Young Sherlock Holmes: Knife Edge (20 page)

‘Ah’ll go an’ brief him now.’ Crowe glanced across at Sherlock. ‘Ah’m sure he’ll be interested to know what his brother has accomplished this
evenin’. Ah’m sure he’ll also be relieved to know who it was who clocked him from behind.’ He gazed levelly at Shuvalov. ‘It
was
your man, wasn’t
it?’

Shuvalov made an ambiguous gesture. ‘Let us
say that it will certainly not be happening again. Mr Holmes is not in danger any more.’

Crowe looked at Sherlock. ‘You comin’, Sherlock, or am Ah doin’ this alone?’

Sherlock thought for a moment. He knew that his brother would want to go exhaustively over everything that had happened, but he wasn’t sure he had the energy for that. Not at that moment,
anyway. ‘You brief him,’ he said.
‘You were an independent witness, anyway, so he’ll put more faith in what you say. I can answer any questions he has tomorrow
morning.’

‘Fair enough,’ Crowe said, nodding. ‘In that case, goodnight, gentlemen, an’ sleep well.’

‘I, for one, feel the need of a stiff brandy,’ von Webenau said. ‘Will anybody join me?’

Holtzbrinck and Shuvalov nodded their agreement. Crowe and Sherlock
left the other three men there and shared the ascending room up to the floor where their rooms were located.

‘Ah meant it,’ Crowe said as they left the ascending room. ‘You did good work there, an’ you saved me from doin’ somethin’ Ah might’ve regretted later.
Ah thank you for that.’

Sherlock smiled, and said nothing.

It seemed to Sherlock that he fell asleep somewhere between taking
his shoes off and removing his shirt. He awoke the next morning still half dressed, and lying diagonally across his bed. The
events of the night before seemed like a bizarre dream.

When he got down to breakfast the other foreign representatives were already there. Mycroft was also there, dressed and with his head still swathed in a bandage. He was looking better: there was
colour in his
cheeks. He glanced over as Sherlock entered the room and nodded gravely, then went back to his discussions.

Sherlock stacked up a plate with food from the sideboard, sat down, and stared at it. A foot-servant filled a cup with coffee, but he didn’t feel in the mood for anything. The events of
the night before had left him elated and exhausted, and now he felt like a candle that had burned
too brightly and too long, and which had been blown out to leave only a trail of smoke.

A movement at the doorway attracted his attention. Niamh Quintillan entered, saw him, and stopped dead. She glared at him with venom in her eyes.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You’ve spoken to your father.’

She just kept staring at him for a painfully long moment, and then she turned and headed out of the dining
room again.

‘Not hungry, I guess,’ Sherlock murmured to himself.

He had just forced himself to eat some toast and marmalade when Virginia entered the room. She saw her father, and smiled, and then saw Sherlock. The smile faded, replaced with an expression he
couldn’t read. It wasn’t the anger that had been on Niamh’s face. This was more like . . . embarrassment? Fear? He wasn’t sure.

Virginia, like Niamh before her, turned and left without sitting down.

‘You got a way with women, son,’ Amyus Crowe called from the other end of the table.

‘Yes, but it looks like the wrong way,’ Sherlock rejoined.

When he had finished his toast and coffee, the meeting at the other end of the table was still going on. He wondered whether or not to join in, but Mycroft looked up,
met his gaze and shook his
head. Instead, Sherlock walked out into the hall. He stood there for a moment, irresolute, wondering whether he should go back to his room and just lie down for a while, waiting for the adults to
decide what to do next. Eventually he wandered down into the hall of the castle, and then out into the open space outside the keep.

Virginia was standing there, in the
fresh air, staring up at the sky. She was talking with Niamh Quintillan. The two of them seemed to be getting on surprisingly well. The weather was cloudy,
but dry, and the clouds weren’t the grey that he associated with coming rain.

Sherlock watched from the doorway, not wanting to interrupt them. Eventually Niamh smiled, nodded, and walked away. Sherlock waited for a few moments, then
approached Virginia.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hi,’ she said softly.

‘You were talking with Niamh,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you two had much in common.’

