Chapter Text
[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]
Many of our cases began with someone entering 221B Baker Street, seating themselves in the famous fireside chair and telling us of a case that they needed our (all right, Sherlock’s) help in solving.
This one began when the devil himself came charging through the door then promptly slipped and fell flat on his face!
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It was a cold misty evening in September and I was grateful for the blazing fire burning merrily in our grate. I was reading through my notes on our recent cases and thinking privately that my writing was indeed degenerating to Standard Received Doctor Scrawl. It would be a bad day indeed if I ruined the re-telling of a case just because I could not read my own handwriting!
Sherlock was sat reading some ancient treatise on Greek literature and looking even more owlish than usual in his reading-glasses. It was all wonderfully domestic except possibly for the bit where I kept thinking about sex with Sherlock while he kept his glasses on (in short it was a perfectly normal evening). And I just knew that the slow smile the blue-eyed bastard was putting out meant that he knew full well the effect his new eye-wear was having on me. He would pay for that later!
Or I would. I was not fussy. I won either way!
Our quiet evening in was curtailed by a sudden pounding on 221B's front door which along with the frantic ringing of the bell suggested more than a degree of urgency. Sherlock raised an eyebrow at me and we listened as the door was opened by a maid. There was no rifle fire so Mrs. Singer must have deemed the visitor acceptable, and soon there was a sound of feet pounding heavily on the stairs. Before we could rise to our feet the door burst open - and there was a man dressed as the devil, complete with a long pitchfork on which he was leaning while trying to catch his breath!
That, incredibly, was only the first shock. The second one was that we recognized the fellow even though he had only been in Baker Street on a very few occasions over the years we had known him. It was Mr. Marcus Crowley!
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Mr. Crowley’s entrance would have been dramatic enough as it was but having briefly recovered his breath he lurched forward and tried to execute a sharp turn on the rug leading to the door only to fall flat on his face with an exclamation of pained anguish. Sherlock and I looked at each other in shock, then acting as one we crossed the room and hoisted him back to his feet again. He looked at us in gratitude but his expression was one of barely-concealed terror.
“Mr. Holmes, help me!” he ground out.
The words were barely out of his mouth when we had our second interruption of the evening (seriously, we were going to start issuing tickets at this rate!). Three large policemen surged through the open door behind Mr. Crowley, and advanced on him. I groaned inwardly when I recognized the one in the lead as the obnoxious Sergeant Craig Whitefeather, a dour-faced newcomer to the area. Indeed his station did not even cover Baker Street, much to my immense relief. What was the annoying, overweight, pompous, self-righteous, racist, moronic, oafish waste of space doing in our home?
(I may just possibly not have had the highest opinion of this personage as more than one of his constables had told me of disparaging remarks that the incompetent rat-faced numbskull had made about both Sherlock and our friend Henriksen. Just possibly).
“Mr. Marcus Crowley!” the sergeant panted, his face red with the great effort all those stairs. “I arrest you.... in the name of.... the law!”
He advanced on the oddly-dressed acquaintance of ours only for Sherlock to smoothly put himself in the way.
“In case you have not noticed, sergeant”, he said pointedly, “you are on my private property.”
I belatedly thought that Mrs. Singer actually had to have been out. She held the same opinion of the waste of human flesh before us as we did, and would doubtless have given him both barrels had he tried to get past her. What a pity that would not have been.
“Following a suspected felon!” the sergeant snapped. “Take him, lads!”
He moved as if to push Sherlock aside which led me to growl and advance on him. He belatedly seemed to notice me and spluttered indignantly.
“Sergeant”, Sherlock said smoothly, “you and your men will wait in the downstairs lobby. Not outside this door; in the lobby. Mr. Crowley is engaging me to investigate his case” – he glanced at our still panting visitor who looked frankly terrified – “after which one of us will escort him down to you.”
“But….” the sergeant began.
“Or do I have to send a telegram to my good friend Colonel Bradford about his men not apparently being capable of respecting the time-honoured tradition that an Englishman’s home is his castle?” Sherlock said coldly. “And to suggest to him that he perhaps needs to take the time to review whether some of his sergeants deserve their positions if they cannot grasp a basic tenet of English law that has existed for nearly three centuries?”
I smiled at that threat. Colonel Sir Edward Ridley Colborne Bradford, Baronet, was then the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and he had written to Sherlock on more than one occasion to thank him for his assistance in various cases. He was thus the person with the power to promote or sack (please please please!) our unwelcome visitor. Sergeant Whitefeather grunted.
“One of my men will be on the stairs”, he snarled. “Boys!”
The two constables followed him out though I caught at least one of them shooting me a covert smile when his superior’s back was turned. I managed to turn the resultant laugh into a cough. Fairly well.
Sherlock and I helped Mr. Crowley to the fireside chair and took our normal positions. Our guest’s face had faded from a red virulent enough to match his costume, and I could see that my friend was having to make an effort to avoid smiling.
“Mr. Crowley”, he said. “Good evening. How may we be of service?”
The man looked shocked at the sudden chain of developments and drew a deep breath.
“The sergeant wants to charge me with theft of the Devil's Foot”, he said heavily. “And that’s not the worst of it! Unless they find who did it I’m a dead man walking!”
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“With both our sons set to marry, my wife and I moved to a smaller house across Golders Green last year”, he said. “Sad to say, another reason was that dear Growley passed on to that great kennel in the sky so of course we did not need a large garden any more.”
It seemed vaguely unreal that we had one of the most dangerous criminals in the capital taking drinks with us while the Metropolitan Police were champing at the bit to arrest him just yards outside our door. Such were the lives we led, I supposed. I looked out of the window and caught Mrs. Singer returning from wherever she had been. I silently hoped that she had plenty of ammunition in stock.
