Young Sherlock Holmes: Fire Storm

‘Won’t he just stop you from getting on a train?’

Sherlock smiled. ‘You know Rufus Stone. You know what he’s like. Given a choice between stopping me going to Scotland or coming with me and having an adventure, what do you think he’ll do?’

‘Fair point,’ Matty admitted. ‘When do we tell him?’

‘Let’s collect a bit more information first. I want to check the station in Farnham. If Mr Crowe and Virginia are heading for Scotland, then they’re not doing it on horseback, or in a cart. They’d be too vulnerable. No, they’ll go by train.’

Matty frowned, carefully thinking through what Sherlock had said. Watching him, Sherlock felt a sudden flash of kinship. Matty had become a part of his life in a way he had never expected. The boy was his opposite in so many ways – instinctive where Sherlock was logical, emotional where Sherlock was cold, impulsive where Sherlock would always think through his options – but he had a quick mind, and he was fantastically loyal. He was the closest thing Sherlock had to a best friend. Sherlock wondered if he always would be.

‘If Mr Crowe bought two tickets to Edinburgh from the ticket office at Farnham Station,’ he said slowly, ‘then he’d be leaving a trail. If the Americans are chasing him they could just check at the ticket office and find out where he went. It’s not as if he’s inconspicuous.’

‘No,’ Sherlock agreed. ‘So what would he do?’

Matty shrugged. ‘I dunno.’

‘He’d probably buy two tickets to an intermediate station – say, Guildford, but he and Virginia could get off earlier – maybe at Ash Wharf. He could then buy two tickets through to Edinburgh from there. If anyone was following then they’d go from Farnham direct to Guildford, and there they would lose the trail, because nobody at the ticket office in Guildford would remember him.’

‘Clever,’ said Matty approvingly.

‘In fact,’ Sherlock went on, ‘if I were him, I would buy two tickets for Guildford, get off at Ash Wharf, buy two tickets for London, then when I got to London I’d buy two tickets for Edinburgh. That confuses the trail even more.’

‘You’re sure that’s what he’d do?’

Sherlock nodded. ‘He’s a hunter. He knows the kinds of trail that prey can leave, and he’ll be careful not to do the same thing.’

‘So what now?’

‘Now we go to Farnham.’

The two of them rode from the cottage towards the centre of Farnham, not without a twinge of guilt in Sherlock’s mind. He hated leaving the cottage empty and unguarded. Who knew what might happen to it before Amyus Crowe and Virginia came back? They would come back, he was sure of it. He would make sure of it.

The ticket-office clerk at Farnham – a tall elderly man with fluffy white sideburns – confirmed that a bigman in a white suit and hat, accompanied by a girl dressed like a boy, had bought two tickets the day before. Sherlock was pleased to note that the tickets had been bought with Guildford as the destination. So far his deductions were bang on target.

‘Look,’ Matty said, pointing across the road. In a small triangle of field next to a barn a horse was cropping the grass. It was tied by a long halter to a fence.

‘That’s Sandia,’ Matty said.

‘Are you sure?’ Sherlock asked.

‘Very sure.’

‘At least we know he’s all right. Virginia has probably paid someone at the station to keep an eye on him. If she had time to do that, they can’t have been taken forcibly. They must have found out that somebody was after them. If I know Mr Crowe, he will have managed to keep one step ahead of them.’ Suddenly Sherlock felt an awful lot better.

‘Are we going on to Ash Wharf now?’

Sherlock thought for a moment. There was a point at which extra evidence did nothing more than confirm what you already knew. He was confident enough in his deductions. ‘No, let’s go and find Rufus Stone. We need to tell him what we’re going to do, and then we need to talk to my aunt and uncle.’ He remembered the events of earlier that day. ‘I think there’s enough residual goodwill there that they won’t raise any objections to me going away for a few days, especially if they know that Rufus Stone is going with me.

Matty turned to go, but Sherlock reached out a hand and stopped him. Matty turned back enquiringly.

‘What?’

Sherlock hesitated, wondering how to ask the question. Wondering if he should ask the question. ‘That stuff you said earlier, about friendship getting thrown away when times are tight and money is scarce – did you really mean it?’

Matty looked away. His lips tightened for a moment before he answered. ‘I’ve had friends before,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t have them now. They left, one by one, when it suited them. So I learned that’s the way things work.’

‘Not with me,’ Sherlock said. ‘And not with Amyus Crowe or Virginia.’

Matty nodded reluctantly. ‘At least you’ve convinced me they didn’t want to go. That’s a start. Now come on. Time’s slipping away.’

They found Stone where Sherlock had expected him to be – in his lodgings, practising by himself up in the attic space. The two boys could hear him faintly from the street, playing what sounded like a wild dance. As they climbed the stairs the music got louder and louder, until they entered the attic where it seemed to fill the entire space, whirling and spinning with the lanky figure of Rufus Stone sawing madly with the bow in the centre. If he heard them enter then he gave no sign. Eyes closed, he pulled wilder and wilder notes from his instrument until, with a final flourish, he finished. The air appeared to quiver like a jelly for a split second before collapsing back to normal.

‘That’s a hell of a tune,’ Matty said approvingly.

‘Very kind,’ Stone said, turning and grinning at the two of them. ‘Although I have to say, it sounds even better played by the light of a campfire in the middle of a forest at midnight. The trouble is that the older I get, the more I find I prefer the comfort of a warm, dry house.’ He gazed from one boy to the other. ‘Something has happened, hasn’t it? Tell me.’

Between them, with Sherlock sketching in the facts and Matty filling the gaps with vivid descriptions, they told Rufus Stone the story. His face grew grimmer and grimmer as they spoke. When Sherlock finished by telling him exactly what the two of them planned to do, he stood for a moment, thinking.

‘You really both intend going to Edinburgh?’ he asked finally.

‘Yes,’ Sherlock answered.

‘And there’s nothing I can say to change your minds?’

‘No,’ Matty replied.

He sighed. ‘Then it’s a good thing I keep a bag packed and ready by the door. It won’t be the first time I’ve had to leave a place at a moment’s notice.’

‘The difference is,’ Sherlock said quietly, ‘that we’ll all be coming back. With two extra people.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was the next day before the three of them could set out for Edinburgh.

After talking Rufus Stone into accompanying them as a responsible adult – a task that was surprisingly easy, Sherlock thought, all things considered – Matty had headed off to make arrangements for Albert to be looked after while Sherlock rode back to Holmes Manor to talk to his aunt and uncle. As he expected, they were still dazed and distracted from Mrs Eglantine’s fall from grace, and the personal freedom they had suddenly gained as a result. He presented the trip to them as a fait accompli and, as he expected, they went along with it. After all, they had previously agreed to him travelling to America and Russia. Compared to that, Edinburgh was just down the road. Or up it.