Young Sherlock: Night Break

by Andrew Lane

‘The man in charge of the entire construction project, and therefore my superior, is Ferdinand de Lesseps – a Frenchman, of course, but nevertheless very cordial and knowledgeable. He is working to plans developed by his countryman Linant de Bellefonds. I find it ironic that the French are so heavily involved in the construction of this canal, given that the Emperor Napoleon had previously contemplated the construction of a north–south canal to join the Mediterranean and Red Sea, but had to abandon the project when a preliminary survey erroneously concluded that the Red Sea was 33 feet higher than the Mediterranean, and would need locks that were too expensive and too time-consuming to construct. The error apparently came from the fact that the measurements on the land were mostly done during wartime, and on a number of separate occasions in separate places, which resulted in imprecise calculations.

  ‘I realize, by the way, that this letter will strike you not just as a bolt from the blue, but also as a perhaps unwelcome communication from a family member with whom you have often been at odds (and that, I fear, is all my fault). Nevertheless, I am hoping that you can put any ill-will behind you and reciprocate the hand of friendship that I am extending from here in Cairo.

  ‘I hope to hear from you soonest, but if I do not I remain,

  ‘Yours sincerely,

  ‘Your brother, Jonathan.’

  Sherlock and Mycroft stared at each other.

  ‘This letter was apparently important enough for a burglary to occur at our house and for an assault to occur on Mr Phillimore here at his house,’ Sherlock said, ‘but it says virtually nothing.’

  ‘On first examination,’ Mycroft mused, ‘there is indeed little here. The letter is merely a long-winded description of the project that Mr Jonathan Phillimore has been working on, and on which his brother James here failed to get a job.’ He glanced inside the envelope. ‘There is nothing else here – no other slips of paper or other enclosures. He sniffed, and frowned, but said nothing. ‘These are deep waters, Sherlock,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Deep waters indeed. I wish we had more information to go on.’

  ‘Those workers will be coming back,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘Why don’t we just ask them?’

  Mycroft raised an eyebrow. ‘Please explain yourself.’

  ‘If the three men who left this house earlier were the three men who broke into Holmes Lodge, then they would have recognized me from when they attacked me. They got a good enough view of my face. I didn’t immediately recognize them and raise the alarm, so they believe their disguises of black coats and wrapped faces were enough to hide their identities. They left Mr Phillimore here, intending to come back later and question him further about the letter. They even told us that they were just going off for lunch, and they would return. They presumed that we would either leave when Mr Phillimore didn’t return, or we would look for him in the house and not find him, and then leave anyway. There is no reason why they wouldn’t come back. As far as they are aware, they haven’t been identified, their secret is safe and Mr Phillimore is still here, plastered up inside the wall.’

  ‘You suggest that we remain here until they return, render them helpless and then ask them what is so important about this letter?’ Mycroft stared at Sherlock for a few moments. ‘Just the three of us – an overweight Civil Servant, an underweight engineer and a boy who was recently stabbed? I admire your confidence, but I am unable to support your plan.’

  Sherlock thought for a moment. ‘The obvious thing to do would be to call the police,’ he admitted.

  ‘Most certainly,’ Mr Phillimore interrupted.

  ‘The problem is,’ Sherlock continued, ‘that the police would almost certainly see nothing to investigate. They might, at a stretch, believe that Mr Phillimore was the victim of some kind of prank, but all they would do would be to have a stiff word with the decorators. The decorators would either claim that nothing happened, or they would take the first opportunity to make a run for it. Either way, we would be left here not knowing what was happening.’

  Mycroft nodded his huge head. ‘You have a point, Sherlock, but I do not see any alternative. I can ask questions through my superiors in the Foreign Office about what might be happening in Egypt, but I doubt they will take any interest.’

  Sherlock was silent for a moment. He was doing what Amyus Crowe had taught him: taking stock of all the resources that he had to hand – not just the obvious ones, but things that might be easily available to him if only he knew they were there.

  Moments later a whole plan materialized in his mind, fully formed. It was risky, possibly even illegal, but it was the only way to find out what was going on.

