Bedlam

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It was one of those rare days in London when the sun shone on clean streets and the air did not smell of rotten vegetables and horse dung. A night of heavy rain had washed the streets clean without, mercifully, overloading the sewer system, and the cobbles and brickwork of the city glistened proudly like a man showing off his freshly cut and oiled hair. Sherlock knew it wouldn’t last for long, but for a while it made London into somewhere he thought he could live, one day.

Sherlock and his tutor, Amyus Crowe, had left Farnham earlier that morning. Sherlock’s brother Mycroft had invited them for lunch at his club — the Diogenes. His reason, which he explained in a letter that had arrived the day before, was that he wanted to talk about Sherlock’s schooling. Having been removed from Deepdene School for Boys and placed in the care of the big American Amyus Crowe, it seemed to Sherlock that Mycroft was now wondering if he had done the right thing. Mr Crowe was a brilliant teacher, but only on certain subjects. Survival in the wilderness, tracking animals, fishing for carp and trout, identifying poisonous fungi, a little bit of recent political history and the logical analysis of evidence — these were all his strong points. Mathematics and Latin — not so much.

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