CHAPTER THREE

Sherlock felt his mouth drop open in shock. He knew Mrs Eglantine disliked him to the point of hatred, but the fact that she hated him enough to want him dead – enough to actually ask someone to kill him – that was a shock. What had he ever done to her? Apart from question her position and challenge her authority, that was.

The man with the oily hair was saying something, and Sherlock concentrated on hearing what it was.

‘I’ll take that into consideration,’ he said, ‘I surely will, but the problem is that I could be seeing a nice return on what I know about that hoity-toity Holmes family, but I’m holdin’ back. Rather than get them to pay me a guinea a week to keep their secret, I’m usin’ that influence to keep you employed by them.’ He sniggered. ‘Let’s face it, who would employ a sour-faced harridan like you if they didn’t have to? I’m losing money on this deal while you get a nice little job and a wage.’

Mrs Eglantine started to speak, but the man held up a hand and she stopped.

‘I know what you’re going to say,’ he said. ‘You’re going to tell me that when you find this treasure of yours that’s hid in the house, you’ll split it with me and we’ll both be rich. The trouble is, that treasure is what’s known as “hypothetical” – I ain’t seen it and I ain’t convinced that it exists. On the other hand, the money the Holmes family could be paying me to keep their secret is real. Cash in hand, if you like – or beer in belly, in my case. So I got to ask myself, am I better off with a smaller amount of real money or a larger amount of hypothetical money?’

Mrs Eglantine sniffed. ‘We had an arrangement, Mr Harkness,’ she said. ‘If you go back on that now, then nobody will ever trust you again.’

‘I’m a blackmailer,’ Harkness pointed out calmly. ‘The only thing people trust me to do is reveal their secrets if I don’t get paid regular.’ He sighed. ‘Look, we’ve had a good thing going over the years, darlin’. You ferret out family secrets wherever you work and bring them to me, and I use them to make a few quid on a regular basis, but since you got wind of this supposed treasure the whole thing’s gone to pot. Why can’t we go back to the way things were?’

‘Firstly,’ Mrs Eglantine said icily, ‘I am not your “darling” and I never will be, and secondly, the trivial way you blackmail the local townspeople over their petty thefts and even pettier romances barely brings you in enough money to fund those big bets you like to place on the horses and the illegal boxing. If you ever want to make anything of yourself, I am your only chance.’

Harkness sighed. ‘You’ve got a sharp but persuasive tongue in your head, Betty. All right – I’ll go along with it for another month. But just a month, you hear? After that I’m getting my hooks into the Holmes family and soaking them for whatever cash I can.’

‘To you,’ she replied, ‘I am Mrs Eglantine. Never take the liberty of calling me by my first name.’ She seemed to thaw slightly, reaching out to touch his arm. ‘I’m near to finding it, Josh – I know I am. I just need a little more time.’ She paused for a moment. ‘And I need that interfering brat Sherlock out of my way. Can you do that for me?’

‘I’ll get some of my lads on it,’ he promised. ‘You got time for a bite to eat?’

She shook her head. ‘That damned family are expecting their evening meal. I swear, Josh, there are times when I just feel like poisoning the lot of them and watching as they writhe in agony on the dining-room carpet. But not just yet. I need to get back.’

‘Stay in touch.’ He laughed. ‘Let me know if you find them golden plates you keep on about.’

‘I will.’ She turned away, then turned back. ‘Oh, I almost forgot. I found this in the room of one of the maids.’ She reached into a hidden fold of her crinoline skirt and withdrew a letter. ‘It is a note from a boy who claims to love her.’

‘I ain’t interested in tittle-tattle,’ Harkness said.

‘You would be if you knew that the boy in question is the eldest son of the Mayor of Farnham.’

