Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets

by David Thomas Moore (ed)

  She was long past saving.

  Holmes swung the lantern against the wall. Tap. Creak. Tap. Creak.

  “She was alive. They heard her. We could have saved her, if someone had listened to them.”

  “And the night we stayed here? When we were kids? Oh, god.”

  They went to the upstairs bedroom and knocked down the wall. There were remains.

  It was a sickening moment. The tapping they heard as teenagers was a person trapped and dying; perhaps every ghostly haunting had been another victim, swinging the lantern for attention.

  “Watson. I think the house is full of such poor souls.”

  He was so logical. He knew he wasn’t hearing ghosts, so he dismissed the noise. He realised now that his so-called logical brain had meant death. It meant he did not investigate further, that he took no action.

  “If only I had listened. Then and now. These innocents could have been saved.”

  For once Watson had nothing to say.

  THEY FOUND BODIES going back a hundred years. Holmes couldn’t take responsibility for all of them, but as he stood beneath a peppertree, he did contemplate climbing up there and letting himself drop. Seeking oblivion that way.

  It wasn’t the first time the tree’s limbs had tempted him.

  IT SEEMED TRITE, but he understood the genius loci of the place now.

  The walls needed to be transparent, made of Perspex. The beautiful old beams apparent. The nail holes, the plane marks. The dark uneven stains where the sacrifices stood for long, long years.

  They should be seen.

  A Woman’s Place

  Emma Newman

  I met Emma standing on opposite stalls at BristolCon one year, while she was pursuing quite the most thorough, professional bid at self publishing I’ve had the pleasure of encountering. Fearless—and utterly committed to everything she does— Emma’s a delight to work with, and a delight at any rate. ‘A Woman’s Place’ tackles an old favourite of the Holmes canon— the unflappable, ever-present Mrs. Hudson—and asks: why exactly does she put up with so much of Holmes’s crap?

  MRS. HUDSON ARRANGED concentric circles, taking the sandwiches on the plate in care that none of the corners overlapped and that the gaps between them were even. She was more creative than people gave her credit for. Once the hot water was poured into the warmed teapot, she carried it all up the stairs into her tenant’s rooms.

  The latest potential client was there, sitting in the armchair always given to those under Sherlock’s scrutiny, with Dr Watson sitting to the left of the coffee table. The good doctor’s fingers were skipping over the virtual keyboard projected a couple of inches above her lap as the client spoke, but she paused long enough to give the landlady a grateful smile.

  Mrs. Hudson put the tray down and sneaked a peek at the stranger. She could smell cologne, too much of it, and noted the dandruff on the back of the man’s dark jumper. It was clustered just below his neck, but not on his shoulders. She imagined him trying to brush it off before putting his coat on. Poor chap.

  “I just... I didn’t know who to—”

  “Did your uncle give any reason why the police shouldn’t be contacted?”

  The man shook his head.

  “And I assume you haven’t sent in a request to the DotGov database team?”

  “Of course not, Mr. Holmes. That’s worse than contacting the police! They’d be sniffing around every byte of data long before any copper came to the door. I don’t want to go against my uncle’s wishes when he’s so ill. But I can’t help thinking something must be wrong, for him to beg me not to tell anyone.”

  Holmes had steepled his fingers beneath his chin and still not acknowledged Mrs. Hudson’s presence, even as she poured. If she moved slowly and kept within the usual behaviour of serving tea and plating up the sandwiches, she’d be able to listen in as long as she liked. If the conversation lasted past that—and it rarely did—she’d be able to catch up on their adventures through Dr Watson’s journal. She preferred to listen in herself, though, see the new clients when they arrived and which cases Sherlock chose to take on. She had a feeling, from the way Sherlock’s eyes had fixated on a spot a few centimetres to the right of the man’s shoulder, that he was going to pursue this one.

  “Your aunt has been missing for over two weeks?” At the client’s nod, he said, “Why come to me now? Why not last week?”

  The man shrugged. “I had hoped she was... I hoped she had left him. I thought I would hear from her any day, after she had time to settle in her new place. But... nothing.”

