Stone Cold

by Andrew Lane

  The breeze ruffled the leaves on the trees, making a soft shushing sound, like waves breaking against some faraway beach. Sherlock lost track of time entirely. There was just an ever-present moment stretching out in front of him as far as he could sense.

  A sudden mechanical noise from the road shocked both the boys into full wakefulness. It was the sound of metal gears and chains – the sound of a bicycle. They stared towards the road, aware that it might just be someone going past, but also aware that it might be the postman, finally.

  It was the postman. He slowed to a halt by the gates of Gresham Lodge, dismounting his bike smartly as he came to a standstill. He wasn’t much older than Sherlock, but he was wearing a dark uniform and a peaked cap, and he had a bulging canvas sack strapped to the back of the bike. He unstrapped it, opened it up, delved inside and pulled out a small package. Turning to the post box attached to the wall he stared at it for a few moments, then stared at the package. Sherlock guessed he was trying to work out whether or not he could fit it through the slot. After a few moments he decided that it wasn’t worth trying and dug into his pockets for a bunch of keys. Each key had a label attached. They must all fit different post boxes at different houses along his route – at least, those houses whose occupants locked their gates and had their post delivered to a box outside. In Sherlock’s experience, most big houses preferred the postman to come to the front door to deliver and collect letters. Whoever lived in Gresham Lodge valued their privacy.

  The postman opened the post box, put the package inside, then locked it again. Within a few seconds he was cycling off, whistling a tune.

  Matty’s head appeared around the curve of the tree trunk. ‘What do you want to do?’ he hissed. ‘Do you want to pick the lock an’ take a look at the parcel?’

  ‘There’s no point,’ Sherlock hissed back. ‘We’re pretty sure we know what’s in it. You saw the box being packed. Let’s wait and see who picks it up.’

  The wait continued. The sun was lower in the sky now, and the weather was getting colder. Sherlock’s stomach was rumbling, and he thought he could hear volcanic murmurings from Matty’s direction as well. He tried to ignore the hunger as best he could.

  It was late afternoon when he heard the noise of a key in a padlock. He snapped his gaze around from the squirrel it had been watching to the gates of Gresham Lodge. The sun was behind the house now, which meant that the walls around the grounds cast a long shadow over the road. The gates were almost invisible, but Sherlock thought he could just make out one of them swinging open. Nothing happened for a long moment. The woods seemed to quieten down – the birds and the insects suddenly hushing as if they were waiting for something bad to happen. Then, just as Sherlock thought that his eyes and his ears were tricking him, a darker shape slipped out from the gap between the open and the closed gates. As far as Sherlock was concerned it was just a patch of moving blackness, but somehow it gave the impression of being large, bulkier than a normal man, but hunched at the same time. It also gave the impression of wariness, as if it was watching its surroundings for anything that might threaten its safety. There was something feral, animal-like, about it.

  The figure got to the post box, obscuring it in darkness, and Sherlock again heard a key being used. Moments later the shape headed back to the gates of the lodge. It paused there, and at that moment a ray of sunlight penetrated between two chimney pots on top of the house and illuminated the shape from behind. Whoever it was, they were bundled up in a thick leather coat and wearing a leather hat pulled down low over their face. Judging by the position of the top of their head, Sherlock reckoned they were somewhere near seven feet tall. It occurred to Sherlock that this had to be the same person he had seen on the roof of the house, when he was on the barge passing by, and then again in the carriage that had gone through the gates of the lodge a few days before. The man with the scars on his hands.

  The man stayed there for a while, watching and waiting, and then he slipped back into the shadows. The gate closed with a clank, and then Sherlock heard the chain rattle and the padlock click close.

  He counted to a hundred, in case the big man was still there, in the shadows, watching, and then he slipped down from the tree and ran across the road to the gates. They were, indeed, locked again.

  Matty joined him. ‘Well, it’s been a fun afternoon,’ he said, ‘but I’m not sure how much more we know now than we did before.’

