A/N: A different kind of odd. Part five. A bit long. Should be one more. -csf
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The world's greatest consulting detective seems determined to make me have all the work to solve the case. In a foreign library where the corpse is absent – the autopsy didn't determine the cause of death anyway – and by the remains of an expensive glass and metal light fixture collapsed into shards on the central carpet, Sherlock insists the case that seems to have pulled us together in his Mind Palace needs solving.
Possibly he's just trying to distract me from my periodic syncopes that cause his Mind Palace to crumble further, cracks spreading in every division we see.
In my mind, I've associated solving the case with the end of my pilgrimage into Sherlock's mind. One can only hope. I no longer feel like a prisoner, and I truly enjoy having my faithful friend by my side, but this is not where I belong, and I must try to find my way back.
I don't know in-depth about my friend's innovative methods, but I've read a few crime novels, so I can have a go at being a detective too. I've always admired Sherlock's work, and I'd love to have a chance to emulate him. And if our combined hallucination's imaginary space is not safe ground to do just that, then I'll never have a better chance.
'Can I question the suspects?' I ask the detective in charge.
He rolls his eyes. 'It's really boring, are you sure?'
I nod, Yes. He shrugs, Fine.
'Mrs White, please.'
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The same old lady in a housekeeper's apron comes back. Sherlock is courteous, but distant, as she enters the library. I glance at my friend and hasten to welcome the woman in, introducing ourselves to her. Sherlock seats on top of the desk again and rolls his eyes at me, while munching on some biscuits he's sneaking out, one by one, from his magic pockets. 'What?' he protests against my stern, advisory look, through a mouth full.
'Manners, Sherlock!'
'Who cares, John? This is not the real world!' he protests with his mouth full.
My turn to roll my eyes. The git's got a point. That should speed up things along nicely.
'Huh...' There's no chair to offer the housekeeper, I notice. Sherlock motions to offer the dead man's chair but freezes as he sees my warning look.
'But it's clean now, John!'
I sigh. Yeah, sure, I guess it will have to do. The older lady seats without reacting to the latest owner of the piece of furniture.
'I brought him tea', Mrs White says, under Sherlock's principles of economic speech. She seems to know what she should tell us and proceeds with hardly any prompt. 'It could have been poisoned with something that didn't show on the autopsy, I suppose, but I didn't put it there, and the tea hardly got out of my sight. Oh, yes, Coronel Mustard also drank tea from the same pot, the nasty man, and he didn't suffer any disturbance.'
I glance quickly at the emotional-eating detective. Imaginary people don't require nourishment to sustain their bodies. I wonder how many biscuits away he is from sending Mrs White out the door for being tedious.
'What can you tell us about the professor?'
She smiles sadly, removing a handkerchief from her apron's pocket and twisting it in her hands. 'I liked the professor, he was a quiet man, pondered and civil. Recently retired, as his health has been declining a lot. I knew something was wrong with him, but I didn't ask. I had even started looking for my next job placement.' She looks at me directly. 'Look here, doctor Watson, I didn't need to kill him. I could have quit my job.'
Sherlock brushes away some crumbs from his shirt, distracted. Mrs White gets another handkerchief from her pocket and hands it to Sherlock, helpfully.
'Who found the body?'
'Oh, I did, doctor Watson. Quite a shock, it was. He was pale as death, when I came to collect the tea tray. I don't know how long he had been like that, you know. I heard no commotion, nothing!' She gets out yet another handkerchief from her pocket and dabs under her moist eyes. I glance, not without some envy, at her magic pockets, she's got them too. Like a magician's trick, with a never ending string of handkerchiefs.
Sherlock thanks her and she gets up to leave. As she crosses the threshold, a funny looking, moustached man comes in. Middle aged or older, boastful and loud.
'Coronel Mustard', he introduces himself. 'Guess you're here to solve the case. About time, eh?'
'Why were you around, Coronel?'
He smiles coldly like a man who likes to keep his secrets. 'I was visiting my cousin, twice removed.'
