Stone Cold (15 page)

‘This investigatin’ lark – it’s not the most fun thing in the world, is it?’

Sherlock smiled slightly. ‘Depends on how seriously you take it.’

A few feet from the gates Sherlock noticed a large iron box attached to brackets in the wall. It was a post box. It had a slot in it, presumably for letters, and a door with a lock that must be
for parcels. The postman would, presumably, have a key so that he could unlock the box and then lock it again. A small metal sign was attached to the box by means of a hinged rod. It took Sherlock
only a few seconds to work out that it was a signal to the postman that there were letters in the box for him to take away. If the flag was up then the postman could unlock the door, regardless of
whether he had any parcels or not, and take the letters. If the flag was down then, if he just had letters, he could post them through the slot and move on. Quite an elegant system.

He looked around. The edge of the forest was just across the road. There was plenty of cover there that he and Matty could exploit.

Together they drove the cart down the road and off into a space between trees where it would be hidden from the view of the road and from who wasn’t specifically looking for it. They tied
the horse to a tree within reach of sufficient grass and went back to the lodge. Finding a relatively comfortable position on the lowest branches of an old oak, they settled down to wait.

For Sherlock – and, he guessed, for Matty – it was a rerun of the watch they had made at the mortuary. It was just as dull, just as mentally numbing. Once another
cart went down the road, and a boy went past on a bicycle, but that was it.

The sun wasn’t visible from where the two of them sat. They were both on the thickest lower branches of the old oak tree, with their backs against the trunk, but they could plot the
sun’s progress by the way the shadows shifted on the road between the forest and the gates of the lodge. Minutes and then hours slowly marched past. Ants from a nearby nest investigated these
newcomers to the forest. Sherlock felt them tickling his legs as they climbed on to him from the tree, and tracked their progress as the tickling sensation moved up his body. After a while the ants
grew bored of him, presumably because he wasn’t an obvious source of sugar, and moved on. To Matty, probably, judging by the muffled ‘What the – get off me, you little
vermin!’ that Sherlock heard.

The breeze ruffled the leaves on the trees, making a soft
shushing
sound, like waves breaking against some faraway beach. Sherlock lost track of time entirely. There was just an
ever-present moment stretching out in front of him as far as he could sense.

A sudden mechanical noise from the road shocked both the boys into full wakefulness. It was the sound of metal gears and chains – the sound of a bicycle. They stared towards the road,
aware that it might just be someone going past, but also aware that it might be the postman, finally.

It
was
the postman. He slowed to a halt by the gates of Gresham Lodge, dismounting his bike smartly as he came to a standstill. He wasn’t much older than Sherlock, but he was
wearing a dark uniform and a peaked cap, and he had a bulging canvas sack strapped to the back of the bike. He unstrapped it, opened it up, delved inside and pulled out a small package. Turning to
the post box attached to the wall he stared at it for a few moments, then stared at the package. Sherlock guessed he was trying to work out whether or not he could fit it through the slot. After a
few moments he decided that it wasn’t worth trying and dug into his pockets for a bunch of keys. Each key had a label attached. They must all fit different post boxes at different houses
along his route – at least, those houses whose occupants locked their gates and had their post delivered to a box outside. In Sherlock’s experience, most big houses preferred the
postman to come to the front door to deliver and collect letters. Whoever lived in Gresham Lodge valued their privacy.

The postman opened the post box, put the package inside, then locked it again. Within a few seconds he was cycling off, whistling a tune.

Matty’s head appeared around the curve of the tree trunk. ‘What do you want to do?’ he hissed. ‘Do you want to pick the lock an’ take a look at the
parcel?’

‘There’s no point,’ Sherlock hissed back. ‘We’re pretty sure we know what’s in it. You saw the box being packed. Let’s wait and see who picks it
up.’

The wait continued. The sun was lower in the sky now, and the weather was getting colder. Sherlock’s stomach was rumbling, and he thought he could hear volcanic murmurings from
Matty’s direction as well. He tried to ignore the hunger as best he could.

