A/N: Last one is here. -csf


Fourth/Four.

'The tea rooms were securely locked', Sherlock Holmes recaps for his audience of one perpetually awed blogger. A showman by nature, he's not above rattling the locked double doors to prove them securely fastened. 'The victim was willingly left inside, for all we know, peacefully munching on crumpets.'

'And grading them for the gastronomic association', I add.

'She had access to the loo, but no escape from the facilities that way.'

'By the way, what about health and safety? Shouldn't there be some sort of fire exit?'

'There is, it's one way and hasn't been used. Its use is recorded centrally as some past employees kept sneaking out for a quick break during shift hours.'

'So we're assuming she didn't even leave the room.'

'Correct, John.'

'She saw a murderer coming in, Lord knows how, in a room where she had supposedly been locked in, and she didn't react. Didn't try to escape through the fire emergency door, or catch the attention of someone out on the street.'

'Ah. The large windows', the detective comments, pacing solemnly towards the large glass panes. He turns abruptly to face me. 'It was a dark stormy night, not a soul about. No one glanced out of a window, no slow moving car with a curious passenger swung by. It was a calculated risk. Our murderer was fond of danger.'

The detective walks back and requests: 'Will you be the victim, John?'

I know just what he means.

Taking a seat at the corner of the room, just next to the leather long sofa, I'm facing the arranged sets of empty tables and seats.

'This is where she sat', I start.

'Yes, John.'

'Can't see the whole room from here', I tell him, twisting and turning on my seat. 'Toilets are at the back. It's a bit awkward when I can have choice of any seat in the house. Even if she liked this table, the sofa just here looks nicer.'

'Go on.'

'No, that's all. Maybe she didn't like mirrors. She's not facing any mirror straight on. Maybe that's what she was avoiding.'

Sherlock sighs, sounding disappointed.

'Fine! You're the genius, tell me how it was done!' I challenge him.

His smirk widens, quite predatorily. This is what he wants, I'm just the powerless spectator now.

His demeanour changes, his moves are open, wide, manic, full of bristling energy. 'The door locks. Your childhood friend is gone. The victim knows time is off the essence, the owner is coming over, for a swap. What does she do? The woman who tastes crumpets for a living and once wrote intricate crime novels? With both jobs she knows the essence of a good research. She has a plan. She gets up from her chair the moment the double doors are locked. She climbs on the table.' The fine china flatters as Sherlock's expensive shoes make contact with the white linen table cloth. The detective stretches confidently to the wooden ceiling panels, tentatively pressing on each corner. Before I can call him to reason, the square section of ceiling gives in, lifted from the frame. Sherlock slides it and extracts an old silk cord. The more he brings out a length of silk, like a magic trick more keeps coming. That is until it stops. The detective smirks and takes a hand into the ceiling gap. Soon the sound of a crank being wound is heard and the cord is pulled back right to the edge. Still holding on to that end of the cord, Sherlock pragmatically warns: 'You may want to avoid death, John, by shifting to another seat.'

The chair's feet scrape the floor as I get up, bewildered.

Sherlock looks back to the trap door space on the false ceiling and comments: 'Ingenious. And all you need is a filled teapot... and "a crime has been committed".' He lets go of the cord, smiling down at his partner—'John!'

I had leaned over to the table. Sherlock said he needed a filled teapot, the least I could do was to help, right? There was a silver plated teapot full of water right there, on the table, I was reaching over when the alarmed shout came. Next thing I knew, my friend had jumped me from the table, pulling me away, and we were both crashing on the nearby sofa. That, by the way, was not nearly as comfy as it first looked. Not when you get tackled by six foot something of consulting detective.

'What the—'

'Levers and counter-weights, John. It's actually quite an ingenious use of an old system. Look', he urges me. I look up. The gap in the ceiling panels is gone.

And underneath, a very wonky chair, half-broken by a mysterious blunt object.

'Wait, I didn't see that trick.'

Sherlock smiles at my characteristically quick recovery from a near death experience. He too acts as if having just saved my life warrants nothing more than a mere reference in passing.

I'll make sure to properly thank him yet.

'The dented teapot the police collected as evidence, John. The one that we knew for sure had not dented the victim's skull and caused death. Here, let's use this one.'

Once again he climbs the table and reaches for the panel, sliding it open. This time I can tell it slides open by a flap that then is held into place. Sherlock extracts the old silk cord, winds it to his advantage so that he squats and loosely twirls the end on the teapot handle.

'The silk cord is brown', I recognise.

