Young Sherlock Holmes: Death Cloud Read online

  Denny seemed to shrink under the other man’s heavy gaze. ‘I was only askin’,’ he said.

  One of the men over by the cart put his hand up to attract Clem’s attention. ‘When do we get paid?’ he asked.

  ‘When the gear’s been delivered,’ Clem growled. ‘Everyone meet up tomorrow, at Molly’s tavern. I’ll get the cash from the Baron and divide it out then.’

  ‘And how do we know you’ll be there?’ another man asked, half-sticking his hand up and then thinking better of it.

  Clem stared the man down. ‘Cos the Baron’s buying our silence, remember – yours and mine. If you don’t get paid and decide to tell someone about what we’ve been doing the Baron’ll come looking for me, and that’s something I don’t want. Everyone gets paid, fair and square, all right?’

  The man nodded, mollified. ‘All right.’

  Sherlock drew himself further behind the stack of crates as the men dispersed, two of them getting on to the cart and two of them opening the massive wooden doors to let it out, leaving Clem to supervise and Denny to stand around looking lost. The man driving the cart made a clicking noise and flicked the horse’s rear end with a stick, and it started to walk off, still eating from the nosebag of hay.

  Clem walked towards the large wooden doors, the oil lamp that was clipped to his belt banging against his thigh as he moved. Without turning his head, he jerked his thumb over towards where Sherlock was hiding. ‘Lock that door,’ he growled, ‘then meet me round the front.’

  Sherlock’s heart skipped a beat as Denny started walking towards where he was hiding. If he came round the pile of crates he was sure to see Sherlock, and if that happened then Sherlock didn’t give much for his own chances of survival. He shifted his position, tensing ready to run. Could he make it to the side door before Denny could catch him? He wasn’t sure, but he was even less sure that there was any alternative.

  Denny came level with the boxes, the dirty, sweaty smell of his clothes wafting around him, and Sherlock cast a quick glance towards Clem, trying to work out whether the burly man was close enough to help Denny catch him. Clem was almost at the main doors now. Sherlock quickly ducked round the side of the crates. As Denny passed by, Sherlock slid back round. If Clem turned his head before he went out of the main doors then he would see Sherlock, as plain as anything, but he didn’t. Sherlock watched, breath caught in his throat, as Clem vanished into the bright afternoon sunshine outside. Moments later one of the doors began to close, its rough wooden edge dragging in the dirt and its rusty hinges squealing.

  Sherlock glanced over the top of the crates. Denny had just checked that the side door Sherlock had entered through was properly closed, and was about to throw the bolts that would make sure nobody could get in. As soon as he left, Sherlock would be able to throw the bolts again, open the door and make his escape.

  Denny picked a padlock up off the floor and slipped it through a loop in the topmost bolt, and then again through a metal ring that had been attached to the doorframe. The padlock shut with a definitive click. The key projected from the padlock, and Denny pulled it out and slipped it into his pocket. Then he turned, whistling, and headed across the barn.

  Sherlock was aware of his heart pounding and his palms becoming clammy. He glanced over his shoulder briefly at the now padlocked door. It looked solid. He wasn’t going to get out that way; at least, not in a hurry and not without making a lot of noise. He would just have to wait until Denny and Clem had left, hold on for another five minutes, then go out the same way that they had.

  Denny got to the main doors just as Clem was pushing the second one shut from the outside. The rectangle of light that showed through from the yard grew narrower and narrower. It shrank to a bar, and then a line, and then nothing. The doors closed with a thud.

  Sherlock’s heart shrank and darkened in the same way as the light had when he heard the unmistakable sound of a heavy wooden bar being slotted into place across the doors. There was no way out!

  For a few moments he could just make out the two men talking, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying. He straightened up, ready to move across to the main doors to see if he could make out any words, but a sudden sound stopped him in his tracks.

  It was the sound of Clem’s oil lamp being smashed against the doors.

  Glass shattered, and liquid splattered across wood. Silence, for a moment, and then an ominous crackling as the flames from the wick of the lamp took hold of the oil-soaked wood.

