Young Sherlock Holmes_ Death Cloud - Andrew Lane [4]
‘And that’s where you’re sending me?’
Mycroft patted Sherlock on the shoulder. ‘If there was an alternative I would take it, believe me. Now, do you need to say goodbye to any friends?’
Sherlock looked around. There were boys he knew, but were any of them really friends?
‘No,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
The journey to Farnham took several hours. After passing through the town of Dorking, which was the closest group of houses to Deepdene School, the carriage clattered along country lanes, beneath spreading trees, past the occasional thatched cottage or larger house and alongside fields that were ripe with barley. The sun shone from a cloudless sky, turning the carriage into an oven despite the breeze blowing in. Insects buzzed lazily at the windows. Sherlock watched for a while as the world went past. They stopped for lunch at an inn, where Mycroft bought some ham and cheese and half a loaf of bread. At some stage Sherlock fell asleep. When he woke up, minutes or hours later, the brougham was still moving through the same landscape. For a while he chatted with Mycroft about what was happening at home, about their sister, about Mother’s fragile health. Mycroft asked after Sherlock’s studies, and Sherlock told him something about the various lessons that he had sat through and more about the teachers who had taught them. He imitated their voices and their mannerisms, and reduced Mycroft to helpless laughter by the cruelty and humour of his impersonations.
After a while there were more houses lining the road and soon they were heading through a large town, the horses’ hoofs clattering on cobbles. Leaning out of the carriage window, Sherlock saw what looked like a guildhall – a three-storey building, all white plaster and black beams, with a large clock hanging from a bracket outside the double doors.
‘Farnham?’ he guessed.
‘Guildford,’ Mycroft answered. ‘Farnham is not too far away now.’
The road out of Guildford led along a ridge from which the land fell away on both sides, fields and woods scattered about like toys, with patches of yellow flowers spreading across them.
‘This ridge is called the Hog’s Back,’ Mycroft remarked. ‘There’s a semaphore station along here, on Pewley Hill, part of a chain that stretches from the Admiralty Building in London all the way to Portsmouth Harbour. Have they taught you about semaphores at school?’
Sherlock shook his head.
‘Typical,’ Mycroft murmured. ‘All the Latin a boy can cram into his skull, but nothing of any practical use.’ He sighed heavily. ‘A semaphore is a method for passing messages quickly and over long distance that would take days by horse. Semaphore stations have boards on their roofs which can be seen from a distance, and which have six large holes in them which can be opened or closed by shutters. Depending on which holes are open or closed the board spells out different letters. A man at each semaphore station keeps watch on both the previous one in the chain and the next one with a telescope. If he sees a message being spelled out he writes it down and then repeats it via his own semaphore board, and so the message travels. This particular chain starts at the Admiralty, then goes via Chelsea and Kingston upon Thames to here, then all the way to Portsmouth Dockyard. There’s another chain leading down to Chatham Dockyards, and others to Deal, Sheerness, Great Yarmouth and Plymouth. They were constructed so that the Admiralty could pass messages quickly to the Navy in the event of a French invasion of the country. Now, tell me, if there are six holes, and each hole can be either open or closed, how many different combinations are there which could signify letters, numbers or other symbols?’
Fighting the urge to tell his brother that school was over, Sherlock closed his eyes and calculated for a moment. One hole could take two states: open or closed. Two holes could take four states: open-open; open-closed; closed-open; closed-closed. Three holes . . . He