No Place Like Holmes

by Jason Lethcoe

  The voice belonged to a man situated at a small desk. Glancing at him, Griffin noticed that the man’s hair was red, that he was wearing a particular kind of coat only issued in the navy, and that he had a tiny tattoo of a sparrow on his left wrist, which signified that he’d sailed over five thousand nautical miles. He knew this last fact because his uncle in Boston had served in the navy and had a tattoo just like it.

  But the thing that interested Griffin most was that the man’s desk was covered with several intricately designed model ships. They were some of the most detailed miniatures Griffin had ever seen.

  “Pardon me, but did you build those ships? They’re absolutely amazing!” Griffin said, gesturing to the models.

  The man grinned and answered, “Yes, it’s a hobby of mine. Do you like them?”

  Griffin nodded. But before he could speak again, his uncle interrupted and said sharply to the young man, “We don’t have time for idle chat, my good man. We’re on important business. Does someone named James Dunn frequent this establishment?”

  The man’s smile faded and was replaced with a sneer as he turned to address Rupert. “Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. Who’s asking?”

  “That’s none of your business,” Snodgrass fired back. “Just take us to him, if you please. I haven’t got all day.”

  Seeing that his uncle’s condescending attitude wouldn’t get them very far, Griffin decided to try a different approach. “I’ll bet those ships took months to complete. Would it be okay if I took a closer look?” he asked.

  The young man’s glare softened as he turned from Snodgrass to Griffin. “Go ahead, if you’d like,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  Griffin took time to carefully study the different ships the man was building. Up close, he saw that they were even more wonderfully detailed than he had first thought. There was a beautifully painted tugboat with carefully constructed wooden decks, a clipper ship that had miniature figurines placed upon it, and, most wonderful of all, a magnificent ship that had been constructed inside of a glass bottle that had a lovely mermaid as a figurehead.

  “Splendid!” Griffin gushed. “That mermaid’s face is hardly bigger than a match head. How on earth did you paint it so realistically?”

  The young man beamed at the compliment. “The brush I use is very tiny. Her scales alone took me a year to paint,” he said proudly. “And they’re still not finished.”

  “I really like the detail.”

  The young man grinned and tousled Griffin’s cap. “What did you say your name was?”

  “I’m Griffin Sharpe and this is—,” Griffin began, but Snodgrass interrupted.

  “Rupert Snodgrass.” Snodgrass flashed Griffin a forced smile, obviously making an effort to be more pleasant. “Yes, er, your miniature boats are, as the boy said, quite good.” He cleared his throat and continued, “The reason we’re here is because we were told that this was the best place in England to get some fishing advice and that Mr. Dunn was the man to speak to. Could you take us to him?”

  Griffin could see right through the half-truth. His uncle was making an attempt to be a little friendlier, but he was still lying to the nice young man. However, before Griffin could point out the truth of the situation to the man, that they weren’t really there to go fishing, the man had ushered them both to a small table in the back corner of the room.

  When they arrived at the table, the grizzled old man who sat there nursing a mug of strong English cider gave them a suspicious glare.

  “Mr. Dunn, I presume?” Snodgrass said, offering his hand. The old fisherman received it and shook it gravely.

  “At your service. And who are ye?” he asked in a light, Scottish accent.

  “Rupert Snodgrass, a private investigator. I’ve been sent to talk to you on behalf of Mrs. Frederick Dent. Can you spare a moment?”

  Griffin noticed that the man looked very tired, like he hadn’t slept for a couple of days. He hesitated before answering.

  “What has she told ye?” Dunn asked.

  “About the strange circumstances surrounding the disappearance of her husband. If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  Griffin thought that the man looked as if he didn’t really want to talk to them, but he gave a short nod anyway and gestured to a couple of chairs. As Griffin sat down, he noticed that his uncle was rummaging through one of the large leather satchels he’d brought with him. After a moment, Snodgrass removed a strange-looking device and set it down on the table with a loud clunk.

