Chapter Six
A Debt to Be Paid – Sea, Sand and Surfing the 'Net – To the Catacombs – The Structural Cohesion of Sand – Sherlock Investigates – Where Wreckers Thrive.
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The child was still asleep or unconscious in the small emergency ward of the small local hospital, a serious-looking young doctor examining the wound in careful detail.
"About how long since this happened?" she asked, quickly signing-off the request for two ampules of Zagreb antivenom and checking the boy's blood-pressure for the fifth time in as many minutes.
Alerted by the slight edge to the doctor's voice, Purrun's anxiety began to rise again. "Not more than thirty-five or forty minutes," he muttered, resting a hand on the child's forehead. It was hot. "Is there something very wrong with my grandson?"
"Some people, especially children, react worse to a bite than others," the name badge advised everyone she was to be known as Doctor Leah Henessy. "Your grandson's blood-pressure is higher than I like and I want to get it back down."
"Antihistamine and hydrocortisone in case of anaphylactoid antivenom reactions?" John was interested to see how techniques had changed. The last time he had to deal with poisonous bites was with Afghanistan's odd few venomous snakes and occasionally, a nasty scorpion sting. It had been a while since he'd seen an adder-bite on his home-turf, as it were.
Henessy looked up appraisingly. "Doctor?" she asked, giving John the once-over.
"Watson," John held out his hand. "John Watson. I locum in London."
"Not many of these up there, I suspect," Henessy shook his hand briefly, returning to take the child's blood pressure yet again. One hundred and twenty-five over ninety and rising; uncomfortably high for a small boy "How old is he?" Henessy watched the nurse prepare the slow infusion of the antivenom in a saline drip.
"Only six, nearly seven," Purrun's voice was almost a whisper. "But he's healthy and strong; surely there will be no serious problems?"
"We will have to wait and see how his systems react to the antivenom," the doctor set up an automatic pressure-cuff around the child's upper arm. It would take a reading every two minutes and beep loudly if certain thresholds were crossed.
"Do you want anyone to come and stay with the boy?" Mycroft understood only too well how he would feel if Julius was the one lying in the bed. "The boy's mother?"
"Yes, yes," Leander Purrun turned, nodding. "It would be best if my daughter were here. Can she be brought?"
"She can, and will," Mycroft nodded. "How do I reach your camp?"
Less than five minutes later and John swore loudly for the second time as Mycroft threw the Landrover madly into a steep turn that led down to a deeply pitted and unpaved track. There were extensive ruts here, he noticed; only a very heavily-laden vehicle could have sunk so far into the soft ground.
Hanging on for his life, John turned his head to look across at Mycroft who was focused upon the upcoming road with a grim determination.
"Problem, Doctor?" the elder Holmes, though driving like a demon, sounded perfectly relaxed.
"Not used to seeing this side of you is all," John almost bounced out of his seat at the next bump when he was sure the vehicle had gone airborne. As his coccyx slammed back down into the seat, he swore again, quietly and viciously. "You might find this car goes faster when all four wheels are in contact with the road at the same time, you know," he managed in a surprisingly normal tone.
"Apologies, Doctor," Mycroft compressed his lips as he swerved from one side of the track to the other and back again. "My current condition must be getting the better of me. I am so terribly sorry ..." he slowed fractionally, slammed down a gear, navigated a sharp turn, then rammed the speed back up as his foot made friends with the accelerator once again.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" John braced one hand against the arm-rest and the other against the door.
"No idea what you're talking about, John," Mycroft saw the vans parked up ahead and brought the Landrover to a sharp halt. He looked at the clock on the dash. "Eight-and-a-half minutes," he said in a distinctly satisfied voice. "Now to find the boy's mother."
Leander Purrun's daughter was waiting for them.
"Is my son still breathing?" she asked calmly.
"Yes, he's still breathing," John was gentle. "Although they're probably going to keep him in the hospital at least overnight. Do you want to bring any of his things with you?"
"You will take me there?" she asked, surprised, bundling a few things into a duffle bag. "I am a stranger to you."
"I too have a young son, Madam," Mycroft met her eyes as he opened the back door of the car. "When you are ready."
"One moment," the woman ran back towards her van, emerging only seconds later with a weary looking long-eared toy rabbit. It had seen far better days.
"It is his comfort," she shook her head stuffing the soft yellow plaything into the bag. "He is still a baby though he tries to be as old as his brothers."
