The Commissioner’s face went red as a carpet burn. “Arrest him? Avery? For what?”
Holmes’ eyes settled directly into Avery’s and a slight, knowing grin creased his face. “For the murder of his wife, Camilla.”
***
“I say, Holmes,” I began, flummoxed to gills. “You never cease to amaze me.”
“It was all very elementary, my dear Watson,” Holmes said, for the first time ever.
We were standing outside the confession box in Scotland Yard, where through a window we could see Constable Avery sitting at a table weeping into his hands. He’d just confessed to strangling then burying his wife in the forest outside the grounds of Averyshire, the castle that had been kept in his family for seven generations. It had been a crime of passion. He’d been having an affair with a Lady from another well-to-do family and Camilla had found out. She threatened to divorce him, make everything public at the fundraiser that night, destroy his family name and wreck his wealth. A wealth that was willed to him only if he promised to take a menial job, learn what the true importance of having money was all about, that’s why he’d become a constable. While constables were digging up Avery’s wife, Avery’s father, approaching seventy years old, had been notified of his son’s crime and was on the way with a barrister. Commissioner Carruthers was reading the confession Avery had written, shaking his head in disbelief, his face still red.
“But what made you suspect?” I asked Holmes, nearly delirious with curiosity.
“It all began with you, Watson.”
“Me? What did I do, Holmes?”
“It was you that brought attention to Avery’s ill countenance,” Holmes explained. “You logically assumed his paleness was caused by yellow fever. But remembering that we’re in late October now and it’s too cold for mosquito’s to live and breed and spread yellow fever, his paleness had to be caused by another factor. He claimed it was by being caught out in the rain and he caught a slight chill, but if you remember, Watson, it hadn’t rained last night - it rained yesterday morning.”
“Yes, that’s right! I remember we went out to pick up our tuxedos for tonight. It was a clear and starry night!” I exclaimed.
“Proving Avery lied and when someone lies, he’s hiding something. Leading me no other choice but to deduce that his paleness and clamminess were caused by exertion. But exertion from doing what? While shaking his hand I felt a number of fresh, thick calluses, the kind only brought on by digging with a heavy shovel. A quick look at his fingernails showed that there was fresh soil underneath them. Another quick look at his boots proved that they hadn’t been shined, but were covered in a thick layer of dirt. So then I wondered; why was he digging as recently as an hour before arriving to the event hall? Which led me to the bruise on his chin, also fresh in every aspect. I’m sure when Commissioner Carruthers looks up Avery’s work schedule, he’ll find that Avery was off last night. The violent drunken laborer was an invention. I surmised that he received the bruise earlier tonight, but from who?”
“Who indeed?” I asked incredulously.
“When I noticed that Avery’s wife was absent from tonight’s event, something no constable’s wife would do unless under duress, I suspected it was his wife that had given him the bruise, in a desperate fight for her life, so I started asking him questions about her.”
“I remember.”
“Then I’m sure you noticed how his nervousness increased, how he began stuttering and sweating. Every answer concerning his wife was a lie.”
“All of it? And you know this how?” I asked.
“Easily. Avery claimed that he hadn’t seen his wife for two days, that would be Wednesday, yet when I leaned in, feigning deafness, I distinctly smelled her perfume on his jacket. It’s called Misty Mountain, the same perfume she was wearing two years ago when we rescued her from the Black Rose Ruffians. So she and Avery had been in very close quarters very recently. Then, as you saw, I found a strand of Camilla’s freshly washed hair on Avery’s jacket. Upon closer inspection I saw that it had been pulled out by the root, during a violent process.”
“Pure brilliance, Holmes!” I said, my head was drowning with information overload.
“The kicker was that Avery claimed he put his wife on a Paddington Station steamer heading out for Cornwall on Wednesday, but I’ve memorized all the train schedules in London and know the Paddington Station steamer only goes to Cornwall on weekends.”
“I’m - I’m fumblegutted, Holmes,” I said. “Only you could have pulled this off.”
