Murder with Lens: A Sherlock Holmes Case (221B Baker Street Series) (8 page)

Sherlock shot into the cab and turned to look back at John. “You didn’t tell me you knew Latin.” It wasn’t often that John gobsmacked Sherlock. Only twice now.

“I don’t really.” John begged off. “Not really, well, just for medicine. I did a few courses. You know. It’s not as though I can speak it, really. I mean, who speaks Latin?”

“I do.” Sherlock told him and drew back into the cab with a shrug. “Inconsequential. Cab. Imperative.”

“Hm. Texting in Latin. Sexy,” John’s brows bounced up along with his shrug. He handed Holmes the cell phone as he got inside and shut the door. “There you go: your phone, safe and sound. Wouldn’t want you to get a nervous tick.”

“Ha.” Sherlock said dryly. He instructed the driver. “Take us to Goldsmith’s.”

The campus was scenic, a mix of trees, lawns, ivy-cluttered stonework and beautiful glass and steel construction that gave it a contemporary, yet firmly established feel. Holmes may or may not have registered this as he swept past youths heading their way to breakfast as if they were leaves blowing across his path. John hurried behind him, squinting against the rising sun.

“Do we know where we’re going? Shouldn’t we try with the Dean or Registrar?”

“Too slow,” Sherlock tapped his phone’s screen. He set it to his ear and waited a moment. “Yes, hello. Where is this phone currently? I have to pick it up for Lawrence….” He sounded so warm that John honestly had to double-take. Sherlock Holmes, dispositional chameleon.

John snorted, “That’ll never work.”

Seconds later he hung up. “Batavia Mews. This way.”

Holmes cut through dewy grass passing between a trio of young women who turned in place to watch him go. “Hey,” one asked John, “He run a class? I’d like to get in that one.” John actually chuckled, but he didn’t answer. That was his job, wasn’t it? Being in Sherlock’s class? He wondered if he was picking anything up, or if the genius still considered him close to hopeless.

The doors at Batavia Mews were locked. Sherlock spun and almost went in John’s coat pocket before John caught his wrist and stopped him. It was one of those thoughtless actions Sherlock often took when his mind was inattentive with some other contemplation. It wasn’t a habit that John was likely to change, just one to be aware of. “What are you looking for?”

“Do you have the badge?” Sherlock straightened and reached for the door handle. He gave it a rattle and looked at the lock.

“Don’t you mess with that; there are young people around here. Think what you’re teaching them.” John told him. He’d fished out the badge. John favoured it with a smile before handing it over.

Consulting Detective. Bite me, Anderson.

“But I stashed my best lock picks in there,” Sherlock said. John actually snapped the badge back to double-check. This tickled Holmes no-end.

The ass. John frowned and hammered the door. It was his rendition of cop-knock, fresh from the friendly streets of Kabul. A head poked around a doorframe inside. John opened the badge on the window. That did the trick. “See that’s how you use it.”

“Then why don’t we return that one, and get you one instead?” Sherlock asked. He was first in the door as soon as it opened. He blew past the undergrad who’d let him in and was on the stairs in a matter of seconds.

“Normal,” John said with a gesture after Holmes. “That’s normal. It’s all fine. Pardon us.” Sherlock was on the next floor up by the time John had extricated himself from the student.

Sherlock had found the correct flat and was talking to a young man standing just inside the slab door. This was one excellently groomed and turned-out young man. He seemed confused by Sherlock’s sudden appearance at his door.

“Ah, you’re the fellow who phoned, well, Lawrence didn’t come home.” An idea occurred to him of a sudden. “I… I don’t suppose you’re responsible for that.” He looked Holmes over and his brows went up. “He’s not into older guys as a rule, but you’d catch the exception.”

“Hm. Charming,” Sherlock said, “and I do know where he is this morning.”

The young man’s eyes widened. “Oh that is ace, he spent the night with you then? No kidding?!” The young man stepped aside in a gesture designed to let Sherlock pass.

“In a manner of speaking,” Sherlock swept into a communal flat where the kitchen island was dotted with young people, mostly clad in PJs and eating sugary cereal.

