CHAPTER 31: NO ONE'S WHO THEY SEEM
An hour and a half later, after updating Giulia in great detail about the case, Sherlock hits the brakes abruptly, making the tyres screech on the cobblestones in front of the Admirals' house. As he turns off the roaring engine of Mrs Hudson's sports car, he flashes Giulia a cunning smile.
"You can drive on our way back if you want."
She looks almost terrified and replies, "That's kind of you, but no, thanks. I don't want to risk running this astonishing car into a tree."
He gives her a puzzled look. "You can't drive?"
"Oh, I can drive perfectly well. Just... on the other side of the road." She chuckles. She still has trouble remembering where to look when she crosses the street. Why do Brits have to do it differently from most of the countries in the world?
He jumps out of the car and bangs loudly on the door, yelling, "Mrs Admiral? Mrs Admiral, please open up."
A few seconds later, Fred shows up on the threshold and looks daggers at him.
"How dare you come to my house again after what you accused me of the last time you were here?"
"Don't worry, Fred, I'm not here for you. I'm looking for your wife," Sherlock says, shoving him aside and making his way into the house, while Giulia stands in the doorway, uncertain.
"What do you want from her now?" Fred tailgates him with a distrustful look.
Holmes ignores his question and looks around the empty living room. "Where is she?"
"In the bathroom, she isn't feeling very well at the moment," Fred reluctantly replies, hesitant to give him details about his wife.
"I knew it." Sherlock almost spins around, full of joy. "What are her symptoms?"
Fred does a double-take and fixes his gaze on the eyes of that hideous meddler. "I beg your pardon?"
"Come on, Mr Admiral, I need some cooperation here. It's a matter of her health. Tell me precisely what signs your wife has been showing in the last few hours," Sherlock commands impatiently.
Fred scratches the back of his head, trying to recall every single detail.
"When she came back home, she couldn't even tell me what had happened with you. She was staggering. She kept pouring herself glasses of water, complaining that her mouth and throat were so dry she could hardly swallow. I couldn't understand a word of what she said: she wasn't making any sense."
"That's it?" Sherlock stares at him. His piercing eyes look like they could cut through the man's skull to force out his thoughts.
Fred wrinkles his nose and adds, "She had a headache and was feeling dizzy. After you left, she lamented that her heart was beating crazily fast—" he is interrupted by Sherlock who pedantically specifies, "It's called tachycardia."
He waves a hand in the air dismissively. "Whatever. I assumed it was a physical reaction to all the stress you put her in." He gives the detective a stern look. "About that, please leave now. I don't like unattended guests," he hisses, pushing him towards the door.
"Not even the ones that might save your wife's life?" Sherlock moves Fred's hands away and straightens the lapels of his coat.
"What do you mean?"
"The list of her symptoms is quite long: staggering, dryness in mouth and throat, slurred speech, confusion, headache, dizziness, elevated heart rate," he quickly sums up. "Everything you have just said is consistent with Atropa Belladonna poisoning. It's a toxic plant also known as 'deadly nightshade'. Its toxins can cause severe clinical disorders, affecting both internal organs and the central nervous system; hence the hallucinations she experienced in front of us at the crime scene. If your wife doesn't get medical attention immediately and provides the doctors with this specific diagnosis, she might not make it. So, I'd suggest you call an ambulance now," Holmes urges him.
Fred pales, nods vigorously, and storms out of the room to look for his phone. In the meantime, Sherlock makes a phone call as well.
"Hey Sherlock, where are you?" John picks up. "I thought I'd find you at home when I came back from the clinic."
"I went back to the countryside with Giulia to solve the case," he answers casually as if a woman's life wasn't at stake.
"Wait, are you done already?" John sounds surprised, especially considering how Sherlock monumentally failed just a few hours before.
"Almost there." He fakes a yawn. "Could you please check the emails, the news, the Internet, anything really, to see if something juicy comes up? Once I finish here, I'd like to get back to work immediately."
"It's 9 p.m.," John objects in a weary voice. "Just come back home, and we'll find you a case tomorrow morning."
"I know you, Doctor: you are most definitely going to wait up. So why don't you use the time to run a quick search?" Sherlock's tone was meant to be playful but came out almost pleading instead.
"Alright, I'm on it," Watson finally concedes.
Sherlock ends the call and meets Giulia's inquisitive gaze.
"Why are you so eager to find a new case?"
