CHAPTER 50: IT'S SHOWTIME

Giulia beams proudly at Sherlock and marches immediately towards the exit of the museum, urging him, "Let's go."

"Wait," Sherlock hesitates, grabbing her arm; his fidgety eyes show signs of an internal battle. For once, the great detective is putting his ego aside and is thinking about another human being. "This was supposed to be your night out. I don't want to ruin it with my case. You were so happy to be here. Maybe you should stay."

"Are you kidding? I wouldn't miss the solution to this murder for the world. The stars have been hung in the sky for millennia. I suppose they can wait one more night." She smiles at him.

They race outside while Sherlock tries to call Lestradeth, but the D.I. doesn't pick up.

"Good heavens, Detective Inspector, it's quite urgent," he hisses, annoyed at the mute phone line.

"It's the weekend. He is probably with his wife," Giulia assumes.

"Yes, of course, since she is trying to win him back. He shouldn't give in, though. She's still sleeping with their neighbour," Sherlock grunts, hailing a cab.

Giulia rolls her eyes and hops into the car. "Who should we contact at Scotland Yard, then?"

Sherlock sighs as the answer to that question becomes painfully clear.

"Goodness gracious," he mutters under his breath, dialling a number and listening to the harsh reply coming from the other end of the phone.

"Hello, Freak. What do you want?"

"Good evening, Sergeant Donovan. It is always a pleasure to speak to you. Listen, Lestrade isn't answering my calls—"

"Are you surprised? It's Saturday night. Get a hobby," she cuts him short.

"I already have one: I act as the most effective consultant and babysitter for the police force when your cases get too difficult," he snarls. "So, now you'll do me the favour of letting your forked tongue rest for a second and listen up. I've just solved the murder of the tenor, but I think Scotland Yard should do the honours and show up for the arrest. Wouldn't you agree, Sally? And since your boss is busy, the fun is all yours tonight," he jests at her.

Giulia can distinctly hear a deep sigh coming from the other end of the line, followed by Sherlock's indications of the address of the theatre. Then he hangs up.

"Are you going to tell me the solution or will you keep me guessing?"

He turns to her with an amused look. "Tell? No, no. I'm going to show you. I promised you an exhibition tonight, but I'm afraid there was a change of plan. I'm giving you a performance instead."

She arches a brow at his cryptic words. "This is why you deliberately chose the theatre, isn't it?"

He smirks at her quick wit and takes a notepad out of his pocket. "You know me. I can never resist a touch of the dramatic."

She goggles at the object in his hands and points out, "That's Lestrade's notepad."

He flicks through the pages and texts frantically on his phone.

"Obviously. I pickpocketed him last night. Surprisingly, he hasn't texted me in all day to accuse me of stealing Scotland Yard's property." He grimaces at the thought of his personal watchdog. He wouldn't admit it, but deep down he likes Lestrade, and not just because he is his only ally in the police. Sherlock knows he is a good, honest man. Bright even—for normal standards, that is.

"You should give it back. It might contain important information," she scolds him, crossing her arms over her chest.

"That's precisely why I took it."

He spends the rest of the ride texting and being texted back. Whomever he is tormenting seems to be extremely responsive.

When they arrive in front of the theatre, two police cars pull over next to their cab. Sherlock quickly briefs Sergeant Donovan and her squad.

"Go to the main auditorium and secure all exits. Then wait there for further instructions. I will give you all the information to complete the arrest."

"We don't even know who we should arrest. Wait, where are you going now?" Sally yells at him while he keeps the main door open for Giulia.

"I have a show to direct," he shouts in reply before disappearing behind the glass doors.

Giulia follows him in the dark hall, whispering, "What show? What are you concocting?"

His pearly teeth glimmer in the dim light.

"Come with me." He takes her hand and guides her through the darkness.

When they reach the direction cabin at the end of the auditorium, she objects, "What are we doing here, Sherlock? You know the access is restricted. How are you planning to get in?"

He takes out Greg's notepad once more, flips through it, and enters a line of code on the keypad by the door. One second later, they hear a click as the door opens, swinging inward.

He shoots her a smug smile. "I figured that the system gets disabled when you type the manual commands to check the data archive of entries and exits—the same code the producer gave the police to check his alibi."

From inside the cabin, they get the perfect view of the dark auditorium. Giulia squints her eyes to distinguish five silhouettes that are gathering on the stage with puzzled expressions on their faces: the five suspects are all there.

