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

“Even if she really wants it, with every single fibre of her being?” he asked Holmes in flawless English.

Holmes could see at once this was a very wise and knowledgeable man. And he swallowed with difficulty, realising the fellow had a case.

“She is not old enough to know what she wants. She is merely acting on an impulse, which, when she departs this place, will swiftly fade.”

A smile crept across the old man’s face. Not a cunning one, and not malevolent in any way, but filled with a certainty born of long experience of human nature.

“Are you sure of that, sir?” he inquired. “I know who you are, and you have a reputation as a learned fellow. So you must have read your Bible.”

Blessed Williams was looking wholly baffled, quite unsure what he was standing witness to. Assisted suicide?

The spirit of blonde Meg was still above her moveless body, staring at the two men piteously.

“Let her escape,” the old man pleaded quietly. “Let her go. To return to the kind of place the Holy Book tells us that we all came from.”

“You are a santero, I take it?” Holmes asked him. “A shaman of the Santeria cult?”

There came a shake of that grey head.

“No, sir. I am a babalewo, which is a high priest of the way. People round here call me Papa John.”

“And this service you’re performing – you’ve performed it on other occasions, yes?”

“Nine other times, to be precise. I only acquired this kind of power a year or so ago, sir. And I only use it on those outsiders who genuinely need it.”

“And how do they pay you? With cash, or by other means?” Sherlock Holmes demanded, trying to find some cause for indignation.

But once again, the man’s head shook. And his eyes became a little saddened.

“Ah, you people from beyond these shores. You always think that money is the answer. But I take no payment, Mr Holmes. These people are in pain, and I do what I’m doing out of kindness.”

And, before anyone could stop him, Papa John gave the rattle in his hand a final shake. Meg’s spirit rose up until it was utterly free of her body, and then vanished.

Her supine form looked no different to the way it had before. But Holmes could tell that it was dead.

He let his gun hand drop exhaustedly, then tucked the piece away. A strange feeling like vertigo had overtaken him. His face had become moist, and he mopped at it with his free hand.

It had never been the case before – not once in his entire extended life – that he had let a frail young woman die, and not been able to do anything about it.

But he saw the broader picture. And he took a while composing himself, but he finally looked across at Papa John again, his features unnaturally slackened.

“Show me where you send them,” he asked quietly. “Show me where they go.”

It was the paved pathway again, the higher slope of it. It was the impenetrable undergrowth Holmes had observed, reaching upward to that rocky promontory.

“There’s no way through here!” Blessed Williams protested.

But the policeman was wrong.

Papa John had brought along his rattle. Closed his eyes and shook it now, and started muttering phrases in a strangled Spanish dialect.

A cold wind blew up out of nowhere, coming up from directly behind them and then passing through the dense, dark foliage. And parting it, enough that Holmes could see in the moonlight that there actually was a very narrow path.

“Only my ancestors know of this route,” the elderly high priest assured him.

They had left the trio of local woman far behind them by this stage.

Papa John – he led the way. Holmes and Williams followed cautiously. It was a very tortuous, very winding path, so narrow in places that their clothes were snagged on thorny bushes, and they had to struggle to break free. And so their progress was extremely slow.

It was long after midnight by the time they’d reached the uppermost point of the outcrop. They stood in silhouette against the fully risen moon. The great detective and his companion stared down.

Below them, past a near vertical slope, there was a crescent of white sand against the dim and lapping ocean. A little shore, enclosed on three sides by vertiginous cliffs and on the fourth side by the water. It was empty, not the slightest sign of life. The only things that moved there were the waves that kissed the tideline.

“I didn’t even know there was a beach here,” Williams protested, still panting from the journey up.

“But you could see it from a boat,” Holmes pointed out. “Unless … the whole place is enchanted.”

At which, Papa John smiled quietly again.

“And now what do we do?” the captain asked.

“Now we climb down.”

It took them over another hour to do so. And they might not have managed it at all, had Papa John not shown them the way. He knew the correct route, avoiding those sections that were too steep and flattened, directing them to the correct handholds and the narrow ledges where they were able to pause and rest.

Holmes and Williams were drenched with sweat, their limbs shaking with tiredness all the same, by the time they reached the white strand at the bottom. Except that the detective noted Papa John was not the least bit out of breath.

Blessed Williams doubled over, placing his huge hands on his knees, then coughing.

“Okay. Now we’re here, what happens?” he asked once he’d found the strength.

Holmes thought that he knew the answer. And he indicated the moon, which had dropped down low against the water.

“We wait for the sunrise,” he explained. He looked across to Papa John, who nodded. “Nothing much will happen until then.”

He found a wide, low boulder, sat down upon it, and then encouraged the police captain to do the same.

“I still don’t get it,” Blessed Williams breathed. “What is going to change here, once the sun is up?”

“It was once worshipped,” Holmes told him. “And in a sense, still is. Those people in the hotels that we’ve left behind, don’t they do precisely that thing?”

Williams became very quiet and thoughtful, starting to see where this might be leading.

“I mentioned religion before,” Holmes went on. “But I only explained the part that Santeria played in this. The other aspect of this case is outlined in the Book of Genesis. The tale of Adam and Eve, and how they were expelled from the Garden.”

Williams’ own eyebrows came up surprisedly, and Holmes took that as his cue to continue.

“People in this modern age? Even though they do not realise it, they manage to play out a similar scenario. For a couple of weeks of every year, they leave their normal lives behind and visit places like this. Here, they revert to a primordial state. They go about near naked under the hot sun, and laugh and play the same way they once did when they were small.

“But as it was for Adam and Eve, so it is for them. An end comes to their frolicking. The realities of everyday existence resume their hold, and these same people must return to colder climes, cluttered cities, heavy working days and pressured lives. They have spent a while in Eden, only to be cast out from it, back into the harsher world beyond.”

“But … they know that when they first arrive,” Captain Williams pointed out.

“Indeed, most do. They have their fun and then accept their fate. But for a few – like Meg, for instance – the thought of expulsion from this paradise becomes unbearable. I listened to her, you see. She had nothing to return to. No one to care for her, and no prospect of improvement in her dismal life. She wanted to remain here more than anything in the whole world. And so – since her own life was worth nothing to her – she forfeited that to do it.”