Part II
"Arr! The fearsome scourge o' the high seas, the Dread Pirate Sherlock Holmes, is on th'unt fer a grand treasure wi'is trusty companion Cap'n John Watson –"
"Hold on, hold on. I'm older, so you're my companion." I crossed my arms and pouted. "I'm the Cap'n!"
We were back at the tree in the afternoon, Mycroft hidden in the bushes nearby with a filched box of chocolates. Sherlock had brought his magnifying glass; it stuck out of the pocket of his trousers.
"Yes, but I ain't on yer crew. I be a rogue pirate who's wi'yer crew to search fer'is treasure." That was the thing about Sherlock; he knew how to make it sound right. He knew how to make sense – at least, after he explained everything that happened in his funny head. After that, it wasn't hard to understand him after.
"Fair 'nough. What sort o' treasure we be lookin' for, Pirate Sherlock?"
"That's Dread Pirate Sherlock to ye, Cap'n," Sherlock drawled, waving his branch-cutlass. "And we be lookin fer me mummy's lost necklace!"
"Your mum's –"
"Me mummy prized an ol' necklace that's bin in th'Holmes family fer gen'rations. She lost it las'week. I'd a-been lookin' fer it e'erywhere."
"Did you, really?"
Sherlock frowned at me and dropped the pirate façade. "Yes. She misplaced it last month, or so she thought. I've searched all over the house. It's been stolen."
"You sure she didn't leave it outside?" I tilted my head to the side, frowning.
"Already checked. No success. The necklace had ten Swarovski crystals set in it. They shine almost like diamonds."
I wondered if my mum had ever owned anything that looked like a diamond.
"I also asked the maid, butler, and cook about the necklace; they had solid alibis." Sherlock poked the ground with his stick. "But since none of them had a fake leg –"
"A fake leg?"
"Yes, I'd also investigated Mummy's room. There were footprints and odd fingerprints all over the bureau where the necklace was stored. Two different sets of footprints – one by a short person with big feet, and the other by a taller person with a fake leg."
"All that from footprints?" I was a bit awed, to say the least. How'd he figure that out? He was only five!
"There was lots of mud on the ground below Mummy's window, so it wasn't hard to tell." Sherlock's grin was mischievous. "And the fingerprints were barely there but I know Mummy polishes her jewellery box before leaving the room in the morning and before going to bed."
"Couldn't some of the prints have been hers?"
"Other than that and on special occasions, she never touches the box."
I nodded, looking down at the ground. Sherlock was definitely the smartest and oddest five-year-old I had ever met. He seemed like a grown-up in a kid's body. I was awed.
"You have any ideas who the other thief is?" I asked after a moment. Sherlock shrugged.
"Couldn't be Mycroft; he was watching me practise violin at the time. And you and your sister weren't here, so…"
"So complete strangers broke into your house and stole the necklace, I get it." I nodded, standing up and dusting off my shorts. "But it's been a week. You still haven't solved it? I suppose I wouldn't be any help –"
"Outside opinions. They're useful." Sherlock smiled and stood up, dusting off his trousers as well. "I took photographs. Come to my house. I'll show you."
I'd never been to the Holmes mansion, even though it was right next door. I knew it was big and old looking, with ivy on the stone walls and roofs like the roofs of those old French houses. Weren't they called chateaus? Anyway, sometimes when the moon was full and there were no lights in the house it looked a lot like a haunted mansion. But now as Sherlock took me to the gate that led into their back yard (Mycroft was trailing us, still eating his chocolates), I looked up at the mansion and thought it really didn't look so creepy after all.
But then again, the sun was still up.
From Sherlock's room I could see my own house and what was probably my window (it looked like the right height and the right spot). Sherlock's window, however, was way bigger and had a big ledge for sitting. It wasn't good for sitting right now, though, because he'd covered it in his bug collection.
Sherlock walked over to his desk and pulled out a set of photographs for me to look at. His hand had been wobbly with the camera, though, so the footprints were a bit blurry. But there was no mistaking their shapes.
"How could you tell that one of the thieves was shorter than the other?" I asked.
Sherlock pointed to one of the photographs. "See the distance between them? The shorter you are, the shorter the distance between."
"What if they're on tip-toes?"
"Only half of the shoe would show."
I continued to frown at the photograph. "How do you think they got in?"
"Door was locked. Window was open. There's ivy below, so they must have used it to climb in and out."
"I don't know if I want to climb up the side of your house if I had a fake leg," I remarked.
He nodded in agreement. "I think the shorter one climbed up first and then pulled up the taller one."
At that moment, the door to Sherlock's room opened and a tall, dark-haired woman stood there, smiling. I smiled, too, but I felt shy. Really shy. She looked like she was Sherlock's mum, and she was really pretty.
"Sherlock, is this the friend Mycroft said you brought in?" Sherlock's mum asked kindly, still smiling at me as I squirmed and blushed at her. Sherlock nodded solemnly.
