Chapter Text
Sherlock Holmes and the Beheaded Bicycleman
Chapter 1: The Simple Facts
Being a man of science, I have never put stock in the supernatural. Nevertheless, the case I want to put to paper today for the invested readers of The Strand shall indeed be beset with ghosts and apparitions of a most dreadful kind! Even Sherlock Holmes, though he will certainly scold me for my spinning of the tale — true as it certainly is! – will not deny that the events of Greensburg disquieted us both deeply.
Truth be told, my friend has always been more susceptible to the possibility of otherworldly phenomena: true to his mantra that, however improbable, what remains when you have ruled out the impossible must be the truth, he never ruled out even the most ludicrous of possibilities until he could be sure of contrary evidence.
On the dark night of October 31st, as we held out by the wayside to catch sight of the dreaded apparition that had so haunted our client’s friend, I believe that perhaps for a moment he considered that sometimes the only possibility remaining… was indeed the impossible itself.
It was the 30th of October 1895, and with the steady advance of early nights the season brought with it, settling sooner and sooner like a cloak upon the roofs of our never-sleeping city, Holmes and I had retired early in front of the crackling fire, with a blanket tucked warmly around our legs. I had been reading out loud, upon his request, the newest Islington Murder article concerning the mysterious murder of a Mr. Sidney Dowling that had occurred at the beginning of October and had not, of course, long remained quite so mysterious – after Sherlock Holmes had attended the matter.
His name did not appear in the paper, a fact that seemed as per usual to neither bother nor surprise my detective friend nearly as much as me, who, I must confess, muttered a pointed insult under my breath.
“As much as I appreciate your ire on my behalf, my dear Watson,” Holmes said to me without looking up, “you must know after a decade of the closest cooperation that I have never desired the gaze of the public eye. For various reasons, as you are surely aware.”
I smiled, but could not help the fire in my chest on his behalf. “Well, Holmes, it irks me still on occasions such as this, where you did all the work! Let me declare, my dearest and closest friend, that the next case rolling our way shall be documented and disseminated by my very own pen, so that a faithful account of your skill might be given once more. And I shall mention your success on this Islington case, too, for good measure.”
“Faithful accounts, Watson? How quaint. How often have I told you that even the simplest facts are reliably distorted by your romantic streak, old fellow?“ He smiled dryly, and as he lounged there in his chair by the firelight, I could not help but think to myself that he looked at me like a feline predator: relaxed, purring, deceptively at ease yet at any moment ready to strike. Had he toppled a vase, glaring at me with his dark eyes, I would not have been surprised in the slightest. Figuratively, I suppose he had.
I left his remark uncommented upon. I deigned it unworthy of even a retaliatory reply.
“A letter carrier has been arrested for fowl thieving,” I commented as I continued to peruse the page, “perhaps if you had been working that particular case I might have been able to stick to the ‘simple’ facts.”
“Please, Watson.” I thought I could hear him chuckle, but did not lower the paper. “While there is many an obvious case that I consider beneath my complex reasoning skill, there is none you would not skillfully turn into a tantalizing tale of crime and punishment. What might you have called it – The Carrier of More Than Letters, perhaps?”
Unsure if I had been insulted or complimented, I raised my head and squinted at the amused Holmes from above the papers. “That is a terrible title,” I informed him, and might have informed him of some more of my opinions had not Mrs. Hudson at this moment knocked and entered our rooms, announcing an afternoon visitor.
This visitor had rather impolitely followed at her heels, tumbling into the room as she gasped in reproach. Or maybe she gasped at his ghostly visage: the dishevelled appearance and the haunted look in his eyes. It was only five o’clock, yet the sun was already setting, and the darkness encroaching from the windows cast his face half in shadow.
I was by her side in an instant, taking her arm soothingly so that she might not reprimand the poor fellow for his discourtesy. “Thank you, Mrs. Hudson.” I smiled and asked her for some tea, which I need not have done, since she had already had a kettle on the fire. What a stellar housekeeper, our Mrs. Hudson.
“Thank you, Mrs. Hudson,” declared Sherlock Holmes not a moment later, and in his voice I could hear not only his usual theatrical tenor reserved for strangers and introductions, but the undercurrent of excitement, the thrill of a potential case. Indeed, as I turned around, Holmes the consulting detective stood masterfully at the center of the room, taking it up with ease, and our eyes rested fixedly on him, until at last he deigned a smile and broke the spell he had cast.
