Young Sherlock: Night Break

by Andrew Lane

  ‘All right, but make sure you do come back before sunset.’

  ‘I will.’

  Sherlock walked back to the house, strangely reassured by his conversation with Emma, but determined to make the acquaintance of her suitor before too long.

  He changed his clothes when he got back, then read for a while before dinner. Someone had found Matty a change of clothes, and he’d had a bath. Sherlock wasn’t sure what to make of this new, sparkling clean and neat Matty. He also thought he recognized some of the clothes as having been his when he was younger – and smaller.

  Dinner was a strange affair. Sherlock and Mycroft didn’t feel like making much conversation, given the circumstances, but Emma seemed to take to Matty and chatted to him through all five courses, which were delivered by a set of servants who all had black bands tied around their arms as a mark of mourning. Sherlock thought that they were probably all wondering what was going to happen to them now, with Sherlock and Mycroft’s father gone abroad, their mother dead and their sister apparently considering marriage. There was a fair chance, he realized with a sudden lurch in his stomach, that there might not be anybody left to actually live in the house, if Mycroft was working in London, and Sherlock was studying in Oxford. He couldn’t let that happen, he thought. Their father needed somewhere to come home to.

  ‘There will be a funeral service at the family chapel tomorrow morning,’ Mycroft announced after coffee had been served. ‘The servants will all be given time off to attend, of course. The vicar from the local church will come in to take the service, following which Mother’s coffin will be interred in the crypt in the grounds of the house.’ He glanced at Matty. ‘It is the tradition of the Holmes family – several generations are already interred there, as will Sherlock and I be in our time.’

  ‘Not too soon, I hope,’ Sherlock murmured. He glanced around, suddenly becoming aware of something. ‘Where’s Rufus?’

  ‘He elected to eat with the servants. He said –’ and Mycroft raised an eyebrow – ‘that the conversation would be more entertaining, and the food would be exactly the same, so there was no real choice in his mind.’

  ‘Could James be at the funeral service?’ Emma asked, suddenly looking up the table at the two brothers.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Mycroft said, quietly but firmly. ‘It is for family and servants only. However, Sherlock and I will pay a visit to him tomorrow afternoon. I think we need to determine . . . his intentions towards you, and also his suitability as a husband.’

  Emma raised her head, as if she was going to argue. Sherlock quickly interrupted to say: ‘I’m sure he’s perfectly suitable, Emma, but Mycroft and I need to talk with him, find out what his prospects are. Father would have done exactly the same.’

  Emma didn’t look mollified. She opened her mouth to say something, but it was Matty’s voice that Sherlock heard next.

  ‘There’s some funny people around,’ he said, looking at Emma. ‘Sometimes they take advantage of people like you – people who see the world as a nice place where the sun is always shinin’, even when it ain’t. Your brothers are just lookin’ out for you – you know that.’

  ‘I do know that,’ she said. ‘And I am grateful.’ She paused, then added, ‘I’m still going to marry him, though.’

  After dinner Mycroft excused himself to go back into the library. Sherlock decided to go to bed. It had seemed like a long day, even though nothing very much had happened, and he was tired. The strange thing was that although nothing had really happened, he felt like his life had changed since he had woken up. The situation he had been in first thing that morning was not the situation he was in now. He undressed, washed quickly in the fresh water that the maids had provided, and slipped between the sheets on the bed. Within moments he was asleep.

  Sherlock was dreaming of his father when he was pulled abruptly from sleep.

  All he could remember, as he struggled up into consciousness, was a landscape of bare earth with the occasional dry bush struggling to survive, and a heat-haze that made the distant hills waver like something seen reflected in water. He had been running for his life, and when he looked over his shoulder he could see sword-wielding warriors running behind him. They had turbans on their heads and their huge beards were being whipped back over their shoulders by the winds. The expressions on their faces were all the same: implacable hatred. He knew that they weren’t chasing him – they were chasing his father, who was somewhere up ahead – but he had to get to his father and warn him before the warriors could get past. If they found his father first, they would cut Siger Holmes into pieces.

