‘She’s certainly a difficult person to please,’ Sherlock said cautiously. He’d learned from Amyus Crowe that general statements, left hanging like that, normally encouraged talkative people to talk even more, and Cook was one of the most talkative people he knew.
‘She is that. I never known such a person to find fault, and ’er tongue’s as sharp as a butcher’s knife. I worked with ’undreds of ’ousekeepers over the years, but she’s got to be the most hoity-toity and the most unpleasant.’
‘What made my uncle and aunt employ her in the first place?’ Sherlock asked. ‘I presume she must have had a good set of references from her previous jobs.’
‘If she did, then I never got to ’ear about them.’
‘I keep seeing her around the house,’ Sherlock said. ‘Just standing there, not doing anything apart from watching and listening.’
‘That’s ’er all over,’ Cook confirmed. ‘Like a crow, just standin’ on a branch waitin’ for a worm.’ Colour was coming back into her cheeks now. She sniffed again. ‘Soon as she arrived she turned this kitchen upside down. Moved everythin’ out into the garden and ’ad the walls an’ the tiles scrubbed. Give ’er credit – she did it herself. Shut the door an’ worked for a whole day, she did. Said she’d ’ad experience of ’ouses wiv mice an’ rats an’ she wanted to make sure there weren’t none ’ere. The nerve of the woman! As if I’d let a mouse in my kitchen!’
‘She’s a strange woman,’ Sherlock confirmed.
‘I got some biscuits I baked earlier,’ Cook confided. ‘Do you want a couple, to keep you goin’ before tea?’
‘I’d love some,’ he said, smiling. ‘In fact, I’d happily miss tea and just eat your biscuits.’
‘It’s nice to ’ave someone who appreciates my cookin’,’ Cook said, beaming. She seemed more cheerful now.
After wolfing down three of Cook’s biscuits, Sherlock headed back into the house. He wasn’t sure that he’d made much progress, but he seemed to have established that Mrs Eglantine had somehow blackmailed her way into the house and that she was searching for something. The gold plates that had been mentioned in her notes? He supposed it was possible, but it sounded a little unlikely. Why would there be gold plates, of all things, in his aunt and uncle’s possession? What would they want such a thing for? He’d been living there for over a year now, and he’d never seen any plates apart from the porcelain ones that were used every day and the bone-china ones brought out on Sundays and when anyone visited. Neither of those sets of plates had any gold at all on them, not even gold-leaf edging.
Suddenly he couldn’t face the prospect of staying in the house for the rest of the day. It seemed to be weighing down on him like a heavy coat. He had to get out. For a few seconds he thought about heading over to see Amyus Crowe – and Virginia – but he felt as if there was more that he could do concerning Mrs Eglantine. If she was in Farnham, sourcing fresher vegetables than Cook had got, then perhaps he could find her and watch her for a while from hiding. After all, perhaps the vegetables were just an excuse. Perhaps she had a different reason for going into town.
He left by the front door and headed for the stables, where his horse was kept. He thought of it as
Saddling Philadelphia up the way he’d been taught by the groom who worked for the Holmes family, he cantered out of the grounds and along the road that led to Farnham. He’d got pretty good at riding over the past few months, ever since getting back from the eventful trip that he and his brother had made to Russia.
That trip, he reminded himself as the horse calmly trotted along past the tall trees of Alice Holt Forest, had involved the mysterious Paradol Chamber – the international gang of criminals who had also been involved with the colossal schemes of Baron Maupertuis. Nothing had been heard of them since their plan to discredit Sherlock’s brother Mycroft and assassinate the head of the Russian Secret Service had fallen apart, but Sherlock knew that they were still out there, somewhere. He occasionally asked Mycroft about them, but Mycroft professed himself to be as mystified as Sherlock as to what they were up to. The only certainty was that somewhere in the world they were up to something.
The outskirts of Farnham crept up on Sherlock before he knew it: solid red brick buildings with tiled roofs replacing the thatched cottages that had been scattered along the road from Holmes Manor. Rather than ride into the town centre, and risk having Mrs Eglantine see him, he left the horse tied up at a stables he’d used before on the outskirts of town, tipping the ostler a few pence to feed and water it. He walked the rest of the way.
If Mrs Eglantine was telling the truth about vegetables, then she would be at the market. Sherlock headed over towards where it was held, in the shadow of a two-storey building with colonnades all the way around. The marketplace was filled to capacity with stalls selling all manner of foodstuffs, from fruit to fresh beans, from smoked meat to shellfish.
He couldn’t see Mrs Eglantine anywhere, but he did see Matty standing by a vegetable stall. He looked as if he was waiting for something to roll off in his direction.
Matty caught sight of Sherlock and waved. Sherlock saw his friend’s gaze flicker back to the stall, and a look of momentary indecision cross his face before he walked over.
‘Waiting for lunch?’ Sherlock asked.
‘I don’t really separate stuff out into “meals” as such,’ Matty admitted. ‘I just eat whenever I can.’
‘Very wise. Have you seen Mrs Eglantine around?’
‘That housekeeper?’ Matty shuddered. ‘I try to stay away from her. She’s bad news.’
‘Yes, but have you
Matty nodded over towards a stall selling fresh trout laid on grass. ‘She was over there a few minutes ago. Said the fish was too small.’
‘Did you see which direction she went?’
He shrugged. ‘Long as she was heading away from me, I didn’t really care. Why? What’s up?’
Sherlock debated whether to tell Matty about the confrontation between Mrs Eglantine and his uncle, but he decided to keep quiet. That was a private family matter – at least for the moment. ‘I just need to know where she is,’ he said. ‘I think she’s up to something.’
‘Shouldn’t be too hard to find her,’ Matty said. ‘She dresses like every day is a Sunday, an’ someone’s died to boot . . .’
As the two boys moved across the marketplace, pushing past the various vendors, customers and browsers who filled the place, Sherlock caught fragments of conversation from all directions.
‘. . . an’ I told ’im, if ’e comes back without it I’m leavin’ . . .’
‘. . . you gave me your word that the deal was already made, Bill . . .’
‘. . . if I see you with that lad again, girl, I’ll wallop you so hard your head will be spinning for a week . . .’
One voice in particular snagged his attention. It was accented, American. He recognized the accent from talking to Amyus Crowe, and from his time in New York. He turned his head, thinking that maybe it was Crowe who was speaking, but the face that he found himself looking at was younger: all sharp planes and hard edges. The man’s hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, and beneath the hair it looked to Sherlock as if his right ear was missing. All he could see there was a mass of dark scar tissue. His clothes were dusty and well-travelled, and he was speaking to a companion who had short blond hair and a face covered in circular scars, the kind you got from a bad case of smallpox.
‘. . . will flay us alive and turn our skins into hats,’ the man with the missing ear was saying.
‘We need to find Crowe and his daughter. They’re our only chance!’
‘Well, we know what’ll happen to us if we
‘Yeah.’ The dark-haired man’s face twisted with an unpleasant memory. ‘Don’t do nothing but stare at the wall now, after what the boss did to him. It’s like there’s nothing left inside his head, apart from what he needs to breathe and to eat . . .’
They were walking in one direction and Sherlock and Matty were walking in another, and that was all Sherlock heard before the two men were out of earshot. It sounded serious though. Sherlock decided to go and see Mr Crowe as soon as he could. Crowe needed to know that someone was looking for him.
