Read Stone Cold for Free Online Page A

awoke with a start to find that it was dark outside. Shaking off the last vestiges of the dream, he got up,
unpacked his possessions, washed in the cold water in the bowl and changed his clothes before heading down the stairs to dinner.

CHAPTER THREE
    Dinner was a surprisingly entertaining affair. There were five of them around the table – apart from Sherlock they were all students at Christ Church College. Initially
he felt out of place, younger and less experienced than the others, but soon he realized that the various things he had done in his life made him into something of a celebrity in their eyes –
not just travelling to Russia, America and China, but even something as simple as living in London, which they regarded as the centre of sophistication. As dinner went on he found that they were
asking more and more questions of him, and he was finding it more and more difficult to answer those questions without getting into dangerous territory regarding Mycroft’s sensitive job in
the British Government and the schemes of the Paradol Chamber. He had to resort to various stratagems to turn the conversation back to his co-diners and find out more about them.
    Thomas Millard was a rather plump youth with thick glasses and thinning hair. He was studying theology, with a view to becoming a vicar like his father and his grandfather. He had a way of
speaking that made it sound like he was giving a sermon, even when he was asking Sherlock to pass the gravy boat. Mathukumal Vijayaraghavan was a slight Indian boy with black hair and dark eyes,
who said little but listened to everything – he was, rather oddly, considering his first name, actually studying mathematics. Reginald Musgrave was a tall chemist who spent most of the meal
discussing cricket with the person sitting beside him – Paul Chippenham, who was studying natural science. None of them seemed to mind that Sherlock wasn’t yet a student at the
University itself.
    As promised, the main course was haddock, with potatoes and beans, but it was preceded by mulligatawny soup, the spicy flavour of which made Vijayaraghavan raise his eyebrows in surprise.
    ‘Remind you of India?’ Musgrave asked.
    ‘Not in the slightest,’ the boy replied. Sherlock wondered whether he was the only one who could detect the ironical tone in his voice.
    When Sherlock tried to turn the conversation to the subject of Charles Dodgson, in an attempt to prepare himself for the meeting the next day, all four of them raised their eyebrows and shared
amused glances. Vijayaraghavan was the only one to say anything, and all he would murmur was ‘An interesting man. Very, very clever. Very, very strange.’
    ‘I say, did you hear,’ Musgrave said excitedly, ‘that he was questioned by the police last week?’
    The others shook their heads.
    ‘What was that about?’ Chippenham asked.
    ‘Some thefts that had occurred, but here’s the thing – the things that were stolen were
body parts
, and they were taken from the mortuary!’
    ‘What is a “mortuary”?’ Vijayaraghavan asked in his quiet, precise voice. ‘I do not recognize the word.’
    ‘It’s the place where people’s bodies are taken after they die,’ Musgrave explained.
    Chippenham added, ‘But only if they died in some unusual way – either murder, or due to some kind of disease or an accident that might need to be investigated. A pathologist will cut
the body up and examine the organs in order to ascertain the cause of death so that it can be recorded properly. Otherwise, when the cause of death is obvious, the bodies just get prepared, put
into a coffin and then left for a while in the front room so that people can sit with them and say goodbye. Then they are buried.’ He nodded towards Millard. ‘In anticipation, that is,
of the resurrection of the dead and the achievement of life everlasting at some undefined time in the future.’
    ‘I thought,’ Sherlock said, remembering the endless sermons that