Snake Bite by Andrew Lane

Author:Andrew Lane [Lane, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Macmillan Children’s Books
Published: 2011-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘I’m too late!’ Sherlock said. The full weight of the run to and from the shack suddenly descended on him: he felt weak and exhausted and defeated.

Cameron shook his head. ‘It’s not your fault,’ he said sombrely. ‘Wu Chung died about ten minutes after you left. The healer came out and told us that he had “joined his illustrious ancestors”, which is what the Chinese people say when someone has died. You wouldn’t even have been at the garden when it happened. There’s nothing you could have done. You could have flown the entire way there and back and it still wouldn’t have made a difference.’

Sherlock could hear Cameron speaking, but it sounded as if his friend’s words were coming from a long way away, through thick cotton wool. He found that the enormity of the cook’s death was more than he could deal with. He hadn’t really prepared himself for the fact that it might actually happen. That Wu Chung might suddenly . . . not be there any more.

He felt strange. Disconnected. He felt as if he was floating slightly above the ground, and that the world was tilting gradually sideways.

He leaned over, put his hands on his knees and took slow breaths, trying to steady himself.

He had seen death before, of course. Even back when he had just left Deepdene School for Boys and moved to Farnham he had seen a dead body in the woods outside his aunt and uncle’s manor house, and later he had seen men die on the Napoleonic fort that Baron Maupertuis was using as a base. He had seen Duke Balthassar die at the claws and teeth of his cougars, and also seen the stabbed body of a man at the Diogenes Club. There was the sailor who had fallen and broken his neck on the Gloria Scott, and the others that had been killed by the storm and by the pirates. But all of these had been people he didn’t know – or, at least, hardly knew. He had never had to come to terms with the death of a friend.

It wasn’t as if Wu Chung was a close friend, he tried to tell himself. He wasn’t like Matty Arnatt, or Amyus Crowe – or even, he thought with a chill, Virginia Crowe. It wasn’t as if he was a member of Sherlock’s family, like Mycroft, or his sister Emma, and yet . . . Sherlock had been close to him. The Chinese man had taught him so much, and he had been an important part of Sherlock’s life, and his absence would leave a hole that would be impossible to fill.

‘How are Wu Fung-Yi and Tsi Huen dealing with it?’ Sherlock asked, and he could hear that his voice was hoarse – more of a whisper.

‘His wife is pretty broken up,’ Cameron said. ‘It must be hard, having your husband away for so long, then losing him again the moment he comes back. The kid is trying to put a brave face on it.

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