Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?

by Paul Cornell

  ‘I wouldn’t do anything to let you hurt him. I wouldn’t.’

  He considered, then decided. ‘Kneel,’ he said. ‘Beg.’

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Lofthouse knelt and started to ask piteously for no harm to come to Peter. In the back of her mind, she kept repeating to herself the address that could save her husband. The spirit let her keep going until the sound of bubbling was audible from the pan, then finally, with a familiar little laugh, lifted his hand from it. It was reddened, but not yet scalded. ‘Amazing,’ he said, ‘what you’ll do for him. I really must experiment further.’

  FIVE

  Quill watched as the other three examined this new crime scene. Following Sefton’s call to arms, they seemed to have a new energy about them. It was Sherlock Holmes’s writing that had done it, that urgent tone. The ultimate crime, which they had to solve. Had that got the ghost ‘killed’? Had he been murdered when he got too close to a solution? Why all the clues? He deeply wished he could share in the energy of his team, in the urgency of Holmes. He wasn’t concentrating enough, knew he was missing something.

  The same thought kept rolling round and round in his head. Assuming nights in a hotel didn’t count, and he was now making that assumption based on the fact that when he’d been in Hell, he’d met relatively few people who didn’t have London accents, then the only person he knew he could save from damnation was Sarah’s sister, Laura, who’d never lived in the capital. How, though? How could he persuade her not to do something as seemingly harmless as move here? How could he do it without telling her what her sister and her sister’s child were already sentenced to? His body’s continual fear that something would leap out at him was making him physically tired, what felt like a literal weight around his shoulders, arms and chest. It was wearing him out. He couldn’t imagine what would happen when he was worn out.

  He’d decided, at Baker Street, that surrendering the scene to a crime scene examiner might well yield new data, so he’d asked Costain to call it in to Lofthouse, getting Anita Clarke’s Study in Scarlet investigation involved on the basis that someone seemed to have purposefully vandalized the Holmes Museum, leaving deliberate clues that were perhaps relevant to Clarke’s investigation. He hadn’t met Clarke before, but when she turned up, he found her to be smart and straightforward, and was pleased to be able to let her people deal with the representatives of the company that owned the museum as they arrived at the start of a working day. ‘What have your lot found?’ she’d asked.

  ‘Just this,’ he’d said, gesturing to the room around him. ‘No idea as to motive. No idea if it’s actually anything to do with your . . . two murders now.’

  ‘It looks indicative, specific vandalism and that knife, maybe taunting us.’ Quill could see what she couldn’t, that she was walking in blood. ‘How did you get on to this?’

  Quill had glanced to Sefton and considered, like he giddily considered so many career-ending decisions these days, telling the truth. ‘I’m afraid we’re not allowed to say.’ One of the museum officials had arrived, and Clarke had had to deal with that. She’d asked a sergeant to show Quill’s team what they had, and they’d all had a bit of a kip in the back of the cars on the way to the first of the crime scenes, in Brixton.

  Sefton had given that house a quick once-over, using his pendulum and his nose to search for any sign of spilled silver or knotted gold, any hint of something that could only be sensed by those with the Sight. He’d found nothing. There’d been no sign of a struggle, the sergeant had said. Christopher Lassiter had trusted his killer enough to calmly have tea with him, having let him into the house. It had almost certainly been someone he knew.

  Then they’d been taken to see the body, which had also yielded nothing from their side of the street. Lassiter had lain on the gurney looking oddly tense, his muscles locked, a look of strain on his face. Quill had wondered if he himself had looked like that when he’d been in this same situation, had imagined once again Sarah seeing him like that. Lassiter’s body had had its every muscle paralysed, the medical examiner had explained to them. Cause of death was asphyxiation as a result, which had taken about half an hour. Had Lassiter lain on the floor, watching his killer write that word on the wall? The poison had probably been curare. There were no puncture marks on the body, and the main investigation had found tiny pieces of what looked like the shell of a pill in the teeth. It might have been incompletely dissolved in hot tea.

  ‘We were working on the basis,’ said the sergeant, ‘that the killer or killers were trying to recreate the first murder in A Study in Scarlet. The second crime scene supports that, as you’ll see.’

