Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor John Watson and all associated characters belong to the late, great Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his estate, various studios and other companies. This pastiche is completely non-profit, and only for enjoyment and entertainment.
Warnings: Light Bad Language & Adult Themes
Authors Notes: I know, it's been a little while. I started up on two other writing projects at once and it pulled me this way and that, and I've just been so distracted. But, bright side, here is Holmes at his most theatrical best.
Please enjoy and please also review.
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Chapter Eleven – A Light in the Darkness
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Gregson rocked back on his heels in shock, while Watson's jaw dropped open. Holmes' face lit up with a fervour of interest.
"Strangerson too," Holmes exclaimed. "The plot has indeed thickened."
"It was already thick enough, Mister Holmes," Lestrade grumbled. "I was the first on the scene; I tracked the man to his hotel room and saw a blood trail creeping from under the door. No one had checked on Strangerson since he arrived there."
"Not poisoned this time?" Watson asked.
"No. Stabbed through the heart. The morgue is still to do the autopsy, but the man had clearly been in a fight. I've been there all day cataloguing the scene," Lestrade sighed wearily.
"You are certain about the identification?" Gregson stammered.
"Absolutely certain, Inspector," Lestrade hissed back.
"Leave out no detail, Lestrade," Holmes ordered imperiously. "What was the exact nature of the crime scene?"
"Strangerson was still in his night clothes in the middle of the floor. His clothes were torn and there were defensive wounds on his arms. His luggage, save his toiletries and night clothes was still packed for a trip, the bedding indicated he'd either just risen or had been roused by the murderer. The wound was a single upward thrust that pierced the muscle tissue under the arm and broke the rib bone, slicing the left ventricle. Death was quick, and bloody. There was blood in the sink of the bathroom where the killer must have cleaned himself and on the sheets where he wiped his knife. All very commonplace for a murder scene, save two things."
Lestrade bent to unlock the case and produced an evidence bag. "One, we found this e-mail printout in his suitcase." He handed the nearly blank page to Holmes and Watson leaned in to see. The e-mail was from a 'B. Young' to '', dated four days ago and stated simply JH is in Europe.
"The second was on the wall. Can you guess what was written above the man's body?"
Watson felt the hairs on his neck rise, even as Holmes answered. "The word Rache, written in blood."
Lestrade nodded grimly. "Correct. Only this time it was written in the victim's blood."
Holmes sat back, steepling his fingers. "Anything else?"
"I don't know that it helps us much, but the murderer was witnessed leaving Strangerson's room. A paper boy who was doing his rounds near the hotel saw a tall, red headed man in a long coat climbing out of the window using a long ladder they use for window cleaning. He thought that the man was just a maintenance worker doing some early job and never gave it much thought until we started questioning all those in the vicinity," Lestrade reported.
"And there was nothing else?" Holmes demanded. "No other items in the room save the victim's luggage?"
"Nothing out of the ordinary," Lestrade shrugged. "There was a novel he'd been reading and his wallet, still with cash and cards inside, a glass of water and some chipboard box with two pills inside."
"That's it!" Holmes leapt to his feet. "That's it, the last link. We have all the threads that formed this tangle, and may now unravel them. Could I have access to these pills?"
Lestrade drew a paper evidence bag from the case. "I have them here, along with Strangerson's other personal effects. I was going to take them to the station until we can contact his relatives." He poured the contents out, and Holmes snatched up the nondescript box from the pile.
"Ah, here we are. Doctor, would you say there's anything strange about these?" Holmes held the pills up.
Watson took one and turned it over in his hands. "There's no identity mark." He turned to the Inspectors. "All drugs have a company stamp or other identifying mark somewhere. It's to help stop counterfeiting and to distinguish them from other, similar looking medicines."
"Fascinating, but I still don't see the importance of this," Lestrade stated, looking like he was being made fun of.
"Just so," Holmes nodded. "These look home made." He took a fitted phial from the GC-MS machine at his feet, and a dug out a clean scalpel. He carefully sliced the top off one capsule, took of sample of the powder therein, and loaded up the machine. "There. We should have a result within about two minutes or so. Watson," Holmes dragged up the battered laptop. "I'm assuming you know basic chemistry. Keep an eye on the readouts, tell me what comes up."
"Holmes, can you please explain this?" Lestrade protested impatiently. "So the man took medicine. More than half the country is medicated. Or he was an addict, which is just as common."
"Patience, my friend, patience," Holmes admonished. "You will see soon enough."
They waited until Watson, reading off the screen, looked up. "It's finished, but Holmes this can't be right. It says here it's sucrose."
Holmes turned on him in disbelief. "Sugar?"
"Sugar and nothing but," Watson turned the screen for Holmes to see the analysis.
Disappointment and chagrin flushed Holmes face. "That can't be right! This is the only answer that fits all the facts, that explains the whole mess. The pills I expected at Drebber's were found, but they are inert?" Holmes paced the room agitatedly. "Can it be possible that my entire chain of logic was false? That's impossible. It can't be coincidence."
Gregson had regained some of his good humour in the face of Holmes' sudden failure. "We can't know everything, Holmes." He stopped grinning when he was hit with the full force of Watson's glare.
Watson found himself empathizing with Holmes confusion and chagrin. It was never nice to have the whole world pulled out from under you, he knew. "Holmes, don't worry about it," he turned the other, untested pill in his hands. "Maybe what you're looking for just isn't there to find."
