The Train Murder

Disclaimer: I don't own any version of Sherlock, nor do I claim to be good at mysteries and detective works.

This was also based off a prompt from my boss, involving a train murder-mystery. Think of this as one of John Watson's blog posts. I seriously love that his blog actually exists.

It was a normal day: started out with morning tea and biscuits, then on to a new case. Our client is out in the country, so we have to take the train. At least this time Sherlock isn't carrying a bloody harpoon and smelling of pig.

I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose, as he insults yet another passenger. She was just complimenting his scarf. Honestly, the man may be a genius, but he can be socially stunted at times. "Sherlock, there's no need to bring up her deceased mother."

"But it's obvious from the bag she carries and her attire that she's going to a funeral," the man begins and I groan. "Whose funeral? Well judging by the age lines around her eyes and mouth, the redness of her eyes, and trembling fingers, it's either a dear friend or relative. Since her child is clinging to her skirts, I can rule kids out. Her ring finger has been unoccupied for several years, so her husband is either already dead or long gone, good riddance. But the connection to her mother comes in the perfume she's wearing, obviously a scent for older women, too old for her, which could be her mother's. A favorite scent can remind you of a loved one, ergo, her mum passed." Sherlock spits the words out quickly, pointing at each clue as he speaks. The woman he is breaking down is shuddering, mouth open in what can be seen as either fury or sorrow. "So sorry for your loss, by the way." He adds as an afterthought.

"Sherlock, you can't just say sorry after insulting someone and doing a forensic analysis." I exclaim, expression one he should be used to by now.

His face scrunches up as the woman and her son teeter away, clearly offended and upset. Shrugging, he adjusts his coat and takes out the day's paper to read. "Boring, lies, boring, another scandal, who cares? Old news, not true, more scandals, pfft!" he flips through quickly before slamming it down on the seat next to him.

This is going to be a long train ride.

"Something's off." Sherlock mutters, scanning the carriage.

"What is it now, Sherlock?" I sigh. He already complained about the food provided, the seating, the window views, the amount of people in the same carriage as us, the questions he got once people recognized him as the famous detective, and yelled at the attendants multiple times for 'getting in his way' somehow or another. What can he possibly complain about now?

"It's too quiet." He narrows his eyes, nose twitching.

I throw my hands up, slapping my knees. "Earlier you said it was too loud."

"Earlier there were too many people. Now there are too few."

"What are you going on about? Are you actually complaining about the exact number of people in this carriage?"

"No, someone's missing." He hisses. I know that look on his face. He's on the hunt.

"Sherlock, we're already on our way to a case." I remind him. He is already standing, preparing to dissect the entire train.

"That one can wait, this one is much more fascinating." He tells me.

"And what case is this, then? Someone went to the bathroom and got lost on the way back?" I ask without much seriousness.

He turns to look at me with a knowing gaze and delivers a stunning proclamation. "No, a murder."

Great, just what we need. And here I was hoping for a nice, pleasant ride out into the country for an easy case.

"Listen up everyone," Sherlock announces. I groan again. Here he goes, creating a frenzy in a chance to show off his brilliance. He's almost worse than Mycroft. Almost. "There has been a murder on the train. Now, don't panic, I'll figure it out before we even reach the station—,"

And that's as far as he gets when the other passengers start to, against his advice, panic.

"A murder? Who? Where?" a man shrieks, looking around.

"Oh dear…but how?" an elderly woman asks, clutching her purse close and eyeing the others around her.

"How do you know there's a murder when there's been no body found?" a younger man adds, dumbfounded, judging by his open mouth and squinty eyes.

"I can smell it."

"Now you're being preposterous." I exhale, rubbing my forehead to ease the migraine already forming.

"You should be ashamed of yourself as a doctor, John. That odd scent in the air, coming from the vents, haven't you noticed it yet? It's been in the carriage for the past few minutes. I noticed some of you reacting to the smell, but no one said a word." Sherlock states.

"Normal train smells?" one passenger suggests.

I sniff the air, burned at his comment on my medical knowledge. The unmistakable smell of death is indeed in the air, dusty and rank. It's a smell I am so used to experiencing, I rarely notice it anymore. Shame.

"I smell it. But it could just be a rodent." I tell him.

"Psh. Come on, John, you know better than that." He side-eyes me, like a petulant child, and shakes his head. "No, that's the smell of a human body disintegrating."

