The Case of the Starry Night

Chapters

1. My friend, Fetlock Holmes
2. Three tickets to a crime
3. An unlikely suspect
4. Holmes unmasked
5. Thrice-frightened
6. Chivalry is not dead
7. Trixie must do everything
8. The fox and the hound have tea
9. The missing piece
10. An unusually-destructive tea-party
11. A real crime

1. My friend, Fetlock Holmes

Being an Excerpt from the Reminisces of John H. Watson, M.D., of the Canterlot General Hospital

Chapter 1. My friend, Fetlock Holmes.

In my association with Mr. Fetlock Holmes, I have often seen the image some proud pony shows the world melt like wax under the harsh light of his gaze. I have been the chagrined object of that gaze myself, and wished he might sometime turn it upon himself. I learned how needless that wish was from an entanglement with a most peculiar mare.

To Holmes, she is always "the mare." I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. If he once felt something akin to love for her, he at least believes he has since sublimated it into an intellectual admiration. He never speaks of the softer passions save with a gibe and a sneer. For him to admit such an intrusion into his own finely adjusted temperament would be to introduce grit in a sensitive instrument. And yet, to him, there is but one mare. It was in Fillydelphia that we first encountered her.

Holmes' appearance regularly drew attention in Canterlot, that magnet for everything and everypony outlandish or excessive in Equestria. He could hardly pass unnoticed on the streets of Fillydelphia. In height he was rather over fifteen hooves at the withers, and so excessively lean that he seemed considerably taller. By breed he should have been a plow-horse, but one could not imagine him engaged in dactylous labor. Aside from his ectomorphic frame, he had a delicacy of touch in his hooves not exceeded by any unicorn's magic; and something imperious in his eyes as well that at times called to mind the Canterlot high-bred. But he walked with the awkward urgency of a grounded pegasus, and I was once again pressed to keep up with him without breaking into a trot, as we headed from the train station towards the center of the city.

He would have stood out even had he not had a completely uniform tan coat, bare of decoration on both flanks. Either by virtue of his mastery of innumerable subjects, of his impatience for pursuing any of them with regularity, or (as I am inclined to believe) through sheer force of stubbornness, Holmes had managed to avoid ever manifesting a cutie mark relegating him to one trade or another. I may give the impression in my missives that detective work was his sole occupation; but in reality it took only a fraction of his time, and served as much as a framework to organize and justify his hobbies and vices, as a profession.

The sight was too much for one blue-maned unicorn on the other side of the street, who cocked his head and widened his eyes until I could see the whites. My companion stopped abruptly as we drew up beside him.

"I see you were admiring my mark. That is a sign of distinction." He tapped his forehead with one hoof and smiled conspiratorily. "Only the wise can see it."

The stallion glanced at Holmes, at Holmes' blank flank, and back at Holmes again. "Ah... remarkable!" he replied.

"Really? What do you think of it?"

"Think... of it?" The poor fellow – it is impossible not to think of anypony who falls into Holmes' hooves when he is in a mischievous mood as a poor fellow, no matter wealth or breeding – twitched his ears back and forth, uncertain whether to venture an opinion or bolt.

"Yes, yes. The coloring, the geometry. Does it call anything to mind?"

"Not... immediately. Unique, I should say." The unicorn took a harder look. "Yes... unique. Excuse me, I have a train..." He sidled off, then hurried towards the station at which we had just disembarked, looking shaken.

"Holmes!" I admonished as we resumed our walk. "You should be ashamed of yourself."

"On the contrary, I have rendered him a service. I have taught him that he is not wise."

"But by deception!"

"That is the difference between you and me, Watson. You are a deontologist; I, a consequentialist."

"I haven't a deuce what you're talking about."

Holmes whinnied briefly. "Thank you, Doctor. It is refreshing to converse with somepony who will admit to not knowing something."

"It is fortunate for our friendship, Holmes," I huffed, "that I do not feel the same."

He tossed his head up and pulled back his lips. "Ha! Touché, Watson!"

He is a horse not given to sentimentalities, observing no emotional allegiances beyond those of close friends and, I charitably assume, family. Yet I have never seen him exercise his sharp wit this way on his fellow earth ponies. It is one of the many contradictions of his character. I would not ordinarily mention such small indulgences of his, but I think this one bears on this case in particular.

"I suppose I will allow you your vices, Holmes, if you will allow me mine."

"Did you have any particular vice in mind?"

"Indeed," I said, already scanning the storefronts along the road. "I plan to find a pub and a pint, and ply you with drink, if need be, until you tell me why you were so intent on arriving here by six for an exhibit that closed at five."

"Ah! I see where that might be confusing. Do not worry about the exhibit; I have an appointment with the curator at six. But it is essential that we see the magic show at seven. I am afraid your drink must wait."

Holmes has a bitter fascination with magic. He has often bemoaned the difficulty of eliminating the impossible when anypony with a horn can violate the laws of physics on a whim, and expressed the opinion that the world would be a good deal more orderly without such nonsense. Yet he devotes entire days to the study of magical theory, and delights in confounding well-educated unicorns with his superior mastery of the subject. He mostly applies this knowledge in eliminating magic as a possibility from his cases. Nonetheless, I could not see his practical study of the matter carrying over into a desire, or even an ability, to be entertained by a magical mountebank. I told him as much.

"You are correct, Watson," he replied cheerfully. "We are not going to the show to be entertained. We are going there to witness the theft of the Starry Night."

2. Three tickets to a crime

Luna's Starry Night, the object of our journey, was on loan from the National Gallery to the Fillydelphia Museum of Art. It had been considered a major work before the Moon Princess' return, and this event made it an even greater object of interest – and of controversy. The quality of the painting was no longer in dispute. It depicts a serene Princess Luna ordering the moon and stars over a small town on a dark night, from a hillside above it. When I say "stars" and "dark night", however, I give a false impression. The night is certainly dark, yet most of the individual brush strokes contributing to it are from a blue-green palette that could be used for the deep sky of an autumn day. The stars each glow like small, far-off suns, and the night sky is full of bright white stripes that somehow add motion rather than light to the scene, painting the wind.

Artist: Van Gogh + TheCentipede@DeviantArt

What was still disputed were the questions surrounding its origins. The artist, Vincent Van Neigh, was generally considered a post-impressionist; but he had had many personal associations with the even more-disreputable late Lunatics, a group of emotionally-labile individuals who felt that the romantics had not been excessive enough in their art or their lives. They connected the ancient Hipponian gods Apollo and Dionysus with Celestia and Luna. Nightmare Moon, they said, was no aberration, but represented Luna's true nature as the mad creative spirit of the artist, while Celestia was the rational interpreter and imposer of order, always refining, always restraining, and always smothering something in the process. Equestria's art lacked passion, they said, since the exile of Nightmare Moon. It was said that they prayed for her inspiration, and for her return. All of the few paintings of Luna in the century before her return could be traced to their influence. The Starry Night was the only one of these that had risen above the level of a statement in politics or artistic theory, to that of Art. It was rumored that the painting was a favorite of Luna herself, though as usual, the Sisters said nothing publicly one way or the other.

Artist: PoniSponsz@deviantart

Van Neigh himself, more intensely spiritual than political, never called for Luna's return. But he did go mad. Eventually, he shot himself in a field not long after cutting off his own ear as a gift for, appropriately enough, a "mare of the night". These events contributed to the suspicion that he was a closet Lunatic. There were many who thus held that the painting portrayed a wicked distortion of the Night Princess and so was an abomination. There were others, not so vocal nowadays, who held that the painting portrayed the true nature of the Night Princess and so was an abomination. While no curator likes to contemplate the theft of a painting, all were conscious that were it to arrive on the black market, there would be as many buyers who wished to destroy it as to collect it. The museum had a tip that an attempt would be made on the painting in Fillydelphia; its board, in addition to notifying the local police, had engaged Holmes to look into the matter.

We arrived shortly at the museum, which was closed, and were let in by a guard at the staff entrance, who was expecting us. We stood in a long, tall hallway just inside the vestibule, replete with fountains, Hipponian statuary, and a bit of greenery, and waited for Mr. F., the head curator. When he arrived, he proved to be a rotund black unicorn with enormous round spectacles and a nervous energy in his speech and action. His cutie-mark, oddly, was a pair of scales.

"Private detectives," he muttered, as if to himself. "Not sure what I think of that. Highly recommended, though. And it is convenient that you have no legal authority whatsoever." He did not seem to notice Holmes' bare flank.

"We aim to please," Holmes said with an ingratiating smile. "Although my companion, Doctor Watson, is not a detective."