Holmes shot him a look, but then his whole countenance changed when he spied Watson's hands holding the other pill. His whole body convulsed as if struck by lightning. "Ah, I have it!" He took the other pill and repeated the same process as with the last, throwing himself down on the couch when finished.
"I must have more faith," he declared, running hands through his hair. "Of course one should always remember that when a fact runs contrary to the logic, it is not the logic but the interpretation of the fact that is the key issue." Was all he said as they waited.
Watson felt a thrill of excitement as the results flashed up. "Congratulations, we have a hemotoxin."
Holmes gave a derisive laugh. "One deadly poison and one completely harmless. But I should have known that before I opened the box at all."
Watson was confused by the statement. "Excuse me?"
Lestrade was staring. "Holmes, what does this mean?"
Holmes shook his head, amused. "All this is strange to you all because you failed to realize the most important aspect of the crime. Because it escaped your attention, you focused on the wrong areas and ended up treading the wrong paths. But the things that perplex you about this affair have only served to make it all the more clear to me."
"Has it ever occurred to you that it is the commonplace murders which are the hardest to solve?" Holmes sat back with a contemplative air. "The ones where there is nothing remarkable or noteworthy, nothing which draws the eye and fires the imagination? They are much more likely to pass out of the annuls of history, unfathomable. This would have been much harder to solve if Drebber had been left beaten or shot on the street somewhere; but no, he was lured and killed, and that uniqueness has made the problem easy to solve. All the effort to obscure the facts has in fact made them transparent, murderer, motive and all."
"You know who it is?" Lestrade cut in, thunderstruck. "Damn it man, who?"
Holmes' expression shuttered, and to Watson's surprise he replied. "I'd rather not say."
Sheer, pole axed, disbelieving silence followed for a moment.
Then Gregson held up a heavy hand. "Now wait just a minute, Mr Sherlock Holmes. We are willing to acknowledge that you are a very smart man and that you have some clever methods. But we need more than a lecture or a theory. We need to find this man. If we were both wrong and both Charpentier and Strangerson were not involved, then who did kill these men? You throw out hints here and there like breadcrumbs but that still does not give us anything we can use!" Gregson had gone red in the face.
Lestrade added, far more calmly. "Inspector Gregson is correct, sir. Yes, we have both failed; but Mr Holmes if you know something that can assist us, we have to know it now. You can't keep that kind of information from the force."
Watson looked over at Holmes and asked simply. "Let's find the man before he kills again."
Holmes, pressured from all sides, replied. "There won't be any more murders; that I am sure of. And yes, I do know the assassin's name but it is of little use compared with an ability to capture him. I have made arrangements which may see him in custody, but they will require careful handling. This man is shrewd, he is desperate, he has the assistance of at least one other just as intelligent and perhaps more accomplices as well. Right now we may find him if he believes himself to be safe; but he has proven himself a very able criminal. If he has an inkling that we are close, he will vanish into this city; and gentlemen, with no intent to hurt, I must say that neither you nor the entire force of Scotland Yard are a match for him. If you want him caught, you must let me try my way. I accept responsibility for whatever this man might do afterwards; but I cannot let him escape and your grasp will be fumble fingered. The instant I can advise you of the details without endangering my arrangements, I will do so. Until then, I will not answer your questions."
Gregson and Lestrade both looked extremely affronted by this.
"Now wait a minute you..." Gregson started, but a knock interrupted him.
Wiggins came in without permission, and gave Holmes a wave. "The taxi you ordered is here, guv," he reported.
Holmes grinned. "Very good. Can you ask the driver to come in? I have some equipment that needs to be moved."
Wiggins hurried off while the Inspectors rounded on Holmes.
"What is this?" Gregson demanded.
Holmes made a show of disconnecting the GC-MS from power before answering. "Surely you've heard. I am moving apartments to Baker Street, and I wouldn't want to trust this kind of equipment to a moving company."
Puzzled and suspicious, Watson also rose, watching Holmes closely. The man was up to something.
Through the open door came the driver – a tall, tanned man with a face flushed with cold, a long coat and a shapeless hat pulled half over his eyes. "What can I do for you, sir?" He asked politely.
"Ah, just the man. Can you help me lift this? It's a little heavy," Holmes waved the man over.
The driver took the order a little sullenly, but bent down to lift one end. In an instant, Holmes hands were a blur, and a tie was around the man's wrist and tightened in a blink.
"Gentlemen," Holmes flourished. "I give you Mr Jefferson Hope, murderer of Enoch Drebber and Joseph Strangerson."
Watson was so shocked that for a moment he froze. Then Hope, the driver, gave a roar and batted Holmes aside with his cuffed fists before leaping for the window. Rotting wood and glass splintered as the man's body slalomed into it but Watson was already there, kicking the back of one knee and hauling back the man with both arms.
Hope managed to knock him off balance, but Gregson and Lestrade joined the fray. Hope was a big man and fought with wild savagery, biting and clawing and hammering with his hands and feet. The Inspectors had him by either arm but the man was still able to drag them around, yanking them this way and that. Holmes leapt in from behind, and secured the half crazed man in a headlock, which still barely slowed him down.
Looking down the barrel of Watson's gun froze him solid. Hope, breathing harshly, looked past the gun to the look in Watson's eyes.
"I've pulled the trigger on better men than you," Watson warned coldly.
Hope took a breath, and relaxed, letting himself be wrestled to the floor.
Holmes, dishevelled but triumphant, shot his audience a wide smile. "Now, gentlemen, I can answer your questions." He gave Watson a wink. "Seeing as how my arrangements have all gone ahead beautifully."
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End Chapter Eleven