Even though the return trip to Poltair was much more sedate, Mycroft still managed a decent run once they hit the tarmac.
The boy was still in the emergency ward when they arrived, although Henessy was able to give them all a warmer smile than the last time they had seen her.
"Blood-pressure's already dropping," she smiled. "Almost back to normal now and his breathing's eased. You are the child's mother?" she turned to the woman who had been speaking to Purrun, taking her elbow and leading her to the boy's bedside.
"Once again, I am in your debt," Purrun pressed Mycroft's hands with his own. "It is a debt I will repay in one way or another," he said seriously.
"Consider it a service from one father to another," Mycroft smiled. "Do you need a lift back to your camp or are you going to stay here?"
"I will stay with my family and will arrange for one of my people to collect me later," he smiled. "My daughter has one of these phones that need no wires."
"If there is anything else we can do to help you, please do not hesitate to send a message to my house," Mycroft said. "If the child needs anything, let me know and he shall have it."
Patting his hand again, Purrun smiled. "You are a good man," he said. "This will not be forgotten."
###
Fortunately, the walk down to the beach in front of the Cornish house was a wide, grassy path on a gentle slope, and both the twins were able to manage it quite well by themselves, rather proud of their increasing independence. Cate had her arms full of towels, sunscreen, drinks, snacks, hats and, most importantly, her laptop.
One of the main reasons she had wanted to get away from London was her writing.
Her first novel and the one which had taken her away from being a full-time academic was The English Spy which, while not cracking the best-seller list, had still done extremely well for a first-time novelist, had made her publishers very happy and had become the first in an agreed string of three books. Her second, An Expert in Lies, was doing fractionally better than the first one, especially in the international markets and America, which was a very satisfying feeling. The problem now though, was the third one.
Cate had an entire notebook of jotted comments and ideas orbiting the notions flitting through her thoughts. There was a great range of things she could write about, but they lacked a single cohesive thread to pull it all together and become the spine of the complete story.
She had hoped that sometime away from London, away from her usual routine might shake something loose. It wasn't that she was blocked, but Cate had been dancing around a nebulous idea for weeks now and was increasingly frustrated that it was so tantalisingly close and yet seemed as vague as ever.
Finally arriving down at the beach, she looked around. Tomas had brought down several deckchairs and a couple of massive beach-umbrellas the previous evening, leaving everything well above the high-tide mark.
The tiny beach was lovely.
Secluded, private and peaceful. There was a trickle of freshwater running down from the hillside and which had formed a thin rivulet down one end of the beach. The lack of salt in the water was evidenced by the profusion of grasses and wildflowers that had colonised both sides of the shallow stream. There was a faint hum of bees.
The beach was pale yellow powdery sand, almost white; it was so clean, with a few strands of rapidly drying green weed on the rounded rocks at the waterline. The tide was pretty much out at this time of the day, but there was a wide shallow pool beside one of the larger, flatter rocks which didn't appear to be going anywhere. It all looked very inviting.
Dumping her cargo onto the beach, Cate moved one of the deckchairs closer to the pool, opening one of the massive umbrellas and staking it into the sand behind the chair.
"Now darlings, remember," she made sure both twins were looking at her. "You must not go in the sea without mummy or daddy beside you, until you are all grown up. Can you remember that? The sea is very strong and can carry children away, and I would be very sad if that happened."
"What about Uncle Shellock and Uncle John?" Blythe was curious. "Can they go in the sea?"
"I don't think you'll get Uncle Sherlock anywhere near the sea, my love," Cate smiled at her daughter, the image of the tall, pale-skinned man in swimming trunks was on the edge of the surreal. "But yes. If Sherlock or John are on the beach, you can ask them to come into the sea with you, but you must always be with a grown up, alright?"
"Can we go in there?" Jules pointed to the shallow pool. With its clean water and sandy bottom, the pale blue ripples were begging to be splashed in.
"Yes, you can go in the pool when mummy or daddy or Nanny Nora are here to make sure you don't fall over."
Satisfied that everyone knew the rules, Cate made sure both twins were once again liberally slathered with waterproof sunscreen, that both wore hats and that she was going to be able to watch over them when she sat back in the chair.
Within seconds, both children were up to their knees in the warmed pool.
Lifting out her laptop, Cate booted it up and waited for everything to settle before she could begin playing with some ideas in writing. It was a shame she was so far from the house which had Wi-Fi, as it was always useful to be able to pull information from the internet whenever an idea struck, but being without the 'net wasn't all that bad.