  It was a large black box. Griffin noticed several switches positioned on top of it and two small doors on its sides. Dunn eyed the machine apprehensively as Snodgrass opened the two little side doors and uncoiled two long cables with metal handles from inside the machine.

  “Now, if I could just trouble you to hold the ends of these in either hand, we can begin,” Snodgrass said.

  Dunn looked apprehensively at the cables. “What for?”

  “It is an invention of mine. I call it the Snodgrass Falsehood Detector. It will detect any, ah, inaccuracies in your description of the events you witnessed,” he said.

  James Dunn rose from his chair, his face flushed with anger. “Are you calling me a liar?” he growled. They were already off to a rocky start, thanks to his uncle’s rude behavior.

  Griffin acted quickly to try to calm things down. He knew they would never get anything out of the fisherman if he were angry.

  “I’m sure that what Mr. Snodgrass means is that there is no reason to doubt your story. Using this machine is strictly a formality, isn’t that right, Uncle?”

  Snodgrass, surely seeing the dangerous glint in the fisherman’s eye, quickly agreed. Mr. Dunn seemed mollified by Griffin’s explanation and, after a little more persuasion from Griffin, held on to the ends of the Falsehood Detector cables.

  “There we are. That’s splendid,” said Snodgrass as he turned the switches on the black box. Griffin heard a deep thrumming vibration begin to emanate from the machine, and a faint smell of ozone filled the air around them.

  “Now then, we are almost ready,” said Snodgrass as he switched his regular derby for an unusual hunting cap he’d pulled out with the machine. Griffin noticed that dangling from its earflaps were two wires that trailed down and plugged into the base of the machine.

  “You may begin your account of what happened whenever you’re ready, sir,” Snodgrass instructed.

  Dunn hesitated, glancing down at the two cables that he held in either palm. Griffin wondered if they were uncomfortable to hold. He hoped that his uncle was as good an inventor as he appeared to be, because if something went wrong and Mr. Dunn were injured as a result of the investigation, things could get pretty ugly.

  “Right. Well, I was fishing at my usual spot on the Victoria Embankment. The fish weren’t biting, so I decided to change locations. Mr. Dent, bless his soul, was standing by the edge of the water. I have visited his shop many times for repairs to my pocket watch and considered him a friend.”

  Snodgrass was listening with rapt attention, his hands holding the flaps of his cap close to his ears. He gestured for the man to continue.

  “It looked to me as if he were waiting for somebody. I was about to call out and greet him, when suddenly the water began to bubble.” Dunn grew more animated. Griffin listened, fascinated.

  “The thing that came out of the water was at least seventy meters tall. And that was just the neck. Its head was enormous, as big as a small fishing boat!”

  The fisherman’s eyes grew wide. “I recognized it immediately. It was Nessie, the great beast from Loch Ness. A bad omen indeed. I do not know what she was doing so far from Scotland. But I tell ye, gentlemen, the mere sight of the monster took all the strength from me bones. I was too scared to do anything except stare. By the time I started moving again, well, poor Mr. Dent—”

  The fisherman broke off, his voice cracking. After a moment, he continued,

  “The beast swallowe
d him whole. One minute Mr. Dent was there on the shore, and the next”—he swatted his hand through the air for emphasis—“gone, he was. Then it weren’t but two seconds later that I heard gunshots. Whether someone was firing at me or at the beast, I didn’t know. I ran as fast as I could from the shore to get help. But, shameful as it is for me to admit, I didn’t know who to talk to, about what I’d seen. The police would have thought me mad and anyone else, well, fishermen are well known for exaggerating their stories.”

  He took a deep drink from his cider mug and, after finishing, wiped a gnarled hand across his bushy, white mustache. “After a sleepless night, I decided to go see Mrs. Dent and tell her the terrible news,” he said, then quickly added, “That’s my story, gentlemen, and I stand by it.”

  The old fisherman glared down at the Falsehood Detector as if defying it to find any inaccuracy in his story. Snodgrass switched off the machine and nodded. Griffin wondered just how the machine worked and what his uncle had been able to hear through the modified earflaps of his cap. Snodgrass seemed satisfied with whatever the fisherman had told him.

