CHAPTER 28: SMALL TOWN MYSTERIES
A small village in the countryside - active crime scene
One hour and a half later
"So, Anderson, what can you tell us about this idyllic village?" Sherlock promptly starts off the minute he and John arrive in front of the victim's house.
"That it is not idyllic at all, for starters," the forensic scientist replies escorting the two of them into the cottage located at one end of the small town, on the edge of the forest. "I'm not saying it has a long history of violence, but in such a little town, even the smallest crime becomes a topic of conversation for years on end. And around here, two huge mysteries, albeit old, will never stop being a talking point, especially given the fact that neither of them was ever solved."
"And I suppose the death of Isaac's father is one of them," the detective intervenes crouching down over the corpse of a corpulent woman lying still on the wooden floor of the living room. He scrutinises every inch of her body and notices traces of soil under her nails. Was she gardening when her killer lured her into the house and shot her? he quickly ponders.
"Oh yes, Elisa's husband was a good man. His mysterious disappearance shocked everyone," Anderson interrupts his flow of thoughts.
"There wasn't much to tell since the body was never found and he had no known enemies," the detective recalls the scarce information the police gave him regarding that ancient crime.
In the meantime, he attentively analyses the creases on the carpet where the body is lying. Signs of struggle: it means she wasn't held at gunpoint and executed in cold blood, Sherlock's mind feverishly elaborates. This suggests that the murderer first intention wasn't necessary to kill her, otherwise, Elisa wouldn't even have had the opportunity to fight, causing the rug to wrinkle like that. What happened, then?
"Is anything missing? Jewels, valuables, cash?" he addresses Anderson who shakes his head and quickly replies, "Nothing. This wasn't a burglary gone wrong. This is why the police think Isaac did it; the motive isn't money-related. Maybe he got into a heated argument with his mother, who knows?"
He does know, if only you let him tell his version of the events, the detective mentally retorts. Nevertheless, assuming (with a monumental leap of faith) that Anderson is, in fact, right, and Elisa and her attacker did argue and she tried to defend herself, why doesn't she have any scratches or contusions on her forearms? Whoever puts up a fight would try to hit the attacker with fists, hooks, punches. However, her knuckles aren't bruised or injured, so she didn't use her bare hands. Would it be possible that she was holding something which she tried to use to hit the killer?
"Did you move anything, any object on or around the body?"
Anderson grimaces at the subtle insinuation of poor forensics procedure, "Of course not!"
John tries to shift the focus back to the story they were being told, "You were saying that the disappearance of Mr Therton, the victim's husband, remained a mystery?"
"Precisely, and it also marked the beginning of the end of the Therton family. Adam, that was his name, was pretty much the only one - with the exception of his wife, who cared about Isaac and truly loved him. When he died and Elisa became a heartbroken, grieving widow, the boy officially became a pariah in the town."
"Why? It's not like he's dangerous or lunatic, he has just problems forging social bonds," Sherlock underlines in a deep tone while heading to Isaac's room.
"Yeah, because he is a sociopath. I understand why you take this case to heart, Holmes..."
"I don't," he cuts him short and bursts into the boy's poorly equipped room.
"The truth is this boy has always been bizarre," Anderson adds without hiding his mistrust.
"He likes popular movies and is a football fan. Seems pretty normal to me," John comments looking around the walls where a few posters of the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' saga and some drawings of footballers are hanging. Anderson glances at the drawings and counters, "For someone who is into football, it's quite weird to get the wrong colours of his favourite team crest," he mocks tapping on a representation of the Arsenal emblem coloured in green and lilac.
Sherlock follows their banter from across the room and teases Anderson, "Let me guess: his lack of social skills made him different, isn't it?" he peeks into the boy's bare bathroom where a few objects are scattered on the sink: just the toothpaste and toothbrush, a razor blade and a deodorant.
"Not only that; he also had the strange tendency to wander into the woods for long hours, hunting - he said, searching..."
"For what?" John intervenes.
"His father's remains, obviously, some clues about what happened. He wanted the truth and there's nothing strange about it," Sherlock answers before Anderson could, then he proceeds back to the main entrance.
"Let's be honest; a lone wolf who roams the woods with a shotgun on his shoulders and that creepy look in his eyes... It's no wonder people started to see him as a threat," Anderson shrugs, prisoner of his biased mind.
"And this small town was more scared of him than of his father's killer on the loose. Anyway, I am curious about the second mystery that shook this village. Who was killed after Adam?" the detective inquires.
"Nobody was. It was a simple, plain robbery; no casualties, just a bunch of stolen jewels worthing tens of thousand pounds. And it actually happened before Adam's death, approximately ten years ago."
"Who would own that kind of jewels here? For what I have seen, there are no rich, luxurious mansions in this town," John remarks furrowing his brow.
"Those jewels did not belong to any of our citizens, they were part of an exhibition which took place in the old church," Anderson explains patiently.
