A shocked silence descended around the table.
‘You’re going to go to Moscow?’ Sherlock asked, stunned. ‘In Russia?’
‘I’m afraid I am,’ Mycroft replied.
‘But you get vertigo if you go north of Oxford Street!’
Mycroft smiled, but it was one of those smiles where humour was a thin veneer over a deeper pain. ‘The fact that I do not wish to go to Russia is immaterial. I should go. I have to go. My own personal comfort is quite irrelevant.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Sherlock protested.
‘I do.’ Amyus Crowe nodded softly. ‘How can you expect subordinates to trust you, to follow your instructions, if they think you will abandon them the first time they get into trouble?’
‘That is exactly it. My people across the world must know that I am not just a fair-weather superior. When storms come, as inevitably they will, I will be standing in the rain with them.’ He shuddered. ‘Uncomfortable as it may be.’
‘And you’re curious,’ Sherlock ventured.
‘Curious?’
‘You want to know the truth. You want to know who actually tried to have you framed for murder, and what the situation is with this land sale.’
Mycroft shrugged. ‘I do confess a certain desire to uncover the actual state of affairs. I dislike uncertainty. It is like having a nagging toothache.’
Across the restaurant, the family that Sherlock had been watching earlier were leaving their table. He stared at them for a moment. The mother was checking that her children were correctly buttoned up and neat while the father looked on. Were they heading off to see the sights of London, or visiting family? Perhaps they were just stopping off in London on their way to somewhere else, and were going straight to one of the main stations to catch a train. Whatever their plans, he felt jealous. He couldn’t remember a time when his own family had been like that – normal, ordinary. What with his father off on army business most of the time and his mother confined to bed, there had never been a time when they had all sat around a table and just been. .. a family.
‘So I won’t be seeing you for a while, just as I won’t be seeing Father,’ he whispered.
‘Unless you come with me.’
For the second time in as many minutes, Sherlock was shocked into silence. ‘Me?’ he squeaked eventually. ‘Go with you? To Russia?’
Mycroft was eyeing the remains of the breakfast on his plate longingly. ‘Perhaps you could explain it to him,’ he murmured to Crowe. ‘I think I may have finished too soon.’
‘Ah’m not sure ah understand it myself.’ Crowe’s expression was severe. ‘Perhaps you could explain it to both of us.’
‘Oh, very well. Sherlock has already become involved in this affair. If I head off to Russia then the best way to distract me, to get me back, or even to stop me going in the first place, would be to threaten him. If he were kidnapped, and let us say a fragment of his ear, or his little finger, were sent to me in a parcel, then I would be rendered incapable of further investigation. I need to establish Sherlock’s safety – ergo I need Sherlock with me.’
Sherlock put a hand to his ear. He didn’t like the sound of having it cut off and posted to Mycroft as a warning.
‘You are hardly a man of action,’ Crowe pointed out. ‘Are you sure you could fight off any attackers?’
‘I will enlist assistance,’ Mycroft said waspishly. ‘I intended taking one of my other agents with me, for protection. And protective coloration. The three of us will travel together.’
‘What does that mean – “protective coloration”?’ Sherlock asked, still trying to fight his way past the immense thought that Mycroft wanted him to go to Russia. He wasn’t sure which thought was the most immense – going to Russia, or travelling with Mycroft.
‘It means that we will be travelling incognito – in disguise, if you wish to put it that way. A relatively senior Foreign Office official cannot just wander into Russia unannounced, not without causing an international incident. No, we must use noms de plume-fake names. We must have fake histories. We must be part of a large whole, a bigger picture, so that nobody will pay us too much attention.’
‘And you’ve already decided on what this larger whole will be,’ Crowe said.
‘Indeed. I worked out the plan while in the carriage from the Diogenes Club to this hotel.’
‘You took a hansom?’ Sherlock protested. ‘It’s barely ten minutes’ walk! Two minutes in a cab!’
‘Exactly Just enough time for a little think. If I had been walking I would have been so concerned with dodging other pedestrians, horses and whatever else that I would not have had any time for thinking at all.’
‘So what’s the plan?’ Crowe asked.
