Young Sherlock Holmes_ Death Cloud - Andrew Lane [23]
It didn’t make sense. Nobody had ever mentioned seeing these clouds of creatures before. Surely Sherlock and Matty couldn’t have been the only people to come across them? Something else was going on.
It was only when the cart juddered to a halt that he realized they were in Farnham. The driver sat as still as a statue, waiting for Sherlock to clamber off, and then set off again without a backwards glance while Sherlock was still fumbling in his pockets in search of some loose change, expecting to have to pay the man something for his trouble.
Sherlock looked around. He recognized the street: it was the main one that ran through the centre of Farnham. Up ahead was a large, square red-brick building surrounded by arches that Matty had told him was a grain store. He glanced around; the market town was going about its normal business, with people walking along and across the street, stopping at shop windows or at stalls selling pastries, talking with each other or minding their own business. A greater contrast to the dark solitude of the woods it would be difficult to find.
It might have been his imagination, but small knots of people appeared to be forming on street corners and outside shops. Their heads seemed to be bowed together, as if they were talking in lowered voices, and they were glancing at every passer-by with suspicion in their eyes. Were they talking about the possibility of plague in the village? Were they scanning every passing face for signs of swollen buboes or the red flush of fever?
Sherlock quickly ticked off the list of places where Matty might be found. At this time the market stalls were still an hour or two from closing, so there was little chance that he was lurking around hoping for fruit or vegetables to be thrown away in his direction, and according to the railway timetable that Sherlock had carefully memorized, in case he couldn’t stand it at Holmes Manor any more, there weren’t any more trains until the evening. Matty might, he supposed, be lurking outside one of the local taverns, hoping for the odd penny thrown by one of the drunken customers.
In the end, Sherlock realized that he didn’t have enough evidence to work out where Matty might be. As Mycroft had said: ‘Theorizing without evidence is a capital mistake, Sherlock.’ Instead, he made his way through the streets until he came to the place that Matty had pointed out to him – the house where the first man had died, and the cloud of death had crawled out of the window, up the wall and across the roof.
The building seemed abandoned. Doors and windows were tightly shut, and someone appeared to have nailed a sign to the door. Sherlock assumed that it was a warning that someone had died from a fever within. He felt conflicting emotions within himself: part of him wanted to go inside and take a look around, see if there were any traces of the yellow powder in there, but another part, a more primitive part, was scared. Despite the brandy-soaked handkerchief that he still had balled up in his pocket, he didn’t want to expose himself to possible contagion.
The door of the house opened a crack, and Sherlock moved back into the shadows of a doorway across the road. Who was in there? Was someone risking cleaning it up, or had someone moved in, or back in, regardless of the risk? For a few moments the door didn’t open any further, and Sherlock felt, rather than saw, a figure in the darkness beyond, watching. He pushed himself further back into the shadows, heart pounding although he didn’t know why.
Eventually the door opened further, just enough for a man to slip through. He was dressed in various shades of grey, and he glanced both ways along the street before slipping out. He carried a sack in one hand.
And the hand that held the neck of the sack was covered in a fine yellow powder.
Intrigued by the powder