“On the contrary, Watson,” Holmes countered. “All one has to do is remember to use all his senses when investigating a crime. As I said before, it’s all elementary.”
A Most Irregular Murder
I was awoken from a sound sleep by a menacing thump originating from the parlour of our flat on 221b Baker Street.
Quickly, yet most stealthily, I lit a lamp, put on a robe and slippers then checked the clock on my bed stand, it read just after four in the morn - dawn was only an hour away. I stood next to my bed, listening like a guard dog in waiting, for another disturbance. After a minute of this, I heard nothing more. Still, the memory of that thump rattled me, it sounded suspicious and would keep me awake until I checked it out. I pulled open the top drawer of my bed stand, took out my service revolver. Once I had that cold steel in my hand and checked to make sure all the barrels were full, I locked the hammer back... now I had courage enough to open my bedroom door. I had hoped to meet Holmes coming out of his room, as he is often a light sleeper and may have heard the noise also, but no, my compatriot still slept soundly - his door remained closed.
I held the lamp high with one hand and aimed the revolver forward with my other as I cautiously stepped into the parlour. The rhythmic pumping of my heart drummed relentlessly in my ears, my trigger finger ready to spring at any moment. That was when I saw it... the door to the flat was wide open, revealing the hall and the staircase beyond! Someone had entered the flat! My thoughts went immediately to Mrs Hudson, our good landlord down in 221a, hoping no harm had come to her by way of the mysterious prowler.
I froze and listened again, all my senses tuned and focused. This time I heard a strange sound, almost like a small puppy whining to be let out, it was coming from the floor just beyond Holmes’ double wide armchair. With the revolver trembling in my hand, I went around the piece of furniture and saw the object of my quest, lying there in a heap of old, tattered clothes and blood.
It was a small figure, a boy judging from the way he was dressed, laying on his back, arms outstretched, palms open and facing up. His legs were spread apart, his bare feet dirty, almost completely blackened. His chest rose and fell rapidly, in concert with that high pitched wheezing. Whoever it was, he was in a very bad way. It occurred to me that this could be one of Holmes’ famous Baker Street Irregulars, that band of homeless street urchins we often received aid and information from to help close a case.
I released the hammer on the revolver and threw it on to Holmes’ armchair as I rushed over to perform a hurried triage. I knelt down beside the boy, placing the lamp near his head so that I could see properly, but what I saw horrified me. The boy’s right eye was badly swollen and purpled, so much so that I couldn’t discern where his eyelids met. His nose was smashed in and bloodied, malformed almost beyond recognition; wheezing was coming from his left nostril, the only one of the two that was clear enough to allow air in and out. There was a curious purple bruise on his right side cheek, in what I recognized to be the shape of a small hand with only four fingers, the absent one being the ring finger; obviously the shadow of a very powerful slap. His chin and lips nearest the bruise were grossly swollen and bloody, it was obvious to me his jaw was broken, it wouldn’t be easy for him to speak while in that condition. But the worst injury was to his head just above his right temple, it was plain to see that the
skull underneath had been smashed in by a hard, blunt object, the edges were sharp and distinctly rectangular. Dark, coagulating blood had caked around the injury in a futile effort to halt the flow. The left side of the boy’s face, though, was relatively untouched and for a moment I’d thought him familiar. His left eye blinked twice then he seemed to recognize me as his pupil fell directly upon my visage. He looked to be no older than ten or eleven.
His left arm moved and the fingers of his left hand grabbed on to my wrist, pulling it towards him. I leaned over, positioning my ear over his mouth. With great effort, the boy whispered: “Help... Holmes... help.”
“What’s your name, boy?” I asked but the only answer I received was a forced sigh. His good eye closed then he released his desperate grip on my wrist. He’d expended too much energy and just lay there, wheezing horribly. It was clear that there was nothing I could do to fix his injuries, it was only a matter of time before he expired.
“Holmes!” I cried. “Holmes! Hurry! There’s a dying boy here to see you!”
