Sherlock's Home

by Steve Emecz

  “The matter is simple enough. When I see a man coated in sweat on a cold London morning, I know he’s made a great deal of exertion and travelled a great distance to reach me. And when I can detect a distinct whiff of sea air about you, Lestrade, then it’s not too difficult to work out where you’ve come from.” Holmes sat back and allowed Lestrade to absorb his deductions.

  Lestrade gave me a smug look. “Simplicity itself!” Having played out this tired dialogue many times before, Holmes and I rolled our eyes. Lestrade finally took a seat and stated his piece.

  “About two days ago, we received a telegram at Scotland Yard telling us about some strange occurrences on board the steamship Moon, which had recently departed from Newfoundland bound for the Docklands. Apparently the engineer had been taken ill after walking into his engine room one morning and seeing a strange white substance all over the walls. When they removed it, they found that more would be there the next morning, more than had been there in the first place. There had also been numerous small petty thefts going on at night. Apparently they were laying a trap to catch the blackguard on the day before the telegraph arrived but it came to nothing.”

  At this point, Holmes interjected, “Might I see the telegram?” Lestrade fished around in a pocket before handing my friend a crumpled piece of paper, which he looked at briefly. He rubbed his fingers lightly across the paper before placing it on his desk for later examination. “Pray continue your tale.”

  “Well, apart from the substance in the engine room, it all seemed pretty run of the mill. This morning, I took a couple of constables down to the docks to await the arrival of the ship. We’d get the passengers to give us statements, maybe search one or two of the ones who looked good for it.”

  “But I take it that the ship never arrived?” Holmes turned away from the faithful policeman at this point to look for his Persian slipper. I was sitting on it and so said nothing.

  “Oh, it arrived. We saw the ship pull in, Mr. Holmes, that is, until it exploded.” Holmes turned round as quickly as I’ve ever seen him.

  “It did what?”

  “Aye, sir, it exploded. Plodding along into port, merry as you like, when it suddenly burst forth with fire and flame and started listing heavily to the side.” Holmes looked rather troubled by this turn of events, so I subtly worked his slipper free and dropped it to the floor. His eyes immediately caught this and he motioned for the slipper. I passed it to him while he asked Lestrade some questions.

  “Dreadful business. Were there any survivors?”

  “None that we could see. There weren’t many people on board anyway; it was a skeleton crew and one or two passengers seeking cheap passage to the Colonies. It’s got us baffled. Who could stand to gain from such a thing?”

  “I suspected as much. It should be easy enough to check; some manifests may have survived the explosion. Have you had a chance to conduct a proper examination of the ship yet?”

  Lestrade let out a kind of half smile at this, something that was rare for him.

  “No, I came straight to you. I know how much you like having fresh clues to look over.”

  “Quite so. It’s a strange thing, Lestrade, but you may have presented me the riddle and the solution within the same story.” Holmes sat back with a smile and let that one sink in.

  “Come on now, man, don’t play games! People have died!”

  Holmes’ manner changed in an instant. He wore a heartfelt look of sorrow upon his face, which was beginning to show his steadily advancing age.

  “I assure you that when I make a statement like that, I speak from truth. I do in fact have a working hypothesis, but it will take time to verify. I will need to come down to the ship and take a look around.”

  “Excellent!” Lestrade ejaculated, “I was about to propose that very thing! Shall we head off now?”

  Holmes gave an almost-unnoticeable look in my direction. I nodded my assent.

  “If your search is awaiting my involvement, then we shall allow no delay. Watson! Fetch your service revolver, we shouldn’t need it but it is better to be prepared, is it not? Ah, I see you already have it.” He called our landlady in that loud but melodic voice that she’d grown accustomed to. “Mrs. Hudson? Kindly call a cab for us, post-haste!”