Mycroft speared a fragment of sausage with his fork. ‘I was asked, some weeks ago, to give permission for a British theatrical troupe to travel to Moscow to give a series of performances to the great Russian families – Shakespeare, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, that sort of thing. I gave them my permission because their visit had been requested through the Russian Embassy, and because it will improve artistic relationships between our two countries – or, at least, it will if the performances were as good as reports have made them out to be. I heard last week that the trip might need to be cancelled, as the company’s General Manager has been taken ill with a heart complaint and been admitted to hospital, and that their principal violinist in the pit orchestra has been arrested for drunken and disorderly behaviour. It occurs to me that the duties of a General Manager cannot be that onerous, consisting mainly of making sure that everybody gets to where they are meant to be and that all bills are paid on time.’
‘And the violinist?’ Crowe asked. ‘How are you goin’ to recruit one of those?’
‘One of my agents is a passable violinist,’ Mycroft said. He seemed to be focusing on his plate very carefully. ‘I will engage him to assist us.’
‘And what about me?’ Sherlock asked.
‘General factotum and backstage assistant. There are, I understand, never enough people backstage when on tour.’
‘But…’ Sherlock’s mind was racing far ahead of his thoughts. ‘But when? How?’
Mycroft popped the chunk of sausage into his mouth and chewed. As to the “when”,’ he said eventually, ‘I would suggest that we leave as soon as arrangements can be made with the theatrical company. They will, I think, be very grateful that the Foreign Office has gone so far to assist them with their tour as to actually provide them with replacements for their missing people. Their travel arrangements are already made. As I recall, they were planning to leave within the next few days, and were on the verge of sending a letter to their hosts informing them of their cancellation. Let us hope that they have not sent the letter yet, otherwise I will need to come up with another strategy. As to the “how?”, the intention is that we sail to France and take the train from there across the continent to Moscow. The journey will take, I estimate, four to five days.’ He reached for a slice of toast and proceeded to butter it. ‘I will inform our aunt and uncle that you and I will be travelling on the continent for a few weeks. They will understand, I am sure. Travel does broaden the mind. I will go and make the arrangements, while I suggest that you, Sherlock, wander down to Charing Cross Road and look for some books on Russian history and culture. They are very different from us – certainly more different than the Americans.’ He nodded towards Crowe.
‘But let me furnish you with some facts which may help,’ he continued. ‘Russia is the largest country in the world. If you were to measure its surface area on a globe you would find that it occupies almost one seventh of the available land, but much of that land is perpetually frozen grassland – tundra, as they call it. Our best estimate is that the Tsar rules over some sixty-five million subjects, which is a number that quite boggles the mind, especially when you consider that those people belong to one hundred and sixty separate races or tribes speaking one hundred and ten different languages or dialects and adhering to thirty-five distinct religions. Russia is, for all practical purposes, a world in and of itself. That is the place to which we are going.’
‘But…’ Sherlock started, ‘… but I don’t even speak Russian!’
‘That will not be a problem,’ Mycroft said reassuringly. ‘I am informed that most of the well-off households, including all of the Tsar’s court, speak French as a matter of course. I speak fluent French, and I believe yours has improved over the past few months since your time in that country. We should be able to get by.’
Sherlock glanced at Amyus Crowe. ‘But what about Mr Crowe? I don’t think he speaks French at all.’
‘Yes, his English is slightly suspect as well,’ Mycroft murmured. He gazed across at Sherlock, and his eyes were heavy with an emotion Sherlock did not immediately understand, but recognized after a few seconds as pity. ‘I am afraid that Mr Crowe will not be accompanying us. This is a trip for you, me and the violinist I intend recruiting.’
‘But why?’
‘As you pointed out, Mr Crowe does not speak French, or indeed Russian. He possesses no skills that a travelling theatrical company could make use of. He would either have to bring the lovely Virginia, taking our party up to five, or organize someone to look after her for perhaps several weeks. And he stands out in a crowd, which, if we are meant to be travelling incognito, is a problem.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Crowe said. ‘I wasn’t expectin’ to go on this little trip. You go, an’ have fun.’
Sherlock felt his stomach clench. ‘But I want you to go with us.’
‘The problem with life,’ Mycroft observed, ‘is that it rarely gives us what we want, or even what we need. I’ve heard it said that the Lord does not give us anything that we cannot cope with. In my experience this is not true, and merely serves as a mechanism for helping religious people accept the unacceptable. Life is harsh, and we cannot even hope to survive it.’
‘Ah see the lessons continue,’ Crowe said quietly.
Mycroft glanced at him. ‘The boy has to learn sometime.’
Crowe took a breath, obviously keen to change the subject. ‘What about the museum? Is there goin’ to be any further investigation there?’
