Young Sherlock Holmes 6: Knife Edge

by Andrew Lane

  ‘It’s all just simple trickery,’ Sherlock said, amazed. ‘But it depends so much on being able to handle a pack of cards perfectly, without anyone knowing what you are doing.’

  ‘The real and only secret is practice,’ Albano pointed out. ‘You need to keep handling that pack of cards until you can manipulate it with your eyes shut. Never go anywhere without it. If you are travelling anywhere, take that park of cards out and just move it through your fingers. Fan them out, rife them, deal them, do anything and everything with them. They need to become your best friends.’ He handed the pack of cards across. ‘Keep practising. You never know when you might need these skills.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Sherlock shook hands with Albano, and left, feeling an unusual spring in his step. He felt revived, refreshed. He felt as if he had been given a glimpse into his own future. He even felt able to talk with Virginia again, but when he asked a servant where she was he was told that she had gone riding with ‘the mistress’ – which, he presumed, meant Niamh Quintillan. It was strange, and rather disturbing, how well those two seemed to be getting on.

  He wondered if they were talking about him.

  Sherlock found that he needed a breath of fresh air before lunch after the concentration of the past few hours, so he headed outside. Remembering his walk with Virginia, and his sight of the mysterious folly that he hadn’t been able to investigate then, he set out to find it again.

  It took about twenty minutes before he was emerging from the undergrowth into a clearing at the base of the folly. It was narrower than he had thought: probably ten feet or so across and about fifty feet high, constructed from a dark grey stone that felt rough to his fingers when he touched it. He walked around it. The lines where the stones met were so thin as to be almost invisible. The workmanship was impressive. In the weak sunlight that filtered through the clouds above he could also see that the stones were riddled with tiny holes. There was something about the sight that provoked a memory, and it took him a few seconds to realize that the folly was actually built from the same material as the smooth, curved wall that had blocked the tunnel beneath the castle.

  He looked in the direction of the castle. How far was it? He tried to estimate the distance. Was it about the same as the distance he had walked in the tunnels underground? Had he gone as far then as he had now? Was the curved wall that he had found beneath the ground the same as the curved wall of the folly that he was looking at? It seemed crazy, but he thought that it might just be true. The trouble was that it added new questions to the list. Why would the tower continue beneath the ground in the same way that it did above the ground? What was the point? Surely a folly like that would be built on a foundation on flat ground. Why excavate the ground so that the folly could be extended down as well as up?

  The point of follies, he reminded himself, was that they were follies. They didn’t necessarily follow any sensible rules. They were things built by the wealthy landowners and had little rhyme or reason to them other than to show how rich the owners were. Why was he even looking for logic?

  Sherlock could see dark spaces in the wall of the folly: all in a line leading up to the top. They looked like windows. The problem was that he couldn’t see a doorway at ground level. What was the point of that? What was the architect trying to do?

  If he strained his eyes, he thought he could see ramparts, or battlements, around the very top of the folly. The thing looked from below, he thought, like an elongated version of the piece known as the ‘rook’, or the ‘castle’, in the game of chess.

  He walked around the folly again, this time in the opposite direction. There was definitely no way in from the ground level, but the presence of windows suggested that there were rooms within the tower, and what was the point of having rooms if you couldn’t get into them?

  He stood there for a long while, just staring at the tower, trying to work out some explanation for the oddities in its construction. Following through the thought that the tower continued below ground in the same way that it continued above, he moved towards the curved wall and knelt down to examine the point where the tower entered the ground. It was overgrown with grass and small furze bushes, but he found that he could slide his fingers down between the side of the tower and the ground. There was a gap.

  A little further along he noticed a stone block sticking out of the tower wall. It was lighter in colour than the tower: made of a different stone. He hadn’t seen it before because a small shrub was growing in front of it. Sherlock could only see it because he was off to one side.

  He moved across to take a look. It was about the size of his body, and it nestled in a hole in the side of the tower, fitting so snugly that there was no space around it. A large iron ring, battered and crusted with age, was set into the end, for reasons that he couldn’t fathom.

  He moved around the tower for a third time and found another three blocks, exactly the same as the first, equally spaced around the circumference. Based on the position of the sun and the time of day, they seemed to be oriented along the points of the compass. Was that significant? He wasn’t sure.

  He sat back, letting the facts slide around in his mind like pieces in a child’s wooden puzzle, hoping that some coherent picture would emerge, but nothing came.

  The only answer, he decided, was to climb the tower and see what was in the rooms, and what was on top.

  The stone wall of the tower seemed sheer, and the fact that the joins between the stones were all but invisible meant that he wouldn’t be able to jam anything, like a knife blade, into any gap to act as a makeshift step. For a few moments he wondered whether it would be possible to carve notches in the stone with an axe so that he could climb up, but that seemed close to an act of vandalism. Also of course, he didn’t have an axe either. The alternative was to go back to the castle and get some rope, in the hope that he could form a loop and fling it up high enough to hook on to one of the projecting battlements, but he would have to go all the way back to the castle and hope that they had some rope somewhere that he could borrow, and he really wanted to investigate the folly now, not later.

