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‘Sherlock Holmes I am not clearing up your mess! You get back here and remove your exploded frog or whatever it is!’ –JW.
The skin of an epipedobate secretes a toxic substance that, in foreign countries, was used to coat the tips of arrows in order to debilitate prey when a hunter was catching it. The use of these poisons were commonly known about in the South America’s, but not really known about in Europe or Britain so there was a scope for intelligent criminals to use them for murders of GBH with very little chance of being caught or suspected.
Unfortunately for most intelligent criminals, Sherlock had been incredibly fascinated by frogs as a boy growing up in the country with a pond located at the edge of his garden. Although he was no longer intensely fascinated by the creatures – he had absorbed quite a lot of information about them and the different sub-species. So when it just so happened that a young man was found sprawled in an alleyway with a needle prick about the size of a pin behind the back of his ear, Lestrade was glad to have Sherlock’s assistance to noticing that it wasn’t a random death of natural causes.
Sherlock had persuaded Molly to give him a report from the post-mortem so that he could find out what sub-species of frog that the poison had come from, and what the quantity must have been to render a young man in the prime of his life, entirely incapacitated to the point where his heart failed. Sherlock was convinced that it would to be quite a fair amount of actual poison, so that was where he was willing to test his theory. Through calling in a favour he was able to obtain four frogs all from the same species, only with small variations, to test upon – and that was where it all went wrong.
He knew that John would be out all day, so he set up his lab early in the morning and began the process to extract the chemicals from the (at that time) living frogs. It was fine until he put the centrifuge on to separate the components of the toxin, and became bored at waiting for the machine to complete its job. Out of pure curiosity he filled his syringe with pure oxygen out of his canister and proceeded to inject it into two of the four frogs. He had had an idea of what might occur if he did this, but he just wanted to check it out and see if he was correct in this thinking.
He had been correct… But he hadn’t predicted how messy the outcome would be. Injecting the two frogs with even the tiniest amount of air appeared to have put their system into distress: which they then reacted to by exploding… Everywhere.
Sherlock glanced around, taking in the splattered frog intestines on the ceiling of the kitchen, the other body parts and fluids that were now all over the counters and walls; and was pretty certain that John would go ballistic if he arrived to see this. Without a fraction of a second’s hesitation, Sherlock grabbed his coat and headed for the door. Maybe if he left for a bit, and waited until after he knew John would get home and have had time to calm down then it would all be alright.
The city of London is vast; more than vast enough to provide Sherlock with three hours of occupation until he knew for sure that John would be back and had enough time to have worked the anger caused by the state of the kitchen out of his system. However, Sherlock was informed to the moment that John arrived back at the flat to an angry text ordering him to come back and clean up his mess. If he waited another half an hour then it was sure that John would have probably calmed down, and possibly cleaned up also!
While ascending the stairs of the flat Sherlock could smell the pungent odour of disinfectant and knew that John must have cleaned some of it up at least.
“You are a dick of the highest degree Sherlock.” John was sat in his armchair, and he didn’t even bother to look round at Sherlock as he entered the room. “I will not continually clean up after you, especially when it’s bloody exploded frog or whatever the hell that thing was!”
“Exploded frog, yes.” Sherlock replied quite placidly, attempting to not further anger John, but clearly not doing a very amenable job.
“Next time you do something like that I’m not going to come back to the flat until you’ve dealt with the mess! You’re not a child, you make a mess – you clean up afterwards!” John turned in his chair to frown in Sherlock’s general direction; reluctantly Sherlock nodded as to show he had understood. Once he felt he had been in the disapproving stare of John for long enough, he turned into the now, mercifully, clean kitchen to check the centrifuge machine that he had left spinning after the frog had exploded. The spinning had come to an end now, and the glass test tubes inside it were sitting very still – one of which pertaining to the exact information that Sherlock needed to clear up the case.
“Fantastic!” He murmured to himself, but not quietly enough for John not to hear him.
“What is fantastic?” John snapped harshly.
“In my hand I have the answer for Lestrade about the man found in the Highburgh Junction alley.” Sherlock answered, bringing the small glass tube round to show John.
“The poison dart case?” John asked, some interest twigging in his voice now.
“Yeah, and I can give the name of the person responsible over to Lestrade now so he can deal with the whole legal side of things.” Sherlock smiled and sat down into his armchair.
“And you got all that from a frog?” John seemed blown away.
“Yes.” John shook his head in an amused gesture of disbelief and there was a small silence. “Now all I have to do is explain to the guy I borrowed these off of that I kind of… well, exploded two of them…”