THE TELL-TALE HEART

A Sherlolly Story

"It is impossible to say how first the idea entered

my brain; but once conceived, it haunted

me day and night."

(Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell Tale Heart)

Part I: The Great Detective

The searing flash of magnesium powder igniting the dim parlour served to both temporarily blind and fumigate the sensibilities as the photographer raised his arm again:

"One more time, gentlemen, please."

Blinking away the involuntary tears through a grey and opaque miasma of fumes, I froze for the shutter, counting the seconds until I could reach for my pocket square. My close proximity to my friend Mr Sherlock Holmes, offered naught but admiration for his stillness and unusual degree of patience (the hour was fast approaching and the circumstances very much beyond his acquired levels of tolerance).

"Watson, you fidget in the manner of an infant –do hold fast, and allow this circus to be over."

Hmm. Perhaps not quite as tolerant as I had first surmised. Holmes likened most social gatherings (particularly those arranged to fete his talents or reward his innumerable successes within the murky criminal world of London) as `unwelcome` and `irritating` events which called upon a man to "either be bored, or to lie."

A quick glance at his aquiline profile (and an expression matched only by his starched collar) enlightened me that a man could, indeed, be called upon to do both.

The recent repatriation of the six year old Lady Frances Carfax with her impassionedly grateful parents had launched the most recent commotion in the society papers, regarding the deductive and inferential powers of my friend. When Gregson, Lestrade and the Scotland Yarders were elbow deep in despair and cold trails, my friend discovered the Queen Bee in the wrong hive, and the opportunistic kidnapper was brought to justice. A small error in apiary leading to a long incarceration at Her Majesty`s Pleasure at Brixton.

`Sherlock Holmes – Champion of the people`

`Great Detective shows the Yarders how it`s done`

`Another Triumph for the Master of the Criminal Classes`

`The Pride of London – Mr Sherlock Holmes`

Truthfully, my friend loathed the attention and plaudits that came his way. For him, the solving of the puzzle and accompanying mental cogitation was its own reward. Cold, hard logic served ever as his succour, and he constantly grumbled that such a famous and celebrated profile served for nothing but to make it increasingly impossible to travel the streets of his beloved city as anonymously and privately as he desired.

"Since all master criminals now have my image and address firmly recorded in their pocket books, Watson, there seems little point attempting to work within any boundaries of discretion. I may as well throw in my lot with the finding of thwarted lovers or lost angora rabbits!"

I privately and silently enjoyed his indignance that same evening, as I filled my pipe and added another shovel of coal to the grate; it had to be agreed – Sherlock Holmes was one of the most famous men in London, whether he liked it nor not.

~x~

Part Two: The Mortuary Girl

My dear father always said that affluence kept your hands clean whilst poverty kept them in the mire, a truism I am now reminded of on a daily basis. The people arrive here often in a sad and sorry state; in a condition that offers no dignity nor quiet repose at the end of their lives, more a cleansing, a cutting, a veritable investigation of their ending which necessitates endless requirements for sluicing, mopping, wiping, rinsing and cleaning. My boots are waxed and raised above the constant tide of post-mortem detritus here in the Morgue. My apron needs a nightly bleaching and the smell of formaldehyde and decay never leaves my skin and hair, even on a Sunday, when my half day allows me time for church and family.

I am Miss Molly (Margaret) Anne Hooper and I clean away death and decay whenever I am needed here in the Scotland Yard Mortuary (which is often). My limited means allow that my hours are long and my leisure time is negligible, but I do not mind. I watch, you see, and I listen. The dead are silent, and yet they speak volumes to me. Every day I am discovering and I am learning. If knowledge is power, dear reader, then soon I shall be as affluent as my father would have wished for me. Currently, I am too timid to share the astonishing details and observations that bubble up in my throat as I see Mr Sanderson or Mr Stamford opening up our patients to share their secrets with us. I am Molly Hooper and I sluice and mop and wipe and rinse and clean, and I do not count; I am not allowed to ask each silent witness how they came to be here on our slabs.

