"Well, it certainly looks like a haunted house." John said, staring up at the imposing estate. The old, empty house, with its overgrown trees and gardens casting shadows in the late-afternoon light, was decidedly spooky.
"Spare me the usual idiotic ramblings, John. You know as well as I do that there is a reasonable explanation for these disappearances and prattling on about the impossible won't be a bit of help to anyone." Sherlock's eyes scanned the building and grounds, taking in everything yet, irritatingly finding no obvious clues. It was maddening.
The day started with Lestrade taking Sherlock and John to the storage facility. Of course, most of the missing persons had been gone long enough that very little helpful could be deduced. Sherlock had, of course, learned plenty that wasn't helpful to the case. From the automobiles and their contents, he quickly deduced that eight of the missing person's were married, three cheating on their spouses, one openly gay and one decidedly in the closet. One was ginger, five naturally blond, two bottle-blond. Six of them had dogs, two had cats and one had a pet cockatoo. Their ages, races, sexes, occupations and incomes varied. Unless they disappeared together, like the workmen, not one had anything in common with the others and there was absolutely no indication of what had happened to them. Although Sherlock's deductions were, as usual, fascinating to John and Lastrade, they were also, ultimately, unimportant to the case. It was unbearably frustrating to Sherlock and he wasn't above taking that frustration out on the nearest convenient person; berating Lestrade for the idiocy of the police, the contamination of the evidence (which, after all, was to be expected after so many years) and the uselessness of the trip to the facility in general. Eventually, even the patience of the DI wore out and he went to collect copies of the case files to be delivered to 221B Baker street, sending John and Sherlock alone to the Wester Drumlin's estate, with a stern warning to John to not let Sherlock go wandering about alone.
Stepping through the police barricades, they entered the grounds. Despite Sherlock's foul-tempered remark and his own common sense, John couldn't suppress a shiver. Just inside the gates, it felt as though the two had left London entirely. It seemed quieter, darker and simply wrong. It wasn't a feeling John could put a name to, but his soldier's senses went on high alert.
"Do you feel that?" John asked quietly, expecting a snide reply. He was surprised.
"Yes." Sherlock said simply. He had gone quieter and more still than usual, his eyes darting from shadow to shadow. Determinedly, he began walking up the drive to the house. John gave himself a stern mental shake and followed close behind Sherlock, vaguely wishing he'd brought his pistol, although there appeared to be no actual danger outside of his imagination.
There were obvious signs of the construction that had started six months prior. The roof had been repaired and there were areas where masonry repairs had begun. New stones for the walks and walls sat in piles, along with sand for concrete and mortar, covered with tarps, even some tools remained, abandoned by the workers. Peeling paint had been sanded off and the bare woodwork had been repainted in places, although in other spots the primer still showed. The windows had been reglazed, the broken panes replaced. No work appeared to have been done on the grounds and the landscaping was in need of care. Still, it was easy to see how impressive the gardens would be if restored to their former glory. As they approached the front entrance, something caught John's attention.
"Wow! Sherlock, look at this." John could not see what had caused the movement he had seen from the corner of his eye, but he walked deeper into the front lawn to the stone bench and statue at the edge of the house. "This is really impressive!" he said. The statue of a life-sized angel, her hands covering her face as if she were weeping, stood in the shadow of the house. John walked around it, looking closely at it. "Look at this detail, Sherlock. Do you think it's part of the remodel? It isn't weathered like the house."
Sherlock looked over at the statue, agreeing that the condition seemed a bit too good to be original to the estate, with no broken fingers or other bits. It was a lovely statue, very detailed. John ran his hand up statue's arms to the cupped hands, peering between the fingers and head. The artist had even gone to the trouble of somehow carving facial features which were visible beneath the statues hands, instead of simply carving the hands attached to the head, covering the face.
"Come on, John, we're losing the light. It's a big house with no power. We need to be in and out before it gets too dark to see properly. We can come back to see the grounds tomorrow if need be. There may well be clues to be found outside, but I hardly think a statue is important." Sherlock said, looking back at John and the angel from the stairs to the entrance. John nodded and, with a last pat on the angel's folded wings, joined him.
Inside the house, the restoration begun by the workmen, before they had abandoned their jobs, was even more apparent. Still, despite the stripped wallpaper, repaired plasters and new woodwork, the atmosphere within was gloomy and, as Sherlock predicted, the electricity did not work, filling the house with shadows even with the sunlight coming through the bare windows. This wasn't helped by the fact it was obviously abandoned, the unfinished work showing the workmen had simply dropped their brushes and trowels and walked out. They decided to search the house room by room, beginning in the musty cellar. John adamantly refused to split up to search, much to Sherlock's annoyance. "Yes, Sherlock," he said sarcastically, "by all means, let's split up in a house where people go missing all the time. Lestrade would kill me if you disappeared."
