Sanguine (Improbable Truths #1)

by J. R. Burnett

  "Someone did. Certainly he had friends and family somewhere."

  "Him? You assume too much."

  "A woman? Why then you must help!"

  Holmes lifted an eyebrow and a sharp electric jolt raced down my spine as he turned one of his unnatural eyes upon me.

  "Not a woman," he said.

  I hesitated, wondering what was not a man, yet not a woman either, when three precise knocks interrupted my thoughts. Holmes continued to stare into his tea cup. Leveraging myself from my chair, I made my way to the front door. On the other side stood a square shouldered man in a bowler hat, his hand raised to knock on the door once more. "May I help you, Sir?"

  Confusion clouded the man's eyes as he glanced back and forth from the card in his hand and the brass numbers set into the stone next to the door. "I was looking for Mr. Holmes," he said after a moment's time.

  "I am here, Detective Lestrade," Holmes said from back in the apartment.

  I stepped aside to let the detective pass, then turned and followed him. While Holmes's business was certainly none of my own, I couldn't help but be intrigued. It wasn't every day that police officers turned up on my doorstep.

  Lestrade kicked at the wad of paper. "I see you received my telegraph."

  "And I see that you now have my answer," Holmes said.

  "I have a carriage waiting out front."

  "There was nothing in the telegraph that suggested your dilemma would hold my attention."

  "Why do you think I stopped by?" Lestrade pulled a daybook from his jacket pocket and handed it to Holmes.

  Holmes flipped through the pages, settling on one. Unfortunately, from my vantage at the dining room doorway, I couldn't see what the page contained. Holmes closed the book and handed it back to Lestrade. "Perhaps I was mistaken." He stood and crossed the room in three quick strides, grabbing his top hat from a rack in the entry. "My friend Watson will be joining us."

  Chapter 3

  The carriage Detective Lestrade had appropriated was far from luxurious, but the driver capable and the horses eager so that soon we were moving through the city at a fine pace. I found myself enjoying the trip far more than I should have given the solemn nature of our errand.

  The streets grew steadily more treacherous as we traveled, both in composition and company. Soon the road was nothing more than rutted dirt tracks wide enough for only one carriage to pass. Dark puddles lined the edge of the road and I was relatively certain they contained more than simply water.

  Both Holmes and Lestrade were silent throughout the trip. Only the occasional sharp command from the driver to the ponies pulling the carriage punctuated the constant rumble of the wheels. I had grown used to Holmes's frequent taciturn episodes, but Lestrade represented a new variable. As it turns out, he is no more a gifted conversationalist than my companion.

  The carriage creaked as the horses finally slowed to a stop. We had arrived at one of the city's less affluent housing districts and the building before us showed signs of the same years of hard use and neglect that society afflicted upon its tenants. Several uniformed police officers milled around in front of the stairs to the building. They tipped their hats to Lestrade and Holmes, but eyed me suspiciously.

  The ever present soot had found its way through the tightly shuttered window into the apartment and, with no resident to clear it away, it had blanketed every surface in the room. More police congregated inside. The mess of people so completely filled the space that it wasn't until Lestrade ordered them out that I saw the very thing we had come for.

  The body of a man lay face down in the center of the room.

  Lestrade went straight to the prone figure and I followed him. Holmes, however, stalked around the perimeter. The detective had obviously encountered this behavior before and waited next to the body for Holmes to finish his inspection.

  My companion circled the room several times, stopping every couple feet to examine one thing or another. A scrape in the dust…a drop of candle wax…. Using a piece of twine he apparently kept for the purpose, he compared several points invisible to my eye, then moved across the room and repeated the motion. Holmes made soft exclamations with each discovery as if such insignificant details could hold the identity of the man's killer. I was certain that once I saw him pick up a stray rock and surreptitiously drop it into his coat pocket. Finally he joined us at the body.

  "Satisfied?" Lestrade asked.

  "My curiosity has been peaked for the time being," Holmes said.

