Young Sherlock Holmes: Knife Edge (12 page)

Mention of the doctor reminded Sherlock of something important that he had forgotten. ‘One of the servants was found dead outside in the castle grounds,’ he said suddenly.

Mycroft gazed at him with interest. ‘Who found the body?’

‘I did.’

‘Yes, of course you did.’ Mycroft paused, wincing at a sudden pain in his head. ‘Were there any suspicious circumstances?’

‘I couldn’t see any cause of death. It looked like she just –’ he shrugged – ‘fell down and died. Maybe a heart attack.’

‘Stranger things have happened,’ Mycroft mused, ‘but the timing is
certainly odd.’

‘Oh, and she wasn’t wearing any shoes.’

‘Interesting.’ Mycroft winced again. ‘But I cannot think about this properly now. I need to lie down. Could you help me to my room, please?’

After he had done so, Sherlock walked down the square spirals of the stone staircase. He half expected Niamh Quintillan to be waiting for him when he got to the bottom, but the hall was empty.
He weighed the envelope in his hand. Mycroft had wanted it to be sent immediately. He supposed he should head down to the town to send it. He could ask a servant from the castle to take it for him,
but he knew that Mycroft was expecting him to take it himself, to make sure that it got sent. It was quite a distance down to the town: he could ask Sir Shadrach Quintillan for a carriage, but
he
felt awkward doing that. The walk would do him good.

Strolling out of the castle he was pleased to discover that the low cloud was blowing inland, leaving blue sky behind, and the splattering of rain had ceased. The weather here certainly was
changeable.

He set out on the reverse of the route that the carriage had taken the previous afternoon, taking him and Mycroft from Galway
to the castle. The path was mainly downhill, of course – the
castle was on top of the cliffs, and the town was at sea level. The walk was pleasant, with the sun shining down from an increasingly blue sky and the smell of wet grass accompanying him, but he
was painfully aware that the walk back would be uphill all the way. Perhaps he could hitch a ride.

It took him nearly two hours to get
from Salthill to the centre of Galway. Part of him wished that Niamh had been with him, to while away the time with questions and guessing games, but another
part realized how annoying that would become. There was something bewitching about Niamh, but only in short doses.

He passed the hotel where he and Mycroft had stayed and taken lunch. He knew that the telegraph office would have to
be somewhere central and obvious, and he eventually found it at the end of
the cobbled main street, near the harbour. Entering, he found the proprietor bent over a complicated mechanical contrivance consisting of various wires and magnets terminating in a simple lever
which he was tapping in a regular manner. He was in shirtsleeves, with metal bands holding his cuffs away from his wrists, and
he had a green celluloid eyeshade held above his eyes by an elastic
band.

‘Can I help you, young master?’

‘I have a telegram to send to London.’

The man raised an eyebrow. ‘And have you the means of payment?’

‘I have.’ Sherlock handed the envelope to the man, along with a handful of change. ‘The message needs to be sent with some urgency.’

‘It’s odd,’ the man said, ‘how few
people come in here and say “Don’t worry, it’s a trivial message and it can wait for a while”.’

Sherlock nodded. ‘Point taken. Nevertheless . . .’

‘It will be sent quickly. You have my word. What if there is a reply?’

‘Then I am up at the castle at Salthill.’

‘Cloon Ard Castle – as a guest of Sir Shadrach Quintillan?’ The man’s voice had taken on a deferential tone, but one tinged
with caution. ‘You’re staying up
there?’

‘I am. With my brother.’

The man nodded. ‘I will get a message up to you if there is a reply.’ He paused, obviously wanting to say something else. ‘Young master – may I ask . . . have you . . .
seen
anything up at the castle?’

Sherlock hesitated. He had seen lots of things. ‘Such as what?’

‘Well . . .’ The man hesitated again. ‘There
are rumours that . . . that
the Dark Beast
has been seen again. Is it true?’

‘I haven’t seen it,’ Sherlock said. The words seemed true when they left his lips, but he suddenly remembered the black shape he had seen in the Cloon Ard Castle ballroom,
hiding behind the curtains. Surely a monster looking like a lobster wouldn’t hide behind curtains? That would be . . . rather trivial.