  Clem and Denny had set fire to the barn.

  Panic threatened to overwhelm Sherlock. He wanted to run, but he didn’t know where to go, so he ended up just twitching back and forth on the spot. A taste like sour metal flooded his mouth, and his heart was pounding so hard that he could feel the pulse in his throat and his temples. For a minute or so he couldn’t think straight, couldn’t connect two thoughts together in a sensible way, but gradually he quashed the panic by repeating to himself that there had to be a way out. All he had to do was to work out what it was. He could feel his racing heart gradually slowing down to normal and the twitching in his legs and arms receding.

  The sudden smell of smoke began to fill the barn. Tiny flames were beginning to find their way like curious fingers through the joints between the boards of the doors.

  Think, he told himself. Think harder than you’ve ever done in your life.

  He looked carefully around the barn. Most of the boxes had been taken away by Clem and the rest of the men, and Sherlock still didn’t know what had been inside. The crates he had hidden behind were still stacked over by the locked side door, but they were empty.

  He ran across to the side of the barn and threw his shoulder against the wooden wall. The wood shook under the impact, but nothing bent or broke. He tried again. Nothing. If he was intending to break it down he was going to need an axe, or a hammer, or something. Not a shoulder.

  Desperately looking around the barn for some kind of tool he could use to break the wall down, or prise the boards apart, his gaze suddenly snagged on the spare cart that had been left, abandoned, to one side. It looked functional, and the man, Clem, had indicated that it would have been used if they’d had enough boxes. Could Sherlock somehow use the cart to get out? Could he even move it?

  There was only one way to tell. Sherlock ran across and grabbed one of the shafts that a horse would have been strapped between to get the cart moving. It came up easily in his hands. He tugged experimentally on it, but the cart didn’t move. He tugged again, harder, and the cart shifted fractionally, but the other shaft was still resting on the barn floor and Sherlock’s efforts were just pushing it further and further into the dirt and stopping the cart from moving.

  Logic. Use logic. If he couldn’t pull the cart, perhaps he could push it. Abandoning the shaft, Sherlock threw his weight against the front of the cart, where the driver would sit. It moved! The entire cart rolled a few inches backwards! He thanked whatever deity was watching over him for the mysterious Baron, whoever he was, who had so impressed his workers with his cautiousness that they had not only arranged for a spare cart but kept the axles greased as well. Then he took a few paces backwards and rushed at the cart, thrusting his shoulder hard against the wood. It was the same shoulder he had thrown against the barn wall, and he felt a spike of red-hot pain flash downward through his arm and up his neck, but the cart rolled a couple of feet backwards before coming to a halt.

  Smoke drifted across Sherlock’s face, making his eyes sting. He turned, and saw that flames were licking their way up the main doors and on to the lintel. Logically, the barn doors would be weakened by the fire and would be the ideal place to smash the cart through, if he could move it far enough and fast enough, but he would have to turn the cart around in order to aim it at the doors, and besides, the flames scared him. His only realistic chance was to try and smash the cart through the wall at the back of the barn.

  Ignoring the sharp pain that radiated through his shoulder, Sherlock braced his hand
s against the front of the cart and pushed his feet into the soft dirt of the barn floor, knees bent. His body was almost horizontal, and he exerted every scrap of energy he had – more than he had ever used playing rugby football on the fields of Deepdene School for Boys, more than he had ever used fighting in the school boxing ring in the gymnastics hall. For a long moment his body seemed suspended between two immovable objects, and then the cart began to shift. One of its wheels caught on something – a stone, or a clump of dirt – and the cart threatened to roll back to where it had started, but Sherlock dug his feet in and pushed until his muscles screamed. The cartwheel edged over the obstruction, whatever it had been, and then began to roll more and more smoothly backwards. Sherlock shifted his left foot, taking a big step, and then his right. The dirt gave his feet grip, and he threw all his energy into moving the cart, inch by inch. Like a locomotive, it began to pick up speed as it went. Within a few seconds it had gone from a lumbering crawl to a slow walk, then a fast walk, then a trot. Sherlock felt something ping in his shoulder as a tendon caught on bone like a violin string plucked by a finger. His arm threatened to flop nervelessly down, but with sheer force of will he kept it locked on to the front of the cart and after a few moments the pins-and-needles sensation subsided. The cart kept on moving. He dared not look up to see how close the far wall was in case shifting position reduced the strength he was bringing to bear and the cart slowed again. All he could do was count footsteps: one, two, three, four, five, six – each one quicker than the one before. Surely he must be at the wall by now? Warmth blossomed on the back of his neck as the fire took hold of the doors. He could see his own shadow cast in front of him by the flames, outlined in red and flickering from side to side.