"Art historian?" Mr. F. asked, leaning closer to inspect me.

"I am a doctor of medicine," I replied.

Seeing the curator's puzzled reaction, Holmes added, "His chief qualification in this matter is that he is the only pony in Equestria capable of tolerating me for an extended duration. Come, sir; the painting."

Mr. F. led us out the other end of the entrance hall, and through a series of galleries, all with plain walls painted a single color chosen so as to best offset the paintings on display in that room. We were slowed by Holmes' frequent pauses and exclamations of delight in front of one painting or another, none of which I recognized, but which the curator, judging by the proud smile he flashed in response, approved of. We were also slowed because the curator kept bumping into the stanchions set up to direct patrons this way or that, knocking them over with a tremendous clatter as their brass heads bounced off the marble floor. After the third such occasion, I said, "I fear your opthamologist has provided you the wrong prescription, sir."

"On the contrary," Holmes said, before the curator could respond. "He is most skilled to do such unusual custom work. I am glad he could prevent your astigmatism from interfering with your career."

"She," the curator replied, slightly flustered. "Yes. Tried several before I found one who could produce lenses that corrected for my astigmatism at nine hooves. Optimal distance for close inspection of paintings, I say. Here we are."

We had arrived in a gallery at the very end of the east wing, with several lesser Van Neighs on the left and right walls, as well as signs giving details of his life and the inevitable story of the ear. The painting itself was on the far wall, protected from accidental contact by a more solid traffic barrier which even Mr. F. could not easily knock down.

"Really ought to have it behind glass," Mr. F. said guiltily, "but I couldn't bring myself to do it."

I could see why. Luna's Starry Night, seen in person, is a conclusive argument for the value of museums even in an age of color prints. I had not been overly impressed by the reproductions I had seen of it, and my low expectations no doubt made the thing itself even more stunning. It was painted – constructed, I should say – from layer upon layer of thick oil-paint brush-strokes, so that it was scarcely a painting at all, but a three-dimensional sculpture, with a glossy shine that prints completely fail to capture, producing reflective lines too bright to reproduce which danced madly if one so much as drew breath as one stood before it. It was hard to dispel the illusion of movement, nor did I want to.

"Will there be a guard in this room tonight," Holmes inquired, "between the hours of, oh, seven and eight?"

Mr. F. pursed his lips. "We have three night guards, and at least twenty-three other paintings on a par with the Starry Night. If you have this alleged thief-to-be's timetable, Mr. Holmes, perhaps you could provide a name and address as well?"

"I have hopes, Mr. F., but at present it would be premature. If my conjectures are right, a guard would be of little use in any case, other than to establish the time of theft. I expect magic will be involved."

Mr. F. whinnied a bit derisively. "Then you are off the mark, Mr. Holmes. The entire east wing of the museum is enclosed in a drag field cast by the Arch-mage herself."

"Lately?" Holmes asked.

Mr. F. frowned. "No. Two years ago. Does it matter?"

"Possibly," Holmes said. "Two years is plenty of time for a clever pony to probe and test it. I assume that our hypothetical thief has a more accurate estimation of both its strengths and her abilities than do I. Therefore, I defer to her judgement that it will not suffice, as indicated by her presence here tonight." The curator whirled around in alarm to look behind him, knocking over another stanchion with a clang. "In Fillydelphia," Holmes clarified. "I assume one of your guards is a unicorn, trained to monitor any unexpected magical fields?"

"Of course," Mr. F. replied.

Holmes pulled a sheet of paper from his saddlebag with his teeth and held it out to the curator, who took it up in a glow of darkly-shaded magic.

"And these magical fields are expected?" Holmes asked.

Mr. F. held the paper out in front of him, no doubt at a distance of two feet four inches, and studied it. "Yes," he nodded after a moment. "Signed the permit myself. Did her first show last night. A minor entertainer, Mr. Holmes, nothing more."

"She seems to disagree," Holmes said. "I intend to observe in any case. At the worst, she should at least provide a pleasurable diversion. Would you care to join Dr. Watson and myself? It is nearly seven, and the cafe is only a few steps away."

Mr. F. seemed at first to fear this invitation might represent some insult to his dignity. But Holmes' friendly and sincere smile – a sincerity I have seen him practice in the mirror many times – won him over, and he gave a boyish grin and acceded with a nod.

I inspected the paper which the curator was still suspending in the air. It was a black-and-white flyer for an event that evening in the museum's adjoining cafe, printed entirely in capitals, with a drawing in the center of a unicorn with a bad cowlick, a tall, pointy wizard's hat that could have been stolen from the props of a second-rate drama troupe, and a smirk that was more contemptuous than inviting. It read,

WATCH IN AWE!
WATCH AND BE AMAZED!
WITNESS THE AMAZING MAGIC OF
THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE
TWO NIGHTS ONLY
THURSDAY AND FRIDAY
FILLYDELPHIA ART MUSEUM CAFE
7PM

Artist: Scotty A

3. An unlikely suspect

The museum cafe, which had a separate entrance onto the street, did not appear a likely venue for either a criminal mastermind or a great magician. It was simply decorated, with white walls, small black ironwork tables of the irritating sort whose four legs never all touched the ground at the same time, and a large window overlooking part of the museum's exterior fountain. The view was fading and the window turning reflective instead as the twilight deepened. An area in front of the window had been cleared of tables for the performance. The ticket receipts from the several dozen patrons present could scarcely have covered Trixie's travel expenses. The Great and Powerful Trixie was presumably behind some tacked-up white bedsheets that partitioned off the far end of the cafe to serve as a dressing room.

Holmes had put on a fast and expedient disguise, consisting of glasses and a felt bowler hat from his saddlebag, and the wide-eyed expression of an eager and easily-impressed tourist. He purchased a "Fillydelphia Cheese Cupcake" whose key ingredient I could smell from several feet away, which I hope he chose only to complete his disguise. I chose a root beer and a simple farmer's sandwich of carrots and cucumbers. Holmes chose a table in the front row but off to one side, giving us a clear view but not making us a focus of attention. Mr. F. excused himself to engage in some argument with the cafe manager over a cloud of steam he had seen emanating from the kitchen, which he appeared to think was somehow a threat to the paintings upstairs.

"Holmes," I said, "I will try not to enjoy it, but I think you are going to look like a fool. This is the sort of magic show one would see at a filly's birthday party."

"Your lack of faith wounds me, Watson. But in that case I suggest you relax and enjoy the show. I expect it will be unconventional. She is, as far as I was able to tell from my investigations, completely self-educated."

"Why do you believe," I pressed, "that this second-rate entertainer is capable of bypassing security installed by the arch-mage and stealing a famous painting under the noses of dozens of ponies?"

"Because she is a second-rate entertainer, but a first-rate magician, and conscious of it. A second-rate magician could not do it; a successful entertainer would not. Bitterness and envy drive the unappreciated genius to crime, not for profit, but for vindication. And because, Watson, if I were to steal the Starry Night, this is how I would do it. She has license to stand nearly directly underneath it for an entire hour, employing powerful magical energies, without an alarm being raised. That is why I looked into her background as soon as I learned she would perform here tonight. Her innocuous first show has lulled them into concluding, illogically, that the second will be equally innocent. Her wit and audacity are remarkable." His face glowed briefly with admiration. After all these years, I can count precisely the number of times I have seen this happen.

But it always chilled me when Holmes hypothesized about himself as a criminal. I took a sip from my root beer and tried to change the subject. "I sense something more, Holmes. You are emotionally involved. Yes, even you have emotions. I know the signs. Your ear has twitched at least twice since we entered, which for you is practically spasmodic."

Holmes appeared as if he were about to dismiss this with a rejoinder, but paused, and instead brought his head close to mine, letting his cheery expression drop. "What would you say is the ratio of earth ponies to unicorns in Canterlot, Watson?"

I thought for a moment, and replied, "Perhaps one in five. It is difficult to know. They are usually behind the scenes."

"Indeed they are. And what, among our criminal cases in Canterlot, has been the ratio?"

I frowned. "Closer to two to one."

"Does that not strike you as odd, Watson? Wings, or a bit of magic, make crime so much easier. Why should earth ponies attempt it at all, let alone be drawn to it at a rate of ten to one over unicorns?"

"Well," I said, "Canterlot is not exactly agricultural. Employment there for strong backs is limited."

His eyes turned hard. "That is no excuse. Neither you nor I have strong backs, and we have done quite well."

"Perhaps we would not have," I said, "if we had strong backs."

