FOUR

Sherlock felt a shudder run through him. They were going to dispose of him, just throw him away like a sack of potato peelings! He glanced back and forth between the two men, looking for a way to escape, but Ives was standing in the doorway and the small, bald man was between Sherlock and the barred window.

“Please, mister, I ain’t seen nothing,” he whined, trying to buy himself some time.

“Don’t come the innocent with me, son,” Ives growled. He moved back into the corridor and gestured to Sherlock to follow him. “This way, and be quick about it.” He glanced over at the short, bald man—who Sherlock assumed had some kind of medical training, as he seemed to be the one Ives deferred to when it came to injuries and insanity. “Berle, you secure Booth good and proper, and then you look to getting Gilfillan up and moving. I want to clear out of this place. There’s too many people already who’ve spotted something odd. I guarantee our friend here didn’t sneak around because he was looking for some lost ball, but because of some kind of dare, or because he wanted to see what we were doing.”

Sherlock moved out into the hall. He glanced back at Berle, who wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Please, mister, don’t let him hurt me,” Sherlock said in the best whine he could manage, but Berle turned away, back to the unconscious John Wilkes Booth. “Sorry, kid,” he murmured, “but there’s too much at stake here. If Ives says you got to die, then you got to die. I ain’t going to get involved.”

Berle hesitated for a moment, looking at something on the dresser.

“What about this thing?” he asked Ives.

“What thing?”

Berle reached out and picked up a jar. It was made of glass, and the top was covered with a piece of muslin cloth held on with string. From where he stood Sherlock could see that tiny holes had been pricked into the muslin with a sharp knife. It was the kind of thing a kid would do to keep a caterpillar or beetle alive—cover the top of the jar so that the creature couldn’t escape but punch some airholes in the top so that it could still breathe—but he couldn’t see any insects or other creatures inside. The only thing in the jar was a mass of glistening red stuff, like a piece of liver or a massive clot of blood.

Ives glanced at it dismissively. “We take it with us,” he said. “The boss wants it. He wants it almost as bad as he wants Booth, here.”

Berle shook the jar dubiously. “You sure it’s still alive?”

“It had better be. The boss ain’t a man known for his patience when it comes to being let down, an’ this thing’s come all the way from Borneo.” His face fell into concerned lines. “I once heard that a servant of his dropped a pitcher of iced mint julep on the veranda one time. Duke just looked at him, not sayin’ anythin’. The servant started to shake, an’ he backed away down the garden to where it ended in a riverbank, shakin’ all the time and cryin’, an’ he walked backwards into the river an’ just disappeared, out of sight. Like he was hypnotized. Never seen again. Duke once said there are alligators in that river, but I don’t know if he’s tellin’ the truth.”

Berle looked dubious. “I would’ve thought Duke would use one of those two things he has on leashes. Ain’t they supposed to be his killers?”

“Maybe he just wanted to make a point. Maybe those things weren’t hungry.” Ives shook his head. “It don’t matter. That thing’s comin’ with us, all the way home.”

He pushed Sherlock down the corridor towards the stairs with the barrel of the gun.

“What are you going to do to me?” Sherlock asked.

“Can’t shoot you,” Ives mused. “Not unless you give me no choice. If a kid’s body is found with a ball in it then there’ll be some kind of investigation, and the house with four foreigners in it is going to be the first place the police look. Could inject you with an overdose of one of Berle’s drugs, I suppose, but that’s a waste. We might need those drugs, the rate Booth’s getting through them. No, I think I’ll just suffocate you with a rag in your mouth. That way there’s no obvious sign of violence. There’s a quarry a few miles away. I’ll put you in the cart, cover you up with some sacking, and drive you out there. There’s plenty of holes in the ground I can throw you into. If you’re ever found, the authorities’ll assume you just fell in and hit your head.”

“Is it really so important?” Sherlock asked.

“Is what so important?”

