The Mystery of Several Stupid Anonymous Letters
Louigi Verona
February 2006
Dr. Watson hated the bakery. For one, he had to stand in line. The other thing, even more frustrating, was that the bakery was right in front of their house, so Holmes peered through the binoculars at it and then greeted Watson with observations. For example, last week he told Watson all about the people he was standing in line with and based it all on Watson's dirty shoes.
However, this time Sherlock was preoccupied with a visitor, and when Watson entered their sitting-room, he saw a good-looking young man sitting in an armchair opposite Holmes. His face was anxious, in his hands he was nervously torturing a small piece of paper. "I am a business man," he said. "I work in the bank for more then 7 years now. But lately I've been getting these damn anonymous letters. All of them are odd and seem like a joke, but then... it all happens!"
"Be more precise," Holmes said, "otherwise I feel myself an imbecile, and we've got Watson for that."
"Well, look. Last weekend I got a letter, 'Dear Mr. Stapple, you will loose an apple.'"
"Yeah. And?"
"And I lost it! Yesterday I opened my lunch box, and the apple was gone! Can you believe it? Or here's another one, arrived just last month, 'Dear Mr. Berry, you will loose a cherry.' And I lost it too! A couple of days later I was robbed - one of the cherries from my cake was gone!"
"What a disaster!" Holmes said.
Young man pulled out a big heap of small papers from his pocket. "Here are the rest of them: 'Dear Mr. Dorange, you will loose an orange', 'Dear Mr. Stumm, you will loose some plum', 'Dear Mr. Dwine, you will loose a lime'..."
"I get the idea," Holmes said. "Let me see those letters." The famous detective took one of the papers and carefully examined it with a magnifying glass. While doing that, he was significantly humming to himself. Watson and the young man patiently waited. At last, Holmes said, "That helped a lot. Now we can make certain conclusions. A logical chain reaction will lead us straight to the criminal."
"How is that possible?" the young man exclaimed.
"Elementary! For example, the letters are written on a piece of paper, so clearly we can state that the author is NOT an Egyptian."
"Not an Egyptian? Why?"
"An Egyptian would have used parchment instead of paper."
"Oh..."
"Do you have any non-Egyptian colleagues?"
The young man seemed to be puzzled. "Yeah, most of them, actually."
"Good," Holmes said. "Let's go further."
Watson rolled his eyes and sighed.
"You probably haven't noticed that the lines of every letter are rhymed," Holmes said. "That gives us strong evidence as to the profession of the criminal."
"Really?" the young man said.
"Sure. If the lines are rhymed, it is obvious that the author of the letters is a poet."
"Oh..."
"Do you have any non-Egyptian poet friends?"
"Um... I'm not really sure. I know a couple of guys who like writing poems on special occasions..."
"Well, you have to find that out," Holmes said. "But we can go even further. If you noticed, in every letter the criminal addresses you with a different name. So he most definitely suffers from bad memory. Usually this happens to older people. He also pathologically loves fruit. Do you know any old non-Egyptian poets who love fruit?"
The young man focused and thought about it for some time. "Well, my boss is far from being young, he likes an orange now and then, he reads Shakespeare and he is not from Egypt."
"There you go!" said Holmes, with a sense of well-deserved accomplishment.
The young man smiled, but didn't seem satisfied. He turned to Watson and whispered, "I'm not sure it's my boss - he is pretty wealthy and can buy lots of fruit himself."
Watson shook his head and said, "Holmes, the description is too general. Can you provide us with a bit more detail?"
Holmes stopped puffing with his smoking pipe and grinned, "Everyone wants the impossible... But let's try..."
The legendary detective took another glance at the letters and after some thinking said, "This guy used a lot of paper. And lots of ink too. He must be pretty wealthy."
* * *
Afterwards Watson often wondered whether it was luck or loud whisper.