"Perhaps," Holmes conceded. "But I believe the underlying causes are more systemic." He pulled his head back, a bitter look now in his eyes. "Regardless," he said slowly, "crime is a terrible profession. The work is unsteady, the risks are high, the payoffs usually disappointing. It is the dregs, the leavings, the last resort. It is, in a word, ours, Watson." He looked around him, and I became conscious that we were nearly the only earth ponies in the cafe.

"Holmes," I said, "you seem to be suggesting that for a unicorn to steal a painting would be to put some honest earth pony out of work."

He cast his eyes down. "Everything is so easy for them, Watson. And for her, with her skill and power, crime is child's play." He looked up and met my eyes with a penetrating gaze. "But I promise you this: She will not find it so easy this time."

I looked away and sipped my drink uneasily, conscious again that there were depths to my friend I had not yet sounded. I had the odd sensation of having fallen into a parallel universe where some chance circumstance had made him something less than what he ought to be. Mr. F. joined us at the table, and his good-natured smile was a relief. The cafe manager dimmed the lights out past the impromptu stage, a hoof parted one of the partitioning sheets from inside, and we had our first view of the Great and Powerful Trixie.

4. Holmes unmasked

Her appearance was prefaced by a sudden bang and a burst of intense light, so that I could not say whether she teleported in front of us, or simply galloped in while we were deaf and blind. The Great and Powerful Trixie proved to be a aquamarine mare with snow-white hair – in the literal sense, having just a touch of blue to it. Her stage costume was covered in stars, and her cutie-mark, I realized with a start when she unfurled her cloak and it was briefly visible, was a cross between the stars of Arch-mage Sparkle and the half-moon of Luna herself.

She regarded us with an indifferent eye, as though our presence were an unfortunate necessity and our opinion of little value, then began begrudgingly to perform a series of unusual and alarming tricks. Her manner reminded me immediately of Holmes.

It was not the sort of magic show one would hope to see at a filly's birthday party. Any parent who unwittingly hired the Great and Powerful Trixie for such a performance could rightfully have sued for emotional damages. A good stage performer impresses the audience, but also forms a bond of mutual, if perhaps unequal, respect with them. Trixie's methodology was instead to shock and awe her audience into submission. The intimacy of the cafe, which could have been used to enhance rapport by a more sensitive performer, only made Trixie's performance more terrifying. One young colt began neighing uncontrollably in fear when Trixie burst into flames a few feet away from him, and had to be removed by his parents. The audience, for its part, appeared not to be enjoying the show so much as attempting to spite Trixie by proving that they could endure it.

After another disturbingly powerful display of magic followed by shocked gasps and a smattering of pro-forma hoof-stamping, Trixie relaxed her tense, aggressive posture, and stood calmly facing the audience. She lowered her horn penitently, and looked at us for the first time with inviting, sympathetic eyes.

"Trixie is sorry if she has disturbed you. Let everypony take a few moments to relax. Breathe deeply. That's good. Look at Trixie. Listen to the sound of her voice. Take another breath. Everything is fine, you are perfectly safe, and comfortable, and – WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON THE CEILING?"

I saw with horror that Trixie was standing on the floor beneath me, while I, my table, and my partly-eaten sandwich were suspended from the ceiling of the cafe. Ponies neighed in terror and twisted and threw their hooves up – or rather down – to catch themselves as they fell. I may possibly have been among them.

Then I realized that it was Trixie who was standing on the ceiling, laughing. She must have gradually levitated and rotated herself as she spoke, without my noticing, leading to the illusion that I was standing on the ceiling. I held a hoof to my head until the vertigo and disorientation went away. Ponies who had fallen down in their panic stood up and resumed their places sheepishly, or in some cases headed for the door.

She spun in the air and landed on her hooves before us like an acrobat, smiling broadly.

"It seems some ponies can't tell up from down. Perhaps Trixie should do something simpler for them." An uninflated balloon appeared in one of her hooves, and she held it to her mouth and blew it full of air. She then held it up triumphantly. A few audience members who did not get the joke applauded half-heartedly.

She pushed the balloon aside and suspended it there by magic. She then produced another balloon, of a darker color, and inflated that to a smaller size, then tied it off and held it next to the first. The balloons then moved apart and together, bouncing off each other several times, until they came together and did not bounce, but merged; then I saw the smaller, darker balloon inside the larger one.

"Remarkable," Holmes said.

"What, that?" I muttered. "It didn't seem very impressive to me."

"That is because you are ignorant of magical theory," Holmes said. "The starting and ending points of any teleportation must be connected by a magical line of energy. Imperfections in this line temporarily disrupt the space around it. To teleport anything through the stretched surface of an inflated balloon without breaking it requires near-perfect discipline. There are only a few unicorns in the world who could do that. Assuming it was not a more mundane trick, such as having a balloon constructed with a thick, non-elastic patch."

I raised my eyebrows in appreciation.

The mare on the stage looked about her triumphantly, but her expression quickly turned to disappointment, and then angry contempt, as she saw the bored audience shared my initial opinion of her balloon trick.

"Incidentally," Holmes added, "detecting and suppressing these nearly-inevitable disruptions are among the key principles of magical defense fields such as the one protecting the museum."

Trixie impelled the balloons rapidly out into the audience, where they stopped in front of an orange unicorn filly, who blinked at them uncertainly. Trixie released them, and the filly watched as they dropped slowly to the floor. She watched them roll away, then looked back up at Trixie, who sighed and looked down. I almost felt sorry for her at that moment.

"Trixie has been greedy," she announced. "Trixie is up here having all of the fun. Would somepony else like to play?"

Mr. F., who appeared to be the only member of the audience genuinely enjoying the show, raised a hoof excitedly, and Trixie called him up. She asked his name. He told her, and added that he was the museum curator, and also that he was enjoying the show very much, and had been persuaded to come by his companion, Mr. Fetlock Holmes. At this he gestured to Holmes.

Holmes rolled his eyes. Then he dropped the tourist act, removed the hat and the glasses, and favored Trixie with his usual enigmatic smile.

I have been present on many occasions when some criminal first became aware of the personal presence of Fetlock Holmes, the great sleuth whose ability to see into the criminal mind must have seemed god-like to those it was directed against. No matter how hardened the criminal, their first reaction, without exception, was to flinch away from him and take an involuntary step back.

The Great and Powerful Trixie leaned towards Holmes with a hungry smile, locked eyes with him, and took a step forward.

5. Thrice-frightened

"The Great and Powerful Trixie is pleased to perform for the legendary Fetlock Holmes," Trixie said boldly. "To what does she owe the honor?"

"It appears," Holmes replied, "that we share an interest in art."

Trixie snorted. She turned back to Mr. F., who was still blinking nervously, oblivious to the contest of wills. "It was wise of you, sir, to bring in such a renowned pony to help guard Luna's Starry Night while it is on display here. I hope you have taken other precautions as well."

"Oh, yes," Mr. F. replied happily. "It's as safe as a baby in a basket. No force known to ponies could wrest it from its place, short of one of the Sisters themselves."

Trixie's condescending smile brightened proudly, as though the curator had paid her some great compliment. "Trixie is relieved to hear this." She looked out to the audience. "But can we be sure that the precious painting is safe? Trixie is still concerned."

She looked directly at Holmes for a moment, as though working herself up for something. Then she lowered her head, closed her eyes tightly, and gritted her teeth. Her horn began to glow even more brightly than before, turning yellow, then white, then too bright to look at. I turned away, and saw sharp shadows of the audience cast against the wall on the far side of the room, and felt waves of heat rolling off the stage. The air smelled of ozone. A high-pitched whine rang in my skull as if it had bypassed my ears entirely. I was dimly aware of indignant cries and audience members retreating from the stage.

Suddenly the bright light vanished. All was still and silent. Ponies stood gaping at the stage, ashen-faced, raised hooves frozen in mid-flight. I turned back and looked. Trixie was bent over and breathing heavily, her sides heaving, but she had a triumphant gleam in her eyes. There, floating in the air beside her, was the Starry Night. It is odd how one never realizes how large most paintings are when seeing them in a gallery.

Trixie addressed Mr. F., who had taken several steps back, and now stared unblinking, sweat dripping down his face, at the painting. He hesitantly stepped forward.

"This is the painting, Mr. F. Yes?" Trixie asked pleasantly, between breaths.

Mr. F. reached out a hoof to touch the frame. He studied it for a long time, breathing deeply.

"It is," he finally said.

"Wonderful! Trixie is so pleased that it is, in fact, safe. Would you be a good pony, and return it to the museum?"

