Young Sherlock Holmes_ Red Leech - Andrew Lane [8]
‘Are you angry?’ Sherlock asked.
‘Not at all,’ Mycroft replied.
‘What would have made your brother angry,’ Amyus Crowe said genially, ‘is if you had been careless enough to let the sun cast your shadow across the balcony in front of the windows.’
‘That,’ Mycroft agreed, ‘would have demonstrated a regrettable lack of knowledge of simple geometry, and also an inability to predict the unintended results of your own actions.’
‘You’re teasing me,’ Sherlock accused.
‘Only slightly,’ Mycroft conceded, ‘and with only the best of intentions.’ He paused. ‘How much did you hear of our conversation?’
Sherlock shrugged. ‘Something about a man who has come across from America to England, and you think he’s a threat. Oh, and something about a family called the Pinkertons.’
Mycroft glanced across the room at Crowe, and raised an eyebrow. Crowe smiled slightly.
‘They’re not a family,’ he said, ‘although sometimes it feels like they are. The Pinkerton National Detective Agency is a company of detectives and bodyguards. It was formed by Allan Pinkerton in Chicago ’bout twelve years ago, when he realized that the number of railroad companies in the States was growin’, but they had no way of protectin’ themselves against robbery, sabotage an’ union activity. Allan hires out his people like a kind of super police force.’
‘Entirely independent of Government rules and regulations,’ Mycroft murmured. ‘You know, for a country that prides itself on its democratic founding principles, you do have a habit of creating unaccountable independent agencies.’
‘You called him “Alan”,’ Sherlock realized. ‘You know him?’
‘Al Pinkerton an’ I go back a long way,’ Crowe admitted. ‘I was with him seven years ago when he an’ I snuck Abraham Lincoln through Baltimore on his way to his Presidential inauguration. There was a plot by the Southern states to kill Lincoln in the town, but the Pinkertons had been hired to protect him an’ we got him through alive. Since then I’ve been consulting for Al, on an’ off. Never actually taken a salary, but he pays me a consultancy fee on odd occasions.’
‘President Lincoln?’ Sherlock said, his brain racing. ‘But wasn’t he—’
‘Oh, they caught up with him eventually’ Crowe’s face was as still and as heavy as a carved chunk of granite. ‘Three years after the Baltimore plot, someone took a shot at him in Washington. His horse bolted and his hat blew off. When they recovered his hat later, they found a bullet hole in it. Missed him by inches.’ He sighed. An’ then a year later, just three years ago, he was at the theatre in Washington, watchin’ a play called Our American Cousin, when a man named John Wilkes Booth shot him in the back of the head, jumped on to the stage an’ escaped.’
You weren’t there,’ Mycroft said softly. You couldn’t have done anything.’
‘I should have been there,’ Crowe said, just as softly. ‘So should Al Pinkerton. In point of fact, the only bodyguard lookin’ after the President that night was a drunken policeman named John Frederick Parker. He weren’t even there when the President was shot. He was in the Star Tavern next door, drownin’ himself in ale.’
‘I remember reading about it in Father’s newspaper,’ Sherlock said, breaking the heavy silence that had descended in the room. ‘And I remember Father talking about it, but I never really understood why President Lincoln was killed.’
‘That’s the trouble with schools these days,’ Mycroft muttered. ‘As far as they are concerned, English history stops about a hundred years ago and there’s no such thing as world history’ He glanced at Crowe, but the American seemed reluctant to continue. ‘You are aware of the War Between the States, I presume?’ he asked Sherlock.
‘Only from the reports in The Times’
‘Simply put, eleven states in the Southern half of the United States of America declared their independence and formed the Confederate States of America.’ He snorted. ‘It’s as if Dorset, Devon and Hampshire suddenly decided