The Science of Deduction

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth

[eliminatedtheimpossible]

The Case of the Disappearing Dinner Guests

I found myself at the scene of what John informs me, detective novelist refer to as a locked room mystery. The crime occurred at a one-bedroom flat in Westminster. Though detective inspector Lestrade had briefly detailed the crime to me via text message on the cab ride over to the scene, there is a great difference between having the crime described and seeing it laid before you. I’m honestly disappointed the readers will only be getting a retelling of the crime as words won’t do the incident justice. It is the first truly remarkable case I’ve had in months and it’s been long overdue. 

The layout of the flat goes as follows: there was an open floor plan for the main room, kitchen, and dining area. Two large windows covered the west-facing wall while a sofa, full-length mirror, and squared kitchen were tucked together on the other side of the room. From the windows, the offices of the adjacent building could clearly be seen. There were no curtains or blinds on these windows. For all intents and purposes, the office workers in the other building should be able to see right into the flat. 

The body had been found in the main room by the owner of the building in a mangled mess of blood and viscera. Descriptions from the owner of the building suggest the victim was the occupant of the flat. However, the victim’s name didn’t appear anywhere on police record. It was likely a fake name. Forensic evidence suggested the victim had been dead for three days. In these three days, none of the office workers in the adjacent building recalled seeing anything a miss. Quite the contrary, someone reported seeing a woman in the flat the morning after the crime. 

A member of the sales department recalled getting distracted during work hours by a ‘beautiful, young woman’ who he assumed lived in the flat. He confessed to watching her sit at her breakfast bar of a morning, sipping her tea and circling things in the paper. On multiple occasions, he recalled catching the woman’s eye. To his recounting, the woman would offer him a smile or a brief wave. The salesman declared it to be an act of flirtation but it could have just as easily been an attempt to be polite. People are fallible and often see what they want to see in a situation, not what has actually occurred. He reported seeing the woman the morning after the crime. 

I asked John what he thought of the whole thing. He confirmed that most women would deem the man’s behaviour as ‘creepy’ and would have invested in some blinds, but he supposed he couldn’t speak for everyone. Perhaps she had been flirting, maybe she had been flattered. Who was to say? It was odd, that she hadn’t invested in curtains or blinds. Then again, who was she? There was only one bedroom so it was unlikely she was the man’s flatmate. It was always possible she was the flat owners girlfriend but how had she missed the dead body which should have been in the centre of the room? Then there was the contradictory recount from the man working as night security at the office building. 

The man from security recounted the night the victim was killed in startling clarity. Clarity can neither prove nor disprove innocence. More often than not, lies hold more details than the truth. When locking up the office space the man glance to the window of the would-be-victim. As he recounts it, the window had been obscured by a thick curtain. However, the face of a man aged between thirty-five and forty glanced out. The security guard described the man as ‘gaunt’. The two had caught eyes for a moment before the curtain was drawn again. This was around 1 a.m. Upon finishing his shift, while exiting the building the security guard recalled looking up to the same window, finding his view now unobscured and two figures silhouetted. 

In the condition I found the crime scene, the dining room table had been set. Three plates of half-eaten food sat stinking on the table accompanied by flies in every stage of their life cycle including a startling amount of the dead and dying. The body at the scene of the crime matched neither the description of the attractive young woman or the thin older man. The victim was around fifty. He was large in stature and had the broad body of a man who had spent his life doing physically demanding work.  Perhaps he worked in construction. I found traces of dried cement on the underside of his boots. He had multiple stab wounds to both the chest and abdomen. The wounds suggested the victim’s assailant was shorter than he was, as the knife wounds had been in an upward motion. It was possible the gaunt man and young woman were the killers but something about the crime scene appeared off. 

The toxicology reports suggested the man had ingested a fatal dose of arsenic less than half an hour before his death. Further investigation revealed the food left on the table also had traces of arsenic. If the man hadn’t bled to death, he would likely have died due to the poisoning. Then why, one had to ask, had he been stabbed? Who goes to the trouble of hiding poison in food only to stab someone moments after? Also, why did each plate of food contain arsenic? Were there two more bodies to be found and if not, had the scene been set after the death of the body to confuse police? It truly was a beautiful crime scene. 

The bloodstains on the carpet were three days old, suggesting the victim had died in the room, slowly bleeding out on the carpet but how did no one hear him? While I had been pacing the room, taking in the conflicting data and trying to piece together what had happened John was in the far corner of the room scuffing his feet against the carpet. He turned to look at me and pointed down. 

“Maybe there’s something under here. It looks like someone’s tried to rip it up.” Of course. Readers, this is why I bring John with me on cases. He is absolutely brilliant at cutting through the clutter of a crime scene and finding the one thread which will pull all my theories together. 

His theory was completely wrong, as they often are but it did point me in the right direction. Let us suppose, dear reader that all the contradictory evidence is in fact true. The flat belonged to the murdered man and yet most mornings it was briefly occupied by a young woman and on the night of the flat owner’s murder, there had been a gaunt man in the apartment. That night there had been a dinner party where at least one of the patrons had been poisoned but before the poison had time to take effect the man had been stabbed several times, before being left to bleed to death. Come the next morning, the body, the curtains and so it would seem, the carpet disappeared and left in their place was an unbothered young woman sipping tea at a breakfast bar and waving at the man from the sales department. The only supposition which needs to be disregarded is that there were three people in the apartment that night. Disregard that and the whole thing slides into place. 

I felt a rush pulse through my body at this idea and began to pace around the edges of the room. For the idiotic members of Scotland Yard, it appeared as though I had finally entered the frenzied state of psychosis and mania they all believed lied behind the surface of my otherwise composed veneer. John knew there was more to the matter and gave me a sidelong glance as he walked beside me. 

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” He insisted.

I don’t like my stream of thought to be muddled by conversation but as John is my partner, in all sense of the word, I supposed I should tell him something. 

“The floor plans of the flat say it’s twenty-two feet.” John hummed as though trying to follow along. 

Out of frustration, I took his hand and pulled him close to my side making him match my own steps. This action had caught Inspector Lestrade’s eye and he gave John a puzzled and concerned look. Lestrade silently asked John a question John didn’t understand. I understood Lestrade’s look clearly but ignored him. He was asking if I was using again. Typical. 

John just shot the inspector a look I couldn’t see, which seemed to momentarily placate his worries. John squeezed my hand tighter. Upon reflection, I suppose I should have asked before holding John’s hand so publicly but I needed to show him what I was thinking. I pulled John along beside me, counting the steps out loud until we reached the opposite wall. 

“Eighteen feet,” John breathed finally seeming to understand. 

“Where are the other four feet?” 

We both began tapping on different areas of the far wall, moving aside furniture as we saw fit. I looked to the full-length mirror beside the sofa and could have cursed for how stupid I had been. John and I quickly pulled the mirror down from the wall and there it was, another small room.

This room was soundproof and a bloodstained curtain was piled in the corner. The corpse had never disappeared from the flat. The scene held a startling resemblance to stage magic. The room was a mirror-box and the body was the object which appeared to disappear and re-appear at the will of the killers but it wasn’t a trick of disappearance. Instead, it was a transfiguration. Older bloodstains in the room didn’t match the blood of the victim and it was too old to belong to the young woman or the gaunt man. It was the blood of the fourth dinner guest. People have the habit of stopping after three. 

With all the pieces in place and a painful call to my brother to confirm my suspicions, the crime became overly simple. The flat owner was an American and wanted criminal, charged with war crimes in Iraq along with kidnapping and murder across the continent of Europe. Two agents had been discharged to track the criminal, the first had disappeared three months prior to the man’s murder while the second had been the young woman. Another agent had been placed on the case after the first man went missing. A simple covert operation was made complex by the emotionality of one agent. 

After months of reconnaissance, the agents realised their missing colleague was trapped somewhere in the flat. They planned to kill the criminal covertly, leave a note with their superiors, rescue their colleague, and call it a day. However, something had gone wrong and the third agent had escaped the room during the dinner party. Out of anger and desperation, the man attacked the owner of the flat, stabbing him multiple times, killing him. 

