Young Sherlock Holmes: Fire Storm (3 page)

‘Thank you,’ Sherlock said, and left the table.

Uncle Sherrinford’s library smelled of old, dry books, mildew, leather bindings and pipe tobacco. Sherlock felt the quietness as something almost physical as the door closed behind him: an actual pressure against his ears.

Sherrinford’s desk was piled high with loose papers of various sizes and thickness. Some were typed, some handwritten in various different styles; most were bound with ribbons or string. As he sat down, not without a tremor of nerves, in Sherrinford’s creaking leather chair, Sherlock realized with a sinking feeling in his heart that the piles were taller than he was, and blocked his view of the rest of the library. This was going to be a long and tedious task.

He set to it. The process was simple on the face of it – take a manuscript from the nearest pile, find out who wrote it and when and then place it on one of a number of separate piles on the floor behind him – but of course it wasn’t as straightforward as that. Some of the sermons didn’t have an author named anywhere in them, some weren’t dated, and some had neither date nor name. Sherlock realized quickly that he had to make his judgements based on other clues. Handwriting was one of them. Some of the sermons were obviously written by the same person, based on the jagged, spidery text, and Sherlock could happily place them all in one pile. Other sermons mentioned particular places – churches, usually – which meant he could place them in at least the same geographical area and thus probably assign them to the same person or group of people. After a while he realized that some of the typewritten sermons had the same characteristics – a faded
n
, a partially raised
a
– which suggested to him that they might have been typed on the same machine, so he put them together in a pile as well. He didn’t actually read the sermons in any detail – that would have wasted a lot of time that he couldn’t afford – but as he flicked through them looking for indications of ownership and date he still managed to pick up a smattering of details: the ebb and flow of life of the countryside, the unsatisfied yearning for the love of God, the detailed analysis of things that were, in the end, unknowable. He also thought he had an understanding of the characters of the men writing the sermons – one of them serious and dour, terrified of eternal hellfire, another wide-eyed at the beauty of God’s creation, a third focused on details and minutiae and completely missing the wider context. At least one, he thought, was a woman writing sermons for her husband to deliver.

All in all, the work kept him busy for a good hour or two, during which he remained undisturbed.

After a while he decided to take a break and stretch his aching back. He stood up and wandered away from the desk, amazed at the way the piles of papers didn’t seem to be any smaller despite the fact that he had some fourteen or fifteen other piles on the floor around the desk by now.

Sherlock found himself wandering along the shelves of his uncle’s books, letting his eyes idly scan the titles. For a while he wasn’t sure what he was looking for, or even if he was looking for anything at all, but then it occurred to him that he could check to see if his uncle had any books on Bach, or music in general. Maybe he could find out some details on the way composers used mathematics in their music. Although Sherrinford Holmes spent his time writing sermons and other religious tracts for vicars and bishops around the country, his library was more than just a repository of books on Christianity. He had a good selection of works on virtually every subject under the sun.

And, Sherlock reminded himself, Johann Sebastian Bach
was
a noted composer of religious music. He had certainly written a lot of material for the church organ, and Sherlock was fairly sure that he had seen the composer’s name attached to various hymns in the church hymnals at Deepdene School for Boys, as well as in the local church. It would make sense for a religious author to have books about Bach in his collection.

Sherlock moved deeper into the shadowy lines of bookcases, looking for anything to do with music. He was out of sight of the door when he heard it open. He assumed it was his uncle, and moved back towards the light to tell him how far the work had progressed, but when he emerged from the aisle between two bookcases he was just in time to see the black bustle of a crinoline skirt vanishing behind a case on the far side of the room.

Mrs Eglantine? What was she doing here?

She seemed to know exactly where she was going. Confused, Sherlock edged closer, keeping as quiet as he could. He wasn’t sure why, but he had a feeling that she was doing something covert, secretive, and didn’t want anyone to know. She certainly wasn’t dusting the bookshelves – that task was below her station, reserved for one of the parlour maids.

