by Andrew Lane
‘Yes, he has.’
‘Good.’ Mycroft lifted a slice of fish on his knife and carefully transferred it to his fork. ‘He disapproves of my plan to take you to Russia.’
‘He said you argued.’
‘We did. He was very forceful in his opinions. He is very protective of you, you know.’
‘We’ve been through a lot together, over the past year or so.’
‘Indeed.’ Mycroft popped the fragment of fish into his mouth and chewed for a moment with his eyes closed. ‘Beautifully cooked. The black butter sauce is exquisite. I shall have to remember this place. It is not so far from my office that I could not take my luncheon here on a regular basis.’
‘Mycroft, are you sure we should travel to Russia in disguise?’
‘I have considered the matter thoroughly, and I see no other option.’ He checked his watch. ‘The third member of our expedition should be joining us in a moment. I sent him a telegram earlier.’ He glanced briefly at Sherlock. ‘There is something I should warn you about. I said that this man was one of my agents, and that he was a violinist.’
‘Yes?’
‘What I did not say was that you already know him.’
Sherlock heard the words, but he didn’t understand them. ‘I know him? But I don’t know any of your agents. I’ve never met any of them – except perhaps Mr Crowe, but I don’t think he counts as one of your agents.’
‘He certainly does not.’ Mycroft’s expression was of a man who was preparing himself to convey bad news. ‘Sherlock,’ he said, as he lifted his gaze to look past his brother, ‘I believe you are acquainted with Rufus Stone.’
Eight words. Eight simple words that seemed to drop like stones into the deep well of Sherlock’s mind. He could feel the ripples bouncing around his mind long after Mycroft had finished speaking. He turned his head so that he could see what Mycroft was looking at, but the logical, analytical part of his mind already knew. The other part – the emotional part that still belonged to a fourteen-year-old boy – was hoping that it wasn’t true, that whoever was standing behind him was a complete stranger.
But it wasn’t, and that emotional fourteen-year-old part of his mind shrivelled up just a little bit more than it already had.
Rufus Stone was standing behind him. Rufus Stone, with his unkempt brown hair and his stubble-flecked chin and his green velvet jacket. He wore a gold ring in his ear. He looked uncomfortable, as if he desperately wanted to be somewhere – anywhere – else. Sherlock certainly did.
‘Sit down,’ Mycroft said. ‘You are making the place look untidy. Don’t mind the waiters; I don’t think they get many Gypsy violinists in here. The experience will do them good.’
‘Hello, Sherlock,’ Stone said as he sat down.
‘You work for my brother?’ Sherlock asked. ‘Why didn’t you ever tell me?’
‘Because I told him not to,’ Mycroft replied. ‘When we decided that you and Amyus Crowe were to travel to America a few months ago, I was worried that Mr Crowe would find himself dragged off on side-business, or suddenly discover that he loved his homeland so much that he couldn’t return to England. I arranged for Mr Stone to get a ticket on the same ship, to keep an eye on you. In New York he was to shadow you and keep you safe.’ He snorted. ‘That, of course, did not turn out as well as I had anticipated, thanks to your actions in following young Matthew Arnatt’s captors on to a train bound for who-knows-where.’
‘You work for my brother!’ Sherlock repeated. The thought was like an obstacle in the centre of his mind that was too big to climb over.
‘I need hardly add,’ Mycroft continued, ‘that teaching you the violin was not in his instructions.’
‘No, that was my choice,’ Stone said. ‘And my pleasure.’
‘But what do you do for Mycroft?’ Sherlock asked.
Rufus Stone shrugged. ‘Mostly I travel, free as a bird and just as poor. I can move unchecked and unhindered through a lot of the Central European countries. Nobody bothers an itinerant violinist like me. I pick up rumours, and I hear things in conversations in taverns and the like, and I report them back to Mr Holmes here.’
‘One can often judge more about the state of a nation’s economy by what the farmers are saying over a glass of ale than one can by reading the newspapers,’ Mycroft said. ‘I have a large number of people, all over the world, whose only task is to reap big bushels of what the general public are saying, winnow it down and send me the resulting kernels of truth.’