‘But
is it true that the Beast has taken a life?’ the man whispered, glancing around and surreptitiously crossing himself for protection.

Sherlock was amazed at how fast the news had found its way to the town. ‘Someone did die, but we think it was an accident,’ he said firmly. ‘There is no connection to the Dark
Beast.’

‘But the dead girl, God rest her – she saw it, didn’t she? That’s why
she’s dead!’

‘It was a heart attack,’ Sherlock said. ‘Or perhaps a seizure. There was nothing supernatural about the death.’

‘Very well,’ the man said, obviously disappointed. ‘But people talk.’

‘Indeed they do.’ Sherlock nodded his head. ‘Thank you.’

Before returning to the castle, he managed to find some lunch at a local shop. The walk had made him hungry, and he bought two pies
and some fruit, and ate them as he strolled back.

He spent time looking at the landscape – the low hills, the fields, the hedges. Strangely different from the England countryside that he remembered from before he left.

As he got nearer the castle, he spotted something tall and thin rising above the trees. It was the tower he had seen from the roof earlier. The sight reminded him that he
had intended to visit
it, and he made a mental note to do so later.

It took him well over an hour to reach the twin pillars of stone that marked the entrance to the castle grounds. As he got there he thought he heard the clatter of distant wheels on stone, and
the whinnying of horses.

Entering, he noticed a group of people standing just the other side of the castle moat. Sir Shadrach
Quintillan was there, instantly recognizable in his bath chair, being pushed by Silman. Von
Webenau was there as well, as was Herr Holtzbrinck, and Ambrose Albano, who was wearing a long coat and a hat, as if he were going out for a walk. The psychic was arguing with Quintillan –
his arms were waving, and even at that distance Sherlock could hear him shouting in his thin, reedy voice, although
he couldn’t make out the exact words. The Austro-Hungarian and German
representatives seemed to be appealing to him to calm down – there were lots of flapping hand gestures from them, and quieter words that Sherlock couldn’t hear. After a few minutes,
Albano made an abrupt dismissive gesture with his hand, turned around and strode away from the group, across the moat and towards Sherlock.

Sherlock kept walking along the gravel path that led to the moat and the castle. He and Albano would pass each other at the halfway point. Albano, however, was walking fast with his head down,
staring at the gravel. He hadn’t seen Sherlock.

A commotion behind him, at the entrance to the castle grounds, made Sherlock turn. A black four-wheeled carriage pulled by two black horses had burst
through the gap between the pillars. The
driver – who had a scarf wrapped around his face – had skidded dangerously to make the turn. The carriage headed straight at Sherlock, who had to leap out of the way to avoid being hit.
He rolled, trying to keep the vehicle in sight. He had a brief glimpse through a side window and inside the carriage, where three men were sitting: two facing forward
and one facing back.

Albano had seen the carriage by now, or perhaps he had been alerted to shouts from the group by the moat. He stopped and stared at the black vehicle that was bearing down on him.

Just moments before Albano would have been mown down by the hoofs of the galloping horses and the wheels of the carriage, the driver snapped the reins to the left and flicked his whip at the
horses’ heads. The carriage slewed around so that it was side-on to both Albano and Sherlock. The force carried it off the gravel path for a few feet before the driver regained control.

As he climbed to his feet Sherlock’s mind was racing, trying to explain the driver’s bizarre behaviour, but before he could come to any conclusions the doors on either side of the
carriage were flung open
and two men – also with their faces wrapped in scarves – jumped out. Sherlock just had time to see a third man, motionless inside the carriage, before the man
on Sherlock’s side of the carriage ran around the back to join his companion, and together they jumped on Ambrose Albano and bore him to the ground. One of the men pulled a sack from his
belt, and pulled it over Albano’s head. The other
man struck Albano, rendering him either unconscious or stunned. Or possibly dead. All Sherlock knew was that the man wasn’t moving.

Sherlock’s stunned amazement at the sudden turn of events snapped, and he began to race towards the incident. ‘Hey!’ he called. ‘You! Stop! Let that man go!’

Von Webenau and Herr Holtzbrinck ran from the castle towards the carriage, but they weren’t as fast
as Sherlock, and they were further away. It would take them longer to get there.
Sherlock knew that he would have to manage the initial fight himself.

