The Wonderland Mystery
John Pirillo
Sherlock Holmes
The Wonderland Mystery
John Pirillo
Copyright 2017
Table of Contents
The Wonderland Mystery
Incident: Wonderland
Incident Two: Pursuit of a Madman
Incident Three: Evidence Gone Awry
Chapter One: Murder of the Mad Hatter
Chapter Two: Mad Hatter’s Promise
Chapter Three: Spades
Chapter Four: 221B Baker Street
Chapter Five: Alice Dies
Chapter Six: Just another Rabbit Hole
Chapter Seven: Painful Memories
Chapter Eight: Edgar Rice Burroughs Theater
Chapter Nine: Shocking Death
Chapter Ten: The Lost Prop
Chapter Eleven: A Clue Too Late
Chapter Twelve: The Wonderland Mystery
Chapter Thirteen: 221B Baker Street
Chapter Fourteen: The End of a Curse
Chapter Fifteen: Abroad in Paris
Incident: Wonderland
Watson glanced skywards as an odd shaped blimp flew overhead, its sides bristling with cannon, huge propellers on wings sprouting from its side that shove it forcefully through the air.
He and Holmes brace a moment for the rush of wind that is sure to come, grabbing their hats to keep them on their heads.
The blast of wind shoves at them, but they are soon out of it.
“Science,” Watson complains.
Holmes smiles, turns about and enters the pub with the glowing sign overhead which shows a young woman passing through a gigantic mirror into Wonderland.
“Always,” Holmes replies as he enters.
They look for the darkest portion of the pub, ignoring the sudden glances their way.
Holmes and Watson are dressed in disguise. Holmes wears a top hat and a tuxedo many sizes too large and a faded rose boutonniere with a hanky sloppily dangling from his tux pocket. His shoes are oversized as well. His face is distorted by a huge scar that runs from the base of his chin across his right eye.
People see his face and immediately glance away, frightened by his menacing appearance.
Watson, they ignore completely, as he is dressed in ragged clothes and has a suit that reeks of rotting fish.
They find a booth and settle in.
“Wonderland is an odd name for an odd place,” Watson mutters.
Holmes holds up two fingers to the bartender, who nods and brings over two mugs. Holmes pays him and the bartender leaves.
“Odd does not do it proper dignity,” Holmes finally replies as Watson takes a sip of his mug.
“I agree,” Watson remarks, setting his mug down.
They lapse into silence.
This is a stake out.
The pub is filled with bizarre people and a unique atmosphere. It is not unusual to see tame werewolves, vampires and witches convening in the dark booths, talking about their work for the day.
So one could respectfully surmise that the name had more to do with its inhabitants, than with it being necessarily a wonderful place. And to assume that would be to put a finger on the pulse of the pub.
Always buzzing with activity of some sort, much of it on the fringes of decency and honesty, as plots were hatched, victims described, and adventures planned. Villains and adventurers were comrades here, as well as the more boisterous pirates from the seas who frequented for the atmosphere, and of course the actors, who reveled in obscurity in their private life, but threw caution to the winds in their public life, hoping to gain further notice by their company, if not for their acting abilities.
Even some from Fairie were stationed about the darkened spaces, sucking on long pipes that held medicinal drugs that caused them to hallucinate. For a fairy who reeked of magic, only by using a rare weed that grew in the Britains, could tame the wild magic that tailed them whenever they crossed over into the Realms.
“I don’t see anything at all,” Watson declared finally, having finished his mug.
The bartender returned with cups of steaming coffee, for which Holmes paid him again with a large tip.
The bartender smiled, surprised at the tip, nodded and walked back to attend to other customers.
They both picked up their coffee cups and held them between their hands. The pub was unreasonably cold. A curse? Magic?
They didn’t know. Didn’t care. It was where they were supposed to be.
They sipped at the warm cups of coffee in their hands, glancing about the dark room carefully, noting where every patron was.
A brutish looking man held up an oddly shaped device with a propeller on it. He spun the propeller and the device sprouted legs and began walking across the table he sat at to the amusement of his partner there.
“Stupid toys,” Watson grunted.
Holmes attention was elsewhere. His eyes swept past the self lit bar mirror which occasionally had messages flying across it like: Another mug to lighten your day.
“It must be here somewhere,” Holmes told Watson in a subdued voice.
Even Watson felt the oppressiveness of the place. “Wild magic stinks. Not that it ever doesn’t. Just here, it seems to reek like rotten pipe smoke.”
As if on cue a snake pops out of a mug a werewolf is drinking and strikes at his vampire drinking partner. The werewolf snatches the snake and bites its head off, then swallows.
On Holmes arched eyebrow. “Not that yours ever disgusts me, Holmes.”
Holmes arches another eyebrow.
“Well, mostly it doesn’t. But I’d prefer if you didn’t smoke when we were eating. My dining jacket always smells like cherry blend afterwards and I much prefer…”
“Raspberry,” Holmes interrupted with a smile. “I know you state that admirable fact each day in your repetitive famished appetite for raspberry scones.”
“Which Mrs. Hudson makes remarkably well.”
