CHAPTER 28: SMALL TOWN MYSTERIES
A small village in the countryside - Active crime scene
One hour and a half later
"Anderson, what can you tell us about this idyllic village?" Sherlock promptly starts 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 a cottage at one end of the small town, on the edge of the forest.
"I'm not saying that 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 because neither of them was ever solved."
"And I suppose the death of Isaac's father is one of them," Holmes intervenes, as they enter the house. He immediately crouches down over the corpse of a corpulent woman lying 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 dead?
"Yes. Elisa's husband was a good man. His mysterious disappearance shocked everyone," Anderson interrupts his flow of thoughts, pointing at a family photo portraying the victim, Isaac and a cheerful man.
"If I'm not mistaken, there wasn't much to tell since the body was never found, and he had no known enemies," Sherlock recalls the scarce information that the police gave him regarding that old crime. It is also consistent with what Isaac revealed during his interrogation.
In the meantime, he attentively analyses the creases on the carpet where the body is lying. Signs of struggle: It means that she wasn't held at gunpoint and executed in cold blood, Sherlock's mind feverishly elaborates. This suggests that the murderer's first intention wasn't necessarily 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 knows, if only you let him tell his version of the events, the detective mentally retorts. Then he turns his attention to the body again, to her forearms and hands.
Assuming (with a monumental leap of faith) that Anderson is, in fact, right, and that Elisa and her attacker argued 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, and 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 and tried to use it to hit the killer?
"Did you move anything, any object, on or around the body?" He tartly asks.
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, right?"
"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—except for 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 this town," Anderson recounts.
"Why? It's not like he's dangerous or lunatic, he just has 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," Sherlock cuts him short and bursts into the boy's poorly equipped room.
"The truth is this boy has always been bizarre," Anderson says without hiding his mistrust.
"He likes popular movies and is a football fan. Seems pretty normal to me," John comments, nodding at 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 mocks, "For someone who is into football, it's quite weird to get the wrong colours on the crest of his favourite team." He taps a gloved finger 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: it's his lack of social skills that 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," Anderson remarks, wrinkling his nose at those disturbing habits.
"For what?" John asks.
"His father's remains, obviously. Perhaps some clues about what happened. He wanted the truth, and there's nothing strange about it," Sherlock answers before proceeding back to the main entrance. He has already seen it all: Isaac's personal space is so neat and tidy that he could register every single detail with just one glance.
"Let's be honest; he was a lone wolf roaming the woods with a shotgun on his shoulders and a creepy look in his eyes... It's no wonder people saw him as a threat." The forensic officer shrugs, prisoner of his own biased mind.
Holmes makes a grimace of contempt.
"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?"
"Nobody was. It was a simple, plain robbery; no casualties, just a bunch of stolen jewels that were worth hundreds of thousand pounds. And it happened before Adam's death, approximately ten years ago," Anderson specifies.
"Who would own that kind of jewels here? From what I've seen, there are no rich, luxurious mansions in this town," John points out, furrowing his brow.
"Those jewels didn't belong to any of our citizens. They were part of an exhibition that took place in the old church," Anderson explains patiently.
"And the mystery about the robbery is—"
"That one thief vanished together with the loot," he ends with a sigh, making it clear that he must have talked about that with the other villagers at least a hundred times. Events like that are a rarity in such a quiet, little village.
Watson frowns. "One thief?"
"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." Anderson does nothing to mask his bored expression.
"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 that the jewels had disappeared and called the police. The second thief tried to help him but soon realised that his injured accomplice was slowing him down, and they would have both been caught. So, the second thief left Fred behind, grabbed all the loot, and disappeared. Poof." Philip mimics with his hands the vanishing act of a magician.
"Why do you still consider it a mystery, then?" Holmes 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," Anderson says, following them into the garden.
"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 that he never saw a cent of the fortune that he had collaborated to steal."
"What makes you say that?" John inquires, keeping an eye on his friend, who has knelt near a bunch of plants with purple flowers. Is he keen on botany, now? he thinks with a trace of sarcasm towards Sherlock's seemingly boundless knowledge.
Philip Anderson shoots him a sadistic grin.
"The man is broke. He has always worked for his wife's plumbers company. The couple recently had a baby, but they still live squashed in 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 and brushing some soil off his trousers.
"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." He overlooks the insult.
"Right. Let's start with hard facts: any witnesses to this murder?" Watson asks.
The forensic scientist shakes his head.
"Nobody saw or heard anything. As you can see, this house is isolated; their only neighbours are wild beasts".
"Speaking of which, is this the reason that portion of the garden is the only one protected by a fence, to keep wild animals away?" Sherlock nods to 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 that are aligned at the centre of that fenced field and reads it out loud, "Plants Experiments. Oh, that was Adam's little lab. He was very fond of his flowers. After his disappearance, I imagine Elisa took over the gardening routine."