  In the Conan Doyle story, Quill was told, it had been a pill and had been identified by Holmes as being ‘a South American alkaloid’. The tea hypothesis was based on two cups that had been left on the draining board in the kitchen, both immaculately cleaned. No DNA other than the victim’s had been found at the entire crime scene. None from friends, even. The matter of the blood, though, was ongoing. Lassiter had, in recent years it seemed, lived an isolated existence. Had he watched, dying, even that careful washing-up? Had he gasped and fought for air, perhaps expecting the good life he’d lived would get him to Heaven? Almost certainly not, not these days.

  Then, with thankfully more sleep in more cars in between, the team had been brought here. It was now late afternoon, dark outside, and they were in a hotel next to Euston Station, in a second-floor room that was utterly bland. Beside the open window lay the body of a man in the uniform of a cleaner, with a deep stab wound in his left side. On the wall above the body, as at the Brixton crime scene, the word ‘Rache’ was written in blood.

  ‘The time frame,’ said Ross, ‘puts this murder at ten p.m., before . . . I’m going to call what was done to Holmes a murder. So the sequence goes Brixton, here, Baker Street. If they are associated, and that’s a big assumption, noted as such, maybe the first two killings are to somehow, I don’t know, power up that blade that killed Holmes?’

  ‘Using sacrifices associated with Holmes to create a weapon to kill Holmes,’ said Sefton. ‘That feels right, and in my area of study, that often means it could be right.’

  ‘There are no more murders in A Study in Scarlet. So if that is what the MO was, this is over.’

  Quill squatted to look at the very real body and read from the report that the crime scene examiner had handed him. ‘Stabbed through the heart. This is almost precisely the location of the second murder in A Study in Scarlet, which wasn’t the case with the first killing. In the book, that took place in Lauriston Gardens, a real street that is a lot closer to the Brixton Road. The cause of death, though, in both cases, looks to be precisely the same as in the book.’

  ‘So the deaths don’t have to be correct in every detail,’ said Sefton.

  ‘The difference could be indicative,’ said Ross. ‘Why were the killer or killers content with the general area for the first murder, but were so specific with this one?’

  ‘No sign of a murder weapon,’ said Quill.

  ‘Could be the same one as killed Holmes,’ said Ross. ‘But why would that be necessary when the first murder was by poison?’

  ‘They’re waiting until we’re done before they remove the body. Nothing was taken from the room. The window was open when the body was found.’

  ‘Any connection between the victims?’ asked Costain.

  ‘The main investigation hasn’t unearthed anything yet. This is Richard Duleep, forty-six, lived in Rickmansworth, wife and three kids, a few counts of petty theft and aggro when he was younger, seen as a bit of a risk by the cleaning company, but they say he’d obviously turned over a new leaf. His workmates say he was just cleaning the room like always. Guest checked out hours before.’

  Costain looked out of the window. ‘The bird shit on the ledge is smeared. Someone got a ladder up here, right?’

  ‘That’s the line the main investigation are pursuing.’

  ‘That’s bizarre,’ said
Ross, ‘and also maybe indicative. If you’re aiming to just kill someone, anyone, in this building, then why not simply walk in, pick a floor and wait? Or break in downstairs or something?’

  ‘You need time to write the word,’ said Sefton.

  ‘Yeah, but to actually bring a ladder, to do it in full view . . .’ Ross was shaking her head, annoyed at the world.

  ‘We’ll get access to nearby CCTV camera footage after they’ve examined it,’ said Quill. ‘We’re told they have a clear view of the front of the building.’

  ‘If you’re going to climb up a bloody ladder right in view of everybody,’ said Costain, ‘there’ll be witnesses. We’re going to find out what suspect or suspects looks like. Unless they’re invisible, which is always a possibility.’

  Sefton was looking up at the word scrawled on the wall. ‘There are spatters between this and the body. I think this time that’s the victim’s blood.’

  ‘Fits with the book,’ said Ross. ‘In the story, the killer had a nosebleed at the first murder and wrote on the wall in his own blood. Then he used the victim’s blood the second time. He didn’t have to worry about DNA evidence.’