Harkness cocked his head to one side in sudden interest. ‘The Mayor’s son, seeing some little hussy of a housemaid? That ought to be good for a few quid. The Mayor’s very particular about the company he keeps. He tells everyone that his son is going to marry into the nobility. He’ll want to keep this one very quiet.’ He frowned. ‘The letter’s in the boy’s own handwriting? And he’s signed it?’

‘With love and kisses.’

Harkness grinned. ‘People never learn, do they? I never commit anything to writing, just in case.’ He reached out and took the letter from Mrs Eglantine. ‘Thanks for this. You want cash now, or shall I add it to the account?’

‘Pay me later. Just make sure you remember.’

‘Oh, I’ll remember. My memory’s razor sharp.’

They parted, Mrs Eglantine heading off in one direction and Josh Harkness in the other. Sherlock almost expected the man to try to kiss her on the cheek, based on that momentary final flash of friendship, but if the thought crossed his mind he didn’t act on it.

Sherlock’s gaze flickered uncertainly between the two of them. Should he follow Mrs Eglantine, or Josh Harkness? It occurred to him that he didn’t have to follow either of them – he could just go and find Matty and spend the rest of the day in Farnham – but he knew that he couldn’t let this thing go. There was more at stake here than he had realized – not just his own safety, but the future of his family. He had to find out what was going on, and stop it. If he could.

After a few seconds he decided that he should follow the greasy-haired man. Mrs Eglantine was heading back to the house – she had said so herself. He knew where she would be and pretty much what she was going to be doing. The man was the uncertain quantity here, and Sherlock needed to find out much more about him. That was the direction that any immediate threat to Sherlock would be coming from.

Harkness now had something incriminating on one of the housemaids in Holmes Manor. Sherlock wondered which one it was. He didn’t know any of them by name, and rarely said anything to them, but they all seemed pleasant enough, and good at their jobs. If one of them had found happiness with a boy who was from a different social class, then what of it? Sherlock didn’t see why either of them should be punished for the fact, let alone the boy’s father.

Not for the first time, it occurred to him that the British system of working class, middle class and upper class people was not only pointless and archaic, but damaging to the very fabric of society.

Checking to see that Mrs Eglantine hadn’t turned around to come back for some reason, Sherlock slipped through the crowd after her friend.

Sherlock stayed well back, just in case Harkness looked over his shoulder. He probably didn’t know what Sherlock looked like, but he seemed like the kind of man who would be constantly checking for pursuit. As the two of them moved through the crowd Sherlock couldn’t help but notice how some of the townsfolk – usually the better-dressed ones – moved out of his way and turned their heads to avoid looking at him. He seemed to be known to a lot of people – and not in a good way. Sherlock couldn’t help but remember some of the older boys at Deepdene Academy who had bullied the younger ones. They had swaggered through the school halls in much the same way, and the kids had moved out of their path like minnows moving out of the way of a stickleback.

Sherlock sensed a presence by his side. He turned his head a fraction, not sure that he wanted to acknowledge whoever it was. Maybe Mrs Eglantine had turned back and seen him. But no – it was Matty. He grinned up at Sherlock, one hand holding a cauliflower which he was eating raw.

‘Wha’s goin’ on?’ he said through a mouthful of vegetable.

‘We’re following someone.’

‘Who? That Mrs Eglantine?’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘No. Some other man she was meeting. Harkness, I think his name is. Josh Harkness.’

Matty’s face seemed to freeze. His eyes widened in concern. ‘Josh Harkness? Small bloke with hair that looks like he washes it in lamp oil?’

‘That’s him.’