At times like this, he was a sight to behold.
Gone the gangly dangling limbs of the fireplace; he stood straight and tall and commandeering, moving with slow, powerful control. Truly, two hearts beat within his chest, yet both of them strong and fierce. I would have followed him into battle, looking at him, though I suppose I was the one with more combat experience, and had we ever shared a battlefield, surely I would have done my best to shield him, without hesitation, with my own body and life.
“Welcome,” Holmes said with a curt nod, and his extended arm suggested our guest take a seat, which he did, sinking down upon it as if his bones had been macerated. “I take it your journey to London was not a pleasant one?”
Our guest looked surprised – he was a young man with a strong physique, brown hair and green eyes, who would probably have been clean-shaven under different circumstances. As it was, light stubble graced his chin; he looked slightly unorderly to a degree that even I could deduce his absentmindedness regarding his toilet.
“Indeed I come from out of town, but how did you know?”
“Mr. Holmes possesses great skills of observation,” I said not without pride, and was rewarded by an affectionate glance from the man himself. I looked at our guest’s mud-stained shoes, and though I could not analyse the earthy tones of the dirt myself, I am sure their providence was not from London streets, and thus had Holmes arrived at his remark.
Holmes followed my line of sight, read my thoughts, and nodded proudly.
“As surely you know, if you seek my services, Mr. …?”
“Ah. Excuse my lack of manners. You see, I’m quite shaken. Murmelbäcker is my name. Dieter Murmelbäcker.”
“Sorgen Sie sich nicht, Herr Murmelbäcker, ich trage es Ihnen nicht nach,” said Sherlock Holmes in impeccable German, and Mr. Murmelbäcker’s face broke into a smile at last.
“Sie sprechen deutsch? Ach, wie schön den Klang meiner Heimat zu vernehmen!”
“I have a basic mastery of most Indo-European languages, not least thanks to your compatriot Franz Bopp’s remarkable 1816 publication Over the Conjugation System of the Sanskrit Language Compared with that of Greek, Latin, Persian, and Gothic. I found it quite fascinating as a school boy, and endeavored to master the base roots of their comparative linguistics, as – I figured in my ambitious youth – crime is not committed only in England! Alas, it turns out, there is enough crime committed in England that I have my fair share of it even here in London, and tend to leave the ones abroad to other, lesser men.”
“A loss, no doubt,” I remarked very sincerely.
“And I must admit, most of my actual fluency is limited to French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Greek, Latin and some Hindi,” Holmes finished humbly and with a brief reprimanding glance in my direction.
If possible, our guest had paled further. “Amazing,” he muttered to himself, “I do not regret to having sought you out. Also if the reason for my visit has to do nothing with languages.”
I realized Mr. Murmelbäcker had not yet fully mastered our language, although most of his mistakes he noticed and corrected as he spoke. A bright young yellow, no doubt.
“It is not from Germany you come, though – you have been living in England for a while, have you not?”
“Indeed, Mr. Holmes, two years now. I reside in Greensburg, from whence I came to you today after a restless, horrible twenty-four hours. Oh, I am unconsolable! My dear friend…”
“Will you not tell us what happened? From the beginning, and orderly, if you can. Leave out nothing – even what might seem to you like trifles and trivialities may prove crucial. Sometimes an animated retelling can provide more than simple facts.” He looked at me. “My good friend and colleague Dr. Watson here, will take some notes as you speak – I am sure you don’t mind?”
I smiled at Holmes as I took out my notebook, accepting his silent apology for his earlier remarks and his invitation, now, to remain true to my word and document this new case faithfully, albeit in my way.
Dieter Murmelbäcker took a deep breath.
“I come to you because my good friend, Mr. Ian Bo Crain, has disappeared.
I am not a superstitious man, and yet… I see no reason… But let me, as you say, start from the beginning, and try to be thorough.
I came to Greensburg, as I mentioned, two years ago, since a distant relative was able to offer me work at the village shop. It was not the job itself that had taken me from Germany, but a desire to see the world! Naja, my money was enough to take me across the channel, not the Atlantic. Maybe one day… As a new arrival, I was of course eager to meet people, and it was not long until an acquaintance introduced me to Mr. Crain – and both of us, being immigrants to your country, me of course from Germany and he from Connecticut in the United States… we became fast friends. He would tell me such exciting stories of his home country! Ach. Through him, I could imagine this land of my dreams more precisely.