This is not part of government protocol. The agents cleaned up the scene as best they could, wrapping the man’s body in the curtain, cutting up the carpet, and removing the food from the table, hiding the evidence in the small room behind the mirror. Two of the agents fled the country that night, leaving false trails and trying to avoid suspicion while the young woman stayed behind for long enough to let their trail run cold. When the time was right, she set the scene again and disappeared herself, hoping to confuse the police with the contradicting stories, also placing poison in the other plates of food and removing the man’s teeth, making it more difficult for him to be identified by dental records.  

After the case was closed, John and I took a cab back to 221B. It was our first case since the new developments in our relationship. Part of me feared things would be different but everything unfolded as usual, even the excess touching wasn’t strictly unusual. 

Upon arriving home I removed my coat and scarf, noting a small fleck of blood on my shoe. John and I still smelled of death. It isn’t uncommon for the two of us to come home smelling like decay. One of us tends to loiter on the landing while the other takes the first shower but today, reflecting on the new possibilities opened by the two of us being a couple I asked John if he wanted to join me. 

At first, John looked startled and I worried I’d done something wrong but after a beat, he agreed to join. We’re both still unsure of how to navigate our newfound relationship. We didn’t have sex. That is a topic neither of us is yet to broach. I’m not ‘shy’ about sex as a topic, but sex with John is different. John is also hesitant to broach the subject as I suspect his limited interest in men has only ever been theoretical. 

So, we showered together. John washed his hair while I huddled in a steam-filled corner of the shower and catalogued all the data the moment had to offer. John uses more conditioner than necessary, likes to shower with his back to the water, and has a small birthmark on his hip. All in all, it was an informative night. 

S.H.   

[eliminatedtheimpossible]

Enthalpy and Entropy

Alternative Title: Heat and Chaos

When possible I avoid working on any more than one case at a time. My methods of solving cases require me to become absorbed in the details of the matter. When working on two at once, my ideas get muddled and the high I get from the solution of the matter is dulled. When focusing on one case the details of it slowly become clear as I gather data. It can be likened to a spool of thread unfurling in a perfect line from beginning to end, inertia in action. Adding more thread just tangles things. I see connections where connections don’t exist. Apophenia has no place in the realm of logical thinking.  

In the last few weeks, I’ve gotten into the habit of working on several cases at once. With the foresight I now have, I realise this was done to distract myself from the one true case which captivated my mind, but before I detail that case, I must detail the others. I spent most nights in the early half of the month out of Baker Street tracking leads for cold cases. It’s a tedious task but Scotland Yard had nothing better to offer and for once I felt like legwork.

I spent a few nights in an out of the way gambling den. I walked the line between being good enough at poker to appear to belong in such an establishment but not so good as to draw attention to myself. John has told me I have a propensity for showing off and poker is such a dull and unimaginative game. Yet, my conversations with the players did lead to some promising results.

Some players were stupid enough to give the locations of human trafficking rings they frequented, while others went so far as to lead me to them. People are idiots. They had the habit of conducting all their illicit affairs at the one time. Following or in some cases, being asked to join players in visiting such places after a match was common. There I uncovered several missing people from both cold cases and recent reports of missing persons. It was more straight forward than I tend to bother with, even the halfwits at Scotland Yard could have done it. After I discovered the gambling ring the rest was playacting but I wanted to get out of Baker Street. I needed to create space between John and myself. As I have previously stated, John Watson can be ridiculously stubborn when he wants to be.

My attempts to establish old boundaries between myself and John had been a dismal failure. I covered the sofa in piles of old case files, my scientific journals and monographs to remove the temptation of lying there with John. He chastised me to clean the flat and when I didn’t, he did. When I refused to sit with him on the sofa, he would give me a perplexed look. I stopped eating breakfast altogether, just to avoid his knee pressing against my own at the kitchen table. He would find me during the day and thrust a plate of food beneath my nose, refusing to budge until at least half of the food was gone.

During my nights out, John would text me asking where I was, when I would be home, and if he could come with me. I ignored him. I needed space to solve my cases, John would be a distraction. But why? Up until this point John had never been a distraction but now being in the same room as him was enough to throw my mind from the case completely. It was insufferable. I spend weeks pushing John away and for his credit, he remained steadfast, until he didn't.

The pendulum swung in the opposite direction. I’d planned to pull away from John, before re-establishing our old boundaries and normal comforts. I needed some more time to get my head around the matter at hand. Just when I believed I was coming to grips with things, it appeared to fall from my fingers. The solution to this problem was water in my hands.

John suddenly began to pull away. I would come home in the morning to an empty house. He still lived there, of course. His clothes were in the dresser and the kettle had been boiled not long before I entered as it was still warm but John was nowhere to be seen. When he was home, he would hardly speak. I decided to stay home at night again. The door to his bedroom was not only closed but locked. The two of us, normally so in sync, felt somehow off-kilter.

One morning, frustrated with how oblique the situation felt I marched myself up to his room, knocked on the locked door, and asked,

“Have I done something wrong?” I believe he had been asleep until the knocking woke him as John had mumbled none discreetly for a time before asking me to repeat myself.

To my surprise, John opened the door, his mussed hair confirming he had been asleep.

“I’ve been asking myself the same question for a month.” Again, this confused me. Why would John think he had done something wrong?

When reflecting upon my own behaviour, I had to conclude it wasn’t the most unreasonable assumption to make. To be honest, I was under the supposition John had read my last blog post and understood at least in part what I was doing. Perhaps that had been why he decided to do the same. John has always been rather vocal about his sexuality, or at least the ‘not gay,’ part of his sexuality. I thought John might find it a relief that I was trying to separate myself from him, to reorganise my emotions for him. To stop all the pesky and idiotic feelings slipping through the cracks of friendship and into the realms of something else. He never did read the post.

I was frustrated, annoyed, and overall just bloody tired. I felt like shooting the walls just to hear the echoes of a deafening crack and add to the entropy of the system which was Baker Street. I felt like throwing something out a window just to watch the perfect parabola of its trajectory. I wanted to scream. I felt like doing drugs. Before John, I likely would have. Yet this time he was the cause of my frustration, the case I was yet to crack. How could one balance the possibility of wanting something, with the reality of having it when the likely outcome would just be losing it?

I did none of these things. Instead, I was idiotically, frustratingly, illogically human.

I hugged John, my body hitting his with such force we both swayed and almost toppled. Until that moment, if you asked me I would say it was impossible to knock the anger out of someone but in that hug, I could practically feel all of John’s indignation and soldier-like repose fall away.

He asked me if I was okay. This adds additional evidence to the theory that John believes my affection is somehow connected with a vulnerable mental-state. However, this time he wasn’t wrong. I shook my head. I was frustrated, beyond frustrated and I was angry, so unbelievably angry. With my body hunched over and my face buried in John’s shoulder, I came to realise the person I was angry with was myself.

How dare I ruin this. This one thing, this one person who I felt like I could truly connect with and talk to, who I could frustrate without having him leave. I know I’m a hard man to get along with but if anyone in the world was up to the challenge, it would be John Watson and this last frustrating mess of sentimentality was going to ruin it all. The feelings had interwoven themselves in my veins, my heart, my throat. There was no way of killing the parasitic emotions without also killing the host. So, what does one do? I had been delaying the inevitable.

I pulled away from John, knowing I wouldn’t want to be touching him when I ruined everything. I didn’t want to feel the shift between having him and losing him occur beneath my fingertips. I wanted distance from it. The truth was the only way to solve the case. I had all the pieces of my part of the puzzle, but like all our cases, the puzzle was also John’s. He had his own invaluable information, which he couldn’t give without seeing the scope of the problem.

“Thou art too dear for my possessing,” I told him, hoping he would understand.

It was too heartfelt. Of course, not as heartfelt and cliché as the three other words I considered. Those would make matters too concrete.

John had let out a short exhalation of breath. It was something between a huff of indignation and a sigh of disbelief. I know John’s facial expressions in fine detail. In my mind, there is an entire index dedicated to John’s micro-expressions. He’s the type of man who can give you paragraphs in one quirk of the brow. I watched several emotions pass across John’s face in the space of a second. Concern, frustration, confusion, and at last, something like hope.

“You would do this in the most confusing way possible,” John had breathed.

He didn’t sound angry or confused as I assumed he would. He sounded amused but his hand rubbed over the back of his neck in a self-soothing gesture. He was nervous.

“You can’t just quote stuff at me Sherlock and expect me to get it. I can’t read your mind. Not with this. Explain it to me, walk me through it. I can tell you’re upset about something.”  