Matty shook his head. ‘Best not to get involved with him, Sherlock. I heard things about him. The barge hands on the canal talk about him in whispers. He takes a cut from most of the thieves that work this town. Five per cent of their earnings, he takes, payable every week. If they don’t pay him, he takes five per cent of their bodies – just cuts it off. Fingers, toes, ears, noses . . . whatever it takes until he has five per cent of their body weight. That’s his rule, and he never varies it.’ He shuddered. ‘We had a talk, him and me, a little time after I arrived in Farnham. He took me by the shoulder in the marketplace and said quietly, “I notice that you’re not averse to nabbing bits of food here and there, young ’un. That’s all right – never let it be said that Josh Harkness begrudges a boy his fill. But take a note from a friend – if you ever graduate to taking money rather than fruit and pies, I get a cut. Ask anyone. And if I don’t get a cut –”’ he made a snipping motion with his fingers – ‘“well, one way or another, I get my cut, if you see what I mean.” He’s not a nice man, Sherlock. Even on a scale of people who are not nice, he ranks right near the top.’

Sherlock nodded thoughtfully as the two of them moved through the crowd. ‘I understand. I got the impression that he had few scruples, but he’s got something on my family – some kind of information that he’s holding over their heads.’

‘Yeah, he dabbles in blackmail as well. He collects all the little secrets that people have, and he gets them to pay him every week according to their means for the privilege of keeping it all secret.’ Matty shook his head. ‘It’s a few pence here, a couple of shillings there and a handful of pounds every week, but it all mounts up. He’s making a fortune without working for it.’

‘And he’s cashing in on people’s unhappiness,’ Sherlock said grimly. He found that the thought was making him angry. ‘He’s a parasite on the human race, and someone ought to do something about it. Why don’t they?’

‘The people he’s blackmailing are too scared to go to the police, because if they do their secrets will be revealed. Besides, he’s probably blackmailing half the police in Farnham as well. The last thing they’re going to do is expose him.’

‘Then I suppose I’ll have to do it myself,’ Sherlock said. The words surprised him even as he heard himself saying them, but they sounded right.

Matty was about to say something else, but up ahead Josh Harkness turned a corner out of the marketplace. He was still clutching the stolen letter in his hand. Sherlock gestured to Matty to keep quiet. Together they exited the fringes of the crowd and moved towards the corner. Sherlock sidled up to the edge of the brick wall and looked around it carefully, half expecting to come face to face with the blackmailer, but the man was up ahead, walking along an empty street. Sherlock hung back until Harkness was almost at the far end. If he and Matty started after him while he was still only halfway along, then if he turned, he would see them straight away. They would be the only two people on the street.

Harkness got to the end of the street and turned left. As soon as he vanished from sight, Sherlock pulled Matty into the street and started running.

It only took a few seconds for Sherlock and Matty to get to the end of the street. They did the same there as they had before, Matty hanging back while Sherlock peered around the corner. Harkness was perhaps twenty feet away, still striding along, ignoring everything around him. He was, Sherlock judged, very confident in himself.

A smell began to prick at Sherlock’s nostrils: a sharp smell, like a combination of cleaning chemicals and something darker, like sewage. Sherlock felt his eyes watering as the vapour – whatever it was – began to irritate them.

At the end of the street, rather than turning into another street or an alley, Harkness came to a door and opened it with a key. He stared right and left suspiciously, the stolen letter still held in his hand. Sherlock pulled back so that he couldn’t be seen, trying to suppress a sneeze that kept trying to explode out of his nose. By the time he felt confident enough to poke his head back out, the man had vanished.

‘What’s in there?’ he asked Matty.

Matty poked his head around the corner as well, underneath Sherlock’s. He sniffed. ‘Tannery,’ he said firmly. ‘They get the cow hides coming in from the farms and the abattoirs, and they cure them to turn them into leather.’

‘“Cure” them?’ Sherlock asked. He’d heard the term before, but he wasn’t sure what it entailed.

‘Yeah.’ Matty glanced up scornfully. ‘You ought to get out more. “Curing” is what they do to turn skin into leather. It makes it harder, makes it last longer and stops it from rotting.’

‘And how do they do that?’

‘They scrape as much flesh as they can off the skins with sharp knives, and then they wash them with some kind of chemical stuff.’

