troupe pretty much just slept where they sat, stretched out where possible across the seats.
The musicians, to whom Sherlock had not been introduced, sat together and seemed to sleep or play draughts on small folding tables all the time. Only Mycroft and Mr Kyte had their own separate berths, as befitting their status as General Manager and Actor-Manager of Kyte’s Theatrical Company. They spent most of their time alone.
Sherlock spent much of the time glued to the window, watching the land flash past. Names that he’d only ever seen in atlases were suddenly coming to life in front of him: countries such as Belgium and Prussia; towns and cities including Brussels, Koln, Berlin, Warsaw and Minsk…
He was staring out of the window, watching wide swathes of fir trees slip past, when Mrs Loran sat down beside him.
‘You seem lonely,’ she said. ‘I thought you might fancy a chat.’
‘I’m fine. I’m just… fascinated by the way some things change as we travel, like languages and food, and yet other things, like plants and animals, stay more or less the same. There’s always birds and cats, for instance.’
‘And sausages,’ she pointed out. ‘I don’t believe there’s a country in the world that doesn’t have sausages.’ She gazed at him sympathetically for a while. ‘Your mentor, Mr Sigerson, doesn’t seem to have had much time for you on this journey,’ she said eventually.
‘He’s been busy,’ Sherlock replied, feeling that he ought to defend Mycroft.
‘Nevertheless, I would have thought that, having taken you under his wing, he would have been keen to look after you, not leave you on your own.’ She cocked her head to one side. ‘He doesn’t seem very interested in your welfare.’
‘He’s got a lot of things to think about.’ Feeling sensitive, Sherlock tried to change the subject. ‘Have you been acting for long?’
She gazed past him, out of the window. ‘Oh, sometimes I feel as if I have been acting all of my life,’ she murmured.
The landscape changed as they moved further and further west. The little bit of France that Sherlock had seen, and the broad swathe of Belgium that they had travelled through, were a mixture of dark green forests and light green fields. But as they travelled through Prussia and into Russia itself the land became more and more waterlogged and the temperature plummeted until the smaller ponds were frozen and there was snow on the ground. The people seemed shorter and darker, or perhaps the low cloud that sat perpetually over the land was having an effect on his senses.
At one point, Sherlock walked along the carriage corridor to see how Mycroft was doing. His brother was sitting in his compartment, propped up by pillows, looking decidedly unwell. He was surrounded by open books, and appeared to be making notes in a small notebook. He looked up as Sherlock knocked and pushed the door open.
‘Yes?’
‘I wanted to see if you were all right.’
‘No, I am not. The infernal rattling of this train is upsetting my digestive system. I am attempting to distract myself with books, but they are of limited help.’
‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘Just leave me alone to suffer in peace,’ Mycroft snapped. ‘I do not feel up to conversation at the moment.’
Sherlock backed out and closed the door. He stood for a few moments outside his brother’s compartment, unsure what to do. He couldn’t remember feeling as lonely and as useless as this since the first time he’d walked into his aunt and uncle’s house in Farnham.
He turned to walk away, but something caught his eye. It was just outside the door to Mr Kyte’s compartment, lying by the door frame: a small brown object about the size and shape of his thumb with a thin piece of cord or string attached. He bent to pick it up. As his fingers and thumb closed on it, and it gave slightly under the pressure, he realized with a shock that it was a mouse. A dead mouse. The thing that he had thought was a piece of string dangling from it was its tail.
A dead mouse? He supposed that trains must have mice, just like houses. He looked around for somewhere to put it, but the door to My Kyte’s compartment opened a crack, and the burly, red-bearded man stared out at Sherlock through the gap. ‘Yes?’ he wheezed. ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing,’ Sherlock said. ‘I was just… visiting Mr Sigerson.’ He slipped the dead mouse into his pocket. For some reason he didn’t quite understand, he didn’t want to mention it to Mr Kyte.
‘If you’re bored,’ Kyte breathed, ‘go and talk to the boys. You’ll need to work with them on the backdrops and the props. Get to know them.’
He closed the door in Sherlock’s face.
Actually, after three days in London, learning how to raise backdrops and move props on stage, Sherlock had got to know the four younger members of the company pretty well. To pass the time on the train, Sherlock finally gave in to their requests to join them in a game of cards. Within the space of a day they had taught him the rules of whist, backgammon and baccarat, and with his mathematically oriented mind – not to mention the retentive memory that seemed to be the genetic heritage of the Holmes family – Sherlock soon caught on to the subtleties of the games.
He became fascinated with the way that the twins handled the cards. They manipulated the pack like expert gamblers, shuffling easily and dealing the cards smoothly and with precision. Eventually, inevitably, he asked them how they did it, and so they showed him, beginning with the various different types of shuffle – the Overhand, the Hindu, the Weave, the Table Riffle and Hand Riffle and the Strip. It was, they told him, all a matter of dexterity and practice. That was what Rufus Stone had said about playing the violin, of course, and so when the games had finished he borrowed the pack and spent the next few hours trying, over and over again, to master the different techniques for shuffling the cards. With his thin fingers and his sheer tenacity, he soon got the hang of it, and for the rest of the games he was shuffling and dealing almost as well as Henry and Pauly.
By the third day, staring out of the window had lost its attractions. Sherlock found himself more and more watching the actors and actresses – Mr Malvin, Mr Furness, Miss Dimmock and Mrs Loran. He tried to use the skills that Amyus Crowe had taught him to determine something about their histories and their characters, but he found himself foxed. Just as he thought he had nailed down a particular deduction about one of them, something came along and changed it. Perhaps it was something to do with their acting training – perhaps what he was seeing was different characters coming out in them without their knowing.
At one point, as the train was clattering across a particularly marshy and boring landscape, Sherlock noticed that Mr Furness – the older, fatter actor with the veined skin and the cauliflower-like nose – had a box on his lap and was sorting through the contents. They seemed to be jars of various sort. He noticed Sherlock watching, and gestured him over.
‘Theatrical make-up,’ he said. His breath smelt of gin. ‘You’ve seen it before, surely?’
‘Not close up,’ Sherlock confessed. ‘I’m usually backstage.’
‘This kit’s been with me for years,’ Furness confided. ‘I’ve got face paints made out of beeswax and mutton fat with zinc, lead, lampblack, cochineal, ultramarine, ochre or Prussian blue added to give ’em their colour. Then there’s the other stuff: burnt cork and lampblack for the eyelids and eyelashes, burnt paper for making shadows, spirit gum for fastening wigs down, or crepe hair for moustaches and beards. Use them properly and you can change the shape of your whole face, at least as seen from a distance.’
Seeing Sherlock’s disbelieving look, he continued: ‘See, if you highlight the protruding bones of the face, like the nose and the cheekbones, with a lighter colour, your features become exaggerated. If you put some dark shadowing in the bits that dip in, it adds depth. Changing the highlights and shadows, you can make sagging jowls, forehead wrinkles, eye pouches and prominent veins. And when all else fails…’ He produced a metal tin from the box. ‘Nose putty!’
‘Nose putty?’ Sherlock asked in disbelief.
‘Changes the shape of your nose, your chin – any bit that doesn’t move much. Nose putty doesn’t flex, see, so if you put it on your cheeks then it’ll crack, but you wouldn’t believe how much a different shaped nose and chin can change your appearance. Your best friend wouldn’t recognize you!’
Eventually, after Sherlock had lost track of the hours and the days, and the journey had become a timeless haze, the train pulled into Moscow Kursk Station.
