Chapter 4: All That Lives Must Die

"Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die,

Passing through nature to eternity."

-William Shakespeare

The next morning dawned a pale grey light. Most of the clouds from the day before had moved out, leaving only a thinly veiled barrier between us and the sky. The rain had stopped, leaving a fresh scent that was on the verge of overpowering the bitter taste in the air that permanently hung around the entire area surrounding the mines. Puddles could be seen every few yards along the ground as I peered out one of the windows on either side of the front doors after breakfast.

Holmes and John had donned thick rubber boots and gone out to search the woods we had driven through just the afternoon before. It was probable, Holmes had said, that if anything had happened to Simon Camberwell, clues could be found about his location in the forest, since naturally he'd have had to pass through it in order to get back to the house.

I was itching with restlessness. Not excluded from the investigation, Nicole had said. I should be out there, searching. I had lost something very dear to me, and it felt right in a sense that I should be helping others find what was dear to them. Every time I closed my eyes or allowed my mind to stray, I felt the pain of losing Ariana. Having my twin, a part of me, ripped from me. There was a hole in my heart that couldn't be filled by anything other than gaining her back. I knew loss. And God help me, I would save as many other people from feeling it as I possibly could. Never mind what was proper. Even if I was a female I was still a human, and I could still do as much as many and probably more than most people cared to.

Biting my lip as I made up my mind, I turned to Nicole, who was standing pale-faced behind me. "Do you have any extra pairs of boots?" I asked.

She nodded immediately, almost eagerly, as if she'd been waiting for me to say something. "Yes, I believe they're in the kitchen. The servants use them when crossing the lawn and walking into town. I'll go fetch them both."

Before I could open my mouth to tell her that only one pair was needed, she was gone. She returned a few moments later, clutching two pairs of boots. She handed the first to me and promptly bent down and began pulling on the second.

"Wait," I said, holding out an arm to stop her. "You should stay here."

She shook her head. "No, of course I'm not! I won't be the only one staying here. If you're going out there, then so am I."

"Nicole, there could be things you don't want to see," I warned her, thinking of the fearful look in her eyes the previous night as she'd realized that her brother may not be alive. "I am more accustomed to these things. I would not be living with Sherlock Holmes if I couldn't handle it."

Nicole looked up at me, eyes wide. "I can see what's in your eyes, Emily. I can see the pain. I can see the fear. You're not living with Sherlock Holmes because you can handle it. You're living with him because you don't have a choice. And yet still you don't shy away. You could stay away from it all. A part of you wants to. And yet you don't. I will not stay away from it either. Let me come with you."

Her words hit me deep enough that I drew back, inadvertently giving her enough room to finish donning her boots. She was right. Of course she was right. I wasn't accustomed to it. A part of me did want to stay away. Every time I had seen a body, I felt ill. Defeated. As if I were connected to all of humanity, and I was watching it fall apart piece by piece before me. But yet there was something about it. Something that I couldn't draw away from, no matter how much it hurt. I wanted to help. I wanted to save people. Healers, my mother had called those people. Those who knew pain and had a burning desire to help others in the midst of it.

I swallowed hard and pulled on my own boots. "Let's go, then," I said, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice.

We silently slipped out the door and set off across the lawn, pulling the collars of our cloaks up against the chill breeze that swept the land.

"Bad luck with the storm last night," I muttered as I sidestepped a puddle on the ground only to land in a deeper one that I had missed.

"What do you mean?" asked Nicole, taking note of my wrong step and taking care to avoid both puddles.

"Water," I replied, quoting what I had heard Holmes say earlier this month after he returned from a case in St. John's Wood, "is the bane of the investigator. It washes most vital evidence away. Footprints, a blood trail, a scrap of cloth, all of it could be gone unless we're very lucky. Water cleanses. And the worst thing that could happen to a crime scene is that it could be cleansed. After last night's storm, I fear the trail could by now be cold."

"There's still hope, though?" Nicole asked with a shudder as the breeze picked up slightly, and the dead leaves on the trees rustled as we approached the woods.

"If there is, it's slim. Not even Sherlock Holmes can outsmart the forces of nature."

As we kept walking, the trees loomed above us, menacing even in daylight. The air seemed to get damper and colder around us, and the bridge of twisted branches over our heads seemed designed to keep some evil tucked away inside, and I knew that whatever the forest was keeping hidden, we had entered the cage. We were in the middle of it.

"Keep your eyes peeled," I said to Nicole, my voice low, "for anything."

As I spoke, I let my own eyes sweep over the area around us, concentrating on every leaf and patch of mud that covered the ground. Anything out of the ordinary.

"Emily," said Nicole after about ten minutes when we had wandered deeper into the forest. "What on earth is that stench? Is that coming from the mines?"

"Shhh!" I cautioned her. "Be quiet. We're not supposed to be out here."