“Whatever you’re doing here? Is it really so important that you need to kill me to make sure nobody ever finds out?”

Ives laughed. “Oh, people’ll find out all right. The world will find out in time, but that’s a time of our choosing.”

Sherlock was at the top of the stairs by now, and Ives gestured to him to head down, towards the first floor. Reluctantly Sherlock obeyed. He knew he had to make a break for it sometime, but if he tried now Ives would shoot him and find some other way of disposing his body so that it would never be found. Apart from causing Ives some momentary inconvenience, Sherlock was pretty sure that running now would achieve nothing. Maybe he’d get a chance when they got out into the open air.

Heading down the stairs, he felt something underneath the sole of his shoe; something lying on the carpet runner. Before he could see what it was, Ives had pushed him onward. Sherlock turned, curious, just in time to see a length of string suddenly pull tight across the stairs, from banister to panelled wall. It was the string, lying on the carpet, that he had stepped on.

Ives’s foot caught under the string as he was going down to the next step. His body kept on moving while his foot stayed where it was, trapped. His eyes widened comically as he fell forward. His hands scrabbled for the wall and the banister, his right hand banging the revolver against the panelling of the wall before he dropped it. Sherlock stepped to one side as Ives fell past him. The man hit the stairs with his shoulder and rolled in an ungainly way, over and over, until he hit the first floor and lay sprawled across the landing.

Sherlock glanced over the edge of the banister from where he stood halfway up the stairs. Beneath him, in the shadows of the first floor, he saw Matty, his pale face staring up at him, his hand holding one end of a piece of string. Sherlock traced the string up to the banister and across the stairs to where a nail had been roughly pushed into the gap between the skirting board and the wall. The string was tied to the head of the nail.

“You were lucky the nail didn’t pull out when his weight was pulling on the string,” Sherlock observed calmly, although his heart was beating fast and heavy in his chest.

“No,” Matty corrected, “you were lucky it didn’t pull out. It made no difference to me. He didn’t know I was here.”

Sherlock descended to the first-floor landing and bent to check on Ives. The man was unconscious, with a nasty red mark on his forehead. Sherlock picked up the gun. No point taking any chances.

Matty joined him. “What is it about you and other people’s houses?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I have to keep getting you out of trouble.” He glanced up the stairs. “What’s going on up there? I saw the cove with the burned face pull you into the house, and then I saw two other coves pitch up in a wagon. Next thing I know, there’s three of you out on the roof. I saw guns, so I thought I’d better come in and get you.” He shook his head. “For a kid with a big brain you spend a lot of time a prisoner. Can’t you just talk your way out of trouble?”

“I think,” Sherlock said, “that it’s the talking that gets me into trouble, sometimes.” He paused. “Where did you get the string from?”

“In me pocket, of course,” Matty replied. “You never know when you might need string.”

“Come on,” Sherlock said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“There’s another bloke downstairs,” Matty pointed out, “but he’s knocked out. At least, he was when I came up. We’d better be careful in case he’s awake by now.”

The two of them crept down the stairs to the ground floor and past the reception room where the man whom Sherlock had first seen unconscious and bleeding—Gilfillan, Ives had called him—was now lying on the sofa and snoring. Sneaking by, they headed out of the front door, out of the garden and down the road to where Matty had hitched the horses.

“Did you find out what you needed to know?” Matty asked as they mounted the horses.

“I think so,” Sherlock said. “There’s four men in the house, and they’re all American. At least, three of them are—I never heard the other one speak. One of the men is disturbed in the head, and one of them is a doctor looking after him. The other two I guess are guarding him, making sure he doesn’t escape. They must have left one man in charge when the other two went out—maybe to get food or something—and the disturbed man, whose name is John Wilkes Booth, knocked him out. He assumed I was part of some kind of plot against him, which is why he pulled me into the house.”

“But what are they doing here in England in the first place?” Matty asked.

“I don’t know, but there’s something going on. This isn’t just a rest home for mad assassins.