I’m sure I interrupted him. I was not upset. ‘Upset’ was a petulant and child-like emotion. I refused to have it. With no other options left I began to explain my feelings to John. I won’t recount exactly what I said here. It is always best to hold ones’ cards close to their chest. However, as I spoke I watched John’s expression soften. It was a look I hadn’t seen before. A truly rare sight. I wanted to take a photo of it and compare it to all the other looks John had given me over the years to determine where it fit. I needed to know what he was thinking but in the end, I didn’t have to solve John’s emotions. He crossed the distance between the two of us and he kissed me. He hadn’t yet brushed his teeth or shaved, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.  

“You’re an idiot,” He told me. This is the only time I will ever except someone using that term in relation to myself as the words that followed truly made me feel idiotic.

“I feel the same way about you. You daft git.”

“But you’re not-” I’m unsure how I finished my speech. For once in my life, I felt miles behind. I needed clarification. I needed more data. This situation was beyond understanding. Never had I even entertained the hypothesis John would want something more between the two of us.

“And you’re married to your work.” John had remarked back.

It became clear we needed to talk, something we’ve never been good at and so we did, long into the afternoon. We sat on John’s bed and we talked. We solved the case, which was our relationship together. It’s still a bit of a muddled affair but we both agreed that the idea of developing a closer relationship was a desirable outcome. The best word for it, I suppose, is partners. After all, John and I have always been partners.

S.H. 

[eliminatedtheimpossible]

The Loss of Inhibitions in Sleep Deprived Addicts

As self-help books and medical practitioners are quick to point out, an addict is always an addict. Generally, I’m the type to disregard idioms as baseless, but in this instance, I find myself begrudgingly agreeing with the sentiment. It should come as no surprise to those who are interested in my personal life outside the realms of logical theorems, deductive reasoning, and cases that I’ve struggled with my own addictions. This has been mentioned in newspapers with an attempt to discredit my work to little avail. 

I’ve never considered myself an addict. I’ve always been keenly in control of what I put into my body, for what means, and how much. My dabbling with cocaine has always been for the purpose of my work. There were instances in the past where I was required to stay awake for long periods of time to solve a case. Though I pride myself in my capability to withstand my body’s more base urges, after two sleepless days, the third is always difficult to muster without losing some of one’s mental faculties. Obviously, when working on a case, this is unacceptable. Cocaine was an easy solution. As it is a stimulant, it was able to keep me alert and functioning well past the time when I should have been able to do so. 

I won’t delve into a past that holds no bearings on the present but needless to say I haven’t used frequently in some time, after a bad miscalculation. The whole trick to being a functioning drug user is the ability to discern the dosage needed to produce the desired effect without developing a dependency. Tolerance is also a painful variable in the equation, but I’m not here to explain how I managed to use drugs for as long as I did. 

I’ve been informed by John that I was using intellectualisation as a coping mechanism. If I believed I had an infallible equation, there was no way I could be an addict. He must have discussed the matter with his idiotic therapist. As she was unable to cure John’s psychosomatic limp and I was, I choose to believe my equation still holds merit. Though, I will resign to the fact that the heroin had been a mistake. 

There had been a logical explanation for the heroin use at the time, but I’m unable to recall it. It had something to do with balance. Like one balances a chemical equation. The cocaine was a high, a stimulant, an upper. But what is left when the case is over and the high continues? What does one do when they need to sleep, when it feels like the universe as a whole is in flux and you can feel it, when everything is hurtling at you with breakneck speed and there are millions upon millions of new ideas and possibilities scratching at the corners of your mind and there are loose threads on your bedsheets, and when did this happen, and how did this occur? Where is the nearest place to buy new bedsheets and would they be open? And why does one need bedsheets? What real purpose do they hold?

It all came down to wanting to sleep. I craved the moment of silence heroin gave. Even now, there are some nights where I crave this silence. 

After my train journey back to London with John, I came to the revelation that it had been months since I slept as well as I had with him in that carriage. It only made sense that my mine went to heroin. Once an addict, always an addict. 

I didn’t have any in the flat, of course, I wasn’t that stupid. Once I had kept a small stash of cocaine beneath the floorboard of the creaking step which led up to the landing of 221B. John had discovered it about a month after he moved in. Since then, I haven’t kept drugs in the flat. It’s probably for the best but last night I regretted this decision. 

It was four in the morning and I hadn’t slept in three days. It’s always around day three things begin to get difficult. On day three, heroin seems like a logical idea. A cure for an ailment. It’s really the equivalent of taking paracetamol to alleviate a headache. On a brain which has been deprived of sleep for three days, it seems like the same thing.  

I wanted to stop my experimentation regarding the relationship between John and myself, as I theorised further advancement would be treacherous. However, last night I saw no other alternatives but to push our boundaries once more. As I’ve stated (see ‘The Method of Places’) John and I have been known to share his bed during the day when his injuries are particularly bad but we’ve never actually slept together, in the most literal sense of the word.

I’d been desperate for sleep and John’s bedroom door was ajar. He’d been asleep when I first entered the room, but as I crawled under the covers beside him, he awoke with a start. The morning after I recorded a transcript of our conversation as I could best recall it, to use as further data regarding the changing attitudes towards affections within our relationship. The transcript goes as such:

“Sherlock?” It should be noted, having just woken up, John was rather more daft than usual. I hadn’t seen the need to respond. I buried myself deeper under the covers. They smelled of John. 

“Everything alright?” He asked next. It seems to be a habit of his, to ask if I’m alright following a display of closeness. I made note to conduct a systematic analysis of other transcripts I have recorded to see if such a theory holds true. 

I admitted to him that I needed to sleep, unsure of how he would respond. I waited for him to object. He didn’t. He became quiet for so long I had begun to drift off but he startled me awake by saying my name again. 

“If it’s a danger night, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?” It had taken my own sleep-deprived mind a painfully long time to catch up. Oh Mycroft. Bloody gossipy bastard.

“Possibly,” I responded. The two of us don’t discuss this type of thing but John seemed to want to.

“Is it a danger night?” John is stubborn when he wants to be, so I told him the truth. 

“Not anymore.” This was enough for him.  

He settled back down into the bed, leaving half a foot between us. I hadn’t realised my hand was encroaching on his side of the invisible boundary until I heard the rustling of sheets and felt the lightest touch ghost across my fingers and palms. In my tired state, I found myself clinging on to the touch. It was a hand, John’s hand. His hand was warm and calloused. I could feel the slightest hint of a tremble, which seemed strange as since John and I began solving cases together his hands had remained steadfast. Like his ever-present limp, the slight tremble in his hand had been a memory. Now I felt it, another strange phenomenon. I’m not known to be a comforting person but I felt as though John needed something. 

It was then I remembered John’s sleeping habits when it came to the long list of girlfriends he had since I made his acquaintance. He stays the night at their house and they have sex but they never sleep together. He comes back to Baker Street with a sore neck and a barely perceptible limp from sleeping on their sofa. 

It was then, I did something I’d never done before. I asked for permission. 

“Is this okay?” I felt like an idiot. John had laughed a long, shoulder-shaking baritone laugh. 

“After all the shit you’ve put me through, you’re going to ask if this is okay?” This confused me, I may try to unpack the statement later but I was glad I seemed to make him relax. 

“It’s fine Sherlock, get some sleep.” 

He may have said more after but I can’t recall. I had finally fallen asleep. 

After some reflection, I can confirm my supposition that attempting to further our relationship would be disagreeable as I now understand my desire to avoid romantic relationships doesn’t strictly apply to John. As I understand he doesn’t have the same inclinations as I do, I believe it would be best for the both of us to reestablish our old boundaries. 

S.H. 

[eliminatedtheimpossible]

The Spectre of Cornwall

I’ve spent the last week solving a case posed by a reader of this blog. Originally, I had assumed John would write a retelling of such events but as he took a week off to follow me out to the countryside to pursue the case he is now making up much of his time at a local clinic and has little spare time. 

The case has been added to the growing list of times John and I have taken on instances that involve theories of the ‘supernatural,’ all of which have taken place outside of London. I’m sure you are all familiar with the case John dubbed ‘The Hounds of Baskerville’. Another such incident involves a weekend trip to Sussex investigating claims of vampirism. As it is always my pleasure to debunk baseless claims and idiocy it should come as no surprise to the readers that despite facing ample numbers of cases laden with claims of the supernatural, I have yet to face a case where these theories hold any legitimate ground. Such was the fate of the spectre in this case.  

