Over My Dead Body

by Dave Warner

  ‘Full bent.’

  ‘Briar or meerschaum?’

  Georgette said, ‘Whatever is under thirty bucks.’ The cold threat of austerity had made itself at home in Georgette’s bosom ever since Holmes had kicked up about the media deal.

  Holmes and the salesman shared the kind of look that Georgette might have given somebody who said a Kandinsky looked like a kindergarten painting.

  ‘Best I can do is this one, thirty-four ninety-five.’ The salesman whisked a pipe from under the counter. They all looked the same to Georgette.

  She said, ‘Okay, but for that you can throw in some tobacco.’

  The guy turned her way as if he wished he had his cleaver handy.

  When they emerged from the shop, pipe and tobacco snugly in his coat pocket, Holmes said, ‘I must say, Watson, you are rather adroit when it comes to negotiation.’

  ‘I’m not adroit, I’m near destitute, and will be completely if you don’t change your mind about publicity.’

  ‘Come, Watson, not so gloomy. Once we solve this case, we can devote our attention to these other trifles.’

  A Nobel prize, and he called it a trifle?

  ‘What do you mean, “we” solve the case?’

  ‘Let Benson make his enquiries and we shall make ours.’

  She was about to tell him that would not be happening when they passed a twenty-four hour pharmacy and more mundane matters like toothpaste elbowed their way into her thoughts.

  ‘Need some supplies,’ she said and entered. Holmes followed. She grabbed the cheapest toothpaste and some razors.’

  ‘You have no brother do you, Watson?’

  ‘No.’ She turned to find Holmes weighing a can of the same brand of shaving cream as Vance’s.

  ‘It crossed my mind as to whom the can in your lodgings belongs. Clearly it is not yours, as it was covered in a film of dust, yet was almost full. The absence of a wedding ring suggests you are not currently married and the absence of photos and the use of your father’s surname testify you are no widow. Divorce is possible but given your age and studies, unlikely.’

  Like she wanted this discussion in a public place.

  ‘That’s correct.’

  Holmes pursed his lips. ‘So you find yourself a spinster?’

  Several women in the shop looked around. She felt like tearing a razor from its packaging and using it on him.

  ‘Yes.’ She moved on quickly.

  ‘The gentleman was a … lodger?’

  ‘If you have a very loose interpretation of the word … gentleman.’ She realized she was clamping her jaw. Vance had informed her he was breaking up from her by Snapchat, embellished with an image of a broken heart. Two weeks later he’d moved in with a twenty-two year old Brazilian graphic designer. ‘I’d rather not talk about this in public.’

  ‘Of course, my apologies.’

  Holmes bowed and took himself off. Now she would have to explain to him about Vance and sex before marriage and … her attention shifted. Fifty percent off Nina Ricci perfume? She had always been a sucker for Nina. On the other hand, there was twenty percent off a cleanser and she knew she’d have a lot more use for that. But could she really afford either?

  A raised voice stopped her in her tracks.

  ‘Call yourself a pharmacist, and you don’t stock cocaine?’

  She charged around the aisle to find Holmes wagging his finger at the young man behind the counter.

  ‘Please, Percy. They may not get your sense of English humour here. After all …’ laying it on, ‘… cocaine is illegal.’

  He was aghast. ‘Not possible. Freud’s treated half the parliamentarians in Europe with it. They would never ban it.’

  She uttered a stagey laugh. ‘That’s very convincing.’ She turned to the pharmacist. ‘For his new role his acting coach told him to live every minute as if he’s a Victorian English gentleman.’

  The pharmacist was probably normally bored out of his skull through these hours because he instantly perked up.

  ‘Who are you supposed to be?’

  ‘Sherlock Holmes,’ Holmes said.

  The pharmacist eyed him carefully then shook his head. ‘No, too short. And you need the funny little hat.’

  ‘“Funny little hat.”’ Holmes tossed his cap onto the sofa, still rankled despite the exertion of walking back. Georgette was busy sorting through a large garbage bag of men’s clothes that had been left inside the door: Simone, true to her word. It was all pretty much jeans and tee-shirts, bar a pair of short pajamas and an old overcoat. Georgette was pleasantly surprised to find they had been freshly washed. She handed them to Holmes. He sorted through them the way an English master might a pile of badly spelt essays.