It was late afternoon when he heard the noise of a key in a padlock. He snapped his gaze around from the squirrel it had been watching to the gates of Gresham Lodge. The sun was behind the house
now, which meant that the walls around the grounds cast a long shadow over the road. The gates were almost invisible, but Sherlock thought he could just make out one of them swinging open. Nothing
happened for a long moment. The woods seemed to quieten down – the birds and the insects suddenly hushing as if they were waiting for something bad to happen. Then, just as Sherlock thought
that his eyes and his ears were tricking him, a darker shape slipped out from the gap between the open and the closed gates. As far as Sherlock was concerned it was just a patch of moving
blackness, but somehow it gave the impression of being large, bulkier than a normal man, but hunched at the same time. It also gave the impression of wariness, as if it was watching its
surroundings for anything that might threaten its safety. There was something feral, animal-like, about it.

The figure got to the post box, obscuring it in darkness, and Sherlock again heard a key being used. Moments later the shape headed back to the gates of the lodge. It paused there, and at that
moment a ray of sunlight penetrated between two chimney pots on top of the house and illuminated the shape from behind. Whoever it was, they were bundled up in a thick leather coat and wearing a
leather hat pulled down low over their face. Judging by the position of the top of their head, Sherlock reckoned they were somewhere near seven feet tall. It occurred to Sherlock that this had to
be the same person he had seen on the roof of the house, when he was on the barge passing by, and then again in the carriage that had gone through the gates of the lodge a few days before. The man
with the scars on his hands.

The man stayed there for a while, watching and waiting, and then he slipped back into the shadows. The gate closed with a
clank
, and then Sherlock heard the chain rattle and the padlock
click close.

He counted to a hundred, in case the big man was still there, in the shadows, watching, and then he slipped down from the tree and ran across the road to the gates. They were, indeed, locked
again.

Matty joined him. ‘Well, it’s been a fun afternoon,’ he said, ‘but I’m not sure how much more we know now than we did before.’

‘We’re just connecting dots,’ Sherlock said thoughtfully. ‘We’ve tracked the stolen items from the mortuary to here. We know that this place is connected to the
thefts.’

‘Great,’ Matty said. ‘So, back to Oxford for some nosh then?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

Matty sighed. ‘I thought you might say that. You want to go inside, don’t you?’

‘Only up to a window, just so I can see the package being opened. Any ideas?’

‘Judgin’ by how careful that bloke in the big coat was, ’e’s not goin’ to allow any gaps in the wall. ’E’ll repair ’em as soon as ’e finds
’em. Out best chance is to find an overhangin’ tree an’ get over that way.’

‘Won’t he be regularly trimming back branches the way he’ll be looking for gaps in the wall?’

Nah – cos ’e’s such a big bloke, ’e’ll only be lookin’ for branches that could bear ’is own weight. ’E’ll forget that there are smaller
people around. Like me.’

‘But I’m bigger than you,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘A branch that would take your weight might break under mine.’

‘Yeah,’ Matty said, opening his jacket to reveal a rope wound around his waist, ‘but I came prepared. I’ll climb over, then throw this rope back so you can climb up
it.’

‘Can
you
take my weight?’

‘If I can’t find a tree trunk on the other side to secure the rope, then I’ll ’ave to, won’t I?’

It all worked out the way Matty had described. They walked around the walls of the lodge until they found a tree branch that projected over, then Matty scrambled up and along like a monkey. Once
over he threw the rope back in Sherlock’s direction. He must have found an anchor point of some kind, because when Sherlock tugged on it the rope went taut. He climbed the wall, feet against
the bricks and hands holding tight to the rope. When he got to the top he paused, and looked around, but everything was quiet. The shadowed bulk of the house appeared to loom over him. Sherlock
carefully slid into the grounds of Gresham Lodge. It felt like it was several degrees colder inside the grounds than it was outside, and even with his back to it Sherlock was aware that the house
was there. He could feel it watching him. He shook himself, trying to get rid of the unwelcome sensation. Houses did not have eyes, and they did not have personalities. They did not watch people,
or loom over them. He was just slightly disoriented from lack of food, that was all.