  "Despite the fact that the building has been unoccupied for some time, this morning a passing officer saw light seeping through the shutters. He assumed some beggar had taken refuge here and lit a fire to stay warm, but when he arrived in the room, he was greeted only with this poor soul's remains. The cards in the man's pocket bear the name Mr. Edward Dahmen."

  "Has his body been disturbed?" Holmes asked.

  "Only to roll him over and verify he was deceased. We replaced him exactly as we found him," Lestrade said. Holmes turned his ferocious gaze on the detective and I saw Lestrade flinch. "We placed him back exactly as we found him."

  Holmes shifted his gaze to the floor around the body. "Not before tromping all over any clues that might have been left behind."

  "He could have still been alive," Lestrade argued.

  "He wasn't."

  "That is obvious now."

  Holmes nodded at Lestrade and the two of them rolled the man over. "What do you think, good Doctor?" Holmes asked.

  I was so taken aback at Holmes's request for my opinion that I had trouble finding my voice. "Young...good weight...excellent muscle tone...no obvious wounds.... I see no particular reason that would explain his untimely demise. Unless...." I leaned down and sniffed at the man's lips half expecting the smell of almonds. The only thing that lingered on his last breath was a slightly sour smell of red wine. "Perhaps he drank himself into oblivion."

  "Perhaps," Sherlock said.

  "He had nothing of interest—a small sum of money, a pipe, a pouch of tobacco, and a telegraph...all still undisturbed in his pockets. Robbery was apparently not the motive here," Lestrade offered.

  "The telegraph?" Holmes asked.

  Lestrade took a folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it off to Holmes, who pocketed it without so much as a glance.

  Sherlock turned away from the body, his sharp eyes surveying each feature of the room. "Where is the mark?"

  "Here." Lestrade led the way to the shadowed back corner of the room. He struck a match and held it up to the wall.

  Strips of once bright wallpaper peeled off the wall in long strips. An intricate symbol had been drawn on the exposed plaster in red paint. I was reminded in some ways of the hieroglyphics that I had seen at the museum the first time I had met Holmes, though it was indiscernible, to me at least, what the figure might symbolize. Still, I suspected the squiggles had been drawn with purpose...and that my companion likely knew what they meant. Holmes pulled a magnifying glass out of the same pocket that tucked the telegraph into and fell to examining the mark in excruciating detail. I leaned forward to see if I could determine by what method the mark had been put upon the wall. The ferruginous smell of blood took me by surprise.

  "Sanguine."

  "I beg your pardon?" I asked, not sure if I'd heard Holmes correctly.

  "The English language is a complex entity," Holmes said. "Sanguine simultaneously means optimistic and bloody. Life and death eternally bound together in a single word."

  "So it is something important." Lestrade's words swelled with pride.

  Holmes put away his magnifying glass. "No. Random marks left by the deranged mind of our killer to lead us astray. You have wasted my time and that of my colleague. I suspect you're wasting your own as well."

  "Maybe you'd enlighten us...." Lestrade's words had hardened as if chiseled from stone.

  "Your killer is female, approximately five feet and six inches tall. She's bold and determined…and moves with the same sense
of purpose attributed to those characteristics. She knew your victim well enough, though they weren't friends in any sense of the word."

  "I expect you're right on most counts," Lestrade said.

  "On all accounts," Holmes protested.

  "Preposterous! Surely you have confused our killer's gender," Lestrade said.

  "Watson?" Holmes asked.

  "Certainly it is inconceivable that a woman would be able to overcome such a fit and healthy man," I agreed with Lestrade.

  "The killer is most definitely a woman," Holmes said. "Given the position of the mark on the wall, we can infer the killer's height. The spacing of the footprints on the floor supports this. Yet the footprints themselves are far too small for a man, or even a boy, of such height. It's a miracle I noticed given that your herd of officers has obscured nearly every impression."

  "They didn't know."