  Mrs. Hudson watched Sherlock’s eyes scan the man’s face and take in all the details that Watson, bless her, had undoubtedly missed. “Hoped? A difficult marriage?”

  “They’re... estranged. But still living together. Separate rooms and no common friends. They never went anywhere together— couldn’t even stand to be in the same room. Times are hard, Mr. Holmes; they couldn’t afford to pay the data amendment fee to the DotGov people if they divorced, let alone pay separate rents. Cost of living these days...” He shook his head. “I do what I can to help, but I don’t have a great deal myself.” He clasped his hands together. “I heard that there are some cases you take on without payment, just for the thrill of it, I suppose. I can offer you a little money, but—”

  Sherlock waved a hand, all his contempt of money encapsulated in the movement. “All I need is their address and for you to meet me there this evening at seven p.m.”

  “My uncle is very ill. He won’t take kindly to visitors.”

  “I have no interest in speaking to him,” Sherlock replied, hand drifting towards his teacup. “Leave the address on a piece of paper and I will meet you there.”

  “I could just ping you with the coordinates—”

  “Mr. Holmes doesn’t use a Chip,” Dr Watson said, passing over the note-block and pen.

  The man balanced the stack of paper on his knee precariously, adjusting his hold on the pen several times. Mrs. Hudson pitied the man, trying to remember how to write under the scrutiny of Sherlock Holmes.

  “Is that all, then?” He said it with such relief.

  Mrs. Hudson wrapped two of the sandwiches in a napkin, knowing what was coming. Sherlock stood, gave the man a curt nod and strode over to the window. “Seven p.m. exactly, Mr. Eddard.”

  “Yes, Mr. Holmes, thank you.”

  Mrs. Hudson smiled at him and led the way out, taking the man’s coat off the hook as she passed it. “I’m sure Mr. Holmes will be able to help you,” she said, not without pride. “By the time you go to bed tonight, all your worries will be over.” He shrugged his coat over his shoulders and Mrs. Hudson wished he had the wherewithal not to wear a black one, with a scalp like his. She held out the wrapped sandwiches. “Why don’t you take these with you to have on the way home? They’ll only go to waste otherwise.”

  Mrs. Hudson watched the man go down the steps into the street. He turned and smiled at her before joining the crowds trying to squeeze their way out of Baker Street in the rush hour crush. She locked the door and went back up to Sherlock’s apartment.

  “I will need five minutes at the most,” Sherlock was saying. “And then I’ll go on to the Albert Hall. You’re welcome to join me, Watson. I’ve heard very good things about the composer.”

  Watson shook her head, reaching for what was probably her third sandwich. Her cheeks dimpled as she smiled at Hudson. “I have a date, but I don’t have to be there until eight o’clock. Do I need to bring anything special with me?”

  Sherlock shook his head. “It’s the simplest of cases.”

  “And the other one?”

  Sherlock twisted, hands still behind his back. “Other one, Watson?”

  Her grin revealed a piece of ham caught between her two front teeth. “Oh, come on, Holmes. Even I notice some things. You haven’t been eating again. What slipper is caught between your teeth?”

  Sherlock frowned, disliking Watson’s favourite metaphor: that on a new case, he w
as like a puppy with a new slipper to chew. “Something important,” he muttered, turning away once more to look down on the people hurrying below. “Did you want something, Mrs. Hudson?”

  “Just collecting the plates and cups, Mr. Holmes.”

  “It’s to do with Moriarty, isn’t it?” Watson pressed.

  The cup Mrs. Hudson was holding nearly slipped off the saucer and made a loud clink as she recovered it. She looked up at Holmes, waiting for his reply, but he was scowling at the teacup. She had overstayed her welcome.

  She picked up the tray, trying to seem disinterested, but she lingered outside the door long enough to hear his reply.

  “It is, Watson. But not, perhaps, in the way you might imagine.”

  “Oh?”

  “Another time, my friend. There is still data to gather. But all will soon become clear.”