  For a few seconds the dream melted into the reality of his bedroom, and he thought that the hand on his shoulder was one of the warriors trying to pull him back, but when he managed to rub the sleep from his eyes he saw that it was Emma, his sister, who had woken him.

  ‘What is it?’ he mumbled. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘They’re here,’ she said simply. ‘The men with no faces. They’re here in the house again. I think they’ve come for me this time.’

  ‘Emma, you’ve been dreaming again. Go back to sleep.’

  He turned over and was about to pull the blankets back over his body when she said: ‘No – I’m not dreaming. They’re here! They’ve come for me!’ She sounded scared.

  Reluctantly he pushed the blankets away and climbed out of bed. ‘All right – I’ll go and take a look if it will make you feel better,’ he said. ‘But I promise you, there’s nothing there.’ Quickly he pulled on his trousers, a shirt and his shoes. ‘Right – where do you think these faceless men are?’

  ‘They were in my room,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t move, because I didn’t want them to know that I was awake. They were very quiet but I felt them watching me. After a while they left to go downstairs. I got up to see if I could get a glimpse of them, but I saw one through the window. He was standing outside the house, looking up. I think he was watching my bedroom.’

  ‘Well, let’s take a look and see if we can see him,’ Sherlock said, moving towards his own window. He pulled the curtain back and glanced out, not expecting to see anything. The moon was behind the house, and for a moment the contrast between the blackness of the shadow it cast and the bright illumination beyond dazzled him. Once his eyes adjusted, however, he could see the lawn outside, the gravel of the drive, and the corner of the portico that shielded the front door. Across the lawn was a clump of bushes that he remembered hiding in as a child while his father growled like a bear and pretended to hunt for him. The memory sent a pang of nostalgia and sadness through his heart.

  He was just about to let the curtain fall back, and tell Emma that she had definitely dreamed about these strange, faceless men, when he noticed a shadow move beside the bushes. Someone was standing there. The moonlight was shining directly on them, but Sherlock couldn’t see their face properly. It was as if they had no proper features.

  Sherlock felt his skin crawl. Emma hadn’t been dreaming after all!

  As he watched, the figure stepped back into the shelter of the bushes.

  It had to have been an optical illusion. There was someone there, although it couldn’t have been a man without a face – that would be nonsensical. Emma’s talk of faceless men had set his imagination running, and he had to suppress it. There was no such thing as faceless men. It had been a trick of the light.

  He moved back from the window and let the curtain drop back. He wasn’t sure if he had been seen or not. His thoughts were racing. Why was someone out there, watching the house? Had there been someone in Emma’s bedroom, or had she imagined that but actually seen the person in the bushes and combined the two into a connected narrative? He wasn’t sure, but he needed to find out – and quickly.

  ‘You stay here,’ he said quietly, ‘and lock the door after I leave. I need to investigate further. I’ll be back soon.’

  ‘Be careful,’ she said, and gave him a tremulous little smile. ‘You’re my little brother – I wouldn’t
want anything bad to happen to you.’

  He slipped out of the door and closed it behind him. A moment later he heard the click of the lock engaging. The upstairs hall was in shadow. The balcony overlooking the downstairs hall was off to his right, and the other bedrooms to his left, with Mycroft’s first. He could faintly hear his brother snoring: a deep, sonorous noise like the purring of some massive jungle cat. For a moment he wondered whether he ought to wake up his brother, but only for a moment. His brother was neither quiet nor fast when he moved around. If there was any chance of intruders being in Holmes Lodge then Mycroft was better off out of it until it was over.

  What about Matty? The lad was Sherlock’s best friend, and he was both quick-witted and surprisingly strong. His bedroom was on the other side of Mycroft’s. Rufus Stone’s was next along the corridor. He was perhaps a better choice than Matty – as an agent of Mycroft Holmes he was trained for this kind of thing, and Sherlock had seen him fight before. Aunt Anna’s bedroom was on the other side of the corridor, and Sherlock hoped fervently that she would sleep through this – whatever ‘this’ was.