“I’m Charlie,” the young man smiled. “Sit down, really. I’ll fix tea and you can wait on him.”

This garnered Holmes some curious looks. John stopped at the doorframe and let his eyes adjust to the dimness inside.

Sherlock looked around the room into which he’d walked like a new landlord, “Oh, no. He’s dead and in the mortuary by now. Last night I examined his remains. John, didn’t you show them the badge?” he wagged his fingers in air and was off to throw open the curtains.

John stepped in and closed the door. Shock and dismay; frozen faces; marshmallow cereal dribbling out of one guy’s mouth – Holmes had arrived. John showed them Sherlock’s badge, motioning at the genius who retreated deeper into the apartment, “Sherlock Holmes, police specialist. He saw your friend last night.”

“No… Lawrence isn’t dead…” Charlie, who’d let Holmes in, roused himself and turned in John’s direction. “That’s… that’s crazy. Who are you people?”

John tossed the badge to the boy. “Feel free to call the Yard.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and noticed Holmes was no longer in the room.

There was some crashing from the hall Sherlock had vanished down and John exhaled slowly. “Sherlock,” he called out.

Half the kids scattered to see if it was their room he’d decided to destroy.

“Sit, please sit down,” John held out his hands as if he could hold them all back. “Trust me, he won’t mistake one of your rooms for Lawrence’s. And we’re going to need to talk to you.”

Charlie’s face was pale, “What happened to him? Can you tell me?”

John wasn’t fielding this, and he’d very possibly clap a hand over Sherlock’s mouth before he let the man explain the condition of the body to adolescents. “This is in the hands of Scotland Yard, right now. Call and ask for Detective Inspector Lestra-”

Sherlock appeared from the hallway with a heap of books he dropped on a cluttered table. They made a loud bang. Hands free, he caught the couch before anyone had a chance to sit, and yanked it off to one side of the room.

***

“What’s he doing?” one of the flat mates yelped. He’d almost toppled to the floor. “People are still sleeping, man! Have a mind!”

“Most definitely,” Holmes motioned about him. “Move… stuff.”

John moved the coffee table. He started to collect the game consoles, scattered books, and other whatnot on the floor to one side. “Uh, Sherlock, what are you doing?”

“I looked at his book shelf,” Sherlock half turned. “Clear as day, the notation flags in the books are patterns. There are oscilloscope patterns, like a voiceprint, but without the spectrograph.”

“That could be random,” John opened his arms.

Sherlock turned several of the exercise books so that the bright note flags faced John, “His initials are spelled in Morse code: L.A.W. – Lawrence Ambrose Waters. Do you see?”

One of the housemates, the one John inwardly called Dribbles-Cereal, muttered a reverent. “And who the hell is this guy?”

Sherlock paced with a spiral bound scribbler he flipped through. “No, he doesn’t think like everyone else. In his room, there are pins on the cork board with elastic bands in complex patterns. And look at this. Everything in this book, he’s turned into a drawing, chart, or a graphic of some kind. Oh see? Here we go. He’s using these patterns as a memory trick for the flavours of quarks. It’s how he remembers. It’s how he sees the world.” Sherlock studied the notebooks on the table, and the colour of the flag for the one in his hand. “Red. Three pen dots.”

“Lawrence is good at that,” Charlie followed John to the now open area of the room. Holmes picked up the notebooks and started flipping pages. Then he started laying them out of on the floor. He stared, took off his coat and scarf, and then set into it in earnest. He turned pages, readjusted, learned something new, reoriented. Within ten minutes he had uncovered, across 40 notebooks, a map of London – some parts were abbreviated; each page, on its own, had the appearance of a hand-drawn maze. But the way Sherlock had set it out, it was a map. Seemingly random marks on pages became landmarks. And there were other marks as well, though, to John, they looked like small stick figure animals. Like maybe a cat, and… something else.

“Oh brilliant. Brilliant.” Sherlock whipped out his phone and started taking photos at frenetic speed. “Not stupid this one. He’s a loss.”

John turned to Charlie, “And when did he leave here?”

