Sherlock Holmes and the Engineer's Thumb 1 | Page 28

Abbey James
It was a cold, dark, dank day, as I lay under my heavy quilts in my queen size bed in
the fusty house I shared, as a bachelor, with Mr. Holmes, when I was woken
suddenly, by the crash of a violin being thrown against a thick wall. This was a sign
that my partner in crime, Sherlock Holmes, was in deep thought. Furthermore, this
was a sign that whatever he was thinking about did not add up and so I should be
wary in my conversation.
As I clothed myself, with the closest things to me, I thought of the previous day and
our unexpected visitor…
It was early afternoon when Mrs Hudson puffed into the grand, oak-furnished dining
room, lit by powerful gas lamps in three of the four corners of the spacious chamber,
with the news that there was a guest there waiting to meet us. Holmes, of course,
was more than keen and ran down the mahogany staircase to acquire knowledge of
the visitor and their possible case.
They came with a mystery Sherlock was keen to deduce. Over the past few days
bodies kept being found, still and lifeless. Upon first inspection they all appeared to
be normal; after taking a closer look, they were all found to be missing the same
thing, a thumb: to be more specific their right thumb. All appeared to have been cut
off with the same scalpel blade.
The stranger wished for Sherlock to further look into these apparently linked cases.
This, of course, my partner was eager to do and so we found ourselves being
ushered into a waiting police car to inspect the rigid corpses of these poor,
unfortunate souls. Somehow though, when we viewed them, something had seemed
a bit mechanical. Almost as though it had been a bit engineered...