  So it was that sometime later, we arrived at the docks. News of this terrible business had clearly travelled fast, and so we had to shove through a crowd of onlookers just to get close to the ship. Once we were out of the throng of people, Lestrade led us to where the remains of the ship lay. Most of the ship was essentially intact, as the explosion (although large) was confined to the one ship and the firefighters were quick to act. This allowed Holmes to have a brief look around the ship, although he had to tread gingerly in some areas. We passed some orderlies with stretchers as they carried bodies out of the ship. I stopped to chat with them about the nature of the injuries as Holmes and Lestrade pressed on. I ascertained that most of the bodies were found with massive burns, but the one they were carrying was found with a wound on the back of his head consistent with being hit by a lead pipe. I promised to pass this information to Lestrade, who wasn’t aware of it because he was with us. I paid my respects to the man upon the stretcher and hurried to find my friends.

  When I caught back up with them they were in the engine room, which I gathered was the room most affected by the blast. The room was truly a mess: the engine was completely devastated and would never run again, the walls were completely charred and any furniture that was within the room was nothing but cinders upon the floorboards. Holmes was in the centre of the room with Lestrade and a police constable, who was answering questions from Lestrade. Holmes noticed me out of the corner of his eye.

  “Ah, Watson. Do come in. Constable Harrison here was telling us that they found a survivor. They’re treating him for shock at the moment, but he should be well presently. Did you hear anything of note?”

  “According to some of the men I spoke to outside, they’ve found one of the victims with his head bashed in, in addition to his burns. No doubt the former happened first.”

  “That would be a natural supposition, Watson. After all, there’s no reason to bludgeon him after he’s already burned to death. However, it is a capital error to theorise without data. We shall wait for the coroner’s report before making the final judgement.” I made a note to ask about the potential murder victim in a few days’ time, in case it slipped his mind.

  Lestrade issued a few orders to the constable, who left and left us to investigate.

  “Any luck finding clues, Holmes?” I asked, knowing that he probably hadn’t found anything yet. I was proven correct.

  “Nothing yet, Watson. We got distracted by the constable. As this room was clearly the epicentre of the blast that took out this ship, let us see where we can get by examining it.”

  We then set about looking for some clue as to why this dreadful business took place. I had the slight feeling that Lestrade and I weren’t going to find anything of note, as only Holmes knew what he was looking for. I tried my hardest to find something to go on, but the room was bare and hardly anything in it was intact. So naturally, it wasn’t a surprise when Holmes showed us both up by giving a loud ejaculation where he was looking. We rushed over to look at what he had found.

  “What is it, Holmes?” I cried with a tinge of exasperation in my voice. There are only so many times you can be surprised when your smarter friend proves to be better than you in his own field.

  “Ah, gentlemen. See along this wall here, there are some slight bits of residue from the strange substance that Lestrade’s telegram spoke of. Evidently, the fire didn’t burn enough of it. Time to speak to your survivor, Lestrade!”

  At this point, we took our leave of the ship and went to speak to the Moon’s survivor, a youth called Jack, who was recovering from shock at a local hospital. We called for a ha
nsom cab and were there within twenty minutes. Once there, we were escorted to the youth. He turned out to be a strongly built boy of about twenty or so, no doubt a junior member of the crew.

  “Jack, isn’t it? You’re in awfully fine condition, considering what you must’ve been through. Can you tell us how you survived this calamity?” Holmes ventured to try and coax his story out of him.

  “Well sir, it’s like this: I’ve been pretty down on my luck my whole life, so I was keen to make a change any way I could. I signed up for the ride over in Newfoundland in the hope of getting work in London. I wasn’t fussy about how I got there so I just took a low paying, general cleaning job. About the second night, we heard a scream from the engine room. We all rushed down and saw the chief engineer shutting the door, gabbling something about ghosts and ectoplasm on the walls. We took a quick look in there, but our engineer was a dominating fellow and if he told us not to linger too long, you better believe we listened to what he said. He recovered his senses shortly afterwards, and got his assistant to help him remove the stuff from the walls. I’ll be darned if there wasn’t more there the next day, than there ever was in the first place.”

