Chapter 43

43. "Hell is empty, and the devils are here"

With my spirits still warmed by the hearty breakfast, I was no longer anxious about cases that might happen at some unknown time when Sherlock suggested we go to the cruise ship's deck together.

The Noah's decks were arranged on several levels.

Like most multilevel cruise ships, its floors were closely tied to their functions and facilities, such as guest rooms, restaurants, and recreational facilities. The corresponding decks were therefore also arranged on multiple levels to meet different passengers' needs.

We were now on the deck by the restaurant floor, which was roughly in the middle of the ship.

It was 7:43 in the morning, and the sky at this high latitude was still shrouded in predawn darkness. The deck lights shone with a clear golden glow that pierced the dark and outlined the shape of the ship.

The howling sea wind and the roar of surging waves filled my ears, yet I felt a strange sense of peace.

The cruise ship's hull was as steady as walking on land, which was reassuring too.

But perhaps because the sea wind carried a mist of water, I had only walked a short while before I felt a cold dampness on my face.

I began to regret not wearing more clothes. Huddling in on myself, I tucked my hands into my pockets, and we walked for quite a while in Sherlock's silence. When we reached the end of the deck and he still showed no intention of explaining, I couldn't help asking, "Did something happen?"

Sherlock's deep blue eyes sparkled with delight.

He said, "When I came out early this morning, I found a body on the deck."

If a stranger had seen his expression, they might have thought he had just picked up an unclaimed lottery ticket worth millions of pounds.

Perhaps it was because I had just put the matter out of my mind, or perhaps it was because I had already waited several days, but now that I suddenly heard the case had begun, I felt none of the excitement of finally getting an update.

Come to think of it, if I were happy about a case, I would be a second Sherlock.

My inability to be happy about it was the right reaction.

I frowned and asked, "Shouldn't we notify the captain now?"

I had the feeling Sherlock had his own ideas and plans, but I still thought we should follow the proper procedure.

Instead of answering directly, Sherlock motioned for me to stand where he was and pointed into the distance, telling me to look up along his gesture. It was a backlit corner of a deck above our current level, in a spot between visible and hidden, where the shadows cast by the ship's lights on both sides happened to overlap.

Where light and shadow interwove, a distinct yet mysterious boundary seemed to have been drawn.

Even in the dim light, however, I could still make out whether anything was there. After all, if an object were present in the shadows, there would be an even more obvious patch of darkness.

But right now, it was clear there was nothing there.

"What do you see?" Sherlock asked, though he already knew the answer.

"Nothing," I answered without concealment. I first gave the case a title in my head: "The body that vanished from the deck." I would let Watson name it later; I was terrible at naming things.

The corners of Sherlock's mouth lifted slightly. "This is an interesting matter, Lanny."

Sherlock continued eagerly, "More than half an hour ago, I was standing here when I noticed an unusual dark shape opposite us. When I went up the stairs to confirm my suspicions, there was nothing there, only two faint scrape marks on the ship's wall, between six and twelve millimeters in diameter."

Although Sherlock had yet to explain exactly how he had determined it was a body, the clues he had given me were enough to set me thinking.

"It was probably maintenance rope," I realized at once.

The ropes needed aboard a cruise ship fell mainly into five categories: mooring lines, lifeboat rigging, emergency escape ropes, anchor rigging, and maintenance ropes. For the first four, the demands of the job, safety requirements, and ease of handling meant a minimum diameter of over twelve millimeters. Only the ropes maintenance workers used for tasks such as cleaning windows and repairing equipment were thinner—the smaller the diameter, the more flexible the rope, and the better suited it was to jobs requiring delicate handling.

Although the cruise ship's decks were arranged on multiple levels, to be honest, we couldn't make out the entire terrace above from where we stood. Yet Sherlock had spotted a dark shape from this angle and, after going upstairs to check and finding it gone, determined it had been a body.

Why was that?

Of course, Sherlock wouldn't have mistaken the shape of the shadow, so rather than ask about the possibility of other objects, I asked, "Why are you sure it was a body and not a dummy? Maybe someone was playing a prank, or it could have been a prop from one of the recreational facilities?"

"Lanny," Sherlock said thoughtfully, "when I was on the terrace, I found a silver-gray hair in a gap between the deck's wooden floorboards. Surely you don't need me to burn it and check for the smell of burning protein to tell whether it's real hair or a wig?"

The last part was full of teasing. He often criticized me for learning only from books and textbooks in a rigid, conventional way. Since I did in fact rely on book knowledge rather than experience most of the time, I couldn't really refute his mockery.

I couldn't help saying in resignation, "Thank you, Mr. Holmes. I don't."

Apart from the flame test, real and artificial hair also differed in appearance, texture, root structure, and elasticity.

I believed Sherlock's observation was accurate.

"That's excellent. There's only one strand, so there really isn't any to spare for burning."

Sherlock briefly showed me the hair he had stored in a clear bag. It was a soft, fine, well-maintained strand of silver-gray hair.

I looked closely. Individual differences aside, fine silver-gray hair like this was generally one of the characteristics of an older person.

"But," I said thoughtfully, "this hair could also have fallen from a tourist. It wasn't necessarily left by the body."

Sherlock tilted his head at me and made a questioning sound in his throat, as if asking, "Are you sure?"

That simple "hmm" nearly made me want to correct my answer. Still, I said firmly, "Even if last night was the sailing celebration, with fireworks for half an hour, and the deck should have been cleaned spotless by the cleaning staff afterward, we can't rule out the possibility that they missed something. After all, you mentioned a gap in the deck, and it might not have been easy to spot there."

