Young Sherlock Holmes_ Death Cloud - Andrew Lane [16]
It was probably half an hour later that the door to the study opened and Amyus Crowe emerged. He was smiling, and shaking Sherrinford Holmes’s hand. Behind them, the serried ranks of green leather-bound books blurred together like a grassy landscape.
‘Ah, Sherlock,’ Sherrinford said. ‘Mr Crowe, allow me to introduce my nephew, Sherlock.’
‘We met earlier,’ Mr Crowe said, nodding at Sherlock.
‘Very well. Thank you for coming. I will have a maid show you out.’
‘No bother, Mr Holmes – I’ll take a walk through your grounds with young Master Sherlock, if I may.’
‘Of course, of course.’ Sherrinford withdrew back into the study like a tortoise into its shell, and Crowe strode over to where Sherlock was standing.
‘Well, which one is it?’ he asked. ‘If any.’
Sherlock scanned the paintings. Despite careful observation, he still wasn’t sure. He pointed to a particularly clumsy painting of a rider on a horse whose legs were so thin they should have snapped under the weight. ‘That one’s not particularly well painted,’ he hazarded. ‘The perspective is all distorted and the anatomy is wrong. Is that the fake?’
‘The thing about fraudsters,’ Crowe said, examining the painting, ‘is that the less talented ones get caught pretty quickly. Often fraudsters are more convincing than the real thing. You’re right about the painting being clumsily executed, but it’s real.’ He moved across to a dramatic coastal scene, with waves crashing on to a beach while a ship tossed in the background. ‘This is the fake.’
Sherlock stared at it. ‘How do you know?’
‘Like a number of your uncle’s paintings, it’s attributed to Claude Joseph Vernet. Your uncle also has a few paintings by Vernet’s son, Horace. The elder Vernet was famous for his coastal landscapes. This is a painting of Dover Harbour, but Vernet never visited England. The detail is too realistic: it’s obviously painted from life; therefore, by definition, it’s not by Vernet. It’s a fake in his style.’
‘I couldn’t have known that,’ Sherlock protested. ‘I never learned anything about Vernet, or any painter.’
‘And what does that tell you?’ Crowe asked. He gazed down at Sherlock, his china-blue eyes nearly hidden behind crinkled skin.
Sherlock thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know.’
‘That you can deduce all you like, but it’s pointless without knowledge. Your mind is like a spinnin’ wheel, rotatin’ endlessly and pointlessly until threads are fed in, when it starts producin’ yarn. Information is the foundation of all rational thought. Seek it out. Collect it assiduously. Stock the lumber room of your mind with as many facts as you can fit in there. Don’t attempt to distinguish between important facts and trivial facts: they’re all potentially important.’
Sherlock thought for a moment. He’d been prepared to be embarrassed and hurt, but Crowe didn’t have a trace of criticism in his voice, and he was making a good point. ‘I understand,’ he said, nodding.
‘I do believe you do,’ Crowe replied. ‘Let’s walk and see what we can find.’
Crowe retrieved his hat and stick from beside the door, and together they wandered out into the bright summer’s sunshine. Crowe struck out across the front lawn and into the trees, talking about the different cloud formations in the sky and how they were related to the weather.
‘Have you ever wondered about foxes and rabbits?’ he asked after a while.
‘Not especially,’ Sherlock responded, wondering where this change in tack would lead.
‘Let’s say you had a hundred foxes and a hundred rabbits in a wood, and there was a fence around the wood so that none of them could get out. What would happen?’
Sherlock considered for a moment. ‘The rabbits would have baby