I was contacted by a young woman who wished for John and me to visit her mother’s home in Cornwall as she claimed to be experiencing a ‘haunting’ by her late husband. The husband in question was said to have died two years prior while on a fishing trip with a handful of work colleagues. He and four others had gathered their money together to buy a fishing boat. This seemed odd as the man worked a well enough paid job to afford the costs on his own. However, discussion with the wife revealed the man to be frugal to the point of avarice. 

A storm had dashed the small fishing boat up against rocks on the coastline. Of the three men and two women who had left for the trip the bodies of two had been found. One a forty-seven-year-old man and the other a thirty-six-year-old woman. The other three men (including the client’s father) and woman were never located. It was suspected they were lost at sea. 

The ‘spectre’ of the missing, assumed dead, husband had begun wandering around the family home one month before the client contacted me. How my client rationalised why it was the dead husband had suddenly chosen to rise from his watery grave and peek through windows in the middle of the night, I will never know. 

John was surprised I took the case. Despite his otherwise rational ideologies, John has the habit of leaning on borderline Spiritualist beliefs when it comes to cases such as this. He believed there was nothing we could do. Of course, he was wrong. After investigating the home and talking with several of the husband’s old workmates John and I opted to stay the night a the seaside home while our client and her mother stayed with family. 

It was said the husband was most frequently seen gazing in the window to his wife’s bedroom and so John and I spent several hours huddled together on the bed waiting for a sign of him. It was a boring and tedious affair, only lessened by having John there for company. Though John appeared to take the case less seriously than usual and chatted away mindlessly. As he still believed the two of us were either waiting for a ghost or for a hallucinogenic drug he supposed I slipped him to kick in. Neither of which occurred. 

It was just after 1 PM when the face of a man, fitting the description of the dead husband appeared at the window. To his credit, John blanched only slightly before running after me to confront the man. I flung open the window and shocked the husband into fleeing. John and I chased him across the craggy coastline for almost a kilometre before we finally caught the very fleshy, very alive ‘spectre’ of the Cornwall Coast. It was then, the husband confirmed my suspicions. 

The man had been having an affair with one of his female coworkers. He had been planning to divorce his wife for some time and had been hoarding away money beneath their mattress, hoping for the wife to remain unaware of the money. That way, if a divorce lawyer were to insist the wife keep half of the money within their shared bank account the husband would still leave the divorce with more than half of their earnings. 

While on the fishing trip, the husband had been thrown overboard in the storm, and upon finding the ship dashed against the coastline he discovered the bodies of two coworkers. However, three of the ship’s inhabitants had remained relatively unscathed: The husband, his lover, and another man who in his years of gambling had garnered a substantial debt. All three saw the wreck as an opportunity to start a new life, assuming they would be reported either as dead or missing. 

Furthermore, after over a year of living from pay-check to pay-check and town to town, the husband and his new companion found themselves wishing for the stability they once had. It was then the husband remembered his supply of money, tucked beneath his wife’s mattress and returned to spy on the house, waiting for the right moment to collect it. This of course was when the wife spotted her supposedly dead husband and had assumed him to be a ghost. 

All in all, it was a simple, yet refreshing case. It’s nice to have a change of scenery, plus the case kept John and myself busy enough not to dwell on the more sentimental matters between the two of us. 

On the train ride back to London John and I sat across from one another in the compartment. I unpacked how I had come to the conclusion that the husband had been cheating, most of which came from testimonies given by his other coworkers. They had described the man and his secretary as having ‘a close but professional relationship.’ The former seemed to be an observation of the couple together while the latter was most likely a comment made by the husband when asked about his relationship with his younger secretary. 

Once the particulars of the case were explained we lapsed into a comfortable silence. John had yawned and shifted to sit beside me. At first, I was unsure of what he was doing, but of course, we had spent half of the night before awake and running around after ghosts. Neither of us had slept. 

“May I?” John had asked. I’d been unsure what he meant but as it was John I assumed whatever it was would be fine and nodded. 

He shut his eyes and rested his head on my shoulder. This was another action to add to the list of ‘things John is now okay with doing’. It seems to be growing by the day. I rested my head against the top of his, something else he is now okay with and found myself falling asleep. It was the first time I can ever recall being able to sleep on a train. It was pleasant. 

S.H. 

[eliminatedtheimpossible]

A Study in Proximity

I’ve decided to embark on another line of scientific inquiry and experimentation. John is yet again, my main subject. I’m aware that in the past he hasn’t been the most receptive research subject but in this case, no one else would do. As I’ve stated several times over, John is a creature of habit. Yet, as of late he has been breaking familiar patterns. 

We have our own patterns and our own established boundaries but lately, I’ve found us crossing these lines. For this reason, I believe it is critical for me to determine where these boundaries lie and reestablish what is ‘okay,’ while maintaining our friendship. The two of us generally have more relaxed boundaries than what is commonly considered ‘average’. 

Since we met, I’ve found myself preferring to be close to John and I believe the feeling is mutual. He is steadfast and grounding. When entering a crime scene the sheer amount of information (and stupidity) can be overwhelming. John is a good touchstone. The casual bumping of shoulders has always been welcome. He is also receptive to retrieving things from my pockets when my hands are full or I can’t be bothered with the mundanity of it. 

John has always been happy enough to share his things with me. He might gripe when I use his laptop or phone, but he never bothers to change his passwords or lock them away. So I assume he is at least neutral on sharing. He’s more than happy to share food. I believe this has more to do with his worries that I don’t eat enough than his affinity for generosity. He never gripes when I steal food from his plate, he just gives an amused smirk. 

These are all parts of the established norm. However, it appears John has become more relaxed on his boundaries. While eating together at a Chinese restaurant with a particularly satisfactory looking doorknob, we found ourselves crushed together in a table at the far corner of the room. It was a busy night. Normally John would suggest we eat somewhere else but tonight he didn’t. His knee spent the night firmly pressed up against my own and never once did he appear uncomfortable. To my own surprise, I found the sensation pleasing. This was new. 

To test if this was a situational adjustment or a new and acceptable part of our interactions the following morning at breakfast I sat across from him at our dining room table, stole a piece of toast from his plate (as was usual), and nudged his ankle with my foot. John gave me the same look of withered amusement common when I steal his breakfast and nudged my foot back. I hadn’t expected this reaction. It appears John is still full of surprises. For the next two mornings, I did the same, to the same effect. It would appear this kind of touching is now acceptable. For my part, I believe this to be a welcome change. 

Another change occurred a week ago. John began spending some of his time reading on our sofa. At first, I’d been irritated by this, as John had his own perfectly good armchair and he knows it’s my favourite spot to lay when trying to work through the particulars of a case. One night, out of frustration I decided to sprawl across the sofa and lay my head in his lap hoping for the action to be a deterrent. It seemed to be the opposite as John had no complaints about the arrangement. He had hummed and shifted his book from in front of my face, resting one elbow on the arm of the sofa and the other, well that’s an unimportant detail. Yet I will note, this was a most preferable turn of events. 

It was then my experiment gained another subject, myself. Originally I had been examining the boundaries of my relationship with John but after realising how comfortable I was with our new intimacy I found myself confused, an uncommon and uncomfortable sensation I assure you. It’s no surprise to the readers that the concept of intimacy with another person is one I try to avoid, yes I’ve previously stated how I am averse to romantic relationships but before John, the concept of friendship was out of my realm of interest. The idea of anyone but John making such advances as he has in recent days is enough to make my skin crawl and yet doing such things with John is different. 

So was it my own boundaries and ideologies shifting or was John an exception to my rules? At first, I attempted to mimic the close proximity John and I share with others. Firstly, the idea of even standing in the same room as my brother is almost unbearable, so nothing’s changed there. At a crime scene, I stood beside Lestrade, instead of John. This also wasn’t very pleasant, though I suspect it had more to do with my distance from John, not my proximity to the inspector. The turning point was Mrs. Hudson.

I spent a morning with my landlady and found the conversation trivial but pleasant. However, standing too close to her for long periods of time threatened to give me a headache as her floral perfume was overpowering. Before I returned to my flat she gave me a quick hug, which was bearable but nothing I would willingly initiate. I questioned if I would like to hug John. After all, it wasn’t something we did. A year ago, the idea would be laughable, but now it seemed possible. After a moment of consideration, I was not opposed to the idea.  