“Why does Sergeant Whitefeather suspect you of this theft?” Sherlock asked looking sharply at me for some reason. Mr. Crowley shuddered.
“This evening I went to a party at Mr. Vine’s house in Mill Hill”, he said, looking meaningfully at Sherlock. My friend nodded.
“Ah”, he said knowingly. “Am I to take it that Mr. Bercow and Miss MacIntyre were there by any chance?”
Our guest nodded. I looked inquiringly at my friend.
“Those three, along with our guest this evening, are the leading proponents of their trade in our fair city”, he said. “And if something has happened to endanger the position of any one of them it would be greatly to the advantage of the other three.”
“Indeed”, our guest said. “I should add, because I know both of you are probably wondering, that we were but four guests among over thirty and that it was a costume party.”
“Even I might have worked that one out!” I snorted (it was completely unfair that they both looked at me in that judgemental way).
“Mr. Vine was displaying a recent acquisition of his, a turquoise bracelet from the time of the Pharaohs”, Mr. Crowley continued. “A pure gold piece known as the Devil's Foot because of both the shape and the repeated attempts that have been made to steal it. It has been verified as of its time by several leading antiquarians and is supposed to be a fertility charm. He invited the three of us to look at it….”
“To boast about it, you mean”, Sherlock cut in. Our guest smiled but nodded.
“You know him well”, he said. “We examined the bracelet - it was a fine piece of work I thought - before we adjourned to the next room to discuss certain, ahem, business matters.”
“Which are only my concern in that I need to know both how long you were in there and if anyone left during that time”, Sherlock said smoothly.
“Thank you”, our guest said, visibly relieved. “No-one left the room during the meeting which lasted for a little over half an hour; the clock had struck the half-hour as we entered and the hour not long after we had left. Mr. Vine had a guard at the connecting door back to the room where the bracelet was as well as a second at the door from that room into the corridor, and even one at the balcony window.”
“Yet it was still stolen?” Sherlock said. Mr. Crowley groaned.
“It was the oldest trick in the book!” he said sadly. “I felt such a fool afterwards. There was the sound of a small explosion, possibly a shot, from the front of the house and Mr. Vine went to investigate saying that we should wait for him. Miss MacIntyre suggested that we could pass the time by looking at the bracelet again so we went back into the other room. There was only one guard left, the one by the window. He stayed in the room the whole time that we were there.”
“How long was Mr. Vine gone for?” Sherlock asked.
“I think about five to ten minutes”, Mr. Crowley said. “He was very annoyed when he came back. Some boy letting off a firework in the neighbourhood, he said.”
“Were you still in the bracelet room when he returned?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you go from there and who went first?” Sherlock asked.
Our guest had to think about that one.
“Mr. Bercow went first, back into the other room”, he said. “Then myself, then Mr. Vine and finally Miss MacIntyre. I would think that there was but ten seconds between all of us. We talked for not more than ten minutes more then returned downstairs, but not through the bracelet room.”
Sherlock pressed his fingers together.
“This bracelet”, he said. “Is it particularly famous?”
“Most definitely”, Mr. Crowley said. “The last owner before Mr. Vine, Lord Brading, loaned it to the British Museum for a time and I saw it there. I would have liked it for myself but I could never have afforded it.”
“Did you take it?”
“Sir?” Mr. Crowley looked shocked.
“Come now”, Sherlock said. “You know from our previous encounter that my interests lie in the pursuit of justice, not necessarily the strict letter of the law which can be a blunt instrument at times. And talking of blunt instruments I suppose that we must consider poor Sergeant Whitefeather, who is either wearing a hole in Mrs. Singer’s hall carpet or has been thrown out onto the roadway for being an annoyance. More likely the latter I suspect; if he has been truly unlucky he will have discovered that she has a rifle and is not afraid to demonstrate that fact. We can but hope. Tell me, how did these associates of yours come to believe that you had stolen the bracelet?”
“It must have been half an hour or so later that the hue and cry went up that it had been stolen”, our guest recalled. “Mr. Vine insisted that it must have been one of us and pulled us all into a side-room. It was pitch-black and he put on some odd sort of blue light. Then he told us that he had protected the bracelet casing with a paint that could only be detected under this light and my hands were glowing blue. I managed to knock over the light and get away in the confusion.”
“Could anyone had transferred that paint onto your costume without your being aware of it?” Sherlock asked. Mr. Crowley shook his head.
“I smelled it in the cab coming here”, our visitor said, “so there was no way I would have missed it if it had been there at the start of the evening. I shook hands only with the three people I have mentioned and any of them could have done it then.”
“Miss MacIntyre shook hands?” I asked, surprised.
“Yes”, our guest said. “She is..... quite modern, I am afraid.”
“I suppose that we have kept the sergeant waiting long enough”, Sherlock said. “I am sure that someone in your position has access to a high-quality lawyer so if you recall anything else of import please send it to me through them. Doctor, would you please escort Mr. Crowley downstairs?”
“You will help me?” our guest asked.
“Of course”, Sherlock said. “The price should I succeed will be the same as last time. One unspecified future favour to be honoured at a time and place of my choosing.”
Mr. Crowley nodded and I led him out of the room. Sherlock had been right; Sergeant Whitefeather had successfully annoyed Mrs. Singer enough for her to make him (but not his constables, I noted) wait outside in the rain. I hoped that I did not smile too much. Though judging by the annoyed look on the sergeant's face I may have done.
The snigger probably did not help matters either.
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