The Case of the Crushed Roses: Chapter 2 (Part 2 of 2)

Continued... Chapter Two, Part Two

     I turned his attention back to the case. Sherlock was leaving the room, Lestrade right behind. I hurried after them and came up behind Lestrade in the small kitchen. Sherlock got to his knees, looked under the fridge again and pulled out a small piece of something shiny.

                Lestrade leaned in closely, “That looks like…”

                “Glass, a fragment.” Sherlock held it up for John and Lestrade to see. “There are small fragments of glass on the floor and under the fridge. The particles on the floor are tiny, small enough that they will leave a tiny sliver. Someone was careless picking them up, a few larger pieces ended up under the fridge. From the apartment we can tell that the owner was clean, the only thing she left about were her books. Even the last night’s dishes are done and the counters are wiped down. Had she shattered the glass in here the floor would have been mopped over. Instead, someone brushed them up hurriedly, missing bits here and there, perhaps not even using a broom but whatever was at hand.”

                “Yes, but what does that mean?” Lestrade was perplexed by this. “Does it matter that someone didn’t pick up the glass in her kitchen? Could have happened earlier yesterday, friends over for dinner and that sort of thing.”

                Sherlock gave Lestrade a look, and walked briskly towards the front door where Anderson and a few others were working. Anderson looked up in annoyance.

                “If you don’t mind, I’m working here,” said Anderson sarcastically.

                “In that case, this will barely register on your radar,” calmly stated Sherlock.

                “I’m busy,” repeated Anderson, “You’ll get in the way of my work…”

                “And since you never work this should be no problem for you now,” said Sherlock and stepped right up to the doorjamb. Anderson and to shuffle backwards from his kneeling position to avoid being slapped in the face by Sherlock’s coattails. I looked up slightly to try and hide a bubble of laughter. Anderson was always upset by Sherlock, and my laughing at him would not make things any easier. I needn’t have bothered though, as Anderson was too busy glaring at Sherlock’s back to notice my amusement.

                Sherlock crouched by the doorjamb and pointed to the floor. “See, here on the floor, a few drops of dried blood.”

                “What about the doorjamb?” said Anderson, “I’m working on…”

                “Not important,” said Sherlock and continued with his monologue. “These are three specifically placed drops. The last one is dragged slightly, probably from a toe in fact. If you look on the floor you’ll observe that there are no loose nails, bits of metal, or even anything to stub a toe on. In fact, even the break-in is relatively clean. If you test this blood you’ll find it belongs to Miss Nouveau. Now why would she injure her foot here, of all places, and once again, not clean it up?”

                Anderson was glowering by now. Seeing a break in Sherlock’s diatribe, he chimed in. “The apartment is free of evidence besides the broken lock. Nothing’s missing that we know of, so it may be that she came home drunk, had to get in and burst through the door by accident…”

                “Not possible,” interrupted Sherlock. Anderson opened his mouth again but Sherlock continued before Anderson could get the words out. “The lock was broken through a solid piece of wood by a good amount of force. That is not something you do on accident when you’re drunk, especially not a female. Considering the height most of these pictures are hung at she was also shorter, between 5’3” and 5’5”. She would never have broken into her own apartment, how would she have locked up after herself.”

                “You couldn’t possibly tell that just from a splintered doorjamb” spluttered Anderson.

                “On the contrary,” replied Sherlock, “It’s quite obvious.” He didn’t expound. Anderson went back to studying the door jamb, obviously trying to figure out what was so obvious to Sherlock.

                I glanced around the apartment. There were a few pictures here and there, most of them set slightly below where I would have put them. T the pictures would have been at a perfect visual height for someone who was tall as Sherlock mentioned. The things he notices, unbelievable. I just barely stopped himself from saying this out loud. Sherlock didn’t mind the compliments, in fact he seemed to take pride in them, becoming even more at the top of his game. It was Anderson who didn’t like being shown up time and again by the world’s only consulting detective.

                Lestrade shifted on his feet, getting tired of waiting. “Alright Sherlock, walk us through this so I can make sense of it all.” Sherlock seemed to switch into hunting dog mode and walked through the crime scene, pointing out the specific spots as he spoke.

                “We know that the disappearance happened at night, most likely she was in bed judging by the rumpled covers when something awakened her at the door. She got up and went to the kitchen first to get a drink of water. We know she didn’t go to the door first because there is no blood in the kitchen so, in the kitchen with a glass in her hand. There is a knock or sound at the door, startling enough that she drops the glass. Miss Nouveau walks to the door, looks out, sees nothing. She pricks her toe on something, this isn’t caused by the door bursting in because she has time to hide. So, she’s at the door, something frightens her enough that she needs to hide. Where? It’s a small apartment, only place she can think of is the chest. She gets in, crushing the flowers. The attacker enters, notices the shattered glass, but continues on to the bedroom. He removes Miss Nouveau from the chest, slams her onto the floor, and then gives her some sort of drug so she passes out. There are no other signs of struggle in the apartment and the attacker had time to sweep up the glass on his way out.”