  It occurred to Sherlock that the nearest window was only about twelve feet off the ground. If he could find a way of getting up that high then he could investigate what was inside. It might at least give him some clues as to what the folly was all about.

  He looked around. There were a few ash trees growing among the furze bushes, but none of them had branches close enough to the folly to use as a jumping-off point.

  He wandered a little way into the undergrowth and climbed up one of the trees until he was on a level with the lowest window. Unfortunately the sun was at the wrong angle and he couldn’t see inside.

  The branch creaked beneath his weight, and he shuffled backwards quickly, lest it break. Looking along its length he noticed that it split into two after a few feet, and the two separate lengths also each split into two. Suddenly an entire plan sprang fully formed into his mind. If he could break the branch off then he could lean it against the tower and use it as a ladder!

  Before his logical brain could give him sixteen reasons why the plan would not work, he started bouncing up and down on the branch. It creaked and bent beneath his weight, but it didn’t break. He edged a little way along it, using a higher branch to hold on to, and stood up. The branch he was standing on abruptly gave way. Sherlock nearly fell, saving himself only by grabbing the higher branch with both hands.

  He swung himself down the tree and pulled the broken branch over to the folly. The branch was about twelve feet long, and Sherlock found that if he set the thicker end on the ground so that it did not slip, he could raise the thinner end up to rest against the edge of the lowest window. Sherlock clambered up like a monkey until his head was level with the dark opening in the wall.

  He lunged for the ledge, fingers catching on the rough grey stone, and his chest crashed against the side of the tower. He hung there for a few moments before he pulled himself up and over the ledge.
>
  He lay inside the window, breathing heavily.

  The room was circular, with only the one entrance, and it was entirely empty. Well, empty apart from some splinters of wood on the floor that looked like they came not from a branch but from a box of some kind. Maybe a crate.

  The sunlight barely penetrated the room but even so, Sherlock saw that one of the flagstones was darker than the rest. He moved across to examine it, and discovered that it wasn’t a flagstone at all – it was actually a hole in the floor. He reached down and waved his hand around. There seemed to be plenty of space down there. Perhaps it was a way into a lower room, one that was at ground level but had no door to the outside? He supposed he could climb down and check, but he was reluctant to do that without a lamp. He could break his ankle or his leg if he fell badly, and he wouldn’t be able to get out again.

  A sudden thought struck him, and he looked upward, at the ceiling of the circular room. There was a hole there as well, offset from the one in the floor. Looking at the holes in the floor and the ceiling of the room he was in, he decided that they must have been put there to allow for a short ladder to climb from one room to another: that’s why they were offset. The ladder could presumably be pulled up from each room into the next, and used again. With luck, the holes would lead all the way to the top of the tower. If only he had a ladder . . .

  He had the next best thing: a strong pair of arms and a strong pair of legs. Crouching, he leaped for the hole above. His fingers clutched at the edge of the hole and, arms straining, he pulled himself up.

  The room above was exactly the same as the room below, with the exception that the view from the window was higher. And he had been right – there was another hole in the ceiling.

  It took him an exhausting five leaps and straining pulls to get from room to room until he was finally at the top, on the flat platform that capped the tower.

  There he found Sir Shadrach Quintillan’s dead body, still in its bath chair, looking over his lands with blind, unseeing eyes, the front of his shirt and jacket stained red with drying blood.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘The obvious question,’ Amyus Crowe said, ‘is: How on earth did he get up there?’

  ‘Not so,’ Mycroft Holmes countered. ‘The obvious question is: Why was he put up there? Most murder victims are either left where they were murdered or hidden somewhere else in the hope that they will not be found. For the murderer to go to all the trouble of getting the body up on top of the folly indicates that they had a strong motivation. What was it?’

  It was hours after Sherlock had found Sir Shadrach’s body. His immediate reaction had been, of course, to check that Sir Shadrach was actually dead, but the gash across the man’s throat and the blood that had soaked into his shirt and pooled in his lap was proof enough, in Sherlock’s eyes. His second reaction had been to gaze around, looking for some way that the body could have been placed, in its bath chair, on top of the tower, but there was nothing – no ropes, no ladders, no mechanism for moving something the size and weight of a man that far in the air. His third reaction had been to climb down the tower the same way he had got up and go back to the castle, to report Sir Shadrach’s death, and that descent, and the following run, had felt like one of the longest periods of his life.

  Mycroft and Crowe had believed him instantly, of course, but it had taken a while before he could persuade von Webenau, Herr Holtzbrinck and Count Shuvalov. Eventually, all six of them had trooped back to the folly, along with a handful of shocked servants and a clearly distressed Silman, the butler. Niamh Quintillan was still out, and could not be found. Two of the foot-servants had climbed up the tower, using the same route that Sherlock had taken. They called down from the top, confirming the fact that Sir Shadrach was really there, and that he was really dead.

  ‘Could this be a way of hiding the body?’ Sherlock asked, staring up at the tower. ‘I mean, nobody could have anticipated that I was going to climb up there, and the body is invisible from down here, on the ground.’