  ‘I presume,’ he said, ‘that Mother was on . . . medication in her final days.’

  ‘She was on morphine to control the pain,’ Mycroft said quietly. ‘Our family doctor prescribed it.’

  ‘And that morphine is still in her bedroom?’

  ‘It is.’ Mycroft closed his eyes. His face twisted as if a spasm of pain had passed through his head. ‘I see what you are proposing. Correct me where I go wrong. We send someone back to the house to retrieve the morphine. Meanwhile, we – by which I mean you, me and Mr Phillimore – hide ourselves somewhere in this house. When the three decorator villains return, the maid makes them a cup of tea. Unbeknownst to them, the milk has been adulterated with morphine. They pass out, then we come out of hiding and tie them up. When they awake, we question them about what is going on.’ He sighed. ‘There are several stumbling blocks, Sherlock. Firstly, they might return before the morphine arrives from Holmes Lodge, and then what do we do? Secondly, neither of us is in a position to judge the dosage of the morphine. We might give them too much, and kill them. Thirdly, having just returned from lunch I would suggest that we can’t guarantee that all of them will accept a cup of tea.’

  ‘Oh.’ Sherlock felt crestfallen. He had been so taken up with the grand sweep of his plan that he had failed to see the obvious flaws.

  ‘Perhaps I might make a suggestion,’ Mr Phillimore interrupted.

  Sherlock and Mycroft turned to look at him.

  ‘I have a sleeping draught upstairs in my bedroom.’ He shrugged, and looked slightly embarrassed. ‘I sleep badly at the best of times, and the powders, which my chemist gives me, sends me to sleep very quickly. I am very familiar with the dose needed. Secondly, there is some cider in a jug in the pantry. If the villains were offered cider rather than tea, I suspect they would leap at the opportunity.’

  Mycroft smiled. ‘Mr Phillimore, I underestimated you,’ he said. ‘You have improved Sherlock’s plan to a point of workability. However, I would point out that you will, of course, need to explain to your maid what is going on, and she may not wish to be involved with something that skirts close to the edge of the law.’

  Phillimore shook his head. ‘I would suggest that we put enough sleeping draught for three large men into the jug, and merely tell cook that she should serve it to the decorators the moment they get back. She can say that I am not here, and that the cider needs to be used up before the end of the day, or some such story. I believe they will accept it.’ He sniffed. ‘They struck me as being men who would rarely pass up the chance of a drink.’

  ‘I concur,’ Mycroft said, ‘although I suspect that you will need to find some explanation for your cook and your maid as to what has been going on in this house today. What with you disappearing, Sherlock and I searching the house and then you reappearing covered in plaster, I think they may be on the verge of handing in their notice.’

  ‘Oh I shouldn’t think so,’ Phillimore said, frowning. ‘They are used to my eccentricities.’ He glanced at Sherlock. ‘At least, I am told by others that I am eccentric. I do not see it myself, I am afraid.’

  ‘Take it from me,’ Sherlock said. ‘You are eccentric.’

  ‘Emma finds it endearing,’ Phillimore said, smiling shyly.

  ‘She comes from an equally eccentric family,’ Sherlock pointed out.

  ‘In the meantime,’ Mycroft continued,
interrupting, ‘I should send a telegram to my superiors, given that there may be an international dimension to this. They may wish to advise me, or make their own inquiries.’ He checked his watch. ‘We should move quickly, so that we are prepared for when these men reappear.’

  The next few minutes were taken up with Mr Phillimore sprinting up the stairs and retrieving the sleeping powders, then heading for the pantry where he was to drug the cider and tell his cook to give it to the decorators when they arrived. Meanwhile Sherlock watched out of the window, ready to call out an alert if the men came back, and Mycroft wrote out a quick telegram on a sheet of paper. Once Mr Phillimore had returned to the room he called the maid in and told her to take the telegram straight to the Post Office and send it, then take the afternoon off to keep her out of the way.

  Ten minutes after she left, Sherlock saw movement along the road. Three men were walking towards the house.

  ‘I think they’re here,’ he said.

  ‘Then we need to head upstairs,’ Mycroft said. ‘Mr Phillimore, are you sure your cook is up to this job?’

