Part 1 (1/2)

Young Sherlock Holmes_ Death Cloud.

by Andrew Lane.

PROLOGUE.

The first time Matthew Arnatt saw the cloud of death, it was floating out of the first-floor window of a house near where he was living.

He was scurrying along the High Street in the market town of Farnham, looking for any fruit or crusts of bread that a careless pa.s.ser-by might have dropped. His eyes should have been scanning the ground, but he kept looking up at the houses and the shops and at the thronging people all around him. He was only fourteen, and as far as he could remember he'd never been in a town this large before. In this, the prosperous part of Farnham, the older wood-beamed buildings leaned over into the street, with their upper rooms looming like solid clouds above anybody underneath.

The road was cobbled with smooth, fist-sized stones for part of its length, but some distance ahead the cobbles gave way to packed earth from which clouds of dust rose up as the horses and the carts clattered past. Every few yards sat a pile of horse manure: some fresh and steaming, surrounded by flies; some dry and old, like strands of hay or gra.s.s that had been clumped together and somehow stuck.

Matthew could smell the steamy, putrid dung, but he could also smell baking bread and what might have been a pig that had been roasted on a spit above a roaring fire. He could almost see the fat dripping off and sizzling in the flames. Hunger made his stomach clench, and he nearly doubled over with the sudden pain. It had been a few days since he'd had any proper food. He wasn't sure how much longer he could go on.

One of the pa.s.sers-by, a fat man in a brown bowler hat and a dark suit that was showing its age, stopped and extended a hand to Matthew as if to help him. Matthew backed away. He didn't want charity. Charity led to the workhouse or the church for a child with no family, and he didn't want to start out on the path towards either of those destinations. He was doing fine by himself. All he had to do was to find some food. Once he had some food inside him he would be fine.

He slipped away down an alley before the man could take his shoulder, then doubled back round a corner into a street that was so narrow that the upper storeys of the houses were almost touching. A person could climb straight from one bedroom to another on the other side of the street, if they had a mind to.

That was when he saw the cloud of death. Not that he knew what it was, then. That would come later. No, all he saw was a dark stain the size of a large dog that seemed to drift from an open window like smoke, but smoke that moved with a mind of its own, pausing for a moment and then flowing sideways to a drainpipe where it turned and slid up towards the roof. Hunger forgotten, Matthew watched open-mouthed as the cloud drifted over the sharp edge of the roof tiles and vanished out of sight.

A scream split the silence a scream from the open window and Matthew turned and pelted back down the street as quickly as his malnourished legs would carry him. People didn't scream like that when they'd had a surprise. They didn't even scream like that if they'd had a shock. No, in Matthew's experience people only screamed like that if they were in mortal fear of their life, and whatever had provoked that scream was not something he wanted to see.

CHAPTER ONE.

'You there! Come here!'

Sherlock Holmes turned to see who was being called and who was doing the calling. There were hundreds of pupils standing in the bright sunlight outside Deepdene School for Boys that morning, each dressed in immaculate school uniform and each with a leather-strapped wooden chest or an over-stuffed pile of luggage sitting in front of him like a loyal dog. Any one of them might have been the target. The Masters at Deepdene made a habit of never referring to the pupils by name it was always 'You!' or 'Boy!' or 'Child!' It made life difficult and kept the boys on their toes, which was probably the reason why they did it. Either that or the Masters had given up trying to remember the names of their pupils long ago; Sherlock wasn't sure which explanation was the most likely. Perhaps both.

None of the other pupils were paying attention. They were either gossiping with the family members who had turned up to collect them or they were eagerly watching the school gates for first sight of the carriage that was going to take them home. Reluctantly, Sherlock swung round to see if the malign finger of fate was pointing his way.

It was. The finger in question belonged in this instance to Mr Tulley, the Latin Master. He had just come round the corner of the school, where Sherlock was standing apart from the other boys. His suit, which was usually covered in chalk dust, had been specially cleaned for the end of term and the inevitable meetings with the fathers who were paying for their boys to be educated, and his mortar board sat straight on his head as if glued there by the Headmaster.

'Me, sir?'

'Yes, sir. You, sir,' Mr Tulley snapped. 'Get yourself to the Headmaster's study quam celerrime quam celerrime. Do you remember enough of your Latin to know what that means?'

'It means 'straight away', sir.'

'Then move yourself.'

Sherlock cast a glance at the school gate. 'But sir I'm waiting for my father to pick me up.'

'I'm sure he won't leave without you, boy.'

Sherlock made one last, defiant attempt. 'My luggage . . .'

Mr Tulley glanced disparagingly at Sherlock's battered wooden trunk a hand-me-down from his father's military travels, stained with old dirt and scuffed by the pa.s.sing years. 'I can't see anyone wanting to steal it,' he said, 'except perhaps for its historical value. I'll get a prefect to watch it for you. Now cut along.'

Reluctantly, Sherlock abandoned his belongings the spare s.h.i.+rts and underclothes, the books of poetry and the notebooks in which he had taken to jotting down ideas, thoughts, speculations and the occasional tune that came into his head and walked off towards the columned portico at the front of the school building, pus.h.i.+ng through the crowd of pupils, parents and siblings while still keeping an eye on the gateway, where a scrum of horses and carriages were all trying to get in and out of the narrow gate at the same time.