'Yes, John. Whereas originally it might have been ochre yellow, time and dust have discoloured it beyond recognition. Still sturdy enough, and our victim did not think of changing such a charming old detail. And, in the odd event that someone would indeed pass on the street and looked inside the lit tea rooms, it was virtually unrecognizable against a background of stained woods.'

'I guess she couldn't count on a stormy night, although it came handy, demotivating witnesses outside. But if you're saying our victim planned the whole thing, you're forgetting that she had to climb up on the table to pull it through. What if someone looked then?'

'"Please help me out, I've been locked in!" would be more plausible than "Go away, I'm planning my complicated suicide". She even phoned the tea room's owner to be sure she had enough time. Probably with some excuse ready, but she didn't need to delay the owner. A falling tree did that.'

'She didn't arrange for the tree falling, then.'

'No one could, John.'

I blink. 'Why so much trouble?'

'It was to be her legacy, John. Her mark imprinted in a town that had forgotten her for the most part. A comeback in fame and superstition that assured she wouldn't be forgotten as easily the second time... Do tell me if you feel the urge to commit a super crime in this town where you once lived, John, and no one remembers you.'

'Chandler remembers me.'

'Ah, that makes this town feel safer already... She remembered you after she got your name wrong, James.'

'Don't be mean to her.'

'She's married, John. Now step away, well away.'

I obey, trustingly. He too climbs down the table and carefully eyes the set up. The silver plated teapot, the china cup and saucer with the gold rim.

'All she had to do, John, was to drink her tea and eat the crumpets. With each refill of the cup the teapot weight lessened. The authenticity of the tea room's historical mark assured the teapot in itself was a quite heavy metal alloy, not like today's lightweight, all round accessible, teapots.' Again Sherlock pours some more tea on the cup, filling it to half. He lowers the teapot, still attached to a strained silk chord, hanging from the ceiling trap. 'She drank the tea and filled the cup. Possibly inch by inch, to draw it out. Until one final time the tea cup was full but the teapot was now too light—'

Sherlock fills the cup entirely and puts down the teapot. As he lets go of the teapot, it gets propelled upwards right out of his hand. The other side of the chord is loosened, dropping a heavy wooden box that slams against the chair (again) and sprints back up to the ceiling's hidden mechanism. At the same time, the teapot has hit the edge of the trap door, getting heavily dented on the side, and freed from the chord free falls against the table and rolls onto the floor, spilling whatever little tea was left in in. Finally, the wooden panel collapses back in place, leaving no discernible sign on the ceiling.

Sherlock hisses. 'Double dent, of course! The trap door and the table! I should have seen it!'

I quietly point up to the dark pit space above us.

'What was that we just saw?'

'The blunt object that killed the victim, John.'

'Yes, but what?'

'Dumb waiter, it was called. Early domestic mechanization to ease the modern life. It communicated between floors, taking food upstairs or perhaps bringing book down. Like a tiny lift. Many old libraries will have one, later run by means of electricity, it still beats carrying loads of returned books to the upper floors.'

'And no one knew it was there?'

'Probably walled off ages ago. One of the many changes done to the layout of the old house. This will have been, partially at least, a morning room. Hence the large windows. It was sort if a breakfast library if you're going to blog this one, John.'

I shake my head. Wait. 'How does that still work? Shouldn't it... I don't know, have gone all rusty and rotten?'

'John, we don't know for sure when it got disused. Perhaps it was kept oiled and tended for until fairly recently.'

'Do you think the victim once knew someone who lived here, or did so herself?'

'Perhaps, given her previous career, she had just researched this place and had all along save this idea for one last bang.' Sherlock states with his most serious face on.

.

'Our cancelled train is a no go, John. The next one departs from platform 1B.'

Normally I'd be the one to source out this information for the detective hates dealing with the mundane. Given that I'm prone to outbursts of anger with the railway system's failures – who isn't? – he pre-emptively took on the job himself.

'Half-an-hour?' I gruff, checking my watch.

'More or less', he answers, advisedly.

'Couldn't we take a taxi to the next train station?'

'The bridge is still being cleared of a mighty Quercus robur fall that cut off all traffic, remember?'

I huff and give in grudgingly.

'John', my friend starts softly. 'You once lived here.'

I smirk. Knew he couldn't drop it. I point out in the distance, over the fading train tracks. 'See that house with the wonky chimney above?'

He squints, trying hard to tell the typical brick and mortar British houses apart. 'Yes. Yes, I see it, John.'

'Well, then. It wasn't that one', I finish, and seal my lips tight as a tomb.

He's a detective. Why should I spoil Sherlock's fun?

.