CHAPTER SIX

Shocked, Sherlock pushed the door fully open and entered the room. The size, the layout, the furniture – everything was familiar to him, but at the same time everything was different. The absence of the usual clutter made the room look much larger than he remembered.

The amount of bare wall disturbed him – he was used to seeing it covered with sketches and maps. The plaster was marked with pinholes where things had been fastened, which was reassuring because it meant that he was actually in the right cottage, not one the same size and shape just down the road that he had mistaken for Amyus Crowe’s residence.

‘They must’ve upped and left in a hurry,’ Matty said, following Sherlock inside.

‘Perhaps they left a note.’ Sherlock indicated the downstairs area. ‘You look down here – I’ll check upstairs.’

‘There’s nothing obvious here,’ Matty said. ‘If they’d left a note, they would have left it in plain sight.’

‘They might not have wanted it to be found by anyone who wandered in. Maybe they’ve hidden it.’

Matty looked at him critically. ‘You’re clutching at straws,’ he said. ‘Face it – they’ve just upped and left. Done it myself too many times to count. Someone’s after you for the rent so you do a midnight flit. Pull up roots and plant yourself somewhere new where nobody knows you from Adam.’ He frowned. ‘Wouldn’t ’ave figured Mr Crowe for a runner though. Whoever’s after ’im must be pretty fearsome for ’im to up sticks just like that.’

‘You’re forgetting those two Americans in the market,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘They said they wanted to warn Mr Crowe about something.’

‘Maybe they was the ones he was runnin’ away from.’

‘But he wouldn’t have done that,’ Sherlock protested. ‘Not without telling us.’

Matty shrugged. ‘Maybe you thought they were better friends than they actually were,’ he said callously. ‘In my experience, stuff like friendship gets thrown away when times are tight and money is scarce.’

Sherlock just stared at him. ‘Do you really mean that?’

Matty wouldn’t meet his gaze. ‘It’s a hard world, Sherlock. You’ve always had it easy. Wait until you’re cold and hungry and poor – see how much friendship is worth then.’

‘You’re my friend.’ Sherlock felt as if the world he depended on was suddenly slipping away from him. ‘I’ll never forget that. I mean it – I’m not lying!’

‘I know you mean it, but your stomach is full and you’ve got money in your pocket. Tell me that again when you’ve lost it all.’ He shook his head. ‘Look, I’ll check for a note. Nobody will be happier than me if I find one.’

As Matty began to check in drawers and behind cushions Sherlock headed up the narrow wooden stairs, nearly bumping his head on the low ceiling. He felt sick, partly because of the disappearance of his friends but partly at Matty’s words. Was friendship really that disposable? Did Matty think Sherlock would just drop him if things got tough?

Would he?

He felt a shiver run through him, and he pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind. He had more important things to worry about right at the moment.

Upstairs was as unoccupied as downstairs. Amyus Crowe’s bed was neatly made, and his wardrobe was empty of clothes. The bathroom didn’t contain so much as a toothbrush or a hairbrush.

Sherlock stood in the doorway of Virginia’s room, shifting nervously from foot to foot. He’d never seen her bedroom before, and even though she was obviously not there, he felt as if he shouldn’t go in. As if it was somehow forbidden territory.

No, this was stupid, he told himself. It was just a room.

He went in. Like her father’s room, the bed was neatly made and the wardrobe was empty. No personal possessions sat on the dresser or the windowsill.

He thought he could detect a trace of her perfume in the air. Strange – he hadn’t even known she wore perfume, didn’t think she was the kind of girl who would wear perfume, but if he closed his eyes he could imagine she was standing just behind him.

Just as he was about to leave, he caught a flash of colour from her pillow. He turned, and bent towards the bed.

There, on the pillow, was a single strand of her copper-red hair.

Something caught at his heart and squeezed it, hard. He suddenly felt as if he couldn’t breathe.

‘Anything?’ Matty called from downstairs.