  ‘Spoilers,’ said Costain. Which still got no reaction from Ross. ‘Here, could this be that obvious? Could the killer be the ghost of whoever it is in the book? He’s got a motive for killing Holmes.’

  Sefton considered for a second. ‘I don’t know what the name of that character is, so I don’t think he’s anywhere near well known enough for London to remember him. From what I remember, none of the three adaptations filming in town are doing A Study in Scarlet, or maybe that’d be different.’

  ‘His name’s Jefferson Hope,’ said Ross, ‘and I agree, but he goes on the ops board.’ She said it like she was answering Sefton.

  Quill found himself looking once again at the body. This Richard Duleep was in Hell now, experiencing the torments Quill had experienced – more, because Quill was pretty sure he’d been spared some of it. It didn’t matter how kind Richard had been to his wife and three kids, how much he’d reformed; he’d fallen victim to the ultimate postcode lottery. It seemed almost bizarre to care who’d killed him.

  He looked up at the others, thinking he’d just blurt it out, share the burden. Seeing their faces stopped him. There was no help to be had. He’d just be putting weights round their necks. He made himself play his role once more. ‘Let’s take all this back to the Hill.’

  They got back to the Portakabin late in the day. As soon as they entered, Ross went to the ops board, which was now bare, the details of Operation Dante having been unpicked from it. She pinned a piece of blank paper on the wall beside it, took a marker and offered it to Quill. ‘Name of the operation and list of operational aims.’ She was aware that she was being brusque with a senior officer, but she was getting enormously pissed off with Quill’s strained silences. It wasn’t as if he was the only one suffering from what had happened during the Ripper case. She herself had lost the ability to feel happiness, but beyond that, her father was in Hell. Previously she’d got slight comfort from him being able to make desperate attempts to visit her. Unfortunately, those had been discovered, and ceased. She shared, however, Sefton’s conviction that they had here a new case that could get them working together like they’d used to, though maybe not all of them. Costain could piss off outside London, where he wouldn’t have to worry about the Sight, for all she cared.

  Quill paused before taking the marker. He’d sometimes indicated, after he’d had a few, that he had occasionally suffered from depression. He’d talked about their new vocation as a revelation that there was a point to life after all, as if there could be a cure, but this current malaise went further than anything she’d seen from him.

  She now had a vague idea of how he felt. She sometimes needed to find logical reasons to do everyday things like choosing a different shirt in the morning. Her problem, however, was specific. Quill these days seemed to keep getting stuck thinking there was something he should do or say, decide not to say it, then have to be forced back into the moment. He needed someone to keep trying to jump-start him.

  Quill caught her look and finally nodded. He went to the paper and began to write.

  1. Ensure the safety of the public.

  2. Gather evidence of offences.

  3. Identify and trace subject or subjects involved.

  4. Identify means to arrest subject or subjects.

  5. Arrest subject or subjects.

  6. Bring to trial/destroy.

  ‘Generic,’ said Costain, ‘but yeah. We can’t bundle killing a fictional character with the other two murders, not if we want a jury to keep a straight face. What are we going to call it?’

  Quill picked up a piece of card and looked at it. ‘One of you,’ he said, and held it in their direction.

  Sefton took the pen and the card from him. ‘Something bloody positive,’ he said. Then he started to write, turned and pinned the name of their new operation at the top of the ops board.

  OPERATION GAME.

  ‘What, like . . . the game Operation?’ said Costain.

  ‘I couldn’t call it “Afoot”, could I?’

  ‘It’ll do,’ said Quill.

