Young Sherlock Holmes_ Fire Storm - Andrew Lane [71]
‘I dunno,’ Matty said, following his gaze. ‘They look like they’re pretty cracked already.’
Rufus led the way out into daylight. The sky was covered by a metallic sheen of cloud, casting a grim light on their surroundings. Sherlock looked around curiously. He had assumed that they’d been inside a house, but looking back at the building the three of them had emerged from, and the other buildings around, he could see that he’d been wrong. The buildings, which were grouped together, were six floors high and as long as half a street. The blocks were separated by narrow alleyways that were like straight paths between vertical cliff faces. The ground floors were lined with doors, one after another after another, and the upper floors with windows, more than half of which were missing their glass. The buildings looked soulless and empty, more like ants’ nests than places where people lived.
‘What are these places?’ Sherlock asked.
Unexpectedly it was Matty who replied. ‘Tenements,’ he said. ‘I remember ’em from the last time I was here. Find ’em all over the place, you do. They’re cheap places for poor people to live, but you end up with only two rooms to call your own, stacked up with other people’s rooms like birdhouses. Everyone’s rooms look the same – same front doors, same plaster, same window frames. The people who live there try an’ make ’em individual-like, with curtains an’ flower pots an’ stuff, but it’s like decoratin’ one beer crate in a pile of crates wiv a bit of ribbon. Just draws attention to how borin’ it is.’ He sniffed. ‘An’ they all end up smellin’ of rottin’ rubbish and boiled cabbage.’
‘The place looks deserted,’ Rufus observed. ‘A perfect temporary base of operations for our transatlantic captors. I wonder how they heard about it.’
‘I ’eard a rumour,’ Matty continued, ‘last time I was ’ere, that the local authorities was tryin’ to move people out of the tenements. ’Parently they wanted to sell the land off to build factories on, or posh mansions or somethin’. People I talked to told me that the authorities would start a rumour that some illness, like consumption or the plague, had broken out in a tenement. They’d move everybody out to the workhouse, then they’d knock the tenement down an’ build on the land. Make a lot of money that way, they could.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I ’eard that sometimes, if there weren’t any places left in the workhouse, they’d brick up the alleyways in an’ out of the tenements an’ leave the people inside to starve, but I don’t believe that.’
‘The trouble is,’ Rufus said thoughtfully, ‘that we don’t have any idea where we are, we have no way of getting out and there’s nobody to ask for help.’
Sherlock looked around. He had the map still in his pocket, but it was no use. ‘I think we were carried from the cart to the block from over there,’ he said, pointing to an alleyway between two of the blocks. ‘We didn’t turn any corners, and that’s the only straight route.’
‘Cart’ll be gone by now,’ Matty observed darkly. ‘That bloke who was askin’ the questions will’ve taken it.’
Rufus shook his head. ‘He had his own carriage. That’s how he brought me here. Just him and a driver. The driver stayed in the carriage.’
‘With the two men who kidnapped us from the park still in the tenement block,’ Sherlock finished, ‘the cart should still be here.’
The three of them looked at each other for a moment, then rapidly headed for the alleyway that Sherlock had pointed out. The alleyway opened out on to a dirt road that led away into the distance. On the other side of the road was a stretch of unkempt ground where a handful of bony, hollow-eyed horses