‘Nothing,’ Sherlock called back, feeling the grip on his heart relax. His voice sounded high-pitched to his own ears. ‘You?’

‘Nothing. No food in the kitchen cupboards or the pantry. Washing-up’s all done. That means they took the food wiv ’em. In my experience that definitely means they’re not comin’ back.’

Sherlock descended the staircase, having to duck to avoid hitting his head. As he re-entered the downstairs room his gaze focused again on the pinholes in the plaster of the opposite wall. He hadn’t realized there had been that many things pinned to the wall.

‘Not a trace,’ Matty said. ‘They’re gone for good. Good riddance to them.’

Sherlock shook his head violently. ‘Amyus Crowe wouldn’t just up and leave without saying goodbye. Even if something urgent happened and he had to go straight away, he would have left a message. And Virginia . . .’ He stopped, not wanting to finish the sentence. He still wasn’t sure what feelings Virginia had for him, although he was becoming increasingly aware of his feelings for her. ‘Well,’ he finished lamely, ‘she would have said something as well. We need to keep looking.’

Before Sherlock could move, Matty articulated Sherlock’s greatest worry. ‘Yeah, it must have been those two blokes in the market. They must have come here and taken Mr Crowe and Virginia. Either that or Mr Crowe somehow got wind that they were on their way, and he and Virginia scarpered. But why would someone be after Mr Crowe?’

Sherlock thought for a moment, remembering the little snippets that Amyus Crowe had let slip about his past life in America – hunting down escaped criminals after the War Between the States. ‘I think Mr Crowe made a lot of enemies in America. That might be why he came here with Virginia. Maybe something in his past has caught up with him.’

‘Must be something really scary if he ran away rather than face up to it. You know how big and how fierce he is. I can’t imagine Mr Crowe taking fright at anything less than a rampaging elephant.’

Sherlock gazed across at him. ‘When have you ever seen an elephant?’

Matty scowled. ‘I seen pictures, ain’t I?’

‘No, something is definitely wrong.’ He slammed his balled fist into his thigh angrily. ‘I just need to work out what it is.’

‘Maybe outside?’ Matty suggested.

‘We could take a look,’ Sherlock agreed. ‘Let’s restrict ourselves to the walls of the cottage and a couple of feet out, otherwise we’ll end up searching the whole countryside.’

They headed out of the door, Sherlock automatically turning right and Matty turning left. Sherlock scanned the brick walls of the cottage and the straw roof, his gaze tracking up, down and up again as he walked. He passed two windows and a wisteria vine that was growing out of the ground and up the wall, but he couldn’t see anything that looked out of place. He wondered if anything had been tucked into the straw of the roof, either from inside or outside, but he rejected the idea. If Amyus Crowe had left a message then he would have put it somewhere easier to access, somewhere he knew that Sherlock would look.

About halfway around the building he nearly tripped over something lying on the ground. For a moment he thought it was a snake, and he stepped back hurriedly, but it wasn’t moving, and it was too dusty and brown to be a snake. He bent down to take a look. It was a tube, made of canvas but strengthened with hoops of something inside to stop it from collapsing. It ran from a hole in the cottage wall towards a clump of grass, and vanished. Some experiment that Amyus Crowe was conducting? It was the only thing he could think of, but it didn’t give him any clues as to where Mr Crowe and Virginia had gone.

He and Matty met again on the far side of the cottage.

‘Did you find anything unusual?’ he asked.

‘Nothing.’ Matty frowned for a moment. ‘Apart from a dead rabbit. Well, most of a dead rabbit. The head was missing.’

‘Where was it? Just lying on the ground?’

Matty shook his head. ‘It had been buried under a pile of logs. Looked like it was deliberately put there, but I can’t imagine why.’

Sherlock let the thought chase itself around his head for a while. ‘A dead rabbit without its head?’ he said eventually. ‘I have to confess, if it’s a message then it’s a very cryptic one.’ He sighed. ‘Come on, let’s keep going. We’ll meet again by the front door.’