  “One moment! Who else had access to the engine room when neither the engineer nor his assistant was in it?” Holmes interrupted him to ask.

  “Well, in theory nobody, but the room is unlocked in case the engine needs to be tended to in an emergency and the engineer’s nowhere in sight. So I guess anybody could’ve got in there when he wasn’t there.” He looked at Holmes as if expecting another question and he didn’t disappoint.

  “I feel that if we concentrate on ghosts and so on, we’re getting away from the real substance of the case. You see every crime must have a perpetrator. This one is no exception. So, continue with your story, but try to leave out the more…sensationalist material.”

  “I guess I can do that, Mr Holmes.” The boy took a drink of water before continuing. “Apart from that, it was all pretty quiet. There were some petty thefts but nothing major. All was going well until we started to pull into port. I was standing on the deck, getting my first taste of English air and I heard what sounded like two men shouting in the direction of the engine room. Then the next thing I know, there’s a massive explosion close by. I get hurled over the side by the force of it and must’ve landed on the pier or something. I guess where it counts, I am a lucky man. Then I woke up here.”

  At this, Holmes thanked the boy and we took our leave. We left the hospital and called for a cab. Lestrade couldn’t quite contain his curiosity.

  “What about it, Holmes? Are you any closer to catching our man?”

  “I know exactly who did it, Lestrade. I just need to find some essential details that I am lacking. I’ll be back in Baker Street at seven. Watson, you head back there and make ready for my return. The places I have to go are no place are not for civilised men such as yourselves.”

  He gave both of us a wry smile at this last comment and availed himself of the cab that we had called. Lestrade had duties to do, so we parted ways there and then as I headed back to Baker Street to catch up on my sleep.

  I was fully refreshed by noon, so I spent much of the day writing up notes from old cases and solving Holmes’ crossword in the paper (a habit that I developed one day when he was being particularly hard to live with). I was engrossed in this last activity when Holmes arrived, rushing up the stairs with triumph evident in his voice.

  “Good news, Watson!” He bounded into the room with a small piece of paper in his hand. “The police have our man. I went down to Scotland Yard earlier and was present for the confession of the evildoer. Of course, it couldn’t end any other way.”

  I took the telegram from him and read it. “’Holmes. Engineer is our man. Found him in local tavern. Thanks for tip. Lestrade.’ The engineer is their man? Holmes, what the devil is going on?”

  He sat back in his favourite armchair.

  “I wasn’t lying to Lestrade when I said I had the whole affair solved from the start, barring a few details. It was indeed a dark case.” A touch of melancholy had crept into his voice as he began his summary of all that he had surmised. “My first clue came from the knowledge that despite being rendered insensible by a ‘ghost’, the engineer cleaned the engine room. Clearly he didn’t want anybody else going in that room, except him and his assistant. This assistant was the same youth we met earlier today, by the way. Once I had that, the rest was easy. The substance on the wall was wax.

  “The assistant got it from the hold in the form of a reserve of candles, while the engineer melted them down. Once the melted wax was ready, the two of them coated the room with it and turned off the boiling furnace for the night so the wax would harden on the walls. When they scraped it off in the morning, they collected it into buckets ready for the same thing to happen again, with more candles added so the process was quicker and covered more of the room. This continued until the last night, when they coated the walls in the largest load yet and then laid a bomb to blow up the ship. The engineer then hid in a secure area of the ship while the bomb exploded, then he was carried away upon a stretcher by some of his friends on land. The evidence of their misdeeds melted away with the fire. However, I found some samples of wax lining the floor at the bottom of the wall and this was enough to confirm my thoughts.”

  “Good God! The blackguard went right past me! I prayed for his soul!” I was left to sputter more indignant outrages as my friend continued with his story.

  “Ghastly affair, Watson. The whole thing was done to kill one man: the Captain of the ship. It seems that the Captain had been a little too free with his affections when they were in America, and one of his targets was the engineer’s wife. He took exception to this and started plotting a scheme for the Captain to meet his demise. Our friend the engineer is a most vicious and cold-blooded killer, one who considers ordinary people acceptable casualties. Unfortunately, his vile scheme worked perfectly.”