'You were invited?'
'No, I showed up on my own', he says, raising his voice, already impatient.
'Hard up on cash', Sherlock deduces frontally, 'and has a gambling addiction.'
'Yes, that's true, but it's possible that I'm an adrenaline addict.'
I turn sharply on Sherlock and warn him; 'Don't put words in his mouth, or we won't solve this.'
My friend shrugs, 'It's boring, John!'
'Well, if you change their testimonies we won't get to the culprit, will we?'
Sherlock shrugs again. 'He's not a coronel, so who cares? That was just the name you picked for him.' He looks the man over and starts deducing. 'High blood pressure, on a cocktail of medications for hypertension. Divorced. Weekend gardner, never managed to grow prized azaleas quite like his neighbour's, possibly because he's using the wrong compost, iron deficient for that plant's needs. Resentfully he's taken to having a dog in the hope that the dog can be taught to destroy the neighbour's garden and prized azaleas. He dislikes the animal because the dog has chewed on several of his trousers' cuffs. There are marking in his trousers right now. The dog has been left behind unattended as the man travelled to get money from his cousin – twice removed – and I have already called the Danish equivalent of the RSPCA to have the dog rescued and the man fined.'
I blink. Sherlock's way of conducting witnesses interviews is much faster.
He continues, energised. 'The professor never gave the coronel any money, because he has set most of his money aside to his twin nieces, on their eighteenth birthday, fast approaching. The coronel was called by the housekeeper, agreed the professor was dead, tried CPR just in case – it was hopeless by that time, and he didn't perform CPR correctly, bruising the corpse in a way that could have concealed marks discernable at the autopsy – and, finally, he called the police. Now, can we send the man away, John?'
I nod, speechless. Coronel Mustard doesn't leave the chair. He disappears into thin smoke.
The twins – Scarlett and Peacock – come in next. One dressed in red, and the other in teal coloured clothes. Young, modern, pretty, looking old and worn for their age. I glance at the detective, but he's got winded, or something, for he lets me start first.
'Hello. Sorry to hear about your uncle.'
'That's alright', the taller one says. 'We hardly knew him. We came for a night over, on account of a concert nearby, by our favourite band. We want to meet the lead vocalist backstage.'
'Oh, you have a pass?' I ask, politely.
'No, but we'll sneak in. We always get what we want. Like coming here. Uncle Plum was against it, but we came anyway.'
The other one agrees: 'I guess having an uncle in Copenhagen was useful... Hey, are we still going to make it to the concert? Like, are you even real cops? Can you keep us here? Wanna come with us to the concert? Your friend is kind of cute...'
I glance at my friend, he's not fazed at all by their straightforwardness.
'He's kind of married to his work', I say.
'About Uncle Plum, we welcome any inheritance', Scarlett says. 'We didn't know we were about to be rich. He never told us. Kind of freaky, huh?'
'Did you see your uncle at all the day he died?'
'Kind of.' She shrugs. 'I came to the library to see if I could sneak some alcohol from his desk drawer. He always had some alcohol there. I hid behind the curtain when he came in on me. He sat at the desk, then fell forward, not breathing at all. I went out without saying anything because the police might think I did it.'
'I see', I say, taken back. Kind of.
The other twin reports: 'I had sneaked money out of the coronel's jacket already, so we'd be ready for the concert.'
I think I'm onto something here. I ask, because this is a game in Sherlock's Mind Palace, I can just guess out the answer to the murder mystery. 'Could you have sneaked some of the coronel's hypertension tablets? Nitro-glycerine tablets could kill a healthy dying man. That's how he died. It was Miss Scarlett, in the library, with, hmm, the nitro-glycerine tablets.' I look over to Sherlock, victoriously.