Ever since, we have been close comrades, and whenever his work as a teacher permits him time off, we would spend much of it together: dining, hiking, drinking - the usual activities of bachelors in such a remote area. It was on such a day, only last Saturday evening, two days ago – ah, it feels like it has been longer! On this last Saturday, we had a grand time at the local pub, that is, until we perhaps indulged in one pint or two too many. As a German, I am well-trained in alcohol consumption” – he laughed – “but Ian was quite properly drunk, must I say. To give you the facts. He also seemed a little bit, I don’t know, sad, quieter than usual, sinking into himself. Brooding, is maybe the word.”
“Any reason you might think why, perhaps, if you were such close bosom friends? Did he confide in you?” interjected Sherlock Holmes with a raised brow.
“I suppose… he did not tell me much about this, being a bit more private with his emotions, but we all knew that he had been quite in love with Katrine – Ms Katrine Deplume, that is, a local wealthy farmer’s daughter. He would not like me to say it, but it is so. In the beginning I thought she liked him too… either way, she rejected him some weeks ago and got engaged to Bob Brunter. But maybe it was– ah, I don’t know the particulars. I don’t want to speculate. But it was on Saturday they were having the engagement party. Which I only learned the next day, in fact, but I am getting ahead. I mean to say I suppose that is why he was so pitiful.
We parted ways around eleven o’clock. The room I’m renting is in the center of town, but Ia– Mr. Crain has been living on a little farm outside of the village the last months, since he could no longer afford his earlier rent. He even lived with me for a few weeks, but my quarters are small, it was only a temporary solution… On the old Slee farm, where now an old reclusive man by the name of Mr. Smith lives, he was finally able to rent a cheap, dilapidated room. The farm is located just behind the outskirts of town, about three quarters of an hour of walking, if you go quick.
Nobody likes to go there, what with the local legends of a ghost haunting the house and the roads… That is where he was headed, pushing his bicycle upon my request. He said goodbye to me, and left.
I haven’t seen him since.”
Poor Mr. Murmelbäcker looked stricken. Impatiently, Holmes waved him on.
“That’s all? God’s sake, man, he might just have gone out on a heartbroken bender, continued drinking…”
“No!” Murmelbäcker cleared his throat. “No. Believe me, Mr. Crain is a dutiful man. When I this morning inquired at his school after a sleepless night, and when they confirmed he had not appeared, a dreadful feeling happened in my stomach. And that was today! Yesterday… I would not have worried about him at all, normally, and I got up late myself, but – there was a commotion. I heard the rumor when I breakfasted, and I worried right away.”
“What rumor?” This time it was me who interrupted, as his ramblings and the jumping ahead and back in time did not help my note-keeping in the slightest. “On Friday, you had drinks. Saturday morning, you heard a rumor that unsettled you and set you out looking for your friend. I suppose you have not found him yet, or you would not have inquired after him at his school this morning, nor visited us in London this evening. Is that correct?”
I circled a passage in my notebook and drew an arrow, then scribbled an annotation on the side. A straightforward missing person’s case, it seemed. Holmes would not be pleased by such a commonplace mystery, even if it intrigued him.
“Precisely! Genau.”
“So about that rumor. Tell us.” Holmes smiled at me, barely, despite the impatience in his voice, and I grinned covertly back, rolling my eyes in good humor. Poor man.
“This rumor is what unsettled me for my friend’s life. I am not a superstitious man, really, but I have found no other explanation as to believe… what the townsfolk have been whispering. Or… some terrible fate, at least.”
My pen was lifted above a blank page waiting to be filled. What he told us then was this, reconstructed from his various inquiries regarding the town rumor:
Around midnight on Saturday, the engagement party at Deplume farm had been in full swing when someone had pointed out a lonely cyclist passing by on the road, which led right past the east side of the large farmhouse where everyone had assembled in the living room. He stopped in his tracks and waved at them through the window from a distance, and was identified as the young Mr. Crain by Katrine Deplume herself. Her fiance Brunter, among other witnesses, also spotted him, and had to be held back from stepping outside, as the young men disliked each other for quite obvious reasons. Yet as young Crain waved, he suddenly glanced round backwards behind his shoulder, and his feet sought the pedals as he scrambled onwards in a sudden haste.