The passengers look uncomfortable, fidgeting in their seats while fearful eyes dart around the carriage. Some get up, as if to do something, but end up standing in front of their seats and looking around.

"Well you don't need to frighten all these people. Let's call an attendant over." I whisper in his ear.

"For what? We're the ones who are going to solve this. Well, I will, while you just make snide remarks as usual." He grumbles beside me.

"Hey!" I exclaim, eyes wide as they regard him with disbelief. He seems to forget all the times I helped out in other cases, especially getting him out of trouble. Need I remind him of the taxi driver and those tantalizing pills? I am about to, when he speaks again.

"Let's find the body." He is moving as he speaks, leaving me to catch up. Long legs take him to the door in only a few strides, while my shorter legs take a few more to reach him. He opens the door, stepping across the open space to enter the next carriage. I hop over, joining him.

"We're going to start a ruckus. Why not let them call Scotland Yard?" I ask.

"They'll take too long. I can solve this by the time they get here to take the murderer away." Sherlock mutters in a matter-of-fact tone. I should be used to a response like that by now, but it never ceases to amaze me how arrogant one person can be.

"If the murderer is still on the train." I mumble, but he hears me.

"Of course he's still on the train." Again with that obvious tone, like it's the easiest thing in the world to know where a murderer is after a crime is committed. "It would be obvious if a passenger or attendant went missing right after a murder. Think, John."

This is going to be a very long train ride.

"Sir, this is the conductor's carriage, you can't be in here."

Sherlock ignores him as he searches the room, rapping on the walls for hidden cubbies and opening the closets. I try my best to calm the conductor down, as well as the several attendants who started following us halfway through the train as Sherlock searched for the source of the smell.

"I can assure you, there's not been a murder on my train. It's probably a rat got into the vents." The conductor tells us.

"Nope." Sherlock says loudly, rifling through any open compartments he can get his hands on.

"There's no way a body could even be stowed on this train without someone knowing," an attendant begins.

"Wrong." Sherlock interrupts loudly again.

They turn to me, and all I can do is shrug helplessly. "Detectives…heh…." I chuckle breathlessly, scratching my head. "Um, Sherlock? I don't think it's in here."

He's furious now, unable to find the body yet knowing it's there. I can sense the tantrum starting by the tense set of his limbs. "It has to be here. We searched everywhere else. Unless…" he looks up, eyes squinting at something only he can see. "Unless it was right under our noses…"

"You're so dramatic…" I sigh to myself, and this time he doesn't hear me—or refuses to acknowledge my statement. He's off again, coat whipping out behind him, and I offer a quick wave before following in a power walk behind. Let it be known that I never run behind Sherlock, only walk quickly. The attendants take a moment before I hear their footsteps following behind us.

"We're going back to our carriage. It has to be there and I didn't notice it." He says as we make our way down the halls, passengers giving us odd looks and staring as they see us pass by again.

"Oh, so you were wrong at first?" I say with a smile. I am always waiting for a chance to tease him, just as he waits to show off.

I see his mouth twitch and his eyes cut back to mine, but he says nothing. At least he's learning something.

We re-enter our carriage, where chaos has erupted. Passengers are shouting, frantic, clutching their belongings and companions. They gasp, eyes on us as we come back.

"Did you find it?"

"Who did it? Who was killed?"

"Are we safe yet?"

They ask questions nearly all at once, but Sherlock ignores them as usual. He starts shooing people away from their seats, ripping up the cushions and throwing them to the side. He raps on the walls, ripping and slamming his fist.

"Now you're destroying the train, Sherlock." I state in a tone I use when speaking with children. He is used to it, enough to sneer back at me and continue ripping the upholstery.

"Sorry…sorry…" I mutter to the other passengers. When he starts tugging at someone's luggage, I finally step in. "Okay, stop. There isn't going to be a dead body in someone's suitcase. For god's sake Sherlock, we haven't been off a case for that long!" I tell him. What could possibly have gotten into him today? Boredom? Is this another game? I'm beginning to think this is just another wild goose chase he devised to make the train ride more stimulating and entertaining. It wouldn't surprise me.

"It's here, John. I can feel it." He snarls.

"Really? Because at first you could only smell it."

"Oh shut up." He snaps, putting his hands to his temples. Going to his Mind Palace already? That's usually reserved for a last resort when he's utterly stumped. It's too early in the case for him to be utterly stumped. He should still be on his know-it-all phase.