“Thanks to the addition of much sugar, Watson, which I suspect is helping you lean less towards lean and more towards…”
“Uh-hem! This is distracting us from our intentions here.”
“Quite right. My apologies.”
“Accepted.”
“Still, this place makes my sinuses block up.”
“Indeed, Watson, but let’s not be judgmental about it, for it is not what we came here for.”
Watson sighed.
“You came for. I was quite happy with my fresh plate of raspberry scones.”
Holmes tapped his partner on his hand gently. “Don’t worry; I’ve instructed Mrs. Hudson to keep them warm for you.”
Watson gave his partner a grateful look.
“But won’t they be a bit overly baked then?”
Holmes smiled.
A scream like a howling dog came from the front of the pub and several vampires hissed in hunger and surprise when a furry head rolled past their table.
Smash!
SMASH!”
Holmes and Watson jumped from their booth and looked towards the front door. It was riven in two, shards of it flying towards them on the floor and in the air.
Someone ran through the destroyed door, screaming like a madman.
“Hurry, Watson!’ Holmes demanded.
He launched after the man who had destroyed the door.
Incident Two: Pursuit of a Madman
A man ran quite quickly along the sidewalk, his form barely visible in the unlit night. Only the faintest of moonlight pierced the gathering clouds overhead. It was a dark night and getting darker.
A brisk wind was building from the North and both Holmes and Watson exhaled patterns of clouds from their breath as they pursued the killer.
As he passed an alley, he was momentarily in
pitch darkness.
Holmes and Watson froze midstep.
“We’ve lost him, Holmes.”
“Shhh!” Holmes hissed back.
Then he continued towards the alley.
Suddenly, a man burst into view and raced across the street.
Another man came from the alley at the same time, and glanced at the running man.
A third man exited a building and stopped to watch as Holmes and Watson pursued the running man.
The man at the alley started to come out, and then his foot struck something. He looked down.
An axe.
He leaned down to pick it up.
Incident Three: Evidence Gone Awry
Holmes leaped through the air and tackled the man they had been pursuing to the pavement.
“You’re under arrest! Don’t move!”
The man didn’t move.
Watson came up, gun in hand, covering the man.
Holmes stood away from him.
The man didn’t move.
“Get up now,” Watson ordered.
Holmes gave his partner a strange look and then said, “He’s dead.”
Chapter One: Murder of the Mad Hatter
How sharp you wit is my dear.
How sharp your appetite for what is right.
How sharp you words can cut.
As sharp as your axe!
-- Unknown Poet.
The axe was picked up, and held before the face of an actor dressed like a Lilly.
“Where did this come from?”
He pondered the props table, but didn’t see the axe he had practiced with earlier.
He eyed a man watching him from the lines to raise the curtains. “Jack, where did this come from?”
Jack shrugged. “What does it matter. The other one broke.”
“But I could hurt someone,” the Lilly protested.
Jack growled. “Only if you don’t follow Will’s instructions, you dolt!”
“Hurry, hurry, hurry!” Will scolded Lilly, rushing backstage to find out what was going on.
He was a hands on director, as well as writer. When one part of the show went wrong; the rest could do. And now that the show neared its end, he wasn’t going to let one of his minor actors ruin it for him and his friend who had written it.
“Take the dratted axe and dance out there!” William Shakespeare ordered.
The actor in the Lilly outfit grabbed the axe firmly and danced onto the stage.
“I am Lilly. Magical Lilly and here is my magical axe to give the Mad Hatter forty or more whacks until he sprouts blood thick as wax.”
Alice, standing nearby turns and smiles. “Oh, Mad Hatter, look at the beautiful Lilly.”
The Mad Hatter snarls angrily. “Can’t you see I’m busy making madness for tea and planning mischief for my friends, who are thieves?”
“Oh, I can see that plainly,” Alice replied. “But with the axe that the Lilly carries in his hands, you can do oh so much more. Surely such a grim thing can open many a door.”
The Mad Hatter growled angrily. “That I doubt not, but your use of verse lacks a good rehearse!” He snarled.
The audience burst into laughter.
The Lilly made a final twirl and dropped the axe in his hands before the Jack of Spades, who gave it a scowl and placed his hands upon it.
Suddenly he spouted, in a poetic voice,
“Life sucks being a rabbit,
But a rabbit stew is quite tasty
If you can get past the tail and fur.
Why don’t you come into my Wonderland?
And find out just how much fun death can be
When you’re more busy dying than trying
To be.”
He eyed the Mad Hatter.
“That’s what I’d say if I were you, Mad Hatter.
“Well, you’re not,” the Mad Hatter replied.
He gave Alice a what-the-hell is happening look. She mouthed she didn’t know, but kept smiling.
“He’s right you know,” she told the Mad Hatter, hoping that the adlibbing would help cover for the horrible error that Jack of Spades had made. William was going to kill them all if the play was ruined.
But instead of things getting worse still, the audience rose from their seats and applauded.
Alice and the Mad Hatter exchanged surprised looks.