"And the mystery about the robbery is..." John presses him.
"That one of the thieves vanished together with the loot."
"One of the thieves?" the doctor frowns.
"There were two of them. Fred Admiral, a man born and raised here, and his unknown accomplice. As far as the investigation could conclude, Fred Admiral must have accurately planned and carried out the robbery together with another person."
"But something went wrong, I suppose," Sherlock encourages him to continue his story and steps into the backyard from the rear door.
"When they were sneaking out of the church with their plunder through the medieval passageways that run under the nave, Fred slipped on the mossy floor and broke a leg. At that time, someone noticed the jewels had disappeared and called the police. The second thief tried to help him but soon realised he would have been caught together with his accomplice. So the second thief left Fred behind, grabbed all the loot and disappeared."
"Why do you still consider it a mystery, then?" Sherlock asks marching towards a fenced part of the garden.
"Because Mr Admiral never talked. No matter what deal the prosecution offered him, he never gave away the name of his partner, where he could be hiding or where the jewels ended up."
"Honour among thieves," John states with a smirk.
"His honourable manners cost him a five-year sentence. And even though he got out early for good behaviour, I'm pretty positive he never saw a cent of the fortune he had collaborated to steal," Anderson points out.
"How can you say that?" the doctor inquires keeping an eye on his friend who knelt down near a bunch of plants with purple flowers. Is he keen on botany, now? he thinks with a trace of sarcasm towards his seemingly boundless knowledge.
"The man is broke. He has always worked for his wife's plumbers company, and the couple has recently had a baby, but they still live squashed into a tiny house. He certainly doesn't look like a man who tried to steal half a million pounds worth of jewellery. His accomplice must have taken advantage of Fred's bad-luck accident and eloped leaving him with nothing."
"And after all these years nobody has the slightest clue of who the second thief might be? No doubt you became such a mediocre officer given your origins," Sherlock disdainfully mocks him straightening up.
"Holmes, I'd like to remind you that we're not here to dig up old crimes but to solve a new one and we're on borrowed time," Anderson overlooks the insult.
"Right. Let's start with hard facts: any witnesses of this murder?" John asks taking out his notepad.
The forensic scientist shakes his head, "Nobody saw or heard anything. As you can see, this house is quite isolated; their only neighbours are wild beasts".
"Speaking of which, is this the reason why that portion of the garden is the only one protected by a fence, to keep away wild animals?" Sherlock nods at the open gate on the paling protecting the plants that he was studying just a few moments before.
Anderson squints his eyes to discern some letters engraved in a sequence of flat rocks aligned at the centre of that fenced field and reads it out loud, "Plants Experiments... Oh, that was Adam's little lab. He was so fond of his flowers! After his disappearance, I imagine that Elisa took over the gardening routine".
"As a matter of fact, she did... where are her grass shears?" Sherlock murmurs barely audible.
"What are you talking about freak?"
"Do me a favour and try to open your eyes every now and then. If you look closely at the plants in the 'lab', you'll clearly distinguish fresh trims along the stems and pruning residues on the ground. If we also add the fact that the corpse exhibits soil traces under her nails, we can easily assume that she had been gardening recently. Considering that this very part of the garden was her beloved husband's haven, we can presume that she would always clean after herself and dispose of all those cut leaves. She wouldn't leave such a mess."
John catches up with his friend's line of reasoning, "She must have been gardening when she was suddenly interrupted. Someone urged her into the house and killed her."
"Indeed, doctor. So back at my question: where are her grass shears?" Sherlock grumbles impatiently.
Anderson raises his hands in surrender, "I have no idea. They were nowhere in the garden or inside the house. I told you: we didn't move anything."
"Something's not right," the consulting detective mumbles and a police officer echoes him, "Something is definitely wrong, sir: there's another victim."
The trio follows the police officer who has just announced the presence of a second body; they march toward the far end of the garden where they spot a dog lying in the grass.
"I don't understand. Did the murderer kill the family dog, too?" John wonders.
"Just because a dog lies dead on a crime scene, that does not necessarily make it the second victim of the same assassin," Sherlock clarifies examining the animal.
"Why would someone kill a dog, anyway?" Anderson intervenes.
"Perhaps, the killer was afraid the dog could start barking thus warning passers-by?" the doctor speculates.
"But it makes no logical sense. Passers-by here? We said it before: this house is isolated. Given the breed and the small size of this dog, we can also rule out the possibility that the shooter felt threatened by it and acted in self-defence. Not to mention that, for what we can observe, this dog doesn't show any external wounds. What could the killer have possibly done, strangle it?" the detective asks rhetorically, but right when he finishes the sentence, something clicks in his mind and he whispers, "Actually..."