  ‘We’re just connecting dots,’ Sherlock said thoughtfully. ‘We’ve tracked the stolen items from the mortuary to here. We know that this place is connected to the thefts.’

  ‘Great,’ Matty said. ‘So, back to Oxford for some nosh then?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  Matty sighed. ‘I thought you might say that. You want to go inside, don’t you?’

  ‘Only up to a window, just so I can see the package being opened. Any ideas?’

  ‘Judgin’ by how careful that bloke in the big coat was, ’e’s not goin’ to allow any gaps in the wall. ’E’ll repair ’em as soon as ’e finds ’em. Out best chance is to find an overhangin’ tree an’ get over that way.’

  ‘Won’t he be regularly trimming back branches the way he’ll be looking for gaps in the wall?’

  Nah – cos ’e’s such a big bloke, ’e’ll only be lookin’ for branches that could bear ’is own weight. ’E’ll forget that there are smaller people around. Like me.’

  ‘But I’m bigger than you,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘A branch that would take your weight might break under mine.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Matty said, opening his jacket to reveal a rope wound around his waist, ‘but I came prepared. I’ll climb over, then throw this rope back so you can climb up it.’

  ‘Can you take my weight?’

  ‘If I can’t find a tree trunk on the other side to secure the rope, then I’ll ’ave to, won’t I?’

  It all worked out the way Matty had described. They walked around the walls of the lodge until they found a tree branch that projected over, then Matty scrambled up and along like a monkey. Once over he threw the rope back in Sherlock’s direction. He must have found an anchor point of some kind, because when Sherlock tugged on it the rope went taut. He climbed the wall, feet against the bricks and hands holding tight to the rope. When he got to the top he paused, and looked around, but everything was quiet. The shadowed bulk of the house appeared to loom over him. Sherlock carefully slid into the grounds of Gresham Lodge. It felt like it was several degrees colder inside the grounds than it was outside, and even with his back to it Sherlock was aware that the house was there. He could feel it watching him. He shook himself, trying to get rid of the unwelcome sensation. Houses did not have eyes, and they did not have personalities. They did not watch people, or loom over them. He was just slightly disoriented from lack of food, that was all.

  Looking sideways at Matty, Sherlock could see that the boy’s face was pale and strained. He was feeling it too, whatever it was.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Did I miss a sign?’ Matty asked. ‘Is this an asylum? Cos it certainly feels like one.’

  ‘It’s just a house.’ He looked at its blank face again. ‘Just an ordinary house.’

  The two of them sprinted across the grounds, aiming for the corner of the house so that they were out of direct line of sight of any of the windows. When they got there they flattened themselves against the brickwork. The house felt strangely warm beneath Sherlock’s palms. It must have been the heat of the sun still lingering in the bricks, he told himself.

  He led the way along the side of the house to the nearest window and peered around the edge of the window frame. Inside looked like a dining room: a long dark table set with candles. The room was empty. He gestured to Matty, and they moved on to the next window.

  This one gave on to a room that was lined with wooden display cabinets with glass fronts. From the angle he was looking at, Sherlock couldn’t see what
was in the cabinets. There were two doors out of the room – one directly across from the window, presumably leading out into a hall, and one to Sherlock’s right, which he assumed led into another room.

  He was about to shift position to get a better view when the door to the room opened and a man walked in.

  The newcomer was the man who had collected the parcel from the post box. He had taken off his hat, but he was still wearing his bulky leather coat. He filled the doorway from side to side and top to bottom, but in the flickering gaslight that illuminated the room Sherlock could see that he had a leather mask over his face. He heard Matty beside him catch his breath as he saw it. The mask was made of fragments of leather of various shades, sizes and shapes, all sewn together in a patchwork. There were two holes for the eyes, but the gaslight didn’t reach inside and they were just dark holes.

  The figure was holding the box from the package. He walked across to one of the display cabinets and opened up the glass. He opened the box inside, took some object from within, then put it into the cabinet and closed the lid again. He stood, staring at it for a moment, then walked out of the room, taking the box with him. He shut the door behind him.

