Young Sherlock Holmes: Knife Edge (25 page)

The stone wall of the tower seemed sheer, and the fact that the joins between the stones were all but invisible meant that he wouldn’t be able to jam anything, like a knife blade, into any
gap to act as a makeshift step. For a few moments he wondered whether it would be possible to carve notches in the stone with an axe so that he could climb up, but that
seemed close to an act of
vandalism. Also of course, he didn’t have an axe either. The alternative was to go back to the castle and get some rope, in the hope that he could form a loop and fling it up high enough to
hook on to one of the projecting battlements, but he would have to go all the way back to the castle and hope that they had some rope somewhere that he could borrow, and he really
wanted to
investigate the folly
now
, not later.

It occurred to Sherlock that the nearest window was only about twelve feet off the ground. If he could find a way of getting up
that
high then he could investigate what was inside. It
might at least give him some clues as to what the folly was all about.

He looked around. There were a few ash trees growing among the furze bushes, but
none of them had branches close enough to the folly to use as a jumping-off point.

He wandered a little way into the undergrowth and climbed up one of the trees until he was on a level with the lowest window. Unfortunately the sun was at the wrong angle and he couldn’t
see inside.

The branch creaked beneath his weight, and he shuffled backwards quickly, lest it break. Looking along its
length he noticed that it split into two after a few feet, and the two separate lengths
also each split into two. Suddenly an entire plan sprang fully formed into his mind. If he could break the branch off then he could lean it against the tower and use it as a ladder!

Before his logical brain could give him sixteen reasons why the plan would not work, he started bouncing up and down on
the branch. It creaked and bent beneath his weight, but it didn’t
break. He edged a little way along it, using a higher branch to hold on to, and stood up. The branch he was standing on abruptly gave way. Sherlock nearly fell, saving himself only by grabbing the
higher branch with both hands.

He swung himself down the tree and pulled the broken branch over to the folly. The branch was
about twelve feet long, and Sherlock found that if he set the thicker end on the ground so that it
did not slip, he could raise the thinner end up to rest against the edge of the lowest window. Sherlock clambered up like a monkey until his head was level with the dark opening in the wall.

He lunged for the ledge, fingers catching on the rough grey stone, and his chest crashed against the
side of the tower. He hung there for a few moments before he pulled himself up and over the
ledge.

He lay inside the window, breathing heavily.

The room was circular, with only the one entrance, and it was entirely empty. Well, empty apart from some splinters of wood on the floor that looked like they came not from a branch but from a
box of some kind. Maybe a crate.

The sunlight
barely penetrated the room but even so, Sherlock saw that one of the flagstones was darker than the rest. He moved across to examine it, and discovered that it wasn’t a
flagstone at all – it was actually a hole in the floor. He reached down and waved his hand around. There seemed to be plenty of space down there. Perhaps it was a way into a lower room, one
that was at ground level but had no
door to the outside? He supposed he could climb down and check, but he was reluctant to do that without a lamp. He could break his ankle or his leg if he fell
badly, and he wouldn’t be able to get out again.

A sudden thought struck him, and he looked upward, at the ceiling of the circular room. There was a hole there as well, offset from the one in the floor. Looking at the holes in the
floor and
the ceiling of the room he was in, he decided that they must have been put there to allow for a short ladder to climb from one room to another: that’s why they were offset. The ladder could
presumably be pulled up from each room into the next, and used again. With luck, the holes would lead all the way to the top of the tower. If only he had a ladder . . .

He had the next best
thing: a strong pair of arms and a strong pair of legs. Crouching, he leaped for the hole above. His fingers clutched at the edge of the hole and, arms straining, he pulled
himself up.

The room above was exactly the same as the room below, with the exception that the view from the window was higher. And he had been right – there
was
another hole in the
ceiling.

It took him an exhausting
five leaps and straining pulls to get from room to room until he was finally at the top, on the flat platform that capped the tower.

There he found Sir Shadrach Quintillan’s dead body, still in its bath chair, looking over his lands with blind, unseeing eyes, the front of his shirt and jacket stained red with drying
blood.

