by Steve Emecz
Over the next few days, Holmes and I were rarely in the same room together for very long. This was not because we were avoiding each other, but because we were both very busy. Holmes said that he had a very pressing case, which he needed to solved quickly, and so rushed out of 221B at irregular, unannounced intervals. During influenza season, my practice nearly triples in intensity, and so I was out of the residence for most of the day, while Holmes’ outdoor adventures usually began at night; I had grown used to the sight of a handwritten note in Holmes’ meticulous scrawl stuck under the door-knocker reading “Gone out. Food on dishes. Don’t wait up. Breakfast at six-twenty-two exactly, please. Don’t touch my cocaine syringe.” On Saturday, I came into the living room to find Lestrade waiting in Holmes’ preferred chair, an exasperated expression on his face and a dying cigarette between his fingers as he tapped his foot impatiently. “Ah, there you are, Watson,” he greeted me, standing up to shake my hand. “I had almost decided to leave and come back later. Do you know when Mister Holmes will return?” “I have no idea, he’s been in and out all week irregularly. What did you want to tell him? I can write a message down for him when he comes back.” “Oh, I can wait. Just another little problem I’m having with a case. Completely baffles me, I must say.” At that moment there came the sound of the front door slamming open and a violent scuffle downstairs making its way upwards and suddenly Holmes appeared at the door, dragging a man by the ear. He presently thrust his cargo down onto the sofa and pinned him there by the shoulder with one of his powerful arms. “Holmes, what in heaven’s name are you doing?” Lestrade babbled. “I am presenting to you Mister Eugene Hailey, of the circus. Shake hands, Gene.” He gave a violent shove against the man’s arm. Mister Hailey reached out with his left hand and shook Lestrade’s and my hand. He was a short man in a dirty suit with greasy, unwashed hair. “And what are you doing with this man?” I asked, setting down my revolver, which I had drawn out of my pocket when I heard the struggle on the stairwell. “I am arresting him for the murder of Abram Browner.” “The circus performer?” Lestrade groaned. “That case has been long closed, it was an accident.” I confess, I had completely forgotten about it as well. “Open your eyes, Lestrade, the evidence to the contrary is right in front of you.” Sherlock Holmes shifted his grip to the man’s throat, and Lestrade cried out. “Holmes, you know I could have you arrested for the way you are treating this man,” the Inspector cried. “So you could. So arrest me. Go ahead.” “Oh, I, uh, realized I have an appointment at Scotland Yard,” Lestrade turned around and walked out the door. “Goodbye, Doctor.” I closed the door after him as he left. “Now, Watson,” said Holmes. “If I might borrow your revolver?” “Holmes, surely you won’t...” “No, I won’t, I just don’t want to continue the entire interview in this position.” He stood up and took the revolver, fixing it upon our guest’s face. Holmes sat down at the table in the corner, resting the handle of the revolver on the table, pointed at his prisoner. “Now, Mister Hailey, conductor of the circus orchestra. Please listen carefully. And Watson, you should, too. “Mister Abram Browner had loaned you quite a considerable sum of money, when your stock exchange debt had to be paid off. And he was a very good debtor, so I was told. However, when you didn’t pay off the debt after three years, he began to pester you for the money back. After two more years, he threatened to bring this before the leader of the gypsies. Naturally, you would be thrown out of the circus, being an outsider in the first place, and so you could not risk that. It was then that your heart was filled with murder.” He pounded his open fist against the table, knocking over the vase of flowers resting in the centre. “You murdered your only friend, did you not?” When Hailey didn’t answer, Holmes pointed the gun at the floor and fired a round into it. “Did you not? Answer me!” “Yes, I did,” Eugene Hailey stuck his chin out in defiance. “But you’ll never be able to prove it. And Scotland Yard will never believe you.” “We might,” came a voice at the door, and Lestrade stood in it with two constables. “Well, isn’t this a merry gathering?” Holmes chuckled. “You were saying, Mister Hailey?” “I killed him, sure enough. But the case will never be proved in court; they’ll never believe it. The only evidence I left was purely circumstantial.” “Maybe if you explained it,” Lestrade asked. “No, I think I will,” Holmes stood up. “Watson, take the revolver and keep it on our friend here. I’d hate for him to run off on us before I’m finished. “You couldn’t just take a gun and shoot him, for it is possible the clever gypsies might find the connection through your motives and convict you. Their methods of punishment are notoriously more medieval than the government’s. So, you had to make it seem like an accident. How am I doing so far?” “Exactly