Andrew Lane - Red Leech

“Is it really so important?” Sherlock asked.

“Is what so important?”

“Whatever you’re doing here? Is it really so important that you need to kill me to make sure nobody ever finds out?”

Ives laughed. “Oh, people’ll find out all right. The world will find out in time, but that’s a time of our choosing.”

Sherlock was at the top of the stairs by now, and Ives gestured to him to head down, towards the first floor. Reluctantly Sherlock obeyed. He knew he had to make a break for it some time, but if he tried now then Ives would just shoot him and find some other way of disposing of his body so that it would never be found. Apart from causing Ives some momentary inconvenience, Sherlock was pretty sure that running now would achieve nothing. Maybe he’d get a chance when they got out into the open air.

Heading down the stairs he felt something underneath the sole of his shoe; something lying on the carpet. Before he could see what it was, Ives had pushed him onward. He turned, curious, just in time to see a length of string suddenly pull tight across the stairs, from banister to panelled wall. It was the string, lying on the carpet, that he had stepped on.

Ives’s foot caught under the string as he was going down to the next step. His body kept on moving while his foot stayed where it was, trapped. His eyes widened comically as he fell forward. His hands scrabbled for the wall and the banister, his right hand banging the revolver against the panelling of the wall before he dropped it. Sherlock stepped to one side as Ives fell past him. The man hit the stairs with his shoulder and rolled in an ungainly way, over and over, until he hit the first floor and lay, sprawled, across the carpet.

Sherlock glanced over the edge of the banister from where he stood halfway up the stairs. Beneath him, in the shadows of the first floor, he saw Matty’s pale face staring up at him. Matty was holding one end of a piece of string. Sherlock traced the string up to the banister and across the stairs to where a nail had been roughly pushed into the gap between the skirting board and the wall. The string was tied to the head of the nail.

“You were lucky the nail didn’t pull out when his weight was pulling on the string,” Sherlock observed calmly, although his heart was beating fast and heavy in his chest.

“No,” Matty corrected, “ you were lucky it didn’t pull out. It made no difference to me. He didn’t know I was here.”

Sherlock descended to the first-floor landing and bent to check on Ives. The man was unconscious, with a nasty red mark on his forehead. Sherlock picked up the gun. No point taking any chances.

Matty joined him. “What is it about you and other people’s houses?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I have to keep getting you out of trouble.” He glanced up the stairs. “What’s going on up there? I saw the cove with the burned face pull you into the house, and then I saw two other coves pitch up in a wagon. Next thing I know, there’s three of you out on the roof. I saw guns, so I thought I’d better come in and get you.” He shook his head. “For a kid with a big brain you spend a lot of time a prisoner. Can’t you just talk your way out of trouble?”

“I think,” Sherlock said, “that it’s the talking that gets me into trouble, sometimes.” He paused, thinking. “Where did you get the string from?”

“In me pocket, of course,” Matty replied. “You never know when you might need string.”

“Come on,” Sherlock said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“There’s another bloke downstairs,” Matty pointed out, “but he’s knocked out. At least, he was when I came up. We’d better be careful in case he’s awake by now.”

The two of them crept down the stairs to the ground floor and past the reception room where the man who Sherlock had first seen unconscious and bleeding — Gilfillan, Ives had called him — was now lying on the sofa and snoring. Sneaking past, they headed out of the front door, out of the garden and down the road to where Matty had hitched the horses.

“Did you find out what you needed to know?” Matty asked as they mounted the horses.

“I think so,” Sherlock said, thinking. “There’s four men in the house, and they’re all American. At least, three of them are — I never heard the other one speak. One of the men is disturbed in the head, and one of them is a doctor looking after him. The other two I guess are guarding him, making sure he doesn’t escape. They must have left one man in charge when the other two went out — maybe to get food or something — and the disturbed man, whose name is John Wilkes Booth, knocked him out. He assumed I was part of some kind of plot against him, which is why he pulled me into the house.”

“But what are they doing here in England in the first place?” Matty asked.

“I don’t know, but there’s something going on. This isn’t just a rest home for mad assassins.”

“Mad assassins?

“I’ll tell you all about it when we get to Holmes Manor.”

The ride back to Farnham took over an hour, and Sherlock’s spirits fell with every mile they travelled. How was he going to explain to Mycroft and to Amyus Crowe that his quiet little investigation had ended with the four men in the house now warned that someone knew they were up to no good? If he’d thought about it properly, he would never have gone near the house.

Mycroft’s carriage was still outside Holmes Manor when they got there.

“Well,” Matty said, “good luck.”

“What do you mean, good luck? Aren’t you coming in with me?”

“Are you joking? Mr Crowe scares me, and your brother terrifies me. I’m going back to the narrowboat. Tell me all about it tomorrow.” And with that he turned his horse’s head away and cantered off.

Taking a deep breath, Sherlock entered the hall, crossed to the library and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” his brother’s voice boomed.

Mycroft and Amyus Crowe were sitting together at a long reading desk over to one side of the library. A huge pile of books was sitting in front of them — histories, geographies, philosophies and three very large atlases which had been opened to show a map of what looked to Sherlock like the Americas.

Mycroft looked Sherlock up and down critically.

“You have been assaulted,” he said, “and not by someone your own age.”

“Or from this country,” Amyus Crowe rumbled.

“In fact,” Mycroft said, glancing at Sherlock’s shoes, “there were two assailants. One of them was mentally deficient in some way.”

“And both men were armed with pistols,” Crowe added.

“How do you know these things?” Sherlock asked, amazed.

“A trifling matter,” Mycroft said, waving his hand airily. “Explaining it would waste time. More important is, where did you go and why were you attacked?”

Reluctantly Sherlock told them both everything that had happened, ending with the realization that he still had Ives’s pistol tucked into the back of his trousers. He pulled it out and put it on the desk in front of the two men.

“Colt Army model,” Crowe observed mildly. “Point four-four calibre, six rounds. Fourteen inches from hammer to the end of the barrel. Replaced the Colt Dragoon as the preferred weapon of the US Army. Accurate up to around a hundred yards.” His fist slammed down on the table, making the gun jump. “What in the name of God and all his angels did you think you were doin’, goin’ to that house?” he shouted. “You’ve alerted Booth an’ his handlers to the fact someone’s on to them! They’ll clear out like greased lightnin’.”

Sherlock bit the inside of his lip, trying to stop himself responding. “I just wanted to take a look,” he said eventually. “I thought I could help.”