  They began, between them, to build the board. Ross felt herself relax as they did so, and she was sure Sefton and Costain felt the same way. They put up pictures of the victims, including, taken from the Internet, a Sidney Paget illustration of Holmes in his deerstalker. They linked a photo of the Holmes murder weapon to that image, with a close-up of the detail on the blade, and a picture of a generic pill to that of Lassiter. What was inscribed on the blade had been the easiest detail to find: the stick men were from another Holmes story, ‘The Dancing Men’, where they’d been a sort of code. In the story, the messages were much longer, and when translated were a mixture of imploring stalker notes and threats. Ross had found some complete alphabets for the figures online, but they differed, and having consulted the story itself, she found there weren’t enough letters given to construct a definitive version. However, one of the online versions had yielded a translation for what was on the blade that made sense, and now she wrote the word on the board beside the weapon: Ghostkiller. She would have added as a suspect a picture of the Holmes expert who’d written the online alphabet, but he’d died in New Zealand fifteen years ago.

  The word ‘Rache’ was pinned up and connected to the two non-fictional victims. Ross printed out images of the lines between the bullet holes in the wall, the gaps in the bookcase, the gaps in the letters, the pinpricks in the eyes, the melted head, the spiral on the hearth, the chalk doorway, the astronomical charts and photo, and the envelope it had arrived in. The charts had been interesting: a map of the heavens circa the 1960s, the sort of thing you might buy in a junk shop; a chart of the solar system that was similar, with a 1973 date on the copyright; a picture of a very general star field, with index numbers at the edges that presumably indicated what part of the sky this was. She pinned photos of all of them, and of the message on the back of that particular picture, onto the board. She sent the photo and envelope to be fingerprinted. Costain printed out pictures of Jefferson Hope, as drawn on what looked like a cigarette card, Moriarty, a drawing from one of the books, General Gordon and Henry Ward Beecher and added them, with a look on his face that was continually hoping to get either a laugh or an order to bin them, to a suspect line above all the rest.

  Then, more seriously, he added a picture of the assistant curator, with her name, Ann Stanley, under it. ‘She was there alone,’ he said. ‘We shouldn’t just trust her version.’

  Ross found herself wanting to nod, but made herself not do so. Any positive gesture in his direction could be the start of a slow slide towards him wheedling his way back under her guard. She knew what he was capable of. She put up a blank card with the question ‘Watson?’ on it. She ran a line down separating the Holmes murder and the other two, because a connection had yet to be found, and Costain had to divide up his ‘su
spects’ as a result. He gave no indication of being annoyed at that. ‘We have two killings like those in Holmes’s stories,’ she said, ‘and one that isn’t. That’s got to be the main indicator here. Let’s not start trying to make the death of Holmes into a Holmes story.’

  ‘You know,’ said Sefton, ‘one of the Continuing Projects Team was called Watson. The memory of him is missing like the ghost of this Watson is missing. Can anyone think of another Watson?’

  A quick look at Wikipedia confirmed they could. ‘I’m relieved these days,’ said Costain, ‘when it turns out there are still coincidences.’

  As they were working, Quill got an email through from DI Clarke’s office. The crime scene examiner had decided the wax head could have been melted, by a sufficiently intense flame, in five minutes, so that didn’t give them any help with the time frame. They looked at the plans and found that the chalk doorway would lead into the stairwell of the building next door, which one could exit without setting off an alarm. So if the killer had had the same resources Ballard did, they had an obvious means of escape.

  After they’d finished, they stepped back and looked at what they had. So much noise. Not unusual for this stage of an operation. She’d wanted there to be something straight away for the sake of the team. ‘Reasons why someone might have done all that at the Holmes crime scene,’ she began.

  ‘As ritual,’ said Sefton, ‘necessary for the sacrifice, if that’s what this was.’

  ‘As a message,’ said Costain, ‘a taunting puzzle hidden in all that detail, like Jimmy said.’

  ‘We still don’t know exactly how the process of London remembering stuff works. According to what Jimmy saw’ – she didn’t want to say ‘in Hell’ – ‘the memories of the dead seem to matter as much as the living. If Sherlock Holmes, the remembered fictional character, is now somehow dead, then how are they still filming movies about him?’ She held up her phone showing news footage of the three Holmes productions carrying on today despite the media screaming about the new murder. ‘Shouldn’t they have forgotten who their central character is, or lost enthusiasm for him or something? What exactly does it mean to have “murdered Sherlock Holmes”? If we can find out what’s changed because of the murder, then we might get some idea of motive, because at the moment that’s completely lacking.’