"He's from next door. John Watson."
"Well, nice to meet you, John."
"Nice to meet you, Mrs. Holmes," I mumbled.
Mrs. Holmes stepped into the room and ruffled her son's hair. "It's nice of you to play with my Sherlock; he's usually so quiet and keeps to himself."
"No problem," I replied, still looking uncomfortable. Mrs. Holmes redirected her smile at Sherlock, who only pouted and crossed his arms.
"Now boys, it'd be a shame to spend the rest of this pretty afternoon inside, wouldn't it? Go outside. Have fun! Only make sure you're back in before sundown – the disappearances of hikers and campers are a little scary."
"Aunt Petunia said something like that this morning," I remarked, touching Uncle Billy's compass for comfort.
"If you don't get home before sundown we can always drive you there. Don't you worry, John." Mrs. Holmes turned tail and swept out of the room. I looked over at Sherlock, who shifted from one foot to the other and shrugged at me.
We started to head outside to savour the rest of the afternoon. "Did you hear about the disappearances?" I asked as soon as we were in the woods. Sherlock was thoughtfully twirling his magnifying glass in his hands, and I thought for a moment that he was ignoring me.
He wasn't.
"I'd heard about the disappearances, yes. The first one was on Monday. Hiker. Amateur treasure hunter, too, if the papers are telling the truth. The second one was on Wednesday. Camper. The most recent one was yesterday. Hiker."
"They're all grown-ups, right?" I think I looked a bit too pale, because he quickly nodded.
"They're all adults who stayed in the woods overnight for some reason."
"Well… isn't the forest… haunted?"
"Haunted?" scoffed Sherlock, scuffing the ground with a snicker. "This is the Cotswolds. It's supposed to be one of the most haunted places in all of England. But that's not true. That's all superstition."
"But Harry said she saw the headless horseman outside Chavenage House and the chambermaid in Sudeley Castle –"
"John, seriously." Sherlock grabbed me by the shoulders, something a bit shocking from a five-year-old boy. "There are no such things as ghosts."
"Y-you can s-say that in the daylight all you like," I stammered.
Sherlock smirked. "I could say it at night-time, too."
"Y-yeah, well, you live in a haunted house."
"It's not haunted."
"Looks c-creepy enough by moonlight."
Sherlock grabbed a tree branch and drew lines across the ground. "Look, John, ghosts couldn't have taken the hikers and campers. You can't touch a ghost, so a ghost can't touch you."
"How do you know –"
"They don't even exist. But for the sake of argument, I'm saying that a ghost cannot possess a corporeal form and therefore cannot do any sort of lasting physical damage to a human. Therefore ghosts could not have kidnapped the hikers and campers."
I crossed my arms, shivering slightly when a cold wind blew past. Sherlock found a sunny spot and started burning ants with his magnifying glass. I watched him work in fascination.
"You're saying then that something not a ghost made them disappear? Like a murderer?"
"A murderer? We don't know yet. They haven't found bodies, only gear." Sherlock seemed totally intent on frying one of the ants in the parade, the one with the huge leaf over its head. "Chances are, it was a wild animal. But then there's the lack of animal tracks at the site."
"You've seen the site?"
"No, the paper didn't talk about them."
I grinned. "Then tomorrow we'll go find the sites."
"And look for data? Excellent idea." Sherlock leapt up. "Just what I needed to relieve my boredom!"
"I thought collecting bugs was interesting."
"Boring." Sherlock shrugged. "Investigating disappearances is so much more interesting."
At that moment, I thought of something. "What if, Sherlock! What if there's a person responsible for the disappearances, and he's the same as the thief –"
He shook his head, mysterious as ever. "Don't jump to conclusions, John; we need to see the data first."
"Oh, okay. Pirates?"
"O' course!"
We played pirates for the rest of the afternoon. The fearless Captain John Watson, along with the Dread Pirate Sherlock, discovered hidden treasure (a trove of mushrooms) under a tree and hid it all in a secret grove deeper in the woods, below a bush that had thorns that could tear clothes to shreds. Sherlock seemed interested in helping me build my treehouse as well, and suggested that we make Mycroft carry the wood that would be used for the house. We then started to form a club, our very own club. Sherlock wanted it to be called the Baker Street Sleuths, but I wasn't sure what he was going on about.
We didn't come up with a club name in the end, but we did come up with a signal system using blinking torches. After all, our windows were almost across from each other. By that time, the sun was starting to set. So, I raced through twilit forest path, heart beating furiously, trying to get home before it really got dark and I started fearing the ghosts. Sherlock could say all he wanted about ghosts not existing, but I believed.
That night before I went to sleep, I looked out the window to see a little speck of light in Sherlock's room. Watching the lights flash on and off in a message, I was sure it was going to be an exciting summer.
