Chapter 8: The Coward's Weapon

"The coward's weapon, poison."

-John Fletcher


It must have been some hours later that I awoke, and I slowly became aware that I was lying in my bed, and that my brother, Nicole, and Holmes were all standing around the room. Light was streaming through the window now. It must have been morning. But it had just been night. God, it was bright, and my mind still felt fuzzy. I tried to open my mouth to speak, but immediately John was pushing a glass of water in my face, taking my pulse and looking closely at my eyes as I drank.

"How do you feel?" he asked as I lowered the glass from my mouth, and I looked from Nicole, who was looking on anxiously, to Holmes, who was leaning on the wall by the door nonchalantly, trying not to show too much concern, but failing, judging from the way he kept surreptitiously sending quick glances in my direction, before I replied.

"My head hurts a little," I replied slowly, carefully forming the words in my still groggy mind, "but other than that I'm all right. What happened?"

"I found you on the floor after Miss Camberwell came to fetch me," replied John. "She said she didn't know what had happened, only that you had made it clear that she was to come get me. It must have been chloroform, from the sweet smell."

I forced myself upwards and put a hand to my forehead to massage it, desperately trying to remember what had happened the previous night. After a moment, the details came within my grasp, although parts of it were still lost in the fog. "There was an intruder in Nicole's room," I said haltingly. "He'd come in through the window and was hiding in the closet. I told her to run and then I went to open the closet and distract him, and then…" Here I trailed off, for my mind could not produce a single detail after I had confidently strode to the closet doors.

"And then what?" Holmes prompted eagerly, face shining at the knowledge that I must have seen the intruder's face. "What did he look like? Did he say anything to you? Watson, hand her paper, she can sketch him!"

I looked down at my hands, folded neatly on my lap, shaking my head. "I…I don't know. I can't remember the face."

"Well, I'm sure you can!" Holmes exclaimed. "Was it narrow or round? Did he have a short or long nose? What color were his eyes?"

"Holmes!" My brother interrupted his quick succession of questions sternly.

The detective snapped his mouth closed and looked inquisitively at John, demanding an explanation.

"Holmes, loss of short term memory is common with many sedatives and anaesthetics," John explained. "Chloroform being prominent among them. We're lucky she remembers as much as she does. Do not push the limits of her brain."

"I do apologize, Emily," Holmes said, softer.

I nodded at him. "It's quite all right," I said. "I'll certainly let you know if I remember anything."

Morning. It was morning. What seemed so very important about morning? I closed my eyes, thinking a moment, and finally the answer came to me. "Lestrade," I murmured under my breath, turning to Holmes. "Have you had an answer from Lestrade?"

He nodded in the affirmative. "It was brought to me less than half an hour ago. He said that he would be more than happy to hand off his cases to another inspector and that he'd be here by nightfall."

Nicole gave him a sideways look from where she was perched delicately on the plush stool in front of the bureau. "Aren't you going to tell her?"

I looked suspiciously from Nicole to Holmes, the peculiarity of this statement shooing away the remainder of the fog in my brain. "Tell me what?" I asked warily.

Holmes looked rather sheepish, refusing to lift his gaze from the vicinity of the worn edges of the carpet in the doorway. "Watson was attached to your side in case of your awakening, and an experiment I was conducting required an extra set of hands."

"We know what the poison is!" exclaimed Nicole, her eyes shining with a light I had only seen in her when she walked up to Andrew and I at the docks. I was struck by the fact that such a kindred spirit had been placed in my path. She thrived on adventure. Even in the face of family loss and tragedy, the centre of the mystery was where she belonged.

"Last night I took a sample of what was left of the late Mr. Camberwell's tea," said Holmes. "I observed from the stain on the carpet that what he was drinking was of the black tea variety, Masala Chai, to be precise. Its preparation is quite singular, in its true Eastern form. You see, the leaves must be –"

"Holmes, if you have written a monograph on the preparation of this tea, I'm sure we can all read it another time. Please, shorten your explanation. Emily is quite in need of some rest." John sounded incredibly short tempered. I wasn't all that surprised. If what Holmes had said was true, he had been awake watching me all night.

"I've just had hours of rest, I don't need more!" I protested.

Holmes sighed and continued his story, skipping the process of preparing Masala Chai tea, apparently much to his chagrin and my brother's pleasure. "The oxidized leaves from which the tea is made are of a distinct earthy colour. However, a handful of the ground leaves left in the bottom of the cup, having not been entirely strained out for the sake of flavour, were very different, a peculiar shade of dark green. So I procured a sample of the powder, and took it back to my chambers to conduct a few preliminary tests. The poison that was the cause of both deaths was a member of the Solanaceae family. Atropa Belladonna, more commonly known as Deadly Nightshade. It grows plentifully in a number of damp, wooded areas throughout Europe. You might even spot clusters of them in these very woods, were you to look. One leaf from the plant is fatal within a few hours, and poisoning causes the same symptoms which we have been able to deduce that both of our victims experienced prior to their deaths. Sensitivity to light and blurred vision would be two of the first symptoms to exhibit themselves, followed by loss of balance and a staggering gait, leading into violent hallucinations, slurred speech, convulsions, and finally death caused by spasms so severe that the respiratory system becomes rigid and unresponsive."

A chill went through me as I was afforded a clearer mental image of the process of death, fitting in the description Holmes gave with the story Mr. Johnson, the pub owner, had told him. "Does this help narrow down possible suspects?" I asked, in an attempt to shake the spine-chilling picture from my mind.

"If you are wondering if I have cleared Simon Camberwell's school mates as suspects, the answer is still no, and will likely remain so, in my opinion."

