Young Sherlock Holmes_ Red Leech - Andrew Lane [33]
When he was quite sure that Gilfillan wasn’t going to move for a while, he backed away, still watching, until he could hear Amyus Crowe’s horse whickering behind him. He turned.
Amyus Crowe lay in the dusty road. In the reddish light of evening, the blood on his forehead seemed almost to glow with a demonic intensity.
‘Is he . . . ?’ Sherlock started to ask, but he couldn’t bring himself to finish the question.
‘He’s still breathin’,’ Virginia answered breathlessly. Her accent had become more obvious.
She reached into a pocket and removed a scrap of linen – a handkerchief, Sherlock supposed. She was about to use it to wipe her father’s head, but Sherlock took it from her.
‘I’ll wet it in the river,’ he said.
She nodded gratefully.
He dashed across to the point where the falling American gunman had cut a swathe through the rushes with his body before emerging and shooting Amyus Crowe. Getting as close to the river as he could without falling in, Sherlock moistened the handkerchief, then returned to where Amyus Crowe lay. Virginia had straightened out his arms and legs so that he was lying more normally, not twisted up in the way he had landed. As Sherlock bent to join her, he noticed that Crowe’s chest was moving up and down and his eyelids were fluttering. It seemed like ages since Crowe had fallen from his horse, but Sherlock realized that it could only have been a handful of seconds, less than a minute at most. The fight with Gilfillan hadn’t been long, but it had been intense, and that had made it seem long.
Virginia was running her hands up and down her father’s arms and legs. ‘No broken bones, far as I can tell,’ she said. ‘Don’t know about his ribs, although I’d be surprised if he hadn’t cracked a couple. He’s got a whole load of cuts and grazes, mind.’
‘He was lucky,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘This close to the river, the ground is soft and muddy. If he’d come off the horse earlier, where the ground was baked hard, he might be dead by now.’
Virginia took the handkerchief from him and ran it across Crowe’s forehead. It came away bloody, revealing a long scratch which immediately began to bleed again.
‘I think this is where the bullet hit,’ she said.
‘Another bit of luck. A couple of inches to the left and it would have gone through his temple.’ Sherlock took a deep breath, and tried to stop his hands from shaking. ‘We ought to find a doctor.’
Virginia shook her head. ‘We need to get him back to the cottage. I can look after him there. As long as there’s no broken bones, what he needs is rest.’ She sighed. ‘I’ve got a feeling he’s been through worse than this and survived.’ She glanced at Sherlock, glanced away, then glanced back again, noticing his various bumps, scrapes, cuts and bruises. Are you OK?’ she asked.
‘I’ve had worse while playing rugby,’ he said.
She frowned, and shook her head.
‘It’s a game which I don’t like and which I don’t play very well. The point is, I’ll be all right.’
‘Did you get him?’ she asked angrily.
‘I stopped him,’ Sherlock replied, ‘but I think your father and my brother will want to talk to him, so I didn’t hurt him too much. Even though I could have done.’
‘Maybe you should have,’ she said darkly.
Thinking about head injuries, Sherlock asked: ‘What about concussion? The ball injured your father’s head, and he may have hit it as well.’
Virginia gazed at him. Her expression was fixed and angry, but her eyes told a different story. They were desperate.