"As a matter of fact, she did," Sherlock confirms, remembering the soil traces on the cadaver. "Where are her grass shears?" he murmurs, barely audible.
Philip frowns. "What are you talking about, freak?"
Holmes glowers at him.
"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 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." He points at the leaves and residues scattered around the fence.
John catches up with his line of reasoning and completes, "She must have been gardening when she was suddenly interrupted. Someone urged her into the house and killed her."
"Indeed, doctor. So back to 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," Holmes says.
A police officer who has just approached them echoes him, "Something is definitely wrong, sir. We just found 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, it doesn't necessarily make it the second victim of the same assassin," Sherlock clarifies, examining the animal.
"Why would anyone kill a dog, anyway?" Anderson intervenes.
"Perhaps the killer was afraid that the dog could start barking thus warning passers-by?" John speculates.
"But it makes no logical sense," Sherlock objects. "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 and acted in self-defence. Not to mention that, from what we can observe, this dog doesn't show any external wounds. What could the killer have possibly done, strangle it?" He rhetorically asks, 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," Sherlock 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?
"Are you saying the dog wasn't killed by Elisa's murderer?" Anderson asks.
"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 back 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?" Holmes 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 him as if she had just seen a ghost. John, 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 knits his brows 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 cries, caressing John's cheek, who yanks his face away from her touch, uneasy.
He throws a bewildered look at his flatmate.
"I haven't the faintest idea who she is. This woman is clearly delirious. She is hallucinating, and I guess she's seeing her father in me, somehow."
John squints his eyes at her. "Can you hear me? Are you feeling alright?" He pronounces clearly, trying to drag her back into reality.
She blinks repeatedly, waking up from her trance, and narrows her eyes at John.
"Who are you?"
"My name's John Watson and I'm afraid that your father was never here. You hallucinated," 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 and breaks free from Sherlock's hold.
"Why shocked? And why did you believe to see your father in my friend here?" Holmes inquires in a harsh tone.
"Yes, I saw my father. He was right in front of me—" she immediately remembers, motioning her fingers in the air as if she was retracing a dream from which she just woke up.
"But it's impossible. He passed away a few years ago." She shakes her head to get rid of that poignant sensation.
"He still haunts you, apparently. Yet his memory looks like a pleasant one; you seemed attached to him and felt guilty about letting him down." Sherlock recalls her words. She lowers her gaze, embarrassed, pulling down the left sleeve of her shirt and squirming nervously under the inquiring gaze of that stranger.
"Sherlock, this isn't the time for your deductions," John reprimands him, shooting a preoccupied look at the woman. His friend has no clue about the right timing.
"I'm not interested in the babbling lunacy of an orphaned daughter," he snorts, showing his notorious tactlessness. "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 herself, glancing at the crime scene.
"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 market rates, knowing she was experiencing some financial difficulties. If you want proof, all the papers containing my estate offer were lying around in the house, waiting only for her signature; the police must have gathered them by now. Still, 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 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 blabbers in a chaotic stream of consciousness.
She stops and swallows hard a couple of times, clearing her throat noisily.
"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 gibbers and gets seemingly delirious again.
"Miss, do you want to sit down?" John suggests, placing a hand on her shoulder and helping her lean 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." Sherlock points at her left hand.
The doctor casts a glance at her wedding band and looks around at the knot of curious people.
"Is your husband here in the crowd?"
"No, he isn't," Anderson intervenes.
Watson arches a brow. "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."
*Just some information about English football: the official colours of the Arsenal football club emblem are red and blue, which is why Anderson mocked Isaac's drawing in which the boy used lilac and green instead.
Author's note: Dear readers, since several new characters have been introduced for this case, I thought it would be helpful to add a recap at the end of the chapter to let you familiarise yourself with them.
Therton family:
Adam Therton (Isaac's father and Elisa's husband): mysteriously disappeared six years ago after going into the woods at night. Presumed dead.
Elisa Therton (Isaac's mother and Adam's wife): shot dead in her house. Her murder is being currently investigated by Anderson and the police.
Isaac Therton: a teenager with sociopathic tendencies. He is the main suspect in his mother's murder. Provisionally detained in New Scotland Yard, London.
Fred Admiral: a local thief who got caught during a jewel heist ten years ago. He was sentenced to five years in prison and got out early on good conduct. He never revealed the name of his accomplice. He works as a plumber for his wife's plumbers company.
Martha Admiral: Fred's wife. She experienced hallucinations next to the crime scene and believed she was seeing her deceased father.
If you ever feel like you are getting confused with the newly introduced characters, names or backstories, do not hesitate to tell me, and I'll try my best to clarify all the doubts. Let me know if you are easily following the investigation of this new case. What are your thoughts on it? Any working theories?