Young Sherlock Holmes_ Death Cloud - Andrew Lane [77]
Eventually he got to the north side of the Thames. The shaft there, with its spiralling stairway, was the mirror image of the one on the south side. He trudged up the stone steps, energy almost spent. He had to stop at each balcony level to catch his breath.
Emerging from the darkness into the afternoon light was like emerging from Hell into Paradise. The air smelt sweet, and the breeze was cool against his skin. He stopped for a moment, eyes closed, to appreciate the feelings. So simple, and yet so perfect.
The area around the north side of the tunnel was more upmarket than the south side. Wharves were occupied by ships of all sizes, with goods being run up and down gangplanks by burly stevedores. Sherlock walked along the side of the Thames, past the ships, looking for a bridge that he could use to cross back to the other side. He knew there were bridges over the Thames; he just wasn’t sure where they were in relation to Rotherhithe and the tunnel. But logically, if he walked for long enough he would find one. Assuming he was walking in the right direction of course – towards the centre of the City rather than away from it – but he knew that if the tunnel was in East London, which it was, and if he had traversed it south to north, which he had, then if he turned left out of the tunnel entrance he would be heading in the right direction. The Sarbonnier Hotel, where Amyus Crowe had booked their rooms, was just about on the Thames, and on the north side as well, so if he walked far enough then he would probably find it, but what he really wanted was to cross back over and find Amyus Crowe and Matty Arnatt.
After half an hour or so he did find a bridge: a massive affair, with twin towers of grey stone linked by a covered roadway which was lined with shops and stalls. He crossed it wearily, ignoring the cries of the various vendors who tried to sell him everything from a whole ox to a loaded pistol. London appeared to him to be a place of almost infinite possibilities, if you were prepared to pay for them.
At the south side of the towered bridge he turned left again, walking along roads, streets, alleys and in some cases the tops of thick walls in order to keep heading towards the warehouse at Rotherhithe where he had lost Amyus Crowe and Matty. The masts of ships projected high into the air along the side of the river, forming a forest of slender wood. The smell of the Thames was an ever-present odour of human excrement. If Mycroft worked every day in this place then he deserved some kind of medal just for survival.
A mile or so downstream from the towered bridge, Sherlock came across a ship that was being loaded by a gang of stevedores. They were sweating and cursing, trying to manoeuvre bulky boxes up gangplanks without dropping them into the river. Something about the size and the shape of the boxes intrigued him, and he moved closer, keeping in the lee of a nearby building.
A burly man in a navy-blue jacket stood to one side, consulting a sheaf of papers that were pinned to a board. Every now and then he made an annotation with a pencil, licking it first.
The boxes were identical to the ones that Sherlock had seen in the gardens of the manor house in which he had been kept captive – the beehives with jagged, slatted sides. And nearby were piles and piles of the wooden trays that he had seen slotted underneath the hives. Now they had been wrapped in waxed paper, but their shape was unmistakable.
He had inadvertently stumbled across Baron Maupertuis’s operation. This was why Denny and his gang had been here!
Sherlock moved closer, watching. Some of the beehives were being loaded on to a pallet which was pulled up on ropes by sweating stevedores and then dropped into the hold of the ship. Heaven alone knows how the bees were being kept from attacking the men, as they had done to the two unfortunates in Farnham.