  He removed the strange cap and, replacing his moldy bowler on top of his head, said, “Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Now, if you don’t mind, could you lead me to the exact location where the event happened?”

  11

  THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

  Minutes later Griffin and his uncle were striding along the shore where James Dunn had indicated the attack had taken place. Luckily, the air was crisper and didn’t smell as fishy as it had near the Angler’s Club.

  The boy’s mind was buzzing with unanswered questions. The fisherman had seemed to be telling the truth. He’d noticed none of the little details in his manner that might have pointed to his lying.

  “This is the spot,” Snodgrass said.

  Griffin stared down at the muddy bank. A deep trough was in the dirt, leading from the water’s edge into the river. It looked as if it had been left by something extraordinarily large and heavy.

  “I don’t think Mr. Dunn was lying,” Griffin said. “He didn’t display any of the mannerisms most people use when they’re not telling the truth.”

  “Such as?” Snodgrass said.

  “Well, I’ve noticed that when people are lying they’re usually reluctant to make eye contact, the pitch of their voice changes, and they act restlessly. Often their stories are filled with inconsistent details. It didn’t seem to me that Mr. Dunn did any of those things.”

  Snodgrass snorted. “Deductive reasoning like that,” he said, “is prone to speculation and error. I arrived at my conclusion by other, more scientific means.”

  Rupert puffed out his chest in a self-important gesture.

  “The data I gathered showed that Dunn believes what he thinks he saw, whether it actually happened that way or not. You see, my Falsehood Detector measures a person’s heart rate. When a person is lying, their pulse quickens. I am alerted to the change by an electronic tone that is conducted through the wires into the earflaps of my cap.”

  Snodgrass grew more excited as he described the workings of his invention. “Because his heart rate remained consistent, my machine detected no attempts at falsehood whatsoever. Those are the facts, boy, and facts don’t lie. It’s elementary!”

  Griffin was impressed by the brilliance of his uncle’s engineering ability. The man truly was a gifted inventor! But while they had each used different methods, he and his uncle had arrived at the same conclusion.

  Even so, Griffin was able to admit that what his uncle had said about deductive reasoning had a lot of truth to it. Human observation did have limits, and sometimes observations could be wrong. There were people out there who, with practice, could hide their gestures when lying and fool the experts.

  “You know, you have a point there, Uncle,” Griffin admitted. “Perhaps a device like that should be implemented in more investigations. I’ll bet your machine is something that the police would love to see. It could greatly improve the way cases are handled.”

  Belatedly, he realized that instead of calling him Mr. Snodgrass, he’d accidentally called him Uncle. Griffin winced, wondering if Snodgrass would reprimand him for the slip. But to his surprise, Snodgrass didn’t correct him at all. Instead, Rupert Snodgrass seemed surprised and pleased by the compliment. “Yes, well. It might be worth considering at that,” he said, sniffing with self-importance.

  Griffin realized that Snodgrass was so absorbed in talking about the case that his attitude toward his nephew had thawed a little. Perhaps if they could stick to conversations about the investigation, they might actually get along.

  Snodgrass removed one of the heavy bags he was carrying on his shoulder and began to rummage through it. Griffin looked down at the bank and examined the deep furrow in the earth that led to the water’s edge. After studying it for a moment, he noticed something strange. Spaced evenly within the deep depression were several barlike tracks, each about twenty-five centimeters across.

  Taking advantage of his uncle’s distraction and willingness to talk, Griffin said, “There are tracks here, but they don’t appear to be made by any kind of beast that I’ve ever seen. Perhaps they have been made by a machine. What do you think?”

  “My thoughts exactly,” replied his uncle. “But I’ll know better after I measure the area for evidence.”

  Snodgrass, armed with a new device, walked over to his nephew’s side. He was wearing green goggles and carried a long pole with an ornate metal bowl on the end of it. His uncle waved the bowl near the earth, back and forth in a sweeping movement just a few inches above the ground.

