Young Sherlock Holmes: Death Cloud Read online

  ‘How do we know it’s not too late?’ Matty asked.

  ‘It’s night. Bees are dormant at night. The Baron’s servant hasn’t had much more time to get here than we have. The bees will be released in the morning.’

  When they got to the top, they knelt behind a low stone wall that ran around the outer edge of the fort. The gaps between the stones were infested with moss.

  Sherlock scanned the top level – he supposed it was technically the deck, although this particular ‘vessel’ wasn’t going anywhere – but the flagstones were empty of anything except coils of rope, tufts of sea grass and the occasional splintered crate.

  Across the other side of the fort he saw the sudden flare of a match illuminate a bearded face with a scar running across it. Whoever was running this fort had posted guards. He and Matty needed to be careful.

  The guard was moving away from them, and Sherlock spotted him passing an opening in the stone deck which had a wooden rail running around three sides of it. Probably a stairway into the depths of the fort. As the man moved on, Sherlock tugged at Matty’s shirt and pulled him over.

  He was right. A set of stone steps led down into darkness. The smell of dankness and decay rose up to greet them.

  ‘Come on,’ Sherlock hissed. ‘Let’s go.’

  The two of them scuttled down the steps into the depths of the fort. At first it seemed as black as the depths of Hell in there, but after a few moments Sherlock’s eyes adjusted and he could make out oil lanterns fastened to the wall at regular intervals. They were in a short corridor that seemed to open up into a larger, darker room which the orange wash of light from the lamps barely illuminated.

  Sherlock and Matty crept along the corridor to where the walls suddenly opened up. The circular space revealed probably occupied most of the level they were on. Stone pillars every few yards supported the roof overhead, but what made Sherlock’s breath quicken was the beehives, lined up in a regular pattern across the flagstones. There were hundreds of them. With tens of thousands of bees in each hive, that meant something like a million aggressive bees were located just a few feet away from him. He felt his skin itch in an unconscious response to their nearness, almost as if they were walking across his shoulders and down his spine. Whether or not Maupertuis’s grand scheme would work across the whole of Britain, the presence of all these bees in one place was definitely dangerous to anyone in the locality.

  ‘Tell me we’re not going to carry them up the stairs and throw them over the edge,’ Matty whispered.

  ‘We’re not going to carry them up the stairs and throw them over the edge,’ Sherlock confirmed.

  ‘Then what are we going to do?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘What do you mean, you’re not sure?’

  ‘I mean I haven’t thought it through yet. It’s all been a bit of a rush.’

  Matty snorted. ‘You had plenty of time on the fishing boat.’

  ‘I was thinking about something else.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Matty said, ‘I noticed.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘We could set fire to them,’ he pointed out.

  Sherlock shook his head. ‘Look at the spacing. We could set fire to one or two of them, but the flames wouldn’t spread and the bees would probably get us.’

  Matty looked around. ‘What are they eating?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We’re in the English Channel. There’s no flowers out here, and I don’t think seaweed counts. What are the bees eating?’

  Sherlock thought for a moment. ‘That’s a good question. I don’t know.’ He glanced around. ‘Let’s look round, in case we find something. Split up, and meet on the other side. Don’t get caught.’

  Matty headed left and Sherlock headed right. Looking back, Sherlock saw that the gloom had already swallowed Matty up.

  The serried ranks of beehives passing by as he moved formed an almost hypnotic pattern. He couldn’t see any bees – perhaps the darkness was keeping them confined to the hives – but he thought he could hear them: a low, soporific buzz, almost on the edge of his consciousness. He noticed that there were wooden frames set up at various points in the cavernous space. Some of them held wooden trays, others were empty. Sherlock wondered where he had seen trays like that before. Something about them was familiar.

  A grotesque figure came into view through the gloom: a man dressed in an all-encompassing canvas suit whose head was covered with a muslin hood held away from his face by bamboo hoops. He was bending over a large box – one of many that Sherlock could now see were lined up along this portion of the curved wall that bounded the space. He straightened up, holding a tray like the ones that had been fitted into the easel-like frames scattered around, and walked towards the hives. A fine haze seemed to rise up from the tray as Sherlock watched him go.