Mr. F. looked at Trixie in horror. I looked to Holmes for his reaction, and found with a start that he was no longer present. I looked back at Trixie, waiting some further trick. But none came. The curator eventually unlocked the connecting door to the museum, wrapped the painting in his own telekinetic field, and departed rapidly with it.

Trixie strutted back and forth, addressing the audience. "As you heard from the museum curator himself, no power could retrieve it, but one of the Sisters. Or else the Great and Powerful Trixie!"

Not one hoof stamped in response.

Trixie scowled at the audience, with barely-controlled rage. She inhaled deeply and ominously, and without any conscious decision I found myself turning and bolting for the exit along with many others. Just then, the door to the kitchen, which had been shut when the kitchen closed nearly an hour ago, opened, and a thick cloud of smoke rolled out. "Fire!" a voice called from within.

6. Chivalry is not dead

I found myself on the street, shocked to my senses by the cool night breeze, surrounded by a crowd of thrice-frightened ponies, none of whom looked as if they were about to recommend The Great and Powerful Trixie to their friends. There was no sign of Holmes, nor of Trixie, nor of a fire. I turned and went back immediately into the now-empty cafe.

The lights were still on. Only a wisp of smoke came from the kitchen. I pushed through the door to investigate. The source of alarm was quickly evident: Some cooking oil had been poured into a pan and set on fire. It had burned quickly, and now merely smoked and stank.

The rest of the kitchen was empty. Returning to the front room, I heard voices behind the curtain. I reconstructed the course of events in my mind. Holmes had no doubt withdrawn from the table during the most disorienting effects of Trixie's magic in order to be free to act unobserved. On seeing that Trixie had made her move on the painting, he had staged the smoke as a diversion, in order to search her dressing area before she made her next move. I did not see his purpose, as we had all seen the painting leave with Mr. F., and as Trixie's act should have been enough of a diversion; but now Holmes was trapped there with an enraged, powerful, and possibly criminal magician. I drew my revolver from my saddlebags, and fastened it to the inside of my left pastern as quickly as I could, pulling the straps tight with my teeth, and pushed my head quietly through between two sheets. How else could an earth pony fire a pistol? Don't say they hold it in their teeth.

Holmes was up against the far wall, held there by magic. He managed not to glance at me as I appeared behind Trixie, who stood facing Holmes. I raised the pistol, prepared for some desperate act on Trixie's part.

But no desperation was evident. Trixie was calmly floating various magical props into two large bags of luggage. A thin, rectangular wooden box, large enough to hold a painting, stood in the corner, which Holmes glanced at from time to time. When all had been packed, Trixie gathered everything to her side and addressed Holmes. "Trixie is sorry not to spend more time with you, Mr. Holmes, but she has a pressing schedule."

"I am also sorry," Holmes said, "but I cannot allow you to leave with that box."

Trixie whinnied in amusement. "It appears you are the one who needs permission. Or perhaps you are hoping your colleague Dr. Watson, who is no doubt standing behind Trixie right now waving his silly pistol about, will hit Trixie on the head with it?" She turned around, showing no surprise at seeing me there, and curtseyed to me, then turned back to Holmes. "It appears Trixie has learned more from reading your stories than you have from living them, for Trixie knows Dr. Watson is a gentlepony who does not assault ladies." Unable to move, Holmes gazed back at her furiously. She levitated her bags and the rectangular box into the air beside her, then walked directly past me, and favored me with a coquettish smile. I automatically lifted my hoof to tip my hat to her, and realized I was still stupidly and impotently holding my revolver. Ostentatiously ignoring it, she turned back and said over her shoulder, "And, really, Mr. Holmes. How many times have you used that smoke trick? An artist should never grow predictable." She walked several steps into the cafe beyond; then Trixie, bags, and box all faded like mist and vanished.

Holmes stumbled to the floor as the force holding him suddenly disappeared. He scrambled to his feet and glowered at me. "Watson! You and your anachronistic devotion to chivalry have let her escape with a national treasure!"

"I saw her give the painting back, Holmes! There's no evidence of a crime!"

"It would be pointless to steal a painting and then give it back. Therefore the painting she gave Mr. F. was not the real painting. The real painting is in that box!"

"Well, what did you expect me to do? Hit her on the head?" Looking into his eyes, I realized that was indeed what he had expected. I must add in his defense that he ordinarily treats mares with great courtesy.

"If she fancies herself a criminal," Holmes growled, "then she must expect to be treated as a criminal. There is no special law for mares or unicorns!" The way he said it sounded as if Trixie were impertinently seeking admission that she did not merit to some elite group. I wondered again what strange paths his thoughts were taking.

7. Trixie must do everything

"Put that thing away," Holmes said, pointing his nose at my revolver. He brushed past me and walked toward the exit. I removed it, packed it away, and followed.

"She must have lodging nearby for the night," Holmes said.

"But where? There are dozens of hotels within walking distance."

"Dozens," Holmes said, "but only three of sufficient grandeur for somepony Great and Powerful, and expecting to soon be flush with cash: The Salisbury, the Four Seasons, and the Palomino."
The 4 Seasons and the Palomar are fancy hotels in Philadelphia.

We headed first to the Salisbury, our hooves clopping on the cobblestones, which glistened in the moonlight. "Holmes," I protested as we went, "I admit that you were right about the painting's vulnerability. But the curator inspected the painting she gave him himself, and pronounced it to be genuine. Nothing I have seen tonight justifies hitting anypony on the head. The only crimes I have proof of are that you created a stampede by shouting "fire!" in a museum, and I pointed a gun at a pony. And I am sure Mr. F. would consider burning oil near his paintings to be a third."

Holmes shook his mane and neighed dismissively. "Set aside for the moment the difficulty of conducting a thorough inspection in a cafe, in front of an audience, in a state of shock, as well as the question of Mr. F.'s eyesight. Did you notice Trixie's exact words? She did not ask him whether it was the painting. She told him it was the painting."

I recollected my own strong if temporary conviction that I was suspended upside-down from the ceiling of the cafe. "Mesmerism," I said.

"And with the head curator's insistence that the painting is genuine, the forgery would not be detected until its return to Canterlot at the earliest, at which point the switch would be assumed to have taken place in transit, long after Trixie's departure."

"But," I pointed out, "Trixie did not expect the curator to be present at the show. That was your doing, Holmes. Your theory now implies that you are an accomplice."

"I expect she planned to see him after the show. It could not be overly difficult for a beautiful mare with the powers of mesmerism to persuade our Mr. F. to accompany her to view the painting. No, Watson, the real problem is that she could not possibly have teleported the Starry Night directly out of that drag field."

"What are you saying, Holmes? I saw her do it!"

"You saw, Watson, an impressive light display, followed by the appearance of a painting resembling Luna's Starry Night."

"But, the balloon!"

"Her trick with the balloon was admirable. But it is one thing to teleport a balloon several inches, and quite another to teleport a painting weighing ten stones sixty feet through a drag field. The energies involved would have turned her horn to ash. I have part of a hypothesis, but we are still missing a piece to our puzzle."

"I seem to have no pieces at all," I said. "Tell me your hypothesis."

"An interesting question in teleportation theory," he said, "is how much energy it takes to interchange, by simultaneous teleportation, two completely identical objects." He stopped under a street-lamp, and tapped two cobblestones with his hoof. "Say, for example, that these two cobblestones were perfectly identical. How much magical energy would it take to teleport the first one into the space originally occupied by the second, and simultaneously teleport the second into the space originally occupied by the first?"

"Well," I replied, "obviously, twice as much as it takes to teleport one cobblestone to the location of the other."

Holmes resumed his trot, and smiled in that superior fashion peculiar to him. "You should avoid the word 'obvious', Watson. It is only ever used to attempt to substitute hyperbole for knowledge. It is logically necessary that it would take no energy at all. If they were perfectly identical, and I were to claim that I had just instantaneously interchanged them, I could not be wrong, do you see? A claim can be wrong only if it is contradicted by the evidence – and there is no possible evidence that could contradict that claim."

See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_particles.

"Aha! I have caught you in your own cleverness, Holmes! You expended no energy; therefore, you could not have exchanged them!"

Holmes shut his eyes, as if hoping thus to shield himself from my stupidity. "Watson. You are trying to proceed from the evidence, to the claim that exchanging them would take energy. You may not assume what you are trying to prove!"

I sighed. "Suppose that I take your word on this for the moment."

