The House Of Silk

doing?’
    ‘She might have, but she said nothing to me.’
    ‘Pray continue.’
    ‘I have little more to add, Mr Holmes. I saw him only one more time and that was in the minutes before you arrived. He came into the public bar while I was carrying up the casks and asked me the time, which only showed how ill-educated he was, because you can read it as clear as day on the church across the road.’
    ‘Then he was on his way to a fixed appointment.’
    ‘I suppose it’s possible.’
    ‘It’s certain. What use would a child such as Ross have with the time unless he had been asked to present himself in a certain place at a certain time? You said that he spent three nights here with his sister.’
    ‘He shared her room.’
    ‘I would like to see it.’
    ‘The police have already been there. They searched it and found nothing.’
    ‘I am not the police.’ Holmes placed a few shillings on the bar. ‘This is for your inconvenience.’
    ‘Very well. But I will not take your money this time. You are on the trail of a monster and it will be enough if you do as you say and make sure he can’t hurt anyone else.’
    He showed us round the back and along a narrow corridor between the taproom and the kitchen. A flight of stairs led down to the cellars and, lighting a candle, the landlord led us to a dismal little room that was tucked away beneath them, small and windowless, with a bare wooden floor. This was where Sally, exhausted after her long day’s labours, would have taken herself, sleeping on a mattress on the floor, covered by a single blanket. Two objects lay in the middle of this makeshift bed. One was a knife, the other a doll which she must have rescued from some rubbish tip. Looking at its broken limbs and stark white face, I could not help but think of her brother who had been discarded just as casually. A chair and a small table with a candle stood in one corner. It would not have taken the police long to search the place for, the doll and the knife aside, Sally had no possessions, nothing she could call her own beyond her name.
    Holmes swept his eyes across the room. ‘Why the knife?’ he murmured.
    ‘To protect herself,’ I suggested.
    ‘The weapon that she used to protect herself she carried with her, as you know better than anyone. She will have taken that with her. This second knife is almost blunt.’
    ‘And stolen from the kitchen!’ Hardcastle murmured.
    ‘The candle, I think, is of interest.’ It was the unlit candle on the table to which Holmes referred. He picked it up, then crouched down and began to shuffle along the floor. It took me a moment to realise that he was following a trail of melted wax droplets which were almost invisible to the human eye. He, of course, had seen them at once. They led him to the corner furthest away from the bed ‘She carried it to this far corner … again to what purpose? Unless … The knife please, Watson.’ I handed it to him and he pressed the blade into one of the cracks between the wooden floorboards. One of the boards was loose and he used the knife to prise it up, then reached inside and withdrew a bunched-up handkerchief. ‘If you could be so kind, Mr Hardcastle …’
    The landlord brought over his own, lit candle. Holmes unfolded the handkerchief, and by the light of the flickering flame, we saw that there were several coins inside – three farthings, two florins, a crown, a gold sovereign and five shillings. For two destitute children, it was a veritable treasure trove, but to which of them had the money belonged?
    ‘This is Ross’s,’ Holmes said, as if reading my thoughts. ‘The sovereign, I gave him.’
    ‘My dear Holmes! How can you be sure it’s the same sovereign?’
    Holmes held it to the light. ‘The date is the same. But look also at the design. Saint George rides his horse but has a gash across his leg. I noticed it as I handed it over. This is part of the guinea that Ross earned for his work with the Irregulars. But what of the rest of it?’
    ‘He got it from his uncle,’ Hardcastle muttered. Holmes turned to him. ‘When he came here and asked to stay the night, he said he could pay for the room. I laughed at him and he said that he had been given money by his uncle but I didn’t believe him and said he could work in the yard instead. If I’d known the boy had as much as this, I’d have offered him decent lodgings upstairs.’
    ‘The thing takes shape. It becomes coherent. The boy decides to use the