustling scene of the station forecourt. ‘I don’t like change,’ he muttered eventually. ‘I like to have everything in my life familiar, and I need to know where I can find it. That counts for people as well as things.’
‘Well, son, you know where
Crowe dropped his arm away from Virginia’s shoulders, ready for the two of them to head off towards their cottage, but Virginia stepped closer to Sherlock.
‘Thank you,’ she said simply, and kissed him on the lips.
Before he could do anything apart from blush, she had turned away and was walking off with her arm through her father’s.
In the station, the train’s steam whistle sounded. It was ready to leave.
‘I think,’ Rufus Stone said, breaking the heavy silence, ‘that I need a stiff tot of rum and a liniment-soaked bandage for my fingers. Or a stiff tot of liniment and a rum-soaked bandage for my fingers. Either one will do. The rum in the Farnham taverns tastes like liniment anyway.’ He cocked his head as he looked at Sherlock. ‘Let’s delay restarting the violin lessons, eh? I suspect that your fingers will be a lot more agile than mine for a while, and I hate to be embarrassed.’
Glancing at Matty, Rufus raised a finger to his forehead and saluted. ‘Until next time, Mr Arnatt.’
Stone walked off jauntily. Sherlock watched him go. He knew he should have been feeling something over all the goodbyes, but his lips were still tingling with the memory of Virginia’s kiss.
‘See you tomorrow?’ Matty said.
‘I suppose so,’ Sherlock replied. ‘The only thing I can think of now is sleep, and lots of it.’
Matty glanced at the crates that had been unloaded from the train. ‘Looks like there’s some good scoff there,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll follow them crates for a while, just in case an accident happens and one smashes.’
Sherlock smiled. Matty was irrepressible. He would always survive, no matter what happened. In fact, Sherlock wouldn’t be surprised if, in fifteen or twenty years’ time, someone named Matthew Arnatt was a highly successful businessman with interests all over the country. But he would still be stealing pies off market stalls, just to keep his hand in; of that much Sherlock was certain.
‘People think there’s an obvious dividing line between things that are legal and illegal,’ he said quietly. ‘I think if I’ve learned anything since moving to Farnham, it’s that there
‘As long as I’m closer to the white end than the black end, I’m prob’ly all right,’ Matty said. He grinned suddenly, then turned and ran off.
Sherlock held on for a moment, waiting for something to happen. He wasn’t sure what that thing might be, but he had a sense that the storm had paused for a moment rather than passing on. Eventually, when nobody else came up to talk to him and nothing at all noteworthy happened anywhere around him, he left, feeling somehow deflated.
He caught a ride on a farmer’s passing carriage back to Holmes Manor. He jumped off at the gates and walked up the curving drive to the front door, carrying his bag of clothes and toiletries.
The door was unlocked, and he pushed it open. Sunlight streamed across the hall. The space that for so many months had seemed dark and threatening now was filled with warmth and light. It was like an entirely different house. Had he finally got used to it, or was this something to do with Mrs Eglantine’s departure? Had she taken the shadows and the darkness with her?
As he stepped into the hall, a figure appeared from the dining room.
‘Ah, you must be Master Sherlock,’ a voice said.
Sherlock’s tired gaze took in the form of a middle-aged woman with straw-coloured hair pulled back into a bun that was secured at the back of her head with a net. Her face was kind, and her eyes were brown and lively. Although she wore black there was something about her clothes that gave the impression of parties and dances rather than funerals and wakes.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve been away for a few days.’
‘So the master said. He mentioned that he was expecting you back soon.’ She smiled. ‘My name is Mrs Mulhill, and I am the new housekeeper. I started yesterday.’
‘Welcome to Holmes Manor.’
‘Thank you. I am looking forward to working here very much indeed.’ She glanced at his bag. ‘I’m sure you have laundry that I can take. If you want to make yourself comfortable somewhere, I will bring you a tray of tea and some biscuits. The master and the mistress are out at the moment, but they will be back for dinner.’
‘Tea and biscuits,’ he said, ‘would be wonderful.’
Leaving his bag in her care, he went across to the library. In his uncle’s absence it was the place where he felt most at home. The front room was for receiving visitors, and the dining room was for eating, and he didn’t feel like going up to his bedroom.
He settled down into his uncle’s leather chair, soothed by the smell of the books and the manuscripts that surrounded him. On the desk he could see the pile of sermons, letters and suchlike that his uncle had asked him to sort through, before Josh Harkness, Gahan Macfarlane and Bryce Scobell had infiltrated his life. It all seemed so long ago.
The sermon in front of him was one he had already looked at – an attack by a vicar somewhere up in the Midlands on various heresies and schisms within the Church. Sherlock’s gaze caught on the phrase ‘Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ halfway down the page, and it was as if a light had suddenly gone on in his brain.
Gold plates. Mrs Eglantine had been looking for gold plates, because she had overheard Sherlock’s Uncle Sherrinford talking about them. She had been obsessed with the idea that somewhere in the house was hidden a stash of gold plates – a treasure of some kind – but she had never found them.
There was a treasure, but it wasn’t the kind she had been anticipating.
Sherlock called to mind what he had read about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – or the Mormons, as they were also known – while he was in his uncle’s library. The movement had begun in America about forty years before, led by a man named Joseph Smith Jr. He had claimed that he had in his possession a sacred text called the Book of Mormon, which he told people was a supplement to the Bible. When asked where this sacred book had come from, Smith claimed that when he was seventeen years old an angel named Moroni told him that a collection of ancient writings, engraved on golden plates by ancient prophets, was buried under a hill near New York. The writings told of a tribe of Jews who had been led by God from Jerusalem to America six hundred years before Jesus was born.
Golden plates.
Sherlock felt a laugh bubbling up in his chest. Mrs Eglantine must have overheard Sherrinford Holmes talking to Aunt Anna about the golden plates of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Had he mentioned the word ‘treasure’ as well? Had he said to her something like, ‘I shall treasure this letter, my dear, as it gives me everything I need to argue that the golden plates of the Mormons never existed,’ and had Mrs Eglantine overheard the words ‘treasure’ and ‘golden plates’ and drawn a completely erroneous conclusion? Without asking her, Sherlock would never know, and he devoutly hoped that he would never meet her again, but it seemed likely. The treasure she had so diligently searched for was a chimera. A complete illusion.
Sherlock laughed again. He would tell his uncle, of course, as soon as he returned, but he didn’t think Sherrinford would be too distressed by the news that there was no treasure. He wasn’t a man who cared much for worldly goods.
In the midst of laughing, Sherlock smelled something sweet. It was a familiar smell, vaguely medicinal. He knew it from somewhere, but he couldn’t quite place it. For a moment he thought that Mrs Mulhill had returned with the tray of biscuits she had promised, but the room was empty apart from him.