“Mad assassins?”

“I’ll tell you all about it when we get to Holmes Manor.”

The ride back to Farnham took over an hour, and Sherlock’s spirits fell with every mile they travelled. How was he going to explain to Mycroft and to Amyus Crowe that his quiet little investigation had ended with the four men in the house alerted that someone knew they were up to no good? If he’d thought about it properly, he would never have gone near the house.

Mycroft’s carriage was still outside Holmes Manor when they got there.

“Well,” Matty said after they’d put the horses in the stables, “good luck.”

“What do you mean, good luck? Aren’t you coming in with me?”

“Are you joking? Mr. Crowe scares me, and your brother terrifies me. I’m going back to the narrowboat. Tell me all about it tomorrow.” And with that he turned and walked off.

Taking a deep breath, Sherlock entered the hall, crossed to the library, and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” his brother’s voice boomed.

Mycroft and Amyus Crowe were sitting together at a long reading desk over to one side of the library. A huge pile of books was sitting in front of them—histories, geographies, philosophies, and three very large atlases which had been opened to show a map of what looked to Sherlock like the Americas.

Mycroft looked Sherlock up and down critically.

“You have been assaulted,” he said, “and not by someone your own age.”

“Or from this country,” Amyus Crowe rumbled.

“In fact,” Mycroft said, glancing at Sherlock’s shoes, “there were two assailants. One of them was mentally deficient in some way.”

“And both men were armed with pistols,” Crowe added.

“How do you know these things?” Sherlock asked, amazed.

“A trifling matter,” Mycroft said, waving his hand airily. “Explaining it would waste time. More important is, where did you go and why were you attacked?”

Reluctantly Sherlock told them both everything that had happened, ending with the realization that he still had Ives’s pistol tucked into the back of his trousers. He pulled it out and put it on the desk in front of the two men.

“Colt Army model,” Crowe observed mildly, “.44 calibre, six rounds. Fourteen inches from hammer to the end of the barrel. Replaced the Colt Dragoon as the preferred weapon of the U.S. Army. Accurate up to around a hundred yards.” His fist slammed down on the table, making the gun jump. “What in the name of God and all his angels did you think you were doin’, goin’ to that house?” he shouted. “You’ve alerted Booth an’ his handlers to the fact someone’s on to them! They’ll clear out like greased lightnin’.”

Sherlock bit the inside of his lip, trying to stop himself responding. “I just wanted to take a look,” he said eventually. “I thought I could help.”

“You’ve not helped; you’ve actively hindered,” Crowe exploded. “This is a business for grownups. You ain’t got the skills or the knowledge to do it properly.”

Part of Sherlock’s mind—a dispassionate, detached part—noticed that Amyus Crowe’s accent became thicker when he was angry, but the greater part was cringing at the knowledge that he had let down two of the three men whose opinion mattered most to him in the world. He opened his mouth to say “Sorry,” but his mouth was dry and he couldn’t get the word out.

The expression on Mycroft’s face was of disappointment rather than anger. “Go to your room, Sherlock,” he said. “We will call for you when”—he glanced at Crowe—“we can be more assured of a calmer discussion. Now go.”

Feeling his cheeks burning with shame, Sherlock turned around and walked out of the library.

The hall was stifling in the afternoon heat. He stopped for a moment, head hanging, letting the feelings drain away from him and waiting until he felt he could face the long climb up to his room. His head hurt.

“No longer the favoured child?” said a voice from the shadows.

Sherlock glanced up as Mrs. Eglantine glided out from the cubbyhole beneath the stairs. She was smiling nastily. Her black crinoline dress moved stiffly around her, and the sound of it brushing against the floor was like someone whispering in a distant room.

“How is it that you manage to survive in this house, being so rude to everyone?” he asked mildly, knowing that he had nothing to lose. Things were already as bad as they were going to get that day. “I would have fired you years ago, if I was in charge.”

