Prompt from goodpenmanship: Sherlock Holmes investigates an allegedly haunted manor.
As I have told Watson before, our agency is one firmly planted on the ground. Ghosts need not apply.
On rare occasions, however, clients bring matters intriguing enough that I am willing to forego my usual dismissal and investigate further. The matter of Mrs Chatterson was one such affair.
Watson was unable to accompany me on this case, remaining behind in London as he recovered from an illness. I would not have left him, but he was insistent that I take the case, assuring me that he was on the road to recovery and would prefer I took the case and brought back the tale to him than defer the case until he had fully recovered.
I do not have Watson's gift for storytelling, therefore I will stick to the plain facts of the case. Mrs Chatterson was convinced her manor was haunted by her late husband, and bid me come to find his favourite watch, long since missing, and without which she was convinced he could not rest.
The task seemed deceptively simple, but when I arrived, it proved anything but. Mrs Chatterson was overly friendly, offering me access to the entire grounds, making a point that her own chambers were included in that. I politely ignored her insinuations, focusing my search on the late master's bedroom, and the shack on the grounds that he had used for hunting.
The former of these was at first very promising, cluttered as it was with memorabilia of all kinds. It was here I missed my Watson most, as Mrs Chatterson was insistent on telling me about the stories behind all the memorabilia stored in the room. Watson would have been able to listen to all her stories, imparting comfort where needed, and gently bringing out the ones relevant to the deceased Mr Chatterson. I did not have his patience, and so used my deductive skills instead, finding where the watch could have gone unseen for so long.
The search took many hours, and by the time I was confident the watch was not in the bedchamber, night had fallen, and I took up Mrs Chatterson's invitation to spend the night.
I did not believe in ghosts before spending the night in that manor. I still do not now. Yet I must confess, somethingappeared to me in my room that night, leading me out of the house and into the garden, pointing an eerily glowing finger at a particular patch of radishes. It may have been a servant afraid to confess their knowledge in any other way, or Mrs Chatterson's younger brother, who was staying in the house at the time, playing a prank on an unsuspecting guest. Either explanation is far more likely than the existence of a ghost, though I know Watson will argue otherwise.
The next morning, I went out to that patch of radishes, and found the watch buried in the soil. Mrs Chatterson was overjoyed, and was rather uncomfortably effusive in her praise. I returned to London on the next train and spent most of the trip writing my accounting of events, ready to tell Watson once I was home.