A/N: Come on, buried alive is another common nineteenth century horror trope, I had to! And John is human and fallible too.
Now, we left Sherlock with a little white lie... -csf
6.
Strictly speaking, it's breaking and entering into private property. I don't mind that detail much; overthinking about cyphers (overdone!), treasure maps (clichéd!) and confessions (John would be mad at me). The lighthouse door yields easily.
'This is incredible,' John mutters under his breath, as we make our way inside. Long gone are the days where he'd blurt out loudly about how brilliant he thought me to be. I miss that. I don't need it, yet I miss it. A paradoxical law in my known universe.
Much like army barracks, there are bunk beds in the ground floor, a kitchenette, someone's mug and magazines forgotten on a shelf. I turn my attention to a short and longwave radio, turning it on, but only statics come out before it flickers off, batteries probably leaked out to a pool of chemical decay.
'Oi, no cheating! You already had the cricket game at the pub!'
He must be nuts if he thinks I care about cricket, least of all this weekend.
'Do you realise that the world could end, and you and I would be none the wiser?' I ask, amused.
'A bit philosophical, don't you think?' he chuckles. I smile. This digital detox is doing John some good too. Or maybe it's the endless strings of mysteries to solve. I almost cross my fingers behind my back, hoping I find another one here.
'Sherlock, come on up!'
John has already gone all the way up the internal spiral staircase, to the top room. I follow suit, only getting the full view of the all round glass windows small room after I go through a trap door.
'It's brilliant,' John comments. Again, under his breath.
The huge mechanism is deceptive. The bulb is large but not all that large, mounted on a gyrating reflective shield rotating plate. The silver coated shield amplifying the light beam when at work. The room itself is only wider than the light source enough for someone to comfortably go around it, presumably to tend to it. The windows are straight, turning the roundness of the room into an octagonal shape. Reminds me of old libraries and astronomy towers. Outside the large windows, seagulls glide the predominant winds at our eye level.
I find John, noticing how quiet he's being.
'You're brilliant, Sherlock,' he tells me. Loud, strong voice. It could melt a sociopathic heart.
.
We could have driven elsewhere but John has taken such a liking to this place that we just hung about in strange domesticity.
John appropriated the green book and browses quickly through the dry, browned pages while laying back in the dusty bottom bunk bed, one arm crossed behind his head, the other holding up the book to read. As for me, I have been sorting out my knickknacks from the beach at the formica table. There's really a bit for all tastes. Another two pieces of stained glass, alongside the curved glass of old liquor bottles. A flat piece of metal that may once have been a silver coin. A flat, triangular section of pewter with only a few letters still visible. A bit of flowery crockery alongside the connected forearm and hand of a porcelain doll. I particularly like the latter, a body part representation suits my tastes just fine. I think about putting it on the mantle back home.
Then it hits me. Take away the stained glass samples (that mystery is solved); the rest illustrate the history of a shipwreck, a missing lighthouse on this jagged coast, treacherous undercurrents, a ship lured to disaster by smugglers as modern day pirates, and a cold watery grave for a handful of passengers. Two stories crisscrossed in time.
John lowers the poisonous book slowly, his blue thoughtful eyes trailed on me.
'You figured it out already?'
He's getting better; he only had my breathing rate to go by.
'I think so.'
'Before you even told me the case?'
I do a double take before I remember my lies. They weave in rather nicely with the case.
I grab an old abandoned piece of newspaper and urge: 'Come, John. Let's stroll on the beach and I'll tell you all about it.'
.
From the sea shore we can see the town rolling up the hill inland. The promenade is gaudy, bright, busy; yet the design is older, from a time when a seaside getaway was a luxury and a sanctuary alike. A majestic but dilapidated looking hotel from around 1900, a bunch of tiny shops and tea rooms mounting the sidewalk eager to please the modern tourists, the weekend getaway B&Bs forming the second wall looming over the sea shore.
In the throng of a forming crowd, the tourists look cheesy and overly enthusiastic, the locals look sourly at the seasonal peace disturbance, children run and shout, adults take hundreds of pictures of themselves in contrived and contorted poses, police officers stroll around leisurely.
John and I stop by the lapping waves on wet sand, breathing the salty seaweed scent that comes from beyond the horizon line and those stretching miles of vast open water. It's as if we have to turn our backs on the modern town to see what was once there, a long time ago.
Rolling the newspaper sheets tightly I peer through them as a telescope onto the sea.
'It would have been rougher waters, both metaphorically and literally. As the tide lowers, the entrapment of jagged rocks and swirling waters becomes more evident. And this would have been long before the lighthouse, in a time where sailors relied on maps, compasses and barometers, with the aid of a fair bit of superstition too. A big stocky ship, travelling around the coast on its way to the harbour, getting caught up in a storm?' I shake my head. 'This coast could mean certain disaster. If the ship ran against rock, it would sink quickly. If the seas were rough, little chance remained for the sailors or passengers to swim and reach the shore. A coastal wreckage meant certain death, and yet there were scavengers at shore, waiting for their chance to pounce.'