He squats down over the dog's muzzle and delicately lifts the flew to reveal blue discolouration on its gums. "A clear sign of cyanosis: this dog had respiratory failure, which is also consistent with the scratches on the bare ground around its paws, signalling it was suffering from convulsions," he states in a gloomy tone.
John looks at him intrigued: is it possible that the very man who never bats an eyelid in front of a human corpse is now affected by the death of a dog?
"So, it wasn't killed by Elisa's murderer?" Anderson concludes tentatively.
"We don't know precisely what caused its asphyxiation, but I don't think the killer had anything to do with it. Still, the question remains: why is this dog dead?" Sherlock asks mostly to himself.
Anderson leads them to the front gate of the house hissing, "Why don't you ask Isaac? Maybe he'll tell you how and why he killed the dog after shooting his mother."
"Don't your neurons get claustrophobic in that tiny brain of yours, Anderson?" the detective talks back getting out of the driveway and stepping onto the main road where a knot of curious people is standing behind police tape.
While they are making their way through the crowd, a woman grabs the doctor by his shoulders, a dismayed look on her face. John instinctively steps back but she tightens her grip on him and stammers, "Is-is that really you?"
She turns pale; her bloodshot eyes stare at John as if she had just seen a ghost. The doctor, visibly confused and uncomfortable, murmurs warily, "Excuse me, do I know you?"
She is now shaking uncontrollably while tears stream down her face, "Dad, Is that you?"
Sherlock frowns at the scene as the woman continues, "Are you back because I'm letting you down? Oh, dad, I'm so sorry! I know that your company was the hard work of your life, nay, it was your entire life. And I've been trying to save it, I swear. But it's so damn difficult. Heaven knows I'd do anything to prevent it from going bankrupt, anything! Are you angry, dad?" she whispers caressing John's cheek who moves away from her touch, ill at ease.
"I haven't the faintest idea who she is," he throws a bewildered look at Sherlock. "This woman is clearly delirious. She is hallucinating, and I guess she's seeing her father, somehow. Excuse me, can you hear me? Are you feeling alright?" he tries to drag her back into reality.
She blinks repeatedly waking up from her trance and squints at John, "Who are you?"
"My name's John Watson and I'm afraid that your father was never here. You had hallucinations," he explains calmly and professionally.
She takes a few steps back with a staggering gait and loses her balance for a second. Sherlock quickly grabs her arm preventing her from hitting the ground. She is still in shock when she mumbles, "It felt so real..."
"Is she drunk?" John asks Sherlock who wrinkles his nose and replies, "I don't smell alcohol. It's more likely drugs. Look at her pupils: dilated. Her speech: slurred. And she is experiencing confusion and hallucinations."
"Pardon me, what are you talking about? I'm not drunk, let alone high! I - I am just shocked," she protests.
"Why shocked? And why did you believe to see your father in my friend here?" the detective inquires.
"Yes, I did see my father, he was right in front of me..." she immediately remembers as if she was retracing a dream she had just woken up from. "But it is impossible. He passed away a few years ago."
"He still haunts you, apparently. Yet his memory looks like a pleasant one; you seemed attached to him and felt so guilty about letting him down," the detective scrutinises her recalling her words. She lowers her gaze embarrassed, biting her lower lip.
"Sherlock, this isn't the time for your deductions," John reprimands him shooting a preoccupied look at the woman.
"I'm not really interested in the babbling lunacy of a prodigal daughter. But I'm much more interested in my first question that is still unanswered: why are you shocked?"
"Because Elisa and I are... were friends," she quickly corrects, "We have known each other for a long time but lately, we had become closer. I used to lend her a helping hand. I even proposed to buy her house for a price way higher than markets rates knowing she was experiencing some financial difficulties. All the papers containing my estate offer were laying around in the house, waiting only for her signature; the police must have gathered them by now. She was never too keen on the idea of leaving this cottage; poor choice but understandable since it was full of memories of her deceased husband. After all, Adam didn't really leave her much, not even money in the bank account, since he didn't trust banks. On the bright side, at least they weren't hit that badly by the financial crash of 2008... Unlike us," she shakes her head disconsolately trying to put an end at her stream of consciousness.
Then she clears her throat swallowing hard to fight the severe dryness in her mouth and throat, and continues, "Had she sold her house to me, she might still have had a chance at a better life. She probably would still be alive... She didn't let me help her, even though I tried to be her friend," she starts gibbering and gets seemingly delirious again.
"Miss, do you want to sit down?" John suggests putting a hand on her shoulder and helping her leaning against a short wall along the dusty road.
"Madam would be more appropriate. Come on, John, I've taught you better than that. Look at her ring: she's married."
"Is your husband here in the crowd?" the doctor asks her looking around.
"No, he isn't," Anderson intervenes.
"And how do you know?"
"As I told you, in small towns some stories live on, and their protagonists get a perennial stigma: everybody knows them. Gentlemen, this is Martha Admiral, Fred's wife."