‘The obvious question,’ Amyus Crowe said, ‘is: How on earth did he get
up
there?’

‘Not so,’ Mycroft Holmes countered. ‘The obvious question is:
Why
was he
put
up there? Most murder victims are either left where they were murdered or hidden
somewhere else in the hope that they will not be found. For the murderer to go to all the trouble of getting the body up on top
of the folly indicates that they had a strong motivation. What was
it?’

It was hours after Sherlock had found Sir Shadrach’s body. His immediate reaction had been, of course, to check that Sir Shadrach was actually dead, but the gash across the man’s
throat and the blood that had soaked into his shirt and pooled in his lap was proof enough, in Sherlock’s eyes. His second reaction had been
to gaze around, looking for some way that the body
could have been placed, in its bath chair, on top of the tower, but there was nothing – no ropes, no ladders, no mechanism for moving something the size and weight of a man that far in the
air. His third reaction had been to climb down the tower the same way he had got up and go back to the castle, to report Sir Shadrach’s death, and that
descent, and the following run, had
felt like one of the longest periods of his life.

Mycroft and Crowe had believed him instantly, of course, but it had taken a while before he could persuade von Webenau, Herr Holtzbrinck and Count Shuvalov. Eventually, all six of them had
trooped back to the folly, along with a handful of shocked servants and a clearly distressed Silman, the butler.
Niamh Quintillan was still out, and could not be found. Two of the foot-servants had
climbed up the tower, using the same route that Sherlock had taken. They called down from the top, confirming the fact that Sir Shadrach was really there, and that he was really dead.

‘Could this be a way of hiding the body?’ Sherlock asked, staring up at the tower. ‘I mean, nobody could have anticipated
that I was going to climb up there, and the body is
invisible from down here, on the ground.’

‘But why go to all that trouble?’ Mycroft repeated. He kept looking around for somewhere to sit, and kept scowling when he realized that there wasn’t anywhere suitable.
‘Why not just dig a hole and bury him in the shrubbery?’

‘It’s a message,’ Crowe said. ‘Perhaps the murderer didn’t care
whether the body was discovered or not, but wanted to make some kind of point. Or perhaps there was
goin’ to be some kind of note sent or letter written tellin’ us where the body was, an’ young Sherlock here merely anticipated it.’

Sherlock was still gazing up the length of the tower. ‘I suppose the body could have been manoeuvred through all those holes in the floors,’ he said, ‘but Sir
Shadrach would
have had to be alive for that to happen, otherwise there would be traces of blood everywhere. I guess he would have had to be unconscious, though, otherwise he would have struggled. The odd bit is
the bath chair. That couldn’t fit through the holes. It must have been pulled up on ropes, but that would have taken hours, and for what purpose?’

‘From what you described,’ Mycroft
said, ‘there is no doubt about cause of death. The man’s throat has been cut.’

‘That’s what I saw,’ Sherlock confirmed.

‘What exactly
is
this thing?’ Mycroft stared up at the tower. ‘It seems to have no practical purpose.’

‘It’s a folly,’ Sherlock pointed out.

Crowe frowned. ‘What’s a “folly” when it’s at home?’

‘A decorative and unfeasibly large garden ornament,’ Mycroft explained.
He shook his head. ‘Why people can’t be satisfied with garden gnomes I don’t
know.’

Silman, who had been speaking with von Webenau, Holtzbrinck and Shuvalov, came over to them. ‘Gentlemen,’ she started, ‘I am . . . sorry that this terrible thing has happened.
I am at a loss to know what to do.’

‘When did you last see Sir Shadrach?’ Mycroft asked.

‘He was feeling ill, so he took
breakfast in his room. That was the last time I saw him. I went to look for him later, but he wasn’t there. I assumed that he had got one of the other
servants, or perhaps his daughter, to move him.’

‘Nobody saw him leave the castle?’

‘Nobody,’ she said.

‘The police must be notified,’ Mycroft said firmly. ‘And nobody who is here can be allowed to leave.’

‘But the foreign gentlemen
are talking about leaving immediately,’ Silman protested. ‘They have asked for transport to be arranged.’