                Lestrade opened his mouth and Sherlock spoke for him, “Why would they sweep up the glass, well let’s see. They did want us to think it’s a break-in, but the papers knew about it before the police did. My theory, there was a third party in here. One that would have cared about the victim and not wanted any harm to come to her. This party would have been upset at seeing the shattered glass, but definitely was the orchestrator of the kidnapping. So, the attacker is a violent person, judging by the crushed flowers and the knock-out method. However, the third party is someone less violent, probably female, definitely knows the victim.”

                “That could be any number of people,” said Lestrade as he crossed his arms. “We can’t do a blanket check on everyone she knows.”

                “Relatives first, they are statistically more likely.” Sherlock pulled off the latex gloves he had been wearing and prepared to leave. “John and I will look for something a bit closer, narrow the playing field.” Sherlock started out the door, then turned and asked Lestrade: “Oh, and I will need to see the ransom note.”

                “Wasn’t a note,” said Lestrade, “Put that back!” He snapped this to an assistant that was trying to surreptitiously lift some scribbled notes from the desk. “Get out! You’re off the case!” The young man ducked his head and ran out down the hall. “The nerve of these new people.” Said Lestrade, running his hands through his hair. “You can almost never trust them, it’s pathetic.”

                “The note.” Said Sherlock, who was still standing in the doorway.

                “Right,” sighed Lestrade. “There was no note, I said that on the phone to get you to come down and take a look.”

                I looked over to Sherlock who had gone into thinking mode. I knew enough from cases that no note usually meant something more serious than a kidnapping. Usually it was an arranged disappearance like Sherlock had originally thought or…

                “No ransom, this is definitely a revenge kidnapping. Something’s gone wrong in her life.” Sherlock turned and kept walking out the door, “Keep an eye out for a ransom note, until you get one there’ll be nothing to go on.”

                I ran after Sherlock and caught up, flipping through my notes. “There’s not a lot to go on, what are we going to start with?” Sherlock pulled out his phone and flipped it around.

                “You noticed she was researching crime syndicates?”

                “Yes, her notes were on the desk.”

                “Exactly, the same notes that intern was trying to lift before Lestrade shouted at him.” He flipped the phone around and showed me a photograph of the young man, obviously covertly snapped while Sherlock had been looking around. “He was acting nervously, much more nervous than any of the other new interns. Darting glances, hiding his hands, he was more than nervous, he was trying to hide something.”

                Sherlock took his phone back, clicked through a few times, and then showed me another photograph. “Timothy Carlton, one-time boyfriend of Chiara Noveau, it’s all over the papers.”

                “Hang on, that’s the same…”

“Intern from the crime scene yes.” He snapped the phone shut.

                “Like I said John, relatives and ex-boyfriends are most suspicious. The fact that she was researching crime syndicates for her next novel does add a level of suspicion that way, but we start with what we know and work out.”

                “Right…” I jotted down a few more notes and asked Sherlock again. “So, what are we going to start with?”

                “This flower,” he said, holding up the one intact rose.

                “The flower?” How were we going to get any information from a flower?

(Chapter Three coming on December 23rd)

The Case of the Crushed Roses: Chapter Two (Part 1 of 2)

Chapter 2

                I stepped carefully under the police tape. They had stretched it across the doorway of a rather small flat, not nearly as pretentious or expensive as I had expected it would be. Sherlock was already in the apartment, turning things over and peering into corners. The flat was smallish, perfect for one or two people. The living area had two little sofas, and a desk with a sitting chair. Books were piled onto bookshelves all around the room. They weren’t stacked like normal books, but rather piled haphazardly here and there, as if they were read frequently. Except for the bookshelves, the rest of the room was quite neat.

                I poked around a bit and then watched Sherlock running his fingers over the kitchen floor. He looked at them, then knelt and peered under the fridge. “Find anything?” I asked? Sometimes Sherlock had all the information within a few minutes and there was no need to even take lunch off.

                Sherlock didn’t answer, but brushed past a couple of interns who had been staring at him. We were a frequent enough appearance at the crime scenes that usually the whole was used to us. The new ones still tended to stare though. He disappeared into the bedroom. I noticed a pile of notes by the computer. I flipped through them, jotted down a few notes and followed Sherlock into the bedroom. Lestrade was standing with his arms folded, watching Sherlock look through the apartment.

                I noticed that the covers on a double sized bed were turned back and rumpled. Books piled the room in a more haphazard fashion here, but the majority of the color was provided by bright blue drapes, and a black and neon quilt.

                “She has a bit of an eclectic taste when it comes to furnishing, I’ll give you that.” Said Lestrade. Sherlock paused for a moment, sniffed the air, then whirled on a medium sized hope chest at the end of the bed and pulled it open.

                “I was wrong,” said Sherlock, and then started carefully poking at something inside the chest.