"A wise choice, Watson. I recall a case involving two identical unicorn twins, who were not powerful magicians, and couldn't teleport an inch – but they could interchange their bodies, or so they claimed. One started a bar fight, seriously injured another pony, and was apprehended. He then appeared bewildered, and claimed that his brother had just swapped bodies with him, and he was innocent. The brother was brought in, and denied it."

"And was the guilty party ever determined?"

Holmes smiled wryly. "Technically, yes. I was able to establish, by painting different marks on their bodies, that they were not actually swapping bodies, but only swapping minds. The judge ruled that the letter of the law called for punishment of the guilty body, not the guilty mind. As they had hold of the guilty body, it could be legally prosecuted."

I spluttered some expression of shock at his complicity in this injustice. He merely chuckled at my reaction. "Surely, Watson, when one pony suffers an undeserved injury, it is more just, in the sense of equitableness, to choose an innocent pony at random and make him pay the medical bills, than for the equally-innocent victim to suffer both the injury and its expenses. Here we had an even chance of the choosing the aggressor. That necessarily makes it more than twice as just."

My instinct was to protest his taking justice into his own hooves, and moreover trying to quantify something that should be sacred. But I reflected on numerous cases when just such an arrogant intervention by Holmes had averted great, legally-prescribed injustice, and held my tongue.

He shrugged. "In any case, some punishment was necessary, or they both would have had carte blanche to commit any crimes they liked. What I neglected to mention to the jury was that, with the helpful if unwise cooperation of my subjects, I had conducted a series of experiments. When I began with very small marks of similar colors, they did exchange bodies. It was only when I painted one with large, obvious swaths of bright color that they were no longer able to do so, and merely swapped minds. We thus see that the energy needed to interchange two bodies is related to the degree of difference between them. So the energy needed to swap, for example, a painting, with a very good forgery of it, is small. You may think of the forgery as a counterweight, such as that found in an elevator, which makes moving large objects up possible with only a small input of energy by moving an equally large object down."

I was silent for a time, pondering the justice of Holmes' actions more than the lesson in magical physics. "Well, then," I finally said, "there's an end to the mystery. She brought a forgery with her, and swapped it with the painting."

"There are three immediate problems with that theory. First, why alert anyone to her action by displaying the painting? Second, the painting she gave Mr. F. would then have been the real painting, and he would have found a forgery in its place in the museum. Third, recall the magical line passing from start to end of a teleportation. While a synchronized swap of similar items requires low energy, it requires a magical connection of roughly three times the cross-section, and thus nine times as unstable and disruptive, as that for a simple point-to-point teleportation. This would play directly into the other strength of the drag field, that of detecting and squelching such connections. No, the mystery is not solved. We must find out what else Trixie has in her bag of tricks."

"Surely that does not matter," I said, "as long as we recover the painting." Holmes did not reply.

We arrived at the Salisbury. The vestibule opened onto a single vast room. At the center of the hotel, the open space went up twenty floors or more, and one could see ponies relaxing on the balconies of their hotel suites on each floor, all the way up to the skylights overhead. A small park with several tall pine trees stood in its center. It might indeed appeal to someone Great and Powerful. Holmes affected a slumped posture and a shuffling gait, and slowly walked across the vast lobby, to ask the night clerk if he could leave a message for the Great and Powerful Trixie.

"We have no one staying here by that name," the clerk said. "But are you Mr. Holmes?"

Holmes' eyebrows rose sharply, but he managed to suppress any other overt display of surprise. "Yes," he said after a few moments.

The clerk retrieved an envelope from his desk. "I was asked to give this to a Mr. Holmes if he came here inquiring after a Miss Trixie, Great and/or Powerful." He placed it on the check-in counter between them, then levitated a letter-opener and looked at Holmes inquiringly.

"I am quite capable of opening my own letters, thank you!" Holmes said sharply.

"Sorry, sir," the clerk said.

It is not such an easy business for an earth pony to open a sealed envelope, so it was nearly a minute later when Holmes managed to scrape the flap open and dump the contents of the letter onto a coffee table in the lobby. Out fell a room key to a humbler hotel that we had passed on the way here, as well as a slip of paper with something written on it. Holmes bent down to read it, then barked out a laugh. He pushed the paper across to me.

The writing was showy, written in bold strokes with an abundance of curlicues. It read, "Must Trixie do everything for you?"

8. The fox and the hound have tea

We soon stood in one of the less-well-lit hallways of a less-impressive hotel, whose carpet was faded and worn and smelled of mildew. The room number on the door in front of us matched that on the key.

"I fear it is a trap," I said.

"I fear more," Holmes said, "that it is not. This is not how the game is played. She is the fox, and I am the hound. There is to be no familiarity between us."

"Perhaps I should wait outside, to fetch aid in case of foul play."

"And allow me to visit a mare of questionable virtue, alone, in her hotel room, at night? You would scandalize me, Watson." Holmes rapped on the door.

The showmare answered the door with a smile that was less condescending than usual, if still a trifle predatory. "Trixie is so glad that Mr. Holmes could visit. And how... nice of him to bring Dr. Watson. Please, come inside. Make yourselves comfortable."

Her mane, which had become slightly dishevelled during her performance, had been redone. We hung our hats behind the door and stepped into her small hotel room, which was scarcely large enough to accommodate three ponies. The only way for us to stand where we could all see each other was for me to stand in the bathroom and poke my head out into the bedroom. It was either that, or stand flank-to-flank with Holmes or Trixie.

Trixie apologized that there was no kitchen. She filled three hotel cups with water from the bathroom – this involved all three of us maneuvering about the suite like a sliding-blocks puzzle – then brought them into the bedroom, where she set them on the writing desk, dropped a teabag (worse still, they were actually labelled 'tea') in each, and aimed a brief pulse of magic at each cup in turn, bringing the water to boiling almost instantly.

"Trixie apologizes for the limited choice, gentlemen. What tea does Mr. Holmes normally prefer?"

"Mr. Holmes is partial to lavender tea," Holmes said, "which Dr. Watson introduced him to." If Trixie considered his imitation of her grammatical affectation mocking, she did not show it. Holmes, meanwhile, kept casting his eyes about the room, no doubt looking for hiding places. The luggage was most likely in the closet, but there was no space large enough to hold the wooden box that he sought. On the floor beside the bed, ten wooden balls were stacked like cannonballs.

"Would Mr. Holmes like to search the suite?" Trixie asked innocently.

"That will not be necessary," Holmes said, although I could tell from his expression that he had wanted very much to search it until she uttered those words.

The awkward circumstance of our conversation was, I think, alleviated for Holmes and Trixie, and heightened for me, by the fact that neither Holmes nor Trixie had any normal sense of propriety. He complimented her trick with the balloons and observed what a valuable skill that would be for a thief. She observed that he would no doubt have hit her on the head already if he believed the painting were in this room; he assured her that he would have explored all other options first. All this was said in polite tones between sips of tea, using grammar that implied they were talking about two other ponies who were not present. Then she asked about his blank flank.

"A cutie mark," Holmes replied, "is a psychosomatic manifestation of a pony's need for a sense of identity, a purpose, a way to fit in. I neither need nor want one. I know who I am; I choose my own purposes as I please; and I would be mortified were I to 'fit in'."

I felt embarrassed for my friend at this narcissistic and anti-social profession. But it impressed Trixie greatly. Her eyes widened and shone with admiration, in that way mares' eyes sometimes do, which Holmes ordinarily finds repulsive. But it seemed, as they continued speaking, that Trixie was impressed by the right things, and not impressed by the wrong things, and this made it tolerable. They were unconsciously navigating together some maze of rules which made no sense to me. I suddenly thought that this must be how ordinary romance appeared to Holmes.

At one point Holmes pretended to notice the wooden balls for the first time. "What interesting toys you have. May I?" Without waiting for a reply, he bent over and picked one up in his mouth.

Trixie nearly jumped. "No, you may not!" She seized the ball in a blue magical field as soon as Holmes dropped it with feigned repentance on the bed, and likewise yanked a washcloth from a rack inside the bathroom. She fussed over the little ball as though it were a living thing, wiping off Holmes' spit gently, inspecting it with wide, concerned eyes as she did. It was the only sign I had yet seen that Trixie had any capacity for affection. Holmes was not impressed by this display; I saw his eyes darken.

The chatty sociability had evaporated. Nopony said anything for a while. Trixie threw the ball up in the air, and when it fell back down, instead of catching it, her horn pulsed, and it appeared again at the top of its arc, but without having slowed down, and fell again. She did this repeatedly, scarcely looking at it, as somepony else would absent-mindedly tap their hooves. The ball sped up alarmingly, until it was just a blur. I wondered how many floors beneath us it would smash through were she to miss.

