My feet aching, I sat down across from him and removed my boots. “What do you have there?” I asked.
“We have here a dollop of blood from a mutilated swan,” he said.
“A swan? Another swan like the one you examined for Mycroft after the Lord Mayor’s Show last year?”
“Yes, and like the one we found after this year’s show in November. Now this one has turned up. Just a month has passed, not a whole year. It seems we may have a serial killer of swans on the loose and his rage is escalating. It is quite baffling.”
Serial killer... a term he had applied to the British Museum murders we’d solved the year before. “So, it’s a series of murders like those we solved last year then? Only swans this time. Not people.”
“Yes, precisely. And according to my brother Mycroft, if I do not solve this case forthwith, if I do not find out who is mutilating the Queen’s swans, England shall fall.”
Chapter 2
I glanced at my watch, slipped my boots back on, and rose. I needed to get to my office.
“So I have no theory as yet,” he said. “No working theory as to why someone would wish to harm Her Majesty’s swans.”
Still staring at the slide, he said, “I have no facts from which to draw any conclusions except that which is before me... a sample of blood and the mutilated creature itself.”
“And why did you decide to examine a blood sample?”
He sighed. “Mycroft insisted this time. Her Majesty wants to know if there is any possibility at all that whoever slaughtered the swan, while exhibiting disdain, even hatred for the Queen or the British government, may have had some degree of empathy for the creature.”
“Empathy? But it’s mutilated.”
“Quite. But perhaps that was done after the fact - after the swan was killed, and the mutilation is only to send a message.”
“Sherlock, I don’t understand.”
“There was a note, just as before.”
He had mentioned the notes but had not shared their contents. His interest now had piqued and he was clearly ready to draw me into his investigation.
“Each time a swan is killed, a note is left which says, ‘I showed it more mercy than was shown to me.’ So,” Sherlock continued, “it is Her Majesty’s fervent hope that the killer did not want the swans to suffer unduly before the savagery. She is apparently quite fond of them.”
“This is dreadful. Are you testing it for some poisonous concoction that would bring death on rapidly then? Like the poison used in the mercy killings last year?”
“Something similar to hydrocyanic acid, yes. I made a list of potential agents. Strychnine, for example, would...”
“...Not be commensurate with any sympathy for the creature,” I interjected. “It has been tested on frogs because of their extreme sensibility to the effects, and when immersed in the poison, frogs are seized with violent tetanic convulsions, in which...”
“...In which,” he interrupted, “the extremities become extended and the entire body becomes rigid. Yes, I know. I’ve experimented on frogs fresh from the pond. I observed that agitation hastens the action of even small quantities of the poison and a violent paroxysm can be induced by a sudden noise, like clapping.”
“They would succumb quickly to the poison,” I told him. “Swans, serene though they may look, can be quite violent, especially when someone intrudes upon their territory. They can be very aggressive in defence of their nests. I’ve heard them. They hiss, they whistle and snort, even the cygnets chirp and squawk harshly if they are disturbed. Mute swans often attack people who invade their territory, so the poison would act quickly, yes, but the death would hardly be merciful. And only someone familiar to the swans could get close enough at any rate.”
Again, he lifted an eyebrow. “You know something of swans then, Poppy?”
“Of course. It is not just Her Majesty, the Dyers and the Vintners who lay claim to them.”
“The who?”
“The city companies, the greatest subject swan owners on the river. They go annually to the Thames to mark the swans. But there are other owners throughout England. Did you never notice the swans in the river near Victor’s house when we spent so much time there that summer?”
“I wasn’t paying particular attention to the swans.”
I pondered this statement momentarily. I wondered if he were trying to tell me that his focus had been on me that summer in the Broads when he’d visited Victor Trevor, Sherlock’s one friend at Oxford and the man who had intended to marry me... the man who had left for his family’s tea plantation in India when he discovered that Sherlock and I had feelings for each other. Or had Sherlock been focused on the little sailing vessel we designed when we spent many lazy days on the river bank during his visit?
“In fact, until Mycroft enlisted me in this enterprise,” he said, “I thought of them as nothing more than something upon which to feast. We often had roast swan at Christmas. Our cook prepared it with several pounds of beef that were beaten into a fine mortar and stuffed inside the swan with some gourmand’s onion, a stiff meal-paste laid upon the breast and served with strong beef gravy.”
He smiled as if he’d just had a pleasant childhood memory. I’d come to know that there were few of those in that intrepid brain attic of his.
“In fact, despite the Queen’s affection for the creatures,” he went on, “she