Sherlock shakes his head. 'Not picked up in the autopsy, John. Anyway, with a few more questions you would have known that earlier Coronel Mustard caught Miss Scarlett stealing and tried to come over and kiss her, thinking that she would have to let him so he'd keep quiet because she'd not risk losing the money from her inheritance, as the Professor was a man of strict morals. She pushed him off and hit him repeatedly, teaching him not to touch her. The coronel was almost the victim currently in the morgue, not the professor. They alibi each other for a mysterious poison, Miss Scarlett and Coronel Mustard. The other twin, Miss Peacock, walked in on them. That makes three alibis. The housekeeper, Mrs White, was gossiping with the neighbour. That makes it four alibis!'
I send the twins away with a hand gesture. They leave arguing among themselves who's going to catch the lead vocalist's eye first.
Guess I lost the game, blurting out the wrong solution. It's hard work, this detective business. What now?
'The victim did it?' I guess, not overly serious.
Sherlock rolls his eyes. 'Why do we need rules?'
'We'd still need to know how it happened, though', I notice. Guess I get another chance, and the game's not over yet. 'Aneurysm? Suicide? What?'
The library door creeks open, unsolicited. A small cat comes into the room, sinuous and independent, ignoring our presence. It reminds me of another cat, a metaphorical cat. Are we dead or alive?
Immediately, as if following my existential doubts, the palace starts shaking again. The tremor starts at ground level and builds up in height and strength, to a small earthquake. Bits of wallpaper float by, peeled off from the walls in strips and chunks. Sherlock edges closer to me as the destruction proceeds around us and debris starts collapsing around us.
As it finally stops, I'm concerned about the daylight amount I can discern outside the windows, perhaps its getting stormier, for it has started to dusk.
'Got anymore pocket candles, Sherlock?' I ask. With no ceiling light and just a small lamp at the lonely desk, we'll soon struggle to look for clues.
Sherlock seems happy to oblige, and I pick up an ornamental candlestick from the room. Then I freeze, holding the candlestick in my hand. It's like in the game. Dagger, candlestick, revolver, rope, pipe or spanner?
'John, what is it?'
'The rules are broken', I mutter. Not realising fully how enigmatic I sounded at first.
We watch the cat not minding us at all, nor the simile of chaos in the room. He is small and playful, and finds something underneath the desk – where Sherlock supposedly couldn't see from the pictures' angles. We hear a metallic noise of something rolling on the ground under the desk.
'Sherlock?' I call my friend, as he's coaxing the little cat to come out from under the desk, gently.
'Do you also require knowing the feline's name, John?' Sherlock teases me, diverting my attention from the cold, distant detective that is on all fours right now to get the attention of a little, cute fur ball. He's got it wrong. I'm hardly paying attention. Little Schrödinger's cat there may have just solved the case...
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'Oh', I say, quite simply.
Sherlock smirks. 'Do you know the answer, John?' he presses.
'Yes.' I nod, stunned. 'I think I know the answer, Sherlock. So, how come we got stuck in here? What does your Mind Palace have to do with the case?'
He doesn't falter in his confident, borderline proud, smile. 'You came over to Baker Street, John. I had decided we should go to Copenhagen. I bought plain tickets. You complained. I persuaded you. You packed a bag full of clothes and toiletries.'
'And you didn't?' He didn't again try to send me on with a webcam link to check the scene without him, claiming it was under a Seven, did he?
'I packed a bag too', he assures. 'It had science equipment and some carefully wrapped and labelled chemicals and instruments. You said I didn't need methylene blue dye or my microscope. I asked if Molly could join us then, and do the forensic work.'
I blink, really?
'You got cranky, possibly jealous. Made me leave behind part of my bag because you said I would go through the check-in with the lot. There was something about looking suspicious going through an airport with a set of different sixed scalpels. You made sure I took shirts and socks – that don't colour coordinate with each other by the way, but I'm sure you knew that!'
Probably. Can't really remember that part. It's ...fuzzy.
'We got a cab to the airport, with the tickets ready', he completes.
My headache returns, so sharp it makes everything look filtered by vaseline smeared lenses. The light hurts my eyes and the back of my head. I take a seat on the dead man's chair.