  MRS. HUDSON WAS back in Sherlock’s living room by ten the next morning, having spent the two hours since breakfast waiting for him and Watson to leave. The news of a lead to Moriarty had made her restless, and she had to be careful not to upset him. All of these other cases were just distractions. Moriarty was the prize, and she knew it just as well as he did.

  The cleaning bot took less than a minute to set up and activate. Its eight legs twitched in its calibration routine before it crawled over to the nearest book case and began sucking up the dust with its metal proboscis. She unplugged the armadillo-like carpet cleaner from its charger and set that off to work too.

  It left her free to read Watson’s journal. The doctor was an incredibly skilled woman, but not, thankfully, when it came to hiding her back-ups. Every time Mrs. Hudson pulled the tiny flash drive from the soil of the potted plant, she was grateful for the fact that Watson was old-fashioned enough to back up on a near-obsolete physical drive every day.

  Watson had no idea she knew the hiding place. She connected via her Chip, entering the password that hadn’t changed in over five years and had only taken three goes to guess correctly, and downloaded the latest journal entry. Five minutes later, she was sitting in her own living room as the bots worked in the room above, drinking tea and reading the private entry.

  Journal: May 6th, 2031 My date turned out to be a rake-thin publicist for some sort of media company (the name of which I have already forgotten). She was just as self-absorbed as Holmes, but without the intellect and, of course, as soon as she made the connection, it was the usual round of questions about him. That’s the last time I let Carrie organise a blind date for me. Honestly, I’m better off single.

  What happened before I got to the restaurant was far more interesting. I met Holmes outside the address as arranged, looking suit and very dapper in his I’m-going-to-a-concert greatcoat, and the nephew arrived a minute after me.

  “I need only three items— or lack thereof— to determine the whereabouts of your aunt,” Holmes said to Mr. Eddard. He used that deep voice that comes from the sure knowledge that he was soon to dazzle us with his superior intellect. He’s such a drama queen.

  Mr. Eddard asked us to be quiet; it was clear the uncle had no idea the nephew was letting us in. The poor man was on the top floor of the rickety town house, one of the low-rent properties supplied by the government to keep poor people away from their wealthy neighbourhoods. I could smell the cheap chest-rub that back-street doctors still prescribe off-grid. Indeed, we were still adjusting to the dim light when the most appalling coughing started upstairs. I fear the uncle has neo-tuberculosis and whispered to the nephew that he needed to make sure his vaccinations were up to date. I didn’t have the heart to tell him his uncle would likely die within the week. It was hard not to go up there and tend to him, but without clearance to enter on medical grounds—and the fact the uncle was obviously trying to keep his illness off-grid— there was nothing I could do that wouldn’t land a DotGov team in the property and me in a cell by the end of the night. He was too far gone to have any hope of recovery, but it was hard being unable to give him something to make his last days more comfortable.

  Holmes went straight into the living room/kitchen. We could hear the family next door through the paper-thin partition. There’d been no effort to make it look anything other than a once-pleasant house chopped into the smallest legally-permitted slices. I wondered if the uncle and aunt considered themselves lucky. I’ve tended to people south of the river in houses where there are ten to a room. NeoTB sweeps through those places so fast the DotGov teams barely get the children registered before they’re dead.

  Both Mr. Eddard and I watched Holmes scan the room and then go to the chipped photo frame in the corner. It was old enough to still need an ether cable connection to the communal network. I haven’t seen one plugged into a photo frame since I was a child.

  Holmes pointed, unable to bring himself to touch it, and said “Show me their wedding photos, Mr. Eddard.”

  Eddard didn’t move. “There aren’t any, Mr. Holmes. They married abroad, in secret.”

  Holmes looked at me then, with the sparkle in his eyes of one more piece falling into place. “Then show us all the photos of them together.”

  “There aren’t any. As I said, Mr. Holmes, they were estranged. My uncle deleted them all. There are a few of them with other people. Would you like to see those?”

  Holmes gave one of those grunts, conveying that the offer was superfluous to his needs but of interest nonetheless. Eddard cycled the photos, but they were so grainy, taken on obsolete equipment instead of the hi-res LensCams most of us are used to now. Holmes was attentive, but made no comment.

