Death in the Air Read Online Free

He moves about, looking toward the skeleton, trying to read the whole headline. Finally, he makes it come fully into view.
    “ ALARMING ACCIDENT AT THE CRYSTAL PALACE ”
    Bell is bending over a pan, cooking sausages, and tending to the tea he is boiling in a flask, both on tripods over Bunsen lamps. Sherlock turns back to his task, racing back and forth from the counters to the table, grabbing mortars to use as bowls, and two scalpels for utensils. He sits down at the table, hoping this will speed up the process. Finally, the old man plops the meat into the bowls andpours the tea. The newspaper is still clutched in the skeleton’s hand.
    “Sir?”
    “Yes, my boy?”
    “Shall I retrieve the
Tely …
and read the front-page story out loud?”
    Bell furrows his brow and looks suspicious.
    “Shan’t we eat first? What is the hurry?”
    “I shall read to you as we eat. It would be my pleasure.”
    Sherlock has the paper in hand and is back at the table in an instant. He leans forward, sticking his eagle nose almost onto the sheet, consuming the story, but trying to read without emotion:
    “Monsieur Mercure, the bird-like leader of the Flying Mercure Family of Gaullist extraction, peers of Leotard and the Farinis, suffered a terrible fall yesterday afternoon at Sydenham. Spectators are divided as to whether the daring man made a gross miscalculation during a particularly tricky manoeuvre, or if there was some mechanical failure of his equipment. In any event, he fell 100 feet and struck the hard wooden floor of the Palace in a stomach-turning manner. He has many broken bones, the exact nature of which we shall not reveal here so as not to offend the sensibilities of our readers. He hasalso suffered a brain concussion and severely fractured skull. He was taken by carriage to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in the City and has been unconscious since his fall; he cannot speak and is not expected to live to the end of this day. The question of the acceptability of such dangerous performances is expected to once again be put before the Home Secretary for his scrutiny. That the citizens of London, the fair sex and children among them, should be subjected to such horrific scenes as this, and that which befell the wondrous Zazu last week at the Royal Holborn Amphitheatre, is the concern before us all. Police suspect no foul play”
    Though the article goes on to describe Mercure’s career and that of the three other members of his troupe, Sherlock reads on with only passing interest. His eyes keep flashing back to the last sentence in the first paragraph.
    The police have no idea
.
    “Hmph!” snorts Bell when the boy is done. “If you live by the sword …”
    They eat in silence for a moment, or at least Sherlock does. Bell consumes his food with his mouth wide open, smacking his lips and groaning with pleasure.
    “Might I pose a question, sir?”
    A large slice of greasy brown sausage is about to enter the apothecary’s watering mouth, speared as it is upon hisscalpel. He hesitates, sets his food back in his bowl and smiles. He loves these sessions.
    “Pose away.”
    “What exactly occurs when one suffers a concussion of the brain?”
    “Ah,” announces Bell, thrusting his pointing finger into the air, “the flying gymnast’s wound.”
    “Precisely,” answers Sherlock trying not to seem too interested.
    “The brain is like a jelly … imagine tomato aspic.” The old man pauses and peers over his glasses at the boy. “Do you have it now?”
    Red, jellied tomato aspic the size of two fists is riveted in a picture in the boy’s own brain.
    “Perfectly.”
    “Now imagine that tomato aspic inside your skull.” He pauses again and leans forward, examining the boy. “Do you have it?”
    “I do.”
    “Dispense with all those absurd ideas about phrenology that one hears these days – that the bumps on one’s skull, prominent or underdeveloped, indicate one’s particular kind of intelligence or lack thereof, or the