"I didn't see that trick tonight," Holmes remarked.

"It is an exercise," Trixie said. "Not that the Great and Powerful Trixie needs simple exercises! She finds it soothing. It is how young unicorns first learn teleportation. Even the very young can bring the ball back to where it fell from, because the ball remembers where it has been."

"Hold on a moment," Holmes said. "Do you mean that it is easier to teleport something back to a place it has recently been?"

Trixie nodded.

"Of course!" Holmes exclaimed to himself. He spoke sharply enough that I feared Trixie would drop the ball and let it wreak its devastation on the unfortunate ponies below. She brought it gradually to a stop and replaced it on top of its stack, eyeing Holmes warily. Holmes chose that moment to tactlessly bring up the question of how much the Starry Night would fetch on the black market, and whether one, in possession of the painting and in no immediate financial need, might not be tempted to simply keep it.

"Trixie has no interest in paintings or bits," she sniffed.

"And yet, we are here," Holmes said. "So Trixie is interested in something."

Trixie fixed him with a reproving eye, as if he had uttered something unforgivably stupid. Holmes then asked about her family, which softened her a little, until she realized that he was trying to quantify their respective magical power in order to estimate its heritability. But before she could work up any degree of indignation, she was drawn into a technical discussion of the different types of magical power, the merits of different ways of measuring them, and whether they were interconvertible according to some underlying conservation principle. Their voices rose in their excitement, and all appeared to be forgiven by both parties.

"Returning to the subject of genes," Holmes said. "If we accept for a moment the unified power measurements of Maxwell, one can show that magical power is a multiple-locus trait involving at least three dozen different major loci in linkage disequilibrium with each other." He leaned slightly toward Trixie. "You must have a truly remarkable allele distribution."

I cringed, and began to suspect that Holmes was deliberately seeking ways to mortify me on his behalf. But instead of flinging a cup of boiling tea at him, Trixie positively blushed. They both seemed to be enjoying their discussion immensely. For my part, I found the topic entirely unsuitable for mixed company, and wondered at times whether the most decent thing to do in my apparent role as chaperone might not be to throw them physically together in order to stop them talking about Trixie's genes.

I had by this time given up attempting to participate in the strange conversation, and just wanted it to be done with. I am afraid that, on top of contributing nothing to the discussion besides occasional indignant looks and interjections of "Holmes!", I began to yawn.

"Poor Dr. Watson," Trixie said in a voice of concern, although one not as convincing as when it had been her wooden ball that she was concerned for. "He needs his rest."

"Nonsense," I protested. "I wouldn't dream of dragging Holmes away from you on my account."

"Trixie did not suggest that you would." She looked at Holmes innocently.

Holmes raised one eyebrow in alarm, and said nothing, considering the matter. I wondered just how far he was willing to go in order to solve this case.

"Yes," he finally said. "Dr. Watson, forgive me for keeping you up. I have a few more questions for Miss Trixie. I will join you shortly."

But his pause had been too long for Trixie. A minute ago she had been threatening to dissolve into giggles like a schoolfilly; now he had aroused her ire. She turned away from us. "Go. Both of you, go. Trixie has no more time tonight for detectives. Trixie has a show tomorrow. And... an important meeting."

"Oh?" Holmes asked. "What sort of meetings does a famous showpony such as yourself attend?"

"A private meeting," she said, "with a pony. To have tea, and discuss paintings." Holmes raised the eyebrow again. "And possibly... flowers. He is something of an amateur botanist."

"Well, then," Holmes said, "we take our leave of you, Miss Trixie. Good luck with your botanist."

"Trixie thanks you," she replied. Then, more quietly, "She will need it."

9. The missing piece

As we trotted back to our hotel, I brought up the question of why Holmes had bothered with the smoke, rather than going immediately to Trixie's improvised dressing room. He explained that he had done so, but on seeing the large box that presumably contained the painting, realized he could not remove that without a more thorough distraction.

"Why did you not go to the police, or to the museum guards?" I asked. He merely shrugged.

"I fail to understand you, Holmes," I went on. "One minute you wish to spare Trixie from the police, the next you want me to hit her on the head. I could almost imagine you were suffering some emotional conflict concerning her."

He scowled irritably. "What I am suffering from, Watson, is a friend with an overactive imagination."

"You did say she was a beautiful mare," I pointed out.

"Merely a statement of fact pertinent to the discussion."

"I believe you also called her a fox."

"A common hunting analogy! Really, Watson, I expect better from you."

We came to Chew Street, and down it to our left, I could see the stone stairway up to the local police station illuminated by the yellow light of four tall gas lamps. "Surely," I said, "you should at least inform the local police of your suspicions, and have them stake out the hotel where Trixie is staying, to see where she is keeping that box and where she takes it."

Holmes whinnied in amusement as he continued across the street. "If you imagine that Fillydelphia's Finest can tail a mare who can mesmerize her observers and vanish into thin air, your estimation of them is high indeed. No, Watson, only logic can lead us to the box, using the clues Trixie has once again kindly left for us."

"Clues?"

"First," he said, "she has a show tomorrow evening, in Pranceton, at eight o'clock."

"How on earth did you deduce that!" I cried.

Holmes gave me an exasperated look. "It was written on the flyers she gave out at today's performance. Second. To travel from here to Pranceton on hoof takes over a day; she will therefore take the train. Third, she has a meeting tomorrow, with some potential buyer of the painting; as business meetings rarely take place after nine in the evening – though one can never be sure with showponies or black market collectors – it must take place before the show, somewhere between here and Pranceton, accessible by rail. Fourth, she specified tea, but not breakfast or lunch. Fifth, it will possibly involve flowers. I have dabbled some in botany myself, Watson, and I think it is likely that her tea with this amateur botanist will take place in the Royal Botanical Gardens, which are the third stop on the line to Pranceton. This must occur within a narrow window of time determined by her show time and by the train schedule. We shall check the schedule and arrive before her. Also, it may interest you to know that I have deduced the method by which she performed the theft."

"Is that what that 'of course' was about?"

"Indeed. Did you observe the wooden balls in her hotel suite?"

"Of course I did. She did her teleportation-juggling trick with one. I assume they were props for the show."

"In other words, you did not observe them. They were far too humble for Trixie to admit them to her show. Everything she used was of polished brass, or ebony, or some such ostentatious material. These were for practice. The most basic practice for a magician, the equivalent of playing scales for a musician, is juggling by levitation, to practice switching magical focus rapidly between many objects. Those balls say much about her."

"All they say to me is that she is a magician, which I already knew."

"Think, Watson! She was here for two nights only, yet she troubled to bring her practice balls. Most ponies would leave them at home and think nothing of missing a few days of a boring exercise while on the road. That she brought them shows she enforces a rigorous practice routine on herself, and allows no exceptions. Additionally, the balls were worn smooth. Have you any idea how long it takes to wear down wood that way by levitation alone?"

"None whatsoever," I admitted.

"Years, Watson. Many years. She must have had those balls as a filly."

I imagined the Great and Powerful Trixie returning to her empty room after the dismal performance we had just seen, and after many others like it, to sit alone and stare at those simple wooden balls, faithfully cycling them through their prescribed orbits.

"The missing puzzle piece was Trixie's observation that it is easier to teleport an object to a location it has recently been. Combine that, Watson, with the principle that two objects are magically interchangeable to the degree that they are similar. They are both consequences of the same underlying principle, that magic requires energy proportional to the change it imposes on the world. In the case of the former, this change is limited to a short span of time; in the latter, to the details by which items differ."

I confessed that these two pieces of information did not immediately interlock in my mind.

"I shall explain tomorrow. Get a good night's sleep, Watson; we must rise early."

I did not get a good night's sleep. I kept harking back to our conversation with Trixie. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that Holmes had been deliberately trying to offend her with blunt statements, that it charmed him when she did not take offense, and that every time this happened, it made him more determined to drive her away. This puzzle, not thoughts of paintings or pistols, kept me awake much of that night.

10. An unusually-destructive tea-party

In the morning, we left just after sunrise for the train station, where we purchased round-trip tickets all the way to Manehattan. This would allow us to travel the line freely wherever Trixie or her mysterious botanist led us. There were suitable stops at the gardens at a quarter to nine and ten-thirty, and Trixie would have to leave by the noon train in order to arrive on time for her show. We took the earlier of the two trains. As he had promised, Holmes explained his "ah-ha" moment to me as we rolled through the countryside north of Fillydelphia.