‘But you’ve already done this next bit,’ Matty complained, ‘and I’ve already done the bit you’re about to do!’

‘Two pairs of eyes are better than one. I might have missed something that you’ll pick up, and vice versa. Come on – it’ll only take a few more minutes.’

They separated and recommenced their search. Sherlock found nothing that Matty had missed. He stopped and stared at the dead rabbit for a while, as it lay sprawled on the grass by a pile of split logs that Amyus Crowe had probably intended for the stove, but it didn’t tell him anything. Apart from the fact that its head was missing, it was just a dead rabbit. The countryside was full of them.

Matty was already waiting for him when he reached the front door. He raised his eyebrow enquiringly. Sherlock shook his head. Matty shrugged, indicating that he hadn’t found anything that Sherlock had missed. ‘Saw some kind of tube thing,’ he said, ‘but that was it.’

Disconsolately Sherlock led the way back inside. He looked around the bare room, hands on hips. ‘I keep getting the feeling that I’m missing something,’ he said in a frustrated tone.

‘If you’re missing something, then there’s no chance I’ll get it,’ Matty said.

‘Don’t belittle yourself. You’ve got a good eye for detail,’ Sherlock said. He stared once again at the wall with the pinholes in it, trying not to look at the details – the individual holes – but the entire thing. ‘Matty, I think there’s some kind of message there.’

Matty stared at him, then at the wall. ‘You’re seeing things.’

‘Yes, I am. Have you got a pen?’

‘Do I look like the kind of bloke who goes around with a pen in his pocket?’

Sherlock sighed. ‘A pencil then?’

‘The same.’

‘A knife?’

‘That,’ Matty said, ‘I can help you with.’ He reached into a pocket and brought out the knife he had used on the tanning vat earlier. ‘Here. Don’t break it.’

‘I won’t.’ Sherlock walked over to the wall. He stared at it for a few moments, trying to recreate the things that had been pinned there in his mind. ‘There was a big map over here, wasn’t there?’ He pointed with the blade at part of the wall.

‘I s’pose.’

‘All right.’ Using the blade like a pen, scratching the surface of the plaster, Sherlock joined up four pinholes in a rectangle that was, as far as he could judge, the right size, shape and position. ‘That’s the map. There were two bits of paper over here, to the right.’ Quickly gaining confidence, he selected two sets of four pinholes and joined them up as well. He now had three separate rectangles on the wall. ‘I remember there being some things up here. Pictures, I think.’

‘They were at an angle,’ Matty pointed out. Sherlock picked out four pinholes that seemed to match his memory, but Matty shook his head. ‘’Bout an inch to the left,’ he said. ‘No, not there – down a bit . . . Yeah, that’s it.’

Progressively, Sherlock connected up the various pinholes until he had a recreation of everything that had been fastened to the wall. Some items had been attached to the plaster with just one pin rather than four, and in those cases Sherlock put an X to show that he had taken the whole item into account.

He stood back to look at his handiwork. The plaster was now covered with a series of overlapping scratches and Xs.

‘You’ve missed some,’ Matty pointed out.

‘No,’ Sherlock replied, ‘I haven’t. Those pinholes are new.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m very sure. Look closely at them.’

Matty moved towards the wall, squinting.

‘No, Sherlock said, ‘move backwards. Try and look past the wall, and ignore the holes that I’ve marked.’

Matty shook his head, but he complied. His eyes suddenly widened in surprise. ‘It’s an arrow!’ he cried.

‘Precisely,’ Sherlock said. He followed Matty’s gaze. There, marked out in pinholes that had no connection with anything that had been pinned to the wall – new pinholes that had presumably been made especially – was an arrow pointing towards the window.

Both boys followed the direction of the arrow and stared through the window at the green landscape outside. ‘Is that the way they went?’ Matty asked dubiously. ‘If so, I’m not sure it’s much help.’

‘Closer than that,’ Sherlock said. ‘That’s the window leading out to the paddock where Virginia kept Sandia. Mr Crowe is telling us to look out in the paddock. He’s left a message for us there.’