Sherlock sniffed again, feeling the bite of ammonia at the back of his nose and throat. ‘Yes, I can smell the chemicals.’

Matty grimaced. ‘You can smell them all over Farnham. The chemicals they use to cure the hides are made from some pretty horrible raw materials.’

Sherlock frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, put it this way – some bloke told me that the chemical was called “urea”.’

Sherlock thought for a moment. Urea. It sounded innocuous. It sounded like . . . oh. Yes. It sounded like ‘urine’. He looked down at Matty, frowning. ‘Are you telling me that they tan leather using urine?’

Matty nodded. ‘That and other stuff, but you probably don’t want to even think about that. Just take my advice – hold your nose whenever you pass by that place.’ He shook his head. ‘I heard a story about one of the blokes who worked in there. He was trying to mix the skins around in the big tank they have, using a long stick, but he overbalanced and fell in.’

Sherlock felt his eyes widen. ‘Fell into the . . . ?’

‘Exactly.’

‘What happened?’

‘He drowned.’

‘Drowned in . . . ?’

‘Yeah.’ He shuddered. ‘When I die I want to die quietly, in my sleep. Not drowning in a bath of—’

‘We’ve got to get in there,’ Sherlock said decisively.

‘What?’

‘I said, we’ve got to get in there.’

‘Are you mad?’

‘Josh Harkness went in there.’

‘Yes. I know. That was my point. Not only does that place smell worse than the wooden outhouse you rescued me from in that American railway station last year – which, by the way, smelled like someone had got stuck and died – but it’s also got inside it the most dangerous man within a hundred miles. There are times when I wonder about you, Sherlock.’

Sherlock sighed. ‘Look, I wish it wasn’t necessary, but he’s got some information about my family. He’s blackmailing my aunt and uncle. They’re nice people. They’ve never done anybody any harm, and they’ve looked after me and fed me for over a year now. I owe it to them to do something.’ He gazed down the street, feeling a grim expression settle across his face. ‘I’ve decided that I don’t like blackmailers.’

‘All right.’ Matty looked around. ‘Going through that door would be a waste of time. Harkness probably locked it behind him, and even if he didn’t we don’t know where it opens out. Might be right into a room full of people. There’s a broken window round the corner. We could probably get in that way.’

‘How come you know there’s a broken window round the corner?’

Matty looked at Sherlock with exasperation. ‘I know where all the broken windows in Farnham are – just in case I need them. You wouldn’t believe the stuff that people leave out on kitchen tables. Although in this case I decided never to use the window as soon as I found out what was in there and who owned it.’

Sherlock frowned. ‘I wonder why Harkness doesn’t get it repaired.’

Matty shrugged. ‘Maybe he knows that nobody in their right mind would ever burgle the place, knowing who he is, an’ all. Maybe it lets some fresh air inside. Lord knows, it needs a stiff breeze running through.’

Sherlock nodded, and led the way around the corner, walking along the street and past the closed door through which Harkness had entered the building. He deliberately didn’t look sideways just in case the door was open a crack and Harkness was looking out, watching for people following him. The confidence with which he’d walked away from the market suggested that he didn’t expect to be followed or didn’t care if he was, but Sherlock couldn’t take the chance. Maybe the man was trickier than he looked.

Sherlock’s skin crawled as he passed the door. He half expected it to spring open. He breathed a silent sigh of relief as he left it behind him and reached the next corner.

Matty was right beside him. Together they turned into a deserted cobbled alley.

The wall of the tannery formed one side of the alley. Sherlock could see the window that Matty had mentioned. It was about eight feet off the ground, and the glass was cobwebby. The lower right-hand pane was missing.

The smell emanating from the hole in the window made Sherlock want to turn around and be sick. Instead, he deliberately clenched his stomach muscles and swallowed a couple of times. He couldn’t afford to let his body betray him. He had work to do.

He glanced at the window: too high for him to pull himself up, and the plaster of the wall looked as if it would crumble under his feet if he tried to get purchase against it. He had to think of another way to get through.