  Instead of waking up either of them, Sherlock moved in the opposite direction: over to the balcony. He stood there for a while, looking down into the hall. The moonlight was shining through a window in the portico, and the tiles of the hall floor seemed to glow white. A leaf was lying on the floor, and Sherlock realized that either the front door was open, or it had been open, and the leaf had blown in.

  Someone was in the house.

  Listening, he could hear what sounded like quiet movements downstairs. His brother was fast asleep, judging by the snoring, and he didn’t think it would be Rufus or Matty wandering around down there. The servants should all be sleeping as well – they worked long hours, and the moment they could get some rest they would grab it gratefully. He supposed it could be Aunt Anna, but there was the leaf on the floor to consider. The front door had been opened. That meant there was a good chance that whoever it was downstairs, was an intruder. Or intruders. Thieves, presumably. There was no other reason why someone would break in.

  Unless it was something secretive and dangerous to do with Mycroft and his work for the Foreign Office . . . but Sherlock didn’t think that was the case. At whatever time in the morning this was, any assassins targeting Mycroft would have made straight for the upstairs bedroom, rather than hanging around downstairs and making noises that might disturb the house. No, they were searching for something – probably in Sherlock’s father’s study. Money, maybe, or jewellery.

  But the intruders had been in Emma’s room, if what she said could be believed. They had been moving around, and had woken her up. He frowned, thinking. If they were looking for jewellery or money, then why choose her room? Or had she dreamed about these faceless men at the same time someone was breaking into the house? Sherlock shook his head. That would have been a coincidence too far.

  Whatever the truth, he would only find it out by catching the intruders and questioning them, and he couldn’t do that by himself. He needed help.

  He moved quietly along the corridor, past Mycroft’s bedroom and on to Matty’s. He opened the door as quietly as he could, but the slight squeak of the hinges had already woken up his friend. Matty was turning over, eyes wide and mouth opening to ask what was going on. Sherlock quickly moved across the room and put a finger against Matty’s lips. He shook his head. Matty nodded, understanding that something was going on and he had to keep quiet.

  Sherlock pointed towards the window and held up a finger, then pointed down towards the floor and raised the finger again, then another finger, and frowned. Matty nodded his understanding: there was one person outside and one or two people downstairs. He didn’t seem unduly surprised. He threw the blankets off. Underneath he was dressed. He obviously saw Sherlock’s expression and he smiled. He was used to sleeping on a barge, or out in the open, by himself, and he had lived the kind of life where he might have to make a run for it at any moment, chased by some stall-owner whose food he had stolen, or some thugs who thought it might be a laugh to pick him up and throw him in a canal. Sherlock should have guessed that he had no use for nightwear. That presumably also explained why Matty showed no surprise at being woken in the middle of the night and told there were intruders around. For him, it was business as usual.

  Sherlock pointed at his own chest, then downstairs. Matty nodded. Sherlock then pointed at Matty, then to the wall separating Matty’s room from Rufus Stone’s, then downstairs. Matty nodded again. He understood: Sherlock was going downstairs and Matty was going to wake Rufus and join him.

  They both headed towards the door, and separated – Sherlock moving in the direction of the stairs, and Matty sidling along the corridor wall towards Rufus’s room. Sherlock turned to look as he reached the top step and saw that Matty had disappeared and Rufus’s door was partially open. There was no noise from within.

  He slipped down the stairs silently, back against the wall. Halfway down, he could see the door to the library through the banisters. It was half open, and Sherlock could hear soft sounds of movement from inside. He glanced towards the front door. It, too, was partially open, giving the intruders a means of escape if they were discovered, or giving the watcher outside a way of warning them if he saw anything.

  He? Sherlock remembered the featureless face of the person outside, and shivered momentarily.