  ‘But why go to all that trouble?’ Mycroft repeated. He kept looking around for somewhere to sit, and kept scowling when he realized that there wasn’t anywhere suitable. ‘Why not just dig a hole and bury him in the shrubbery?’

  ‘It’s a message,’ Crowe said. ‘Perhaps the murderer didn’t care whether the body was discovered or not, but wanted to make some kind of point. Or perhaps there was goin’ to be some kind of note sent or letter written tellin’ us where the body was, an’ young Sherlock here merely anticipated it.’

  Sherlock was still gazing up the length of the tower. ‘I suppose the body could have been manoeuvred through all those holes in the floors,’ he said, ‘but Sir Shadrach would have had to be alive for that to happen, otherwise there would be traces of blood everywhere. I guess he would have had to be unconscious, though, otherwise he would have struggled. The odd bit is the bath chair. That couldn’t fit through the holes. It must have been pulled up on ropes, but that would have taken hours, and for what purpose?’

  ‘From what you described,’ Mycroft said, ‘there is no doubt about cause of death. The man’s throat has been cut.’

  ‘That’s what I saw,’ Sherlock confirmed.

  ‘What exactly is this thing?’ Mycroft stared up at the tower. ‘It seems to have no practical purpose.’

  ‘It’s a folly,’ Sherlock pointed out.

  Crowe frowned. ‘What’s a “folly” when it’s at home?’

  ‘A decorative and unfeasibly large garden ornament,’ Mycroft explained. He shook his head. ‘Why people can’t be satisfied with garden gnomes I don’t know.’

  Silman, who had been speaking with von Webenau, Holtzbrinck and Shuvalov, came over to them. ‘Gentlemen,’ she started, ‘I am . . . sorry that this terrible thing has happened. I am at a loss to know what to do.’

  ‘When did you last see Sir Shadrach?’ Mycroft asked.

  ‘He was feeling ill, so he took breakfast in his room. That was the last time I saw him. I went to look for him later, but he wasn’t there. I assumed that he had got one of the other servants, or perhaps his daughter, to move him.’

  ‘Nobody saw him leave the castle?’

  ‘Nobody,’ she said.

  ‘The police must be notified,’ Mycroft said firmly. ‘And nobody who is here can be allowed to leave.’

  ‘But the foreign gentlemen are talking about leaving immediately,’ Silman protested. ‘They have asked for transport to be arranged.’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Mycroft insisted. ‘They were present at the castle when the murder occurred, and therefore they are suspects, whether they like it or not.’

  ‘Don’t they have immunity as diplomats?’ Crowe asked quietly.

  ‘The Congress of Vienna does grant certain rights,’ Mycroft admitted, ‘but only to certified diplomats, not to ordinary visitors. I don’t know about the other three gentlemen, but do you, Mr Crowe, possess diplomatic papers?’

  Crowe’s mouth twitched. ‘Not as such. Am Ah a suspect?’

  ‘Not as such,’ Mycroft countered. ‘I am merely making a point. Only those people with diplomatic papers are entitled to immunity, and even then such immunity can be withdrawn by their own governments if they are involved in a serious crime separate from their diplomatic duties. But we are getting ahead of ourselves – firstly, there has to be an official crime, and that means the involvement of the police. We must all stay here until the police arrive and have concluded their examination and questioning.’

  ‘The Irish police?’ Crowe questioned. ‘From Galway? This ain’t a case of a disappearin’ cow, you know. This is murder.’

  ‘And I am sure that Galway Town on a Friday night sees its fair share of violence.’ Mycroft glanced at Silman, who was standing patiently listening to the discussion. ‘Firstly, do not arrange any travel for anyone. Secondly, send someone down to the town to fetch the police, in force if possible. Thirdly, sort out some means of getting Sir Shadrach’s body down from the tower. I
suppose the police will want to see it in situ, but we need to be prepared to move it as soon as we are permitted.’

  ‘And fourth,’ Sherlock added, ‘find Niamh. She needs to be told.’

  Mycroft nodded. ‘A valid point, Sherlock. Now, I will go and smooth the feathers of those gentlemen. If you will excuse me . . .’

  He moved across to the other group. Crowe stared after him for a moment, and then said: ‘Ah need to go an’ talk to Virginia. Ah’d rather she hears about what has happened from me, rather than from one of the servants, or by overhearin’ some passin’ conversation.’

  ‘What about Niamh?’ Sherlock asked.

  ‘If Ah see her, Ah’ll tell her as well. What about you?’

  ‘I’ll hang around here and see if anything occurs to me.’

  Crowe nodded, and left. Sherlock moved back to the edge of the clearing in which the folly stood and found an old tree trunk on which he could sit. He stayed there for several hours, watching as the police arrived from Galway and briefly examined the scene, and then as firstly the body and secondly the bath chair of Sir Shadrach Quintillan were lowered on ropes from the top of the folly. He overheard, from where he sat, the police sergeant telling Silman that this was obviously a murder, and that he would need to talk to everyone at the castle. The two of them left, and a couple of servants took the now-shrouded body away, wheeling it in the bath chair in just the way they would have done had Sir Shadrach been alive.