And then Cate realised the little broadcast icon on her ultrabook had lit up.
It couldn't possibly be.
But it was. As she opened up a browser to Google, everything was right there, and very swiftly, too. How entirely odd.
The beach was Wi-Fi enabled. She would have to tell Mycroft.
And that had actually given her another idea … mysterious technology in strange places. Cate was sure she could work that in somewhere … perhaps something to do with a virtual environment that spies might use now instead of a bricks-and-mortar building? Spy headquarters were so old-fashioned these days. Who needed them?
But she was still missing the central backbone to her various plots: something to hang everything on and so she sat, watching the twins splashing around and chewed her thumb.
###
By the time Mycroft and John finally returned to the Cornish house it was late in the morning and the sun was starting to become very warm.
Stepping out of the Landrover into the heat and quickly pulling off his jacket, John nodded at Mycroft's bare legs. "Never thought I'd see you in anything but one of your suits," he said, "but I should have realised you're always going to be one step ahead of the pack, aren't you?"
Smiling blandly but saying nothing, Mycroft walked into the house and out through the kitchen where Mrs Compton was indulging her love of the culinary with what looked to be the preparation for a gargantuan spread. There were already several different cakes out and cooling and if that wasn't bread in the cooking, then John didn't know what it was.
"If Mr Sherlock tries to steal another one of my good pans for his experiments, Mr Mycroft, I shall have words," the older woman smiled, but raised her eyebrows in serious admonishment as she began whipping heavy cream for some outrageous dessert.
"Heaven forbid, Nora," Mycroft ducked his head, hiding a smile and keeping his voice grave. "Leave it to me."
The makeshift lab was looking anything but by now, as Sherlock stood back and watched Tomas tighten the last couple of clamps around an intricate series of distillation flasks.
"That do?" the boy asked, looking between the tall man and the convoluted tree of glassware behind him.
"For now," Sherlock tapped his thumb against his chin. "We may need to set up a second series later, but I won't know that until I begin to get some results … ah John," the younger Holmes smiled. "About time. Tomas and I were just about to throw caution to the winds and enter the catacombs without you."
"I must spend some time with my family or Cate will never let me hear the end of it," Mycroft looked at his nephew. "Do not let my brother inveigle you into doing anything you would rather not," he said, turning to look at John. "I leave the safety of the party in your hands, Doctor," he added. "Happy hunting." Turning to head for the front door, Mycroft paused and leaned back. "Do leave Nanny Nora's kitchen alone, Sherlock," he said. "You know how upset she becomes when you murder one of her pots."
Rolling his eyes, Sherlock folded his arms. "Are we finally ready to view this mysterious entrance to the Underworld?" he demanded. "Such delay is not assisting the purpose of our visit."
"Then let's go," John swept an arm towards the door. "Tomas, lead the way."
###
Enjoying the stroll down the gentle slope to the beach, Mycroft inhaled the warmed, salty air and smiled to himself. Whatever happened, this was not a bad life. He would find a way out of this troubling situation and enjoy everything his existence held for him, determined not to allow his life be governed by assumed misfortune.
Reaching the edge of the grass that petered out into the warm sand of the beach; he surveyed the domestic scene before him and felt an enormous sense of satisfaction wash over him.
His wife was sitting beneath the shade of a large umbrella facing the children but working on her laptop, no doubt tussling with the plot for her latest novel. He was still irrationally pleased that the attraction of writing kept her from full-time engagement with the university, though he would likely never tell her so, nor would he put any obstacle in her way should she ever decide to return to the academy. Only in the privacy of his own thoughts did he admit that he liked the idea of his wife being at home with his children. He knew it was politically incorrect these days, but in his heart of hearts, he couldn't help it.
The twins were having one of their intensely serious conversations and given the fact that Blythe seemed to be advising Julius on the right way of making a sand castle, then construction of some sort appeared to be the argument at hand.
Mycroft experienced a surge of pleasure at the sight of his children playing in the sun and suddenly came to the knowledge that he truly adored them, had done from the moment he had seen them born. How odd that it took the forced restraint of his higher analytical abilities for him to be able to recognise this fact as a conscious act.
Walking towards the little group, it was clear that his daughter was explaining to his son that there was his way of making sands cassels and then there was the right way. At times, Blythe could be quite the martinet; Mycroft wondered idly where she got it from.