She seemed surprised by his reaction. The smile slipped from her face. “You have no power here,” she snapped. “I have the power in this house.”

“Only until Uncle Sherrinford dies,” Sherlock pointed out. “Neither he nor Aunt Anna has any children, so possession of the house will pass to my father’s side of the family. And then you need to step very carefully, Mrs. Eglantine.”

Before she could say anything in response, he headed up the stairs to his room. Looking down from the first-floor landing, he could still see her standing there.

He lay down on his bed, flung an arm across his eyes, and let the whirl of thoughts in his head take him over. What had he been thinking? Mycroft and Crowe had both warned him off from helping. What exactly was it that he had been trying to prove?

He must have drifted into a doze after a while, because the light in the room seemed to suddenly change, and he had pins and needles in his arm from where it was awkwardly crossing his face. He got up and slowly went downstairs; more to find food than for any other reason. He was suddenly ravenous.

The maids were setting the table for dinner. Mycroft was just emerging from the library. There was no sign of Amyus Crowe.

Mycroft nodded at Sherlock. “Feeling better?” he asked.

“Not really. I did something stupid.”

“Not for the first time, and probably not for the last time. Just make sure you learn a lesson from this. Making a mistake is excusable the first time. After that it becomes tedious.”

One of the maids emerged from the dining room with a small gong in a frame. Without looking at Mycroft or Sherlock she banged the gong once, loudly, and then retreated back into the dining room.

“Shall we?” Mycroft asked.

Within a few moments they had been joined by Sherrinford and Anna Holmes. Mycroft spent most of dinner discussing the accuracy of the Latin translation of the Greek translation of the Hebrew and Aramaic books of the Old Testament. Aunt Anna spent most of the time talking to Sherrinford and Mycroft, oblivious of the fact that they were already talking to each other, although from some sense of gallantry Mycroft would turn around every so often and answer one of the questions that passed by in her continuous monologue. Sherlock spent his time eating, and avoiding the stare of Mrs. Eglantine, who glared at him from a position by the windows.

After dinner, Sherrinford and Anna escorted Mycroft to the front steps to say goodbye.

“Your Greek is fluent, and your Latin is particularly well constructed,” Sherrinford said, apparently the highest praise he could think of. “And I have enjoyed our discourse. Your knowledge of the Old Testament is lacking, but you have made some surprising deductions already, based on what I have told you. I will need to think long and hard about what you have suggested concerning the early days of the Church. Please visit us again soon.”

Aunt Anna surprised everyone by stepping forward and placing a hand on Mycroft’s arm. “You are always welcome here,” she said. “I … regret … the animosity that has split the family. I wish it could be otherwise.”

“Your kindness is a force that could overcome all adversities,” Mycroft replied gently. “And the charity you have shown by looking after young Sherlock is a humbling example to us all. Consider the rift more than repaired, but eradicated.” He cast a glance into the shadows of the hall, where Sherlock thought he could just make out a figure, dressed in black, watching them. Mycroft lowered his voice. “But while a particular person still has influence within this house, I suspect I will never feel quite as accepted as you would wish me to feel.”

Anna looked away. Sherlock thought he could see the gleam of tears in her eyes. “We are where we are,” she said cryptically. “And we do what we do.”

Mycroft stepped back. “I will take my leave of you,” he said, “with many thanks. Might I presume upon your good natures one last time, and ask that Sherlock accompany me to the station? The carriage can bring him back afterwards.”

“Of course,” Sherrinford said, waving a hand airily.

As the carriage took them out of the grounds of the manor and onto the road, Sherlock looked back. There were three figures on the steps now—his aunt, his uncle, and Mrs. Eglantine. And either by accident or design, Mrs. Eglantine was standing on the highest step, towering over her employers.

“You still want to talk about what happened today,” Sherlock guessed as the carriage bounced over potholes and stones.