‘I have notified the police as to its role in this case, and I have also initiated some more… covert… investigations through certain arms of the Government, but I strongly suspect that we will find nothing there. Either they were using it as a convenient meeting point, in which case all they have to do is walk out of the front door and we have lost them, or they had an office of some kind there, in which case they will immediately have cleared it out as soon as you and Sherlock blundered in. Either way, it will not furnish us with any clues. This is a very professional group we are dealing with.’
‘You don’t think the entire museum is a front for whoever framed you?’ Sherlock asked.
‘I sincerely doubt it. The museum is a charitable organization, above reproach. No, I suspect that either the villains met there, or one of the staff was a member of their organization. It will prove to be a dead end.’ He popped the last fragment of buttered toast in his mouth, crunched on it for a few moments, and sighed contentedly. ‘Now I feel I can start the day properly’ He pulled a watch from his waistcoat pocket and consulted it. ‘Another hour or so until luncheon. That should give me enough time to initiate preparations for our journey. Sherlock, Mr Crowe – I suggest we meet at the Diogenes at about one p.m.’ Levering himself out of the chair with some difficulty, he added, ‘Perhaps someone would be kind enough to secure a cab for me.’
While Crowe and Mycroft talked on the pavement, Sherlock walked off. His head was buzzing with possibilities, and he wanted some time by himself to sort them out.
‘Oh, Sherlock!’
He turned around again. Mycroft was flapping a hand at him.
‘What is it?’ he asked, returning to where the two men stood.
‘You may need some money’ He handed across three coins. ‘Here’re three guineas. Keep them safe, and buy yourself some cold weather clothing, if you see any.’
Sherlock walked alone, up through Piccadilly Circus, through Leicester Square and across to the bottom of Charing Cross Road. The streets were thronged with people on the pavements, and horses, carts and cabs of various descriptions in the road. If this was just a few hundred people, and it felt like he was being crushed, then what would a country of sixty-five million people be like? And if there were sixty-five million people in Russia alone, then how many people were there in the world as a whole? The scale of things made him dizzy!
Bookshops, junk shops and pawnbrokers lined the street on either side, and he spent a good hour browsing through the boxes of stuff that were located outside the various emporia, and the shelves and cabinets inside. He let his mind wander, not trying to force it in any particular direction.
He came across a handful of books about the Russian Empire, selected the two most factual and bought them. He also found himself interested in a box of door locks, padlocks and keys, which the owner of the shop warned him were unsorted. There was no guarantee that any of the keys would fit any of the locks; the owner was selling them as seen. Sherlock wondered whether by having numerous padlocks in his possession, to fiddle with and experiment on at his leisure, he might learn how to pick a lock. It was a skill that might prove useful in future. In fact, it would already have proved itself useful in the past couple of months.
In the end he abandoned the box of locks and walked away. He could always go back for them later.
Further up Charing Cross Road he crossed Cambridge Circus, and then went on to the beginning of Tottenham Court Road. Still more shops, although the street was at least wider here, giving more room for the horses and cabs to pass. He checked out a pawnshop in desultory fashion, knowing that it was nearly time to turn round and head back if he was going to be at the Diogenes Club on time. His eye was caught by a violin case resting on a shelf at the back.
He carefully took the case down and blew the dust from it. He opened the lid, and drew a sharp breath when he saw the violin inside. It was old – old and beautiful. The veneer was a deep red, crazed with a tight spider’s web of cracks, and the f-holes on top seemed slightly offset to him, but there was something about the instrument that spoke to him. Called to him. He hefted it in his right hand, holding it by the neck and taking its weight on the heel of his palm. The balance seemed better than Rufus Stone’s violin, which he had held and played on the SS Scotia, on the way to New York. He let the violin’s curved body rest on his forearm and plucked at the strings. Sounds filled the shop, plangent and long – lasting. The tuning was awful, but there was something about the tone, some complexity, that thrilled him. It wasn’t a pure sound, by any means, but it was warm and expressive. He ran his finger along the edge between the top and the side of the violin. It felt like velvet.
‘You have a good eye,’ a dry-as-dust voice said from the back of the shop.
Sherlock turned. A section of shelving was in the way and he walked around it to see a man so old and frail that a strong wind might have blown him away. He was sitting behind a desk piled high with books and other objects. He wore a black skullcap, and he peered at Sherlock through a set of glasses that were perched on the bridge of his nose and secured from falling to the ground by a chain that hung around his neck.
‘I beg your pardon?’