Matty shrugged. ‘Seems a lot of palaver to go to when he could have just left a note pinned the wall.’

‘Like you said, if he’d left a note, then anyone could have found it,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘He’s left a clue pointing to a note.’ He held out Matty’s knife. ‘Here, thanks.’

Matty shrugged. ‘Keep it,’ he said. ‘The way things go, you’ll probably need it more than I do.’

Together the two boys headed out of the cottage and into the open. Sherlock led the way to the fenced-off area of ground that had been visible through the window. They climbed over the gate.

‘Where do we start?’ Matty asked, looking around the grassy area. ‘I don’t see anything obvious.’

‘It won’t be obvious,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘Mr Crowe would have hidden it so it wouldn’t be found.’ He thought for a moment. ‘If I had some string we could mark off a grid of squares and search each square individually, so we knew we’d covered all the ground. Without that, there’s a risk that we’ll miss something by accident.’

‘Tell you what,’ Matty suggested, ‘let’s you and me start at opposite sides and walk forward, looking at the ground, until we meet. We take a step to the side, turn around and each walk towards the fence again. Then we turn around, take a step to the side, and do it again. That way we’ll work in strips across the field and we won’t miss anything.’

‘Sounds like a plan.’ Sherlock nodded. ‘Let’s do it.’

So for the next half hour they progressively moved together and apart across the field, each one meticulously examining the ground as they walked, checking each clump of grass, each rabbit hole and each pile of manure that Virginia’s horse had left behind. Sherlock’s back began to ache after a few minutes, thanks to the uncomfortable position that he was forced to adopt: bent over and taking small steps. He imagined that from some distant vantage point he and Matty looked like chickens checking the field for corn.

‘I’ve got something!’ Matty exclaimed.

‘What is it?’

Matty lifted something from the ground and held it up. It was made of a grey metal.

‘It’s a fork,’ Sherlock pointed out.

‘I know it’s a fork. Could it be important?’

Sherlock shrugged. ‘Leave it where you found it. We may have to dig if we can’t find anything else.’

Five minutes later it was Sherlock’s turn to make a discovery. ‘Matty – over here!’

Matty stuck the fork into the ground, and then ran over to where Sherlock was crouching. ‘What is it?’

Sherlock indicated a root-edged hole that led away at an angle into the earth. ‘I think it’s a rabbit hole.’

‘Congratulations. I’ve already found five of them.’

‘But this one has something in it.’ Sherlock reached into the hole, to the object he’d caught sight of in the shadows. His fingers encountered something that was simultaneously furry and sticky. Taking a grip, he pulled it out.

It was a rabbit’s head, the severed neck covered in blood.

‘A rabbit’s head in a rabbit hole,’ Matty commented drily. ‘Ain’t that an unexpected turn of events? Are you trying to tell me that a fox took Mr Crowe and Virginia away?’

‘You see,’ Sherlock replied, ‘but you do not understand. Look at the neck.’

Matty considered it, then nodded in understanding. ‘It’s been sliced off with a sharp blade, not bitten through or ripped off.’ He thought for a moment. ‘This must be the head that goes with the body we found back at the cottage. Even so – it could have been taken off a kitchen table by a fox or a stoat and just . . . left here.’

‘I don’t think so. An animal, if it had stolen this thing, would have eaten some of it. There would be teeth marks. As it is, it looks like someone has just cut it off and put it straight in this hole.’

Matty turned his attention from Sherlock back to the rabbit’s head. ‘Pretty fresh,’ he admitted. ‘Probably less than a day old.’

‘It’s a message,’ Sherlock said thoughtfully, ‘but the question is, what kind of message is it?’ He paused for a moment. ‘No,’ he went on, ‘the real question is, are there any more messages apart from this one?’

Matty looked around and sighed. ‘You mean we have to finish searching the field?’

‘We do. Just because we find one thing, it doesn’t mean there aren’t other things to find.’