There is a difference between theory and practice, as I’m well aware. The only way I could know for sure if I would enjoy hugging John was to do so. This posed a problem as all of the new advances in our relationship had been initiated by John. How does one know the right time or place to do something?

I needed to collect more data before initiating anything. I sacrificed time which I would normally spend reading new chemistry or forensic science journal articles on my laptop to sit with John and watch what he referred to as ‘crap’ telly. People hug a lot on crap telly. I kept notes on the events which occurred prior to and preceding the hug, in an attempt to determine the perfect time for myself to implement this. 

According to programs like ‘Coronation Street,’ there are several instances when hugs are appropriate. The first is for comfort. This often occurred after a character had found out something mind-numbingly stupid for the sake of television drama: their partner was cheating, they had a terminal illness, or some such event. The next type of hug happened after a love confession, which could be ruled out straight away and the last seemed to occur almost at random between two individuals who shared a close relationship. It seemed as though this final type of hug would most suit John and my own relationship. This didn’t help me much in determining when I was meant to initiate the hug. It often seemed like a placeholder for a hello or a goodbye. With this in mind, I attempted to use it as such. 

This morning, John woke around nine and found me at my microscope in the kitchen. He mumbled out a sleepy ‘morning,’ and turned on the kettle as was our usual routine. It was my time to break routine. I rose from my chair, strode over to John, and gave him a hug. 

At first, John had stiffened considerably, which didn’t seem like the right response. I was about to move away when John finally became receptive and hugged back. It was an interesting sensation. It lasted longer than my hugs with Mrs. Hudson, in those cases it was always her hugging me, never a mutual affair. John didn’t smell like sickly sweet perfume, which was good. He smelled of soap with a hint of aftershave. It was a smell akin to trivial sense names like ‘clean breeze’, or ‘open windows’. It was nice. It was very nice. We both pulled away and I returned to my place perched on a kitchen chair. I’m not exactly sure how John felt about the whole thing as after it happened he was still and silent for a long while. The kettle had boiled and cooled by the time John remembered he was making tea and he had to boil it again. 

‘Has something happened?’ John asked me, looking as perplexed by the hug as I was by his question. Did something have to happen in order for me to hug him? Had I gotten it wrong? It appeared probable. Perhaps he assumed this hug was more indicative of terminal illness or a death in the family but how had I gotten it wrong? 

Sometimes John can be surprisingly observant. Something on my face must have tipped him off as after he seemed to determine my intention or at the very least my concerns. 

‘It was fine. Just give me some warning next time,’ He had informed. 

This is as far as my experimentation has gone thus far. I haven’t yet defined the boundaries between John and myself but I’ve determined hugging is fine. As far as my own involvement in the whole process, I have concluded that I like hugging John and if given the opportunity I would gladly do it again, which suggests John is the exception to my previously established ideologies. This is the worst possible outcome as this revelation has caused me to formulate another hypothesis, one which I’m unwilling to explore, as it is impossible to examine. 

All this to say I need a case to distract me. If the readers would contact either myself or John on our respective blogs regarding cases of interest, we shall examine them. I fear if nothing comes up soon, I might have to contact my brother and everyone will be all the more miserable for that outcome. 

S.H. 

[eliminatedtheimpossible]

His Interpreter

Readers, you might be disappointed to know I’m not Sherlock Holmes. This is John. As you lot have been pestering me on my own blog in the aftermath of Sherlock’s last post and he refuses to address the fact he wrote something ‘sentimental’, I thought I would write an update so everyone would leave us be. In short, yes- we had a row. 

Sherlock is in the midst of a case so I doubt he realises how much you lot have been begging for more information. Honestly, you’re worse than Mrs. Hudson. At first, I didn’t want to address the issue because if I’m honest I didn’t know how to do so without feeling like a parent talking to a child. Yes, mum and dad had a fight. No this doesn’t mean they’re breaking up. Sherlock and I are still perfectly happy living together, working together, and griping at one another when the occasion calls for it. I’m already hating myself for using that analogy but really, as I’ve stated many times on my own blog, I’m not a writer. 

You already know his side of the story. He was a bit of a thoughtless git. He sodded off to god knows where for five days. When I came home from my conference the flat was the same as I left it. I waited for him to come back. As he’s said, it’s not unusual for him to disappear for hours at a time but by the second day, my mind went to places I’d rather not discuss. 

I’m not Sherlock. I’m not going to air his dirty laundry for the world to read, though he might deserve it after some of the stuff he’s put on here. However, it’s no secret Sherlock has his vices and his enemies. I can’t believe there was a time when I thought people didn’t have enemies. Yes, Sherlock Holmes has enemies. I think it’s well within my rights to be pissed off when I couldn’t contact him and his watchdog brother was too busy messing about with government issues to answer my calls. 

When Sherlock came back to the flat acting like nothing was wrong and rambling like I was the one being ridiculous it was just the icing on the cake. I left, called Mike Stanford, and went to the pub. I spent several hours venting my frustrations to Mike. He’s the best kind of mate you can have. He’s good at just showing up and listening. When I get fed up with Sherlock’s antics, and monologues, Mike is always a welcome change. If I’m being honest I think he takes all of Sherlock and myself’s misgivings to heart as he was the one to introduce us. The only time he interrupted me was to tell me Sherlock had posted on his blog. 

Bit not good, Sherlock. You could have called, or texted. 

Anyway, I came home and we had what Mrs. Hudson. would call ‘a little domestic’. I’m sure she heard us as the next morning there had been a knock on our door and a tray of Sherlock’s favourite biscuits and tea set on our landing. We must have been louder than I first assumed because nestled beside Mrs. Hudson’s gifts was a couple’s therapy novel, likely from our neighbours. Which was very presumptuous of them, but it’s not as though they were the first people to assume such things. At some point, it just seems useless to correct people. 

The funny thing was, I’m almost certain Sherlock flicked through it. When I told him I was going to bed yesterday night he had looked up from his case file and gave his best attempt at an apology. Of course, he never actually said sorry but you learn to read between the lines with him. I believe his exact words were, 

‘Next time I’ll text you and I’m not mad at you anymore, so I don’t think you should be mad at me.’ 

When I decided to flick through the book for myself, one of the tips for conflict resolution was assuring ‘you and your partner’ (or in this case, you and your best mate) never go to bed angry with one another. it’s a pretty common tip, nothing groundbreaking but I think it’s the first time Sherlock’s ever considered something so ‘trivial’. 

I forgave him because of course I did. He can be charming when he wants to be. Plus, he promised to keep his collection of severed digits out of the crisper for the next month. So I count it as a small victory. 

As for everyone commenting about my love-life or lack thereof, kindly bugger off (That includes you, Harry). Just because Sherlock mentioned it to piss me off doesn’t mean other people get to have an opinion on the matter. I’m just not in the mood. With my work as a doctor and assistant to a madman, I don’t have much time for dating, particularly when I spent days running about London looking for Sherlock. At this point in my life, running about after Sherlock is a full-time commitment. 

So, as a summary. Sherlock and I are fine. We’re currently working on a case for Scotland Yard and as always, everything else is quite forgotten. My dating life is none of anyone’s business but my own and anyone else directly involved. For now, I’m taking a page out of Sherlock’s book and saying I’m married to my work, which just so happens to be chasing after Sherlock Holmes. 

Feel free to read into that what you will, I’ve told Sherlock as much and he, as always, is utterly clueless. 

[eliminatedtheimpossible]

An Oversight

Before I detail to you the events which occurred over the time since I last updated you, I wish to state that my actions were perfectly logical and well-founded. I was ‘missing’ for three days. I use the word ‘missing’ in the very loose sense of the definition as my disappearance was entirely purposeful and the only individual who truly deemed me to be ‘missing’ was my flatmate John Watson. 

It’s common for me not to come home overnight or to be absent from the flat for a day or more. Where I miscalculated was in forgetting to inform John I was working on a case. I was contacted by a dockworker regarding a murder amongst their ranks. At the time, John was attending a weekend-long medical conference in Manchester. It sounded unbelievably boring and if anything I was irritated he had left me for such a half-witted affair. 

