AN: Joy and rapture! Another chapter! This is probably more boring thatn my other two stories... Forgive me if it's uninteresting. ;-;
Chapter Four: Intermission With the Detective
"It seems that you have picked up a few of my more aggravating habits." I found myself looking into the sharp gray eyes of Sherlock Holmes. I groaned, closing my eyes against the pain and put a hand to my forehead.
"What are you talking about, Holmes?" I asked, opening one eye to peer at him. We were both standing, but he had bent down to my eye level to investigate. Presently, he stood to his full height and lit the bowl of his pipe with a puff of smoke.
"You and I seem to share the lack of interest for eating when a case is present," he said simply, shaking the match out and tossing it into the darkness of oblivion. "Would you care to take a walk with me?" I opened my second eye then and looked about me. Nothing but the blackness of my subconscious awaited us.
"Walk to where, Holmes?" I asked incredulously, looking back to him. He shook his head, taking the pipe from his mouth and blowing a soft, gray smoke ring.
"Have you no imagination, Jack? Can you think of this place as nothing more than a well of inky blackness? Think, boy, think." I watched Sherlock Holmes turn away from me, as if expecting me to solve this problem while his back was turned. I bit my lower lip, then screwed my eyes shut. As I opened them again, the great detective and I were surrounded not by an endless void, but the soft sunlight of summer in a verdant park unlike any I have ever visited. Holmes turned back to me, a smile on his normally sharp features. I returned it.
"Is this more to your liking?" I asked with an air of smugness. He took a look around him, puffing silently on his pipe, then nodded, replacing his momentary smirk with a look of critical inspection.
"Yes, yes, this is much more agreeable." Glancing back at me, he took the pipe from his mouth once more. "See what the mind is capable of, Jack, my boy?"
We walked down the path, which, if it is of any consequence, was comprised of pebbles, for quite some time in silence. He smoked his pipe unmolested by speech, and I watched the sunlight filter through the wide green leaves above. Just walking, I was somehow content, more than I had been for a long time in my memory. Strangely enough, it was one of the most calming moments I had ever remembered witnessing, and I am not even sure that it really ever happened. I grew accustomed to the sounds of our shoes crunching the tiny stones underneath, and even the intermittent bird call from far off in the distance. At last, Holmes halted and knocked the ash from his pipe by knocking it against his shoe. The sound echoed loudly against the tree trunks.
"Who are your suspects, dear boy?" Holmes asked as he began to twirl his pipe between his fingers. The gray eyes looked down at me with one eyebrow raised. We again began to walk on the path.
"My main focus today was to meet with the sisters McGuiness, to hear their unfettered view of the events. The mind of a child is yet uncorrupted."
"As is normal, Jack. Not all hold to the norm, you must remember." He held his pipe between his teeth in thought, though the tobacco was long gone. "In fact, it would be wiser to expect nothing but what strayed from the beaten path of normalcy. But you have not answered my question, young Holmes."
"Anyone on that green could have abducted the man, Holmes!" I felt the blood rising to my cheeks. To be embarrassed in such a way in front of Sherlock Holmes was close to unbearable. But he was quiet, patient.
"You said yourself to Ms. Joan McGuiness that someone close to Mr. McGuiness abducted him. So think. How many times must I remind you to think?"
I stared at the ground, trying to hide my rapidly flushing face from the great detective. Those last words had stung me, even if he had not meant them to. The problem was that he did have to remind me to think, to deduce. And while I said nothing for minutes on end, we simply kept walking in silence. His distance made it seem as if he didn't care about the case one iota, but I knew differently. After a period of deliberation, I spoke slowly, carefully.
"Alice and Anna are ruled out without pause. They are both far too young to have contrived anything of this sort. Ms. Brooke can also be done away with, for she was on 'stage' when Mr. McGuiness disappeared. That leaves the possibility of the remaining Ms. McGuiness', Mr. Gerald Heyman, any of his Hamlet stage-mates, or of an outside force."
"Search the facts, slowly eliminating those who do not fit the profile," Holmes suggested, digging into a pouch at his side for more pipe tobacco. His face was pinched, as if in impatience. "Come now, Jack, you should be able to deduce more than this without my help, shouldn't you?"
