Young Sherlock Holmes_ Death Cloud - Andrew Lane [80]
When he finally awoke, he had the feeling that a long time had passed. His mouth and throat were dry, and when he touched his tongue to the top of his mouth it stuck there. He was also very hungry.
After a while, he felt strong enough to sit up without being sick. And what he saw temporarily drove all thoughts of thirst, hunger and sickness from his mind.
He was lying in a four-poster bed with an embroidered canopy. The pillows were soft, filled with feathers, and the room beyond was panelled in oak. The floorboards were varnished and covered with exquisitely detailed rugs.
It was the same room in which he had woken up after being knocked out after the boxing match at the fair – the one just outside Farnham.
But how could that be? Baron Maupertuis had abandoned that manor house, leaving it empty. Surely he couldn’t have returned so quickly? Why would he?
Sherlock rolled off the bed and stood upright. He ran a hand across his face, and was surprised when it encountered something dry around his nose and mouth. He rubbed at the stuff, pulling it off his skin, then looked at his fingers. They were covered with strands of something black. He rubbed his fingers together, and was surprised to find that the strands were slightly sticky.
He remembered the cloth that had been clamped across his mouth. Some kind of chemical? A drug to make him sleep? It seemed likely.
And Virginia! A sudden flush of anger drove the last remnants of sleep and nausea from his blood. What had happened to Virginia? If anyone had harmed her, he would –
He would what? Kill them? He wasn’t exactly in the best position to do that at the moment.
He had to gather information. Find out what was going on, and why. Only then could he do something about it.
Sherlock stepped across to the curtains and pulled them back, expecting to see the dry red earth and the hundreds of beehives that had been outside last time he was in the room, but what he saw sent him reeling backwards in surprise.
A short distance from the house a beach of grey sand gave way to rolling spume-topped waves which extended all the way to a ruler-straight horizon. The sky was bright blue. Somewhere in the distance Sherlock could see sails.
He closed his eyes for a moment, and thought. Was he hallucinating? It was possible, he supposed, but the dream about the snake and the treacle-like water had been tainted with a bizarre, illogical sensation which, looking back, had meant that he somehow knew that he was dreaming, whereas this was sharp-edged and rational.
Was the picture outside the window just that – a perfectly executed painting that gave the impression of beach and sea and blue sky when it was just pigments on canvas or board? He opened his eyes again, and looked. Far away, circling above the peaks of the waves, were small white ‘w’ shapes, moving as he watched – seabirds riding the updraughts. That couldn’t be faked in a painting. Whatever was out there was real.
And as there was no ocean anywhere near Farnham, the logical conclusion was that he wasn’t near Farnham any more, and probably wasn’t even in England. The wharfmaster had said that the boat was bound for France. This must be France then. And the room? Something as prosaic as the fact that Baron Maupertuis was a creature of habit, and liked to have his surroundings as familiar as possible, wherever he was. Assuming that the manor house outside Farnham wasn’t his ancestral home, he had probably had it remodelled and redesigned to look like wherever it was that he called home. Which might well be this French . . . chateau? Was that what they called it?
Feeling obscurely pleased with himself for working out something that, he suspected, had been intended to confuse and destabilize him, he didn’t even turn when the lock clicked on the bedroom door and it swung inward. He already knew what he would see there – two footmen in black breeches,