Stone Cold
Page 23
‘I suspect the servant – George. He is under investigation too. And, to answer your earlier question, I anticipate that nothing at all will happen to Mrs Weston. She is paralysed, and bedridden and, as you have pointed out, beautiful. Taking such a woman to trial would cause consternation and anger among the general populace. No, she will be sternly warned, and she will be watched. All post to and from the house will be opened and inspected. Her life will be under constant scrutiny. Worse – her husband will know everything. He will not leave the house, but he will abandon her in all but geographical terms. A sad end to things.’ Abruptly changing the subject, he went on: ‘But what of this Cavalier treasure? After the boy and his mother spent so long searching for it, please do not tell me that you have just stumbled across it?’
‘Hardly “stumbled”,’ Sherlock said. ‘I had noticed that the apple trees in the orchard were of different varieties, and it occurred to me that whoever planted them might have left a clue as to where the treasure was buried – if, for instance, there was only one apple tree of the King Variety, or the Garden Royal. Later on, though, when Matty and I were going through that maze of tunnels, I realized that there was one tree whose barrelled roots we diverted completely around. The only reason for there to be no tunnels going to or from that tree would be if nobody had ever hidden there, which meant that it was the perfect location for the treasure.’
‘Ah,’ Mycroft said, ‘of course. How simple.’
‘Simple if you were there,’ Sherlock muttered.
‘What do you think of Charles Dodgson?’ Mycroft continued as if Sherlock had said nothing.
‘His brain works like a corkscrew,’ Sherlock said, smiling. ‘His love of wordplay and of mathematical puzzles is quite amazing. I feel as if I have to run just to stay in one place with him, mentally at least. It’s a very refreshing feeling.’
‘He thinks a great deal of you,’ Mycroft said. ‘He has written to tell me so. He finds you an excellent student.’ He smiled. ‘I am pleased.’
The military band finished their tune, and the crowd clapped. Sherlock and Mycroft did their best to join in, given that they were both holding ice-cream cones.
‘If you do not like Oxford,’ Mycroft went on, ‘then you can return to London. I would not wish to force you into any course of action you dislike.’
Sherlock thought for a while. ‘No,’ he said eventually, ‘I think I will stay. I’m having fun. And, of course, Matty is in no condition to move at the moment.’
‘Indeed.’ Mycroft was silent for a while. ‘Perhaps I could send him a hamper of food,’ he added. ‘As an apology.’
‘I think he’s getting more than enough food where he is,’ Sherlock answered. He laughed suddenly.
‘What is it?’
‘You could always have his barge repaired and repainted while he’s confined to bed. I think he would appreciate that.’
‘Then I shall do that.’ Mycroft settled back into his deckchair and closed his eyes as the band struck up another tune. ‘Ah,’ he murmured, ‘this is just perfect. I wish I could capture this moment in time forever. I wish I could capture a portrait of you, as you are now, before you get any older and become a man rather than a boy.’
Sherlock thought back to the time a little while ago, on the banks of the River Isis, with Charles Dodgson taking his photograph. ‘One day,’ he said quietly, ‘we will all have little devices the size of a matchbox, with levers on the side, and when we press the levers a glass plate inside the box will record exactly what we have seen and preserve it for posterity.’
‘How fanciful,’ Mycroft replied, eyes still closed. ‘You might just as well claim that we will have other little boxes that will, at the press of a lever, somehow magically record this wonderful music that we are listening to for us to replay later, in the convenience of our own homes.’
Sherlock smiled. ‘New things are being developed all the time,’ he replied. ‘Perhaps it will even be the same box.’
Mycroft snorted. ‘Enjoy the moment,’ he said. ‘Enjoy it while you can. It can never be recreated.’