  Suddenly the back end of the cart hit the far wall. The mass of the cart carried it on, the wooden slats splintering around it and the nails that held them together tearing out with painful squeals. Fresh air gusted in past Sherlock’s head, blowing the smoke back but causing the fire to spread. The cart’s rear wheels snagged on the wood, but Sherlock could see daylight shining around the blocky edges of the cart’s body. He scrambled up on to the driver’s position, then across the flat bed of the cart, and out into the glorious fresh air and sunshine.

  Naively, he had expected to see crowds of people and the local fire brigade with handpumps and buckets, but the yard was deserted. Even the dog had fled, presumably following the ruffians out of the main gates. Although the barn had been perilously close to an inferno on the inside, on the outside the flames were barely distinguishable against the bright sky, and only a thin trail of smoke led upward – barely more than a kitchen fire would make. Eventually someone would notice and investigate, but not for a while.

  The main gates were closed, and Sherlock assumed that Clem and his retreating ruffians would have chained and padlocked them. They had displayed similar caution in almost everything else they had done. Ignoring the gates, Sherlock looked around the walls for a suitable place to climb up and get over. The interior was bare brick, and he had no problems in scrambling up.

  He paused on the wall and looked back at the barn. The fire was beginning to edge up into the roof space now, and the rafters were burning. He needed to get out of there.

  Half-climbing and half-falling to the ground, Sherlock limped away. He kept going until his lungs felt like they were going to burst and the muscles of his legs were begging him to stop. Slumping to a sitting position beside a low stone wall, he gave in to exhaustion and to the panic that he had been fighting off for what seemed like forever. He sucked in great lungfuls of air and let the shaking that had been building up in him sweep over his chest, his arms and his legs. After a while he felt strong enough to raise his hands up in front of his face. The skin was scraped and bloody, and there were splinters sticking out of his palms that he hadn’t even felt. One by one he pulled them out, leaving his hands dotted with beads of blood.

  All that effort, all that danger, and what exactly had he learned? That if the death of the man at the house in Farnham was an accident then it was an accident caused by some kind of criminal activity. The dead man had been stealing something from his confederates, and that something had got him killed. The criminals had packed the rest of that something into boxes and had taken them away by cart to some unspecified location, and then set fire to the barn to cover their activity. And this was all done to the instructions of a mysterious ‘Baron’.

  And then Sherlock remembered the first time he had stood outside the gates leading into that yard, when he and Matty had almost been run down by a carriage. The man in the carriage – the man with white skin and pink eyes – was he the Baron? And if so, what exactly was he up to?

  Sherlock suddenly registered how dark it was getting. The sun had almost set, and he had not only to get back to Holmes Manor but also somehow to clean himself up and change clothes – all before Mrs Eglantine spotted that something had happened. He’d thought for a moment that his troubles were over for the day, but he realized with a sinking heart that they were only halfway through.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Sherlock nearly missed breakfast next morning. The adventures of the previous day had left him tired and achy, and his head pounded in time with his heartbeat. He could feel a tightness in his chest and a scratchiness in his throat that was probably due to the smoke he had breathed in. He had missed dinner, but his aunt had made sure that a tray of cold meats and cheese had been left out for him. It had to have been his aunt – Mrs Eglantine certainly wouldn’t have bothered. He had spent the night restlessly balanced between sleep and wakefulness, slipping between dreams and memories until he could no longer tell which was which. He only slid into a deep, dreamless sleep as the sun was coming up, and as a result the gong that was struck by one of the maids to signal breakfast jerked him awake and gave him barely ten minutes to get ready for the day.