"Hello, darling, you finally made it," Cate looked up from her laptop, watching as he brought another one of the deckchairs closer to the pool, copying her setup with the second umbrella. Heaving a quiet sigh of pleasure as he sank down into the relaxing hammock of canvas, Mycroft turned to face her.
"You missed all the excitement," he said.
"Excitement?"
He recounted the events of the child and the snake and Leander Purrun, but carefully omitted the detail of his brief rally-driving career.
"Well, I have my own piece of news," Cate tipped her laptop towards him. "Look," she said, pointing to the illuminated beacon icon.
He looked and … ah… kept his face purposely virtuous.
Cate wasn't fooled for one second. "You knew already," she accused. "There's no way a signal could reach all the way from the house, so how on earth do I get a Wi-Fi uplink down here?"
Mycroft linked his fingers across his stomach and smiled brightly. "It's a secret," he said. "Classified. If I told you, I'd have to have you arrested."
"How can I be arrested if you are the one who told me?" she raised both eyebrows. "Surely by rights, you should be the one arrested?"
"Rank hath its privileges," he smiled back insouciantly.
Snorting in mild disgust, Cate returned to her novel, allowing Mycroft to focus attention on the children.
Jules had completely ignored his sister's dire warnings of his architectural failings and, despite the fact that she was correct in her advice, he had soldiered on, only to watch as effort after effort collapsed into a soft mound of unidentifiable sand.
This was not acceptable.
"How do I do this, Daddy?" Jules turned to his father with a look of extreme frustration, his little mouth tight and scowling.
"You have to pack the sand in harder … when you put the sand in the bucket … here, let me show you."
Lifting her Raybans from her face, Cate watched jubilantly as her husband, the stiff, besuited, Master-of-all-he-surveyed-in-Whitehall, got down onto his hands and knees and proceed to give his young son an explanation of the laws of gravity and its effect on the structural cohesion of damp sand.
Her own curiosity aroused by this strange new factor in sands cassels-fabrication, Blythe crawled over and Cate watched on with absolute fascination as Mycroft spent the next fifteen minutes showing his young offspring how to make the perfect sand castle.
Standing and brushing loose sand off everything, he reclaimed his chair, a pleased smile on his face.
"If you're going to sit in the sun, you should put some sunscreen on, you know," she grinned, handing him a tube of something white and smelling vaguely of bergamot.
"I am planning to lie back here and contemplate the pleasing infinity of the universe," Mycroft was as good as his word and closing his eyes, crossed his long legs at the ankles and sighed a relaxing sigh of pleasure.
With the warmth of the day and the soft sounds of the water and the quiet babble of the children, he was asleep in minutes.
###
"Bet you can't work it out," Tomas grinned madly, switching his gaze between Sherlock and John's faces and the bookcase.
Sherlock's stare was intense, as his eyes flitted from one side of the bookcase to the other. There were several anomalies: the extra-thick shelves; the ornate carving across the top of the bookcase; the nature of the books themselves, even the uneven quality of the floor around the base of the shelves. Any of these might be the key, but he wanted further verification. The ornate carving at the top was too high to be of easy use for the average sized person at the time the house had been built; the thickness of the shelves was a constant throughout the bookcase and lacked anomaly, and the floor showed no recent indications of unusual usage. This only left …
"Who was it that found the way in the end?" he asked, idly, scanning the books.
"Aunty Cate came up with an idea, but Uncle Mycroft was the one who made it work," he responded cheerfully.
If Cate spotted it, then it was most probably in the books … and then he saw.
Reaching up, he rested his fingers on the leading edge of Johnson's narrative and pressed it firmly. There was a loud click, a shimmy of shelving, and the entire case slid free from the stone wall behind.
The large, dark entrance was again revealed, with the same faint rush of salty air.
For Tomas, it was just as exciting the second time as the first. He looked at John, watching a wide grin curl the blonde man's mouth as his brows rose in accord with his delight.
Everyone loved a good, old-fashioned secret passage.
Sticking his head into the darkness, Sherlock sniffed several times. There was something foetid underlying the cool sea-breeze, something that whispered of alchemy and the taint of the industrial.
"Torches?" he held his hand out to Tomas without looking, grasping the same bright square flashlight that his brother had used.
"Better stay behind us for a bit," John murmured to the boy. "Just until we're sure everything is safe."