"You know that I'm always restless. My superior intellect needs to be constantly stimulated. And I didn't enjoy this case. I got too involved," he struggles with the last word as his eyes evasively scan the living room.
"You mean emotionally involved," she underlines.
He raises a brow in a scornful grimace. "That would imply that I am capable of emotions."
Her lips curl in a smirk. "Sometimes you remind me of the Tin Woodman from The Wizard of Oz who has no heart."
He frowns at that reference as childhood memories rush back to his mind. His mother forced him to read that book, hoping he would learn a valuable lesson. Three things are fundamental in life: brain, heart, and courage. Unfortunately, he narrowed the list down to one and traded courage for recklessness.
"Strange," he comments. "I agree more with the Wizard when he said to the Tin Woodman: 'As for you, my galvanized friend, you want a heart. You don't know how lucky you are not to have one. Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable'," he quotes by heart. He stops there, deliberately leaving out the Tin Woodman's reply, who objected, 'But I still want one.'
He wonders if he would reply the same. Would he, who has always abhorred the very idea, ever desire to feel emotions?
Giulia stares at him, fascinated by his unlimited knowledge and his quirky ideas. She cannot say she disagrees, though. She made the choice to renounce her heart over a year ago. She didn't know what to do with a broken heart, anyway. Besides, living heartless is easier, more 'practical' even—as the Wizard said. She can still feel other sensations: fear, for instance, is visceral. Contempt for the people that destroyed her life, her thirst for justice... those are matters of the mind. She can feel all that and still keep her distance. The only feeling she consented to be deprived of was affection: that's the one thing the heart is good at—getting attached. And the one thing it has no defences against.
She instinctively casts a glance at Sherlock. But at what cost?
Fred emerges from the kitchen. "The ambulance is on its way," he announces, concerned, rousing Giulia from her stream of consciousness.
Sherlock checks his watch and smiles. "Lovely. They should arrive simultaneously with the police, then."
Fred frowns at him. "Why did you alert the cops?"
"Oh, it's very easy, Mr Admiral. Because your wife shot and killed Elisa Therton."
The house becomes silent as Fred gawks at Sherlock with pure hate in his eyes.
"This is nonsense."
"I'll have you know that I highly value logical sense and rationality," he arrogantly replies.
"You've got to stop pinning murders on people, man. I'm actually glad you called the cops; I'll have you forcefully removed from my house, and I'll file a restraining order against you. Let me check on my wife and see if she needs any help before I kick you out of here," Fred Admiral groans and goes upstairs, muttering insults under his breath.
"Is she really the killer?" Giulia tentatively asks when he is out of hearing range.
Sherlock turns to her, seemingly offended by her question.
"Obviously. In my first solution to the case, I was right about almost everything. I correctly deduced that Adam Therton was the second thief of the jewel heist and was indeed killed by Fred in a fit of anger and revenge. I still don't have hard evidence for that, but I trust Isaac's memory of that night. His colourblindness helps explain the detail of the man in a coverall coming out of the woods—which is highly unlikely to have been just a dream, given Mr Admiral's work clothes. However, for what concerns Elisa's killer, I mistook the member of the pair. I regret to say that I didn't give Mrs Admiral enough credit. The whole time, I thought she was just a pawn in her husband's hands, whereas she masterminded the entire plan."
"Women empowerment, Sherlock," Giulia reprimands him mockingly.
"I'm a strong advocate of gender equality: to me, you are all equally twit." He scoffs at her. "Anyway, when her husband presumably came clean to her about both the robbery and Adam's murder, I am confident that she took things into her own hands and approached the wailing widow, lending her a helping hand. She took her time to assess the situation, becoming a constant presence in that house, getting to know the people, their habits, everything. Up to this point, my deductions were flawless, so we'll just skip the part when she realised the jewels weren't hidden in the cottage but buried in the garden and tried her hardest to convince Elisa to sell the house so the Admirals could become the rightful owners of that land. When it became clear that the widow would never give in, she threatened Elisa by holding her at gunpoint but must have considered the idea of killing her if she didn't manage to convince her. That's why she planned everything carefully with the specific intention of framing Isaac if it came down to murder, eventually."
She tilts her head to the side. "Framing how?"
