Welcome to Baker Street

65. The mystery deepens

The trio follows the police officer that has just announced the presence of a second body. They march toward the far end of the garden, where they spot a dog lying in the grass.

"I don't understand. Did the murderer kill the family dog, too?" John wonders.

"Just because a dog lies dead on a crime scene, it doesn't necessarily make it the second victim of the same assassin," Sherlock clarifies, examining the animal.

"Why would someone kill a dog, anyway?" Anderson intervenes.

"Perhaps the killer was afraid that the dog could start barking, thus warning passers-by?" John speculates.

"But it makes no logical sense," Sherlock objects. "Passers-by here? We said it before: this house is isolated. Given the breed and the small size of this dog, we can also rule out the possibility that the shooter felt threatened and acted in self-defence. Not to mention that, from what we can observe, this dog doesn't show any external wounds. What could the killer have possibly done, strangle it?" He rhetorically asks, but right when he finishes the sentence, something clicks in his mind, and he whispers, "Actually..."

He squats down over the dog's muzzle and delicately lifts the flew to reveal blue discolouration on its gums: a clear sign of cyanosis.

"This dog had respiratory failure, which is also consistent with the scratches on the bare ground around its paws, signalling it was suffering from convulsions," he states in a gloomy tone.

John looks at him, intrigued. Is it possible that the very man who never bats an eyelid in front of a human corpse is now affected by the death of a dog?

"Are you saying that it wasn't killed by Elisa's murderer?" Anderson concludes tentatively.

"We don't know precisely what caused its asphyxiation, but I don't think the killer had anything to do with it. Still, the question remains: why is this dog dead?" Sherlock asks, mostly to himself.

Anderson leads them back to the front gate of the house, hissing, "Why don't you ask Isaac? Maybe he'll tell you how and why he killed the dog after shooting his mother."

"Don't your neurons get claustrophobic in that tiny brain of yours, Anderson?" Holmes talks back, getting out of the driveway and stepping onto the main road where a knot of curious people is standing behind police tape.

While they are making their way through the crowd, a woman grabs the doctor by his shoulders, a dismayed look on her face. John instinctively steps back, but she tightens her grip on him and stammers, "Is-is that really you?"

She turns pale; her bloodshot eyes stare at him as if she had just seen a ghost. John, visibly confused and uncomfortable, murmurs warily, "Excuse me, do I know you?"

She is now shaking uncontrollably while tears stream down her face.

"Dad, is that you?"

Sherlock knits his brows at the scene as the woman continues, "Are you back because I'm letting you down? Oh, dad, I'm so sorry, I know that your company was the hard work of your life, nay, it was your entire life. And I've been trying to save it, I swear. But it's so damn difficult. Heaven knows I'd do anything to prevent it from going bankrupt. Anything. Are you angry, dad?" she cries, caressing John's cheek, who yanks his face away from her touch, ill-at-ease.

He throws a bewildered look at his flatmate.

"I haven't the faintest idea who she is. This woman is clearly delirious. She is hallucinating, and I guess that she's seeing her father in me, somehow." He squints his eyes at her and pronounces clearly, "Can you hear me? Are you feeling alright?" John tries to drag her back into reality.