What if I were Sherlock Holmes?
I looked around the room. Fortunately, I had gotten there before anyone could mess with the scene. The police were so unobservant and so untidy. I adjusted my cap so the brim was out of my line of sight, took a deep breath, closed my eyes and bit down on the pipe.
I didn’t actually smoke. It was just comforting to have something in my mouth while I was taking in the scene. I am sure that Freud would have had something to say about that, but Freud wasn’t at the scene at the moment. The pipe had never been used, which was important, because the sense of smell was sometimes just as important at a crime scene as sight. Perfume, incense, the smell of lingering coffee could all tell something about what had transpired before the crime itself. Another deep breath to calm the churning mind and I opened my eyes.
The scent of lilac was cliché, but there was fresh dirt under it and a hint of coffee that was just a little burned. The sink in the kitchen dripped ever so slightly. A fan was on in another room. The air was slightly heavy, which meant that there was some extra humidity. The shag carpet underneath my feet felt soft, looking down, it appeared freshly clean.
The room itself was orderly. At first glance, there was nothing that suggested a crime had been committed unless one counted the body in the chair with a red stain on its chest. One frame on the wall was slightly tilted to the left; another frame on the table was face down. The person in the chair had dropped his glasses on the floor, and they had been stepped on.
There was little left that I could do until the police arrived. Certainly, they would gum up the whole operation, but encroaching on their crime scene would only put me in a bad light, and I was going to need help and greater access. I turned up my collar, went outside and sat on the stairs to wait for them to show up.
I didn’t actually smoke. It was just comforting to have something in my mouth while I was taking in the scene. I am sure that Freud would have had something to say about that, but Freud wasn’t at the scene at the moment. The pipe had never been used, which was important, because the sense of smell was sometimes just as important at a crime scene as sight. Perfume, incense, the smell of lingering coffee could all tell something about what had transpired before the crime itself. Another deep breath to calm the churning mind and I opened my eyes.
The scent of lilac was cliché, but there was fresh dirt under it and a hint of coffee that was just a little burned. The sink in the kitchen dripped ever so slightly. A fan was on in another room. The air was slightly heavy, which meant that there was some extra humidity. The shag carpet underneath my feet felt soft, looking down, it appeared freshly clean.
The room itself was orderly. At first glance, there was nothing that suggested a crime had been committed unless one counted the body in the chair with a red stain on its chest. One frame on the wall was slightly tilted to the left; another frame on the table was face down. The person in the chair had dropped his glasses on the floor, and they had been stepped on.
There was little left that I could do until the police arrived. Certainly, they would gum up the whole operation, but encroaching on their crime scene would only put me in a bad light, and I was going to need help and greater access. I turned up my collar, went outside and sat on the stairs to wait for them to show up.