  He remembered just as the man in the bee-suit reached a frame and slotted the tray inside. He’d seen beekeepers in the same suits at Baron Maupertuis’s manor house just outside Farnham removing similar trays from underneath the hives. And then suddenly everything fell into place – the trays, the haze of powder that rose up from them, the ice that he’d seen the thug Denny unloading from the train in Farnham and Matty’s question about how the bees ate in the absence of flowers. It was all so perfectly logical! Bees collected pollen from flowers, storing it on fine hairs on their legs until they got to the hive and then used it as food. Put a tray beneath a hive, and create some kind of ‘gate’ that the bees had to go through to get into the hive, and you could brush some of the pollen from their legs and collect it in specially positioned trays. Put the trays on ice and you could store the pollen for when you needed it – for instance, when the bees were being kept somewhere where there were no flowers. Place the trays scattered around, and the bees could collect the pollen from them, not even realizing that this was the second time they had collected the pollen.

  Remembering Farnham, and the station, another memory clamoured for Sherlock’s attention: something that Matty had told him. Something about powder. About bakeries. He ransacked the lumber room of his memory, trying to bring the words to mind.

  Yes. Powder. Flour. Matty had mentioned a fire that had occurred at a bakery where he once worked. He’d said that a powder like flour was highly inflammable when it was floating in air. If one speck of flour caught fire then it would spread from speck to speck faster than a man could run.

  And if it worked for flour, it might just work for pollen.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts,’ said a voice behind him.

  Sherlock turned, knowing what he would see.

  Mr Surd, Baron Maupertuis’s faithful retainer, was standing in the shadows. The leather thong of his whip spilt from his hand and curled around his feet.

  ‘Never mind,’ Surd said, advancing on Sherlock. ‘If the Baron wants to know what’s in your head, I’ll just give him your head and he can pull it out himself.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Sherlock stepped to one side. Mr Surd swung around to track him. The metal tip of the whip scraped along the ground as the man moved.

  Surd’s face was a mask of polite indifference, but the scars criss-crossing his scalp were red and inflamed with anger.

  ‘Did the Baron give you a hard time?’ Sherlock taunted. ‘Letting us escape like that couldn’t have done much for your reputation. I’ll wager the Baron discards useless servants like any other man throws away a used match.’

  Surd’s face remained impassive, but his hand flicked and the whip lashed out. Sherlock jerked his head to one side a split second before the metal tip would have sliced his ear off.

  ‘That’s a neat circus trick, but there’s any number of better tricks out there,’ Sherlock went on, trying not to let his voice waver and betray him. ‘Perhaps Maupertuis could hire a knife-thrower next time.’

  Again the whip flickered out, its tip snapping past Sherlock’s left ear with a crack that momentarily deafened him. He thought it had missed, but a sudd
en warm splatter of blood on his neck and a growing icy pain at the side of his head suggested that the metal tip had made contact. He staggered to one side, holding his hand to his ear. The pain wasn’t that great, not yet, but he wanted to change their positions and he wasn’t quite there yet.

  ‘Every taunt that you throw in my direction is another strip of flesh I’ll peel from your face,’ Surd said calmly. ‘You’ll be begging me to kill you, and I’ll just laugh. I’ll laugh.’

  ‘Laugh while you can,’ Sherlock said. ‘Perhaps I can persuade the Baron to employ me in your place. At least I’ve proved I’m more competent than you.’

  ‘I’ll keep you alive just long enough for the girl to see what I’ve made of you,’ Surd went on as if Sherlock hadn’t said anything. ‘She won’t want to look at you. She’ll scream at the sight of you. How will that feel, boy? How will it feel?’

  ‘You talk a good fight,’ Sherlock said. He took another step to one side. Surd moved as well.

  The wooden boxes containing the trays of pollen were directly behind Sherlock now. He reached behind with his right hand, and let his questing fingers close around the edge of one of the trays. It was cold from the ice beneath it.