"Is it what you were doing during our cab ride? You texted them all, summoning them here to witness the arrest?"

Sherlock smirks and gestures to a rolling chair. "Just sit back and enjoy the show."

By manoeuvring the control keyboard of the cabin, he operates the lights over the stage, then switches the microphone on and announces through the speakers of the room, "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the one-time-only performance named Who Killed Vincent Storing?"

On hearing the announcement, the five people jump, startled, and instinctively take some steps forward to clear the room, but Sherlock's voice booms through the loudspeaker.

"No use, sorry. All doors are momentarily locked. The police are attending the show, too." He moves the lights' controller to illuminate the exit doors secured by Scotland Yard officers.

"However, there's no need to rush it. I'll deliver my monologue now. To make it more spectacular, though, I'll add a little twist to my account of events. I will proceed backwards, starting from the discovery of the body and going all the way back to the last moments of Vincent Storing's life."

He clears his throat and draws his lips closer to the microphone.

"The beginning of this case was enthralling. The corpse of a famous tenor was found floating in a diving pool, the scuba diving equipment still on him. Despite my best efforts to prove it couldn't possibly be a diving accident, for it simply made no logical sense, all the internal organ damage still seemed to point to only one medically exact diagnosis: barotrauma—deadly atmospheric pressure caused by diving depth. Impossible for a diabetic singer on his show night, yet the only seemingly unavoidable conclusion." He sighs melodramatically.

"Spoiler alert: It wasn't barotrauma that killed him, but we will put aside the circumstances of his death for the moment. So, the question is: how did his cadaver end up in that pool? We can assume he didn't die there. After all, neither the guard at the main entrance of the theatre nor the one on the rear exit saw Vincent Storing leave the theatre, indicating he died here, and someone moved his body to the pool. Who and how?" Sherlock asks emphatically while pressing a few buttons to power on the lighting system.

"I suppose someone with a moving van, some empty containers, and a fake carrier uniform would do the job," he says and casts a spotlight right over the journalist on the stage, who lifts his arm to shield his eyes from the blinding light.

"The costume designer's story of how he planned the elaborate farce to sell a scandal under the counter to a gossip columnist was ingenious, but not as much as the truth. Mr Ammel, our dear journalist, didn't dress as a delivery guy only to take some notes; he helped Calvin Dewey move Vincent's body from the stage—the place where he was seen alive for the last time and where he ultimately died. The two of them stashed it into one of the empty costumes' boxes and loaded it into the lorry that the journalist had rented. The fake delivery of an apologising costume company was an excellent expedient. It gave you a free card to carry a corpse out of the theatre without making the rear guard suspicious, thus going completely unnoticed. Only one tiny detail gave you away." He takes a moment to flick through the pages of Lestrade's notepad.

"When Detective Inspector Lestrade interrogated the guard at the rear door to get confirmation of the costume designer's alibi and the delivery, he diligently wrote that the guard claimed he saw Calvin and a delivery man moving heavy shipping boxes. Yet, according to Calvin Dewey's version, the shipment was all a setup: those boxes were supposed to be an empty prop, but were they?" Sherlock suggestively asks before resuming his one-man show.

"Now, we can easily imagine that you, Mr Ammel, drove the lorry containing the dead body to the swimming pool after closing time, stripped the corpse of his elegant stage clothes, and put the diving equipment on him, knowing that all the signs on the body (namely, burst lungs and ruptured eardrums) would point the police towards a cause of death consistent with barotrauma, therefore classifying a cold-blooded murder as a simple drowning accident. You arranged the scene and did your best to conceal his identity by placing random clothes in a locker to leave the police with as few clues as possible." He fishes a shiny object out of the pocket of his jacket and glances at it with a smirk even though he knows the journalist can't see him.

"This reminds me: you dropped one of the victim's gold cufflinks in the process. You might want to be more careful next time you hide a body."

Giulia arches a brow at him: he enjoys roasting the defendants.

"What motive could you possibly have?" Sherlock rhetorically asks. "It's fairly obvious: revenge for your sister, for the atrocious pain that Vincent Storing inflicted on her and eventually caused to you, in consequence of her suicide. Your strong motivation was the idea of repaying in kind—wanting someone to suffer just as much as they hurt you. But there's a specific reason you were invited to join this plan; the others needed you. Your complicity was necessary for the final part of the plan: publishing that infamous scandal regarding the affair between the victim and Miss Trevors. In the end, it would be immensely profitable for every one of you. A posthumous scandal. The press would be all over it in no time, making both the mischievous mistress and the betrayed widow filthily rich thanks to all the interviews they would give. And you, Mr Ammel, would become the man of the hour. After all, money is the underlying motive for any good crime. But let's proceed in our reverse order."