‘She has horses. Well, Connemara ponies, they’re called. She said she’ll take me riding later, if I want.’

Sherlock couldn’t think of anything to say in response. The silence between them grew to almost unbearable
proportions. In order to break it, Sherlock said: ‘Do you want to take a
walk outside?’

‘Is there anything to see?’

‘There’s a beach.’

Virginia nodded. ‘All right. Let’s walk.’

Sherlock led the way out of the castle, across the moat and off towards where he remembered the cliffs as being. He remembered that Niamh had told him about a way down to the beach, and it only
took
a few minutes of searching to find the steep path down the side of the cliffs. The two of them made their way down, sometimes using the steps that had been crudely carved into the cliff face
and sometimes just scrambling down the mud and the rock. A wooden banister ran down most of the path, giving them a handhold in case they slipped, but sometimes it just wasn’t there –
swept away by landslides
or weathered and broken by storms, Sherlock guessed. There wasn’t any chance of talking while they were descending – the exertion took all of their energy and
all of their concentration.

Far below them, but getting closer, Sherlock could see grey-green waves topped with white foam crashing against the sand and pebbles of the boulder-strewn beach. Seagulls soared around them,
eyeing them
with beady menace and uttering raucous cries. Sherlock hoped that the two of them didn’t go anywhere near any seagull nests. He suspected that those cruelly hooked bills could
cause a lot of damage if the seagulls wanted to defend their eggs.

Eventually the descent levelled out, and they half ran, half fell the last few feet to the beach. They were both covered with scratches and mud. Looking
back up the side of the cliff, Sherlock
wondered how they would ever be able to get back. If they couldn’t climb then they would have to wander along the beach until they found an easier route up. Or starved.

He scanned the cliff for signs that the tide might come all the way in and drown them if they didn’t find a way off the beach in time. There was no line of seaweed on the cliff face
marking the high tide point. Turning and looking at the beach, he noticed that it sloped down noticeably, and there was a line of seaweed about ten feet away from the cliff face. The pebbles on one
side of the seaweed line were damp, and the ones on the other side, closer to where Sherlock and Virginia stood, were largely dry. That would be the high-tide point, he decided.

The cliff face
was pockmarked with dark holes – some just a few feet across, but some large enough to drive a horse and carriage into. These must be the caves he had heard about –
the ones used by smugglers in the past. He realized with a thrill that some of them must connect up with the cellars and tunnels beneath the castle, which meant that they did have another way off
the beach if they needed it. The
problem was that he had no idea which caves led to the tunnels and which ones just ended blindly. He would have to try and work out a way of telling which was
which.

He stared at the cliff face for a while, trying to imagine it not as it appeared – a solid mass of rock – but as something honeycombed with tunnels that wound around each other and
headed up towards the top of the cliff.

He turned, to find Virginia staring out at the sea.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘In Albuquerque, the only sand we had was desert sand. I still can’t get used to the idea of sand and water together.’

‘Oh.’ He wasn’t sure what else to say.

‘Come on then,’ she said, turning and heading off along the beach. ‘If we’re going to walk, let’s walk.’

‘Your father said you’re going
back to America,’ he said after a few minutes, more to break the silence than for any other reason.

‘He says we have to go to Washington DC,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘It freezes in the winter and it boils in the summer, but that’s where Pinkertons have offered him a
post, liaising with the Federal Government. That’s kind of what he’s doing right now – the new job. They really want him
back.’

‘Oh.’ He paused, framing the next few words carefully. ‘You’re old enough that you could stay here, in England, you know. I’m sure he’d let you. He might not
like it, but Mr Crowe knows that you know your own mind.’

‘Travis wants to go back to America as well,’ she said.

‘Ah. Travis.’

Virginia stopped and stared out to sea. Sherlock stopped behind her. Without knowing
what he was going to do, he reached out and touched her shoulder, pulling her around to face him.

Her cheeks were wet with tears. Her violet eyes brimmed with them. As he watched, more spilt out and ran down her face.

He stepped forward and took her in his arms. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his chest.

‘It’s no good,’ she said, her voice muffled. ‘It’s all
wrong. Everything is wrong.’