"I have been in here before, you know," Tomas' feathers were a little ruffled. "And I thought I was supposed to be the guide for you?"
"He has a point," Sherlock lifted his eyebrows at his flatmate.
Sighing, John agreed and stepped aside, albeit reluctantly. "But don't do anything to show us how much you know," he said. "One show-off in the party is quite enough."
Ignoring the implied slur, Sherlock waved Tomas to the fore. "Lead on," he said, flashing the beam of his torch all the way around the inside of the entrance, gathering and compiling every micron of data he could.
"There's a kind of flat open space just inside here to the left," Tomas' voice threw a faint echo as he stepped fully into the darkness. "Probably so more than one person could stand here while the door was being opened or closed, I suppose."
"That's exactly what it was for," Sherlock was looking at everything, even getting down onto one knee to rub his fingers across the cool stone flags beneath their feet, smelling the dust on his fingertips. "This was a smuggler's passage," he added. "Many of these old houses had something similar."
"That's what Uncle Mycroft said too," Tomas acknowledged as he walked on into the gloom.
Suppressing a smile at Sherlock's quiet snort, John followed, checking behind that the door had been securely wedged open and that nothing was hanging down or looked like it was about to land on their heads.
"How far does it go on like this?" the younger Holmes was right on Tomas' shoulder, his additional height enabling him to see further into the pitch blackness than the boy.
"Not far, and then there are some steps going down to another and wider area with a table and chairs and stuff."
"Stuff is an insufficiently descriptive term," Sherlock muttered critically, looking above his head at the carved ceiling; it was semi-smooth and dry, a mostly uniform shade of dull red with duller patches of grey algae. He wanted a sample. "Hold on."
Taking out one of the fine latex gloves, Sherlock scraped not only a sample of the algae into a clear plastic packet, but also a few grams of the red base upon which it was growing.
"If you want to see the place that Uncle Mycroft touched the wall and got goop all over his hand, it's just down here," Tomas pointed.
"Sherlock has to make sure we don't miss anything that might be important," John cautioned the boy. "Until we know exactly what is was that made your uncle sick, then we have to look at every detail," he added. "Imagine this was a page of numbers and some of them were blanked out," he asked. "You couldn't do any real analysis of them, could you?"
"Not unless you could work out what the hidden numbers were," Tomas looked thoughtful. "Can you do that?" he asked of Sherlock. "Can you see things that aren't see-able, I mean, visible?" Cate's nephew was really curious now.
"It's what he's best at doing," John grinned. "Nobody else can see invisible things like Sherlock Holmes."
"What is that smell?" Sherlock took another deep inhale, hunting around for the source of the odiferous draught.
John shone his torch around, also looking. "Dunno," he said. "I noticed it a bit when the bookcase opened, but it's definitely stronger down here. Smells like a chem lab, or like things you'd smell on a farm, maybe."
"On a farm?" Sherlock turned to his friend.
"Yeah, you know," John was still scanning the walls with the torch. "Chemicals farmers use on their fields: pesticides and stuff like that."
"Stuff is an insufficiently descriptive term," Tomas quipped smartly, grinning and dodging back as John gave him a raised-eyebrow look.
"Don't you start getting smart with me," he said. "Hard enough to deal with one genius, let alone two of you."
"I'm not a genius," Tomas shook his head. "I'm just copying him," he nodded at Sherlock.
"The thing with the numbers," Sherlock was focused on the rock surrounding them but it was clear he was speaking to Tomas. "Likely Genius level on the revised Stanford-Binet scale, probably turn up as brilliant on Raven's matrices as well," he muttered, following a fainter formation of rock along the right-hand wall.
Tomas stood quietly in the dark, taking the information in. "You think I'm smart?" he asked, cautiously. His 'thing with the numbers' had been the cause of endless teasing from his siblings, and he wasn't about to invite any more.
"Not smart," Sherlock shone the torch in the boy's face before dropping it a fraction. "Intelligent," he said. "Highly intelligent. Genius."
Tomas laughed shortly. "You're kidding, right?"
"He never kids," John shook his head dolefully. "You're entirely doomed to be a clever clogs for the rest of your life. Now come on and show us where Mycroft picked up the goop," he added, stepping further into the tunnel.
Hardly knowing which way was up for a moment, Tomas shook his head to clear his thoughts. "It's along here somewhere, on the way down the steps, I think it was."
And there were the steps.