I sniffed the air. I hadn't noticed it before. All my focus had been trained on my sight, not my sense of smell. Nicole had done well pointing it out. I raised a hand to cover my nose and mouth, for I felt bile rising in my throat as my stomach turned over. The smell was awful. It was worse than the bitter smell of smoke and exposed minerals coming from the mines. It was worse, even, than the foul odor of waste and filth and unwashed bodies that pierced every street of London. It was the most nauseating thing I'd ever smelled, like the sickly sweet aroma of rotted fruit that has been feasted upon by flies, but somehow different. Somehow worse. Even though I was shielding my nose and mouth, it was still so awful that my eyes watered and I was terrified to breathe it in, and I wondered how it couldn't be smelled from all over the forest.

Nicole and I, both trying to breathe as little as possible, looked around frantically for the source of the smell. My vision was blurry from the tears forming in my eyes, and I tried desperately to blink them away so I could see the ground in front of me in something other than brown streaks.

Suddenly, from somewhere off to my right, Nicole screamed. I whirled around and started running in her direction. She was standing in the middle of a web of protruding tree roots, stretching to meet each other in a dark, twisting embrace. She was staring at something lying between two trees. I heard shouting in the distance and knew that Holmes and John had heard Nicole's screaming. I moved closer to see what she was staring at, transfixed.

Oh my God. The source of the awful stench. A body, mangled and torn, in the midst of being decomposed by nature. As a rule, everything breaks down over time when exposed to the elements. Especially the human body. After what was presumably four days, the skin was beginning to turn a sickening shade of marbled green, and was starting to sag, no longer connected to the skeleton. The eyes were larger than normal, bulging out of the sockets with the expression of a madman. The jawbone was tense and rigid, the mouth clenched tightly.

I retched, turning away for a moment to swallow the bile. When I turned back, I saw that Nicole had collapsed onto the ground, and I became aware that she was screaming at the top of her lungs, her words incomprehensible, her entire body shaking. I knelt down and tried to speak to her, to comfort her, but my words did no good. Her body was rigid with shock, and I wasn't strong enough to pull her away from the sight of her brother's decaying corpse.

A moment later, Holmes and John arrived, and they too briefly covered their faces in reaction to the smell. They afforded barely a glimpse at me. "Watson," Holmes said in a low voice, "kindly escort Miss Camberwell back to the house. I'd like your opinion as a medical man when you return."

My brother nodded and gently lifted Nicole in his arms, as she must have been in no condition for walking. I listened to her hysterical wailing fade as they disappeared into the trees.

I didn't think Holmes would acknowledge my presence, but I was wrong, for after a moment he spoke. "What are you doing out here?" he asked sharply, seeming as if he were already used to and unfazed by the smell of rotting flesh right under his nose.

"I-I needed to help search," I answered. "I couldn't just stay there."

I expected him to let a quick, half smile flit across his face, with some remark about how he knew and that was why he'd let me come along, but instead he just gave me a cold and hard look. "What was she doing out here?"

I averted my gaze to the ground. "I know I shouldn't have let her come," I replied. "I tried to warn her about what we might find. But she wouldn't allow me to leave her behind."

Holmes did not reply this time, but instead sprang down upon the ground and whipped out a small magnifying lens. "Staggering footsteps led from the direction of the town," he muttered under his breath. He abruptly sprang up to examine the bottom of the dead man's shoes, then, apparently satisfied, returned to his examination of the ground.

"Excuse me," I said, watching his actions carefully, "but wouldn't all the rain last night have washed away any footprints?"

He didn't reply, too caught up in studying the evident footprints underneath the blanket of wet leaves.

A few moments later, John reappeared, and immediately knelt to examine the body. "Dilated pupils," he muttered softly to himself. He lifted the arm to look at the fingers. "Advanced cyanosis and rigor mortis." He nodded affirmatively and leaned back. "Holmes," he said.

Holmes looked up. "Yes, old fellow?"

"The cause of death appears to have been asphyxiation. The way the jaw is clenched indicates advanced rigor mortis after death, which could be the result of convulsions and seizures prior to death, and there are scrapes on the knuckles which suggest that he was grappling for something – my God!" John recoiled at something on top of the body, and Holmes sprang over, full of energy and eyes alight with the thrill of the hunt.

John held up something he was gingerly holding in his handkerchief. Despite the stench and repulsing sight before me, I took a few steps closer and leaned in to look. I gasped and raised a hand to cover my mouth again. "Oh my God, is that his tongue?" I asked softly.

John replied without looking up at me, working to pry the dead man's mouth open. "Yes," he said, grunting, "it is. Convulsions it must have been, then. So severe that he bit off his own tongue." Then he did a double take. "Emily, what the blazes are you doing here?" he hissed. "Go back to the house. Stay with Miss Camberwell."

I crossed my arms and shook my head, making an attempt to steel myself against the malodor. "Absolutely not. You did not force me to stay in London, I expect because you didn't trust me not to get in trouble, so you can't expect me to just sit around here, especially when there's a case. A case that you let me hear about from the inception. I'm staying right here, and you'd do well to include me."