  “What is it?” Griffin asked, indicating the device with a nod of his head.

  “The Snodgrass Super Finder. It is a finely tuned instrument for locating and detecting hidden metal. The goggles I wear act as a filter, helping me to observe the slightest glint of reflected light off of metal surfaces.”

  Griffin smirked, resisting the urge to ask if everything his uncle had created contained the words The Snodgrass in the name. It seemed to Griffin that his uncle was very particular about getting credit for his work.

  Snodgrass continued moving the large bowl back and forth over the unusual tracks. After a few moments, a small beeping noise sounded from the device. With a yelp of triumph, Snodgrass knelt and pawed around in the earth for a moment or two. Seconds later he drew an ornate pocket watch from the sand.

  “Not exactly what I was looking for,” he said, disappointed. “I was hoping to find some evidence of mechanics, perhaps a bolt or a discarded bit of wire. But I’m sure it’s a clue nonetheless!”

  Griffin moved closer to peer at the pocket watch. To his surprise, his uncle handed it to him. After studying it for a moment, Griffin noticed some words etched on the inside of the watch’s cover.

  To F, with all my love, S It didn’t take long for Griffin to deduce who “F” and “S” were. Frederick and Sarah Dent! He drew his uncle’s attention to the inscription. Snodgrass brightened perceptively at the discovery.

  “Well, that confirms that Frederick Dent was actually here. Good observation, boy.”

  Griffin felt quite proud upon hearing his uncle’s praise. Glancing up, he could tell that Snodgrass was so completely preoccupied with studying the watch that he had probably delivered the compliment unconsciously. But to Griffin, it was one more small step on the road to friendship with his uncle.

  “Thank you, Lord,” Griffin prayed in a whisper.

  “What’s that?” Snodgrass asked, overhearing Griffin.

  “Er, nothing,” Griffin said, smiling, and turned back to examining the ruts on the muddy ground.

  While his uncle scanned the beach with his contraption, Griffin walked along the shoreline, looking for more clues.

  He didn’t find anything of interest for several minutes until, about thirty feet from the shoreline, he spotted something strange. Kneeling down, he noticed several tiny scraps of red paper. They seemed familiar to him, but he couldn’t think why. Then,
in a flash, he remembered the scraps he’d found in the cab the day before.

  Reaching into his jacket pocket, he removed the bits of paper and compared them to the ones in the dirt. They matched perfectly.

  Griffin felt sure that there was some strange connection between the tracks on the shoreline, the paper on the shore, and the same unusual red paper he’d found in the cab. His heart beat with excitement as he considered the puzzle. After pocketing the paper, he turned his gaze to the rest of the shoreline. He walked around for several minutes, inspecting every bit of discarded fishing net, piece of glass, or anything else that might yield a clue. But he didn’t find anything of interest.

  The sun was starting to go down and the air was turning clammy. Griffin hunched up in his jacket and thrust his hands into his pockets.

  “I guess that’s all there is to see,” he murmured. His fingers brushed the little scraps of paper in his pocket, and he turned over possibilities of what they might be in his mind.

  Stationery? he wondered. But he dismissed the idea almost immediately. The texture of the paper was rough, and its red color would have made unusual material for correspondence.

  He was about to turn back and go down to the shoreline where his uncle was scanning the beach when his attention was drawn to a group of nearby boulders. Several gulls were perched on the huge rocks, squawking loudly. But there was something that didn’t look quite right. Griffin couldn’t immediately place what it was, but then he noticed that there seemed to be something wrong with one of the birds. His expert gaze had picked it out from the group of others, noticing that it seemed unusually still.

  Is it dead? he wondered.

  Griffin walked over to the big stones, scattering all of the birds as he approached except for one. He reached out to touch it, and to his surprise he saw that it still didn’t move. But it wasn’t dead . . . It was something so cleverly designed that anyone not knowing about it would have thought it just one of the other birds.