‘I’ll boost you up on my shoulders,’ he said to Matty. ‘You open the window and get in, then you’ll have to pull me up.’

‘Not going to work,’ Matty said firmly. ‘Take it from an expert at getting into buildings. I can get up and in the window, no problem, but I can’t take your weight for long enough to pull you in after me.’ He grimaced. ‘We’ll have to do it the other way round. I’ll bend over – you climb on my back, get in the window and pull me up and in.’

Sherlock’s gaze moved between the high window and Matty’s small form. He nodded reluctantly. ‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘but I don’t want to hurt you.’

Matty shrugged. ‘Stuff happens,’ he said casually. ‘But bruises and scratches heal. Frankly, if your boot in my face is the worst thing that happens to me today, I’ll be as happy as Larry.’

‘Who’s Larry?’ Sherlock asked.

Matty stared at him. ‘It’s just an expression,’ he said. ‘People say it all the time.’

‘I’ve never heard it.’

‘As I said, you should get out more. Mix with people.’ He smiled. ‘Now come on – you’re wasting time.’ He bent over, bracing his hands against his thighs. ‘Get up there quickly. You’re just as thin as you were when we first met, but I think you’ve put on some muscle in the meantime, and muscle is heavy.’

Before he could reconsider, Sherlock put his right knee on to Matty’s back and then brought his left foot up, boosting himself until he was standing upright. Matty grunted, but his back remained steady. Quickly Sherlock reached in through the hole in the window and felt around for the catch. He undid it, then, pulling his hand back, slid the window open. He jumped for the opening, feeling Matty move beneath his feet as he did so. Sherlock’s stomach caught against the window frame, and he wriggled inside. The wood scraped against his skin. Before he could fall to the floor, he caught himself and crouched, looking around.

He was in a small room that was empty of people but filled with boxes. Up against one wall was a wooden chute like a child’s slide, set on its end. The floor was about five feet below the edge of the windowsill – obviously built up a couple of feet from where the ground was. That made things easier. He lowered himself to the floorboards, turned and leaned out of the window. Matty was looking upward expectantly. When he saw Sherlock he extended his hand. Sherlock reached down and pulled him up. His friend was surprisingly heavy, and Sherlock felt the muscles in his back protesting, but he managed to haul the boy in through the window without causing himself permanent damage.

Together they moved past the boxes to where a door interrupted the wall. It was closed. Sherlock turned the knob and edged it open an inch.

Through the gap he saw a large room that occupied the centre of the building. A raised walkway ran around the edge of the room, with several doors leading off and a gap on the right that presumably led to the door to the street, but most of it was at the same level as the ground outside. In the middle of the room were four wooden vats, like the bottom halves of enormous barrels. Inside each one was a liquid. In two of the barrels the liquid was discoloured and lumpy, like soup, with bubbles rising slowly to the surface, but in the other two it was clearer, more like water.

The smell rising from the vats was so strong that Sherlock could swear he saw the air itself rippling above them.

‘I ain’t going to eat for a week now,’ Matty complained in a whisper.

‘Breathe through your nose,’ Sherlock suggested.

‘I am. What I need to do is breathe through my ears.’

There was no sign of Josh Harkness, but there were two other men in the room. They were moving from vat to vat, using wooden poles as long as their bodies to swirl the contents around. Each time they did so, the smell got momentarily worse.

‘I know those blokes,’ Matty said. ‘They go round town collecting cash for Harkness. They’re bad news.’

Sherlock looked at the various closed doors. One of them presumably sheltered Josh Harkness. He didn’t dare explore until he knew where the blackmailer was.

As the thought crossed his mind a door across the other side of the room opened and Harkness emerged. He wasn’t holding the letter any more.

‘Keep stirring them leathers,’ he yelled at the men by the vats. ‘That last batch came out patchy and baggy. I ain’t paying you to stand around doing nothing.’