  Fortunately, another of the maids had left a bowl of water in his room without disturbing him. He splashed his face, brushed his teeth with a chalky powder flavoured with cinnamon that he sprinkled on his bone-handled hog’s bristle toothbrush and quickly dressed. He’d have to make sure that someone washed his clothes soon – he was beginning to run out of clean things to wear.

  He checked the time on the grandfather clock in the hall as he rushed down the stairs. Seven o’clock.

  He rushed into the dining room, ignoring the dark stare from Mrs Eglantine, and helped himself to kedgeree from the long table of plates and dishes that took up one side of the room. It was a tasty mixture of rice, egg and smoked haddock that he’d never come across before arriving at Holmes Manor, but he was developing quite a liking for it. He did his best to avoid eye contact with anyone, shovelling the food in his mouth so fast that he could barely taste it. He was ravenous: the events of the day before had taken a lot of his energy, and he had to replace it. Uncle Sherrinford was reading a religious tract while eating and Aunt Anna was talking to herself, as she always did. As far as Sherlock could tell, every thought that passed through her mind was immediately articulated, whether it was of relevance or not.

  ‘Sherlock,’ his uncle said, looking up from the pamphlet he was reading, ‘I understand that you were involved in an unfortunate incident yesterday.’ There were traces of porridge on his long beard.

  For a moment Sherlock was petrified, wondering how his uncle knew about the warehouse and the fire, but then he realized that Sherrinford was talking about the body of the man that he and Amyus Crowe had found in the woods. ‘Yes, Uncle,’ he said.

  ‘Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live,’ Sherrinford intoned, ‘and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.’ Fixing Sherlock with a penetrating gaze, he went on: ‘In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?’

  Unsure how to respond, Sherlock just nodded as if he understood
exactly what his uncle was going on about.

  ‘You have experienced a sheltered life with my brother and his wife,’ Sherrinford said. ‘The facts of death may have passed you by, but it is a natural part of God’s plan. Do not let it worry you. If you need to talk, then my study door is always open.’

  Sherlock was touched that Uncle Sherrinford was, in his own way, trying to help. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Did the man we found work here, on the estate?’

  ‘I believe he was a gardener,’ Sherrinford said. ‘I cannot say that I knew him, but he and his family will be in our prayers. His dependants will be supported.’

  ‘He was new,’ Aunt Anna said. ‘He had only just joined us, I believe. Previously he worked making clothing in Farnham for a company owned by an Earl or a Viscount, or someone from the aristocracy. His references were excellent . . .’

  ‘How did he die?’ Sherlock asked, but his aunt kept talking quietly to herself.

  ‘This is not,’ Mrs Eglantine said from where she stood over by the table of food, ‘a fit subject for discussion over breakfast.’ Sherlock glanced at her, surprised both at the boldness of her words and at the fact that his uncle and aunt didn’t admonish her. For a servant, she was very forward. He found himself remembering Mycroft’s warning – she is no friend to the Holmes family – and he wondered if there was more to Mrs Eglantine, and her presence in the house, than he had believed.

  ‘The boy is curious,’ Sherrinford said, fixing Sherlock with a glance from beneath his bushy eyebrows. ‘I encourage curiosity. It, and our immortal souls, is what distinguishes us from the animals.’ Turning back to Sherlock, he continued: ‘The body has been released to the local doctor, and he has sent a telegram to the North Hampshire Coroner. It is up to them to pronounce on the cause of death, but I understand that the man’s face and hands showed the raised blisters characteristic of smallpox or bubonic plague.’ He shook his head, frowning. ‘The last thing we need around here is an outbreak of some fever. The doctor will be hard pressed to cope if anybody else becomes sick. I understand that some of the market traders are already packing up their stalls and moving elsewhere. Panic can spread faster than disease. Farnham exists because of trade – sheep, grain, wool, and so on. If that trade moves to another town then Farn-ham’s prosperity will just wither and die.’