Stone Cold Read Online Free PDF Page A

‘even though it’s my barge an’ my ’orse.’
    They kept going until the house was out of sight and Harold had calmed down, then they stopped and tied the barge up for the night. The sky was cloudless, speckled with stars, and the two of
them lay back on the barge’s deck and ate their provisions as Harold noisily munched grass from the bank. They talked about everything and nothing, important things and trivial things, all
mixed together. Sherlock hesitantly put forward his plans of moving back to London once he had finished at Oxford and working for, or with, the police, and Matty for the first time talked about his
dreams of finding a girl, getting married and having a large family. They slept there, on the deck of the barge, and if Sherlock dreamed then he didn’t remember the dreams.
    The next day they arrived in Oxford.
    They tethered the barge on the outskirts of the town and walked in. By the time they got to the centre, Sherlock had fallen in love with the place. The various colleges – Christ Church, of
course, but also Balliol, Jesus, Merton and many others, were scattered through the town like plums in a plum duff. The town itself was the usual mixture of shops, taverns, houses, official
buildings and storehouses, but the college buildings were magnificent ancient stone edifices, like walled medieval mini-towns in their own right. Students in black robes and flat black caps were
everywhere: walking, riding bicycles or standing around in groups and conversing. Sherlock noticed that the students appeared to stay in their own groups, and the townspeople just talked to each
other. There was little mixing between the two. He filed that away for later consideration.
    Remembering the address that had been in Charles Dodgson’s letter, Sherlock found the house where he would be living just around the corner from Christ Church College. Number 36 was a
three-storey stone house set in a terrace of similar houses. There was nothing special about it, but the stone steps outside were scrubbed clean and the windows gleamed. Mrs McCrery was obviously
very house-proud.
    ‘What d’ya want to do?’ Matty asked.
    Sherlock thought for a minute. ‘I want some lunch,’ he said, and then I want to go back to the barge and get my stuff. I’ll need a carriage, I guess, to get it all here. I
can’t carry it all the way, even with your help, but that’s going to be expensive.’
    ‘Don’t worry about a carriage,’ Matty said mysteriously. ‘I’ll sort that out. You see about getting us some lunch.’
    They ate sitting on the banks of the River Isis – a tributary of the Thames, Sherlock remembered. Rather than steal something off a stall or from the counter of a shop, he had spent some
of the money that his brother had given him on a couple of bread rolls filled with roast pork and bottles of lemonade. They watched the boats, barges and punts float past them as the clouds sailed
past overhead.
    When they got back to the barge Sherlock moved his stuff out on to the bank while Matty vanished off on some mysterious errand. When he returned, he was leading Harold, his horse, who was now
attached to a cart. There was straw on the cart. He had obviously borrowed it from some nearby farmer or workman.
    Sherlock just hoped that the owner knew that it had been borrowed.
    ‘Load ’er up,’ Matty called cheerfully.
    ‘I doubt this is the way that most students arrive in Oxford,’ Sherlock said dubiously. ‘Even the ones who are here to prepare for the University, rather than actually attend
it.’
    ‘Well, that’s okay then,’ Matty said. ‘You ain’t like any other student.’
    ‘A fair point, well made,’ Sherlock conceded, and so they spent the next hour or so riding sedately through the town, both perched on the driver’s bench at the front of the
cart while Sherlock’s possessions teetered precariously on the back. Several times he had to dive backwards to prevent a bag or a trunk from sliding