  ‘What are you doing, boy?’ Surd asked. ‘You think there’s anything there that will save you? You’re wrong. Wrong.’

  ‘The only thing that will save me is my brain,’ Sherlock said, bringing the tray around in front of him. Pollen spilt from it, yellow and powdery, making him cough. Surd struck out with his whip again, aiming for Sherlock’s right eye, but Sherlock held the tray up like a shield and the whip curled around it, the metal tip sinking into the wood and sticking. Sherlock tugged hard, pulling the handle of the whip from the grasp of the surprised Surd and throwing it to one side.

  Surd bellowed like a bull and rushed forward, arms spread wide. Sherlock grabbed another tray from the box and smashed it over Surd’s head. The man reeled back, enveloped in choking yellow powder. If Surd survived, he would have even more scars on his scalp.

  Of course, if Surd survived then Sherlock would probably be dead.

  He stepped forward and grabbed Surd’s ears. Bringing his knee up, he banged Surd’s face down on to it. Surd’s nose broke with a crack just as loud as the one from his whip. He staggered backwards, blood waterfalling down his mouth and chin.

  Before Surd could attack again, Sherlock grabbed the whip from the floor and pulled the metal tip from the wooden tray, disentangling the leather thong. As Surd, raging like a madman, surged out of the cloud of pollen towards Sherlock, he lashed out with it. He’d never used a whip before, but watching Surd had shown him how to do it. The whip curled out towards the bald thug, the metal tip slicing across his cheek. Surd was flung back by the impact.

  Straight into one of the beehives.

  It fell, and Surd fell with it, into it. The wooden slats burst apart as they hit the stone floor together, covering him in the gooey, waxy interior of the hive.

  And bees. Thousands of bees.

  They covered his face like a living hood, crawling into his nose and mouth and ears, stinging everywhere they went. He screamed; a thin, whistling sound that got louder and louder. And he rolled, trying to crush the bees but succeeding only in knocking another hive over.

  Within moments, Mr Surd was invisible beneath a blanket of insects that were stinging every square inch of flesh they could find. His screams were muffled by the bees filling his mouth.

  Sherlock backed away, horrified. He’d never seen anything like this before. He’d been fighting for his life, but what was happening to Surd was so terrible that he felt sick. He’d killed a man.

  ‘I can’t leave you alone for a moment, can I?’ Matty said from behind him.

  ‘You think I like getting into fights?’ Sherlock said, aware that his voice was trembling on the edge of hysteria. ‘They just seem to happen to me.’

  ‘Well, you seem to acquit yourself all right,’ Matty conceded.

  ‘I know what to do,’ Sherlock said, trying to get his voice under control. He indicated the clouds of yellow pollen dissipating through the cavernous space inside the fort. ‘There’s trays of pollen stacked up in those boxes. We need to spread that pollen through this place.’

  ‘Why?’ Matty asked.

  ‘Remember what you told me about the bakery in Farnham?’ Sherlock asked.

  Matty’s eyes lit up with understanding. ‘Got you,’ he said. Then his face clouded over. ‘But what about us?’

  ‘We have to stop this, and stop it now. We’re less important than the hundreds, maybe thousands of people who will die if we don’t stop it.’

  ‘Even so . . .’ Matty said. He suddenly grinned at Sherlock’s shocked expression. ‘Only kidding. Let’s get on with it.’

  Together they grabbed as many trays of cold yellow pollen from the ice boxes as they could and ran through the aisles between the hives, letting the powder spill out in expanding clouds behind them. Within ten minutes the air was full of floating motes, and they could hardly see ten feet ahead of them. It was hard to breathe without choking. Sherlock grabbed Matty by the shoulder.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  Blinded by clouds of pollen, they groped their way towards the corridor to the stairs, fighting their way through the yellow clouds, trying not to knock over any of the hives.

  Sherlock’s foot kicked against something soft, and he almost fell over. Looking down he saw a puffy mass of red-splotched flesh that he just about recognized as Mr Surd’s face. Surd’s eyes were invisible in swollen folds of skin, and his mouth was full of dead bees.