Sherlock turns off the lights, and the stage falls back into darkness, as his voice keeps echoing from the speakers.

"So far, we've established that the victim died in the theatre, on that very stage you are all standing on, and that the costume designer and the journalist concocted the perfect cover to dispose of the body. But how did the tenor end up on stage so much earlier than his scheduled appearance on the scene? I guess it's time to introduce a few more characters, starting from one of the last people to see him alive during the usual preparations: the cunning mistress who is carrying the victim's child. Isn't it right, Miss Trevors?"

Sherlock meddles with some more switches to get the makeup artist into the spotlight.

"A brief summary for everyone here: During her interrogation, Megan Trevors confessed to planning to blackmail her lover. However, dear Megan, we both know you wouldn't be able to get much out of him. First, he was broke. Second, he had neglected to include you in his plans for his new American life, meaning he had no intention of becoming a puppet in your hands. Wouldn't it be more profitable for you to join forces with his wife instead?"

A few touches on the keyboard let him switch on another light to illuminate Abigail Storing for dramatic effect.

"After all, Mrs Storing had always dreamed of becoming a mother and had planned ahead. For the record, it was really interesting to read the details of your husband's life insurance at the end of his contract, Mrs Storing. Thank you for the precious information. You had already signed for a family plan with the prospect of a significantly increased sum in the case of children. How forward-thinking of you! Here's my theory; you clever women planned to hide away for a few months, just long enough for the baby to be born. Then again, you were cooperating with the journalist who had probably consented to hold off on releasing the gossip. He was going to profit out of it anyway, and he would have already quenched his thirst for vengeance. After the birth, Mrs Storing would claim her husband had gotten her pregnant only weeks before his tragic death and would present the mistress's baby as hers. The journalists would love the juicy drama of a single mother left a widow by her cheating husband."

Giulia interrupts him. "Hold on. How could they be sure their plan would work? You said the family plan included conspicuous life insurance, and insurers are notoriously hard to convince."

Sherlock covers the mic with his hand. "Good point. I should probably explain it further."

He speaks into the microphone again, "The most surprising part of this plan is that it had no apparent flaws. The insurers would probably request a paternity test using one of the victim's hair or his toothbrush—all fanatics' memorabilia that could be easily retrieved. Here's the trick; the DNA would undoubtedly match since the father is indeed Mr Storing. You would be able to cash the insurance money, which amounted to a considerable fortune, and split it with the mistress. That was your motive: money coupled with the revenge against the man who had cheated on one of you two and dissipated your savings in gambling, and who was about to abandon the other who is expecting. Passionate revenge is always an excellent motivator."

"Are you accusing us of murder, Mr Holmes?" The soprano shouts from the stage. Her powerful voice is loud enough to be heard distinctly, even without amplification.

"Complicity in murder," he corrects her. "Your alibis are still valid; you didn't factually kill Vincent. You two just had a small part to play. According to the costume designer's testimony, Mr Storing had his makeup done early, as always, except that this time he came out of the makeup section looking troubled and upset. We can assume that his mistress told him she was pregnant, with the express purpose of upsetting him, knowing that he would feel insecure, thus needing to rehearse. Predictably, he ran to his dressing room to sing some arias. This is where the wife came into the picture for one final touch: she sprayed the perfume that her husband hated to fill the air of the room and make it unbearable for him. At that point, he decided to rehearse in the auditorium, going unknowingly to his death. He sent everyone away and got up on the stage from which he would never step off," he theatrically declares, switching off the lights once more and plunging the auditorium into darkness.

"And here we are. A tenor singing alone in an empty theatre," Sherlock's voice booms through the speakers much louder than before, making everyone jump in the darkened hall. "But he wasn't alone. The seats might have been empty, but a shadow was watching from the direction cabin: his producer and best friend, Mr Samuel Humphrey."

He fidgets again with the lighting command to get the producer in the spotlight, lighting his face up with a pitiful cone of light.

