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By Root 414 0

black stockings, black waistcoats and short black jackets wearing black velvet masks with eyeholes cut in them. Just like last time. He counted to ten in his mind, then turned. He was partly right – the two footmen standing just within the doorway were both dressed the way he remembered – but a third man stood in the centre of the doorway. In fact, he almost filled the doorway, he was so large. His arms were as thick as an ordinary man’s legs while his legs were like tree trunks. His hands were the size and shape of shovel blades, but it was his head that commanded attention above everything else. He was bald, but his scalp was so covered with winding brown scars that it looked, at first glance, as if he had a full head of hair. He wore a long brown leather coat over a baggy grey suit, and the cut of the coat, together with its sheer bulk, made him look even larger.

‘The Baron wants to see you,’ he said in a voice like the grinding of two millstones.

‘What if I don’t want to see the Baron?’ Sherlock said in a level voice. The two footmen exchanged glances, but the scarred man just shook his head slightly. ‘What the Baron wants, the Baron gets. No other opinions count but his.’

‘What if I refuse to go with you?’

‘Then we pick you up and carry you.’

Sherlock knew he was being childish, but he wanted to establish in their minds that he wasn’t just a passive prisoner – that he had opinions of his own. ‘What if I hold on to the door frame and refuse to let go?’

‘Then we break your fingers and take you anyway.’ The man smiled, but there was no mirth in the expression. It was just a baring of the teeth, like a tiger preparing to strike. ‘All the Baron needs is enough of you to answer questions. That means your head, so your brain can think and your mouth can move, and your chest so your lungs can breathe and keep you alive. Everything else is optional. Your choice.’

Sherlock held on for a moment, just to prove that he knew he had a choice and was exercising it, and then moved towards the doorway. The scarred man didn’t move until Sherlock was about to bump into his chest, then he turned to one side, just enough so that Sherlock could pass through the doorway.

‘My name is Mr Surd,’ he said as he and the footmen followed Sherlock down the hall. ‘I am the Baron’s manservant and factotum. Whatever he wants done, I do. If he wants a glass of Madeira, it’s my job to pour it. If he wants your head on a plate, it’s my job to cut it off and deliver it. Not a pleasure, not an onerous task. Just a job. Do you understand me?’

‘I understand,’ said Sherlock. ‘It was you holding the whip last time I met the Baron, wasn’t it? In the shadows.’

‘Just a job,’ the scarred man repeated. ‘But I do take pleasure in a job well done.’

The upper hall was just as he remembered it in the house at Farnham, as were the stairs leading down to the main hall. Sherlock had to stop himself from looking for hoof prints from when he and Matty made their escape. It wasn’t this house. It was another house that just happened to look like this one.

Virginia was standing outside the room in which, Sherlock remembered, Baron Maupertuis would be waiting for them. Two masked footmen stood beside her, next to a large teak cabinet.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘Strange dreams,’ she said. ‘I was riding Sandia, but she was wild and I couldn’t control her. We just rode on and on through this landscape that kept melting away whenever I looked at it.’ She shook herself to get rid of the memory. ‘What about you?’

‘Snakes,’ he said succinctly.

‘What was that stuff they drugged us with? My head’s still muzzy.’

‘I think it was laudanum – morphine dissolved in alcohol. My mother and father used to give it to my sister. I recognize the smell. It’s made out of poppies.’

‘Poppies?’ She laughed. ‘I never liked poppies. They’re a very macabre flower.’

Mr Surd pushed past them and pulled open the door into the room where the Baron waited. He gestured for them to go in.

The room was in darkness, as before. Two chairs were set at one end of a massive table whose other end