Young Sherlock Holmes_ Fire Storm - Andrew Lane [44]
As they got back on to the train, and as Sherlock headed for his own carriage, he wondered whether the men knew about him and Matty and Rufus Stone. Rufus hadn’t spent much time with Mr Crowe, but Sherlock and Matty were regular companions of his. Most people in Farnham would have seen Sherlock and Mr Crowe together at one time or another, and people in small towns were inveterate gossips – something that Josh Harkness had traded on. It would only take a few pence changing hands, or the purchase of a pint of beer, for them to find out that Amyus Crowe spent time with people other than just his daughter. If they had descriptions of Sherlock and Matty, then they might recognize them on the train. The three of them would have to be careful.
Sherlock got back to his carriage just as the guard on the platform blew his whistle, warning passengers that the train was about to leave. He settled himself back into his seat. Matty was apparently asleep, and Rufus Stone was busy memorizing a musical score, the fingers of his left hand automatically making the shapes of the notes in the air as he read. Not wanting to interrupt them, Sherlock settled back into his seat with the newspaper.
The pages were filled with politics and reports of international events. Having heard his brother Mycroft speak disparagingly about newspaper journalists, and how little they really knew about the real reasons for things happening, he only skim-read the articles. Mycroft had once said that reading a newspaper piece about politics was like reading a book review written by a man who had never read the book, but had been told about it by a couple of people that he had bumped into in the street.
Sherlock did scan the pages for reports of the British Army’s presence in India, but there was nothing. He hadn’t heard from his father for a while now. He knew that things were busy out there, but he worried. He couldn’t help himself.
The front page was filled with personal advertisements and he was about to skip over them when his eye was caught by something unusual and he found himself drawn into reading them. They were small pieces, usually ten or twenty words – written by readers of the newspaper who paid for them to be printed – but Sherlock found that they opened little windows on to a world he would probably never know anything else about. ‘Dog missing, Chelsea area, answers to the name of Abendigo. Will pay handsomely for return, dead or alive.’ Sherlock supposed that he could understand someone loving a pet enough to pay money to get it back if it went missing, but what kind of person would name their dog after an obscure biblical character, and would want it back even if it was dead? It didn’t make any sense. And what about ‘Footman required urgently, good references essential. Must be able to play ocarina’? People needed good staff, obviously, but why would they need a footman with musical ability, and with such an unusual instrument to boot? Each personal advertisement was a slice of life, and he wanted to know more about the circumstances behind them. Some were obviously in code – apparently random collections of letters and numbers – and he tried to use the skills that his brother and Amyus Crowe had taught him to unlock their secrets. With some of them he was actually successful. Most were arrangements for furtive meetings, probably of people who loved each other but couldn’t, for whatever reason, meet in public, but others were stranger. One in particular made his blood run cold. After he had decoded it, the words said simply: ‘Joseph Lamner, you will die tomorrow. Set your affairs in order. Prepare to meet your Maker.’
Sherlock turned reluctantly