  ‘The fashion of gentlemen these days, if I may say so, is bereft of style. With the exception of the fellow in the poster above the tobacco store.’

  Georgette rifled her memory. ‘James Bond. He’s a fictional spy.’

  ‘Definitely fictional from what I have seen in the manner of gentlemen’s attire. Thank Simone. I shall make use of these.’ He held up a pair of jeans, and a half-dozen tee-shirts bearing the name of death-metal or thrash-metal bands or whatever they were; scrap-metal as far as Georgette was concerned. He also scooped up the short pajamas and a pair of complimentary airline slippers. After hanging the clothes in his wardrobe, he re-emerged, entered the kitchen and began clattering in the fridge.

  ‘I must say, Watson, this idea of the cold meat safe is extremely functional but does not appear to be being put to any use.’

  ‘I’ll shop tomorrow. I’ve been a fraction busy bringing you back to life.’

  He closed the fridge, wiped his face with his palm.

  ‘My apologies. It’s frustration. This case is tolling a bell but I am deaf to its ring. Had I been able to purchase some cocaine, the cloth covering my ears may have been ripped away. Every investigator could do with the assistance of that wonder drug.’

  ‘I’ll be sure to suggest that to my father.’

  ‘No matter how impressive the scientific tools at one’s disposal, if one has not an agile brain to wield them, they are but skittles without a ball.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll be sharper in the morning after a good night’s sleep.’

  ‘Indeed. Thank you for everything, Watson. I mean that most sincerely. Your great-great-grandfather would be justifiably proud. If you would allow me to excuse myself?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Holmes entered his bedroom and closed the door. The weird thing was, this was starting to feel normal. Georgette checked her messages and saw three from Simone. For more privacy she headed to her own bedroom before calling her sister.

  ‘How’s Sherlock doing?’ asked Simone.

  ‘Please, call him Percy. He thanks you for the clothes.’

  Georgette ran through all that had happened. She expected a sympathetic ear from Simone on the question of publicity but was surprised.

  ‘You can’t blame him. He’s right. He’ll be treated like a freak.’

  ‘Not handled the right way. This is one of the great scientific discoveries. I can’t keep quiet about it. Lives could be saved.’

  ‘Maybe he’ll save lives in another way. Like with this investigation.’

  ‘It’s not the same. He could still do that.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, Georgi, but you want this to be about you. Hey, I get you’re pissed you can’t tell anybody. But you know what? You still did it. So what if those nerds don’t know about it. Play their game. Find some frozen monkeys – or a woolly mammoth, right? Get some mammoth buried in an avalanche a thousand years ago and revive that. I’ll catch you tomorrow. I really want to see our friend again.’

  The call ended with Georgette miffed. Worse, part of what Simone had said was eating away. Maybe she did just want this to be about her?

  Something woke Georgette, a sound, close by. She blinked awake, listened. Yes, somebody was moving around in the apartment.

  ‘Holmes, is
that you?’

  The instant she called out, she regretted it. What if it wasn’t him? She’d just alerted an intruder. Footsteps moved to her door. She tensed, cast about for a weapon, grabbed the book off her nightstand. A paperback. Hopeless.

  ‘My apologies if I disturbed you.’

  Holmes’ voice was muffled by the closed door. She looked at her phone, saw it was 2.45.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  She clicked on her light, got out of bed, threw on her robe and opened her door. Holmes stood there in short pajamas wearing a Slayer tee-shirt and holding a glass of water.

  ‘I was working on something and got thirsty.’

  ‘You were working on something at three in the morning?’

  ‘I commenced an hour ago. I suddenly woke and realized what I should have done the instant I saw those victims.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘It has happened before: in Rome in eighteen eighty-eight.’

  Ten minutes later they were side by side on the sofa hunched over her computer. Holmes was talking.

  ‘I was contacted by an Italian detective, a friend of the mayor of Rome but I was fully involved with the Ripper case at that time and could offer no assistance.’