“Uh? Friday morning? He cut classes, but he’s way ahead, so…” Charlie returned to gaping at the floor. “What is this? This is London, yes? Why has he drawn London? I thought… he liked drawing mazes, like it helped him think. And you… how on earth did you just walk in and see all this?”

“He’s a specialist,” John explained.

“Stop him,” Sherlock waved the comment away as if it were tangible in air. His head bowed over the map, one hand to his temple. “Stop wondering. Too loud.”

“My wondering is too loud?” Charlie’s brow scrunched in perplexity.

John lowered his voice and drew the young man back to the knot staring from the kitchen. “Can you draw up a list of Lawrence’s friends and enemies for us?”

“Enemies?” Charlie recoiled. “Who has enemies like that?”

“Not uncommon,” Sherlock stopped cogitating over the map to answer his buzzing cell. “I do.”

“Well, normal people don’t. Lawrence didn’t have enemies. People adored him. He was so helpful and funny – such a weird accent and all. He’d been all over the United States.”

“No enemies, and yet he’s dead.” Sherlock finished consulting his phone. “John. It’s him. A tooth dislodged during the fall was found lodged in the throat, and it is consistent with a crown he got three months ago. DNA is turning up a match.”

Charlie looked at the ground, unable to comprehend the news. “Oh my God…” His eyes beaded with tears. “Lawrence.”

Sherlock prowled over to the boy. “Have you ever seen him with someone you didn’t recognise? Someone he was trying to keep secret or hide from you?”

“Just this boyfriend who came by now and then – this brunette with pale eyes, a bit like you. I didn’t see him very closely. They’d go in his room and stay there, and you know, you don’t disturb a guy,” Charlie punctuated this with a nod, and wiped his damp eyes. “Lawrence, he’s a bit uptight, but he’s so great. I didn’t want anyone to mess things up for him. But this guy, he seemed a bit-” the young man stopped and looked up at Holmes, wide-eyed.

“Still listening,” Sherlock stood attentive, with his hands parked on his narrow hips. It was about as undivided as attention got. When nothing else was forthcoming, he frowned.

Tears streaked down Charlie’s cheeks. “Do you think his boyfriend did this?”

“Oh, I think someone very professional did this,” Sherlock bent to the scribblers and turned in place. He’d picked up Highgate, flipped to a blank sheet, and handed it to Charlie, “Considering you don’t have a picture, I’ll need you to describe the boyfriend. Don’t do it now. Do it when you’ve had time to think – really think – what he looked like. Talk to the others. Have them do the same. When you’re done, contact the Yard. Ask for me.” Sherlock made his way back to Lawrence’s room. This time, John and the rest of the flat, everyone who was awake, anyhow, followed him.

The bedroom wasn’t large, but, intellectually, it was massive. Star charts clotted the walls with architectural diagrams, the ceiling was a collection of domes from famous buildings all over the world, some of them religious, some not.

In comparison, the bed was a low, quiet affair, a simple dark blue corduroy comforter with a single pillow, no ornamentation. It was like negative space. His desk was stunning – so much like Sherlock’s abuse of the kitchen table that John glanced between it and the tall genius. “Sherlock, did you see this?”

“John, are you running a temperature?” Sherlock asked.

“Okay, so you saw it. What do you think of it?”

“He’s growing algae. The blooms look amazing,” without diverting his gaze, Holmes reached back and flicked the cover off an electron microscope. The motion was so fast it practically blurred. His other hand was extended out at the room, fingers spread. He looked between them as if gridding the world in front of him.

John stepped back to the doorframe and turned his head. He held up his finger to his lips to shush the curious onlookers. Sherlock took two steps and caught up a phone. It had been charging beside the pillow, almost under the comforter. “Cable running into the bed… he left without his phone. No. He hid his phone.”

“Oh he didn’t hide it. I knew right where it was because he always stuck it there – like almost under his pillow. Like out of sight, out of mind.” Charlie volunteered.

“Oh hardly.” Sherlock’s voice rumbled.

Charlie tried again, “But what I mean is, he’d leave it there and go out without it when he didn’t want to be bothered, you see?”

“Why bothered?” Sherlock asked. He drew close, watching Charlie’s face closely.