John is smiling a bit too much, as he points out: 'And you call me out for my "romantic turns of phrase", mate.'
I shrug. I liked pirate stories as a child. Something always stays with you from your favourite stories, no matter your age. Still, I pocket the made up telescope. It cannot help me witness the past.
'The real pirates in this case were not sea-based mutineers with a penchant for parrots and rum. The rascals in this tale were poor families living ashore, committing premeditated murder to feed their families. Think back on a time when leaving of the arid coastal land made food on the table an uncertainty. Fishing was equally dangerous, and at certain times of the year, a small boat would immediately wreck against the rocks. So families turned to a different profession. Smugglers, ship wreckers by trade, scavengers by necessity. And how easy was it? The precursor of the lighthouse were simply fires, beacons of light in the storm, indicating land and telling sailors to back off. But if you wanted the ship to wreck, all you needed to do was grab your family, bring them out in the eye of the storm, put out the fire, and wait for the inevitable disaster. After that, just a gorier version of "pick your strawberries at the farm", John.'
'You think that's what happened. How those debris washed ashore ended up at the bottom of the sea in the first place. Centuries later, the sea regurgitated them ashore.'
'It's not unheard of. The sea keeps what it takes from the land, they say. But not forever. Periodically things may be washed ashore, and if not collected by casual wanderers, to the sea they return again.'
John sighs. 'Serendipity, I get it. Okay, what do you really see?'
I bring out the knickknacks from my pocket and complete them in my mind's eye.
'I see a dark tinted Port bottle, a bisque porcelain doll's arm with lifelike fingers, a flowery dainty teacup, all likely from about 1900.'
'Not exactly sailor merchants usual luggage material.'
I shake my head. 'Add the small circumference bell with the inscribed letters SS for "steamship" and something starting with a D, and I think we're talking daily excursions on a steamroller, John. One that sunk fast and faded from collective memory in time. The silver coin, battered as it looks only further helps to place the wreck in the first years of the 1900s.'
'You said "pirates", Sherlock.'
I hold out a hand to point out a section of the sea where the waters are darker, murkier, more violent under the surface. 'A steamer wrecks up the coast, John, in plain sight of a seaside town. Men in ridiculously long bathing garments made of wool rush to try to grab the drowning passengers out of the cold water. The modern pirates fished out lives from the sea, risking their own. Pirates in reverse.'
'Yeah, you'd like that idea.'
'There are cries for help, the whole town mobilises, but little more can they do, but grab back to shore and to life the lucky ones that they can reach. A tragedy. What can the town do, but join forces to build a small lighthouse to signal the worse of the hidden perils?'
'They built our lighthouse.' I blushes at his possessive words. 'I didn't mean ours...'
I smile to him, and walk him back to our lighthouse.
'John, if you were to build a lighthouse where would you put it?'
'Ugh, most dangerous bit, as in "I'm here, go around"?'
John is nothing if not a practical man. Common sense serves him well.
'Maybe even atop of the large main wreck?'
'Yeah, sure.'
'John, I think it's time we go explore the cellar in our lighthouse.'
.
A trapdoor, barely distinguishable in the worn out wooden planks floor. I push it back and we both stare at the dark tunnel. Rocks, seaweed decaying and dark sloshing waters at the bottom. I reach to the metal gramps on the walls forming rudimentary stairs and check their sturdiness, their usefulness.
'Sherlock, you know this is either the treasure trove or just the lighthouse caretaker's extra privy, right?'
I smirk, and without waiting for John to recommend me caution as customary, I swing my legs down the tunnel and lower myself slowly. I can sense John's eagerness to follow, but not yet, better have someone up there, safe, in case this goes horribly wrong. The metal steps are slippery as I make my way down and I grab on tensely. The darkness forces me to wait a minute out for my eyes to adjust, so I can better make out the space around me. The waves batter the concrete and rock foundations, salty and pungent in the ocean depths richness. Up above, John's anxiety is comprised of tense silences and jagged worries.
Lowering myself to the bottom, still clinging on to the last wrung of the ladder, I explore the space around me, tactile and squinting into the darkness. I wonder about the tides and how quickly this space can get submerged again. My hand finally touches something cold, under the wriggling, slimy barnacles and slithery, flowy algae. It's heavy and with an effort to balance myself right, I hoist it up. John, perching from the opening above, takes it from me in wordless collaboration and places it somewhere on the lighthouse floor above. He immediately returns to his vigil over me, as if delaying a discovery that should be shared. Not finding much else down bellow, I climb back up, John already pulling me along back to safety.
There, on the wet wooden flooring, is a big section of the brass metal bell, reading ORIS 1901.
John puts it together for us: 'The SS DORIS, launched 1901. Amazing, Sherlock. You did it again, no technology needed.'
I just beam at my blogger.
This is the type of holiday break that suits me; John, constant location changes, a new mystery solved in each. I wonder why more people won't do the same.
.
TBC