  "They should." Holmes turned and started for the door, the tails of his long coat fanning out behind him. "Come, Watson. We might as well return home."

  ***

  I shuffled along after Holmes, my limited mobility little match to his long, loping stride. Even in my hurry, I couldn't help but notice the plethora of footprints alongside the road. The city had been washed clean by rain the day before and the path in front of an empty tract of housing should be relatively devoid of traffic. Holmes was right. The suspect's footprints should have been easy to pick out from the background noise. But the police, in their comings and goings, had worn a path into the dirt that not even the most experienced tracker could glean any information from.

  "How could you know such things?" I asked as I caught up with Holmes.

  He stopped, then turned and looked me up and down. "The same way I know that, despite a real injury on the front, your continued suffering is mostly a ploy to avoid being sent back to a war with which you morally disagree."

  "I object to such accusations, Sir!"

  Holmes's arm shot out and he grabbed my cane, pulling it from my grasp with a strength that I wouldn't have attributed to him. "You may object all you wish, but it is written right there for one to observe if they care to take the time."

  I swayed, but caught myself before I fell. My heart pounded against its boney cage. The deception would be seen as fraud, perhaps even desertion, by my superiors if they ever found out. No doubt Holmes's acquaintances in the police force had further acquaintances in the army.

  Holmes handed me back my cane. "Your secret is safe with me. I was merely answering your question. I observe where most people do not. It is a habit that I have perfected over more years than you would credit me."

  I stared at Holmes. Every hypothesis and conjecture I had about the man over the past few weeks paled in comparison to what I had been shown so far that day. A million questions raced through my mind so quickly that I couldn't choose one to verbalize. Holmes seemed to understand this somehow and continued without my prodding.

  "Lestrade seems to think I have some sort of extrasensory perception or a connection with the spiritual plane, however it is nothing more than the simple act of observing and, consequently, deducing the meaning of such observations. Take, for example, your watch."

  A bit confused, I took my timepiece from its pocket. I offered it to Holmes, but he simply shook his head.

  "The watch is meaningless to me. I refer instead to its tether. Chain would be the most practical choice in order to thwart potential pickpockets, yet you have chosen a thin leather strap. Given the conservative, but still affluent, nature of the rest of your attire, I suspect that this choice was made intentionally and not merely due to of lack of funds for a chain. The leather itself is decorated with wooden and bone beads—both traditionally used by this country's native tribes. While it is not uncommon for those on the frontier to adopt some of the native cultures' practices, their taste tends toward much showier pieces that have value on the market...silver and turquoise. The trinkets on your watch fob have no worth other than their meaning to you. Given that few natives carry pocket watches, it seems unlikely that you found such a unique piece readymade. Coupled with the fact that, despite the apparent disuse of the limb, your left leg shows no muscle wasting and the right no compensatory enlargement, I have arrived at the conclusion that your injury is not all it seems and suspect it is a ruse to avoid redeployment to the front, as that would be the outcome if the army knew that you were sufficiently able bodied to satisfy your duties."

  I admit that this first demonstration of Holmes's powers of deduction so overwhelmed me that minutes passed before I was able to think or speak clearly. At times, even today, I find myself no less amazed when my friend pieces together a truth that was only moments before invisible to my own eyes. It seems so straightforward and simple when he explains his reasoning, but I know that I would fail to come to the same conclusion on my own no matter how ample a time I was given.

  "That's incredible," I said once my words had returned to me. "I can see why the detective values your opinion."

  Holmes merely shrugged. "My interests give me a...special insight into the meaning of some of the darker aspects of human nature. The police use that to their advantage at times."

  "Lestrade brought a drawing of the mark on the wall. That's what changed your mind about taking the case."

  A thin smile spread across Holmes's lips. He started back down the street at a more sedate pace, though I wasn't certain whether that was for my benefit or because some of the fire had gone out of him. "You are perceptive."

  "You were interested when it was simply a drawing, but not when you saw the mark in person."