"First thing: the murder weapon. A few hours ago, when we were at the flat, I expressed to you my confusion and doubts about why Isaac might have shot his mother with his father's handgun rather than his own shotgun, and I have my answer now: he didn't. We can assume that Fred Admiral informed his wife of his criminal activities, including the smuggling of Iraqi firearms into the country that he kept going when he came back home from the war. That malicious gossip must have been true. Thus, Martha Admiral learned that Adam Therton, her husband's former comrade, was part of the ring, too, and possessed the very same firearms as Fred. When she became a regular visitor in the house, she could test the waters and see for herself exactly what handguns were still there. She carefully chose a weapon that both men had smuggled and kept. By firing a model that she knew was also in Therton's house, she made it incredibly easy for biased police officers and forensic scientists to believe that Isaac must have used his dad's gun to kill his mother. Only ballistics can confirm whether the gun of the Thertons has been fired recently. She probably hoped that with any luck, the preliminary analysis would mostly focus on matching the bullet wound to the calibre (which obviously does), making a crystal-clear connection that would contribute to incriminating Isaac," he concludes in a gloomy tone. And it almost bloody worked. All because of unfounded mistrust for a defenceless outsider.
"You are implying poor police work," she scolds him.
He abandons his customary conceit when he corrects her, "I'm just reckoning that the human brain is eager to jump on the most logical answer that manifests to it. The easier it appears to be, the quicker we convince ourselves that we found the truth. I'm criticising their biased approach against someone they consider different, not their overconfidence about the culprit. The latter is just a result of pride—something I, too, indulged in when I was sure I had figured out everything about this case." The tiniest note of shame is barely noticeable in his voice.
"Still, that couldn't be enough to frame a fifteen-year-old for murder," Giulia insists.
He smirks. It makes him oddly proud to see her inquire stubbornly about every detail to get the full picture.
"Precisely. That's why Martha Admiral's next step was to choose the perfect time window for the homicide. She had become a family friend, so she knew exactly what Isaac's routine and movements were. She knew when he would go hunting in the woods, making him the perfect suspect once the gunshot residue test on his hands and clothes would come out positive because of his little adventures after wild animals," Sherlock explains.
"Alright, I get it: she knew Isaac would fire his own shotgun while hunting and anticipated that the police would find gunshot residue on him, obtaining even more incriminating evidence. Not to mention that people were already distrustful of the poor boy. But is it the only reason she planned to frame him?" Giulia asks, finally understanding Sherlock's aversion to the close-mindedness that almost got an innocent boy convicted.
"Of course not. Isaac was the perfect fall guy, but Mrs Admiral had an ulterior motive to choose him as the scapegoat: she needed him out of the way. The Admirals could get their hands on the longed-for Therton house through an auction, but that could only occur in the absence of legal heirs. With Elisa gone, her son would inherit the cottage, and the Admirals would have the same problem all over again. There was no way the whole family could be murdered: it'd be suspicious, to say the least. And if the police didn't identify Elisa's killer, the house would probably become a longstanding crime scene. Mrs Admiral chose the most convenient move: she killed the mother and blamed the son. Killing two birds with one stone."
"It seems plausible. And yet, there's one more thing that I don't get: what made you realise she was the killer?"
"I told you back in Baker Street: the simple fact she was poisoned. That's the whole point of us being here now; I came to check if all her symptoms were consistent with my diagnosis of Atropa Belladonna poisoning. Clear as day, isn't it?" He beams at her, but she quenches his expectancy, shaking her head.
"Not really, no. What is Atropa Belladonna?"
"It is a poisonous plant with purple flowers. I spotted and studied some bushes of it in a fenced part of the Therton's garden. I archived that information in my mind palace, labelling it as irrelevant, but that little fainting stunt of yours at the flat brought it back to my mind," he taunts her. "When you talked about chemistry and poisonous substances, it hit me: Mrs Admiral's weird behaviour and all those apparent signs of drug abuse were, in fact, a dreadful reaction to the toxins of that plant."
"How does your brain even work? You see someone delirious, you hear the word 'poison', and all the pieces magically fall into place?" She shoots him a disoriented look. That mind of his is a maze where only he can find his bearings. Asking him to break down his reasoning process is equivalent to solving an equation, step by step.
"There's nothing magical about logical deductions." He glowers at her. "I managed to trace the exact cause of her illness because I realised I had already seen some nasty symptoms at the crime scene: on the dead dog."
"You never mentioned that the dog had been poisoned, too," Giulia protests.
"Because I was only able to resolve it in my mind palace. At the crime scene, I couldn't understand what had caused his death, but by putting together the respiratory difficulties that the dog had experienced before dying and the worrisome symptoms shown by Mrs Admiral, I concluded that those two living beings were infected by the same poison. They showed different reactions by reason of the physiological structure of their bodies. Atropa Belladonna plant is sometimes more toxic to domestic animals than it is to humans," he describes in a professional tone.