  “You said they sleep in separate rooms,” Holmes said once the sad display was over. “These places rarely have two bedrooms.”

  “My uncle made the attic space into her room.” Eddard’s eyes widened. “You won’t tell anyone, will you? It’s... not entirely legal.”

  “Show me her room.”

  “You can only get to it by a ladder from the upstairs landing.”

  “That’s of no concern to me,” Holmes said and waved a hand in my direction. “Nor Watson.”

  “We’ll have to be quieter up there,” Eddard said. “The ladder is right outside my uncle’s room.”

  We climbed the stairs and gave Eddard a moment to check in on his uncle, and then all three of us climbed the ladder. Eddard’s fears that his uncle would hear us were unfounded; the poor devil was seized by frequent coughing fits and was barely conscious between.

  The attic space was a tragic, dingy garret without a window and only a solitary light bulb hanging from the eaves to light it. There was a single chest of drawers, a canvas wardrobe with black mold creeping up the sides and a small bed covered with a faded comforter. The smell of damp wood and misery lowered my spirits immeasurably. Perhaps that was another reason why the date was disastrous. To go from that place to a restaurant where a starter costs more than Eddard’s family live off per week made me feel wretched.

  Holmes went straight to the top drawer and opened it. Eddard stood back in shocked silence at his effrontery but, like most clients, didn’t dare say a word. Holmes rummaged, nodded to himself and then looked in the drawer below. After a swift inspection of the contents and then those of the wardrobe—a few dresses still hung in there—he turned and clasped his hands behind his back.

  “Mr. Eddard, your aunt has not disappeared. She never existed in the first place.”

  Eddard looked as shocked as I must have. “But I used to see her every week! Are you saying I’m mad?”

  “Not at all. I’m saying you have been duped into believing your uncle married a woman before you were born and lived with her in this house. But the woman he married abroad never returned with him. I’m willing to stake my professional reputation on the supposition that if one were to delve into the license details held by DotGov, one would discover they married in a county with less rigorous requirements than our own—and that all her records would have been established by proxy, rather than in person. You are in your early thirties. Thirty years
ago, the DotGov teams as we know them didn’t exist.”

  Eddard opened and closed his mouth several times, like a goldfish spilt from its tank.

  “But who did Mr. Eddard see every week?” I asked on his behalf. “I doubt the uncle could afford an actress. And why keep up the pretence anyway?”

  “There was no need for an actress, Watson,” Holmes said. “The uncle played the role of the aunt himself.”

  “Now this is just too much!” Eddard blurted.

  “As for why he should keep up the pretence, I imagine it was a simple need to have two DotGov living allowances subsidising the household rather than one. And married couples get preferential treatment on housing lists.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Holmes opened the top drawer and pulled out a handful of padded breast forms, stitched crudely into shape, and dropped them onto the bed. Then he dumped a pile of corsets on top. When Eddard remained silent, Holmes pulled out what looked like a box of tissues, only to reveal a hidden compartment inside filled with heavy-duty make up. “I assume your aunt was always immaculately presented?”

  Eddard nodded dumbly.

  “I would be unsurprised to find wigs under the bed. Of course, no one has ever slept up here.” He pulled back the comforter with a dramatic flourish, revealing a pillow resting atop a rectangle of foam propped up on several piles of bricks, collectively masquerading as a bed. “Your uncle has been too ill to reprise his role for your weekly visits. NeoTB has a rapid onset and decline. He didn’t have time to craft a story for your benefit.”

  “But... surely... why didn’t I notice?”

  “You loved your aunt, didn’t you?” I asked him. “And your uncle was the one who made her miserable. I doubt you even looked at him that often. Am I right?”

  He nodded, a singletear breaking free. “I’m such an idiot.”

  “People notice very little,” Holmes said. “And they too easily believe that which they wish to. Now, if you’ll excuse us, Mr. Eddard, Watson and I have other engagements this evening. May I bid you goodnight?”