No one gave his behaviour much regard at first, attributing his flight to Brunter’s infamous temper, and people were returning to drink and dance when suddenly a woman’s shriek directed the guest’s attention back to the window.
There, on the road, another cyclist had appeared. But this figure could only be described later as “not right,” “all wrong,” “otherworldly,” “frightful”. The disfigured limbs were moving separately all of their own accord, and its enlargened head lolled back and forth as the bicycle made its unsteady way across the little bridge in the fog. And its eyes – they were glowing! At the top of the arched bridge, a branch caught the monster and – to everyone’s horror! – beheaded the foul creature! Multiple witnesses saw the head dislocate and splash into the water below. And the cyclist, who or whatever it was, drove lurchingly on, headless. A young woman fainted.
But the beheaded creature must have sorely missed its eyes, curving left and right on the road before it disappeared, with a bone-chilling laugh, into the bushes and the ditch that separated the road from the fields beyond.
This time, Bob Brunter and some of his friends dashed outside.
But when they reached the bridge, nothing or no one was to be found.
When Murmelbäcker had first heard parts of this tale on Saturday morning, he had become immediately worried for his friend, fleeing by himself in the dark, and had sought him out on Old Slee Farm – yet encountered only the reclusive Smith. The old man was a light and troubled sleeper, and felt confident that Crain had not returned in the night.
“And the next day they found his bicycle.”
“What?”
“Ian’s bicycle! In a ditch by the road. Except not in the place the ghost had been sighted, but about a mile uproad. It must have reached him there-”
“Why did you not say so immediately!” bristled Holmes, and rose out of his chair. He stood imposing, and Dieter Murmelbäcker cowered into his chair.
“Holmes,” I placated.
Pacing to the window, Holmes mumbled to himself. “An interesting account indeed… Perhaps…”
We watched him as he stood and stared out the window, and I poured us another cup of tea. “This might take a moment,” I confided to Murmelbäcker, and indeed we exchanged some polite pleasantries over biscuits before Holmes made his way back to us.
“Thank you for your visit, Mr. Murmelbäcker,” he said, and as Murmelbäcker rose he swiftly indicated the door. “Goodbye. I assume you will be staying in the city tonight, be so kind as to meet us tomorrow in the morning for the 9:16 North Western train at Euston.”
“You will help me? Oh danke, thank you, I did not know what else to do. I do hope you find Mr. Crain, I do worry so much about him. Thank you, Mr. Holmes.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” said Holmes as he ushered the man out the door and closed it behind him resolutely.
“A nice young man,” I remarked at the same time Holmes groaned with relief and made for his pipe. “Is there a case in this? You reckon you can find him? Or have you already made a guess as to his whereabouts, Holmes?”
“Guess! Ha!” Holmes sank into his armchair and inhaled greedily. I moved to sit down opposite him, and stretched my legs. “You insult me. Guess. Pah.”
“Do you know where he might– where he is?”
“Of course not. I have no idea!” He said it happily, but I refrained from reprimanding him. Our client had already left, after all. “However, I intend to find out. Will you join me, Watson?”
“Do you even have to ask.”
We smiled at each other.
After a moment’s companionable silence, I could not help but speak up once more.
“You don’t think a headless apparition is at fault, do you?"
The look he gave me would have been answer enough, but Sherlock Holmes is not always a bottomless well of restraint. “Watson,” he said with the patience of a school teacher about to snap but smiling through it, “let us – first – rule out – the impossible.”
“Whatever remains must be the truth,” I said faithfully, and smiled, which mellowed his features instantaneously. He sucked on the pipe as if his life depended on it.
“Precisely, my Boswell. Precisely.”
The next morning found us at the station just on time.
With an animated step, Holmes jumped onto the train and offered me an arm as I joined him at his side. His eyes shone as he directed the force of his hot gaze at me. His mood was spectacular, a fact from which I knew I would benefit while we journeyed to Greensburg in our private compartment. There was no worse travel companion than a depressed Holmes, as much as I was willing to care for him and put up with his moods – yet the reverse was also true. I looked at him fondly as he hung exuberantly by the door, leaning backwards out of it and exclaiming to no one in particular:
“The game is a-train!”