But they speak to me anyway, and one day I shall tell.

~x~

Part Three: A Diamond in the rough

Sherlock Holmes adjusts his lens minutely as he peers low into the blackened and swollen eyes beneath him. If the stench of decay and estuary water which has recently offered up yet another drowning victim repels him, he does not show it. As single minded and saturnine as he is, my friend is also acutely aware of the presence of close family in the room, and would be ever mindful not to upset them with outward displays of horror and disgust. James Sanderson, police pathologist, hovers sparely nearby and I know Holmes has already noted the twitching hands and slight perspiration of a man who is both uncertain of his visitor and his own abilities.

"Drowning, you say?" Murmurs my friend, as Sanderson cranes his neck over the heads of Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade and the morgue assistant to see what my friend sees. Alas, it is unlikely he ever will.

"My initial observations of her Ladyship indicate a bludgeoning about the skull, followed by unconsciousness and drowning."

Holmes runs a gloved finger across the clavicle of Lady Eleanor Morcor, Granddaughter of the Countess Morcor, the sole owner of a South African diamond mine and half of Mayfair.

"No mortuary incisions. You are surmising that her lungs are full of water?"

"She was pulled from the Limehouse Wharf, Mr Holmes," (a voice teetering upon the brink of apprehension and resentment) "her lungs will be full of water without need for butchery to prove it."

"Indeed." Sherlock Holmes stands and snaps shut his lens, his face an unfathomable mask. "Providing she didn't draw her last breath before entering the water."

As the sombre gathering moves away towards the slightly more salubrious offices of Mr Michael Stamford, Chief Pathologist, Inspector Lestrade steers Miss Catherine Cusack (Ward of the Countess and erstwhile guardian of the deceased) by her elbow and proffers lowly muttered words of condolence. It seems, at present, quite illogical that such an illustrious and privileged young Lady, shod in the finest kid leather and furs, should have been pulled unceremoniously from the river in the filthy docklands of East London by a couple of lads in a Thames Skiff. Venturing out that chill December morning in leafy Mayfair to visit friends, she had been missing for almost two days before such a grim discovery was made.

Miss Cusack, a broad and swarthily handsome woman of approximately thirty years of age, dabbed at her eyes with a lace kerchief embroidered with intertwined C`s (clearly, my friends habits and methods had begun to influence my own) and allowed herself to be led, whilst my friend and I brought up the rear, stepping over mops and buckets (an almost permanent fixture in such a place). Her voice belied her stature and issued forth thin and reedy:

"They say trouble comes in threes, Inspector. Certainly this must be true of us at present. Firstly my Lady Eleanor`s dear mama passing last winter, then the Countess being robbed from her own hotel room, and finally – this. It is beyond tolerable, sir. It cannot be borne for the Countess to suffer so. Such a terrible accident to befall such an innocent creature…"

And as I follow such a distressing litany of sorrow, I am promptly made aware that my friend is no longer beside me, and as I look back I see him speaking so quietly as not to be heard, to a small, aproned mortuary girl (probable owner of said mop and bucket), his dark head towering over her auburn one. As if aware of my gaze, he nods curtly as she also inclines her head in facsimile of a curtsey (although not quite) and each resumes their previous affectations.

"Interesting," notes he, catching up with me, and I note that his Icelandic eyes are sparkling slightly, in that way they occasionally do.

"Information?" I query, holding the door.

"Verification," he says softly, letting me.

~x~

Felicitations to all!

At the end of my last story (Breadcrumbs) I asked whether anyone would be interested in a Victorian Sherlolly tale. The general consensus was YES! so, here it is.

I have loved the language of the Victorian era and the challenges of writing in a different time - no texting, hi-tech equipment or casual chit-chat in those days, I can tell you!

However, although external things may be a little different for our people, I still have them (in my head canon) as looking like the BBC Sherlock characters (and behaving like them on occasion!) and although their world is Victorian, it is also a world where Sherlock Holmes and Molly Hooper are destined for each other, no matter how many barriers may exist between them.

Hope you like it.

Emma x