Today, while our Irish Soda Farls were baking, I asked the kids to illustrate the third chapter of our story,The Adventures of Sir Lóchrann Holmes: A Study in Emerald. They did three illustrations with permanent marker and watercolours, and a fourth with a plain black marker. Bea added highlighters to the final drawing. Tobes added oil pastels. The illustrations are below today’s plot summary.
Summary: A Study in Emerald, Chapter Three, The Blarneystone Mystery
Holmes asks McUaitson to read aloud the urgent message he received from the skateboard messenger. Police snake Tobias Gallagher has written to Holmes to report that a body has been found in an unihabited building known as Blarneyston Gardens, Lower Wolfe Tone Street. Notably, the deceased is not a grass snake, but a large, venomous python. As Pythons have not been seen in Ireland since the days of St. Patrick, this comes as quite a shock. To McUaitson’s surprise, Holmes takes his time deciding whether or not he should travel to the crime scene to help with the investigations. However, he is delighted when Holmes asks him to grab his hat and scarf and come along. Holmes carefully inspects the slither-ways outside of Blarneyston Gardens before entering in to meet with Gallagher, and his companion, Na’Sraide, and to view the crime scene. The coiling-room may be blood-spattered, but there is no evidence of a wound, not even a single fang mark, on the dreaded python. Holmes carefully inspects the victim and his belongings before allowing the python’s length to be removed. Just then, a female serpent’s wedding tail-ring drops to the floor, and all are astounded. Na’Straide then discovers a mysterious word, EIRIC, written in blood on a far-off wall. He thinks it is the beginning of a female’s name, and suspects that the murderer has written it there. Claiming that he is going to leave the case to the police-snakes, Holmes, nonetheless, asks for the name and address of the sergeant who discovered the body in the first place. And, before he makes his exit, he reveals the means of the murder: poisoning, by the venom of the African Puff Adder, to be precise. He also warns Na’Sraide away from searching for any sort of mysterious serpent murderess by revealing that the word on the wall is actually a lesser-employed Gaelic term for “Revenge.”
Illustrations
Bea:
The contents of the python’s pockets
Tobes:
The victim serpent
We also made some pretty cool Serpent Mobiles & Stick Puppets today.
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