‘It can be fixed,’ he said, hoping against hope that it could.

‘No, it can’t. You don’t understand.’ She balled one of her hands into a fist and hit him on the shoulder. ‘I didn’t know if you were ever coming back. I had
to make a decision – did I wait for you forever, or did I move on with my life? So I decided.’

‘I’m here now. I’m back.’

‘But it’s
too late. I made a promise. I have to keep it.’ She pushed him away, to arm’s length, and stared up at him. ‘Travis loves me; at least he says he does.
And I love him, I suppose. Maybe not in the way I love you, but it can grow, with time. Travis will look after me. He’ll provide for me. We’ll have a good life. His dad is a powerful
businessman – he’ll be a useful contact for Father to have.’

‘Is that enough?’ Sherlock asked bleakly.

‘What else is there?’ She stared up at him, waiting for an answer, but he wasn’t even sure he understood the question. ‘Maybe a year ago we might have had a
chance,’ she said eventually, ‘but not now. We’ve grown in different directions. We’re on different paths.’

‘I’m not even sure which path I’m on,’ he admitted.

‘And that’s part of
the problem, Sherlock. Travis knows who he is and what he wants to be. He has a plan for his future, and he wants me to be a part of that plan. He intends going
into politics. He wants to be a senator, and maybe a governor. What do you want to be? What’s your plan?’

He shrugged uneasily. ‘I’m still trying to work that out.’

‘I hope you do.’

‘Is there anything I can say to change
your mind?’ he asked quietly.

Virginia just stared at him, tears still brimming in her eyes. He had a feeling that she wanted to say ‘Yes’, but then she would expect him to know what it was that she wanted to
hear, and he didn’t. He had no idea. He could work almost anything out, given the evidence, but not that.

‘Let’s get back,’ she said eventually, looking away from him.

They
headed out along the beach, away from the castle and away, as far as Sherlock could tell, from Galway itself. Sherlock kept an eye on the cliffs above them, and was relieved to see the
boundary where the limestone cut across the blue and white of the sky moving closer to them. The sea had to be at the same level, so the logical solution was that the cliffs were getting lower.
Maybe there would
be a chance to scramble up them soon.

‘How’s Matty?’ Sherlock asked after a long period of silence.

‘I haven’t seen much of him,’ Virginia admitted. ‘He stays in town, mostly, and I spend my time out in the countryside. I think he’s scared of my dad.’ She
hesitated. ‘He never says anything, but I know he wishes you were around.’

‘I thought he might leave Farnham, once I’d . . . once
I’d gone. He seems to prefer travelling to staying in one place.’

‘I think he’s hoping you’ll come back, one day.’

‘And here I am, back again,’ Sherlock murmured, but if Virginia heard his response then she gave no sign.

After a while, Sherlock realized that the cliff edge was low enough for there to be a realistic prospect of getting back up. The boulders were smaller here and speckled
with orange algae. He
looked for a suitable spot, but it was Virginia who saw one first. As with their original point of descent, crude stairs had been cut into the rock and the dirt to provide footholds.

‘Do you want to go back to the castle?’ Sherlock asked.

Virginia stared at him for a moment. ‘What do you want to do?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m getting hungry. Shall we head back?’

‘If that’s what you want.’

A path left by who knew how many generations of feet led back towards the castle through thick furze that grew to a level that was mostly over their heads, with the occasional copse of ash trees
rearing from it. It was uphill, but not steeply so. The two of them walked in silence, with Sherlock taking the lead and pushing the undergrowth back so that Virginia could
get through without
getting hurt. Every now and then there was a gap in the bushes, through which either the sea or the distant castle was visible.

After an hour or so, Sherlock realized that he could see something above the undergrowth – something artificial. It was the tower that he had seen a couple of times before – the
folly that he knew was near the castle but which he could sometimes
not see from places where it should have been easily visible. Now that he was close, he knew that he had to take the opportunity
to investigate it. The chances were that he might never be able to find it again if he left it now.

‘I need to look at that thing,’ he said, pointing. ‘Is it all right if we divert our course a little so that I can take a look?’