Young Sherlock Holmes_ Fire Storm - Andrew Lane [12]
Finally, he closed the window, remembering to leave it open a crack.
He took a last look around the room, partly for anything he might have missed and partly to see if he’d left any traces. To both questions, the answer was no.
After listening at the door for a few moments to check that the coast was clear, he left Mrs Eglantine’s room and slipped along the corridor. For a moment he considered going into his own room, but there was nothing for him to do there apart from rest for a while, and think, and he had other things to do. He headed downstairs.
The heavy oak door leading out into the drive and the gardens thumped closed as he entered the hall. Someone had just left the house. Through a narrow window Sherlock could see a black-clad figure walking to a waiting cart. It was Mrs Eglantine. She had put on a coat, which meant that she was probably going into town. She must have finished her conference with Cook, and a shiver went through Sherlock as he realized how close a call he’d had. If she’d kept her coat upstairs instead of in the kitchen, then she might have found him.
The cart clattered away and vanished through the gates to the road. Sherlock turned and headed back towards the kitchens.
‘Master Sherlock!’ Cook called as he entered. She was a large woman, her cheery face usually red from the heat of the ovens and her hands covered in flour, but today she looked pale and the skin around her eyes was creased as if she was trying to stop herself from crying. ‘I just got some bread in the oven. Come back in a while and you can ’ave a nice hot slice wiv butter fresh from the churn!’
‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘but I was looking for Mrs Eglantine.’
Cook’s face seemed to age five years in as many seconds. ‘She’s gone to town. And good riddance too! ’Parently the quality of the vegetables I’ve been preparin’ for this household is not up to the standards she expects.’ She sniffed. ‘Anyone’d think she was the lady of the house, rather than Mrs ’Olmes, and this was some swanky ’otel rather than a country ’ouse.’
‘She’s certainly a difficult person to please,’ Sherlock said cautiously. He’d learned from Amyus Crowe that general statements, left hanging like that, normally encouraged talkative people to talk even more, and Cook was one of the most talkative people he knew.
‘She is that. I never known such a person to find fault, and ’er tongue’s as sharp as a butcher’s knife. I worked with ’undreds of ’ousekeepers over the years, but she’s got to be the most hoity-toity and the most unpleasant.’
‘What made my uncle and aunt employ her in the first place?’ Sherlock asked. ‘I presume she must have had a good set of references from her previous jobs.’
‘If she did, then I never got to ’ear about them.’
‘I keep seeing her around the house,’ Sherlock said. ‘Just standing there, not doing anything apart from watching and listening.’
‘That’s ’er all over,’ Cook confirmed. ‘Like a crow, just standin’ on a branch waitin’ for a worm.’ Colour was coming back into her cheeks now. She sniffed again. ‘Soon as she arrived she turned this kitchen upside down. Moved everythin’ out into the garden and ’ad the walls an’ the tiles scrubbed. Give ’er credit – she did it herself. Shut the door an’ worked for a whole day, she did. Said she’d ’ad experience of ’ouses wiv mice an’ rats an’ she wanted to make sure there weren’t none ’ere. The nerve of the woman! As if I’d let a mouse in my kitchen!’
‘She’s a strange woman,’ Sherlock confirmed.
‘I got some biscuits I baked earlier,’ Cook confided. ‘Do you want a couple, to keep you goin’ before tea?’
‘I’d love some,’ he said, smiling. ‘In fact, I’d happily miss tea and just eat your biscuits.’
‘It’s nice to ’ave someone who appreciates my cookin’,’ Cook said, beaming. She seemed more cheerful now.
After wolfing down three of Cook’s biscuits, Sherlock headed back into the house. He wasn’t sure that he’d made much progress, but he seemed to have established that Mrs Eglantine had somehow blackmailed her way