"That answer will do." Sherlock nodded, indicating he was reasonably satisfied with my answer. "There's one more thing. When I noticed the dark shape, what I actually heard first was a woman's scream. Most of the people who heard it have gone back to rest, but the person who screamed still has her light on."

As he spoke, Sherlock pointed out a window in the first-class section. It belonged to one of the few guest rooms with its interior light on. The light was still on. From this angle, I could also see that the curtains in both my room and Sherlock's had been opened. Just as my attention wandered to whether I should draw the curtains tomorrow, Sherlock's voice sounded by my ear. "She screamed, 'A ghost!'"

His low words made my scalp prickle.

Sherlock's eyes glittered with interest. "That's interesting, isn't it? When she saw a strange shadow outside her terrace, she shouted that particular word instead of simply being frightened and giving an ordinary scream. Clearly, she knew it was a dead person. Otherwise, how would she know the person in front of her was a 'ghost'?"

With that, Sherlock smiled, his expression full of the confidence and composure of someone in control of the situation.

I was still in the dark.

Returning to the original question, I asked, "Should we call the police?"

"There's no need to rush, Lanny," Sherlock said. "We have many things we can do, and many things we need to verify." With that, he strode back toward the elevators in the ship's superstructure.

We used the elevators to get around. After all, the cruise ship had fifteen floors in total and was about 51.85 meters high. Without elevators to go back and forth, it would have been far too much trouble.

"What do we need to verify?"

I had my own ideas, of course, but I wondered whether Sherlock and I were thinking the same thing. Perhaps because of my bad habit of checking answers, I was used to wanting to know whether I was right.

At the moment, the most basic and simplest thing to verify was "who the body was."

We could actually start with the woman who had screamed.

Another relatively clear matter was "the murder behind the body."

Then there was "where the body was" and "who exactly was playing this kind of prank."

I thought I had a guess about the last question, but it wasn't convenient for me to say it outright.

After Sherlock entered the elevator, he turned around.

Facing the elevator doors, he reminded me again as I stood by the entrance, "Don't be in too much of a hurry."

He continued, "It's still early. You can rest a little longer. At ten this morning, we're going to take part in an interesting activity."

Not knowing what he was planning, I asked again, "Do you need me to notify Mr. Watson and Mrs. Hudson? Or will you invite them?"

"No need."

"All right."

Although it was an affirmative statement, I said it in a questioning tone.

That was because I wasn't sure he would do such a thing.

"Just the two of us are going." Sherlock had me enter the elevator, then pressed the button for our floor. "There's no need to mobilize so many people."

Sherlock paused, then asked, "By the way, do you believe there are ghosts in the world?"

"I'm a materialist."

"All right, then from now on, you're not a materialist."

"..."

I didn't understand.

10 a.m.

Sherlock took me to see a fortune-teller named Valentine Butler.

I didn't know who he was.

While waiting in line, I gathered information about him from the conversations around me.

I heard he was a very famous fortune-teller who had appeared on television and in newspapers. He ran his own blog and had over a million followers. Mrs. Talbot, Maren Flynn, was one of his fans. At present, he had a fortune-telling parlor all to himself aboard the Noah, and the line of people who wanted a reading stretched from the door to the stairwell two floors away. I was on one of those floors. After having me line up, Sherlock told me to text him when I was close to the front.

Fortunately, I had my phone to play with, so the wait wasn't too frustrating.

After waiting a little over an hour, I had only moved forward a dozen or so places. Feeling that I still had a long wait ahead, I couldn't help pounding my thighs a little and looking around to give my eyes a rest. As it happened, I met Albert's gaze as he came down the stairs.

After our eyes met, he looked straight along the line, then smiled. "I didn't expect you to like fortune-telling."

"Because I suddenly became a non-materialist this morning thanks to a certain person," I said expressionlessly.

Albert thought I was joking, and his smile deepened. "Did you hear about Mrs. Talbot, Maren Flynn, encountering a ghost in the early hours too? Do you really believe it?"

An encounter with a ghost was already a controversial topic, and with the story involving someone from high society, even if eighty percent of the people hadn't known about it this morning, at least half of them knew by now.

"No." I paused, and seeing that he seemed quite interested in the subject, said, "Are you very interested in this?"

"Not entirely." Albert smiled. "It just reminded me of something from university."

Albert continued, "I had a friend at university who was obsessed with horror novels. Once, after reading a particularly frightening one, he said he couldn't go on and kept feeling uneasy. So he went ahead and burned the book."

"Huh?"

Hearing that the book had been burned pained me a little.

"Wasn't that a bit much? It was only a book."

Albert nodded too, fully agreeing with me.

I had assumed his story was meant to illustrate the irrational reactions people could have under exceptional circumstances, such as his friend burning a book out of fear, or some people believing in ghosts and doing things they normally wouldn't.

But Albert's story wasn't over. "So I went to a bookstore and bought a new copy, wrote his name on the side of the book the way he usually did, and used a match to scorch its edges. Then I put it in my friend's drawer."

As soon as he finished speaking, I caught the sincere, warm smile on his face.

This was probably what they meant by "hell is empty, and the devils are here."

I had better change the subject.

I asked, "By the way, is Professor Moriarty all right?"

At the mention of Professor Moriarty, Albert's smile faded. "He's not very well at the moment. He's taken some medicine, but he hasn't eaten anything since yesterday."

From what Albert said, Professor Moriarty might really be feeling unwell.

Remembering how frail the professor looked, I realized I was actually a little worried about him.

Would it be better to pay him a visit?

But Sherlock didn't like me associating with him.

I couldn't help sighing inwardly. *...*