Young Sherlock Holmes_ Fire Storm - Andrew Lane [14]
‘Did you see which direction she went?’
He shrugged. ‘Long as she was heading away from me, I didn’t really care. Why? What’s up?’
Sherlock debated whether to tell Matty about the confrontation between Mrs Eglantine and his uncle, but he decided to keep quiet. That was a private family matter – at least for the moment. ‘I just need to know where she is,’ he said. ‘I think she’s up to something.’
‘Shouldn’t be too hard to find her,’ Matty said. ‘She dresses like every day is a Sunday, an’ someone’s died to boot . . .’
As the two boys moved across the marketplace, pushing past the various vendors, customers and browsers who filled the place, Sherlock caught fragments of conversation from all directions.
‘. . . an’ I told ’im, if ’e comes back without it I’m leavin’ . . .’
‘. . . you gave me your word that the deal was already made, Bill . . .’
‘. . . if I see you with that lad again, girl, I’ll wallop you so hard your head will be spinning for a week . . .’
One voice in particular snagged his attention. It was accented, American. He recognized the accent from talking to Amyus Crowe, and from his time in New York. He turned his head, thinking that maybe it was Crowe who was speaking, but the face that he found himself looking at was younger: all sharp planes and hard edges. The man’s hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, and beneath the hair it looked to Sherlock as if his right ear was missing. All he could see there was a mass of dark scar tissue. His clothes were dusty and well-travelled, and he was speaking to a companion who had short blond hair and a face covered in circular scars, the kind you got from a bad case of smallpox.
‘. . . will flay us alive and turn our skins into hats,’ the man with the missing ear was saying.
‘We need to find Crowe and his daughter. They’re our only chance!’
‘Well, we know what’ll happen to us if we don’t find them. Remember Abner?’
‘Yeah.’ The dark-haired man’s face twisted with an unpleasant memory. ‘Don’t do nothing but stare at the wall now, after what the boss did to him. It’s like there’s nothing left inside his head, apart from what he needs to breathe and to eat . . .’
They were walking in one direction and Sherlock and Matty were walking in another, and that was all Sherlock heard before the two men were out of earshot. It sounded serious though. Sherlock decided to go and see Mr Crowe as soon as he could. Crowe needed to know that someone was looking for him.
By the time he had formulated the thought, he and Matty were across the other side of the marketplace.
‘Wait here for a minute,’ Matty said. He dashed away, towards the two-storey colonnaded building on the edge of the marketplace. Sherlock lost him as he vanished into the shadows. He was about to turn away and scan the crowd for signs of a black-clad woman when Matty’s head appeared above the parapet, running along the roof of the building. He waved at Sherlock. Sherlock waved back, amazed at how quickly Matty had got through the building. The scruffy barge boy scanned the crowd with his keen gaze. Within moments he was pointing at something.
Mrs Eglantine? Sherlock mouthed, trusting to Matty’s skill at lip-reading to pick up the words.
Pork pie! Matty replied. Sherlock couldn’t tell if he was actually making any sound or not, but the movement of his mouth was clear enough. Matty grinned. Only kidding! he mouthed. She’s over there!
Sherlock gave him a thumbs-up, and Matty’s head disappeared from the parapet.
Sherlock plunged into the crowd of shoppers and market traders, heading in the direction that Matty had indicated. He scanned the heads of the people in front of him, looking out for Mrs Eglantine’s distinctive scraped-back hairstyle. Within the space of a few moments he had seen virtually every variation of hair and headwear possible: black, red, blond, grey, white and bald; straight, curly, pig-tailed and close-shaven; bare-headed, bonneted, scarved, flat-capped, bowler-hatted