The detective looks scared, as he comes a bit too close, as if ready to pick me up if I lose balance, or hug me till the vertigo goes away.
'Sherlock, what happened? Did we catch the flight?' I can't remember. He should have told me this already.
'No, John. We didn't make it to the airport.' He gulps drily. This is bad.
'Sherlock...' Tell me.
'We've been arguing all the way, even the cabbie was getting tired of hearing us, and a cabbie hears a lot. A car ran over the red lights at a crossing, flying right at us; my side. You saw we were about to be rammed sideways. I was the first to be hit, to receive the bulk of the impact. So you grabbed me with a belated yelled warning, and pulled me down, as I realised you had set yourself free of the car's seat belt to better reach me. Soldier's instinct, I imagine. You wrapped your body over mine, protecting me. I held on to you, with all my strengths, because you didn't have the seat belt and the impact was sure to project you. You wanted to save me, despite your own safety. I tried protecting you just as fiercely, but there was little I had time to do.' He looks young and guilty as he tells his side of the story, at last. He carried his secret out of guilt, but I don't think he should blame himself for the outcome of my choice. I would have done it again, and I don't regret it.
'I wanted to save your incredible mind, Sherlock', I speak at last, breaking the lingering spell of Sherlock's emotional voice. My words come out through the haze of Sherlock's violin music, inundating the library, returning twice fold as strong. 'You are my friend, Sherlock. There was not enough time to warn you, so I took it upon myself to keep you safe. Were you harmed? How bad was it for me?'
This is why I'm here, isn't it? To protect Sherlock's Mind Palace as his owner was involved in a horrible car accident.
'I don't know, John, and you don't know either', he says. He's the one being enigmatic now.
'What's the last thing you remember?' I press him on, my friend took so long already to tell me what he knows.
'I remember that you had just about solved the case on your own, John', he misunderstands me, and talks only about the time before impact. Perhaps it's out of his memory's reach too. 'We were about to catch a flight to Denmark and the case had already been solved. Really disappointing.'
I shake my head. 'But I don't solve cases, you do!'
He gets up from the desk and paces the room in wide circles, as a strange ritual around a broken lamp fixture. 'You had just solved our case, John, as I knew you would, and you were about to be hit on the head instead of me, sacrificing your brain matter and memories. It's common to have short term memory loss from around the time of the injury. You may not even remember solving the case.'
I feel bad for taking the spotlight away from my friend. That is, if I indeed solved his case. That doesn't happen often. Some days, Sherlock would even say it doesn't happen at all. 'It's alright, Sherlock. You'd soon solve it too.'
He raises his arms in the air, agitated. 'I had solved it before we met up, John, do keep up! I was giving you the chance to solve it first out loud! You had changed your whole day to help me and I couldn't bring myself to tell you it was a waste of time; there was no more case!'
Oh. Guess that makes sense. It was really thoughtful in a way.
'I'm sorry I yelled at you', I return.
He stops short, bitting his lower lip. 'Do you remember the cab ride?'
'Not in the slightest, but I'm quite sure I yelled. Probably used some vulgar language too, at some point.' He smirks, I probably did.
'It's alright. I'm sorry I almost made you go on a plane to solve a case I had solved already', he points out in the interest of fairness.
'It's fine. I would have enjoyed it, I'm sure.'
'John?' he calls out softly at my sudden silence. I was looking down on the little kitty.
'Sherlock... Are we both dead?'
'No, I don't think so. Dead people don't feel pain, right? Remember the candle burn?'
'Are you dead?' I ask, with a cold shiver that has nothing to do with my headache.
He shakes his head. 'You said I was in your head all the time, John. That you were the real one.'
'Yeah, but you know things I couldn't have known.'
'Always, John.' He smirks.
'Oi, watch it!' He's a hopeless git.
'Perhaps, John, you are in my head, and I really wanted to see you solve the damned case.'
I smile at the mention of solving the case. 'Yes, I think I have.'
.TBC