  In spite of everything, Sherlock felt a powerful urge to help the dying man, but it was too late. Feeling cold and sick inside, he kept going.

  He came up against a stone wall. Left or right? He chose left, and guided Matty after him by grabbing his shirt and pulling.

  It seemed like hours but was probably less than a minute before they found the corridor. Sherlock turned and looked back. There was nothing behind him but a roiling wall of yellow powder hanging in the air.

  He reached out and took an oil lantern from the stone wall of the corridor. Weighing it in his hand, he thought about the bees, innocent of anything apart from just being themselves.

  He had no choice.

  He threw the lantern. It arced away into the cloud of pollen, and vanished. Moments later he heard the shattering of glass as it hit the flagstones.

  Followed by a massive whump! as the pollen caught fire.

  An unseen fist pushed Sherlock in the chest. He flew backwards, down the corridor. The very air in front of him seemed to be burning, and he felt his eyebrows and the hairs on his eyelids singeing. He hit the ground hard, and rolled. Matty landed on top of him.

  The corridor behind them opened out on to an inferno of flames. Covering his mouth with his hand, Sherlock led Matty up the stairs to the top of the fort. Air rushed past them, feeding the fire beneath.

  Guards were rushing back and forth, bellowing and panicking on the top of the fort. The sky was dark, with just a red line on the horizon showing where the sun had been. They paid no attention to the two boys who ran past them, climbed down the stairs to the sea and then into their rowing boat.

  As they rowed away, Sherlock turned back to look. The entire fort was ablaze. Maupertuis’s thugs were throwing themselves off the top and into the water. Some of them were on fire, falling like shooting stars through the darkness into the sea.

  It was a sight that Sherlock would never forget.

  The journey to the English coast was a blur of aching arms, flash-burned skin and sheer exhaustion. Later, Sherlock would wonder how he and Matty ever made it without capsizing or getting lost and drifting out to sea.

  Somehow Amyus Crowe had worked out where they would end up. Perhaps he had calculated it based on tides and wind direction, or perhaps he had just guessed. Sherlock didn’t know, and frankly didn’t care. He just wanted to be wrapped up in a blanket and helped to a comfortable
bed, and for once what he wanted was what actually happened.

  He woke the next morning with the gulls crying outside the bedroom window and the sun glinting off the sea and making rippling patterns on the ceiling of his room. He was starving. Throwing off the bedcovers he dressed in clothes that weren’t his, but were the right size and had been left on the back of a chair, waiting for him. He walked down stairs that he didn’t remember climbing up, to find himself in the parlour of a tavern that obviously rented out its rooms to travellers. And adventurers.

  A stretch of open ground led away from the front of the tavern, and then the ground dropped sharply towards the sea. Sherlock had to screw his eyes up against the brightness of the sun. Matty Arnatt was sitting at a table outside, wolfing down a huge breakfast. Amyus Crowe was beside him, smoking a pipe.

  ‘Mornin’,’ Crowe said amiably. ‘Hungry?’

  ‘I could eat a horse.’

  ‘Best not let Ginnie hear you say that.’ Crowe indicated a seat at the table. ‘Sit yourself down. Food will be ready soon.’

  Sherlock sat. His muscles ached and his ears still rang from the explosion, and his eyes were dry and itchy. Somehow, he felt different. Older. He’d seen people die, he’d caused people to die, and he’d been drugged with laudanum and tortured with a whip. How could he go back to Deepdene School for Boys now?

  ‘Did everything get sorted out?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘Your brother got the message we sent, and he went straight into action. I believe there’s a Navy ship headed out to the Napoleonic fort, but from what you murmured last night I guess they won’t find much but ashes. And even if the British government can persuade the French to check out Maupertuis’s chateau, I think they’ll find it empty. He’ll have got out, with his servants. But his plot has fallen apart like a house of cards in a strong breeze, thanks to you and Matthew here.’

  ‘It would never have worked,’ Sherlock said, remembering the confrontation between him, Virginia and the Baron. ‘Not the way he wanted it to.’