“Of course. We will be stopping at Mr. Crowe’s cottage. There is still much to discuss.”

The carriage rattled through the landscape.

Sherlock could still feel an ache in his scalp where the scarred lunatic had grabbed him by the hair and dragged him into the house. He reached up and surreptitiously tugged at a lock, just to check that it wasn’t going to come out. The sudden pain made tears spring out in his eyes, but the hair stayed where it was. Thank God.

Within ten minutes the carriage was slowing down, and Sherlock could see the loaflike shape of a thatched roof rising above a clump of bushes.

“Come,” said Mycroft as the carriage stopped outside a gate in a dry stone wall. “Mr. Crowe is expecting us.”

The cottage door was open. Mycroft knocked and then entered without waiting for an answer.

Amyus Crowe was sitting in a chair by the hearth, his massive form dwarfing the wooden frame. He was smoking a cigar. “Mr. Holmes,” he said equably, nodding.

“Mr. Crowe,” Mycroft responded. “Thank you for seeing us.”

“Please, sit yourselves down.”

Mycroft chose the only other comfortable chair in the room. Sherlock sat on a stool near the cold, empty fireplace and looked around. Amyus Crowe’s cottage was as untidy as he remembered. A pile of letters was fastened to the wooden mantelpiece with a knife, and a lone slipper on the floor beside the fireplace contained a bunch of cigars, sticking upward in various directions. And there was a map of the local area attached to a wall with drawing pins. Circles and lines had been drawn on it in some apparently random pattern. Some of the lines continued off onto the plaster of the wall.

Sherlock wondered where Crowe’s daughter, Virginia, was. There was no sign of her in the cottage, and given her headstrong attitude he wouldn’t expect her to stay in her room meekly while the men talked. Maybe she was out riding around the countryside, as she seemed to do a lot of the time. He hadn’t seen her horse, Sandia, outside the cottage.

He smiled. Virginia hated being inside. In some ways she was more like an animal than a person.

“Might I offer you a glass of sherry?” Crowe asked. “Can’t stand the stuff myself—tastes like something’s crawled into the barrel an’ died—but I keep a bottle for visitors.”

“Thank you, but no,” Mycroft replied smoothly. “Sherlock does not drink, and I prefer a brandy at this time of day.” He glanced over at Sherlock. “America has still not managed to develop a national drink,” he said. “The French have wine and brandy, the Italians grappa, the Germans wheat beer, the Scots whisky, and the English ale, but our transatlantic cousins are still in the process of working out their own identity.”

It sounded to Sherlock as if Mycroft wasn’t really talking about drinks at all, but trying to make some other, much more subtle point, but for the life of him he couldn’t work out what it was.

“The Mexicans have a drink they distil from a cactus,” Crowe said good-humouredly. “Tequila, they call it. Maybe we could adopt that.”

“What’s a cactus?” Sherlock asked.

“It’s a fleshy plant with a thick skin an’ covered with spikes,” Crowe responded. “It grows in the heat an’ the sand of the hot, arid lands in Texas an’ New Mexico an’ California. The thick skin keeps the water from evaporatin’ away, an’ the spikes stop cows an’ horses an’ suchlike from eatin’ it for the water content. Either the cactus is evidence of a Designer who makes things differently for different environments, so they can best survive, or it’s evidence that there’s some force that pushes livin’ organisms to change and develop so as to best survive in whatever place they find themselves, as Mr. Charles Darwin contends. You pay your money and you make your choice.”

“Back to the subject at hand, what have you been able to discover?” Mycroft asked.

Crowe shrugged. “I found the house. It’s empty. Looks like the occupants cleared out in a hurry. I talked to a farmworker along the road who saw them leave. He said there were four of them. One looked like he was asleep, one had his head all bandaged up, an’ the other two were scowlin’ like they’d got a long an’ unpleasant journey ahead of them.”

“The birds have flown.” Mycroft considered for a moment. “Is there any more evidence that the sleeping man was John Wilkes Booth?”

