Associates of Sherlock Holmes - George Mann Page 0,7
by the undamaged windows, with a thin haze of wood particles tickling our throats. Stack after stack of carved boxes filled the chamber, only interrupted by a deal table with an unlit lamp resting upon it, and next to it a bowl of soup with dried broth staining its lip. Mr Holmes tiptoed along the walls, hands hovering in midair, reading the sawdust as we watched in silence.
“All right, come in.” Mr Holmes’s brows had swept towards his hawklike nose. “There’s been traffic within the past day or two, but –”
He cut himself off and stalked across the room, staring down at a row of boxes piled six and eight high. When we followed him, it was plain to see that a single column had recently vanished, for its rectangular outline was printed clearly in the dust on the floor.
“Dear God,” Dr Watson breathed.
The trio sprang into action, opening doors and cupboards, urgently seeking more evidence. My efforts to assist soon bore morbid fruit when I took the corridor leading to the back area and discovered a bloodied hatchet lying on the ground.
“Mr Holmes!” I shouted (though I ought to have called for Lestrade). “In the rear yard!”
Both men were there in seconds, gathering around my hunched form. Mr Holmes’s eyes darted hither and thither over the cornsilk-hued grass and the chipped flagstones but, seeing nothing he deemed important, he sank to his haunches next to me, peering at the dull blade with its encrustation of gore.
“What do you see?” he asked. Lestrade opened his mouth. “No, no, my dear fellow, let us test his mettle a bit further. Inspector Hopkins, tell me what you observe.”
A needle of panic shot through my breast, but I soon rallied. “The blood is not more than five days old, which fits our timeline – it rained on the twenty-eighth, which would have washed much of this away, and the arm was found on the first, quite fresh. Additionally, there is not a large amount of it. While it coats the edge of the hatchet, the ground beneath is spotted, not soaked.”
“Meaning?”
“The body was moved.”
“Or?”
This required thought, but I soon had it. “The body had been dead for long enough for the blood to begin to coagulate.”
“Top marks.” Mr Holmes stood. “This is manifestly the scene of the crime, and it would do to call in –”
“Holmes!” Dr Watson’s face appeared in the door, his pleasant features sombre and still. “You had better see the bedchamber.”
Not twenty seconds later, we were standing in the queerest room I’d ever encountered.
Two beds nestled against opposite corners, indifferently dressed in stale bedclothes. The single round table hosted dirtied teacups and several amber bottles, which the doctor shifted to study.
The rest of us gazed in astonishment at the walls, which were entirely covered with maps. Maps of the world, maps of Great Britain, maps of our dozens of colonies. Maps of America and its southern neighbours, maps of Arabia and Brazil and the Sahara, maps of Japan and the Bering Sea, maps showing entire constellations of islands I’d never heard of before. Stuck into these scores of maps were pins of every colour, some with notes – “tropical, parrots and pineapple trees!” – and some without, creating a dizzying spectacle of a smashed globe spread out flat and fixed to the plaster.
“Well, someone’s taken an interest in geography,” Lestrade muttered.
“This was recently a sickroom,” Dr Watson reported. “Here is a willow bark tonic, elderberry syrup, yarrow extract, ginger… whoever was being treated had a severe fever.”
“By George, Liza was taken ill,” I realised. “And only her brother left to care for her. But did he speed it along, or –”
“Hsst!” Mr Holmes lifted his palm.
I heard nothing, and from their faces neither did the others. But an instant later, dashed if Sherlock Holmes wasn’t out of the room and already halfway down a flight of steps. Quick as we ran, he had the advantage of us, and we reached the cellar (which housed a single combined workshop and lumber room) just as a guttural moan reached our ears.
“Stop! Slowly, now,” Mr Holmes said in a calm, clear voice, and we proceeded at a more measured pace. “Watson, I need you.”
Mr Holmes was half-kneeling with his forearm resting on his upraised thigh, looking for all the world as if he’d happened upon a friend in a quiet lane on a summer’s day. The lad cowering behind a stack of alder planks looked to be around eighteen years old, his