Molly set the dining room table for dinner in a thoughtful mood. On the Activity bus ride home, she had an interesting conversation with her two friends.
“Well, what did you think of the first meeting of The Whodunnit Club?” Harold had asked as they sat in their bus seats.
“I don’t know yet,” Bev admitted as she slid across toward the window, allowing Molly to sit down.
Harold stretched his legs across the seat he was sitting on in front of the two girls. He leaned his head on the window and said, “I think it is just another class.”
“What?” Molly said and quickly added, “Why?”
“We have to read,” Harold said as he closed his eyes.
Molly shook her head before asking them, “What book did you guys get anyway?”
“The thinnest one possible,” Harold responded. “I think it is called ‘His Last Bow’.”
“I grabbed an anthology, too,” Bev spoke up as she reached inside her backpack. “Unlike Harold, I like to read. Here it is…’The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’. So what did you get, Molly?”
“’A Study in Scarlet’,” Molly leaned back to rest her head on the back of her seat. “Apparently, it is the first story about Sherlock Holmes.”
“I still don’t like to read,” Harold closed his eyes.
After dinner and the disclosing of her day to her family, Molly retreated to her upstairs bedroom. Her room was average size holding a full-size bed, a dresser, and a desk. Her bed flowed out from beneath the window, her dresser is next to her closet on the bed’s left, and her desk is in the corner to the right of the bed. The walls were painted light purple, blank, except for the bulletin board above her desk. Posted on the bulletin board, Molly placed the things that made her happy. A family photo is pinned on the lower right corner, a drawing her brother had made for her of a sunflower is at the top left, and beneath it, the strip of three photos from one of those photo booths at the mall of her and her new friends, Harold and Bev. She smiled when she looked at it as she remembered that day, her first trip to Jamestown Mall.
Molly sat at the chair to her desk and turned her desk lamp on. She reached down to recover her backpack that she had thrown on the floor and placed it on her lap. She withdrew the three books she had placed in there when she left school earlier in the day and returned the backpack to the floor. She spread the three books in front of her. Inside her Math book, she had placed a math worksheet there she had to finish. She also had two chapters to read in American History. The third book was “A Study in Scarlet” by Arthur Conan Doyle.
She looked at its cover for a few moments trying to decide what to do. The title was scripted in bright red letters with long twirls coming from the overlarge letter S in Study and Scarlet. The best way she could describe it was, fancy. She was curious. She opened the book and turned the two pages that are a second title page and a dedication, to the table of contents. The novel was written in two parts. Part I. had no title, but Part II did, The Country of the Saints. Each part had seven chapters but two of them jumped out at her, Chapter I. Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Chapter II. The Science of Deduction. She pushed her Math and History book to the side and placed the mystery novel in front of her. She opened the desk drawer and pulled a notebook from within it, opened it, and at the top of the page, she wrote with a pencil, “Mr. Sherlock Holmes”. She then turned the page of the book to ‘PART I, Chapter I. Mr. Sherlock Holmes’. She held the pencil in her hand, ready to take notes, and began to read.
Time flew, writing feverishly as she read the first two chapters. She cried out joyfully in the midst of Chapter II, that Dr. Watson had listed “Sherlock Holmes – His Limits” and she happily recopied them on her paper. She reviewed her list and was so excited by what she had learned that she began to read her notes out loud.
“Obviously, this story is told by Dr. Watson, an army doctor injured in the line of duty. He met Sherlock Holmes through an old friend when he was looking to share an apartment. Sherlock Holmes knows: Anatomy, Chemistry, can verify how far bruises can be produced after death, and uncovered an infallible test for blood stains. He has shortcomings, gets down in the dumps at times and doesn’t speak for days and simply asks to be left alone and he will be all right, but no medical or science degree or anything that would give him portal into the real world. Dr. Watson is so confused. Why did I write that?” Molly paused in her reading and scratched that last sentence. Picked up the notebook again and began to read out loud again. “He was ignorant of the Copernican Theory that the earth revolves around the sun, explaining that he didn’t like to fill up his brain with clutter. He called his brain an attic to be filled with things a person needs to do their thing. Ah, Watson’s List is next. I will skip that and finish what I found. Holmes revealed that – the Science of deduction and analysis is an art only acquired by long and patient study, but a person is never able to attain the highest possible perfection in it because life is short. He also knows the history of crime. Wow, this is a fairly good list and I have only read the first two chapters,” Molly concluded her reading, pretty proud of herself.
The following Monday, The Whodunnit Club had resumed their circle of desks. Miss Marvel is sitting at a student desk on one end and the others sat in clockwise order, in what would become their seating chart, to her left, Bev, Molly, Ted, Carol, Harold and Jason. On the top of the desk she sat at, Miss Marvel had a book and a red spiral notebook.
“First,” Miss Marvel leaned in as she spoke to them. “We need a scribe.”
“What’s a scribe?” Carol asked. Leaning forward, too.
“A secretary,” Ted looked at Carol. “Someone to take notes.”
“Exactly,” Miss Marvel agreed.
“I’ll do it,” Bev raised her hand. “I can do it.”
“Thank you, Bev,” Miss Marvel handed her the red spiraled notebook and then folded her hands on top of the book. “Okay, tell us when you are ready.”
“Ready,” Bev turned the page in the notebook. She wrote the date on the first line.
“Let’s go around our circle and simply state the book we read, or are reading, about Sherlock Holmes. It is okay that we may be reading the same book because we may have made different lists. I am reading ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.”
“Me, too!” Bev added excitedly and then wrote it down.
It turned out that Ted and Carol were reading ‘The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes’, Jason was reading ‘The Return of Sherlock Holmes’ and Harold was reading ‘The Last Bow’. All of them were reading anthologies except Molly who was the only one reading one of his novels.
“Now,” Miss Marvel said. “What are his skills?”
Bev finished writing the long list as they went around the circle and shared what they learned about Sherlock Holmes. There were many duplications, and, in the end, the group agreed on a short list of skills.
“Please re-read the list to us, Bev,” Carol told their scribe.
“Okay,” Bev raised the notebook slightly toward her. “He understood the sciences, chemistry, botany, biology, geology, psychology, and the study of the brain. He was observant and a detail analysis of physical evidence. He asked questions and listened then made deductions based on known facts.”
“A lot of science,” Harold stated.
“Yes, well,” Miss Marvel leaned in to stop any more conversation. “For our next meeting, come with a list of your detective skillset. Now, before we go, I was informed today that every club has to have a fund-raiser for the school. Please have some ideas at our next meeting, too.” She looked around the circle, smiled at them, and stood up before continuing, “I hope you keep reading about Sherlock Holmes. I know I will. See you in school.”
The chairs squealed as they all stood up and followed her out of the door.
To be continued…
My First Stories 