  If that was the toe which had been stolen from the mortuary, then the mysterious man had placed it in a display. Logic told Sherlock that everything else in the display had to be a stolen body part as well, but why? What was the point?

  He felt a burning wave of curiosity wash over him. He had to see inside the room! He had to know what was going on! ‘Can we get in?’ he whispered.

  ‘I dunno – ’ave you got a monkey wiv you?’

  Sherlock stared at his friend. ‘Don’t be facetious.’

  ‘If I knew what that was, then I wouldn’t be it.’ Matty ran his hands around the window frame. ‘This place is pretty old,’ he whispered. ‘I reckon I could prob’ly work some of this wood loose and pull the entire frame out, but I suppose you don’t want to leave any traces.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Sherlock hissed back. ‘No noise and no evidence that we were here.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Matty’s gaze flickered around the frame again. He pushed at the window experimentally. The bottom section was obviously designed to slide up, if someone in the house wanted to open the window, but there was a bolt connecting it to the upper section that stopped anyone outside opening it if it was closed. Sherlock heard it rattle. ‘Right – I think I can do this.’ Matty reached into his pocket and pulled out a spool of wire. Quickly he pulled a length of it straight and bent it to and fro a few times until it broke off. He then fashioned a loop at one end and lowered the hook through the gap between the two sections of the window. He fished around for a moment or two until the wire loop touched the bolt. He hooked the loop around the bolt and pulled. The bolt slid back.

  ‘You’ve done that before,’ Sherlock whispered accusingly.

  ‘No, I haven’t!’

  ‘Then why do you keep a reel of wire in your pocket?’

  ‘Cos it’s useful for all sorts of things. Man’s got a pocket knife an’ a reel of wire an’ he can pretty much do anything. An’ repair anything.’

  Sherlock glanced at the window. ‘You seemed to know exactly what to do there.’

  ‘Obvious, weren’t it?’ Matty protested.

  Without replying, Sherlock carefully placed his hands against the glass of the lower section and pushed upward. There was a counterweighted sash somewhere inside, because it slid up noiselessly and without effort.

  Sherlock glanced at Matty. ‘Are you coming in?’

  ‘You want me to, or you want me to stay out here an’ stand guard?’

  ‘I think there’s a bigger risk of someone coming down the corridor and into the room than coming round the corner of the house and seeing the window open.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  Sherlock climbed over the windowsill and into the room. He looked around at the glass cabinets and gasped.

  They were full of bits of bodies.

  Sherlock heard a thump on the carpet beside him as Matty entered the room. A few seconds later the boy gasped, and said, ‘Oh my God!’ What is this place?’

  Sherlock didn’t know. He was transfixed by the sight of arms, hands, legs, feet, eyes and ears, all carefully placed on purple velvet. All the hands were together in one case, all the ears in another . . . everything was clustered in groups of similar objects. Seeing them together, and divorced from their bodies, Sherlock was amazed at how different they were from one another. In the case of hands alone there were big hands, small hands, hairy hands with torn nails, delicate hands . . . all possible variations – and more than could have come from the Oxford mortuary, Sherlock realized. These thefts were much wider than he had thought.

  The hands had been sliced neatly at the wrist, he noticed. There was no blood, no tearing or bruising of the flesh. They all looked as if they should still be attached to their owner.

  There were labels beside each hand, he noticed. They were written in a neat copperplate script, and they appeared to relate to the occupation of the person whose hand it was. ‘Manual labourer’, one said. Another said: ‘Typist’.

  In Sherlock’s mind, a theory began to form.

  Matty was transfixed by a case of eyeballs. Sherlock moved across to join him. The eyes weren’t as different from one another as the hands were, but each one was a different colour, and the labels this time read: ‘Short-Sighted’, ‘Long-Sighted’ and ‘Blind’.

  ‘They’re lookin’ at me,’ Matty whispered hoarsely.

  ‘It’s your imagination.’

  Matty took a step to one side. ‘Nah, they’re definitely lookin’ at me. They’re followin’ me around the room.’