"Consider the problem, Watson. There is an original painting within the gallery, and a forgery without. Trixie desires to get the original out and replace it with the forgery. She could attempt to swap the paintings, but then the magical connection that must be created between the two items is too large to maintain through the drag field. She could attempt to teleport them directly one at a time, but then the energy requirement to pull them through the drag field is too great."

"A seemingly impossible dilemma," I commented.

He smiled, and continued. "Now, add to this the knowledge that it is easier to teleport an item back to a location it has recently been in. I would wager, in fact, Watson, that it might not only require very little energy, but might release an amount of magical energy in some way equivalent to the mechanical energy that was required to move it from its starting point. The idea presents an intriguing approach for an investigation into the possible conservation of all energy, magical and mundane."

"Never mind all that," I said. "What about the painting?"

Holmes tsk-tsked and shook his head sadly. "The problem with physicians is that you always think concretely, never abstractly. Very well; I will state it physician-style for you: You have a painting on the inside, and a painting on the outside. Magic, if we may anthropomorphize it, regards these paintings as nearly equivalent to each other, wherever they may be at the moment. Also, it takes almost no energy to teleport a painting back to a point where it recently was. Now, you saw a painting – presumably the forgery – carried into the museum, and we must end up with the original teleported out of the museum. What steps must come in-between these events?"

"Well," I said, picturing it in my mind, "the forgery is carried into the museum. It could be recalled to the outside of the museum, because that can be done without the larger – what, magical cross-section – and because it was recently outside the museum. But if magic 'sees' the two paintings as interchangeable, that means the original can now also be teleported to the outside equally easily."

"Precisely!" Holmes cried, slapping my side with a hoof. "There's hope for you yet, Watson! By bringing the forgery into the museum, our Mr. F. himself made it possible for Trixie to teleport the original out!"

I could not share his enthusiasm, because I had nearly convinced myself that Holmes had let his resentment of magical crime carry him away, and that Trixie was innocent. Even were she guilty, I believe I would rather have remained deceived and let her escape with the painting, than see Holmes develop this mania further. Apart from that, I wanted her to remain innocent. For that was how I thought of her, disagreeable and world-weary though she was. Her focus and dedication were, in their own way, as pure as any maiden's virtue. She had been cursed with a gift that she did not know how to express. Her repeated failures to do so had twisted her, but never shattered her faith in the importance of doing so, as an extended stay in the royal dungeons would.

The Royal Botanical Gardens are vast, and asking to meet somepony there would be only slightly more specific than asking them to meet you in downtown Canterlot. There are separate gardens for different types of trees and shrubs, garden styles of various nationalities, different habitats (woodland or field, acidic or alkaline soil, marsh, and pond), and flowers organized by taxonomic family, color, season of blooming, and native origin. There are even sections for agricultural crops. It was early autumn, so the flower gardens were largely bare, and there were not so many visitors as I had seen there on my one previous visit.
[Based on the Royal Botanical Gardens in Ontario, + the National Arboretum in DC.]

I half-expected Holmes to produce a string of logical deductions narrowing in on the spot where the meeting would take place, based on, perhaps, the decorations on Trixie's hat. Instead, he found a secluded spot among a cluster of rhododendron bushes that were out of season, with a view of the entrance gate nearest the railway platform.

"But, Holmes," I said, "I can't make out faces from this distance. I hardly think we can rely on her to wear her pointy hat."

"Fear not, Watson. I have a collapsible telescope in my bags. She may anticipate observation, but magicians never think of technology."

As Trixie would almost certainly arrive on the ten-thirty train, if at all, and we did not want to attract attention, we roamed the gardens for an hour like honest tourists. I was drawn to the massive grove of crapemyrtles densely covered with bright pink flowers, but Holmes insisted on seeing the bonsai collection. He made a little speech, which I did not fully understand, about finding the lower limits of detail at which aesthetics were still possible. He also mentioned ink-wash paintings and haiku. I gathered that he wanted to make beauty and art more efficient and controllable, which I felt was missing the point. But I admired his ability to lose himself in botanical observation and the theory of art, as though we were not preparing to spy on a dangerous criminal in under an hour. If there were nothing to be done about it until then, his disciplined mind would turn its attention to other matters, and that was that.

Some five minutes before the next train, we returned to our observation post and Holmes retrieved and extended his telescope. He need not have brought it; Trixie stepped off the train with the gigantic rectangular wooden box trailing behind her. She checked her other luggage at the station, and then took a roundabout tour of the gardens, following a circuit through the most-populated areas, always with that enormous box bobbing behind her like an overgrown pet.

"Perhaps she forgot to arrange a meeting spot?" I suggested.

"A mare whose profession requires the utmost attention to details others cannot even perceive? Preposterous!" Holmes said, though he did not offer any alternative explanation.

Eventually she settled in a remote spot in the middle of a few weeping willow trees, given some privacy by the drooping branches – though not enough to defend her from Holmes' telescope. She leaned the box up against a tree. Then she opened her small saddlebag and laid out a thin blanket – I could tell it was something delicate, like silk, by the way it drifted to the ground – and weighed down its corners with some of the many fallen branches lying about. She set up a tea service in the center of the blanket – three cups, not two – and waited, with a hopeful smile. It was by this time a quarter to eleven, and the sun was high in the sky.

"Should we seize the painting now, Holmes?" I asked quietly.

"If you are prepared to shoot her from behind first," Holmes said. I believe he was joking. "Otherwise, I do not recommend the attempt. We will have more luck wresting it from her customer. He is likely to be a tall, thin stallion. The third place setting, I deduce, is for an appraiser, to verify the painting's authenticity."

The night before, I had been irritated at my companion, both for contemplating taking advantage of Trixie's infatuation, and for his reluctance to do so. I may have been suffering some conflicting emotions myself. I was still a trifle miffed, so I determined for once not to immediately gratify Holmes by asking him to explain his deduction, but to wait and force him to explain himself if he wanted my admiration. As the minutes dragged on, however, I saw he would not.

"All right, Holmes," I finally said. "You win. Why a tall, thin stallion?"

"Have you been puzzling over that all this time? That is the type of pony she inspected most carefully during her circuit of the gardens."

We waited, and Trixie waited. Her smile faded as the hour passed and the sun rose toward noon. Her mysterious botanist, or botanists, had little time left to make their appearance. She began to pace back and forth irritably.

"I am going to be especially cross at our botanist if his tardiness causes us to lose our quarry!" Holmes whispered.

It was nearly noon, and I saw the smoke of the approaching train in the distance. Trixie rose and began thrusting teacups and blanket back into her bag. Then she stopped, lowered her horn until it touched the grass, and pawed the earth like an angry apple-bucker from Appaloosa. She looked around the little clearing, and called out something three times – a name, I think; I could not make it out from this distance – first questioningly, then angrily, then with a pleading look. Then she took the cups and blanket back out gently, set up everything just as before, and sat back down under the noonday sun looking very dejected. We heard the whistle for final boarding, and the train departed.

"Incredible," Holmes said. "This meeting must be very important indeed."

But apparently it was not important to our botanist, for another hour came and went, as Holmes and I took turns viewing through the telescope, with nothing to observe other than the careful folds in Trixie's mane coming slowly undone as she sweated under the mid-day sun. I was taking my turn when she suddenly leapt to her feet, kicked the tea-set off of the blanket, and viciously trampled kettle and cups into fragments.

"Holmes!" I said, bumping him with my shoulder.

Holmes grabbed the telescope, took one look, and immediately opened his saddlebag and took out, to my astonishment, my revolver, which he began strapping to his pastern. "I am sorry, Watson," he said, "but I could not rely on you to use it."

Then the big box went down – Trixie had knocked it over with one kick of her rear legs – and Holmes raised the revolver. I lunged forward, bit his foreleg, and clung to it, dragging it down. Holmes screamed in pain and kicked me in the face with his other foreleg. I let go and fell to the earth. A deafening shot exploded above my head.

I staggered to my feet and looked in horror out into the field, expecting to see Trixie lying bleeding on the grass. She would have been, if Holmes had aimed at her – he is an excellent mark, even at that distance and with a strange pistol. I saw no sign of her, but I thought I heard her galloping away over the ringing in my ears. I picked up the small telescope and trained it on the base of the willow tree. Fragments of wood lay where Trixie had shattered the box into pieces and ground them into the grass while I struggled with Holmes.

We turned to face each other, both snorting. I felt a trickle of blood run down my nose, and pawed the ground. I glared at him in disgust, and in challenge. For once in his life, he looked away in shame.

"I... I only meant to scare her off, Watson. Don't look at me like that."