Sherlock looked around the edge of the bookcase, keeping most of his head and all of his body hidden. It
was
Mrs Eglantine. She was kneeling down about halfway along the row of shelves, her crinoline skirt spread out around her, pulling out whole handfuls of books and letting them fall to the carpet. A part of Sherlock’s mind winced to see the books so carelessly treated, some of them lying open with their pages bent or their spines creased. Once she had cleared them out she bent even further down, head close to the carpet, and scanned the space she had created. Whatever she was looking for wasn’t there. With a
huff
of disappointment she quickly stuffed the books back again, apparently not caring what order they had been in or whether she was putting them back upside down or back to front.

She gazed to her left, away from Sherlock. Alerted, he ducked back just as her head began to swing his way. He knew it was fanciful, but he could almost see the intensity of her gaze scorching the carpet and disturbing the dust.

He counted to twenty and looked back just as he heard an irregular thumping noise start up. Satisfied that she wasn’t being observed, she was sweeping another row of books, higher up this time, off their shelf and letting them fall to the floor. Again she looked carefully into the space before grimacing in disappointment and shoving the books back pell-mell.

‘How dare you enter my library!’ a voice cried. ‘Get out of here this instant!’

Sherlock looked up, shocked. There, at the other end of the line of bookcases, was Sherrinford Holmes. He must have come in quietly, without either Sherlock or Mrs Eglantine noticing.

Mrs Eglantine straightened up slowly. ‘You are a fool,’ she said, slowly and distinctly. ‘You have no authority in this house – not any more.
I
am in charge here.’

CHAPTER TWO

Sherlock felt his breath catch in his throat. How
dare
she talk to his uncle like that! The feeling was followed by a sudden flash of joy: she could not survive this. She would be gone from the house within the hour, and never mourned.

Sherrinford Holmes’s fist was clenched against his leg, but the expression on his face was not anger. It was more like a powerless frustration than the justified rage of a man who had found a servant riffling through his possessions. Sherlock waited for his uncle to explode with fury, to fire Mrs Eglantine immediately, banish her from the house with no references, but instead he just shook his head while his fist beat ineffectually against his thigh. ‘You have no
right
!’ he cried.

‘I have every right,’ Mrs Eglantine retorted. ‘I have any right I want in this house, any right I wish to exercise, because you and that insufferable wife of yours know what will happen if you
ever
cross me.’

‘Y-you are a wicked, evil woman,’ Sherrinford Holmes stammered. He couldn’t seem to meet Mrs Eglantine’s gaze. Instead he stared down at the carpet, and Sherlock was stunned to see his eyes filling up with tears.

Mrs Eglantine stepped very slowly and precisely along the aisle between the shelves until she was standing in front of Sherlock’s uncle. She was smaller than him, but the way he stooped and the way she held herself made it seem as if she towered over him.

‘You pathetic fool!’ she spat. She reached up with a hand and took his chin between her thumb and fingers. Sherlock, watching appalled from the shadows, could see the indentations she caused in his cheeks. ‘You sit here, day after day, writing meaningless words for equally pathetic and deluded fools around the country to repeat like parrots, and you think – you actually
think
– that you are doing something worthy of praise. It means nothing, old man. I should bring it all crashing down around you, just to show you how little the world would care if it all stopped. I could, you know. With what I know, I could ruin this family.’

‘Then why do you hesitate?’ Sherrinford asked, voice muffled by the fingers that were clenched across his face.

Mrs Eglantine paused and opened her mouth, but no answer came out.

‘You cannot,’ Sherrinford Holmes continued. ‘If you were to reveal what you know then yes, my family would be ruined, but you would lose access to this house, and then where would you be? You have spent a year or more searching it, from top to bottom and side to side. I do not know what you are searching for, but I know how important it must be for you, and I know that you will never do anything that might imperil your search.’