***
“It’s young Peter Lawson,” Holmes said as he knelt down next to the boy. The name was familiar but it still wasn’t clear to me exactly who he was.
“One of your Irregulars?” I asked.
“Yes, he helped us track down Thornwald, that damned giant who stole the Pearl of Death last year, remember?”
I did remember the boy now. Holmes had given him two shillings instead of one, for his services. “Do you think the pearl has anything to do with this?” I asked.
Holmes was scanning the dying boy from head to toe, he had a disgusted grimace on his face. “Not at all, Watson. Thornwald died falling through that roof and the pearl has been returned to the proper authorities. That case is closed. Young Master Peter has been beaten for an entirely unrelated reason.”
The boy, hearing Holmes’ voice, came out of his stupor and looked up at the consulting detective with a clear, concentrated eye. His energy seemed replenished.
“Peter,” Holmes began. “Can you speak? Who did this to you?”
The boy tried courageously to get his jaw and lips to coordinate but all he could get out were a series of tortured mumbles. Finally he gave up, realizing it was useless. With his left hand he pointed at the four-fingered bruise on his cheek, then he dropped his hand and moaned. I noticed the boy’s breathing becoming shallower and shallower.
“Is there nothing you can do, Watson?” Holmes asked.
“I-I’m sorry, Holmes,” I said. “His injuries are far too-”
“Never mind! I have something,” Holmes said impatiently, stood up then rushed into his bedroom. A moment later he came out with a small bottle and a hypodermic needle. He knelt down next to the boy again then began pulling the clear liquid from the bottle into the hypodermic. “From my own personal stock,” Holmes added. “To ease his suffering.”
When he put the bottle on the floor, the label read Morphine, evidence of Holmes’ continuing struggle with addiction. He plunged the needle into the boy’s right arm and pushed the plunger. Young Peter’s relief was immediate, but he was going fast.
“Peter,” Holmes pleaded as he dropped the needle. “Try to concentrate, try to gather up the strength to answer my questions. I promise I’ll find who did this to you, but I need your help for only a few minutes longer... ”
In answer, the boy reached into his pants pocket with his right hand and came out with a fist. He thrust his fist into Holmes’ hands, opened it, immediately I heard a metallic tinkling sound. Then the boy gave out one last gasp and fell limp, his breathing completely ceased. I took the boy’s wrist and felt for a pulse, finding nothing.
“He was so young,” I said, shaken to the core at the tragedy I’d just witnessed. “Who would do such a monstrous thing?”
“A devil,” Holmes murmured, I could see immense grief masking his face like a cloud of black smoke. “A soulless, evil, unfeeling devil with no regard for human innocence. It’s a terrible time we live in, Doctor.”
A moment of deep silence passed between us as we slowly let the sad occasion of the past few minutes sink in, though, I suspected Holmes’ mind was racing like a stallion at Pemblebrook.
“What did Young Peter give you, Holmes? A clue?”
My voice startled the great consulting detective out of his musings. “What? Oh, this,” Holmes answered as he opened his hand. In his palm were two shiny shillings. “I believe, my dear Watson, that Young Peter has hired us to find his killer.”
***
As Mrs Hudson went to fetch a morgue wagon and an inspector from Scotland Yard, the sun was coming up, promising yet another overcast and dreary spring morning in London. Holmes ran a glass over Peter’s corpse many times, looking for the most miniscule evidence of the boy’s plight. I did what I could to assist him but I was still deeply troubled and fear I was only hindering his investigation.
“Ah, what’s this, then?” Holmes said as he focused in on Peter’s head wound. He used a pair of tweezers and pulled something from the blood and gore.
He held it up for me to see but I could only guess what it was and told Holmes so: “It resembles a sliver of some kind.”
“Quite correct, my friend,” Holmes said as he spun it around in front of his piercing brown eyes. Then he brought it to his nostrils and sniffed. The repugnance of this made me queasy but I trusted that he knew what he was doing. “Yes. A cedar sliver to be exact, a wood commonly used in ship building, which places Young Peter’s mauling near one of the ship building yards on the banks of the Thames, somewhere in the East End.”