‘And moving to Farnham?’ Sherlock’s hands were shaking, and he had to hold them together beneath the table to stop anyone else from seeing. He felt betrayed. ‘Whose idea was that?’
Stone looked across at Mycroft. When Sherlock’s brother remained silent, Stone said: ‘When I came back to England, Mr Holmes asked me to stay in the country for a while, see what I could learn about the state of the nation. I suggested that I should start in Hampshire.’ He paused, awkwardly. ‘I wanted to see how your violin playing was coming along.’
‘I bought a new violin,’ Sherlock said. His voice sounded small, even to him.
‘I’d like to see it.’
Mycroft coughed. ‘Mr Stone will be accompanying us to Russia. He has travelled in that country before, and of course we need a violin player in order to complete the theatrical company roster.’ He paused for a moment, and then continued in a softer voice, ‘Sherlock, believe me, I would never have done this for any reason other than for your own good, and I would not have let you find out that I had done it if it had not been entirely necessary.’
‘That doesn’t make it all right,’ Sherlock said. He stood up. ‘I’m going out.’
‘Be at the King’s Theatre in Whitechapel at four o’clock this afternoon,’ Mycroft instructed him. ‘We are to meet our travelling companions.’
Sherlock walked away without answering. Behind him, he could hear Mycroft saying: ‘No, let him go. He will come to understand, in time, that what I did was entirely logical and for his own protection.’
He walked out of the hotel and into the street. It was beginning to rain, and he felt the cold prickle of raindrops on his face, but he didn’t seem to care. Everything around him was grey and uninteresting. Meaningless.
He turned left and started to walk, not really caring where he was going. He clamped down hard on his thoughts, not letting any consideration of his brother, or Rufus Stone, or the trip to America that now turned out to be largely fiction, to get started. He just walked; walked and observed. Like some kind of mobile calculating machine, he took in the facts around him and let his mind join them together. The man wearing the red-spotted neckerchief over in that doorway – he had caught an illness, probably in India, and would be dead within a week, judging by the state of his skin. The watch that the gentleman in the top hat was consulting was not his own: he had most likely stolen it from someone, and the theft had only occurred in the past few days. The beggar on the corner in the trolley with the wheels, the one who was wearing a sign round his neck claiming that his legs were paralysed, actually walked several miles a day, judging by the recent wear to his shoes. All of this Sherlock deduced from the things he observed, and none of it mattered to him. None of it mattered at all.
He lost track of time as he walked, but when he checked his watch and found that it was nearly four o’clock, he realized that he was already near Whitechapel. His mind had steered him in the right direction without him realizing.
The theatre was tucked away in a side street off a main thoroughfare. Its frontage was red brick and white portico columns; four steps led up to the main doors. Sherlock trudged up them and through into the lobby. There was nobody present – the shutters were closed over the ticket booth – but Sherlock could almost sense the essence of the crowds that presumably crossed the foyer on a regular basis: a trace of cigarette smoke, eau de toilette and perfume that had been absorbed by the ornate plaster of the walls and ceiling.
Stairs led up on either side of the lobby pre
sumably to the circle seats, but on the far side was a pair of doors which he presumed led directly to the stalls. A door to one side of the ticket booth probably led to the backstage areas: the dressing rooms, the green room and the stage itself.
Sherlock stood for a moment, breathing in the aromas of the theatre, listening to the sighs and groans as the building flexed, letting his gaze skip across the old posters which were framed behind glass on the walls. There was something almost alive about this place. He’d been in a lot of buildings which were public spaces, but this was the only one he’d ever known which felt as if it had absorbed something good from the people who had passed through its doors. Deepdene School for Boys had reeked of desperation, and the Diogenes Club felt prickly and irritable, but the King’s Theatre felt like a home he’d never been in before.
He walked to the main doors into the auditorium and pushed them open.