  Holmes's laugh was more joyful than I would have thought him capable. "I was playing with Lestrade, though I am not sure that he is aware. It will give him something to do while I...we consider a different angle."

  "What angle would that be?"

  "That is still under consideration." Holmes nodded at a side street. The buildings here were less tired than the one we had just left. Laundry hung from open windows like celebration flags. The bitter smell of coffee mixed with a sour stench that suggested the Board of Health had not yet fully implemented their sanitation reforms in this neighborhood. "The officer who discovered the scene lives here. I should like to question him."

  A lone scarlet poppy struggled to bloom in a rusted bucket next to the front steps. The muffled sound of a crying child penetrated the heavy door. Holmes knocked and the wailing stopped. The woman who answered had heavy shadows under her eyes. A young child clutched at her stained apron. "Can I help ya'?" she asked, her voice weary.

  "My name is Sherlock Holmes and this is my associate, Dr. John Watson. We wished to speak to your husband."

  "He's sleepin'," the woman said.

  Holmes pulled a coin from his pocket and offered it to the child. She grabbed it and then shuffled further back behind her mother.

  "I'll wake 'im. Wait 'ere." She turned and left, the girl trailing along after her.

  Holmes and I loitered in the entry way. After a few moments, I started to pace back and forth across the cramped area. Holmes watched me for several minutes before he reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. "Stop."

  The muscles in my arms twitched painfully. "We should be out doing something."

  "I believe this counts."

  "We're waiting." I hesitated, the words needed to express my feelings refusing to form themselves on my tongue. Outside the world was rushing by and our killer put more distance between us with each passing second. Surely the victim deserved justice. Surely he had a family somewhere that cared about him. Surely....

  "You will learn in time."

  "Learn what?"

  Instead of answering, Holmes nodded towards the stair case. An older man in a threadbare robe made his way down the steps. "I already filed my report, Gentleman."

  "I understand, Officer Rand," Holmes said. "I simply wished to hear your story for myself. From the source, as it were."

  "Ain't much to tell. I was on my way h
ome at the end of my shift when I saw a light in one of the abandoned apartments up the way. I figured it was some drunkards seeking shelter or the like. Not really my business, seeing as I was off duty, but I feared ill might come of an unattended flame, so I went up to run them out. That's when I found the body."

  "The light?" Holmes asked.

  "Candles on the floor. I spilled hot wax on me when I picked one up." The man extended his hand so that we could see the red welts newly burnt into his flesh. "I raised the alarm immediately."

  "You should spread honey on those burns," I said. "They'll be less likely to fester."

  Holmes narrowed his eyes at me and I fell silent. "The candles?"

  "Didn't see no reason to leave them. Good candles are worth a pretty penny."

  "Of course." Holmes's words were more restrained than I expected. "Did you see anyone else?"

  The man shook his head. "Not a soul. No one on the street...no one else in the house.... I did...." Officer Rand's voice wavered as his words failed him.

  "Go on," Holmes said.

  "I did feel like someone was watching me. And I swear that I heard scratching at one of the windows. But...the other officers and I checked it out. Nothing. The wind and an overactive mind, I suppose."

  Holmes bowed his head slightly. "I appreciate your time, Officer Rand. You have been quite helpful."

  "Don't know how I could have been, but all the same. Good day, Gentleman."

  "The killer returned to the scene of the crime," Holmes said the moment the door closed behind us. There was a glee in his voice that I didn't understand.

  "We don't know that," I countered him. "There could be any number of explanations for the noises that Officer Rand heard."

  "It was our killer." There was a finality to Holmes's words that, even then, I knew better than to argue with.

  "Why would a killer return to the scene of the crime after they've escaped?" I asked. It seemed a preposterous theory to my mind, but I was sure Holmes had a reason for his belief.

  "Because they mislaid something of great importance." Holmes pulled a small, flat, brown stone from his pocket and handed it to me. Several lines had been etched into one side. "It's a rune."