Free Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets by David Thomas Moore (ed) Page B

a murderous love triangle. Detective Lestrade had, in his usual bungling manner, overlooked most of the pertinent facts. Holmes, while sucking on his electronic cigarette—its LED tip shining blue with each intake of nicotine—took great pleasure in pointing out his main error. The farmer, a Mr. Petrous Marais, had been described as a brutal man by his wife and farm workers. They’d claimed that he’d tormented his labourers with threats of feeding them to his pet lion, which apparently was the only creature the man had shown any affection to. His wife had insisted that he’d beaten her and the workforce on a regular basis, but the lack of bruises on her person, or any other evidence of spousal abuse, like medical records, and the comfort in which the workers lived had given Holmes pause. Surely a man who beat his workers and threatened to feed them to his lion wouldn’t house them quite so well. The workers had indoor plumbing and didn’t live in tin shanties like some workers on other farms across the country. The atrocious living conditions of South African farm labourers was a familiar plight, but it was not the case on that particular farm.
    Mr Marais, while a hard man, was not brutal or cruel. He’d treated his workers fairly and paid them what he could afford. His wife, on the other hand, while attractive in the conventional and obvious sense, was not a fair woman. She piqued Holmes’s interest when he noticed the tennis bracelet she wore on her right wrist showed no scratches on the clasp, and was obviously—to him—brand new. The wrapping from the jeweller’s shop and the credit card slip in the rubbish bin backed up his premise. She’d bought it the day after her husband’s death, as though to reward herself for a deed well done. It was not the act of a woman in shock over the brutal murder of her husband. He also noticed traces of lint on her blouse, which matched the fibres from the farm foreman’s shirt, and traces of lipstick on the foreman’s collar that matched the shade of lipstick Mrs Marais favoured. Holmes deduced that they had been having an affair and that the foreman had riled up the workers against Mr. Marais and convinced them to feed him to his outsized pet. Once confronted, the lovers had turned on each other in a rush to secure a plea bargain. The farm labourers had felt contrite and come clean on all the details. The poor animal had been put down and Mrs. Marais and her lover were charged with conspiracy to commit murder and sundry other charges.
    But that was over a month ago, and Sherlock needed a new diversion to prevent another crack-induced manic episode. Mrs. Hudson put the tea tray down as I read through the potential cases. Most of the requests for help were the usual twaddle, a missing dog or a necklace that Holmes said was clearly taken by the maid. There was one that briefly held some interest—a missing child—until Sherlock surmised that the father had absconded with the boy because the mother refused him visitation rights. He claimed there was something in the wording of the woman’s email that had led him to that conclusion; I personally didn’t see it. Holmes sent the distraught mother an email informing her that perhaps if she hadn’t used the child as a weapon against his father, the father wouldn’t have resorted to such measures, and that perhaps she should endeavour to be a better and less selfish parent.
    Her response had been less than friendly.
    A text message from Lestrade, sent from a crime scene along with a photo, finally caught Sherlock’s attention for longer than five seconds. The dismembered body of a well-dressed white businessman, found in Mamelodi Township, was not something that happened every day, and was therefore noteworthy to Holmes.
    “Watson,” he said after sucking on his e-cig, the blue LED light glowing in the dimly-lit room. The blinds were closed. Holmes had a hangover and bright sunlight bothered his bloodshot eyes. “I think