‘I was afraid you might say that.’

Leaving the bloodied head where it was, Sherlock and Matty continued their search, combing through the grass for anything that might have been left or dropped. It was another three-quarters of an hour before they found themselves searching along the far fence.

‘Nothing?’ Matty asked as they walked back to the cottage.

‘Nothing,’ Sherlock agreed. ‘Either it’s the rabbit head, or there’s nothing here.’

Matty looked over to where they’d left the head. ‘I can’t see how there can be a message there, unless Mr Crowe’s written it on a small piece of paper and shoved it in the thing’s mouth. That would just be sick.’

‘It’s not the head itself,’ Sherlock replied, ‘or, at least, I don’t think it is. It’s more likely to be something to do with its placement, or just its existence. I don’t think Mr Crowe had time to do anything complicated, like write a note. He just had time to make some pinholes in the wall pointing out here, and then throw the head into a hole.’

‘He had time to catch and kill a rabbit,’ Matty pointed out.

‘I think it was already there. I think he probably caught it earlier and was preparing it for a meal – taking the head off, gutting it and skinning it. I think that something happened to make him want to leave, and after clearing out the cottage of everything he and Virginia owned he only had a few moments to come up with a message.’

Matty sighed in frustration. ‘Yeah, but what is it? I think he had more faith in us than was warranted.’

‘A rabbit’s head in a hole,’ Sherlock mused, trying to provoke some movement in his head, some sudden revelation that might only occur if he kept on repeating the obvious.

‘Burrow,’ Matty murmured as they entered the cottage.

‘Sorry?’

‘It’s a burrow, not a hole. Rabbits have burrows, foxes have dens and badgers have setts. You’re normally the one who likes to get words right – you need to learn these things.’

‘A rabbit’s head in a burrow,’ Sherlock corrected. That elusive thought in his head finally started running. ‘A head in a burrow. Matty, you’re a genius!’

‘I am?’ the boy said, surprised.

‘Well, technically you’re not a genius, but you have an amazing ability to bring out the genius in others. It’s so obvious!’

‘It is?’

‘Remember when you’d been kidnapped by Duke Balthassar’s men and taken to New York, and we tracked you down?’

Matty nodded, mystified.

‘Do you remember when I found you in that building? You tried to get me to understand that they were taking you on the train line to Pennsylvania?’

Matty smiled. ‘Yeah, that was clever, wasn’t it?’

‘You mimed using a pen, then touched the windowsill, then pointed to a weather vane on a nearby building. It took me a while to put it together, but I did.’

‘Yeah, I remember, but so what?’

Sherlock sighed in exasperation. ‘Don’t you see? That’s what Amyus Crowe is doing here. A head in a burrow. He and Virginia are going to Edinburgh!’

Matty frowned. ‘That’s a bit of a coincidence,’ he said dubiously. ‘Him having a rabbit’s head and a nearby burrow to put it in, and knowing he was going to Edinburgh.’

‘I think it happened the other way around,’ Sherlock said. He could feel the pure, cold flame of triumph flashing through his body, burning away the tiredness and the aching muscles. He’d done it! He’d cracked the code! He knew he was right! ‘I’m not saying it’s the best clue in the world, but Mr Crowe had to work with whatever he had to hand. He could use the pinholes in the wall to point us out here, he had the rabbit’s body lying around and he knew there were burrows out here in the paddock. He used the ingredients to hand to make a clue, and then he took Virginia to Edinburgh because that was the only destination he could build a clue for!’

‘But why has he let us know that he’s going to Edinburgh?’ Matty asked.

‘He must want us to go after him. There’s no other reason. If he didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye, he could have left a note saying just that: “Goodbye”. It wouldn’t matter who found that. But it clearly does matter that nobody knows he has gone to Edinburgh. I think he’s in danger. I think he wants our help.’

‘We’re goin’ to follow him, aren’t we?’ Matty said gleefully.