  ‘She understands what to do,’ Phillimore said. He raised an eyebrow. ‘I believe she has taken a shine to Mr Throop. Giving him a glass of cider will not be a problem for her, I feel.’

  ‘Did you tell her what you had added to the cider?’ Mycroft asked.

  ‘Certainly not! I felt it was better for her not to know. I did tell her to open the door when she hears the knocker and inform the men that I had gone out for a while. They will suppose that she just hadn’t seen me, and made that assumption, when I was in fact still incarcerated in the wall of my own spare room.’ He hesitated. ‘I also told her,’ he added, ‘to leave the men there and head into town to get some vegetables, meat and fish. She was reluctant to leave the men alone, so I told her that the maid, Marie, would be returning soon, and that there was no need to worry.’ He removed his glasses and started to polish them self-consciously. ‘She is a good woman, and I would not want her to be frightened when the men all fall asleep together.’

  ‘Good thinking.’ Mycroft led the way out into the hall and up the stairs. Sherlock had to resist the temptation to push his brother, who laboured to move from tread to tread and had to use the banister to pull himself up. Mr Phillimore kept glancing over his shoulder nervously, expecting the decorators to come through the door any moment, but Sherlock knew that it would take them a good few minutes to cover the distance from where he had seen them to the house.

  They got to the landing at the top of the stairs and were heading for one of the rooms that wasn’t being decorated when they heard the front door knocker.

  ‘It occurs to me,’ Mycroft said quietly, ‘that our plan comes to nothing if that is the postman instead of the decorators.’

  ‘Just as long as the cook doesn’t take it into her head to give him a glass of cider,’ Sherlock murmured. ‘It occurs to me that the men might just come straight upstairs to check that Mr Phillimore is still where they left him. If they do that they will see that he has been rescued.’

  Mycroft shook his head. ‘They have no reason to believe that he might have been found, and they will want to leave him inside the wall for a while in order to soften him up, render him more amenable to questioning. Besides which, I am sure they would not turn down the chance for some refreshments before recommencing their work. Interrogation is such thirsty business.’

  From the safety of the spare room they heard the door being opened, and various voices – one female and several male. They listened closely for any sound of someone coming up the stairs, but instead the voices got quieter as the men followed the cook along the corridor towards the kitchen, and the cider.

  ‘How long do we give it?’ Sherlock asked.

  ‘We should be able to hear the conversation slow down as they feel sleepy, and then stop as they fall asleep,’ Mycroft replied. ‘That is when we shall act.’

  They heard the cook’s footsteps coming back into the hall, and then the sound of the front door opening and closing. Sherlock felt a shiver of anticipation as he realized that the three of them were now alone in the house with three dangerous thugs, and of the three of them he would only trust himself in a fight.

  ‘How quickly do these powders work when you take them?’ Mycroft asked James Phillimore.

  ‘Usually within twenty minutes I am fast asleep,’ he replied in a whisper. ‘Even if I am reading, I fall asleep. I’ve often woken up in the morning with my spectacles still on my nose and a book in my lap.’

  ‘So, quite quickly then,’ Mycroft said. He looked at his watch. ‘We will give them half an hour, just in case.’

  As the three of them sat there silently, waiting for the criminals in the room below to fall asleep, Sherlock found himself remembering the various occasions when it was he who had been drugged, rather than someone else. A few years back the agents of the international criminal organization that called itself the Paradol Chamber had knocked him out with laudanum and transported him across the English Channel to France. A year or so after that they had done the same with a spray of some drug – probably morphine – directed into his face so that he breathed it in. He remembered on both occasions how soft and smooth his dreams had been, and how he hadn’t been aware even that he had fallen into a drugged state. Waking up in France the first time and a lunatic asylum the second time had been a shock, however, but given the way that the drug had made him feel he could understand how some people could become addicted to it.

  Mycroft checked his watch again, and said, ‘That is half an hour, and I can hear no conversation from downstairs. Let us go down and check on your labourers, Mr Phillimore.’