                “Excuse me, what was that?” said Lestrade with a trace of a smile on his face.

                “Wrong, not a set-up, Chiara Nouveau was kidnapped.”

                “That’s what we figured,” Lestrade shifted to see what had captured Sherlock’s attention in the hope chest. “What gives it away? On the phone you were convinced it was a set-up.”

                “Flowers,” said Sherlock. I moved over to get a view. There were crushed petals from what had been a bouquet of roses. The stems were still bound together by a dark, wine-colored ribbon. The dark petals were now mostly a small pile of flakes. Three of the roses were partially intact, and one was barely crushed at all.

                “Crushed flowers?” inquired Lestrade. “That doesn’t make sense.”

                “Makes perfect sense,” shot back Sherlock. “Miss Nouveau saved these roses, they were special to her, thus placing them in this out of the spot way where they most likely wouldn’t get crushed and she could control the environment. Probably from a funeral or an old boyfriend that she still misses. If they were from a wedding or a celebration she would have them out in a vase but no, something she doesn’t want to be constantly reminded of but also doesn’t want to forget. So, something sad, betting on the ex-boyfriend theory, especially considering that these are what used to be red roses.” Sherlock paused the diatribe and looked up and Lestrade. “Look into ex-boyfriends for Chiara Nouveau, shouldn’t be too hard to find given her celebrity status.” Lestrade rolled his eyes.

                “What else have you got, how does this prove she was actually kidnapped?”

                Sherlock jabbed at the flowers. “Miss Nouveau would never destroy these flowers, they were special to her. If she was done with them she would have thrown them away. No, these were crushed while in the chest and by force, plus they are still here.”
                I felt the need to interject, “Perhaps she got angry and smashed them herself, forgot to clean them up?”
                “If you’re going to destroy something in a rage, you do it properly. See here,” Sherlock carefully lifted out the intact flower, “Four of the flowers are not completely crushed; this was by accident.” Sherlock rose and pointed to the floor. “You can see a few flakes randomly patterned on the floor.”

                There were indeed a small trail of rose petal pieces on the floor. There were a few larger ones among several small ones, as if they had carelessly fallen from some thick fabric, a jumper most likely. I crouched by a few flakes that seemed to be gathered by the door. They formed almost a perfect circle, and seemed to have been ground into the carpet. Sherlock continued his diatribe.

                “If the flowers had been crushed by hand the flakes would be spread in a wider fashion, as they would have been brushed off the hands and floated around the room. These are in a direct path of sorts. They were also not brushed off clothing before the clothing met the floor. Notice the circular pattern that the flakes are in, with the smallest flakes being at the center. These petals were on a part of the body, most likely a knee or a shoulder considering those are the two items most likely to come in contact with the floor and make that particular pattern.”

                “So, why would someone kneel or lie in dried flowers?” asked John. Lestrade looked on expectantly.

                “That is the proper question now.” Sherlock was in his element. “You wouldn’t put yourself in a small space unless you needed to hide for some reason. It’s possible that the lady had some friends over and they played hide-and-seek, but those flowers wouldn’t have been crushed for fun in that scenario. Rather, if the chest was needed as a place to hide, whoever got in there would have taken the time to remove the flowers or found another place to hide.”

                “Perhaps a friend was in there that didn’t know what the flowers meant.” Sherlock shook his head.

                “A friend would have been even more careful about invading another’s space, even if it were a close friend. You mess up my sock drawer John, but you wouldn’t break my valuables.” Lestrade raised his eyebrows, but Sherlock provided no further explanation. I shook my head, Sherlock was referring to when I had gone through Sherlock’s drawers to ensure he hadn’t hidden cigarettes anywhere. Sherlock was clean, but sometimes the temptation became too much when he was bored…

                I turned his attention back to the case. Sherlock was leaving the room, Lestrade right behind. I hurried after them and came up behind Lestrade in the small kitchen. Sherlock got to his knees, looked under the fridge again and pulled out a small piece of something shiny.

                Lestrade leaned in closely, “That looks like…”

                “Glass, a fragment.” Sherlock held it up for John and Lestrade to see. “There are small fragments of glass on the floor and under the fridge. The particles on the floor are tiny, small enough that they will leave a tiny sliver. Someone was careless picking them up, a few larger pieces ended up under the fridge. From the apartment we can tell that the owner was clean, the only thing she left about were her books. Even the last night’s dishes are done and the counters are wiped down. Had she shattered the glass in here the floor would have been mopped over. Instead, someone brushed them up hurriedly, missing bits here and there, perhaps not even using a broom but whatever was at hand.”

                “Yes, but what does that mean?” Lestrade was perplexed by this. “Does it matter that someone didn’t pick up the glass in her kitchen? Could have happened earlier yesterday, friends over for dinner and that sort of thing.”

                Sherlock gave Lestrade a look, and walked briskly towards the front door where Anderson and a few others were working. 

(Chapter Two to be continued December 21st)