Young Sherlock Holmes_ Red Leech - Andrew Lane [13]
Matty looked at him strangely. ‘We came a long way to play ball games.’
‘Just do it – please.’
Matty sighed and took the coins, then trotted off, glancing back over his shoulder and making an audible ‘tch noise.
Sherlock dismounted and waited patiently, tying up his horse and then moving closer to the edge of the trees and looking at the house. Nobody was moving. Was it Shenandoah, or something else, like Summerisle or Strangeways?
After what seemed an age, Matty returned. He was holding the ball under one arm.
‘We were done,’ he said, stopping. ‘This ball is flat.’
‘Doesn’t matter. Let’s wander back down the road, throwing the ball to each other. When we get to the house, whoever has the ball throws it but deliberately misses, and gets it as close to the front door as they can.’
‘So the other one can run and fetch it. Yeah, OK.’
‘So that I can run and fetch it. I need to see what it says on that sign, and you can’t read, remember? Not properly, anyway’
They wandered back down the road, throwing the ball back and forth. Once or twice Matty would drop it to the ground and kick it up in the air towards Sherlock.
When they got to the point on the road nearest the house, where a path led off towards the front door, Matty manoeuvred himself around so that he was at the other side of the road. He bought the ball behind his shoulder and threw it high, over Sherlock’s head. It sailed into the garden and bounced once, floppily, before rolling towards the front door.
Sherlock made a dumbshow of irritation, throwing his hands wide and shrugging, then turned around and scooted up the path towards the front door. Without making it obvious, as he reached the ball and bent down to retrieve it he glanced up at the sign beside the door.
Shenandoah.
It was the right house. Now all he had to do was decide on his next step. Did he want to stay and watch it for a while, so he could describe the occupant to Mycroft and Amyus Crowe, or did he dare sneak in and look around, if the occupant wasn’t home?
The decision was taken away from him as the door was flung wide open and a man appeared out of the darkness. He was thin, with a narrow, pointed beard shot through with grey hairs, but the thing that made Sherlock freeze in shock was the left side of his face. He’d been burned at some stage, badly burned; the skin of his face was red and lumpy, and his eye was just a dark hole, with no eyeball showing.
‘You yapping little cur,’ he snarled. He grabbed Sherlock’s hair and dragged him inside the house before he could make a sound.
CHAPTER THREE
Sherlock’s scalp felt like it was on fire. He grabbed at the man’s arm and let himself be pulled along, trying to lessen the agony of his entire body weight hanging off a handful of hair. He half expected chunks to tear out at the roots, leaving bleeding areas of raw flesh exposed to the air.
‘I was just getting my ball back!’ he cried.
The man ignored him. He was muttering a stream of profanities and accusations to himself as he pulled Sherlock along.
The hall of the house was light, with the sun shining through a skylight high above. It had an empty, half-furnished feel to it. The man’s footsteps echoed on the tiled floor.
He pushed open a door with his left hand and dragged Sherlock inside. It was a reception room: chintz-covered comfortable chairs with antimacassars on top to stop the hair oil of any gentleman callers from staining the cloth, and some occasional tables sitting around with nothing on them but lace doilies. It had the feel of something half furnished, not something that was lived in. A house, not a home.
Oh, and there was a body on the floor. Sherlock only just caught sight of a pair of boots and the lower half of a body, facing downward against the carpet, as he was pulled past and thrown into a chair.
He quickly reached up to check his hair, feeling for warm blood or raw flesh, or even just for some looseness in