Young Sherlock Holmes_ Death Cloud - Andrew Lane [40]
‘I’ll be here,’ he promised, knowing as he said the words that he was unlikely to make it back in time. He would worry about explaining that when it happened.
Finishing dinner, he excused himself and pushed open the door to the library. His uncle was still in the dining room, eating, and he had said a day or two back that Sherlock could go in the library if he wished, but still he felt like an intruder in this hushed room, curtains drawn against the sunlight, with the smell of leather and old paper filling every nook and cranny. Sherlock browsed along the shelves, looking for something related to local geography. He found several different sets of encyclopaedias, bound volumes of ecclesiastical periodicals, a myriad books containing collections of sermons from what he presumed were renowned clergymen of the past, and many histories of the Christian Church, and eventually came across several shelves of local history and geography. Choosing a book about the waterways of Surrey and Hampshire, he left the library and returned to his room in the eaves of the house.
For half an hour or so he composed a note explaining that he had gone out early and that he would be back later. His first few attempts were too detailed, specifying various untruths about what he was going to do and where, but he realized after a while that the simpler his note was, and the fewer facts it contained that could be checked, the better. Once he had finished it, he lay on his bed and read the book that he had taken from the library.
Sherlock scanned the book looking for mentions of the River Wey, preferably with a map that he could memorize, but soon found more than he expected. The Wey, for instance, wasn’t just a river – it was apparently something called a ‘navigation’. Rivers tended to wind around the landscape in unpredictable directions, whereas canals – built for purposes of trade between towns – were straight where possible and used step-like constructions called ‘locks’ to raise and lower the level of the water depending on the shape of the land. A navigation, he discovered, was a river that had been made more navigable by the building of weirs and locks – converting a natural river into something closer to a canal.
Sherlock’s head buzzed with details of the immense feats of engineering that had been required to bend the river to the will of man, and the many years that it had taken. He eventually tried to sleep, knowing that he was going to have a long day ahead of him. Although his mind seethed with ideas, images and facts, he slipped into a dreamless sleep before he knew it. When he woke it was still dark, but a fresh breeze was blowing through the window and the birds were beginning to sing in the trees and bushes. It was four o’clock.
He had lain down dressed, and so within moments he was slipping through the darkened house, out on to the attic landing and down the narrow wooden stairs, making sure that he stepped on the outside of the treads to avoid creaks, then cautiously along the first-floor landing, past the bedroom of his aunt and uncle, past their dressing room, past the bathroom, trying not to breathe too heavily, and then down the main stairs that swept in a curve into the ground-floor hall, hugging close to the wall and sensing the weight of the paintings that hung above him, their ornately carved wooden frames dwarfing the pictures themselves into relative insignificance. The only noise was the ticking of the great clock that stood in the angle where the stairs met the tiled floor.
He paused as he reached the hall. Now he had to cross the expanse of tiled floor towards the front door. No more sliding along the wall – he would be exposed, out in the open if anyone happened to come out of a doorway or looked down from the upstairs balcony. He knelt for a moment, trying to see if there was any light under any of the doors, but everything was dark. Eventually he screwed up his courage and crossed the tiles. By the time he reached the front door his heart was hammering twice as fast as the ticking