correct, sir.” Hailey kept his defiant stance the whole time. “So, what you did was organize an ‘accident’ for Mister Browner. Blindfolded tightrope-walkers rely on the music to know when they have reached the end of the rope, and so you ended the music just before he had got there. And you even made sure that should he decide to test whether he had indeed finished, he would fall, because of the loose wire; and you made a mistake that cost you your victory. You slightly loosened the screws holding the wire in place at one end with lamp oil. This convinced me that it was not an accident. You stopped the music just before he reached the end, and he fell. If you hadn’t made sure the wire was loosened it would have seemed like a perfect accident, but you were not able to remove the oil entirely from the screws. The oil got me wondering. For motive, and a narration of the event, all I had to do was ask around at the circus, posing as a certain stilt-walker Watson met on the streets.” He gave me a slight apologetic smile. “Then I became an expert on tightrope-walkers and how the events are coordinated. The music was the key. Am I correct in this?” “Absolutely, Mister Holmes. But you still won’t prevail against me in court with the evidence you have.” “Most likely not. But for your abuse of music, I can at least provide some entirely legal punishment. Watson, the gun if you please. No, I won’t shoot him, just give it to me.” He took the revolver, held it up next to Hailey’s right ear and fired two shots into the back of the settee, then changed over to the left ear and fired the remaining three. In the confined space of the room, the shots were extremely loud, and right next to Hailey’s ear, it must have deafened him considerably. “There we go, I’m finished with him. Lestrade, you may take him away.” As they were leaving, Holmes asked. “Watson, please write a letter to Missus Browner about this. Oh, by the way, Lestrade, what was that case you wanted to bring to my attention?” “Another irregular accident. I thought you’d like to make another murder out of it.” Eugene Hailey was carried away to the sound of Sherlock Holmes’ braying laughter.
A Leap Of Faith
By Emily Bignell
Brisbane, Australia
When clients came to 221B Baker Street, they weren’t usually followed by paparazzi and autograph hunters. But those clients, weren’t Aidan Crawley, celebrity author of a series of spy thrillers that were not only international bestsellers, but were also being made into blockbuster films.
Sherlock was expecting a visit from Aidan. Not so much from a process of deduction, but from seeing him interviewed the previous evening on the 9 o’clock news. Aidan had gone public about the breakdown of his marriage to his wife of 10 years, Melanie. He had been unable to contact her since she walked out on him, and announced, with tears in his eyes, that he would be enlisting Holmes’s help to find her. “When it comes to finding my wife, I’ll leave nothing to chance. Sherlock Holmes is the best detective in the world and if he can’t find her, nobody can.”
The tears were back in Aidan’s eyes as he showed Sherlock and John photographs of Melanie, and told them how he had returned home six months before to find her gone. “Six months?” Sherlock repeated incredulously, “She left six months ago and you have only just come to me now?” Aidan looked embarrassed. “Well, I was hoping that I could find her, or that she’d come back to me. You see, our marriage had been in trouble
for some time. Fame and success came at a price. I was away an awful lot, and when I was home I was holed up in my study writing most of the time. Melanie grew a little… irrational. She started accusing me of caring more for my work than her, even that I was having an affair with Caroline Cooley, which was utterly ridiculous.” The casual mention of the beautiful lead actress in the film adaptation of his books raised both Sherlock and John’s eyebrows. Oblivious, Aidan continued. “She even began to threaten divorce, and that she’d take me to the cleaners. Anyway, I’d been in LA, overseeing the final draft of the script for the new film. When I came home, most of Melanie’s things had gone and so was she. I sent a text asking her what was going on, and this is what came back.” Aidan fumbled in his pocket and produced an iPhone, which he showed to Sherlock and John. The text message was brief and to the point: “I’ve left you. You will be hearing from my lawyers.”
“And did you hear from her lawyers?” Sherlock asked.
“No,” said Aidan. “I’m hoping that she’s reconsidered. I just want to find her, talk things through with her.”
“Have any of her family or friends heard from her?” asked John.
“Melanie didn’t make friends easily, and she had no family, apart from me. She was an only child of older parents, no other living relatives. I was… it.” Aidan looked sad. “I think that was why she became so jealous. She was afraid of losing the only family she had.”
“So she made sure of it by leaving,” Sherlock finished. Aidan looked at him, uncertain how to respond. John, seeing this, stepped in.