  “At least he was caught. He’ll be judged in both this life and the next.”

  “Perhaps, Watson. Perhaps.” He sighed heavily, and with extreme effort, drew himself together. “Life goes on. Pass me my shag tobacco. I’ll have a quick puff and then we’ll pop out to catch a performance of William Tell at the music hall.”

  That seems like a good place to bring this tale to a conclusion. And that, my dear reader, is how Holmes dealt with one of the vilest killers he met in his entire career on the same day that the crime was committed.

  Dust In The Wind

  By Daphne Vertommen

  Mechelen, Belgium

  To others, it might have seemed like an average English dawn. To us – the two figures marching through the green, dewy fields – the virtually alpine mist bore the scent of a fresh and intriguing mystery. We hadn’t shared a word since our arrival, but didn’t feel the need to. The unspoken excitement I had grown accustomed to over the years was palpable like a faint buzz in the air, thrilling us both to go farther.

  During the walk I took a moment to let my eyes roam the breathtaking surroundings. There was nothing but green foliage and spacious heaths all around us, our peaceful solitude only disturbed by the occasional hare racing past. My breathing slowed down and I could hear the sound of birds, hiding in the fir trees just a short distance away. It seemed like such a peaceful, rustic place…

  My thoughts were interrupted by a loud “Over there!” and I suddenly bumped into my previously silent companion, who now chuckled briefly. “Are you quite alright, Watson?”

  “My apologies, I wasn’t paying attention… just getting that London fog out of my throat…”

  “Well, do try and keep up, for it seems we have reached our destination.’

  Holmes then stretched out his arm to direct my attention to a point in the close distance. I leaned forward, squinting slightly.

  “But there’s nothing there
.”

  That made the corners of his mouth curl upwards.

  “Exactly.”

  He then dashed in a straight line towards the mystery location, not paying any attention to the aesthetically pleasing surroundings at all. I shook my head, smiling, before I followed him up a small hill that didn’t seem to lead to anything but a clearing of the surrounding trees, and eight stone steps with sturdy handrails on each side that had somehow survived the test of time. By the time I reached the terrace, my friend was already investigating the remains of the building that had been there a long time ago, and crouched near the remains of what had quite possibly been a fireplace once.

  I accidentally kicked a forgotten, rusty doorknob, which make him turn and give me a most irritated look. I offered him a half-hearted apologetic shrug in return, and made a mental note to keep quiet for a while.

  As Holmes resumed his investigation, I made my way in the other direction to have a look at the rubble of various shapes and sizes. I saw dust covering crumbled stones and carelessly thrown graffiti cans, shards of coloured glass that might have been part of a coat of arms once, mouldered pieces of wood with flakes of paint that turned to a thin powder by my touch. I now couldn’t help but keep a respectful silence, almost as if we had found ourselves in a church. This abandoned and forgotten sanctuary seemed to maintain a mystery novel aura, which I felt strangely drawn to. Any sound would feel like blasphemy. A look over my shoulder confirmed that my friend was working in an equivalent silence. There wasn’t much to see, so I decided to sit and wait for him to finish. Soon I found a somewhat clean place in what had been the entrance hall of the house and sat myself down by the three steps that indicated there had been a sturdy wooden staircase once.

  “I don’t understand it.”

  “Hmm?”

  It seemed like I had dozed off for a while. Time had passed: the sun had now finally managed to break through the clouds, its soft light intensifying the dreamy colours and turning our current location into a beautifully dystopian kind of painting. I looked up to see him sitting on the stone steps in the middle of the green mirage of a landscape. Holmes’ dark figure with slightly hunched shoulders seemed as out of place as the fading brick stones of the long forgotten home. I stood up from my spot near the old staircase to join him, and I briefly surveyed my friend’s worried frown before looking out on the picturesque mass of green that stretched out before us both.