Nevertheless, I knew I would be alone in this case and so I decided to collect data in a manner more common to my practice pre-John. I cut my hair (a regrettable decision), donned dockworkers’ attire, and took up a new alias for five days in an attempt to discern which of the dockworkers had killed their colleague. The solution to the crime came to me when examining the initials carved on a cigarette lighter found at the scene. 

Over my time undercover, I became close to one of the dockworkers and discovered they were using a fake name, with their real name exactly matching the initials inscribed on the lighter. I was remarkably glad this evidence came when it did as I was beginning to suspect the man wished to advance our relationship. Over the years, I’ve become remarkably adept at faking ordinary human relationships but when possible I avoid romance as they can be tedious and messy. 

Upon returning to Baker Street, I was met by a disapproving and flustered John. I’m not sure why he was surprised, as I’m often neglectful of things which don’t hold my interests and told him as much. This didn’t go well.  John had spoken a few choice words, too vulgar to repeat, taken his coat, and exited the flat. 

Since he left, I’ve had a lot of time for reflection. Despite being an expert in the deduction of human emotions and motivations, when these emotions regard myself I can often be shortsighted. Perhaps he thought I said he held little interest to me. But of course, this wasn’t what I meant. I meant the idiotic idea of having the ‘decency’ to tell someone where you were going and what you were doing every moment of every day was pointless.

When he stormed out of the flat several hours ago he neglected to do the same with me. I neither know where he went, or how long he will be gone for. It seems counterintuitive to do the exact action which made you angry in the first place. 

Surely John can’t think I don’t care about him. Honestly, my actions since we’ve met are all solid proof this isn’t the case.  I’m not the type of man to mince words or fake platitudes. If I didn’t care for him, it would be abundantly clear. I wouldn’t have him as a flatmate and work partner if this were the case. Am I supposed to tell him as much? It seems redundant. I’m sure he realises.

I’m aware, on occasion he reads my blog as he gives me feedback about how I need to use less technical terminology and theories in my writing to appeal to the masses and discuss our personal matters less. By discussing our personal matters so openly I’m hoping to goad him out of his childish temper tantrum and back to Baker Street. 

Here are some other personal tidbits regarding John. He snores, sometimes ridiculously loudly. If he had it his way he would eat toast for breakfast, anything from Angelo’s for lunch, and curry for dinner every day for the rest of his life. He thinks eating pasta with a spoon is ‘a lie posh people made up’. He drinks at least two cups of tea every day. He hates my brother almost as much as I do. Sometimes he hums in the shower. He hasn’t been on a date in over two months and has a truly horrid taste in women. He’s just as much of a dick as I am, he’s just better at hiding it. 

If John would like to argue any of these points I shall be waiting at Baker Street for his snide retorts. 

S.H. 

[eliminatedtheimpossible]

Employing Socratic Questioning In Deductive Reasoning

Alternative Title: Why being Asked Stupid Questions Can Yield Effective Results 

I’m not the type of man who often refers to the Greek philosophers in the context of my scientific endeavours. My knowledge on the subject could be described as minimal. Though it may be said philosophers like Socrates were a cornerstone in the creation of modern science you wouldn’t equate his rudimentary musings to what science has become. One would just as soon see a doctor praising Hippocrates for his work with phlegm. However, I must concede I greatly overlooked the effectiveness of Socratic questioning until I began working with John. 

The concept of Socratic questioning outlines the importance of asking questions to develop a deeper understanding of a subject, prompting an individual to identify and assess their preconceived notions and biases to test the validity of their supposition. When I began working with John and explaining my deductions I would find him asking questions, which in some instances I was unable to answer. On a rare occasion, John would ask a question which would point me to a glaringly obvious, yet overlooked aspect of a crime scene. For the readers’ benefit, I shall supply an example of such a situation. 

John and I were standing before the body of a twenty-something law student. I’m not one for embellishments but it must be noted that the death was gruesome. There were lacerations to the wrists, ankles, and neck of the body. The victim had four broken ribs and their face was covered by a pillowcase. The cause of death was asphyxiation. At first, I supposed the crime to be one of passion, a violent crime motivated by revenge or anger. The student’s body was found in their apartment building but it was clear they had died elsewhere. There was no sign of forced entry. 

“How did they get into the apartment without breaking in?” John had asked. 

It was obvious the attacker must have been known to the victim. This was no surprise and I explained as much to John, postulating my theory of malicious intent. The student had a string of lovers, perhaps one had discovered the presents of the others. 

“Why didn’t they defend themselves?” John asked again and oh, Sherlock had missed that. 

Of course, he noted the signs, which pointed to a lack of a struggle. There was no skin under the victim’s nails and despite the deep lacerations, likely caused by some kind of rope or twine, there were little signs of thrashing. The injuries had occurred before death, John had confirmed as much. Were they unconscious? No. No drugs detected in the toxicology report. The victim had willingly been restrained. After their death, the body had been placed back in their bed, tucked under the covers. There was nothing malicious about that. It was, in a twisted way, loving. The pillowcase over the head, guilt. The body was placed somewhere they were likely to be found, in the apartment they shared with three other university students. It couldn’t be premeditated, too idiotic, and why the broken ribs?

It was an accident.  A sexual act gone very wrong. There was no struggle because the victim trusted their assailant implicitly. The broken ribs, a result of failed CPR. They had panicked and like a child that breaks an expensive family ornament they had tried to stick the pieces back together and when that failed, swept them under the carpet. 

It was not my first line of thought. I would have spent much more time on the case if it had not been for John’s line of questioning. Yes, I still would have solved the case upon talking to one of the victim’s partners as obvious guilt could be established in their body language, but it would have taken longer. Human emotions always were more John’s area. His line of questioning has been invaluable to me within many of the cases we have worked together. 

It was surprising he hadn’t proposed the solution to the case, as sexual relationships are more his area than my own. Of course, I’m not naive when it comes to sex as it is often entangled with crime but my knowledge is far more theoretical, while John’s is practical. It would be interesting to pick his brain on the topic and lead my own line of questioning. 

When John is gone, I use the skull on my mantelpiece for a replacement but asking oneself questions is never as effective. Moreover, there are some questions that I cannot ask John, particularly those which concern him. This type of questioning just leads to more confusion than answers. Perhaps one day I shall discuss these questions with him. 

S.H.

[eliminatedtheimpossible]

The Method of Places

Picture a room. It is one you know well enough to circumnavigate in the dark.  It is the type of room you know intimately enough to note each scuff mark on the floor, each scar or stain. In this place, each piece of furniture is known to you. Everything has a place in this room. If such a place can exist in your mind, then you have the beginning of a mind palace.

This is a memory technique I have explored in length across my lifetime. It is a mental model of a place in the physical world, a place to store information. Of course, my own is much larger than a room but a room is a place to begin. The current size of my own mind palace encompasses several locations familiar to me across my lifetime. The most worn area of this place is, of course, the sitting room of Bakers Street. This room is used to store information regarding current cases. Once the case is finished, the information is deleted or filed away in other rooms for later revision. The mental model of Baker Street differs from the flat in several ways. Upon moving to 221B and having to reshape the mind palace to suit more familiar surroundings I disregarded a singular room. This was John’s room. 

Within the mind palace, John’s door leads to the sitting room of my childhood home. This room holds more asinine cases that are either rudimentary to my work, or cases that fascinated me as a child. A pair of trainers has found a permanent place on the entrance mat and beneath it, an old Polaroid of the World’s Fair Hotel. 

I never expected to know John’s room enough to become familiar with the intimate details required for the space to function within the mind palace. This was the impression left upon me three months after John and myself had moved into Baker Street when I began to catalogue the rooms of the flat. In the early days of our lodging, my time in John’s room was almost nonexistent. Entering his room when he was home would lead to a disapproving look and a lecture about mutual boundaries. For the longest time, this statement confounded me, as John was welcome to my room in equal parts as I believed I should be welcome to his. John’s boundaries regarding my own bedroom were entirely self-imposed as my room is dreadfully dull and any room with John in it is more tolerable. 

This is how I believed we would continue but time together seemed to soften John’s resolve. There are rare occasions when the weather is particularly unpleasant and his war wounds ache, making the bed preferable to his armchair in the sitting room. Those who know John don’t need to be told that he doesn’t take the failing of his body lightly. That’s how John and I slipped into the habit of sorting through cold case files on his bed during his worse days. Of course, there was also our less frequent nocturnal habits. Physical injuries aren’t all John brought back from the war. I know John well enough to understand he doesn’t want what he deems as a ‘shortcoming’ to be detailed for the general public. As a doctor, John appears to have an unhealthy bias towards the importance of physical injury over that of the mind.