The man moved out of the shadowy nook in which he had been sitting and into a dusty beam of sunlight. ‘That violin I brought with me from Krakow, many years ago. My father won it in a game of cards, would you believe? It has travelled with us across most of Europe, and now I have to sell it in order that I buy food and firewood, and yet still I want to keep it.’
‘It’s a lovely instrument.’
‘It is lovely, just as my wife is lovely, and it plays like a dream, or so I am told by those who know. Me, I play the piano, and sometimes the accordion, but only when I drink too much.’
Sherlock looked in the case. ‘Does it have a bow?’
‘For you, I have a bow,’ the man said. He dug around on the desk, moving some books. ‘There are some who say that the bow is as important as the instrument. Me, I’m not so sure. The instrument is a work of art, but the bow is just horsehair. Maybe the type of horse is important, I don’t know. Ah!’ He pulled a bow from a hidden recess and handed it across to Sherlock. ‘Go ahead, try!’
Sherlock thought back to the lessons he’d had from Rufus Stone. He’d not practised since getting back from America, because he didn’t have a violin, but he’d missed the discipline of repetitive scales and the way his mind could be calmed from its perpetual churning by the simplicity of music.
He quickly tuned the violin, plucking the strings repeatedly and turning the pegs at the end of the neck until the notes were correct. He raised it to his shoulder and nestled his chin against it. It felt natural. It felt as if it was meant to be there.
Placing the bow against the strings, he played a sustained note on each one in turn: G, D, A, E. The notes sounded like a voice, singing in heaven. He tried some scales, and was surprised at how quickly his fingers seemed to remember what to do.
When he lowered the violin, he was amazed to see tears in the old man’s eyes.
‘It has been a long time since she was played,’ he said. ‘I was worried that the passing of years and the passing of miles had dulled her tone, but she sounds more beautiful than ever – which is more than can be said for my lovely wife, who sings like a crow.’
‘How is it,’ Sherlock asked, ‘that different violins can sound.. . so different? I mean, a cart is a cart is a cart. They each have four wheels and they move when they are pulled. It’s difficult to choose between them. But violins – they all look the same, more or less, but they don’t sound the same.’
The old man shrugged. ‘You ask three fiddlers, you get four different answers. Some say it’s to do with the wood that they’re made from. Denser wood is better, they say. Some say that wood that was towed behind boats passing through the Adriatic Sea outside Venice gives a sweeter tone. Others say it’s nothing to do with the wood, but all to do with the varnish, and whatever secret ingredients the violin makers put into it. Me, I believe that it has to do with love. An instrument made for money will sound -’ he rocked his hand back and forth expressively, ‘- acceptable, but an instrument made out of the sheer love of making instruments – that will sound beautiful.’
‘Do you know who made this one?’
‘I do not. It came into my family unheralded and unadvertised. But there is a lot of love in its construction, along with the wood and the glue and the varnish – you can tell that much.’
‘How…’ Sherlock swallowed. ‘How much does it cost?’
‘Seventy shillings,’ the old man said promptly. ‘But as you appreciate a decent instrument, I will sell it for sixty-five.’
‘I can give you forty-five shillings,’ Sherlock said nervously knowing that he had three pounds and three shillings in his pocket. That was sixty-three shillings, but he wanted to make sure that he had some money left, just in case something unexpected happened.
The old man cocked his head to one side. ‘Did I mention the food and the firewood I need to buy for my family?’
‘You did. Forty-five shillings,’ Sherlock repeated firmly.
‘You are a boy whose heart has turned to stone. Fifty – seven, and no lower.’
‘Fifty,’ Sherlock said. He realized that he was breathing fast.
The old man sighed. ‘Maybe I leave the firewood for another day, and tonight we eat cold meat and cold soup. Fifty-five.’
‘Agreed.’
They shook hands solemnly, and Sherlock put the violin back in the case. He handed three one-guinea coins across. The old man handed back five shillings in change. You take care of her,’ he said, ‘and if you manage to find out anything more about her, come back and tell me. I would be interested.’
‘I will.’
The door to the shop opened, and a shadow fell across the floor. A section of shelving blocked the back of the shop from the front, so neither Sherlock nor the old man could see who had entered, but before the old man could call out Sherlock heard a voice say: ‘’E came in ’ere! I swear ’e did!’
‘You should’ve come straight in an’ nabbed ’im,’ another, deeper voice said, sounding like bricks grating together. ‘Not waited for me.’
‘What if I’d got the wrong one?’
‘Then some other family would be grieving tonight.’