The logic of this deduction was unshakeable, but he had more.
“I’d say the murder weapon was a piece of wood, not a very common choice when it comes to killing. It was probably lying conveniently near the attacker, which means Peter’s killing wasn’t premeditated. It was spur of the moment, fueled on by high tempers and a vicious argument. Judging from the distinctly shaped wound, it was a two-by-four or something very close to that size.”
I stared at the wound and shook my head. “It’s truly amazing to me, Holmes,” I began. “That the boy could reach our flat from the East End with such a debilitating injury.”
“It’s not amazing at all, Watson,” Holmes stated calmly. “The last desperate action of Young Master Peter’s life was to get here, it tells you how important it was for him. In all of London, our flat was the place he chose to die. If we are to catch his killer, there is no better place for him to go and he knew that.”
“Is there anything else you can discern from his corpse?”
Holmes nodded. “All the bruises and wounds are on the right side of his face,” he said and pointed to the obvious damage. “His killer was left handed. And look at this-” he put his hand close to the mysterious four-fingered bruise. “See how much smaller the killer’s hand is compared to mine?”
“The killer was a child?”
“Or a woman.”
“A woman? I find that unbelievable, Holmes!” I exclaimed.
“A woman isn’t capable of killing, Doctor?” Holmes asked rhetorically. “History is rife with women who kill.”
“But in this violent a fashion?”
“Hmmm. I’ll give you that, my friend,” Holmes conceded as he rubbed his chin. “Usually they poison their victims or hire someone to complete the task. Only prudent, determined investigation will win that debate, Watson. Luckily, we have a four-fingered clue to lead the way!”
***
Detective Inspector Lestrade and the wagon men from the morgue arrived not long after we’d completed the investigation of Young Peter Lawson’s corpse. On the street, outside the flat, as I gave Lestrade the details of the happenings earlier that morning, I noticed Holmes acting strangely. He seemed distracted by things in the shadows of nearby alleys or behind the corners of build
ings, things I couldn’t see for myself.
Once Lestrade and the morgue wagon left, Holmes came up to me and grabbed my sleeve. “Prepare some tea, milk and biscuits, Watson,” he said into my ear. “We’re going to have visitors.”
I’d long learned not to trouble myself with Holmes’ way of mystery, knowing things always became clear to me later on, so I shrugged my shoulders and did as he’d requested. As I boiled the water in the pot, Holmes reclined in his armchair while smoking a pipe, legs crossed - quietly, calmly, perusing through the morning edition of the London Gazette. With the first rising whistle of the tea pot, Mrs Hudson knocked and entered our flat.
“Callers, Mr Holmes,” she said. “A whole slew of them.”
Holmes quickly folded the gazette, threw it on the floor and stood up. “Thank you, Mrs Hudson,” he said. “Please show them in.”
As I placed a tray full of biscuits on the dining table, a small army of children came through the door, all were shoddily dressed, very grief stricken and in desperate need of a bath. They were of all shapes and sizes, but none over the age of twelve. The tallest and, in my estimation, oldest of them was a blond haired girl, the only girl in the group, she seemed to be their leader. I couldn’t help but be impressed with her raw beauty and strength, she would have made a fine young vision in a different circumstance, a different world.
Holmes stared at them with sincere concern, then finally spoke: “My deepest sympathy for the loss of your compatriot, Irregulars.”
The only one not staring hungrily at the biscuits was the girl, she responded in a proper, refined, cordial manner which belied her physical appearance: “Thank you, Mr Holmes. You’ve always been fair and good to us in our dealings together, that’s why we’ve come to you this morning.”
Holmes, observing their eyes, motioned toward the dining table. “Let’s not begin our conversation on an empty stomach, Miss Elsiebeth. Would you all care for a biscuit?” he asked.
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