The space inside was smaller than he had expected. Rows of seats curved away to either side of him and sloped away in front, all of them covered in tired green velvet. The underside of the circle seating loomed like a low, dark cloud above him. It was supported by iron columns that had been wrought into artistic shapes and painted brown and red and green, like slender trees with leaves and flowers on them. Curtain-backed boxes were attached to the walls on either side, containing small numbers of secluded seats for anyone who had the money to pay for them. That was the way the tickets were arranged, Sherlock knew: the stalls were the cheapest, the circle seats the next most expensive and the boxes most expensive of all, although ‘expense’ was probably a relative term as far as this isolated little theatre went. Aisles cut through the stalls seating, leading down towards the stage.
On the stage was a group of people, including his brother. Mycroft was resplendent in overcoat, top hat and cane. For a moment, gazing at him, Sherlock could see him as a person, not as his brother. He had a natural authority to him; he radiated importance and power.
Rufus Stone was standing just behind and to one side of Mycroft. The red-haired, bear-like man Sherlock had seen earlier – Mr Kyte – was standing next to Mycroft, still wearing his massive coat, and on his other side was a group of people that Sherlock presumed to be actors and backstage staff. The actors were, in the main, wearing costumes of a bygone age: ornate velvet dresses for the women, lace shirts and puffed breeches for the men.
‘Ah, Scott,’ Mycroft said. His voice boomed through the auditorium. ‘Come and join us.’
Sherlock made his way down one of the aisles. The way to the stage was blocked by a fenced-off area that Sherlock supposed would contain a small orchestra for musical productions. He glanced left and right. Five steps led up from the floor of the stalls to the stage on either side. Arbitrarily, he chose to go to the right.
When he got up on the stage, he was surprised to see that it sloped slightly. It was about a foot lower at the front than it was at the back. He supposed that tilting the stage in that way gave the audience a better view of what was going on, especially the people in the cheap seats, some of whom would actually be looking up at the actors. The edge of the stage was lined with gas lamps behind reflectors and there was a trapdoor in the centre.
He crossed the stage to where Mycroft was standing, watched by everyone else.
‘I have already introduced Rufus Stone, who will be playing violin in the pit,’ Mycroft said grandly. Allow me, then, to introduce my protégé, Master Scott Eckersley. With the kind permission of Mister Kyte, Scott will be joining the company as general factotum.’ He turned to Sherlock. ‘Scott, allow me to introduce you to the cast and crew’ He indicated a tall man with long blond hair brushed back from a wide brow. He was in costume. ‘This is Mr Thomas Malvin. He is the company’s leading man.’
Malvin nodded at Sherlock, barely even looking at him.
‘And this,’ Mycroft continued, nodding towards a beautiful pale woman with green eyes and raven-black hair who smiled at Sherlock, ‘is Miss Aiofe Dimmock She plays the romantic female leads opposite Mr Malvin.’
Sherlock smiled back. Aiofe must have been at least ten years older than him, but there was something about her smile and her green eyes that made his heart skip a beat.
Tearing his eyes away from Aiofe Dimmock, Sherlock followed Mycroft’s waving hand. ‘Mr William Furness and Mrs Diane Loran provide invaluable supporting roles to the two main actors,’ he said.
William Furness was a portly man with a fringe of dyed black hair running around the back of his scalp, from ear to ear. His nose was swollen and knobbly, and his cheeks had the red-veined appearance of the heavy drinker. Presumably the veins would be covered by make-up when he was actually giving a performance, but there wasn’t much that could disguise that cauliflowerlike nose apart from distance. He raised two fingers to his forehead in mock-salute. Mrs Loran was a matronly woman with her hair tied up into a bun. She looked as if she would be more at home in a kitchen than on stage. She smiled warmly at Sherlock. If he had been closer he suspected she might have given him a hug.
‘Along with Mr Kyte,’ Mycroft said, ‘who often appears on stage with Mr Malvin and Miss Dimmock as well as running the company, these four are the main performers. The others you see here serve to fill in crowd scenes and come on in minor parts when they are not shifting scenery backstage. From left to right we have Rhydian, Judah, Pauly and Henry.’