‘Well,’ Sherlock answered cautiously, ‘there are other options. Perhaps we should tell my brother.’

‘How long will that take? And what’s he going to do? Knowing your brother, I doubt he’ll be getting the next train to Scotland. He’ll just send lots of telegrams out, getting people to search for Mr Crowe, but they won’t know what he or Virginia look like.’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘We’ve never been to Edinburgh,’ he said. ‘We won’t know anything about the place. How can we help them if we’ll be practically lost there ourselves?’

‘I’ve been there,’ Matty said cheerfully. ‘My dad took me and me mum there on the barge. Took weeks, it did. We stayed there for a month or more while he looked for work.’

‘Even so – the two of us, just kids, alone in Scotland?’

‘You went to America. And Russia.’

‘I had Mr Crowe with me in America.’

‘Until you ran off with Virginia.’

‘That was an accident,’ Sherlock protested. ‘The train left the station before we could get off. I also had Mycroft with me in Russia.’

‘Before he was arrested.’

‘But that wasn’t part of our plan. Anyway, Rufus Stone was with us. He helped.’ A bright light seemed to go on in his head. ‘What if we asked Rufus Stone to come with us?’

‘Would he?’ Matty asked dubiously. ‘I didn’t think he and Mr Crowe got on.’

‘They don’t,’ Sherlock admitted. ‘They’re like a cat and a dog locked in the same room, but . . .’ He thought for a minute. ‘But I’m pretty sure that my brother is paying Rufus Stone to hang around Farnham and make sure I don’t get into trouble. Mycroft still thinks that the Paradol Chamber are going to take some kind of action against me. If I tell Rufus that you and I are going to Edinburgh, then he’ll have to come with us, won’t he? If he’s supposed to stop me getting into trouble, then he won’t have any choice.’

‘Won’t he just stop you from getting on a train?’

Sherlock smiled. ‘You know Rufus Stone. You know what he’s like. Given a choice between stopping me going to Scotland or coming with me and having an adventure, what do you think he’ll do?’

‘Fair point,’ Matty admitted. ‘When do we tell him?’

‘Let’s collect a bit more information first. I want to check the station in Farnham. If Mr Crowe and Virginia are heading for Scotland, then they’re not doing it on horseback, or in a cart. They’d be too vulnerable. No, they’ll go by train.’

Matty frowned, carefully thinking through what Sherlock had said. Watching him, Sherlock felt a sudden flash of kinship. Matty had become a part of his life in a way he had never expected. The boy was his opposite in so many ways – instinctive where Sherlock was logical, emotional where Sherlock was cold, impulsive where Sherlock would always think through his options – but he had a quick mind, and he was fantastically loyal. He was the closest thing Sherlock had to a best friend. Sherlock wondered if he always would be.

‘If Mr Crowe bought two tickets to Edinburgh from the ticket office at Farnham Station,’ he said slowly, ‘then he’d be leaving a trail. If the Americans are chasing him they could just check at the ticket office and find out where he went. It’s not as if he’s inconspicuous.’

‘No,’ Sherlock agreed. ‘So what would he do?’

Matty shrugged. ‘I dunno.’

‘He’d probably buy two tickets to an intermediate station – say, Guildford, but he and Virginia could get off earlier – maybe at Ash Wharf. He could then buy two tickets through to Edinburgh from there. If anyone was following then they’d go from Farnham direct to Guildford, and there they would lose the trail, because nobody at the ticket office in Guildford would remember him.’

‘Clever,’ said Matty approvingly.

‘In fact,’ Sherlock went on, ‘if I were him, I would buy two tickets for Guildford, get off at Ash Wharf, buy two tickets for London, then when I got to London I’d buy two tickets for Edinburgh. That confuses the trail even more.’

‘You’re sure that’s what he’d do?’

Sherlock nodded. ‘He’s a hunter. He knows the kinds of trail that prey can leave, and he’ll be careful not to do the same thing.’

‘So what now?’

‘Now we go to Farnham.’