Equally suddenly, the smoothly cut walls and curved roof gave way to a much coarser finish, the verticals hacked far more roughly from the solid rock than the rest of the passage closer to the house.
"This is where the real masons let the paid muscle do the rest of the work," Sherlock nodded, still tracking the lighter grade of ore with the beam of his torch. "Either there was some speed required, or the experienced miners were taken away to perform another task," he added, placing his feet lightly upon the descending stone steps. The formation of rock he'd been following blossomed into an unusual orange-yellow chalky substance framing an inner core of crumbly white-grey rock. Parts of it had already crumbled onto the side of the steps. A seam of raw tin, parts of which were dull and chalky, while other parts were shiny and slick.
"This is where Uncle Mycroft put his hand," Tomas was about to reach up and show the tall dark-haired man, but his wrist was rapidly seized and held away.
"Gloves, John," Sherlock had his own gloves on and was already in the process of taking a significant sample of the oily, greasy substance that clung almost like a gel to the granite beneath it. He dug into the soft rock to a depth of several centimetres, and still the shining ooze was visible. It looked as if it might have permeated the entire seam. How extraordinary. The unpleasantly chemicalised odour present in the air appeared especially concentrate at this point. Carefully sniffing the fingers of his disposable gloves, Sherlock drew back sharply as the caustic reek threatened to burn the inside of his nose.
"I think we have a potential suspect," he sounded intrigued. "Something is interacting with and contaminating the ore." Putting everything carefully into the heavy-duty collection bags, Sherlock turned back to Cate's relative. "On we go," he nodded.
Carrying on down the stone steps, the three of them came to the much wider space, still roughly hewn from the rock, but at least the floor had been properly levels and clad in smooth flagstones. Just as Tomas had described, the space held a crude table and equally rough chairs.
"I remembered we'd need these," the boy grinned again as he shook a box of matches. Going to the table he immediately lit all of the candles that had been in use only a few days prior.
A soft glow brought the room into focus and John slid his torch-beam up and down the walls as Sherlock walked around looking for anything anomalous that Mycroft might have touched in some way, but there was nothing other than dust.
"Whoa!" John's surprise was clear as two beams of light cut back to him to see the blonde man staring interestedly at the machete half-buried in the solid wood beam.
"For hacking at ropes and wood, John, not people," Sherlock observed. "Look at the slight serration: it's a cutter, not a killer."
"Still wouldn't fancy anyone coming at me with it," John looked unimpressed.
"This is what the smugglers would have used to open their cargo?" Tomas was also intrigued, trying to pull the blade of the knife free from its prison. It was rusted tight. John had an attempt, but it would take more than a pair of hands to pull that particular rabbit from its hat. "Is there anything here worth taking a closer look at?" he scanned the broken boxes and piled drifts of detritus.
Sherlock had already taken samples of the dust but doubted he would find anything significant in it. "Let's keep going," he said.
"There's some more steps down this way," Tomas pointed with a beam of light. "And then we get to a fake landslide."
"A what?" John turned to check he'd heard correctly. "A fake landslide? How did they fake that?"
"More to the point, John surely, is why?" Sherlock was already playing his torch ahead, down the several steps in view.
"Uncle Mycroft said it was probably to stop anyone following people back up to the house," Tomas kept walking downwards.
"Well yes, that's clearly the purpose," Sherlock sounded a fraction testy at his brother's praises being heralded so promptly by their young guide. "But not the question I asked, which was why it was necessary," he looked ahead as they came to the fabricated blockade. "It must surely have been a last-ditch form of evasion, allowing the house owner to gain a measure of distance from any pursuit."
"You mean, the smugglers might have been chased back up here by police?" Tomas found the idea exciting. It would have been an epic chase.
"Not the police; they weren't mobilised until after the County and Borough Police Act of eighteen fifty-six," Sherlock stepped closer to the apparent blockage of rocks and earth. "Back in the day, it would have been the local militia, often in the pay of the local Lord of the Manor in any case." He pressed a careful palm against the surface of the blockage, nodding happily to himself as the hand met a far different level of resistance than might have been anticipated. "Very clever," he murmured, moving towards the left wall of the landslide.
"There's a big iron gate behind this first lot of stuff," Tomas supplied. "It was all rusted up, but I gave it a kick and it opened all right," he added. "And then there's another fake landslide on the other side as well."