In the early days, the nights where John couldn’t sleep were spent with him sitting in his armchair, reading a mystery novel while I played the violin. On his bad nights, he didn’t even mind me plucking away at the strings. He is the only person who I can’t deter simply through the use of the violin. This was another experiment, which I may detail on another day. 

On these nights, John would often drift in and out of sleep in his armchair. This left him sore and stiff the next morning. I don’t recall the moment the decision was made but through means of natural progression, an armchair appeared tucked into the corner of John’s bedroom, and on his bad nights, he leaves the door ajar. It was this which led me to become intimately accommodated with John’s room and therefore I was able to use it in my mind palace. 

In the mind palace, John’s room is situated just outside of my childhood bedroom. When I was a child I would gaze out from my window at the garden. There is something about flowers which has always fascinated me, they are an embellishment which I don’t often afford myself. In the original house, there was a window that opened out to a Juliet balcony where I would spend hours peering over chemistry textbooks. In the mind palace, this window leads to John’s room.

I fear my infrequent reading of John’s blog has begun to show in my own writing as upon rereading this entry my account seems overly sentimental and unconcerned with the facts of the Method of Loci. This technique is not meant to be an emotional one which has led me to think I may need to continue practicing the technique myself. Perhaps I will write a more accurate account at a later date. 

S.H. 

[eliminatedtheimpossible]

Sodium and Chlorine

I loathe the winter months as I do the summer ones, though both for different reasons. An escalation in heat also brings an escalation in violent crime. This is a well researched and documented phenomena, the results of which I have seen echoed in my practice. As a consulting detective, when waking up to a heatwave I feel a thrill similar to the one John informs me ‘normal’ people have on Christmas mornings. Last time a heatwave occurred I worked four cases in the space of a week. It was brilliant. Two murders, one kidnapping, and a case of stolen identity. It was better than any Christmas. John didn’t say it- he never does, not appropriate, not good but he felt the same. 

Yet, the heatwaves I experienced in my time before John, Baker Street, and regular Scotland Yard cases had been insufferable. One of these times found me living in a small bedsit on Montague Street. Those unfamiliar with London and England in general should note air-conditioning is a rarity in most private buildings. I spent two days sprawled on the tiles of the communal bathroom, considering adding to the violent crime statistic each time another lodger entered to shower. 

My memory of the time is hazy as it was during the peak of my recreational drug habit. I recall one person stubborn enough to insist on a cold shower. Their body was pale snow under the fluorescent light. A welcome thought in the heat. The cold water from their shower flooded the tile floor and for a moment I felt adrift in the ocean. The illusion was only shattered when I inhaled the acrid stench of cheap bathroom cleaner. It was not my most dignified hour. 

Upon awakening this morning in Baker Street to a broken heating system and a bone-chilling freeze, I couldn’t help but think of Montague Street. 

As expected, today there were no cases, at least, none of which required leaving the flat. It was insufferable. The sudden cold weather also caused the emergence of John’s most garish jumper. The only thing more annoying and distracting than the biting chill of single-digit temperatures was John’s blue and green striped sweater. If kindling is needed for the fireplace I know what I’ll use first.  

I spent the better part of the afternoon performing increasingly dangerous exothermic reactions at the dinner table in an attempt to heat the room. John put his foot down after a mixture of sodium and chlorine almost set the flat ablaze. If John and I were boiled down to a base chemical I could imagine us as nothing else but sodium and chlorine. John, sodium: soft, yet solid, essential for life and myself chlorine: light yet hazardous, used to strip surfaces and poison men in warfare. He could be found in the depth of the earth, myself in the atmosphere. Both chemicals on their own, or combined with others are volatile and yet the product of the two is nothing more than table salt. Alone we are capable of explosions, together we are steady crystalline. 

After the small blaze was contained John and I opened every window in the flat and shivered beside each other on the sofa. Despite it all, having John with me made the day far better than any of my days on Montague Street. 

[eliminatedtheimpossible]

Cryptographers and the Hunt for the Anser

A client stood in the sitting room of 221B this morning with a disconcerted gaze and the annoying nervous habit of tapping their foot while talking. They detailed how their friend and business partner had disappeared from an out of the way antique bookshop the two co-owned. It was odd that the client had chosen to come to me, as the person in question had only been missing for twelve hours. Normally, I am my client’s last resort, not the first. They hadn’t yet contacted the police. That was interesting. 

After yesterday’s odd comings and goings, John was more than happy to join me with today’s case. I take it that whatever matter occurred between us has now been resolved. There are several times during our partnership where I will admit, I have underestimated John Watson. 

While our client spoke, John listened diligently scribbling notes in a small casebook he uses to review and recount our adventures. I expected his scribblings to note the obvious: the name of the client and their missing business partner, where they were last seen, and the stringent schedule the missing person adhered to which made their disappearance all the more out of character. However, upon inspecting his notes, it was evident John was becoming better at observing than most of Scotland Yard’s idiots. 

.- .--. .--. . .- .-. / .-- . .- -.- / .-- .... . -. / -.-- --- ..- / .- .-. . / ... - .-. --- -. --.

It was the rhythm tapped out by the client’s restless feet. It was a clue more valuable than anything which had left the client’s mouth. As John and myself are familiar with Morse Code, him from his military background, myself from the necessity of my own occupation, we were quick to translate it. 

‘Appear weak when you are strong’ 

This meant little to me at first. Obviously, it was a message but what did it mean? In the end, it was John who recognised the words as a quote from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, a piece of literature which was important enough for me to have not entirely deleted from my memory but not so important that I should be able to quote it. Again, John’s military background saved us some time. Though with it being the twenty-first-century, he really only saved us a Google search.  

We soon took our search across town to the client’s bookshop. Where little excavation led us to discover a copy of The Art of War. Within the front page was another note, this time a series of vague, seemingly nonsensical numbers. Of course, another code. 

42.22.52.51.34.53.34.25.14.22.11.54.55

This was another simple cipher for anyone familiar with cryptography but for those unfamiliar with the art, such as my companion John, I will inform you it is a Polybius Square cipher. Without an encryption key, the deciphering of the code would prove difficult. However, upon finding the referenced quote from the previous code amongst the pages of the text a scrap of paper fell from the book revealing the key. 

Any original suspicions I had regarding my clients and their possible involvement with the government or more nefarious agencies were put to rest. As the more deeply my companion and I delved into the case, the more it felt like a children’s scavenger hunt. John, as always, was a little slow on the uptake and was quick to scribble out the encoded message. I have placed the encryption key within this text so that the readers are also able to decode the message. I hope this task will prove to be as trivial to you as it was to me. 

The next piece of the puzzle stared up at me from John’s notebook. ‘I am unknowable’. Given the nature of our scavenger hunt thus far I found the next logical place to search annoyingly simple. The theme of today’s case, as the reader has likely already noted is ciphers and cryptography. Therefore, with my expansive knowledge of out of the way topics, regarding my work, it was simple to guess. Ask yourself reader, what is an unknowable cipher likely to be found in an antique bookstore? 

Placed on the front desk under several hardback Oscar Wilde novels was a copy of The Voynich Manuscript. Nestled between two crudely drawn images that vaguely resemble plants was a final sheet of paper. This message wasn’t encoded. 

While writing up this recount of the case with my knowledge of the events which come after finding this piece of paper I can see it for the innocuous scribble it was. However, I will admit at the time the note sent a shiver down my spine as I looked down at the address of 235 Baker Street.

I have never been the type to make small talk with our neighbours. I knew very little about them other than what I had heard in passing. Their landlady Mrs. Turner often had tea with Mrs. Hudson on Sundays. Her tenants were two men, a married couple. According to Mycroft, they posed no immediate danger and so they have been filed away in my mind as unimportant. This was a mistake. 

Upon arriving at 235 Baker Street I found myself ushered into the sitting room by a man who eerily fitted the description of my client’s missing business partner. I came to realise something was very wrong. One look at the smirk on John’s face told me everything I needed to know. I turned from John to watch as my client entered the sitting room, his eyes also trained on John. My client, their missing business partner, and our neighbours Jonathan and Shannon Norbury were one and the same. 

