The Murder Of The Very Dead Victim

by Martin Hill Ortiz

About the Author: Martin Hill Ortiz is a professor of Pharmacology at the Ponce Health Sciences University in Puerto Rico. He is the author of over 45 published short stories along with three novels and a novella.

Excerpt

Grover Chance, Shammy as he calls himself, colludes with me in many of my adventures. He seated his massive frame on the edge of my bed across from me. He wore a broad top hat, one that would swallow a less expansive head. His body was blanketed in several layers of well-worn wool. Ofttimes, he worked the wee hours as a cabby and his heavy wardrobe served as a sleeping roll as he snoozed in place in the driver’s seat of his hansom. He needed no boxlight announcing his cab’s presence: his snore broadcast far and wide the availability of his service.

He threw back a snort from a tin flask. “I have me a neighbor,” he said, “in me building where I stow meself, and he is asking for some help, some help that needs a detective’s eye. Someun who can be ‘delicate with the truth’ he says, ‘and don’t get concerned when the truth goes missing. I don’t exactly needs me a Sherlock Holmes,’ and so I told him of you, Jules Pfennig, not exactly a Sherlock Holmes.”

The very name of that impudent detective made my blood boil. I am more than exactly Sherlock Holmes. I am a sleuth to every degree his equal. Nay, his superior! His building is next to mine and I share a wall with him, assaulted by the infernal scratchings of his violin.

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