  The three of them went downstairs together and moved quietly across the hall and through a corridor to the kitchen. Three men – the same three that Sherlock had seen leaving Mr Phillimore’s house earlier on – were sitting at the kitchen table. One of them had slumped forward with his head on his arms, while the other two were resting with their heads tilted backwards. All three were snoring. An empty copper jug and three empty glasses sat before them on the table.

  Sherlock stared at them. If he was right, then these three men had tried to burgle his family home, and had attacked him when he tried to follow them. They had tried to kill him, and now here they were, completely at his mercy.

  He tried to see in them some recognizable feature, something that would confirm that these were the same men. One of them had a bandage around his arm, he noticed. This might have been the man whose arm he had hit with a tree branch. Another had a purple bruise across the front of his neck, giving the appearance that he hadn’t shaved.

  In the end, he wouldn’t know unless they actually confessed. Evidence could only take a person so far – it was indicative, but rarely definitive.

  ‘Mercy me!’

  The three of them turned. Standing in the doorway was Marie – Mr Phillimore’s maid. She was holding several shopping bags, and she was staring at the three men asleep around the table in shock.

  ‘Ah, Marie,’ Mr Phillimore said. ‘This is, ah . . .’

  ‘Easily explained,’ Mycroft interrupted smoothly. ‘Mr Phillimore’s decorators have been working very hard for a while, as you know. Unfortunately, the wallpaper paste they mixed up earlier contains a chemical which is meant to prevent mould and fungus from growing, but has also been proved to have a soporific effect on the human body. They have all fallen asleep. I suggest that you stay out of the kitchen, my girl, and let us tend to them.’

  She looked at him as if he’d been speaking in Chinese. ‘Shouldn’t you call a doctor?’ she asked. ‘I mean . . .’

  ‘We shall,’ Phillimore said. ‘I suggest you go and attend to your duties, Marie. I believe the upstairs needs tidying.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said, and then, looking at Mycroft: ‘Oh, sir – I went back to the Post Office to see if there’d been any reply to that telegram I sent, and there was. It must have come in awfully quick. I’ve got it here for y
ou.’

  She handed a sealed brown manila envelope across to Mycroft, then left, glancing dubiously backwards over her shoulder as she went.

  ‘Wallpaper paste?’ Sherlock said to Mycroft, smiling.

  ‘It was the first thing that came to mind,’ he said. He was using his pocket knife to slice open the envelope as he spoke. He removed a slip of paper and read it. His expression clouded over, a frown marring the normal unreadable expression.

  ‘Bad news?’ Sherlock asked.

  ‘Rather a change of plan,’ Mycroft said thoughtfully. He read the telegram again, then tore it into small pieces and slipped the pieces into a pocket of his jacket as if it was the most normal thing in the world. He glanced up to see Sherlock looking at him askance. ‘If I screw the telegram up and throw it away, somebody might retrieve it and read it,’ he explained. ‘If I tear it up and throw it away then someone might reconstruct it from the pieces. If I keep the pieces and throw them away gradually, throughout the day, then it is much more difficult for someone to find out what it said.’

  ‘Was it that important?’ Sherlock asked, intrigued.

  Mycroft looked at him for a few moments. ‘I neither send, nor do I receive, trivial telegrams,’ he said enigmatically.

  ‘Do people really collect the pieces of a torn-up telegram and rebuild it so they can see what it says?’ he asked. ‘It sounds like something from a book!’

  Mycroft drew himself up. ‘I have,’ he said huffily, ‘gained significant diplomatic advantage by collecting the torn-up pieces of a message and reassembling it to reconstitute the original.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Well,’ he added, ‘when I say “I”, I mean that agents of mine have done it. Searching waste-paper bins is beneath my dignity.’ He turned to Phillimore. ‘I have decided,’ he said, abruptly changing the subject, ‘that we should move these men from your house to ours. I presume you have no great attachment to them, and that you would rather see them gone?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Phillimore said, ‘with the proviso that I will need to find a new team of decorators to repair the damage done by these men.’ He paused, frowning. ‘I hope you will tell me the results of any questioning,’ he added. ‘I would hate to be left in the dark.’