Free Sherlock Holmes 01: The Breath of God by Guy Adams Page A

quiet area, Dr Watson, and strangers would find it hard work to arrive unnoticed.”
    “Besides,” said Holmes, “if you planned on paying a legitimate visit to the hall you would drive up to the front gate. If your visit was intended to go unnoticed – as their arrival via the forest would certainly suggest – you wouldn’t ask a local cab driver to drop you here.”
    “Yes, all right,” I agreed, irritated again. “It was a stupid idea clearly.”
    “Not at all,” Holmes said, giving me a friendly glance. “It was simply a consideration that needed to be addressed and then discounted. It’s only by so doing that we get to the truth.” He sat down on the verge. “Certainly they did arrive by a small carriage, there are clear grooves in the grass where they pulled off the road a few feet.”
    “They can’t have travelled too far then,” Mann said. “Only an idiot would use a horse and carriage for a journey of any great distance.”
    Holmes shook his head. “Not so much an idiot as a cautious group of men,” he said, “one of whom smokes a particularly unusual tobacco.”
    He scooped a few strands into another empty envelope.
    “They had smoked during the journey,” he explained, “and knocked out their bowl – most likely on the carriage wheel – here before refilling with enough fresh tobacco to accompany them on their walk through the trees.”
    “A devoted smoker indeed to feel the need for a pipe on that walk,” I said.
    Holmes smiled. “Yes, even I managed to avoid tobacco for the duration.” He got to his feet. “Right, I don’t think we have anything else to learn here. Might I suggest we head back to the station ourselves?”
    “You don’t wish to interview the servants?” Mann asked, sounding somewhat disappointed.
    “Not for now,” Holmes replied, “though I will happily read the transcripts of your interviews if you would be so kind as to share? Watson and I have a long journey ahead of us today and I need time to think as well as pack a travel bag.”

CHAPTER NINE
T ERROR U NDERGROUND
    Holmes and I said goodbye to Mann and were soon on a train back to London. I had hoped I might be able to persuade Holmes to allow us lunch at a public house before our journey, but he was resolute that the afternoon held tasks enough that the time could not be allowed. When pressed as to what tasks he had in mind, he would not say. I therefore travelled back in something of an irritated mood. Not helped by a lingering sense of unease after my bizarre episode in the forest. I was still unable to understand what had happened. In my capacity as a doctor I have assisted a number of patients who had experienced fainting spells and blackouts, but try as I might I could pin down none of the obvious symptoms in my case. Unless, of course, it was an early sign of something much worse. Worrying about that wasn’t going to help me, however, so I pushed the concern from my mind. After all, it’s not as if I didn’t know an excellent doctor.
    Once we arrived at Liverpool Street, Holmes bade me a goodbye and vanished into the crowds. It was hardly the first time I have been abandoned mid-investigation. Still, with the disorientation of earlier lingering I stood on the streets of the city and felt utterly adrift.
    Around me Londoners moved at the only pace they know, hustling to and fro, darting past one another in a complex dance that always reminds me of schools of fish navigating around each other. Stood amongst them I was just another obstacle and was besieged on all sides, both by their impatient shoulders and also by the noise: the constant percussion of hooves on the streets, the shouts of the news vendors, the station announcements behind me. All with that low, bass line of general chatter running underneath it.
    For a few moments I felt unable to move, as submerged by the life around me as I had been by the imaginary soil earlier.
    What was happening to me? I felt one step removed from the world