“Well, thank you for coming to see us, Aidan. We’ll do what we can to help find your wife – although if she’s hidden herself from you so well, I don’t know how much luck we’ll have tracking her down.”
John saw Aidan out and came back to find Sherlock lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling.
“We won’t have any luck tracking her down,” he said as John entered. “We don’t even know where to start looking for the body.”
“Are you serious? You really think Aidan murdered Melanie?” John asked.
“I don’t think it. I know it. Something just doesn’t feel right.” He leapt to his feet and went to the window, staring unseeingly at the street. “But where do we start looking?” he said, almost to himself.
John, in the meantime, was on his laptop, looking up Aidan Crawley. The top stories were from various gossip columns, linking him with Caroline Cooley. The accompanying photos certainly lent weight to the rumours – Aidan rubbing sunscreen into Caroline’s back, Aidan and Caroline in a passionate clinch in the back of a cab, Aidan and Caroline leaving a hotel together…
“Looks as though poor Melanie had good reason to be jealous,” John mused. “What a bastard.”
“Excuse me, boys,” Mrs Hudson knocked on the open door. “Sorry to disturb, but you have another visitor. This is Lucy Bennett.” She ushered in a rather good-looking woman, of around their own age. John stepped forward with enthusiasm to greet her.
“I’m John Watson, and that man over there ignoring us both is Sherlock Holmes. How can we help you?”
“Nice to meet you, John. This is going to sound weird but I’m here about Melanie Crawley.”
That was enough to bring Sherlock back from the window.
“You know where Melanie Crawley is?” he asked.
“Maybe,” Lucy replied.
“Maybe? You either do or you don’t. If you’re going to waste my time please leave.”
“It’s not as simple as that! Like I said, I might know where she is. But you will need to keep an open mind.”
“I always keep an open mind,” Sherlock replied loftily.
“Please tell us what you know, Lucy,” John interjected, before things could escalate further.
“Okay. I was watching the 9 o’clock news last night and saw the story about Melanie. They showed a photograph of her, and for some reason I just couldn’t stop thinking about her. And the word “Undershaw” kept coming to mind, although I had no idea what it was. I didn’t pay much attention to that right away, but then when I was trying to go to sleep, I kept seeing this image.” She stopped, as if unsure how to proceed. John, sensing Sherlock’s scepticism, silenced him with a look.
“Go on, Lucy. What did you see?” he asked gently.
“It was somewhere in the country. It was as if I was lying under a tree. I was looking up, seeing sky between branches and leaves, and some sort of tower further away, an old crumbling tower. I have no idea where it was, but it was so clear, like a photograph. And again, the word Undershaw kept coming to mind. Next morning, I looked up Undershaw on the Internet. Turns out it’s the ruin of a house out in the country that was once owned by a famous author. Completely abandoned now, and nobody goes next or near it.”
“Are you trying to tell me that you think Melanie is buried somewhere in this place you dreamed about?” Sherlock demanded. Lucy looked at him, chin raised.
“I don’t think she is. I know she is,” she said, simply.
“Where have I heard that before?” John murmured.
Sherlock laughed. “Oh, you’re one of these psychic people. How fun!”
“I am NOT a psychic!” Lucy’s voice was like ice. “I don’t know how I know the things I know sometimes. I just do. And I never usually tell anybody about them because of the exact reaction I’m getting now. Against my better judgment, I decided I would tell you, because Aidan Crawley said on the news that he was going to put you on the case.”
“So you thought I’d go out to some old ruin in the middle of nowhere on the strength of something conjured up by your imagination.” Sherlock was openly mocking now.
“So much for the open mind,” Lucy said, getting to her feet. “Well, I’ve passed it on for what it’s worth. I’ll leave you to your nice, tangible, scientifically proven clues, shall I? Got many of those yet?”
“Lucy-“ John got in before Sherlock could retaliate, but she shook her head.
“Don’t bother. I’ll see myself out.” She went to the door, and turned back to them.
“Oh, and one more thing. Undershaw happens to be near the village where Melanie grew up. That was also on the internet, by the way, just in case you think I dreamed that too.”
With that, she turned and went down the stairs. Sherlock caught up with her before she reached the front door.
“How do I know that you haven’t made all this up?” he asked of her. She met his stare without a qualm.
“How do you know that I have?”
If the driveway leading to Undershaw was any indication of the condition of the house, it was in a pretty bad way indeed. Potholes and fallen branches made an obstacle course that required all of John’s skills to navigate, but it was still a bumpy ride, and they were all glad to get out of the car at the end of it.