Looking sideways at Matty, Sherlock could see that the boy’s face was pale and strained. He was feeling it too, whatever
it
was.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible.’

‘Did I miss a sign?’ Matty asked. ‘Is this an asylum? Cos it certainly feels like one.’

‘It’s just a house.’ He looked at its blank face again. ‘Just an ordinary house.’

The two of them sprinted across the grounds, aiming for the corner of the house so that they were out of direct line of sight of any of the windows. When they got there they flattened themselves
against the brickwork. The house felt strangely
warm
beneath Sherlock’s palms. It must have been the heat of the sun still lingering in the bricks, he told himself.

He led the way along the side of the house to the nearest window and peered around the edge of the window frame. Inside looked like a dining room: a long dark table set with candles. The room
was empty. He gestured to Matty, and they moved on to the next window.

This one gave on to a room that was lined with wooden display cabinets with glass fronts. From the angle he was looking at, Sherlock couldn’t see what was in the cabinets. There were two
doors out of the room – one directly across from the window, presumably leading out into a hall, and one to Sherlock’s right, which he assumed led into another room.

He was about to shift position to get a better view when the door to the room opened and a man walked in.

The newcomer was the man who had collected the parcel from the post box. He had taken off his hat, but he was still wearing his bulky leather coat. He filled the doorway from side to side and
top to bottom, but in the flickering gaslight that illuminated the room Sherlock could see that he had a leather mask over his face. He heard Matty beside him catch his breath as he saw it. The
mask was made of fragments of leather of various shades, sizes and shapes, all sewn together in a patchwork. There were two holes for the eyes, but the gaslight didn’t reach inside and they
were just dark holes.

The figure was holding the box from the package. He walked across to one of the display cabinets and opened up the glass. He opened the box inside, took some object from within, then put it into
the cabinet and closed the lid again. He stood, staring at it for a moment, then walked out of the room, taking the box with him. He shut the door behind him.

If that was the toe which had been stolen from the mortuary, then the mysterious man had placed it in a display. Logic told Sherlock that everything else in the display had to be a stolen body
part as well, but why? What was the point?

He felt a burning wave of curiosity wash over him. He
had
to see inside the room! He
had
to know what was going on! ‘Can we get in?’ he whispered.

‘I dunno – ’ave you got a monkey wiv you?’

Sherlock stared at his friend. ‘Don’t be facetious.’

‘If I knew what that was, then I wouldn’t be it.’ Matty ran his hands around the window frame. ‘This place is pretty old,’ he whispered. ‘I reckon I could
prob’ly work some of this wood loose and pull the entire frame out, but I suppose you don’t want to leave any traces.’

‘That’s right,’ Sherlock hissed back. ‘No noise and no evidence that we were here.’

‘Hmm.’ Matty’s gaze flickered around the frame again. He pushed at the window experimentally. The bottom section was obviously designed to slide up, if someone in the house
wanted to open the window, but there was a bolt connecting it to the upper section that stopped anyone outside opening it if it was closed. Sherlock heard it rattle. ‘Right – I think I
can do this.’ Matty reached into his pocket and pulled out a spool of wire. Quickly he pulled a length of it straight and bent it to and fro a few times until it broke off. He then fashioned
a loop at one end and lowered the hook through the gap between the two sections of the window. He fished around for a moment or two until the wire loop touched the bolt. He hooked the loop around
the bolt and pulled. The bolt slid back.

‘You’ve done that before,’ Sherlock whispered accusingly.

‘No, I haven’t!’

‘Then why do you keep a reel of wire in your pocket?’

‘Cos it’s useful for all sorts of things. Man’s got a pocket knife an’ a reel of wire an’ he can pretty much do anything. An’ repair anything.’

Sherlock glanced at the window. ‘You seemed to know exactly what to do there.’

‘Obvious, weren’t it?’ Matty protested.

Without replying, Sherlock carefully placed his hands against the glass of the lower section and pushed upward. There was a counterweighted sash somewhere inside, because it slid up noiselessly
and without effort.