  He moved across the hall towards the library, avoiding those tiles that he knew might shift beneath his foot and make a noise. He glanced back towards the stairs, but there was no sign of Rufus and Matty yet.

  He got to the library door and edged his head around the frame, just far enough so that he could see inside.

  The library was lit by an oil lantern on the desk. By its light Sherlock could see two figures. Their backs were towards him, and they were bending over the desk, seemingly examining papers that were scattered across it. Sherlock didn’t remember the papers from earlier – it looked like the figures had taken them from the desk drawers. They were dressed in black coats that fell all the way to the carpet, hiding their feet. They had black leather gloves on their hands that came to points, like claws. Their heads were dipped low in front of them, staring at the desk. It almost looked from behind as if they didn’t have any heads at all on their shoulders.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Sherlock glanced behind him, at the stairs again. Still nobody.

  He turned back to the library, but his hand brushed against the library door. It swung further open with a squeak of hinges.

  The two figures turned to look at the doorway.

  Their faces – their entire heads, from where their necks vanished into the collars of their long coats upward – were wrapped in ribbons of material. The ribbons were like bandages, only they were black instead of white. Some of the ends of the ribbons hung loose, waving slightly with the sudden movement of the heads, like locks of hair, only thicker. They had no eyes, only dark holes in the material where their eyes should have been, and their mouths were just lipless black slashes.

  Sherlock took a shocked step backwards, but then gloved hands grabbed him from behind, jerking him still further back. He wrestled himself forward, twisting his body. Behind him was the figure from outside – the one he had seen in the bushes. The front door was wide open. Its face was wrapped in black material as well, and its shadowed eyeholes stared pitilessly down at him. He was about to bring his arms up, knocking the figure’s hands away, but the figure pushed him, sending him staggering back against the half-open library door. The door pushed fully open and he fell inside, falling at the feet of the two other black-clad intruders.

  The three of them gathered around him, staring down blankly, making no noise. Their gloved hands reached down for him like claws.

  It was like something from a nightmare.

  Before any of the gloved hands could touch him, one of the figures was jerked backwards by something behind it. Sherlock caught a glimpse of Rufus Stone’s concerned
face, still puffy and flushed from sleep, and then his friend and mentor was wrestling with whatever or whoever it was that he had pulled away. Another of the figures suddenly stiffened, then fell sideways. Matty was standing behind it holding his father’s cricket bat, rescued from the hall. The third figure jerked its head left and right, trying to work out what had happened. Sherlock lashed out with his feet, catching it beneath its chin – assuming it even had a chin beneath those black bandages. It staggered away, into the hall, then turned and ran towards the open front door. In the library the figure that Rufus Stone had been fighting suddenly backhanded Rufus across the face, sending him sprawling. It too ran for the front door. Sherlock turned to where the third figure had fallen after Matty had hit it, but it had vanished. Seconds later he heard wood and glass smash on to stone. His head jerked around towards the window that faced out on to the garden. The third creature was standing in front of the window. It had thrown Sherlock’s father’s chair through the glass, creating a means of escape. It turned its head towards Sherlock, fixing him with its blank, black stare, then jumped up to the windowsill like a vulture, and ran off, its long coat flapping around its body like wings.

  In the hall the other two figures had got to the front door unimpeded, and were heading through it to the front drive, coats swirling like dense smoke caught in a draught.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ Rufus asked, climbing to his feet and holding his jaw gingerly.

  ‘They were looking at stuff on the desk,’ Sherlock said breathlessly. ‘Emma saw them and woke me up. She said they were in her room.’

  Matty was still holding the cricket bat as if he expected to have to use it again at any moment. ‘They were lookin’ for somethin’? What was it? An’ who were they, wiv their coats and those bandages?’

  ‘I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.’ Sherlock looked at the front door, swinging on its hinges. ‘I’m going after them,’ he snapped, suddenly angry. ‘They invaded this house and rifled through my dad’s stuff as if they had every right to do it – but they didn’t! It’s wrong, and I want to find out what they were looking for!’