England. The landscape was rougher, wilder – craggy, dark hills in place of rolling fields. Even the sky seemed more overcast.
A ticket collector eventually appeared, and Sherlock explained about their friend not having made it back on to the train. The man
Time seemed to slide slowly past. The ticket collector returned later to say that there was no news of Rufus Stone, and Sherlock felt his mood become blacker. Eventually, looking out of the window, he noticed that they were heading through more houses than he’d seen in one place for a while. Rather than being made out of brick, they were constructed from large blocks of grey stone. It gave them a serious, permanent look. The sun, which was balanced on the horizon, cast an orange light over them. The train began to slow down, wheezing to a halt just as it came alongside a platform that seemed to go on for miles. The signs on the platform read
‘We’re here,’ Matty said simply.
They left the train, clutching their bags. They took Rufus’s too. Sherlock pulled Matty to one side and stopped. He wanted to watch the rest of the passengers leaving, just in case he recognized someone – like Mr Kyte or, hopefully, Rufus Stone.
The station was a teeming mass of people in different varieties of clothes, from top hat and tails to hairy tweed jackets and patched trousers. There were even – and Sherlock had to suppress a gasp at this – men wearing skirts.
Matty noticed Sherlock’s reaction. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘sorry – I probably should have mentioned that. Took me by surprise when I was here a few years back.’
‘Men with skirts? Well, maybe you thought I wouldn’t notice.’
‘They’re not skirts,’ Matty said firmly. ‘They’re
‘Kilts.’ Sherlock sampled the unfamiliar word.
‘They’re a traditional piece of clothing worn by the Scottish clans.’ He sniffed. ‘A “clan” being a posh name for a family, as far as I can tell. Anyway, the clans used to be perpetually at war with each other until they all decided to get together and hate the English, and apparently the kilt makes it easier to fight. Or something. Anyway, they’re coloured in different ways depending on which family you come from.’
‘Presumably,’ Sherlock said, ‘so you can make sure that the man you’re fighting is from another clan and not your second cousin twice removed.’
‘Probably,’ Matty replied.
Sherlock filed the information away in his brain. Different coloured kilts for different families – that would bear some further investigation. You could look at a man in a street in London and not have any way of finding out his name short of asking him, but if you could look at a man in a street in Edinburgh and know straight away that his name was MacDonald, well, that was a useful thing to know.
‘Anything else I should know?’ he asked.
‘That purse-like thing that hangs down in front of the kilt is called a “sporran”, and it’s used to store things like money and such. Oh, and if a Scotsman’s wearing a kilt then there’s an odds-on chance that he’s got a small knife tucked into his sock. It’s called a “dirk”.’
‘Got it. Thanks.’ Sherlock continued to look around, and to listen. Many conversations were going on within earshot, but the words were accented, difficult to understand. Sherlock was used to local accents of course – people in Farnham talked differently from people in London, and the various Americans he’d met talked differently from anybody in England, but he hadn’t expected there to be an accent within a train ride of London that was so thick it was almost incomprehensible. He listened for a minute or so, analysing the passing conversations with Matty standing patiently by his side, until he had the basics sorted out. Once your ear was attuned to it, the accent seemed to fade into the background, letting the words come to the front.
‘Right,’ he said as the last passengers walked through the barrier and he stared along the empty platform, ‘I think I’ve acclimatized myself. Let’s go and find the hotel.’
They went outside and took the second cab they could find. The driver seemed to be in two minds whether he should risk taking two boys by themselves, but Sherlock showed him a handful of shillings from his pocket and the man nodded. As long as they could pay, he didn’t care what age they were.
Sherlock had already looked inside the envelope that Mycroft had given them, and he called out the hotel’s name to the driver.
The journey took about twenty minutes, passing terraces of tall buildings all made of the same grey stone blocks, and larger halls and mansions set back in acres of grass behind metal railings. Close up, Sherlock noticed that the grey stone contained hints of other colours – orange, yellow, blue, green – and that even the stone that was really grey often had ripples of darker hues running through.
The cab took them along the side of a park, and then jinked left and right into a wide thoroughfare lined with shops and hotels. It was the match of anything Sherlock had seen in London, New York or Moscow. Edinburgh, he could tell already, was an old and proud city.
The cab took a sudden right and drew to a stop. Sherlock and Matty got out just as the driver threw their bags down from where they had been stored behind him. He obviously felt that he shouldn’t dismount for kids. Sherlock resisted the temptation to throw the money at his feet. Instead he just held it up, slightly out of reach, so that the driver had to lean forward precariously to get it.
They had stopped before a tall terraced building with a sign saying ‘The Fraser Hotel’. The cab pulled away into a turn, back towards the main thoroughfare, and Sherlock noticed with part of his mind that the road sloped downward ahead of them. The rest of his mind was taken up with marvelling at the castle that had been revealed as the cab pulled away. It was enormous and dark, but the fact that it was built on a hill that was partly hidden by mist made the castle look as if it was a vast storm cloud hanging over the town.
‘What now?’ Matty asked.
Sherlock felt the absence of Rufus Stone weighing heavily on his mind. With Rufus gone he felt vulnerable, uncertain. Two kids, alone in Edinburgh. What
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
CHAPTER NINE
After dumping their bags Sherlock and Matty headed down the hotel’s staircase and out into the town. The sun had dropped beneath the horizon, and the darkness of the night was leavened by gas lamps and by flaming torches attached to brackets on the stone buildings. People were already thronging the streets, crossing from one tavern to another apparently in search of a better time than they were already having. Avoiding all of the activity as far as they could, the two of them found a relatively civilized tavern where they could sit in a corner and eat a gammon pie each, washed down with a watery beer which the barman seemed to have no problem serving them. However, when Sherlock asked for a pitcher of water the man just looked at him with a scowl on his face.
Every few minutes a different person tried to sit down beside them and engage them in conversation. Sometimes it was a woman with more make-up than was necessary and wearing clothes that looked as if they hadn’t been washed in a while, but more often it was an unshaven man in a stained suit or a grey collarless shirt and braces. Matty always said the same thing – ‘Our dad will be here in a minute, and he wouldn’t like it if he found you here’ – and they quickly left with a muttered apology or a curse. The first time it happened Sherlock just shrugged it off, but after the third time he stared at Matty with a question in his eyes. Matty avoided his gaze. ‘There’s some strange people around,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t matter what town you’re in, they always try and make friends with you if you’re a kid alone. You learn early on not to have anything to do with them.’
Sherlock didn’t ask any questions. It was obvious that Matty didn’t want to go into details, but once again he was glad to have his friend with him.
For a while they discussed what to do about Rufus Stone. It was clear that they had both secretly hoped that they would find him, or at least a message from him, at the hotel. The fact that there was nothing had rattled them more than they wanted to admit.