  ‘Are you sure it wasn’t the Ripper?’

  ‘There were many differences. The Roman killer strangled and used a knife to cut the throat, no genital mutilation. At each body the killer left a picture of an animal cut from a children’s book.’

  Georgette tapped away on the computer, searching for hits with keywords Rome, Murder, 1888. Nothing remotely echoing Holmes’ story showed up. She tried different keywords. Still nothing that sang. She couldn’t help wondering if he might have imagined it, hated herself for doing so.

  ‘There’s no mention here.’

  ‘The murders were never made public but I committed to memory the sequence: puma, jaguar, giraffe. There may have been more after that but I would have been dead by then. If I may?’

  She watched as Holmes typed in a query in Italian and hit Enter. Only one hit was thrown up. He translated.

  ‘This mentions the murder of a young woman whose body was found by the Spanish Steps in September of eighteen eighty-eight. A cut-out of a drawing of a giraffe was left by her body. The case was never solved.’

  ‘There’s no mention of other murders?’

  ‘They were attempting to suppress information so as not to cause panic but I suspect the Spanish Steps was such a public location that the murder became known.’ He reflected a moment and then typed in the words ‘Pasquale Ometti’.

  ‘He was the Italian who contacted me,’ he explained.

  Apart from a few Facebook pages for contemporary Pasquale Omettis there was only one entry, and it was in English. Georgette couldn’t help herself, she swung the computer back her way.

  On the screen appeared: Crimini d’Italia, Pasquale Ometti. First edition 1904. Summer Catalog 2020, Edwards Rare Books.

  Holmes uttered a cry of affirmation. ‘It seems Ometti finally wrote about the case.’

  ‘Do you think it was solved?’

  ‘Given the lack of entries here, I doubt it. The police love to trumpet a success.’

  A webpage link followed. Georgette hit Enter and up flashed a page showing a website for Edwards Rare Books. On Contacts she found a phone number with an address for Greenwich Village.

  ‘This place is local,’ she said in case Holmes hadn’t followed but his eyes were those of a hawk’s on prey. Next, she searched within the site, typing in the title and author’s name. Up came the listing with the word ‘Sold’.

  ‘Logically,’ said Holmes, ‘whoever the killer is had knowledge of these earlier murders, and as the only reference would appear to be Signor Ometti’s book …’

  ‘It must be somebody with access to the book.’

  ‘Precisely. We need to find out to whom the book was sold, who supplied the book in the first place, and who may have handled it between those times.’

  Georgette felt obliged to point out that they would not have much say in the matter.

  ‘We need to make Benson aware of this information.’

  Holmes seemed about to object but all he said was, ‘Quite so. The scent of a crime almost makes me forget that I am many thousands of miles and more than a century from my usual jurisdiction.’

  With that he wished her goodnight and returned to his room. Georgette could not help but empathize. You didn’t have to be a century out of step to feel you didn’t know your place in the world.

  Tonight, when she let herself into the apartment, it felt different. Oh, the furniture was the same as she’d left it, the bamboo dresser, the rattan chairs with the colorful cushions that she was still pinching herself about – thirty dollars, you just never saw them anymore, anywhere. She had preceded that whole tiki-bar, Tahitian vibe by … how many years ago did she buy them? At least seven. One day she would make it there. Maybe with him. It was a long time since she had allowed herself to think like that. She looked at the photos of her and her girlfriends that she had slung under the mantlepiece on a piece of string. All of them in leis. That had been a fun night, and who would have thought Sirena could make cocktails like that?

  She had invited him to dinner and he had accepted. That was why tonight felt different, the promise of something shared, the idea that this room, much as she loved it, wouldn’t just always be for her alone. She wondered what his place would be like? He dressed well, and the picture of his apartment building and the street looked nice. It was a good area, like here, a nice normal place. She slipped her shoes off and walked in bare feet. It had been chilly without pantyhose but anything to make her legs slimmer … and her taller. In the best of all possible worlds, men didn’t care how tall you were. She had a good bust. No, make that a great bust, but what she liked about him was that, unlike the last couple of times she dated a guy, his eyes stayed on her face.