"Slow down, Mr Chemistry set. You just said that Atropa Belladonna was a bush in the Thertons' garden. How could it poison both Mrs Admiral and the dog?" Giulia struggles to follow him.
"In two different ways, actually. The dog ate the plant's poisonous fruit when Mrs Therton left the gate of the fence open, minutes before being killed. As for Mrs Admiral, the way in which the poison entered her organism is precisely the clue that unmistakably nails her as the killer," he alludes suggestively.
This time, she doesn't voice her question but silently stares at him, prodding him to carry on with the explanation.
"When I examined the scene, I deduced that right before being shot, Mrs Therton had been gardening, taking care of one bush with purple flowers: there were pruning residues of Belladonna on the ground of the fenced grass. She was presumably interrupted when Mrs Admiral stormed into the house for one last desperate attempt at a bargain for the house sale. She threatened Elisa, hoping to get her to sign her estate offer, but Elisa reacted and fought her off by wielding the grass shears that she was holding. In the struggle, she must have injured Martha, which would also explain why she had a bandage over her forearm this morning. Some of the plant remains that were on the shear blades entered her bloodstream through the wound, poisoning her. That's why I couldn't find the grass shears anywhere; Mrs Admiral must have taken them since they were stained with her blood: not exactly the ideal clue to leave behind at a crime scene. Now, let me just verify my deductions," he trails off, striding across the living room up to one chair where a handbag is hung on the seatback. He recognises Mrs Admiral's purse: it's the one she dropped in front of them that very morning.
He takes a tissue, sticks his hand in, and delicately pulls out a pair of blood-smeared grass shears, careful not to contaminate it with his fingerprints.
He chuckles. "Now I understand why John thought her bag was unnecessarily heavy when he picked it up from the ground."
She goggles at the blood-spattered blades and breathes out, "You were right about everything."
"You don't need to sound so surprised, you know."
"Where are the Admirals, by the way?" She wonders, considering that some minutes have already passed since Fred went upstairs.
"Packing their baggage for prison?" He jokes around.
Giulia smiles at him for a second, then her expression suddenly changes, and a shadow falls on her face as she whispers, "Sherlock, shut up, I think I heard something—Duck!" She screams as soon as she glimpses the metallic reflection of a gun barrel shimmering at the top of the darkened staircase.
As she leaps toward him, a gunshot reverberates through the walls.
221B Baker Street
At the same time
This is mortally boring, John mentally grumbles at his computer, looking for a new case.
He passes a hand over his tired face and lets out a loud sigh. He can't believe that Sherlock solved that case in such a short time.
John shoots a glance at the clock and realises just now that all the events related to that case (their first trip to the crime scene, the weird encounter with Mrs Admiral, and Sherlock's wrong accusations of her husband) have actually happened over one day. Their life is so full and busy that it is difficult to keep track of what happens daily.
He stretches his back with a groan and goes back to the search for a new adventure. He keeps distractedly scrolling down the inbox full of requests for the Consulting Detective until one email catches his attention: Anonymous sender.
He grunts. Why do people even go to the trouble of contacting them if they don't want to disclose their identity? Don't they know that Sherlock doesn't do anonymous clients?
He opens the email: no subject and no content except for an attachment—a newspaper article from over a year ago.
He rolls his eyes, annoyed. Why would someone bother to collect and attach an old article without giving the slightest information about themselves? Are people incapable of using their own words to describe what their case is about?
He skims the text absentmindedly, then frowns when his eyes land on the picture of a happy family featured in the article. He blinks repeatedly and leans towards the screen, shocked. That's not possible. It can't be.
He scrolls back up to read the title and the first lines attentively.
Explosion in Italian Consulate: The Consul's family decimated
Due to a gas leak, a massive explosion burst down an Italian Consulate in Latin America. When the firefighters arrived on the scene, 90% of the building had already been destroyed by the flames. Official sources have confirmed three fatalities: the Consul, his wife, and one of their daughters (the woman on the right in the photo).
He looks at the picture again, and all the colour drains from his face.
The Admirals' House
At the exact moment Fred fires his weapon, Giulia lunges towards Sherlock and tackles him to the ground. The impetus of her jump flings them on the carpet of the living room. Sherlock falls backwards while Giulia lands on top of his chest, making him cough out all the oxygen in his lungs. She whips her head up with an apologetic look and rapidly scans his expression for signs of pain.