"Aha!" he exclaims, finger in the air. Dear lord, the theatrics he goes through during a case is more than I'd see in any play. He comes up to a space in the wall where a compartment is held to stow away luggage, seeming to measure off something. "Has anyone used this?"

"No, it was stuck earlier. Wouldn't open, so I put my suitcase in another—," the woman who spoke is waved off. The others shake their heads, and he beams.

"That's because the body was in here the whole time." He declares and knocks on the compartment with the side of his fist. It falls open, and out drops the body of a middle-aged man.

Someone shrieks, and Sherlock is smiling at us, having finally found the body.

"Well…" I say in a rush of breath, hands bouncing at my sides without having anything else to do. "Guess we found it." I rock on my feet, glancing at the people around us who are appalled and terrified. "You might…want to leave now." I suggest. They scatter like rats.

Attendants come rushing in, but Sherlock holds out his hand to stop them. "Don't come any closer, this is now a crime scene and I don't want you idiots contaminating the small amount of evidence left to collect." He says, ever so polite.

He takes out his tools and gets to work, looking at the bruises and gashes on the man's figure, noting the crusted blood on his clothing, rummaging through his pockets and analyzing the dirt beneath his boots. I wait until he calls me over, lifting the man's wrist to figure out how long he's been dead. It has to be a fresh death; that would explain the smell coming so late on the train. But why would anyone want to hide a body on a train right at the start? Why not wait until the next stop and—

"Obviously he wasn't killed here." Sherlock states.

"Right." I add as I catch on.

"The station we were picked up at, it must have been done there."

"Uh huh." I agree.

"He was on the train and got off, only to change outfits and re-enter as a new passenger. It is too obvious when a passenger leaves after dumping the body, which is why he didn't leave, but the police would think he did. Different name, different appearance, different ticket."

"Okay...wait…wait how do you know he got back on the train? How do you know he got off in the first place?" I ask, turning to look up at him with squinty eyes and a gaping mouth.

"Because we saw him before and after his transformation. Remember?" Sherlock is starting his big speech, I can tell. All I need to do is give him my confused expression and he'll start in. "Ohhh John!" he's squeezing his hands, bending his knees to jump back up excitedly. The attendants are probably starting to wonder how far on the autistic spectrum he is. "Think, John! He bumped into you as he was disembarking. Shaggy hair, open shirt, didn't bother to apologize. You commented that it was rude, glaring at him, before we boarded. Then I noticed him come back on, but with a cap pulled over his hair and a large coat. I was sure it was him, because I noticed a spot of blood on his pant leg and it was there as I looked down. I thought it odd, storing it in my Mind Palace for later."

Yes, he's on a roll now.

"He must have used the crowd to blend in, ducking into the bathroom or an empty corridor to change appearance and reappear as a different passenger. The attendants wouldn't notice because they aren't paying attention to the people, just the tickets, and would probably miss a bomb going off right in front of their faces." They glare at him, making noises of affront. "No offense." He shoots quickly before returning to his analysis. "So he has a new ticket, clearly planned the entire thing out, and takes his place in the same carriage where he stored the body. Perhaps that was his luggage, and he merely didn't want to pay the extra coins." He shrugs and one person near about faints at his casual tone.

"I highly doubt the killer would be traveling with a human suitcase, Sherlock." I remark snidely. He points at me, and I am reminded of our earlier conversation. Scowling at him, I cross my arms and gesture for him to finish. He said he was going to solve this before we arrived at the station, and we're already starting to get close.

"Aside from the cruel joke, I believe he had a purpose in storing the body on the train and staying with it. He must have been transporting it for some reason. So, he killed this man on the train, stuck him in here and made sure the lock would stick so no one else would stumble upon it, made it look like he disembarked, then reentered to keep an eye on his luggage." I hold back the snort.

"Mind explaining to the peanut gallery how you know all that?" an attendant asks. I can see their faces as they try to figure out what Sherlock already knows.

Sherlock holds up the ticket he snagged from the dead man's pocket. "With this. He embarked on the train a few stations back and was supposed to get off at the last one. No one would report him missing on the train if he wasn't supposed to be on it."

"So who killed this man? Or are you still working on that part?" I ask lazily.

"Oh, that's easy. It's the missing passenger."

"What missing passenger?" an attendant asks.