  ‘It’s an optical illusion. The same thing happens with well-painted portraits – they seem to be looking at you all the time.’

  ‘Maybe they are as well.’

  Actually, Sherlock had to admit that in the flickering gaslight it did look as if the eyes were shifting around slightly on their velvet.

  ‘How come they’re not, like, decayin’?’ Matty asked. ‘What’s keepin’ them fresh?’

  ‘I was wondering that.’

  ‘Are they, like, preserved in alcohol or somethin’?’

  ‘They’re not in bottles, floating in liquid.’

  ‘Mummified then, like them blokes in Egypt?’

  ‘Mummies are shrivelled and brown because of the preservation process. They don’t look this fresh.’

  ‘Well, what then? Magic?’

  Sherlock indicated the hands in their case. ‘Take a look at them. Do you notice anything?’

  Matty bent over, not without a twitch of his shoulders. ‘They look too good to be true. An’ there should be some bruisin’ or tearin’ where they were cut away from the arm, but there’s nothin’.’

  ‘They’re not real,’ Sherlock announced firmly. ‘Look at the skin – it’s slightly shiny. These are wax models – not real hands at all.’ He turned and indicated the eyes. ‘If these were real they’d look more like poached eggs, all deflated and discoloured, but they’re perfect. They’re made out of wax as well, I think.’

  Matty stared at Sherlock. ‘So someone steals these things from the mortuary, sends ’em to London, where someone else sends ’em back, an’ by the time they get back here they’ve turned from flesh to wax? That don’t make any sense!’

  ‘It does if the box that gets sent back isn’t the one from the latest theft, it’s the one from the theft before that.’ Sherlock thought for a minute. ‘Mycroft’s agent didn’t see what happened to the box while it was inside the house, and he can’t be sure the one he sent was the same one as arrived. Somewhere in that time, the stolen toe was taken out and something else was put in the box or the box was swapped/exchanged for a similar one.’ He looked around, trying to work out where the burly figure had been standing when he and Matty had been looking through the window. Yes, it was nearer the corner of the room. He crossed over and quickly scanned the cabinet. Eight
fingers were lined up inside, on velvet. The ends appeared to have been neatly sliced through, showing bone and tissue and fat, but close up Sherlock could see that it was all too perfect. The flesh was the scarlet colour of fresh blood, not the rust of dried blood, and the shine of the wax made it look wet, not dried. One of the fake fingers was slightly twisted, as if it had been only recently put into the case, and in a hurry. ‘This one – this is what we saw the man putting in just now. So – a real toe was stolen and a reproduction finger was returned. I guess that next time there’s a theft, whatever is stolen will be sent to London and a wax toe will be returned. Someone in London is making wax reproductions of these stolen body parts.’

  ‘What are they doing with the originals?’ Matty wanted to know.

  ‘Throwing them out,’ Sherlock ventured. ‘Or maybe burning them – if they’ve got any Christian feeling in them.’

  Matty looked around again, but he was relaxing now that he knew the body parts weren’t real. ‘So this is – what? – some kind of exhibit? Like in a museum?’

  ‘It must be. But why? What’s it all for?’

  Matty moved across to the door. ‘Maybe there’s other rooms with other stuff in that might tell us.’ Before Sherlock could stop him he had eased the door open a crack and was looking out into the corridor. Quickly he pulled his head back again and shut the door.

  ‘What happened?’ Sherlock asked.

  ‘It was a cat,’ Matty said. ‘It startled me.’

  He opened the door again and glanced outside. ‘Okay, it’s gone now,’ he said. ‘Let’s see what’s next door.’ Quickly he slipped outside. With a muffled curse, Sherlock followed.

  The corridor had a door at one end and disappeared around a corner at the other. A cat sat at the far end, licking itself. There were three more doors leading off the corridor’s length. Matty moved along to the next door and put his ear up against it. Sherlock joined him as quietly as he could. They both listened carefully, but could hear nothing from inside. Eventually Sherlock took hold of the doorknob and cautiously turned it. There was no reaction from inside the room. He pushed the door open.