Tony Richards - The Astonishing Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in the Twenty-First Century

Holmes took note of their expressions. And the majority were relaxed, accepting, sanguine ones. But he could see that a few individuals were looking genuinely glum.

Expelled from Eden , it occurred to the detective. Their two weeks in the sun were up. They had to go back or else find themselves out of a job, and they had no choice whatsoever in the matter.

It was a strange affair, this whole ‘vacation’ business. A complete departure from these people’s normal lives, and yet a limited and temporary one. It seemed almost cruel, to allow them so much freedom and then take it all away again.

But Holmes put such idle thoughts aside. Ruminations on the modern nature of existence were all very well, but not entirely helpful.

He had a number of mysterious deaths to solve, and needed to apply himself more resolutely to the matter.

As soon as evening started to fall and it got cool enough to take a good long walk, he did so. It was not enough simply to know about the circumstances of his own hotel. He wanted to become familiar with the entire area, Conch Bay.

There was a palm-fringed beachside promenade he walked along, which bypassed all the other hotels. He went by the Neptune and the Regency, and there were identical scenes on the terraces of each. Some vacationers were still on their recliners, either asleep or too lethargic to move. But most were packing up or gone, and the night’s festivities were beginning. Loud music had begun issuing from many of the beachfront bars, which were already filling up, their patrons ordering tall, frosted cocktails. Chatter and laughter washed over him as he passed them.

You almost never saw people as delighted and relaxed as this in the seething metropolises of America or Europe. New friendships were being made. And men’s hands were going to women’s knees in a way that was alarmingly casual.

A small group of fellows in their late twenties went past him on rollerblades, whooping like adolescents.

And there was nothing but more of the same, in this direction. So Holmes turned back the other way.

Past his own hotel, there was one more such massive establishment. And then the promenade began to rise at a gradient, curving away from the coastline.

A very warm and gentle breeze tugged at Holmes’ clothing as he climbed still higher. The light was fading very fast – the sun went down much quicker here than in more northern climes. And when he turned around, he could see the strip of lights from the hotels glistening below him, a varicoloured sparkling like a great display of precious jewels. But there was no lighting up here, and he could barely make out his surroundings.

He waited while his sight adjusted, but could only make out silhouettes. To his right was a gentle grassy slope that led down to the first hotel. But to his right …? Spiky trees and tangled bushes, a great dense mass of them, that rose still higher till they reached a rocky outcrop at the very top.

And beyond that? Holmes spent a good five minutes looking for some kind of footpath through, but in this sparse illumination he found nothing. Maybe there was none. This foliage seemed impenetrable and he had no choice but to accept that, and so he started heading down. Only to come upon a mildly curious sight, once that he was back within reach of human habitation.

There was a low, white-painted wall around the hotel next to his. And sitting on it – Holmes thought at first that she was on her own – was a slim, blonde woman in her early twenties. What was she doing here, when the activity was centred round the numerous bright bars? And then he realised that she wanted to keep a distance from all that, and not for any cheerful reason.

Her back was bowed like a woman several decades older. The moon had started coming up at the horizon, its white glow streaking the dark waves, and in it Holmes could see her tanned face was extremely mournful. She looked close to tears.

Her lips were moving. And at first the great detective thought she might be talking to herself. But then he spotted independent movement, to the rear of her. There was someone sitting on the wall beside her. A local woman, slightly squat, and in a dress of a faded dun colour, which had made her partially invisible. She was not a member of the hotel staff, because it wasn’t any kind of uniform.

Holmes stepped back into the shadows, where he’d not be spotted. Then he watched and listened.

“But what’s the point?” he could hear the tourist saying. “… no prospect of … and no one gives a damn about me.”

He couldn’t make out every word that she was saying from this distance, not with the rushing of the currents so close by.

The local woman put an arm around the tourist’s shoulder.

“Don’t be so negative,” she was advising. “Life can always change, Meg. Why not just go home and try to make the best of it?”

“You don’t know the place I come from,” Meg came back at her. “If anything there ever changed, I think most folks would die of shock. The thought of going back there, to that cramped apartment and that dead-end job …”

There was something slightly odd about the local woman, Holmes thought. He crept around a few more feet to get a better view of her. She was dressed pretty much like anyone he’d seen in Jarvistown. Except she had a large silk turban on her head. There was a great proliferation of strings of rounded beads around her neck and wrists – they appeared to be of different hues, though Holmes could not tell which ones in the darkness. And was that a white tattoo on the back of her hand? He could not be certain, and wished that he could get in closer.

“My flight’s tomorrow morning, and I’m dreading it already,” Meg was practically wailing, her voice strangled with emotion. “Please, can’t you help me?”

Her counterpart considered that for practically a minute, her rounded face screwed up with consternation. Then finally, she came to a decision and nodded.

“Me, no. But I know someone who might have the ability to solve your problem. Can you meet me again here, just before midnight?”

Meg nodded without any hesitation, rubbing at her nose and cheeks and snuffling as she did so.

And a few more scraps of conversation might have passed between the pair. But Holmes was not aware of it, since he was already circling around them and then heading back to his hotel.

A quarter of an hour before midnight, he and Captain Blessed Williams were hiding in the shadow of a nearby clump of bushes, carefully watching the spot where Holmes had overheard the conversation. They had both come armed, although their guns were tucked away in their belts. Williams’ brow furrowed in the darkness.

“This is about religion, you say?”

“In one case, figuratively. And in the other literally,” Holmes whispered back.

“But we are mostly Catholic people here.”

“You know that is not true,” Holmes admonished him. “The fact is, you are only partly Catholic. And partly something else.”

Williams’ face swung towards him, his eyes widening with dismay and a slight touch of anger. But Holmes’ only response was the vaguest smile.

“That stroll we took, earlier this afternoon, through the more ordinary parts of town – the parts few tourists ever see. What I observed was a comfortable and fairly prosperous – by Caribbean standards – neighbourhood. But something else as well. There were fetishes and symbols outside several of the doorways. Offerings too – that fruit in bowls. And I thought at first they might be signs of voodoo. But then I remembered the Spanish influence around these parts, and that made me correct my first assessment.”

His eyebrows came up like a pair of distant seagulls drawn with a thin pencil.