Lewis Carroll, the ever so famous writer of “Alice in Wonderland,” but extremely nervous playwright of the same as a play now, fretted like a nervous hamster in a cage as he watched the production of his play in the Globe Theater.
Then he grabbed his head and tried to squeeze it flat. “I’m ruined; ruined. They’ve just applauded a lie. I never wrote that. You never wrote that!”
“Lewis stop it!” exclaimed William Shakespeare. “At least you know you have a stagehand who can act, unlike your horrible Mad Hatter, who is more capable of drinking wine, than of eating his lines on stage like a journeymen actor should.”
Lewis turned on William. His eyes were bloodshot and ruined from crying. He thought he was watching the end of his career.
William Shakespeare, sporting a classy beard that forked to his chest with a tiny red bow at its tip, watched in fascination as his actors on stage went through their stage movements, unaware of the force of his words upon Lewis.
He was going to give them a good talking to once the play was over and past, but for now, since the audience liked it, he was not going to stop it.
He smiled to himself though. He knew his friend was much too sensitive and was only beating himself up for nothing. Then he frowned to himself and thought, I hope!
“But…” Lewis began.
William put a hand up to shut his mouth.
Lewis made choking sounds at the humiliation of it, but shut up.
The actress portraying Alice, no longer a young girl of ten or twelve, but a young maiden instead, tiptoed past the Mad Hatter, who was an older actor with a twisted nose that had seen too many bar fights with hair that was much too active to be normal, shooting from beneath his weirdly colored top hat.
The Mad Hatter was seated at a round table with the Door Mouse, a talking Teapot, a napkin with arms, the Red Queen and the White Rabbit, who wore a splendid White Tuxedo that was stained by red wine.
“Relax, Lewis,” Shakespeare told his fellow writer friend. The moroseness was pouring off him like a tidal wave upon a shore. Extremely uncomfortable. “We’re getting to the best part soon.”
“I can’t. What if no one likes the play? I’ve never written a murder mystery before.”
William turned his face to look at his friend, who was tall and gangly, a toupee to cover his loss of hair, a bold sash about his neck to cover warts and a long jacket that if someone didn’t know him, might think he was one of the stage actors waiting to go on in the play.
“Are you mad, Lewis? There isn’t a single peep in the theater, except for the sound of your nervous teeth chattering! And that is really annoying me. Even more than the fact that the Mad Hatter has a red stain on that beautiful white suit I just purchased for wardrobe.”
“I’m going to murder him if he ever does that again.”
He snorted angrily. “In fact, I might anyway.”
That elicited a nervous laugh from Lewis Carroll, who actually, at that moment, didn’t think it such a bad idea as the man was ruining the role of the Mad Hatter with his stage whispers that stank of booze and debauchery.
Lewis sighed and sank deeper into the balcony chair he sat upon. It was made of very soft cotton and deep blood red, as were all the balcony seats during this performance. The next layer of seating was all black. It was part of the colors of the play…black versus red. To symbolize death and murder. It also matched the posters that were plastered throughout London: Alice in Murder Land. And of course, the cards…which were black and red.
The villain of the play was the Jack of Spades, a black hearted card who wanted to kill Alice of Wonderland, the Red Queen, the Door Mouse
and the Mad Hatter so that a war in Wonderland would happen. If he managed to take out the White Rabbit too, it would be a bonus for him.
It was downright delicious in its fantasy and epical approach to fairy tale telling. The methods that were to be used in the various murders and their exposition through the White Rabbit would be classic!
On the stage the Mad Hatter raised a tea cup. “To Alice of the Wonderland.”
William winced.
Louis began sobbing.
All the actors on the stage raised their cups in unison. “To Alice!”
The audience burst into cheers and began clapping.
William and Lewis glanced at each other in surprise.
“They like it!” Lewis hissed, in total shock.
“It would seem so, my dear friend,” William agreed, more puzzled than proud at this moment. He had directed the play when Lewis had decided it to be too much for his frail nerves, but he never thought this part would draw cheers from the audience.
What had he done wrong?
He laughed at that thought. You idiot!
As Alice and all the actors about the table began drinking, the Jack of Spades suddenly leaped to his feet and grasped the axe.
He raised it over his head.
William tensed. What was happening? None of t he actors were doing what they had been instructed now.
“I forbid you to be toast the woman; she ruined my life, my happy home and took everything I love away from me!” the Jack of Spades declared, his eyes glowing an odd color that resembled burning coals.
Both William and Lewis gave each other shocked looks. “How?” They both began to ask.
The audience broke into jeers, hisses and boos as Jack raised his axe even higher in threat.
Jack turned to the audience. “Laugh at me if you will, but tonight I am the King of Sorrow and that has no color or warmth to it, only the essence of evil. Pure evil. Unforgiving and as black as your dirty little eyes, Mad Hatter!”
Then he swept around with his axe prepared to swing.
William leaned closer to whisper into Lewis’ ear. “This should be spectacular. Our special effects team was up all night making this scene ready. Watch closely!”
But inwardly he frowned, too many things were going on that hadn’t been staged that way and now the Jack of Spades was swinging the axe, but instead of it passing safely behind the neck of the Mad Hatter. It struck him.