Sherlock shut his eyes and lay back in the deckchair. He knew that his brother was wrong in this respect, and Mycroft’s insistence that the world would always be pretty much the way it was now worried him. There were changes ahead – big changes – and the world needed to be ready for them.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book, the seventh in the Young Sherlock Holmes series, is an odd hybrid. At least, that’s the way it’s turned out in my mind. On the one hand it marks a break with the past: moving Sherlock away from the comforts of having his aunt and uncle’s house as a base (even though he hadn’t actually been there for the past two books) and towards a future that involves starting a course at university, and also away from his comforting support network of friends like Rufus Stone, Virginia Crowe and Amyus Crowe, and towards a future when he is on his own. On the other hand it’s a return to the kind of stripped-down, pure version of the books that I managed to hit in Death Cloud – Sherlock and Matty working alone together to solve a crime. What the future holds is anyone’s guess – although I do have a file of notes.
As usual I’ve done a fair amount of research to make sure that the history and the people are more or less accurate. I managed to pull descriptions of the Oxford town and Oxford University of the time from Victorian Oxford by W. R. Ward (Frank Cass and Co. Ltd, 1965), while Charles Dodgson’s eccentric character and history I took from three books: Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life by Robin Wilson (Allen Lane, 2008), Lewis Carroll and Alice by Stephanie Lovett Stoffel (Thames and Hudson, 1997) and In the Shadow of the Dreamchild: A New Understanding of Lewis Carroll by Karoline Leach (Peter Owen Ltd, 1999). The Victorian attitude towards death and dead bodies was taken from the excellent Necropolis: London and Its Dead by Catharine Arnold (Simon and Schuster, 2006), which I have used before in Fire Storm. Wikipedia has, of course, been used to fill in the gaps and answer sudden questions, such as, ‘When were ice-cream cones invented?’ (The answer is that they were first mentioned in the year 1825, where they were said to have been made from ‘little waffles’, so, when Sherlock and Mycroft have their ice creams in the park in the epilogue, it’s all historically accurate.)
The bit when Sherlock has just met his landlady, Mrs McCrery, for the first time, and is introduced to her stuffed cat, Macallistair, really happened to me, by the way. I was in Wigtown, which is a small town out in Dumfries and Galloway, in Scotland. I was there for a literary festival and I arrived late one night after a long journey up by plane, by train and by car. It was dark, I was tired and I was hungry. The festival organizers had, very nicely, put me up in a local farmhouse that also did a good line in bed and breakfast. The lovely lady who ran the place ushered me into her small sitting room and said she’d go and make me a pot of tea and some warm scones. I settled down to relax. There was a cat, curled up by the fire. I went over to stroke it, because I love cats and I wanted to make friends with it. You can guess the rest. It was, and still is, one of the more bizarre events that has ever happened to me. Perhaps I just lead a sheltered life.
With luck, and a good headwind, I will be starting work on the next book in the series soon. It might be called Wind Chill, or it might be called Night Break – I’m not yet sure. I’m pretty sure, however, that Charles Dodgson will play a part, and that it might involve Sherlock returning to his family home to see his mother and his sister. It might also involve the case of Mr James Phillimore, who, stepping back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world.
Until then, take care.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Lane is the author of the bestselling Young Sherlock Holmes series and of Lost Worlds. Young Sherlock Holmes has been published around the world and is available in thirty-seven different languages. Not only is Andrew a lifelong fan of Arthur Conan Doyle’s great detective, he is also an expert on the books and is the only children
’s writer endorsed by the Sherlock Holmes Conan Doyle estate. Andrew writes other things too, including adult thrillers (under a pseudonym), TV adaptations (including Doctor Who) and non-fiction books (about things as wide-ranging as James Bond and Wallace & Gromit). He lives in Dorset with his wife and son and a vast collection of Sherlock Holmes books, the first of which he found in a jumble sale over forty years ago.
Books by Andrew Lane
The Young Sherlock Holmes series
Death Cloud
Red Leech
Black Ice
Fire Storm
Snake Bite
Knife Edge
Stone Cold
www.youngsherlock.com
The Lost Worlds series
Lost Worlds
Lost Worlds: Shadow Creatures
www.thelostworlds.co.uk
First published 2014 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This electronic edition published 2014 by Macmillan Children’s Books
a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-4472-2806-6
Copyright © Andrew Lane 2014
Cover illustration by Steve Stone
The right of Andrew Lane to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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