His face is just a few inches away from hers; his breath brushes against her lips as he tries to take in a gulp of air. A tuft of her hair is hanging loose in front of her forehead, stroking Sherlock's cheek. As they are entangled on the floor, she shifts away from his diaphragm, letting him breathe normally. Without a word, she checks on him by staring into his piercing eyes; they are so close.
He inhales deeply and props himself up on his elbows, groaning, "Did you play rugby in your previous life, by any chance?"
She doesn't have the time to come up with a witty reply because he clutches her arm and pulls her closer, dragging her out of the line of fire. One second later, a bullet darts right where her head was. He tries to shelter both of them behind the sofa as Fred takes aim again and shoots in their direction. Sherlock bends down as another bullet grazes a cushion of the backrest that is shielding him, just a few inches above his shoulder. Fred fires some more shots as they crouch down trying to make themselves less of a target.
"You will never get to her, you will never lay a finger on my wife," Mr Admiral shouts angrily, firing away.
Giulia looks at Sherlock with both terror and determination. "What do we do now?"
He shuts his eyes for a second, raising his fingers up to his temples while elaborating an exit strategy inside his mind place; while providing the solution to the murder, he memorised the plan of the ground floor of the house, and a clear exit path now appears in his brain.
He snaps his eyes open and rapidly explains, "From where we're standing, the rear door is closer than the main entrance and easier to reach. If we sneak out through that, we will be out in the garden and could run to the car I parked in the driveway. But we still need a diversion." He lets out a low moan of defeat. "I wish I hadn't locked my Browning in that drawer."
"Would this still do the trick?" She produces her gun out of the pocket of her coat. "Before you ask, that's why it took me a while to get dressed, back at Baker Street: I was taking the gun out of my other coat that was hung on the rack. It's not like I bring weapons to university," she jokes around.
Sherlock's eyes sparkle. "You did like my Christmas gift, then."
"I figured that since you made me leave my bodyguard behind, I could at least take with me another instrument of the Holmeses' protection." She winks at him and hands the gun over to Sherlock.
"Here's the plan: I'll fire some shots at Fred while you grab and topple that little wooden table on your right, next to the armrest of the sofa. We are going to use it as a shield to get to the rear door. It's not the best cover, but we only have to run for a couple of metres: it'll be enough. All clear?"
She nods without a word.
"Are you ready?" He asks, placing his left hand on her shoulder in a reassuring and encouraging gesture. She nods again and takes a deep breath.
The next thing she knows, her hands are grasping the wooden stand as she knocks it over and lifts it by levering one of the table's legs with her shoulder. She squeezes her body behind it and makes room for Sherlock, who takes off the gun safety and fires several times against Fred, struggling to get a clear shot of his target perched on the staircase, mostly out of sight. Giulia tries to provide as much cover as possible for the two of them while they simultaneously move towards the rear door.
They proceed one leg after the other trying to dodge bullets, and have almost reached the rear door when Sherlock's phone rings. Without losing sight of Fred's line of fire, he quickly takes the call.
"John? This is not a good time." He whiffles, squashing his full height behind the small table that is now riddled with bullets.
Giulia stretches out her hand to lower the handle of the door and glares at Sherlock. Why did he even pick up?
"I don't care. I've something important to tell you right now," John's voice replies, anguished, unaware of their current situation.
"Could you wait for a bit?" Holmes groans.
"No. Your life might be in danger—" Watson stops mid-sentence and holds his breath as he hears the distinguishing sound of shots being fired on the other side of the line.
"You don't say," Sherlock ironically replies, rolling his eyes.
"There was an email in your Inbox containing an old article about an explosion in an Italian Consulate—"
"I don't have time for this right now," the detective interrupts him. "I'll think about it when I get home."
"No. Listen to me, please. According to the newspaper, one year ago, an explosion killed the Consul, his wife, and one of their two daughters whose smiley face is clearly visible in the picture beside the text." John's tone gets more alarmed by the second.
"It's interesting, I'll grant you that, but—"
"I have the picture in front of my eyes, Sherlock, and there's no doubt," John cuts him short. "It is also stated in the text: the woman's name was Giulia. According to this article, Giulia is supposed to have—"
"Died a year ago," Sherlock completes his sentence, coming to a sudden halt while his blood runs cold.
A second later, a bullet pierces him.