Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure.

A week or so ago my friend who performs at The Grand Theatre in London, told me to enter a contest and win two tickets to an adaption of Sherlock Holmes to the stage. I love theatre and I have a slight obsession with the many adventures of the world's only consulting detective so I truly had to do it.

The challenge was to come up with a theory as to what happened to The Grand's founder Ambrose Small, who mysteriously disapeared on December 2, 1919.

Details provided are here!
Though I did do some of my own research. :) I'm fairly bad at being clever (believe it or not) and extremely unconvincing in this case, but I figured that I should post my submission somewhere so I can chuckle at it in a few months.

And so, without further ado....

"Teresa Small was aware of her husbands various 'escapades' with women,but chose to ignore them. That is until she found various obscene letters addressed to her husband by his mistress Clara Smith. She left them on the kitchen table so that he would know she had seen them, and later confronted him about it and demanded that he stop his cheating ways. He agreed and their lives continued on for the most part. That is, until he disappeared.

Now, when examining the disappearance of Mr. Ambrose Small the most obvious solution would involve his wife conspiring against him despite his promise of dedication or maybe his gambling and multiple affairs had finally landed him in severe debt with 'the wrong people'. These conclusions are incorrect as they are only based on a handful of the facts and every detail has not been brought into consideration.

The first would be that Teresa truly did love her husband and their argument about Clara's letters had no doubt been aggressive but also ended passionately. (How else was he to assure his wife that he adored only her and his cheating days were over.) Despite being of a wealthy and well-educated background, Teresa was foolish enough to believe her husband, and if she hadn't the woman was obviously not capable of keeping some master scheme a secret from the authorities, she was far too over dramatic (most likely a result of too many free tickets to the theatre). Thus, Small's disappearance was not a crime of passion.

However, his vices did have a large role in his demise. Small had made many enemies. His prejudices were well known to anyone who would listen, even strangers. He disliked children, Catholics, the poor and felt that giving anything away to a charity was foolish. His continued gambling and scheming did eventually anger some 'bad people' but it also infuriated Charles Ross Somerville, Mayor of London at the time. Somerville adored his city, he would freely give his time and money to every worthy public-spirited movement or event and wanted nothing more than for it to grow as a controlled and peaceful community. Small was branding the area with a foul image and setting nothing but bad examples for its citizens, he continued to have affairs despite his promise to Teresa and was uncontrollable. The news of Ambrose Small's fortune reached Somerville, and I have no doubt that the man paled instantly (perhaps a sickly shade of green) when he heard. For you see if Small was a powerful force now, he would soon be invincible with such a large amount of money behind him. Somerville knew action had to be taken.

He teamed up with the more shady characters that Small had also angered and together they schemed to get rid of the millionaire. The snow storm on December 2^nd proved to be a convenient twist to the whole ordeal, it provided the perfect cover for the kidnapping, as no one was out and about for fear of the strong winds and biting cold. Ambrose was most likely knocked out by a blunt object, (a gunshot would draw attention) and transported to the local crematorium where he 'disappeared'. Ashes can be disposed of more easily than a corpse and the owner of the establishment was a good friend of Somerville. Though, the threatening shady characters and a decent bribe helped with the situation.

And it was done. Each member in the ploy was paid off for their troubles and everyone was happy, with the exception of Theresa Small who was the unfortunate suspect involving her husband's 'disappearance'. Their earlier argument and Small's continued affairs were no major secret amongst the citizens and Somerville was more than happy to cover his trail by blaming the poor woman. In an attempt to clear her name she had offered a reward which helped little, but she was eventually proclaimed innocent. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had expressed an interest in the mystery was never asked to assist because the more powerful people involved didn't want to risk being exposed. All in all, no one truly liked Ambrose Small, he is long gone and his wife, the only person who still had faith in him, lost it with the discovery of his fresh lies, she blames her husband's many mistresses for his disappearance, completely oblivious to the real culprit-much like every other investigator who has pursued the answer.

You must consider all of the facts when examining a case such as this, and eliminate the impossible, because whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

And the truth here is obviously murder.

With the best intentions of course."