Sherlock nodded to the four boys of about his own age who were standing behind the main actors. Rhydian was thin and dark, with a pointed chin and heavy eyebrows. Judah was also thin, but his hair was so pale and fine that it was almost white, seeming to float around his head, and his eyes had a pinkish look to them. Pauly and Henry were twins: both muscular, both brown – eyed. The only difference between them was that Pauly (Sherlock assumed it was Pauly, as he was the one nearest to Mycroft) had lost the little finger of his left hand in an accident at some stage.
Someone coughed in the wings. Looking into the shadows, Sherlock could just about make out a tall man whose mouth was overhung by a thick black moustache. He seemed almost to be leaning backwards, hands in his pockets, as he stared at the people on stage. His eyes glinted in the darkness.
‘Ah yes, I almost forgot,’ Mycroft said. ‘Although the rest of the pit orchestra will be joining us later, this is Mr Eves. He is the conductor and musical arranger.’
‘Mr Eves,’ Sherlock acknowledged.
‘Master . . . Eckersley,’ the conductor acknowledged. His voice was dry, laconic. ‘A pleasure to meet you, I am sure.’
‘Mr Kyte, ladies, gentlemen,’ Mycroft – or, rather, Mr Sigerson, as Sherlock supposed he should be known from now on – proclaimed, ‘thank you for taking us into your company, into your confidence and, I hope, into your hearts. Mr Kyte has seen my references, and knows that I can be trusted to serve you responsibly, as I have served other theatrical companies in the past. I undertake for my part to serve you as General Manager to the best of my abilities, and to take you ever onward and ever upward. To that end, the first order of business is to ensure that the incipient trip to Moscow goes without incident. My aim is to ensure that all business affairs are concluded swiftly and painlessly, so that you may concentrate on your artistic endeavours. Put your trust in me, and I will not let you down.’
A smattering of applause followed these words.
‘And with that,’ Mr Kyte rumbled, ‘I suggest we get back to rehearsals. Five minutes, everybody, and then I want everyone on stage. Remember – we leave for Moscow in three days!’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The next week passed like a feverish dream. After a few days in London, settling in with the theatrical company while Mycroft arranged the final details of their transport, Sherlock had boarded a train at Charing Cross Station with the rest of them. If it had been Waterloo then he might have been more nervous, remembering the chase in the tunnels beneath, but Charing Cross was a smaller place with no bad associations for him. The train had taken them through the familiar English countryside do
wn to Dover, where they had transferred on to a boat that took them across the English Channel to France. At Dunkerque they had boarded another train, and in three days they would be in Moscow. Three days to cross Europe! Incredible!
The accommodation was fairly basic. The seats were barely padded, and there were no beds. Instead, the troupe pretty much just slept where they sat, stretched out where possible across the seats.
The musicians, to whom Sherlock had not been introduced, sat together and seemed to sleep or play draughts on small folding tables all the time. Only Mycroft and Mr Kyte had their own separate berths, as befitting their status as General Manager and Actor–Manager of Kyte’s Theatrical Company. They spent most of their time alone.
Sherlock spent much of the time glued to the window, watching the land flash past. Names that he’d only ever seen in atlases were suddenly coming to life in front of him: countries such as Belgium and Prussia; towns and cities including Brussels, Koln, Berlin, Warsaw and Minsk . . .
He was staring out of the window, watching wide swathes of fir trees slip past, when Mrs Loran sat down beside him.
‘You seem lonely,’ she said. ‘I thought you might fancy a chat.’
‘I’m fine. I’m just . . . fascinated by the way some things change as we travel, like languages and food, and yet other things, like plants and animals, stay more or less the same. There’s always birds and cats, for instance.’
‘And sausages,’ she pointed out. ‘I don’t believe there’s a country in the world that doesn’t have sausages.’ She gazed at him sympathetically for a while. ‘Your mentor, Mr Sigerson, doesn’t seem to have had much time for you on this journey,’ she said eventually.
‘He’s been busy,’ Sherlock replied, feeling that he ought to defend Mycroft.
‘Nevertheless, I would have thought that, having taken you under his wing, he would have been keen to look after you, not leave you on your own.’ She cocked her head to one side. ‘He doesn’t seem very interested in your welfare.’