The two thugs with hidden faces pulled the insensible Albano towards the carriage. Picking him up, they threw him in, climbed in after him and pulled the doors closed. The driver, who had been
waiting for that moment, whipped the edgy horses
into life. They lunged against the straps, pulling the carriage away. The driver hauled on the reins and the horses responded, coming around and
heading across the grass and towards the gravel path.

Straight for Sherlock again.

He just had time to leap out of the way once more before the carriage sped past in a blur of black. Sherlock gained a momentary impression of wild rolling eyes
from the nearest horse, and then
it and the carriage were past him and moving towards the gateway.

Sherlock got to his feet again, brushing himself off, and watched as the carriage rushed away from him. It was too late to catch it: the speed it was going, it would outdistance him easily.

Herr Holtzbrinck and von Webenau ran up to him, both breathing heavily.

‘Are you all right?’
the Austrian asked, gasping for air.

‘I’m fine,’ he replied. ‘What’s happening?’

‘What you can see,’ Herr Holtzbrinck said. ‘Herr Albano has been abducted. Kidnapped. Taken.’

‘But why?’

Von Webenau shrugged. ‘We have no idea.’

As the three of them stared after the departing carriage, something unexpected happened. It seemed to swerve sideways, leaning up on to two wheels and
wobbling alarmingly. Somehow the driver
managed to release the horses, or perhaps the sudden twisting of the carriage snapped the straps that connected them to it. Whatever the reason, the horses bolted away, trailing the leather straps
and the reins behind them, and vanished out of the castle grounds and on to the road outside. The driver, now without a job and in imminent danger of his life,
jumped off the carriage, falling to
one side. He seemed unhurt, judging by the way he staggered to his feet and ran off.

The carriage wasn’t so lucky. Rolling at an angle, it smashed into the right-hand pillar with the sound of wood splintering. The front right-hand wheel collapsed, sending the carriage
tilting forward. The two left-hand wheels came off their axles and spun away, flying
over the top of the wall and vanishing beyond.

Sherlock, Herr Holtzbrinck and von Webenau shared a shocked look, then bolted towards the site of the crash as fast as they could.

Before they could get there, three men climbed out of the wreckage, brushing shards of wood from their clothes. All three of them had black scarves wrapped around their faces – the two men
who had abducted Ambrose
Albano and the third man whom Sherlock had seen in the carriage. They saw von Webenau, Holtzbrinck and Sherlock bearing down on them, panicked, and ran away, through the
gap between the pillars. Within moments they were out of sight.

Sherlock had a horrible feeling about what they were going to find when they got to the smashed remnants of the carriage. There was no sign of Ambrose Albano
getting up unhurt. He must have been
injured in the crash, if he wasn’t already dead.

The three of them got to the pile of black-painted wood that was all that remained of the carriage and started pulling at the wood, throwing the fragments over their shoulders in their attempts
to uncover the psychic.

But he wasn’t there.

By the time they got down to the flattened grass and scattered
gravel underneath where the carriage had been they had to admit that there was no sign of Ambrose Albano. The three of them
straightened up and stared around them, looking for some piece of the wreckage large enough to hide his body, but there was nothing. They had moved every fragment of debris without finding him.

‘How many men did you see running away from the carriage after the crash?’
Sherlock asked. He deliberately didn’t name a number himself, as he wanted to hear what the other two
men remembered without influencing them with his own memories.

‘The driver ran away first,’ Herr Holtzbrinck said, ‘followed by three men from inside the carriage. They were all wearing scarves across their faces.’

Von Webenau nodded. ‘Three men from inside the carriage, plus the driver.’

‘Apart from the driver, how many men were inside the carriage before Ambrose Albano was kidnapped?’ Sherlock went on. This was the key question. He had seen three – the two men
who had taken Albano and the third man inside, but maybe he had been mistaken. Maybe there had only been two men.

‘Three,’ von Webenau said firmly. ‘Two men jumped out of the carriage to take Herr Albano, but I
saw a third man inside. I saw him clearly. He never got out.’

Herr Holtzbrinck nodded an emphatic agreement. ‘Three men – one inside and two who got out.’