The main entrance hall was lined with oak panelling and encircled by marble busts of previous headmasters and patrons, each on its own separate plinth. Shafts of sunlight crossed diagonally from the high windows to the black and white tiled floor, picked out by swirling motes of chalk dust. It smelt of the carbolic that the maids used to clean the tiles every morning. The press of bodies in the hall made it likely that at least one of the busts would be toppled over before long. Some of them already had large cracks marring their pure marble, suggesting that every term saw at least one of them smashed on the floor and subsequently repaired.

He wove in and out of the people, ignored by everyone, and eventually found himself exiting the throng and entering a corridor that led off the entrance hall. The Headmaster's study was a few yards down. He paused on the threshold, drew a breath, dusted down his lapels and knocked on the door.

'Enter!' boomed a theatrically loud voice.

Sherlock twisted the doork.n.o.b and pushed the door open, trying to quell the spasm of nervousness that shot through his body like lightning. He had only been in the Headmaster's study twice before once with his father, when he first arrived at Deepdene, and once again a year later with a group of other pupils who had been accused of cheating in an examination. The three ringleaders had been caned and expelled; the four or five followers had been caned until their b.u.t.tocks bled and allowed to stay. Sherlock whose essays had been the ones copied by the group had escaped a caning by claiming that he knew nothing about it. In fact, he had known all along, but he had always been something of an outsider at the school, and if letting the other pupils copy his work got him tolerated, if not accepted, then he wasn't going to raise any ethical objections. On the other hand, he wasn't going to tell on the copiers either that would have got him beaten and, perhaps, held in front of one of the roaring fires that dominated the dormitories until his skin began to blister and his clothes to smoke. School life was like that a perpetual balancing act between the masters and the other pupils. And he hated it.

The Headmaster's study was just the way he remembered vast, dim, and smelling of a combination of leather and pipe tobacco. Mr Tomblinson was sitting behind a desk large enough to play bowls on. He was a portly man in a suit that was slightly too small for him, chosen presumably on the basis that it helped him believe he wasn't quite as large as he obviously was.

'Ah, Holmes is it? In, lad, in. Close the door behind you.'

Sherlock did as he was told, but as he pushed the door shut he caught sight of another figure in the room: a man standing in front of the window with a gla.s.s of sherry in his hand. The sunlight refracted in rainbow shards from the cut gla.s.s of the schooner.

'Mycroft?' Sherlock said, amazed.

His elder brother turned towards him, and a smile flickered across his face so rapidly that if Sherlock had blinked at the wrong moment then he might have missed it. 'Sherlock. You've grown.'

'So have you,' Sherlock said. Indeed, his brother had had put on weight. He was nearly as plump as the Headmaster, but his suit was tailored to hide it rather than accentuate it. 'You came in Father's carriage.' put on weight. He was nearly as plump as the Headmaster, but his suit was tailored to hide it rather than accentuate it. 'You came in Father's carriage.'

Mycroft raised an eyebrow. 'How on earth did you deduce that, young man?'

Sherlock shrugged. 'I noticed the parallel creases in your trousers where the upholstery pressed them, and I remember that Father's carriage has a tear in the upholstery that was repaired rather clumsily a few years ago. The impression of that repair is pressed into your trousers, next to the creases.' He paused. 'Mycroft, where's Father?'

The Headmaster harrumphed harrumphed to attract attention back to him. 'Your father is-' to attract attention back to him. 'Your father is-'

'Father won't be coming,' Mycroft interrupted smoothly. 'His Regiment was sent out to India to strengthen the existing military force. There has been some unrest in the North West Frontier region. You know where that is?'

'Yes. We've studied India in Geography lessons and in History.'

'Good boy.'

'I didn't realize the natives there were causing problems again,' the Headmaster rumbled. 'Not been in The Times The Times, that's for sure.'

'It's not the Indians,' Mycroft confided. 'When we took the country back from the East India Company the soldiers out there transferred back under Army control. They've found the new regime to be a lot . . . stricter . . . than the one they were used to. There's been a great deal of bad feeling, and the government has decided to drastically increase the size of the force in India to give them an example of what real real soldiers are like. It's bad enough to have the Indians rebelling; a mutiny inside the British Army is unthinkable.' soldiers are like. It's bad enough to have the Indians rebelling; a mutiny inside the British Army is unthinkable.'

'And will will there be a mutiny?' Sherlock asked, feeling his heart sinking like a stone dropped into a pond. 'Will Father be safe?' there be a mutiny?' Sherlock asked, feeling his heart sinking like a stone dropped into a pond. 'Will Father be safe?'

Mycroft shrugged his ma.s.sive shoulders. 'I don't know,' he said simply. That was one of the things that Sherlock respected about his brother. He always gave a straight response to a straight question. No honeying the pill. 'Sadly, I don't know everything. Not yet, anyway.'

'But you work for the government,' Sherlock pressed. 'You must have some idea of what might happen. Can't you send a different Regiment? Keep Father here in England?'

'I've only been with the Foreign Office for a few months,' Mycroft replied, 'and although I am flattered that you think I have the power to alter such important things, I'm afraid I don't. I'm an advisor. Just a clerk, really.'

'How long will Father be gone?' Sherlock asked, remembering the large man dressed in a scarlet serge jacket with white belts crossing his chest, who laughed easily and lost his temper rarely. He could feel a pressure in his chest but he held his feelings in check. If there was one lesson he had learned from his time at Deepdene School it was that you never showed any emotion. If you did, it would be used against you.