"But you haven't even spoken to them yet!" Nicole protested. "Once you do, you'll see that they're not capable of something like this."

"Miss Camberwell, I only form my opinions based on what the evidence tells me."

I furrowed my brow in surprise. John froze in the act of reaching for something in his bag, and I could tell that he had been taken aback by the very same thing as I.

One point that Sherlock Holmes was fiercely adamant about in the field of investigation was that one should never, in any circumstance, form an opinion, a theory, or a judgment before having all the evidence. And having not yet gotten the stories of his prime suspects and some of the most important witnesses, he certainly did not have all the evidence. Something was rotten in the state of Denmark.

John hesitantly pulled his hand back, folding his arms across his chest and turning fully towards the detective. "Holmes," he asked cautiously, "are you all right?"

"Quite fine, old fellow," Holmes said, although he sounded quite distant. Without another word, he stood fully up and walked briskly out of the room.

"…Am I missing something?" Nicole asked, looking back and forth between the two of us with raised eyebrows.

"Holmes has a habit of telling us never to form a hypothesis without first holding all the cards in our hand," I explained, my eyes still fixed on the hallway into which Holmes had so abruptly disappeared. "It's the only piece of advice that he stresses so…persistently."

"Then why on earth did he just attempt to defend an unfounded theory?" Nicole asked, turning to stare in Holmes' wake along with us.

John shook his head. "I have absolutely no idea."


Sherlock Holmes was, despite all his eccentricities, a creature of habit. He took trips to the British Museum every Friday at two o'clock to study their anthropological specimens and do whatever reading he liked in their private library. He kept to the same schedule of sleeping unless he was actively investigating a case. He always played the violin when thinking through the evidence in murder and forgery cases, and always smoked his pipe when thinking through robbery, domestic, and political cases. The pipe he smoked always depended on the day of week and the type of weather. From eight o'clock to eleven o'clock every morning he devoted his time to reading the dozens of London newspapers to which he subscribed. It took nothing short of a figurative - or, perhaps literal - explosion to throw him off of his self-made routine. The morals to which he clung were very clear cut, and I doubted there was anything which could blur the line between black and white in his mind. Something must be very wrong for him to completely disregard one of such morals.

A fog was rolling in over the moors and across the lawn as I mused about Holmes' irregular attitude. As the mist crept ever closer to the house, it swallowed everything in its path, until everything was blurred and distorted in shape.

I began to feel slightly shaky, and my eyes suddenly started to droop closed. John had been right. I did require more rest, besides the disturbingly deep slumber which had been induced by the chloroform. I stifled a yawn with my hand and sank into my desk chair, too weary to stand.


Some time later, I was awakened by a light shaking on my shoulder. I started and turned around, my eyelids still heavy.

The face that I saw was not the one I had been expecting to see. Long, shaggy hair drooped over his eyes, and his smirk was instantly identifiable. "Andrew?" I asked, squinting and suppressing a yawn.

"Good evening to you too," he replied.

"What in heaven's name are you doing here?" I asked, still thoroughly confused.

He shrugged. "I was passing by Inspector Lestrade's desk last night and saw he had a telegram from Sherlock Holmes. I read it, and was, of course, concerned about you, seeing as Holmes spoke of multiple murders. So, I bought a ticket on the only train coming to North Yorkshire today and rode up here with Lestrade."

"So you weren't invited?" I guessed.

Andrew emitted a small snort. "Heavens, no. Don't be ridiculous. I seldom require an invitation to make up my mind."

I couldn't hold back a giggle as I stood up to more properly greet him. "It's very sweet, you know," I said, reaching out to embrace him.

He enclosed my waist gently in his arms and pulled me closer to him. "Yes, I know," he murmured.

I let his warmth surround me for a moment before I pulled back to study his face. "Were Holmes and Lestrade pleased to know of your presence?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

Andrew chuckled softly. "Lestrade told me I should have stayed in London, and Holmes told me I wasn't qualified enough to be here, and it was bad enough that he already had to involve two girls. Oh, about that –"

"You met Nicole?" I asked.

"Yes, she was downstairs with Holmes and your brother to greet us," he said. "What was she doing at the West India Docks that day?"

I shook my head. "All I'm going to say at present is that her spirit is as strong and curious as my own." Suddenly a thought struck me, and I backed fully out of his embrace.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Andrew, none of them know about us," I told him. "Aren't they wondering why you're here?"

Realization dawned on his face. "Well, I can't say that I think any of them would be especially surprised," he admitted. "And from the curious look Holmes gave me, I'd wager that he's already deduced it."

My face darkened as the reality of the situation swept over me once again, and the excitement of unexpectedly seeing Andrew was washed away. I sank slowly onto the bed. "Andrew, this family is being targeted," I said. "Both the father and the son have been poisoned."

"Poisoned?" Andrew's eyes lifted in alarm.

"Yes," I replied darkly. "Atropa Belladonna, Holmes said. Andrew, I'm frightened," I confessed. "Mr. Camberwell and his son are both dead. Nicole might be targeted next, and something's wrong with Holmes. He's not himself. He's not –"

Andrew stopped me by placing a finger to my lips. "Shhh," he said quietly, drawing me closer. "It's all right. Poison is the weapon of cowards, you know. Those too scared to get their hands dirty. They can cause pain and death without soiling their hands and watching the light go out in their victim's eyes. The danger is not as great as it would be in the case of shootings or stabbings. No, this killer is not to be feared. We can use his fear against him."

I knew that Andrew was right. But he was also wrong. The killer wouldn't come out in the open. But that didn't necessarily make it easier to catch him. He was a silent killer, as fluid and dark as the shadows. He might be anywhere. If anything, his secrecy made him all the more dangerous.