Holmes had not slept in over ninety hours.

He was spiraling, his mind spinning out of control, and the pipe and snuff did nothing to soothe his frayed nerves and racing thoughts.

He was in the midst of a bloody and fascinating case— a locked-room murder with no witnesses. Oh, it was like Christmas!

There were no fingerprints, no footprints, nobody who had seen the deceased within three days of their death. But the angle of the gunshot wound spoke of another person at the scene, and the bruises around their neck showed that they had been assaulted and asphyxiation attempted, before the struggle that had left the room in disarray and the victim with a skull fractured by a bullet from a sidearm.

Scotland Yard was of no assistance; then again, they never were. They were dull and dim-witted and daft, the lot of them.

The hour was late, and Holmes was pacing, his dressing gown fluttering behind him as he mumbled in fragmented German to himself, the words punctuated with random bouts of something that sounded suspiciously like Ancient Greek.

“Die Kugel drang in einem Winkel von fünfzig Grad ein… clear signs of a struggle! ἀλλ' οὐδὲ ἓν ἔνισμα ἢ ἴχνος ὑπολείπεται! πῶς! There must be! It is simply impossible! Oh, those fools at Scotland Yard just had to muck up the scene before they called me in, the idiotic, empty-headed…” His voice raises into a shout as he rants to the empty air. His long, thin fingers tear at the papers on his desk, throwing them into the hearth, his narrow chest heaving as his eyes reflect the firelight.

The man was mad!

You stand in the threshold of the sitting room, a look of concern mingled with pity on your countenance. You dare not come any closer, not with Holmes clearly in one of his more unstable moods.

Holmes looked like a madman, his skin ashen, his hair mussed, his eyes ringed with dark circles from lack of sleep. It is obvious that the man is nearing a breakdown— the case is driving him up the wall. He needs to solve it.

“Holmes?” you call out softly.