‘I think you do know what I am searching for,’ she said scornfully, releasing him. ‘And I think it’s here, in this library. That’s why you sit here, day after day, like some old hen brooding over a batch of eggs that will never hatch. But I’ve searched everywhere else, and I know it has to be here, in this room.’

‘Get out,’ Sherrinford said, ‘or I
will
dismiss you, and God protect me from the consequences. I
will
dismiss you, just to end this nightmare, and to know that I have prevented you from finding whatever pathetic treasure you think might be here.’

Mrs Eglantine stalked past him, heading for the door. As she got to the end of the row, she turned to face him. Twin spots of bright colour burned like coals in the otherwise glacially white surface of her face. ‘You cannot get rid of me without consequences,’ she hissed. ‘And I cannot dispose of you without consequences. The question is, who fears those consequences the most?’ She turned to go, but then turned back. ‘I require you to get rid of that pathetic nephew of yours,’ she added. ‘Get rid of him. Send him away.’

‘Does he scare you?’ Sherrinford asked. ‘Are you worried that he will uncover your true position in this house and do something about it?’

‘What
can
he do? He is only a boy. Worse than that, he is only a Holmes.’ With that she turned and left. A few moments later Sherlock heard the door to the library open and shut.

‘She
is
scared of you,’ Sherrinford said quietly. It took a moment before Sherlock realized that his uncle was speaking to him. Somehow he knew that Sherlock was there.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said, emerging into the aisle and the light.

‘There is no reason why you should.’ His uncle shook his head as if it had suddenly become very heavy. ‘Forget what you have seen. Forget what you have heard. Put it from your mind. Pretend, as I will, that there is no trouble in this house and that everything is calm and serene in the sight of God. Pretend that the serpent that is Satan has not slithered into our midst.’

‘But Uncle . . .’

Sherrinford frowned and held up a thin hand. ‘No,’ he said with finality, ‘I will discuss this no longer. It will never be discussed again.’ He sighed. ‘I would ask you how far you have got with the cataloguing of sermons, but I find myself tired. I will rest for a while, here in the peace of my
sanctum sanctorum
.’ He gazed at the disarrayed books on the shelves and on the floor. ‘Later I will do some tidying up. I would normally ask a housekeeper to do that, but under the circumstances . . .’

Quietly Sherlock retreated from the library. He could hear his uncle murmuring to himself as he closed the door behind him.

Mrs Eglantine was in the hall, and he stayed in the shadows, watching her. She was speaking to one of the maids.

‘Tell Cook that I will be joining her shortly. The menus for the meals this week are totally unsuitable. They will need to be changed. Tell her that I will not be happy until they are completely revised.’

As the maid scurried off, and Mrs Eglantine stood motionless for a moment, lost in thought, Sherlock found his thoughts pulled in an audacious direction. Mrs Eglantine apparently felt free to search the entire house, looking for something. What if he was to search her room while she was occupied? Maybe he could find some clue as to what she was looking for. If he could find that, and then locate the hidden object before she did, then there would be no reason for her to stay at the house any longer. Even if he couldn’t find out what she was looking for, he might be able to work out what power she had over his aunt and uncle. If he could free them from
that
, then he would have paid them back for all their hospitality.

Mrs Eglantine moved towards the back of the house, presumably to what was going to be a rather fraught meeting with Cook. Sherlock felt a twinge of sympathy. He liked Cook; she always had a slice of bread and jam or a scone and cream for him if he passed through the kitchen. She was the only one of the servants who could stand up to Mrs Eglantine.

With his uncle in the library and his aunt presumably in the sitting room sewing, as she normally did in the afternoons, Sherlock knew that he was unlikely to be disturbed by his immediate family. He also knew that the servants’ schedule meant they would be cleaning out the fireplaces in the main bedrooms at that hour. Nobody would be up on the top floor, where the staff quarters and Sherlock’s own bedroom were located.