‘Absolutely not,’ Mycroft insisted. ‘They were present at the castle when the murder occurred, and therefore they are suspects, whether they like it or not.’

‘Don’t they have immunity as diplomats?’ Crowe asked quietly.

‘The Congress of Vienna does grant certain rights,’ Mycroft
admitted, ‘but only to certified diplomats, not to ordinary visitors. I don’t know about the other three
gentlemen, but do you, Mr Crowe, possess diplomatic papers?’

Crowe’s mouth twitched. ‘Not as such. Am Ah a suspect?’

‘Not as such,’ Mycroft countered. ‘I am merely making a point. Only those people with diplomatic papers are entitled to immunity, and even then such immunity can be
withdrawn
by their own governments if they are involved in a serious crime separate from their diplomatic duties. But we are getting ahead of ourselves – firstly, there has to be an official crime, and
that means the involvement of the police. We must all stay here until the police arrive and have concluded their examination and questioning.’

‘The Irish police?’ Crowe questioned. ‘From
Galway? This ain’t a case of a disappearin’ cow, you know. This is murder.’

‘And I am sure that Galway Town on a Friday night sees its fair share of violence.’ Mycroft glanced at Silman, who was standing patiently listening to the discussion. ‘Firstly,
do not arrange any travel for anyone. Secondly, send someone down to the town to fetch the police, in force if possible. Thirdly, sort out
some means of getting Sir Shadrach’s body down from
the tower. I suppose the police will want to see it
in situ
, but we need to be prepared to move it as soon as we are permitted.’

‘And fourth,’ Sherlock added, ‘find Niamh. She needs to be told.’

Mycroft nodded. ‘A valid point, Sherlock. Now, I will go and smooth the feathers of those gentlemen. If you will excuse me . . .’

He moved
across to the other group. Crowe stared after him for a moment, and then said: ‘Ah need to go an’ talk to Virginia. Ah’d rather she hears about what has happened from
me, rather than from one of the servants, or by overhearin’ some passin’ conversation.’

‘What about Niamh?’ Sherlock asked.

‘If Ah see her, Ah’ll tell her as well. What about you?’

‘I’ll hang around here and see if
anything occurs to me.’

Crowe nodded, and left. Sherlock moved back to the edge of the clearing in which the folly stood and found an old tree trunk on which he could sit. He stayed there for several hours, watching as
the police arrived from Galway and briefly examined the scene, and then as firstly the body and secondly the bath chair of Sir Shadrach Quintillan were lowered on ropes from
the top of the folly.
He overheard, from where he sat, the police sergeant telling Silman that this was obviously a murder, and that he would need to talk to everyone at the castle. The two of them left, and a couple of
servants took the now-shrouded body away, wheeling it in the bath chair in just the way they would have done had Sir Shadrach been alive.

He stayed there for a long while
afterwards, just staring at the folly, letting thoughts swirl around in his brain until, every now and then, they touched each other and stuck together. He was
beginning to develop a theory, and it depended on this folly being where it was, and what it was.

He heard a quiet movement behind him, and said, ‘It’s all right. I’m just sitting here. You can come into the open, if you want.’

Niamh Quintillan stepped out of the bushes. She had obviously been crying: her eyes were red and the skin beneath them was swollen.

‘You killed him,’ she said quietly, but with an intense ferocity.

‘I didn’t,’ he replied, feeling breathless at the force of her accusation. ‘I had no reason to.’

‘You exposed the tricks he and Mr Albano were using during the séances. If you hadn’t exposed
him, he would still be alive.’

‘Actually, that’s not true,’ Sherlock said calmly, hoping Niamh would calm down as well. ‘He and Mr Albano had managed to recover a lot of the ground they had lost when I
showed everyone the tricks they were using. The auction was going to go ahead this afternoon, with the Germans, the Russians and the Austro-Hungarians bidding. The situation had more or less
returned to the way it was before I said anything.’ He paused. ‘That, I think, is why he was killed – because the auction was going ahead. I think that if the other international
delegates had listened to me, and the auction had been cancelled, then he would still be alive.’

‘Then maybe you should have explained away the trick with the painting as well. If you’d done that, then the auction
would
have been cancelled.’