"You expect too much of me," I said in a soft voice, but he still heard what I said. He lit his pipe for the second time, and silently puffed it for a moment to two, then tossed the match onto the ground and ground it into the pebbles at our feet.
"I expect from you what I expect from myself, no more or less, though, admittedly, you have pushed my expectations higher with each exploit. You set your own bar, Jack, not I." Only another second passed before he dropped the bomb. "You brought this upon yourself." I turned on him, enraged.
"I would never have even thought about being a detective if you hadn't forced your ideas on me!" I clenched my fists in rage.
"Dear boy, I never thrust the thought into your mind." Holmes was calm, but his tone had suddenly become more biting. I frowned at his immovability.
"Just because I am Holmes reincarnate, I am expected to be not only as great as he was, but greater in every way," I growled, looking everywhere but at him.
The world around us wavered for a moment, then flickered back into view. We were silent. At great length, he took the pipe from his mouth and spoke a slow, steady voice of a man trying to remain calm, and yet somehow hurt from deep inside.
"You may bow out at any time you wish, Jack." Holmes' voice was hollow, devoid of emotion. "No one has bound you to this case but yourself." The world blinked off and on, and the form of Sherlock Holmes winked in and out of existence. "But I have learned that I never took cases for my own good, but for the good of those who needed my expert help. Remember that, Jack."
I opened my eyes to see three sets of eyes that were far too close to be comfortable. One set was a familiar, comforting brown while the others were a shocking blue and rich, dark brown. I gasped as I sat up, scattering the eyes to their respective persons.
"Good God, Holmes," came Watson's exasperated voice to my left. "You really must desist from passing out like this. It really does frighten me."
"Apparently, I cannot help it, Watson," I said, rubbing my temples hard and remembering the conversation I had held with Holmes. "It is in my nature to routinely forget meals." I looked around me to identify the owners to the other two sets of eyes, and I could see Ms. Sara McGuiness with her small blue eyes and Ron, who held the darker of the brown eyes, sitting precariously close. I quickly shoved my body from the ground, remembering well the talk that Holmes and I had shared. I exchanged no dialogue with Watson or Sara McGuiness as I moved past them, at some protest from young Ronald.
"Hoy, Mr. Holmes!" he shouted, running after me. "You gotta eat something or else you'll fall right over again!" Just as the words left him, a numbing pain splashed spasmodicly through my body, and I fell to one knee with a dull thud. Ron appeared at my side, a wonderfully tantalizing sandwich in his hands. I stared at the food with loving delicacy. But I shoved the thought from my skull.
"Ron," I asked, tearing my eyes, not without difficulty, from the beloved food item, "what did you learn from Ms. Anna McGuiness?" Ron, luckily, had done what I had asked without words.
"Nothin', Mr. Holmes." He shoved the sandwich in my face. "That is, if you don't eat, I didn't learn nothin'." I took my eyes to his, and was surprised to see the determination there. With a look of faux distaste, I snatched the succulent sustenance from his grubby fingers and began to tear ravenously into its flesh-like bread.
"You are a tyrant, young Ron," I muttered between bites, feeling the wonderfully reviving food in my gullet. "Now," I said, with the last bites yet to be taken," tell me of your exploits."
"Ms. Anna told me about seein' a big black car earlier in the day, and that Mr. McGuiness and a group of his friends went somewhere for a few hours, she didn't know where. In," his eyes flashed, "the black car." With the last crumbs of the much-needed sandwich still in my mouth, I smiled at the urchin boy.
"Good boy, Ron," I murmured, swallowing the last of the food. I stood, and brushed the grass from my knees. "Now to identify the vehicle that abducted our absent Hamlet." I turned to where it seemed that Watson and Sara McGuiness were deep in conversation. I frowned. Watson had said that he had been concerned, but that I fell to my knees and he did not so much as glance up made my lips turn down slightly.
After only a moment, I was on my knees again, but this time of my own infliction. I leaned my face close to the ground. It may have seemed very odd to an outsider: a young man, nearly lying on his stomach, staring at something that wasn't there. But there was something there, and I was staring right at it.
"Close tread," I observed aloud, peering with one eye shut, my head parallel to the ground. This could have belonged to any black car in London, but I was sure that it was the same car that had stolen away Mr. McGuiness. I began inching my way along the tire tracks, searching for anything that might be singular about them, anything that would allow for any distinction at all. I found it, but not with my eyes.
