by Andrew Lane
Sherlock nodded. ‘Thank you.’
They walked on in silence for a few moments.
‘That was good figurin’ out, by the way,’ Crowe said.
‘What was?’
‘The bit about the ghost – workin’ out that only livin’ people need open doors.’
Sherlock smiled. ‘It just seems obvious. A ghost that can’t walk through walls, or bars, isn’t a ghost at all. And that’s why I can’t believe in ghosts, by the way.’
Crowe raised an enquiring eyebrow. ‘Go ahead – I’m all ears.’
‘Well, we assume that ghosts can walk through walls, but they apparently still need to walk on floors. People say they’ve seen ghosts on stairs, or in first-floor bedrooms, or wherever. It doesn’t make any sense. If walls aren’t any barrier to ghosts then floors shouldn’t be either – they should just fall straight through them. Or, rather, they shouldn’t be able to climb up stairs in the first place. Maybe, logically, there’s something about the ground that means they can’t move through it, the ground being natural, but if they can move through vertical barriers like walls then they can move through horizontal barriers like floors, and if they can’t move through horizontal barriers then they can’t be ghosts.’
Crowe considered for a moment. ‘I like your style of thinkin’. Most people argue for or against the existence of ghosts on a spiritual basis. You’re applying rigorous logic. Are you doin’ this to everythin’ in your life?’
‘Bit by bit.’
‘Try not to turn your attention to religion just yet. Remember, you still have to live in your uncle’s house, an’ I suspect that his heart wouldn’t stand the strain if you tried to persuade him logically that God don’t exist.’
Crowe headed towards a carriage that was waiting patiently for them. Sherlock hung back.
‘Can we trust it?’ he asked uncertainly.
‘As much as we can trust anything,’ Crowe rumbled. ‘It’s the cab I took to get here. To be on the safe side, I waited for three to pass before I hailed it.’ He placed a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder. ‘You’re spooked, son, an’ that’s natural. The Paradol Chamber have taken a shot at you, an’ it blew up in their face. I don’t think they’ll try anythin’ else for a while. If nothin’ else, this was a warnin’. They want you to know they’re watchin’ you, an’ they don’t want you interferin’ in their plans again.’
Sherlock felt something harden within his head. ‘Then I don’t have a choice, do I?’ he asked.
Crowe just cocked an enquiring eyebrow.
‘If I want to walk safely in the streets,’ Sherlock said grimly, ‘then I have to bring the Paradol Chamber down. I have to crush them so they never threaten anybody else again.’
Crowe nodded. ‘I reckon,’ he said, ‘that’s a logical course of action to take.’
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The text that forms the majority of this story was originally written for the third Young Sherlock Holmes adventure – Black Ice. It formed a self-contained section just after Sherlock is attacked by a steel-clawed falcon in the Passmore-Edwards Museum and just before he heads off to Russia. It was removed because it slowed the story down, and because it didn’t have very much to do with the rest of the plot. I always regretted its loss, so I present it here as a short story in its own right. The action now takes place between the end of Black Ice and the beginning of the fourth Young Sherlock Holmes adventure, Fire Storm.
Sherlock’s brief imprisonment in the madhouse known as ‘Bedlam’ (or, more properly, the Bethlehem Hospital) is as accurate as I could make it. Actually, I could have put a lot more detail in there, but I wasn’t sure that a full-blown description of a London madhouse of the 1860s was entirely appropriate for a story like this. They weren’t nice places. Anyway, the books I used for research were:
Bedlam: London and Its Mad by Catharine Arnold (Simon & Schuster, 2008)
Bedlam: London’s Hospital for the Mad by Paul Chambers (Ian Allan Publishing, 2009)
Richard Dadd, the artist who engages Sherlock in conversation in the asylum, was indeed a patient at Bedlam for a number of years. He was, at one stage, moved to the newly opened Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, but I’m assuming in this story that he was moved back to Bedlam for a while – possibly for good behaviour.
The building occupied by the Bethlehem Hospital is now the Imperial War Museum in South London. My grandmother used to live just around the corner from it, and I have distinct memories as a child of being taken through the grounds, past the building, and looking up at it nervously, knowing that it had once been inhabited by lunatics. Apparently the staff of the museum still don’t like going down into the basement to the storerooms. They say there’s a ‘feeling’ about the place. Sherlock wouldn’t believe in ‘feelings’, but me? I’m not so sure . . .
Andrew Lane
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Lane is the author of some twenty previous books. Some are original novels set in the same universes as the BBC TV programmes Doctor Who, Torchwood and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), some are contemporary novels written under a pseudonym, and some are non-fiction books about specific film and TV characters (notably James Bond, and Wallace & Gromit). He has also written for the Radio Times and its US equivalent, TV Guide. Andrew lives in Dorset with his wife, his son and a vast collection of Sherlock Holmes books, the purchase of which over the past twenty years is now a justifiably tax-deductible expense.
Also by Andrew Lane
Young Sherlock Holmes: Death Cloud
Young Sherlock Holmes: Red Leech
Young Sherlock Holmes: Black Ice
Young Sherlock Holmes: Fire Storm
This electronic edition first published 2011 by Macmillan Children’s Books
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ISBN 978-1-4472-1287-4 EPUB
Copyright © Andrew Lane 2011
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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