  Maybe she would have a splash of rum and Coke? Celebrate. It had taken a long time to feel like she could have a future, like she actually might deserve one. You can carry your past like a saddlebag. But we all make mistakes and though she didn’t go to church that often anymore she still remembered that bit about forgiveness. Finally, she was beginning to forgive herself. She fumbled in the freezer for a handful of cubes, pulled out the sliced lemon, sat it on the rim and poured. She could do this for him, not just for herself. He didn’t drink much, virtually not at all, and that was a good thing. Of course, she had been nervous and felt like quaffing the cocktail fast but she had sipped slowly, made it last. Didn’t want him thinking she was some lush. She sat down in the rattan chair and sipped. It tasted so good. She’d thought of dating sites, all the girls were on them. Sirena swore by them. But she’d always been wary of them and it seemed she had been proven right because they’d met in her local bar with just a casual word or two that time, and then nothing for two weeks and she had sort of given up as you do until tonight, there he was again and it was a kind of play it by ear for both of them, just strolling around, chatting. He bought an inexpensive meal for them and then walked her home and when she’d invited him for a home-cooked meal next time he seemed genuinely delighted. He said he had been hoping she would be in the bar tonight because he had been thinking about her but hadn’t told anybody about their meeting, he didn’t want to jinx them. She felt the same, although of course she would have to let Sirena and Rosemary know that there might be somebody. Or maybe she wouldn’t say anything because it might all come to nothing, but she didn’t think so. She had a good feeling about things.

  12

  At eight a.m. sharp, her head still fuzzy from lack of sleep, Georgette tried to contact Benson but got only his voicemail. Not wishing to leave a confusing message about her potential lead, she simply asked him to call her as soon as possible. Holmes, who had been listening in, twirled his razor.

  ‘Each storm brings a silver lining, Watson. Now we can investigate.’

  ‘We can’t d
o that.’

  ‘Why on earth not?’

  ‘It’s a murder investigation,’ was all she managed.

  ‘It is our investigation. Time is of the essence, Watson. We have no idea when Noah may strike again. I place no expectation on you accompanying me but I may need some stipend. And by the way, these razors are a marvellous invention.’

  Until the resurrection of Holmes, Georgette’s recent life had been unremittingly dull. Well, apart from the horror of murder. She knew Simone would have seized upon Holmes’ suggestion, and asked herself now why her sister should have all the fun. Even as her desire for potential excitement was balanced by the unnerving, inevitable consequences, she found herself saying, ‘Okay, I’m coming. Where?’

  ‘Yes?’ Though it was a single, small, unprepossessing word, it strode through the tinny security-door speaker with its nose well and truly pointed up in the cool morning air.

  Holmes, changed into his new suit, had prepped Georgette on the way downtown in the cab. She was starving. There had been no time for breakfast with Holmes insisting on coming here immediately. He nodded to her and she leaned in to the speaker.

  ‘Doctor Watson and Mr Percy Turner. We saw your summer catalog.’

  ‘Please, come on up,’ said a male voice that conjured heavy silver cutlery, cravats and meticulous gardening. ‘Third floor. Ring the bell when you arrive.’

  The door clicked and they pushed in.

  ‘Could have done with one of these at my lodgings,’ observed Holmes. ‘It was a devil of a thing running up and down those stairs.’

  ‘I thought you had a housekeeper?’

  ‘We did, of sorts. Conan Doyle improved her somewhat. She was usually under the weather by the stroke of midday and I feared for her safety tackling the stairs.’

  It had been raining in the early hours and the morning sky had remained the color of a battleship. Only the most adventurous rays of light snuck into the narrow vestibule from the single grimy window above the door. It was a walk-up. Georgette started to climb the very steep wooden staircase so narrow they had to ascend single file. On the second-floor landing they passed a frosted glass door that bore no name and gave no indication as to what kind of business might be conducted therein. Edwards Rare Books on the other hand presented a large clear panel of glass and the business name in gold lettering. There was no handle to the door. When Holmes pressed the bell, Georgette realized he was sporting the Hulk.