John sighed and muttered what seemed to be a prayer, but did nothing to desist me as he continued to examine the body.

Gingerly, I stepped around to kneel behind the corpse's head, moving my eyes slowly over the body, my mouth tightly closed to keep from gagging at the smell and the sickly, unnatural sight. "What's that?" I asked, pointing to a tear in the shirt covering the late Simon Camberwell's left shoulder.

"Probably nothing but the markings of an animal that came by looking for old flesh to eat," said John, giving the area nothing but a brief glance.

Holmes, however, shook his head, looking very interested. "No, not an animal, Watson!" he exclaimed, bending over the shoulder. "An animal's claws or teeth would make a jagged tear as they ripped it apart. This is far too straight-edged and clean." He took a small knife from the pocket of his trousers and began cutting away at the cloth with it until the entire area of the shoulder was exposed. "Halloa! What have we here?" he mused.

John and I both leaned in to have a closer look. There was a wound in his shoulder, shallow, about two inches long. A small amount of dried blood was crusted on the cloth of the shirt Holmes had pried away from the skin.

My brother furrowed his brow in confusion. "A knife wound," he murmured. "But it's hardly a scratch. Remarkably shallow. It couldn't have hit any major arteries. Not enough blood loss to cause much harm. And how on earth could it have caused asphyxiation like that?"

"Asphyxiation, you say?" Holmes looked from the man's eyes, pupils far larger in size than usual, which gave the face a gruesomely panicked expression, to the tongue he had bitten off in thrashing about before death, to the wound on the left shoulder studiously.

"Yes, Holmes," said John, watching him as if trying to conclude the purpose of his methods. "Asphyxiation. From the lack of scabbing around the wound, I'd wager a fair amount that it was sustained no more than a few hours prior to his unfortunate demise. But that coupled with the asphyxiation doesn't add up."

"Perhaps the wound was sustained in that fight he had with his friends, and the asphyxiation was brought about by alcohol poisoning. We know he'd been drinking," I suggested.

Holmes gave me a sideways look, nodding slightly and giving me the smallest of grins, a brief upturn of the corner of his mouth. "Excellent hypothesis, Emily, but no," he said, gesturing to the corpse's mouth. "Alcohol poisoning was not a factor in the asphyxiation here. Note the lack of frothing around the mouth. You are correct about one thing, though; the wound was sustained during the altercation outside of the public house in town."

"Then what of the asphyxiation?" John asked, and I must confess that I was as stumped as he was.

"My dear fellow," Holmes said, "it only doesn't add up when one has a distinctive lack of imagination. You must consider what may be true, furthering what you already know for certain. The knife certainly must have been tipped with poison of some sort, causing the convulsions and death by asphyxiation."

John shook his head. "But with a four day old corpse and no weapon, how will we be able to ascertain the identity of the poison?"

Holmes had leaned back upon his knees and was scouring the area around us with the sharp gaze of an eagle watching for leaping fish to catch as he swoops over water. With a cry, he sprang up and ran for about ten yards to a pile of leaves and began digging through them with the use of his foot. A moment later, he gave an ejaculation of triumph and held up a silver and ebony pocket knife with his handkerchief.

John and I both stood and dashed to meet him and see what the fuss was. John looked, gaping, at the knife Holmes had discovered on the ground. "But how can that be?" he asked in amazement. "If the wound was sustained in the fight outside the pub, how in blazes did the knife get here? Suppose one of the others drew their knife during the altercation and lightly slashed him across the shoulder to keep him in check. The knife would have stayed in their possession. But somehow it ended up in a pile of leaves several yards away from a dead body."

An elated expression on his face, Holmes turned over the knife, crusted with dried blood, and held it out so that we could see. The initials S.C. were engraved into the ebony handle. Simon Camberwell. "It was his knife," John said.

"But how does that explain how it came to be buried under the leaves?" I asked.

"And how did you know it would be there?" John added quickly.

"The former cannot be answered as of yet," said Holmes. "The latter, however, I can elaborate upon. You will observe this tree here." He pointed to the tall tree that loomed above us into the sky. "I have made a study of the deciduous trees of Britain, and even written a little monograph on the subject. This is a Sorbus Aria, or common whitebeam. This is a leaf of the common whitebeam." He stooped to pick up a leaf, displaying it to us. It was small and round, with jagged edges shaped like tiny teeth. "So it seems more than odd," he continued, "that the leaves of the Quercus Robur, or English oak, one of which is growing a few yards away, should be found directly underneath the common whitebeam." He picked up another handful of leaves, which bore the familiar curved shape of oak leaves.

"Simply absurd," John muttered, shaking his head.

"I do believe," said Holmes, pocketing the dead man's knife wrapped in his own handkerchief, "that once the proper authorities to move the body have been notified, a word with the owner of that public house is in order."