"You would be ruined more than anyone else by Mr Storing's getaway to the United States, Mr Humphrey. It must have made you furious to find out he was about to betray you for an American company. The friend you had devoted your life to, the inexperienced young tenor you had transformed into a huge lyric star, the reckless gambler you had bailed out of jail and shielded from the persistent attacks of a desperate gossip columnist... He was going to throw it all in the air. Your golden goose was about to spread his wings and fly away, leaving you behind with no future prospects. That's good enough a reason to kill."

"In case you forgot, I got nowhere near the stage. I stayed inside the direction cabin, right where you are standing at this moment. I couldn't leave the cabin without the computer system signalling it, as I told you during my interrogation. How could I have possibly killed him?" The producer shouts, staring skyward, towards the dark end of the hall.

"About that, Mr Humphrey, I'd like to thank you for presenting me with the most peculiar cause of death I've ever encountered. I must admit, I was baffled when I first saw it. Every symptom and sign on the body was consistent with pulmonary barotrauma, yet I established with absolute certainty that the victim wasn't a diver nor had he been diving right before his death. What could cause his lungs to literally explode then?" Sherlock lets his rhetorical question linger in the air for a few seconds, before resuming his monologue.

"The answer dawned on me with extraordinary obviousness a while ago, when I was listening to a museum guide talking about acoustic frequencies of the cosmic noise. I am not an astronomy enthusiast, but his explanation was so clear that it finally opened my eyes to this case, too. Noise—surprisingly, deviously easy. When I heard that little lecture, I suddenly realised that atmospheric pressure isn't the only force capable of having a disruptive effect on the internal membranes of organs. I possess enough knowledge of physics to know that sound is composed of waves of pressure propagating through a medium and, therefore, also capable of travelling through liquids and solids. It means those waves can pass through human bodies as well."

Sherlock fiddles with the sound console until everyone in the auditorium groans in pain while pressing their hands over their ears, including the police. Giulia frowns at their inexplicable reactions before realising that she is sheltered by the soundproof walls of the direction cabin. After a couple of seconds, Sherlock makes the jarring sensation fade away by lowering some levers on the keyboard.

"I apologise for the nuisance, but I needed to prove a point: not all sounds are audible to the human ear. Some frequencies are simply too high or too low to be detected as clear sounds, but they still exert quite a perceivable effect. Am I right?" He smiles smugly at their winces and grimaces of pain.

"You can cause some damage if those vibrations apply enough pressure on fluid-filled parts of the body, such as the lungs (which are gas-filled membranes). When subjected to force behind a vibration, lungs can only stretch up to a certain limit before bursting, and this is precisely what happened to the victim. It's just a matter of finding the right combination of low frequencies pulses, or infrasound. Needless to say, it requires a certain level of expertise; it's not something just anyone can do. And who better than the one person in the group with a past as a sound technician? That's why the producer went to the direction cabin yesterday. While Vincent Storing was rehearsing on the stage, Samuel Humphrey tampered with the speakers and the sound system up to the point of generating sound waves of such a frequency to cause an air embolism in his lungs, making them explode due to increased air pressure in the room. Eventually, this also explains why the eardrums of the corpse were disrupted. Again, that's the fatal effect on membranes subjected to waves of pressure. Not atmospheric pressure as in diving accidents, though, but air pressure provoked by specific sound frequencies," Sherlock explains.

"This is mere speculation," the producer protests from the stage.

"No, this is science. If you need additional proof, we all heard the shriek of the microphone that was dropped by an assistant when the police arrived at the theatre yesterday. I bet the sound system was still recovering from your little sabotage. You were the only one who had the motive, means, and opportunity to pull that off. You killed Vincent Storing from a distance while putting in place the perfect alibi thanks to the automated door of the direction cabin," Sherlock replies through the microphone.

"Vincent Storing was a lyric singer; his vocal range reached peaks of rare beauty, and you killed him with the one thing he lived for—music. Quite the poetic retribution, Mr Humphrey."

Author's note: Even if Sherlock is closing the case, this overall storyline is far from done, and the solution to the case still requires some more details, but this chapter was getting way too long. The next chapter will provide additional elements to properly wrap up this murder. As it has already been revealed, though, all five suspects were ultimately complicit and guilty. What do you think? Did you see it coming? Were you able to get to the solution before Sherlock did?

I am dying to hear from you, dear readers. Feel free to hit me up with your ideas, comments, anything—either through reviews or PMs. I am more than happy to connect with you, especially during these hard times of social distancing.

Stay tuned for the next update: Sherlock's and Giulia's night is still young...