"The one I mentioned earlier, when I first caught scent of the body. He must have noticed it and left before anyone else could so he wouldn't get caught. Stupid, of course, seeing as I'm here."

"Remember what we talked about the other day, Sherlock? About humility?" I look at him pointedly. He sighs, rolling his eyes.

"All we have to do is find the missing passenger, and we have the killer. Easy!" with a snap of his tiny magnifying glass, he brushes past us all and down the hall.

"Apparently he knows where the killer is." I sigh, once again trailing after him. I just want to sit down and rest my legs for once, is that too much to ask? The group follows us, and soon we gain some curious passengers. We go back and forth, Sherlock getting to one part of the train only to change his mind and double back, forcing the group to turn, hurriedly trying to catch up. I have a feeling there's a purpose to this, but I keep my mouth shut as to what it might be.

Soon the entire train is following us, murmuring amongst themselves as we hunt for the killer. Sherlock abruptly stops, turning to the crowd, and does a head count. Of course. This is what he wanted all along.

"Right then!" he claps his hands once. "The killer is amongst us. One of you stashed the body and hid on this train. No need to run now, this will only take a moment."

The crowd is gasping, looking around, inching away from each other nervously, and questioning their companions or carriage mates. Sherlock moves through them, pushing some aside. "No, not you. Nope. No. Not you." He passes by each one, heading toward the back, and I see him.

"Sherlock!" I call. The killer is behind him, pulling a gun from his overcoat, cap tugged snug over his hair, but I catch the brown curls peeking out and recognize the build of the man who bumped into me earlier.

Sherlock turns, facing the killer with a smile on his face, gun pointing between his eyes. I know the shot will be difficult to dodge at this distance, with so many people around and in the way. I step forward, but Sherlock stops me with a gesture of his hand, hidden from the killer.

"Found you."

"And what do you intend to do now? Let me guess, discuss why I did it and how, telling all these people how smart you are by figuring my motives out, eh? Not today, detective." The killer sneers, pulling the trigger. The gun clicks and I wince, but Sherlock is still standing there with that insidious smirk.

"Missing something?" he holds up the bullets. "I snagged these when you weren't paying attention earlier. See, I knew it was you from the moment I saw your ticket." The killer pats his coat pocket, presumably where the ticket is supposed to be. "I've had this since you got on, when I realized you were the same man who bumped into John. Terribly rude, I have to say, without even a 'sorry' or acknowledgement." Sherlock tsks, shaking his head. I can tell by the way the killer's shoulders are shaking that he's getting to him. "Finding the killer was the easy part. It was finding the body which took longer, because I wasn't counting on you being stupid enough to stay near."

And there he is, insulting a murderer. Classic Sherlock.

The train is coming to a stop, the rails screeching and whining. From the windows, I can see Scotland Yard standing at the station, prepared to storm the train.

"See? I told you I could solve the crime before we arrived." Sherlock looks at me smugly. I manage to shake my head and rub my eyes before a commotion has me looking back up.

"You won't get to put me in jail, bastard!" the killer rushes at Sherlock, knocking his large and lanky frame over as he pushes through the crowd, who stumble to collapse against each other. Sherlock is stuck in a tangled pile of limbs as I stand over him.

"That's what you get for being a jerk." I grin down at him.

He grumbles as I eventually help him up, and we both peer out of the window to see the killer struggling against the police gathered outside, shouting obscenities about the asinine detective who absolutely didn't catch him.

Sherlock pats his coat, brushing it with his hands to smooth the crinkles from his fall. The people around us are helping each other up, shaking with the adventure. They start congratulating him, to which he makes an annoyed face and tries to shoo them away.

"Well, now that we're here, let's see about that case." He states, exiting the carriage. We walk past Scotland Yard, who glance over at us and finally understand what the killer has been raving about for the past few minutes.

"We just solved a case!" I exclaim, gesturing behind us.

"That was just for fun. Our real case is here." He tells me, pulling on his gloves.

"I thought you were already bored with that case. You said a train murder-mystery would be 'much more fascinating' did you not?"

"It was, but it was too easy. You know I always like a challenge." He turns to smirk at me, and I sigh, smiling with a small shake of my head.

"Off we go, then." We walk side by side, prepared to take on another mystery together.

Author's Note: I'm not good with trains, seeing as I've never really been on one, so just ignore any inaccuracies. But seriously there's a legit blog for John Watson that they reference in the BBC show and it amuses me to no end.