The cold, congealed liquid squelched between my fingers, and I grimaced. I rocked backwards onto my knees, staring as the dark viscous blood rolled in large drops down my palm and wrist.
"Oh merciful Lord," came the voice of Hannah Brooke from behind me. I turned, and her fingers were trembling violently as they hovered over her paled lips. I acted quickly.
"Watson!" I barked, standing in an instant. He snapped to attention from his position beside Sara McGuiness and was suddenly beside Ms. Brooke, holding her waist to keep her steady. "We do not want another person to fall unconscious during this investigation," I said to him, and then to the mass that had gathered around us: "Someone find Ms. Brooke a glass of strong brandy!" There was no shortage of strong alcohol amongst the traveling actors, and soon, Ms. Brooke was sitting on a park bench with a blanket draped over her shoulders. Situated in her quivering fingers was a glass of brandy that she brought to her lips and sipped on daintily. Watson sat on the bench beside her, ready to supply aid or more brandy should she need either.
"I am so sorry, Mr. Holmes," she said in a shaky voice. Her hands were still quaking. "I could have seen the same scene in a cinema and had no troubles, but to see the blood... David's blood."
"Ms. Brooke," broke in Watson's voice, "I am not sure that we can be certain-" I stilled his voice with a hand applied to his shoulder.
"Watson," I murmured close to his ear, "it is not wise to instill false hope to such a woman."
"The blood could belong to one of the kidnappers," he told me resolutely. "McGuiness could have injured some of them in a struggle."
"Think, Watson," I said, using the same words that Holmes had used on me earlier. I felt myself grow angry at their resurfacing. "There is blood on the rope fragments near the front of-" I looked at where the troupe had formerly been lined up, and it seemed as if they had dispersed while I had been unconscious. "Well, what used to be the front of the line. I will promise to never eat again if that is not the victim's blood." Watson's face paled.
"You shouldn't joke like that, Holmes. Every time you-" He bit his lower lip, then continued. "It scares me more than I have ever been scared before. You are my only friend in the world, Holmes, and if you-"
"Watson," I said calmingly, resting my hands on his shoulders. "Do not worry yourself over such matters." I paused, looking at the boy that had walked into my life not so long ago, not sure of what to say next. It was true. I was the only friend, or even family, that he had left. And all I had was him. I opened my mouth to tell him this, closed it, and patted my friend firmly on the shoulder. Straightening myself, I walked to where I had seen the frayed ends of ropes severed. Leaning closer, sitting again on my worn knees, and taking care not to touch them, I reasoned that they were cut with a pair of heavy scissors.
'Larger,' muttered Holmes, the first time that he had spoken out since I had passed out. I frowned at his interjection.
"Shears, then?" I asked to anyone. But no one responded. Even Holmes, who was always eager to insert his opinion, was silent. I waited for almost a minute for him to reprimand or reward me, but nothing came. Nothing, that is, until a feminine hand with long white fingers came down in front of my eyes, holding a large, handheld magnifying glass. I wrapped my fingers around the grip and looked at the person offering it to me.
"I suppose that if you're going to help David, you'll need some more help than an amateur journalist and an urchin." Joan's voice was softer, many decibels lower than it had been before. I stared in awe at the change in her face, standing to my full height.
"Thank you," I told her, not sure if I could allow her a smile. After she had let go of the grip, and I had pocketed it, I looked at her face. "Are you offering her services to me?" She retreated her eyes to the bloodied rope.
"You have put me in my place, Mr. Holmes. There is no place for me among clues and detecting. There is so much that I will never learn because I am not willing to look for it." Her sudden change in demeanor caught me off guard, and the following smile even more so. "But perhaps there is someone among us who can help you."
"Ms. Sara," I muttered quietly. Joan's face did a double take, then she calmed herself.
"I almost forgot whom I was talking to," she said with a sigh. She fiddled with the ring on her pinkie finger, returning to the subject. "Sara loved David, probably more than I did, but I've never seen her act the way she has today." Suddenly, her old, hardened face retuned, without warning. "I don't know who took David, Mr. Holmes, but I wouldn't rule out a suspect just because they cannot drive."
And she walked away, leaving me to ponder her cryptic words.