‘It ain’t got nothin’ to do wiv us stirrin’ or not stirrin’, boss,’ one of the men yelled back. ‘It’s got to do with the quality of them skins. The cows you’re usin’ are’s old as my gran. Their skins are just as baggy an’ just as blotchy. You want better leathers, you get better skins for us.’

‘Don’t give me none of your lip!’ Harkness shouted. ‘If you think you can do it better, then you set up your own tannery! Until then, you work with whatever you’re given!’

The men shrugged, looked at each other and got back to stirring. Harkness glowered at them for a few moments, then stomped along the raised walkway to where some steps led down into the centre. He walked over to one of the vats and looked inside, having to stand on his toes to do so. The smell didn’t seem to bother him.

‘There’s not enough skins in here,’ he shouted. ‘Throw some more in.’

The two men headed over to an area hidden from Sherlock’s view by the vats. Harkness stomped across to join them. For a moment the room seemed empty.

Sherlock took his chance. He quickly and quietly raced out on to the wooden walkway and ran along it to the door from which Harkness had emerged moments before. Matty followed silently.

He got to the door, quickly opened it and slipped inside, closing it behind him before the three men could re-emerge from behind the vats. Part of his mind, the emotional part, worried about how he was going to get out again, but the rest of it, the logical part, told him that if the men had disappeared once then the chances were that they would again. All he had to do was wait. For now, the important thing was to search the room for its secrets.

He looked around. One wall had a set of poles leaning against it. They had hooks on the end – presumably for pulling hides out of the vats. The other walls were lined with shelves, and each shelf had several cardboard boxes on it. Written on the boxes were letters: A, B, C, and so on. He went to the first box, pulled it from the shelf and took the lid off.

The box was filled with paper: newspaper clippings, letters, official-looking documents and the occasional daguerreotype photograph. He scanned a couple at random. The newspaper clippings were a strange mixture of reports on criminal activity – burglaries, stabbings and so on – and reports of a more social nature – births, marriages and deaths. The official documents were much the same – some court reports or witness statements, with a smattering of notarized statements on legal paper, and some certificates of birth or marriage. One or two appeared to have been torn directly from church registers. The letters ranged from handwritten declarations of love or hatred to typed proposals of business, along with a couple of invitations to duels. Some of the photographs were simple, innocent portraits, usually with a note of the person’s name on the back, while others were the kind of thing that made Sherlock suddenly turn them over in embarrassment. In total, the box was a complete cross section of human life.

He thought for a moment. Although most of the stuff in the box – with the exception of some of the photographs – was completely innocent, it presumably meant something more serious if taken in context. The letter to the housemaid at Holmes Manor from her boyfriend – which Sherlock assumed was now in another box somewhere in the room – was just a simple declaration of love on the surface, until you knew who had written it – the Mayor’s son, a man out of the housemaid’s class. The same must be true of everything else. A birth could be a simple birth – or not, if the mother was not married. That would be scandalous. A marriage could be quite innocent – unless the groom had been married before and his wife was still alive. That would be bigamous. Even a death – especially a death – could be suspicious if there were relatives who would inherit money in the will. That might be murder.

He looked around the room grimly. The contents of those boxes could destroy lives quickly if they were made public, but they would just destroy lives more slowly if they weren’t. Josh Harkness would bleed money from the people he was threatening until they were destitute, living on the streets.

His eyes fixed on the box labelled H. Somewhere in there was the secret that Mrs Eglantine had discovered about the Holmes family. He could, if he wanted, quickly take a look. Find out what it was that she knew – a secret so powerful that his aunt and uncle would rather keep the poisonous viper that was Mrs Eglantine close to their bosom than get rid of her and risk its exposure.

Or he could destroy that box, along with all the rest of them, and free hundreds of people from misery.

Put that way, was there even a choice to make?

The only question was: how?