Frowning, Sherlock turned to John. "Why on both sides of the gate?" he wondered. "On the lower edge, in order to fool any pursuit from the outside, is sensible, but why on this side as well?"
"As an escape route, in case the militia came looking for them at the house?"
""That would be the most likely rationale," Sherlock located the bars of the old iron gate beneath the cleverly constructed clay-coated canvas and pushed. It swung open more or less easily, allowing them to pass through. Sherlock looked back over his shoulder when they were several steps away.
"Even knowing what we know, and at this proximity, it's still easy to see why any pursuers might be completely fooled into thinking they could pursue no further," he smiled a brief, pleased smile. "There was a clever mind behind this."
Continuing down the steps, their torches lighting up the walls enclosing them in this dark, quiet space, it took just over a minute before a glowing light developed further down, the acoustics of the tunnel also beginning to change as the carved stone steps lost their straight lines, moulding themselves into bedrock. One last turn and they found themselves in the dimmed sunlit entrance to a cave opening onto a small, secluded cove.
With the sea in front of them, cliffs surrounded the beach on two sides, while the remaining side offered a steep and dusty bank: not one most people would willingly attempt to clamber down without the aid of a rope. Yet there was a distinct track that zigzagged from the bottom to the eventual crest, together with multiple signs that it hadn't been so very long ago that a number of people had made the steep climb.
And just as his brother had noticed before him, Sherlock observed the deep groove cut into the soft sand by the keel of a heavy boat. Given the tidal averages in these parts, the scar was at least two weeks old and would soon vanish beneath the shifting sands. Sliding his hands into his suit pockets, the younger Holmes looked around, especially out to sea.
Outside of a clear but narrow passage of open water, there was a complete forest of jagged brows rocks at this time of low-tide, which stretched for as far as he could see around the headland. At high-tide, and especially in a storm, the rocks would be barely submerged and utterly lethal to any kind of hulled craft which ventured beyond the safe channel.
"Not just smugglers," he mused aloud. "Wreckers, too."
"Wreckers?" John followed his friend's gaze out to the rocks. "Ah," he nodded. "That might explain why they built the fake landslide on the outside of the gate in the first place," he added. "So if anyone was left alive, none of the poor sods could ever find a way out of this place in time to send out an alarm. Bastards."
"But that is far more recent," Sherlock indicated the sandy scar. "No more than twelve or fourteen days old, I'd say. It was a heavy craft that made such a cut."
"Tourists?" John wondered. "Local fishermen?"
"Tourists would be unlikely to know how to navigate the secure channel to reach the beach at high-tide," Sherlock shook his head. "And why would anyone with a local berth need to haul up on a tiny cove like this?" he pursed his lips. "No," he added. "There's more going on here than is immediately visible."
John turned to his friend and smiled. "But seeing the invisible is what you're brilliant at, don't forget."
The younger Holmes lifted both eyebrows and smiled back.
###
The hurtling cliff of the tanker's bow was almost upon the Clear Sky before the inevitable surge of the huge bow-wave lifted the smaller vessel up and threw her aside as lightly as a piece of flotsam on a spring tide.
Great floods of frothing, icy water washed backwards and forwards over the deck, the formidable Penta-engines screaming as Bisset wrenched them into full power, tearing his boat away from the insatiable vacuum of water caused by the downdraft of the tanker's turbine propellers.
If they were caught beneath the bow, or dragged under by the enormous suction of water, they would all die, drowned or mangled, it would make little difference.
And so the Captain of La Ciel Claire poured on the power, held his breath and prayed.
In less than a minute, though the reality of it felt several times as long, the hulking carrier had moved itself away to port, as the smaller and still-invisible craft kept moving to starboard. The gap between them, measured at first in mere meters, became boat lengths and then, finally, an unguessable distance, but one safe enough for Bisset to release his breath and take his beloved engines down to a middling-idle.
That had been too close.
But they were through the worst of the Channel and now only had another couple of hours before they made for St Mary's and the discreet little inlet where they could hide up during the daylight hours before refuelling and making for the Cornish coast. One more day and one more night and this venture would be finished.
Checking the chart-box, Bisset made sure no water had affected the very expensive and extensively amended charts not only of the Scilly isles where they were headed now, but also of the coastline where they'd be bearing the following night: a small, secluded cove where wreckers used to thrive.
###
Note:
Though attempting to maintain the usual schedule, my work is manic at the moment, thus the next update might not be for two weeks. Apologies if so.