Sherlock at Seventeen - The Blue Drum Theory

I loved murder mysteries and as a kid when others traded stickers, I traded suspects. I devoured every Nancy Drew case I could find and longed to join the adventures of The Famous Five. I was fascinated by how the brain worked, how the same set of facts could produce different conclusions in different minds. That curiosity made me inquisitive. That and the one undeniable gene I inherited from my mother: the reading gene.

Novels were technically banned from my schoolbag. Not because they were inappropriate but because I disappeared into them. I once missed my bus stop entirely, only resurfacing when the conductor shook me awake at the depot. I received a legendary earful that evening. But those were safer times, a time when the world was kinder. I miss that era. For a girl who lived and breathed mysteries, I always wished for a real one to solve. I just didn’t expect it to come wrapped in tragedy.

It was during my 12th board exams. Physics was still echoing in my brain—laws of motion, buoyancy, density, when the school van arrived with unsettling news. The grandson of a retired Physics teacher had died. We all knew the child. A tiny LKG boy who used to trail behind his mother a primary school teacher. His tiny fingers holding on to his mom with school bag in his shoulder. Five years old. All eyes and energy.

The initial version was that it was an accident. He had been playing with a ball and the fell into a blue water drum in the bathroom. When he tried to retrieve it, he fell and drowned. In those days, during peak summer, water came on alternate days. In our housing board apartments, almost every home had those blue 25–30 litres drums stationed in bathrooms. Before overhead tanks became common, this was survival.

It sounded possible. But it didn’t feel right.

My friend Nisha and I exchanged a look. No words needed. Sherlock and Watson had clocked in.

First question: How does a five-year-old reach into a drum nearly half his height? Did he drag a stool? No one mentioned a stool.

Second: If a ball falls into water, does it sink? We had just taken our Physics exam. Law of Buoyancy. A regular rubber ball would float. So why would he need to reach deep inside?

Third: If a child that small toppled into a water-filled drum, wouldn’t there be splashing? Noise? Panic? These were cramped apartments. Walls were so thin you could hear your neighbor sneeze. We joked that residents knew when the other person breathed. And yet, we were told the stepfather was asleep in the next room.

Asleep!!!! Through the sound of a drum overturning? Through a child’s panic?

We kept collecting fragments. The boy had been “unattended.” The stepfather was home. It was power-cut afternoon windows open, sounds carrying. Too many gaps.

Our conclusion formed quietly but firmly: this was no accident.

We went home bursting with righteous triumph. I presented our deductions to my mother, expecting applause. Perhaps even admiration. Instead, I received a scolding that burned hotter than the summer outside.

“If you used this much brain for your studies, I would be happy,” she said. And worse; she warned me never to malign someone’s character just because he was a stepfather. I was accused of imagination running wild. Nisha fled to her house. I retreated to my textbooks; slightly afraid I might lose dinner privileges if I continued my investigative journalism.

The mystery went silent. Until fifteen days later.

Exams were over. We were preparing for entrance coaching when the news broke like a thunder bolt. The police had arrested the stepfather. It wasn’t an accident. It was murder. The child had been a nominee in property matters.

So, my logic was right.

I ran home not in sorrow, not in horror but in exhilaration. I announced my “I told you so” with dramatic flair. I laid out the facts, the arrest, the motive. My mother was speechless.

Our neighbor, who happened to be visiting, stared at me and said, “Goodness. What a brain you have.”

Was I proud? Absolutely.

Looking back now, I realize something unsettling. At seventeen, I didn’t grieve the child ‘s death the way I should have. What thrilled me was not justice but validation. Proof that my reasoning wasn’t random guesswork. That I could see what others overlooked.

It was the first case I ever “solved.” And perhaps the most haunting.

Because real mysteries don’t end like the ones in books. There’s no neat final chapter. Just a quiet apartment, a blue drum and the uncomfortable knowledge that sometimes logic is right and that can be the most chilling part of all.