Very little light was available through the small, dirty, cellar windows but luckily John's phone had a flashlight app, giving them extra visibility. "What do you see, John?" asked Sherlock. John looked the room over, hating the question, which Sherlock loved to ask. "It doesn't look like they've done anything down here." he replied. "Obviously," said Sherlock, "they've not started renovating, but it's clear the workmen were here. Things have been moved. Just look at the floor." John could barely see in the flashlights beam, drag and scuff marks. "They moved several large, heavy objects." said Sherlock. He snatched the phone from John's hand and moved to the center of the room, walking about, looking at the marks. "From the areas where the dust hasn't collected you can see there were four, in a circle, or square. Irregularly shaped, they appear to be the same size as the base of the statue in the garden. Which could explain its preservation, but why anyone keep it down here? Were there four of them? What did they do with them?" Sherlock muttered to himself, looking around. "They were moved against that wall, but there's no sign of how they got them out of the cellar. They just aren't there now. Curious."
Curiosity notwithstanding, the rapidly fading light made any further searching of the cellar nearly futile, so Sherlock and John headed back up to the main level of the house, where larger windows made searching possible. Very little was to be seen, however. A large front room held the sleeping bags abandoned by the two teenagers that went missing most recently, still rolled up, untouched, and a six-pack of lager, unopened. "So, the teenagers decided to stay in here for the night, but never settled in. Clearly whoever took them surprised them." said Sherlock.
"Perhaps they went exploring first?" suggested John.
"And left their torches? I doubt that." said Sherlock, pointing to them, lying near the sleeping bags. The only other thing of note on the main floor was graffiti. Specifically, in black pain across a rather hideous green wall, were the words, "Beware the weeping angel. Oh, and duck. No, really duck! Sally Sparrow. DUCK, NOW! Love from The Doctor (1969)"
"This graffiti is old." said Sherlock, "Judging from the type of paint and amount of cracking and fading it's easily from 1969. You can see where the wallpaper covered it for years. 'THE Doctor.' Why THE Doctor? Doctor Who? And who is Sally Sparrow? And why should she duck?"
"That's what catches your attention?" said John. "What about 'Beware'? A normal person is usually more concerned with the warning!"
"Beware the weeping angel? It clearly refers to the statue." Sherlock looked out the window where the statue John had spotted earlier still stood. "There appears to be no reason to beware of a statue and no way to find out what it could mean without finding the people involved. Not that it matters to this case. There weren't any disappearances in 1969. A spooky message in a big old house isn't unusual, but the rest of the message is quite unusual. How would someone know when someone else should duck? Unless they were planning on doing something themselves to make the person need to duck…but if you were doing that, why would you warn them?" Sherlock relegated this puzzle to the back of his mind, as it seemed to have nothing to do with the case at hand and the two moved on.
They continued their search of the house and headed upstairs, moving quickly as possible while looking for any clues. Opening a door into a large bedroom, John jumped back, nearly knocking Sherlock over. "Bloody Hell!" he exclaimed! There before them was another life-sized statue of an angel. Ignoring Sherlock's smirk at his being startled by the statue, John moved on into the room. This statue was different though just as detailed. Not weeping, this Angel stood half turned, with one arm raised to shield the angel's face, as though she were trying to avoid seeing something. "Guess we found another one. But, what the devil is this doing here?" he asked.
"A better question is how did it get here?" replied Sherlock. "There has been work in this room, plaster dust along the walls and on the floor show that, but no dust on the statue." He ran his finger across the angel's shoulder. "There are no drag marks on the floor, no evidence of wheels. I doubt it would fit through the windows," he said, walking over and looking at the casings, "but if it did, there's no evidence of machinery used to lift…" He stopped in mid-sentence. "John," he said quietly, "it's time we left."
Keeping an eye on the statue, Sherlock herded a confused John back out the door, closing it firmly behind them. He hurried down the stairs and through the front entrance, knowing John would be close behind. It wasn't until they were back out the gates that John spoke.
"Sherlock, what's going on?" he asked, trotting after him down the sidewalk.
"It's getting dark. There's no way to find clues in the dark with only that little torch of yours." said Sherlock.
John grabbed Sherlock by the sleeve, stopping him. "That's not it." he said. He looked at Sherlock curiously. "You're acting very odd, almost like you're spooked and that's just ridiculous, you don't get spooked. What aren't you saying?"
Sherlock hesitated, with a very unusual look on his face. Incredibly, he seemed to John to be almost confused. "It was the statue." he finally stated.
"The statue in the room? What about it?" prompted John.
"Not the one in the room, the one in the garden."
Again John prompted Sherlock, "What about the one in the garden?"
"When I looked out the window, I could see that part of the garden." said Sherlock. "John, the statue wasn't there anymore."