Crowe shrugged. “Save what your brother told us, nothin’. It’s instructive that his face was scarred by an old fire. The last thing that was heard of John Wilkes Booth was when he was involved in a shootout in a barn in Virginia with the Army. They’d tracked him down an’ ordered him to surrender, but he opened fire. The Army fired back, an’ somewhere along the line the barn caught fire. Prob’ly an oil lamp got knocked over. Anyhow, when the fire had died down the Army recovered a body from the wreckage. It was so badly burned they couldn’t identify it properly, but they assumed it was Booth. Looks now like Booth escaped but some accomplice got caught in the fire an’ couldn’t get out in time.” He paused. “Booth was always highly strung. Seems now that the enormity of what he did an’ the subsequent escape an’ the fire have caused his mind to snap. What’s interestin’ to me is that he’s obviously under the care an’ protection of an organization of some kind, an’ they obviously have a need for him. He ain’t goin’ to lead anyone anymore, not from what the lad here has said, so what else can he do for them?”

“He’s a figurehead,” Mycroft pointed out. “Probably the most famous Confederate apart from General Lee and Jefferson Davis. If there’s even a stub of Confederate supporters left in America, and if they have even the slightest flicker of interest in overturning the new presidency and installing one more sympathetic to their own beliefs, then John Wilkes Booth would be an ideal man for them to use as a rallying point. All they have to do is wheel him out at a few secret rallies and make a point about how he had the courage to try to bring down the Union with a few well-aimed bullets, and they could whip up a crowd into a frenzy.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Crowe said, nodding. “Don’t matter if he’s of unsound mind—they just have to dope him up enough so he can stand still on a stage, an’ they can make all kinds of speeches around him.” He paused for a moment. “What’s the position of the British government on all of this?”

“I can’t speak for the British government,” Mycroft said judiciously, “but I am aware that the Foreign Office is in favour of the current regime, and would not like to see the Confederacy resurgent. Slavery is an abhorrent practice, and it needs to be stamped out. The first thing a Confederate president would do is to reverse the advances made by President Lincoln and his successor. That will not do.”

Crowe sighed. “They’re goin’ to head back to the United States, aren’t they?”

Mycroft nodded.

“Then I have to follow ’em.”

“We could send a telegram,” Mycroft offered. “It would beat them across the Atlantic.”

Crowe shook his head. “We don’t know which ship they’ll be on.”

“We can check the manifests,” Mycroft said. “Granted they’ll be travelling under false names, but we can look for four men travelling together, one of whom is obviously sick.”

“They won’t be travelling together.” Crowe sounded certain. “They’ll book tickets separately, and possibly engage the services of a nurse to look after Booth. No, we’ll be tryin’ to track down four individuals whose descriptions are vague an’ whose names are unknown.” He suddenly hit the arm of his chair with a balled fist, making Sherlock jump. “I’m a tracker. I have to track ’em. Simple as that. I’ll assume they’re headin’ for New York an’ start there.”

“I could help,” Sherlock said, surprising himself. “I’m the only one who’s seen them. I could go to the docks and see who boards the ships.”

“We don’t know where they’re embarkin’ from,” Crowe pointed out.

“It could be Southampton, or Liverpool, or even Queenstown,” Mycroft added gently. “One boy can’t cover three ports, no matter how clever he is.”

“But…” Sherlock started to say, and then trailed off. What he wanted to say was that Crowe couldn’t leave England, because Sherlock was only just beginning to understand the lessons that Crowe was teaching him, and if he was going to leave then he couldn’t take his daughter, Virginia, with him. Sherlock was developing feelings for her that he didn’t quite understand and he wanted to see where those feelings were going to lead him, even though they scared him. But he knew that neither of those arguments would hold any water when set against some vague but obviously important conspiracy directed against the government of an entire country.

But it looked as though his life was about to be turned upside down.

Again.