I held out my foreleg. He sighed, and handed me my revolver. I checked that the chamber had not advanced past the still-smoking empty shell, then deposited it in my saddlebag and hurried out to survey the devastation.

Light-colored scraps littered the grass. I rushed forward in horror, then pulled up short. On close inspection, what I'd taken for shreds of canvas turned out to be nothing but bits of plywood mingled with shards of glass plate and a few trampled hollow brass rods. I poked them with my hooves, then looked up at Holmes in confusion as he finally arrived, limping where I'd bitten him, on the scene.

Holmes, too, seemed perplexed. He made a full circuit around the tree, scanning the ground carefully, stirring the debris up with one hoof. He snuffled at the shreds of tea leaves spilling out of a crushed tin. Then he sat down and began to laugh a sick, hacking laugh.

"Holmes!" I said. "Get hold of yourself! What is all this?"

"If I am not mistaken," he said, "it is the remnants of some prop for a magical performance."

"But, then, where is Luna's Starry Night?"

He looked up and grinned at me as if I had made a joke. "In the museum, where it has been since Trixie returned it to the curator."

"But... what about the forgery? The mesmerism?"

Holmes pointed a hoof at the small pile of tea leaves on the ground before him, already dwindling as the slight breeze carried bits away. I walked over and sniffed it.

"Lavender," I said in amazement.

He rose to his feet. "Sometimes the simplest explanation is best, Watson. I have fired a pistol at a mare whose only crime was wishing to have tea with me." He shook his head ruefully. "And to think that I risked harming a national treasure, for the sake of a mere painting."

"But it was impossible for her to retrieve the painting without a counterweight!"

"Impossible? I have said that when you have eliminated the impossible, the truth must be among what remains. But when you have eliminated the possible as well, you must expand your conception of what is possible. There was no counterweight. Just the sheer force of an indomitable and desperate will." He carefully folded up the silk blanket – the only thing that had survived Trixie's rampage – and packed it away in his bags. I never saw it again.

"Then why the charade? Why pretend to have stolen a painting? Why not simply invite you to tea?"

Holmes chuckled. "Because she knew it would not work. You know how I feel about attention from admiring mares, Watson. Other stallions pursue mares. I pursue criminals. To attract my interest, she had to pretend to be one."

He kicked the fragments of wood lying at his hooves. "What a mare, Watson. What a mare."

11. A real crime

We scarcely spoke on the journey back to Canterlot. We stopped only at the station telegraph office, where Holmes sent a cable informing Mr. F. that the case held no further interest for him and he was returning his retainer. When we arrived at our little flat on Baker Street, Holmes set the fire going in the sitting room stove and put on a pot of water, and then went straight for his violin. I sat in my usual chair and contemplated the events of our journey, while Holmes pranced about the sitting room drawing a cheerful tune from his violin, one more flowery than his usual baroque selections. I believe it was Mozart's Rondo in D major, which Holmes was adapting to the violin as he played. If I had not recognized it, I would have sworn it was composed for that instrument.

The notes he drew forth were bright and brilliant, and his eyes shone with the elemental happiness of a child, which is how I knew it was a lie. Whether the lie was for me or for himself, I could not then say.

"It isn't like you to give up on such an important case so easily," I told him.

Holmes lowered his bow for a moment. "I fail to see the importance of a painting not being stolen."

"You know perfectly well that is not what I am talking about," I said.

"Ah," he said with a chiding whinny, "you are ever the romantic, Watson. But I am not. It is enough for me that there is such a creature in the world." He smiled falsely, and resumed playing.

If Holmes has one chief vice, it is his obsession with justice. Not the justice of the courts, but he must balance the scales within his own mind. Those less-gifted ponies who drift through life in confusion and fall into crime by default, he regards as children, and shows an almost careless mercy. But to those whom he judges should know better, he is far less forgiving. His demands of them are in direct proportion to their intellect.

Holmes would make no rationalizing allowances for the showmare's behavior. I myself would not have called her blameless. I feared Holmes had already judged and condemned her, by standards no pony other than he himself could meet.

"Damn it, Holmes," I said, standing up, "there is no crime standing between you. Swallow your self-righteous pride for once and go to her. For Celestia's sake, go to her!"

But Holmes kept pretending to be absorbed in his fiddling. I studied his face for some trace of emotion, but what showed there bore witness more to the flickering of the gaslight than to anything underneath.

"It was the tea party for three," I said. "She set you a puzzle that you didn't solve."

That made him glance at me, which I took as a confession.

"You're ashamed to face her," I said, my voice rising with conviction. "Your damnable pride can't bear to admit that for once in your life, somepony overestimated you!"

I thought that would crack the varnish on his smile. But he only smiled more broadly. Then, to my amazement, he laughed—a short, barking laugh ending almost in a whine, which I would normally associate with bronchitis or an excess of phlegm. I sat back down and snorted in disgust.

I began going through the stack of mail that had piled up during our absence. I came across an envelope which had no return address, nor even our address, but merely said "To Mr. Fetlock Holmes". I recognized the large, ornate writing. It had not, I think, arrived via the hooves of the Canterlot Postal Service.

I sat staring at it long enough that Holmes noticed. He set down his violin, and came and sniffed at the letter.

"Ah," he said. "Lavender again."

He did not pick up the letter. Instead, he settled back onto one end of the divan, still holding his violin. He looked up at me and smiled. "Tell me, Watson, what do you think is in that letter?"

"I, I think—something private, I should imagine!" I stammered.

"Certainly. Were it not so, you would hardly be tapping your left rear hoof like a drum major beating out a tempo in your eagerness to find out."

I only then became aware of the sound, and that I was making it. I pressed that hoof firmly to the floor and bit my lip. Holmes raised an eyebrow, and I realized that of course he had seen that, too.

"Dammit, Holmes," I said, "Sometimes I wonder why I even bother speaking my thoughts out loud to you."

"Sometimes," he agreed amiably. "But tell me now: What do you deduce this letter contains? An invective? An apology? An invitation?"

"Well, she was quite angry last we saw her… and that was before you shot at her. But the letter is scented. Addressed most decorously. Not an invective, then." I studied Holmes' face to see how I was doing. He frowned disapprovingly. "The envelope is sized for writing paper, not an invitation… but I should hardly expect Trixie to apologize." The frown deepened.

"I don't know!" I burst out. "It's none of my business!"

His face brightened at last. "Precisely!"

"Ah," I said. Holmes just sat there, still smiling at me. He flicked his gaze to the letter.

"Ah! Of course," I said, and backed out of the room, into mine, shutting the door behind me. It occurred to me as I did so that Holmes might equally as well have taken the letter into his room, had he wanted privacy.

"Done!" I heard Holmes call out moments later. He could barely have had time to open the envelope. I threw my door open and rushed back into the sitting room, full of a sudden certainty that Holmes had outsmarted me again.

I perceived, first, that the letter was nowhere to be seen, and second, that Holmes, seated on the divan with his violin resting on his lap, was watching the fire behind the stove's smoky glass, which had flared up with a white light.

"Holmes!"

"You would have tried to stop me," he said, without looking away from the glass.

"Are you mad?" I cried. "Now you'll never know what it said!"

He paused and regarded me coolly. "If I inquire into the great, everlasting mysteries—the spark of life, the objectivity of good and evil—you accuse me of an unwise and ungovernable curiousity. But if one letter, whose import is limited to the brief lives of two ponies, promises a dash of sentiment, you cannot resist. You would reach into the fire and pull it out, even though it should burn us both."

He looked back to the stove. The bright but fading light of the burning letter made his shadow dance against the wall. "I will not. I know when something is better left alone."

I walked over to the stove and stood there, looking into the flames with him.

"Holmes," I said finally. "Sod all that. You're a rare bird, you know. You've been singing your own song two score years now. For once somepony else has called back. This mare may be your last chance at love."

"Do you think I don't know that?!" he cried.

The mask fell away from his face, and for the first and only time I saw his mouth twitch and his eyes bright with despair. He looked at me with such intent focus and lack of pretense, that I felt that it was the first time I had ever had his full attention—indeed, the first time I had been eye-to-eye with any real stallion in complete openness. It seemed indecent.

"To dilute her remarkable genes with those of an unmagical, tired old Earth pony, and rob the world of her magical lineage—now that would be a crime, Watson."

Then the mask slid back into place, and he raised his violin and resumed playing that music which he had no right to play so well. I slumped in my cushioned chair and stared into the fire, until the incessantly cheerful sound drove me out into the night to seek the refuge of the nearest pub.