The two of them rode from the cottage towards the centre of Farnham, not without a twinge of guilt in Sherlock’s mind. He hated leaving the cottage empty and unguarded. Who knew what might happen to it before Amyus Crowe and Virginia came back? They would come back, he was sure of it. He would make sure of it.

The ticket-office clerk at Farnham – a tall elderly man with fluffy white sideburns – confirmed that a bigman in a white suit and hat, accompanied by a girl dressed like a boy, had bought two tickets the day before. Sherlock was pleased to note that the tickets had been bought with Guildford as the destination. So far his deductions were bang on target.

‘Look,’ Matty said, pointing across the road. In a small triangle of field next to a barn a horse was cropping the grass. It was tied by a long halter to a fence.

‘That’s Sandia,’ Matty said.

‘Are you sure?’ Sherlock asked.

‘Very sure.’

‘At least we know he’s all right. Virginia has probably paid someone at the station to keep an eye on him. If she had time to do that, they can’t have been taken forcibly. They must have found out that somebody was after them. If I know Mr Crowe, he will have managed to keep one step ahead of them.’ Suddenly Sherlock felt an awful lot better.

‘Are we going on to Ash Wharf now?’

Sherlock thought for a moment. There was a point at which extra evidence did nothing more than confirm what you already knew. He was confident enough in his deductions. ‘No, let’s go and find Rufus Stone. We need to tell him what we’re going to do, and then we need to talk to my aunt and uncle.’ He remembered the events of earlier that day. ‘I think there’s enough residual goodwill there that they won’t raise any objections to me going away for a few days, especially if they know that Rufus Stone is going with me.

Matty turned to go, but Sherlock reached out a hand and stopped him. Matty turned back enquiringly.

‘What?’

Sherlock hesitated, wondering how to ask the question. Wondering if he should ask the question. ‘That stuff you said earlier, about friendship getting thrown away when times are tight and money is scarce – did you really mean it?’

Matty looked away. His lips tightened for a moment before he answered. ‘I’ve had friends before,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t have them now. They left, one by one, when it suited them. So I learned that’s the way things work.’

‘Not with me,’ Sherlock said. ‘And not with Amyus Crowe or Virginia.’

Matty nodded reluctantly. ‘At least you’ve convinced me they didn’t want to go. That’s a start. Now come on. Time’s slipping away.’

They found Stone where Sherlock had expected him to be – in his lodgings, practising by himself up in the attic space. The two boys could hear him faintly from the street, playing what sounded like a wild dance. As they climbed the stairs the music got louder and louder, until they entered the attic where it seemed to fill the entire space, whirling and spinning with the lanky figure of Rufus Stone sawing madly with the bow in the centre. If he heard them enter then he gave no sign. Eyes closed, he pulled wilder and wilder notes from his instrument until, with a final flourish, he finished. The air appeared to quiver like a jelly for a split second before collapsing back to normal.

‘That’s a hell of a tune,’ Matty said approvingly.

‘Very kind,’ Stone said, turning and grinning at the two of them. ‘Although I have to say, it sounds even better played by the light of a campfire in the middle of a forest at midnight. The trouble is that the older I get, the more I find I prefer the comfort of a warm, dry house.’ He gazed from one boy to the other. ‘Something has happened, hasn’t it? Tell me.’

Between them, with Sherlock sketching in the facts and Matty filling the gaps with vivid descriptions, they told Rufus Stone the story. His face grew grimmer and grimmer as they spoke. When Sherlock finished by telling him exactly what the two of them planned to do, he stood for a moment, thinking.

‘You really both intend going to Edinburgh?’ he asked finally.

‘Yes,’ Sherlock answered.

‘And there’s nothing I can say to change your minds?’

‘No,’ Matty replied.

He sighed. ‘Then it’s a good thing I keep a bag packed and ready by the door. It won’t be the first time I’ve had to leave a place at a moment’s notice.’

‘The difference is,’ Sherlock said quietly, ‘that we’ll all be coming back. With two extra people.’