The glimmering beams of pink, purple, and orange rays broke through the darkness that devoured the pre-dawn hours of the early morning. An eerie fog swept into the city huddled near the ocean bay, as life began to stir at the beckoning light that crept through windows and small nooks and crevices that ran in disorderly lines up old walls. A cold misty morning like this was not unusual this time of the year in London. Down cobblestone streets and through dim lighted alleyways that lay between two brick walls of homes and shops, where the thieves and ruffians ran for shelter, to the very edge of the city, I walked to the Stone’s Residence.
The quaint little house sat in a shady neighborhood, a place where I could hardly believe a gentleman of a tiny fortune had lived in. As I approached the door I noticed a pale hand withdraw behind tattered maroon curtains in the window. I only needed to knock once before the door was swung open. Standing within the entrance was a squat and graying women. Her mouth was pinched as her grey eyes stared fixatedly at me, and her skin was like a canvas stretched around that of a skeleton, tough and dry.
“What is it that you want?” She demanded bluntly.
“I wished to interview you, ma’am, about your son, Mr. Adam Stone,” I replied coolly.
The shrewish women glared at me down her long nose, “I have no son by such name,” she told me with a clip in her tone.
I raised an eyebrow, Holmes suspicions had been correct; she denied the existence of her son, “Is that so, madam?” I drawled, “Then can you tell me what relation you have with Mr. Adam Stone?”
She puckered her pinched lips and smacked them together, “I’ve disowned him, so leave me be!”
I knew she had intended to shut the door upon me; however, I was too quick for the woman. I stepped forward just in time to stop the door from closing.
“I’m here to investigate his death, madam,” I told her as she scowled at me.
A look of shock crossed her eyes, but I fathomed the confession wasn’t any news to her. “He has died?” Her voice trembled.
I nodded at her.
“Come in, come in,” she turned her back on me and retreated into the dark house, “I’ll spare you a minute, sir, but no more.”
I stepped into the foyer—if one could call such an area one, for it also appeared to be a sitting room and a dining room—immediately a stench rose up my nostrils; one so atrocious I had to clasp my hands behind my back to stop myself from plugging my nose. I followed her quietly into another room. As I looked around, it was clear to me that I was standing in the kitchen. From the corner of my eyes I saw the lady slip a pistol from upon a moldy wooden counter into her apron pocket that hung at her waist.
I eyed her skeptically and she only smiled, showing her decaying teeth, “This is a household with only two females now; it’s a safety precaution.”
Her explanation seemed reasonable to me, however there was just something mysterious in the way her eyes seemed to gleam. It was a strange, knowing look that I could not read into; I decided to be wary of the rickety old woman.
“Ask your questions, and be gone with you, sir,” she said with a wave of her hand.
“Your son was Mr. Adam Stone, correct?” I began.
Her large grey eyes rolled, “He is no longer my son; he is as dead to me, as he is to the world.”
“Can you tell me why you have disowned him?”
She opened her mouth, and then closed it to ponder more upon my question. “He is a despicable man! He’s piled us to the sky with debt, running around all night and day gambling!”
I collected and stored the information she gave me, “Did the man work?”
Her cackle was high and loud in answer to my question, and then she made a clucking sound with her teeth and tongue, “Not a day in his life!” She shouted, “He ran away with my money too!”
Remembering the report in the newspaper I remarked, “Oh really? Mr. Stone’s body was found with not even the smallest cent on him.”
“I’d expect so,” she said knowingly; a satisfied smirk molded her thin firm lips, “Whoever killed him would have been stupid to have left his body without robbing him.”
I raised an eyebrow, “Is that what you think? That he was murdered because he was being stolen from?”
“Look,” she said sternly, “The man was found in the early morning, therefore he must have been killed sometime at dawn or at night, and so it shows that he must have been waylaid by a thief while he was walking about at some God forsaken hour.”
Her outburst revealed that she had already heard of the case, which surprised me because it contradicted her look of surprise at my news, “How is it that you knew of that, ma’am, when it appeared that I had been the firs to present you his death?”
For a moment her expression faltered, “I do read the papers,” she said in defense, “I didn’t know though, that the man found in the park was Adam. It was just an assumption, sir. Even women can connect the dots.”
I sighed with defeat, “All right then, is your daughter home? I wish to have a few words with her before I leave.”
The woman’s face hardened, “She is not here at the moment; Elizabeth has gone to stay with a friend in the countryside. You can leave now, our discussion is over.”
Part Six