‘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.’