John had orchestrated today’s case and the subsequent goose chase as something of a ‘lesson’. There was some insufferable monologue involving ‘a taste of my own medicine’, ‘immoral experimentation’ and chastising about my inability to recognise my own neighbours. Needless to say, John is not invited to join me in my next case. 

S.H.      

[eliminatedtheimpossible]

The Observation of Negative Space

Scotland Yard employees and amateur detectives alike, fail to copy my methods by reducing my practice down to simple ‘observation’ as crudely outlined within John’s recounts of our cases. Laymen assume observation is simply seeing what is there. Upon entering a crime-scene or meeting with a potential suspect, the inept ask themselves many inane but potentially helpful questions such as:

“What am I observing? What does the body tell me about the murder weapon? Does what this person saying align with the evidence?”  

What they neglect to ask and observe is what is missing. For a fanciful comparison, one might call this the observation of negative space. What does not occur at a crime scene, or what is not observed in a conversation can be the final piece of what seemed until that point an unsolvable puzzle. 

For a moment ponder what the absence of a wedding ring on the body of a married woman’s finger might mean. There are many possible explanations for this. The unimaginative among you may propose that she was going through a marital rough patch, perhaps she was meeting with a lover and wished to hide she was married. More pragmatic individuals may propose the lack of a wedding ring could indicate particular occupations, for example, a nurse or healthcare worker, or a job involving manual labour. If the woman is a healthcare worker, the ring is likely to have a slightly raised stone, as a traditional gold-band wedding ring should be deemed suitable for work, while someone with a manual labour occupation is more likely to have a traditional wedding band. 

Moreover, if there is an indication that the wedding ring was removed post-mortem such as the lack of a tan or an indentation on the ring finger it indicates that the ring had value in the eyes of the killer. Whether the ring had a monetary value or a sentimental one would remain to be seen. There isn’t enough information in this scenario to discuss crime, motives, and the victim in-depth as it would lead to conjecture. However, it does illustrate the importance of exploring the lack of something at a crime scene. 

A lack of blood at a crime scene indicates the victim may have been killed at a different location and the avoidance of topics when interviewing a suspect suggests they know more than they say. One case which John is yet to write an account for was solved simply by noting the lack of noise in the night. The victim owned two Dobermans, who had several noise complaints lodged against them in the eighteen-months the victim lived in her Hampstead flat, yet on the night she died, they were silent. Her killer was someone familiar to both her and her dogs. The boyfriend, obviously. 

With a current lack of cases, today has found me sprawled on the sofa, contemplating this deduction of absence and the observation of negative space. John has spent his day out of the flat. After yesterday’s experiment, I can’t help but wonder if this absence is somehow my doing.

S.H.

[eliminatedtheimpossible]

Needs Further Experimentation

Take a moment dear reader, to engage your brain in something other than senseless social media gossip and ask yourself what a sleep-deprived John Watson, an infant, and a chameleon have in common. 

Several readers appear to have enjoyed my last entry, detailing an experiment involving my flatmate John Watson. So here is another. 

The experiment began in earnest the morning after one of John’s ‘Pub Nights’ with Mike Stanford (readers may recognise the name as a frequent commenter on John’s personal blog). John was sipping tea at the kitchen table while I examined water samples under my microscope for spirogyra. I handed John a slide for him to hold, which he did without complaint. This is an incident that members in the scientific community might label as an ‘outlier’ or ‘anomaly’. John is the only man I’ve met who, with little exception, will do whatever I ask of him. However, he makes up for his pliant nature by complaining more than anyone would deem ‘strictly necessary’.  That day, there was nothing. John Watson is endlessly fascinating as a research subject and so, another experiment began. 

I handed John another slide without a word. He took the item without question. A pen, a mug, and a pipette were added to the growing collection of items in his grasp before he questioned what I was doing and why he was holding an assortment of random objects. Chameleons, infants, and a sleep-deprived John Watson share what is known as a ‘Palmar Grasp Reflex’. It’s the reason newborns grab their parents’ thumbs, making their idiotic hearts swell.  It is a rudimentary, involuntary response likely stemming from our days as primates but people always attribute it to sentiment. Nevertheless, whenever given the opportunity I run similar such experiments with John. 

It only works when John is tired or distracted. Three is the average number of items I can hand John without him realising I’m conducting the experiment. Though, this average varies greatly depending on the object. The more commonplace an object such as a phone, set of keys or pens takes longer for John to detect. While unusual objects like a skull or pocket knife have a lower average of two items. 

The biggest outlier within my experimentation to date came earlier this afternoon. John had worked a double shift at the clinic and arrived back home at 221B suitably sleep deprived. He had folded himself into his armchair, looking moments from lulling off to sleep when I extended my hand to him. After a moment of hesitation, I rubbed my forefinger against the palm of John’s hand. 

The reader may note the brilliant grin of satisfaction that crossed my face when John’s hand encircled my own, confirming my hypothesis. However, this satisfaction was short-lived, as John’s eyes flew open. It took a moment of prodding for John to realise what I was doing (as previously discussed, when possible John must not know an experiment is being conducted.) Upon John realising the hand-holding was for an experiment I was vehemently scolded. It was an odd response, which requires further exploration. I shall inform the readers of any scientifically interesting discoveries which come from it.  

S.H. 

[eliminatedtheimpossible]

Experimentation & The Mind of a Scientist

The Science of Deduction, as the name would imply involves several elements of the Scientific Method.  To hone one’s deductive skills one must also interact with the scientific method. Today I shall be focusing on the elements of hypothesis and experimentation. Instead of using an inane example like the ones displayed in scientific textbooks for high school students, I shall instead detail a simple, on-going experiment involving my flatmate John Watson and his alarming consumption of tea. 

A simple observation I made after my time living with John is that aside from our now commonplace adventures working for Scotland Yard and over-emotional Londoners, John is a creature of habit. He enjoys a cup of tea each morning while reading the paper or browsing online news sites. He enjoys milk in his tea. The exact colour of his ideal tea could be described as ‘warm tan’. This information was gathered from last month’s experiment. He also detests sugar in his tea. From there I formed two research questions.

RQ1: How much sugar can be placed in John’s tea before he notices? RQ2: How much sugar can be placed in John’s tea before he says something? 

Hypothesis: John will notice the presents of sugar in his tea when roughly 2g (1/2 teaspoon) is added to his morning tea. He won’t complain about it until 8g (2 teaspoons) are added. 

The experimental process was simple enough. After a control period of a week in which I made John’s tea the way he preferred it I began to add increasing amounts of sugar (0.5g) every other day. As expected John noticed the day in which I added 2g of sugar. For readers who have never seen John Watson, it is important to know, he has a very expressive face. It was clear to tell by the screwing up of his nose and the downturn of his lips that he noticed the sugar. Also as expected, he said nothing. What I had not factored in was the observer effect. 

A simple observation John had made after his time living with me is that in post-case lulls, I tend to enjoy experimenting. John is often the subject of such experiments. It appears, he became aware, at least in part, of my experiment. John Watson is a stubborn man and as such, he didn’t mention the sugar until 8 teaspoons (33.5g) were added to his tea by which time the liquid had taken on a viscous nature. 

From this anecdote the reader should gather two critical observations:  1: When possible, avoid extraneous variables.  2: John Watson is an unpredictable research subject and should always be counted as an extraneous variable. 

S.H.

[eliminatedtheimpossible]

A Reintroduction

It was John who reminded me of the existence of this blog. Up until now, it had been a forgotten piece of data. One of the most critical things to remember when embarking upon the science of deduction is to eliminate all extraneous information. These include but are not limited to: the names of work colleagues, the scores of football matches, and unless directly related to a case, the solar system. It has come to my attention that the world is sorely in need of an outline to logical, deductive reasoning, which is not subject to the theatrics and sentimentality that can be found in the personal blog of my colleague and flatmate, John H. Watson.  

Though John Watson’s writing appears to be entertaining to the masses he isn’t observant of the true matters at hand and in deductions, it is best to be succinct. That’s how I was almost rewarded a knighthood.

That’s a story I’m sure John will one day tell. For now, dear readers, it is just past 7 and John informs me that we are to skip out, as it is an appropriate time for dinner. 

S.H.