by Cavan Scott
I washed and changed into my bedclothes and dressing gown to find that my apparel from the day had been dutifully whisked away, although the stink of the fire lingered in the bedroom. Then it was Holmes’s turn to freshen himself, although by the look of the man it would take more than a long soak in the tub. I wished I could march him straight back to the hospital, but considering everything that had happened I could scarcely be assured of his safety, even within the previously trusted walls of Charing Cross.
My head was still spinning with what he had suggested: that Mycroft himself was somehow involved in a conspiracy to stop our investigation. Just what had we stumbled upon?
My body ached for my bed, but I knew my mind would gain no rest until we had discussed the recent occurrences. Who had started the fire, and, worst of all, had they been aware that we were inside the building?
Such questions faded when I found my wife in the kitchen. For a moment, I considered leaving her to her grief, but immediately I scolded myself. What kind of man and husband would I be then?
“My dear,” I said, as softly as possible, stepping forward. She started, pushing back her chair to rise quickly, trying to hide her tears from me even as she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.
“There you are,” she sniffed. “Feeling more human, I hope? I shall fetch you a drink.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind.” I would hardly insult her intelligence by asking what was wrong. “We’re quite all right, you know, a little singed around the edges, but other than that—”
“It’s not funny, John.” She pulled away, her back to me. “None of this is funny. You could have been killed tonight.”
“But we weren’t. We—”
“Escaped?” Now she turned towards me, but the sorrow was gone from her face, to be replaced by anger. “Yes, this time. But what about tomorrow, or the day after that?”
“You don’t understand. After the day I’ve had—”
“After the day you’ve had? Do you have any idea about the day I’ve had, John? Yesterday, you were delivered to our door by a policeman, with your arm in a sling and suspected concussion. Today, I awake to find you’ve gone, sneaking out to heaven knows where before dawn.”
“It was hardly before dawn, and I went to the surgery, that’s all.”
“How was I supposed to know? How am I supposed to know anything any more? I’m your wife, John, but how many more days will it be until I become your widow?”
“There’s no need for that kind of talk.”
“Isn’t there? Yesterday, it was a knock on the head. Today it was near immolation. What will it be tomorrow? A knife in the back? I tell you, he won’t rest until he sees me put you in the ground!”
“Who won’t?”
“Who do you think?”
I had never witnessed such ire from my wife, and, while I knew that she had every right to be aggrieved, I was not about to be addressed in such a manner, not in my own home.
“Now, that’s enough. None of this is Holmes’s fault. I am your husband and—”
“Then start acting like one!” she cried, cutting me off. “None of this is Holmes’s fault? Now I know that knock on the head did some damage. Did any of this happen before you invited him to stay? Did we have policemen at the door morning, noon and night? Don’t you dare suggest otherwise, John Watson. That man up there will get you killed!”
“And what am I supposed to do, eh? Turn him out on the streets? Forget any of this happened?”
“He has a home to go to, doesn’t he? A life of his own that’s far enough away that it won’t turn yours upside down. This isn’t one of your silly little stories, John. This is real life. Our life, not some childish fantasy.”
Now she had gone too far. “Childish fantasy? They were real. You know that; all of them. They happened to me. To us. They’re part of who I am.”
“Who you were, John. They’re in the past now, or so they should be.”
I snorted with derision. “I didn’t see you complaining when my ‘silly little stories’ paid for this house!”
“A house for us to grow old in together,” she replied, “not for me to live in alone, grieving for you for the rest of my days.”
“Then perhaps you should leave!”
I don’t know who was more stunned by my words, my wife or I. She stood there, staring at me in disbelief. If my aim had been to shock her into silence, there was no doubt it had worked, although the words had tumbled from my mouth with little in the way of thought.
No, that wasn’t right. They hadn’t tumbled. I had spat them, like bullets from a gun, and I had no way of putting them back in the chamber.
She straightened, trying to retain her dignity, her lip trembling with both fury and sorrow. “Perhaps that would be the best, until things settle down,” she admitted. “I can go to my sister’s.”
I took an appeasing step forward. “I didn’t—”
She backed away, brushing an imaginary crease from her dress. “Millie’s been asking me to visit for months now,” she continued. “But I’ve been too busy. I can leave in the morning. Maybe stay for a week or two.”
She granted me no opportunity to argue. I had done enough of that already. Instead, she swept around me, head held high, and disappeared out of the kitchen.
“I’m going to bed,” was all she said as she climbed the stairs.
I stood in the kitchen, uncertain what to do. Should I go after her, attempt to dissuade her? I doubted it would do any good. She was a strong-willed woman. It was one of the reasons I had been attracted to her in the first place. Once her mind was made up, she stuck to her guns, come what may. Besides, and this was what truly twisted the knife, part of me was glad she wouldn’t be around. Oh, I told myself it was because she would be safe, miles away from whatever was happening here, but that was another lie, to myself this time. I knew I wanted to see this through to the bitter end, and had no need of the distraction of quarrels at home. I hated myself for admitting it, but it was true nonetheless.
How selfish had I become?
There was a sound from the drawing room. The creak of a chair. I walked down the hallway to find Holmes sitting in the armchair in his dressing gown, a book on his lap. He looked better, if still dreadfully pale, glancing up at me as I entered the room.
“You heard?” I asked.
“It was difficult not to, I am afraid.”
I eased myself into the other armchair, my shoulder still throbbing. Holmes closed the book. “I shall leave in the morning.”
“Holmes, we’ve already gone through this.”
“I am sure the Goring can find a room for me.”
“There is honestly no need.”
“Watson, if it is a choice between me and your wife, there is nothing more to discuss. I am only sorry that my involving you in this case has led to such hostilities at home.”
“You didn’t involve me. Tovey did. Besides, the one thing no one seems to be taking into account here is that I may want to find out what’s happening.” Glancing at the door, I lowered my voice and leant towards Holmes. “The last couple of days have seen me attacked, threatened and nearly burnt alive. I need to see this through to the end, Holmes. Besides, those men from the surgery, Burns and Hartley; if we don’t get to the bottom of this, how do I know they won’t crawl out of the woodwork again? No, it’s better my wife goes to see her sister. At least she’ll be out of the firing line. It really is better this way.”
Holmes regarded me in silence. I could see from his eyes that my resolution had pleased him, but he spoke not another word about it. Instead, he steepled his fingers in the way I had seen him do so many times during our long friendship. “Then let us review the evidence.”
I shrugged. “What evidence do we have? I doubt Scotland Yard will let us get near that infernal hand again and everything in the hospital was scrubbed clean even before it went up in flames.”
Holmes tapped the side of his head. “Everything I need to know ab
out the hand is up here. No, we must turn our attention to our mystery collarbone.”
“The clavicle? But even that was taken—”
“By Burns and Hartley, yes, but you examined it, did you not? And would recognise a similar specimen?”
“Of course, if we could find such a thing.”
Holmes smiled thinly. “In that case, Watson, I believe we should look in your attic.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE ATTIC
My wife was not fond of going into the attic of our townhouse. It was no surprise. She was, after all, a woman who prided herself on the tidiness of our home.
“A place for everything and everything in its place,” she would say. It’s a principle that I myself have lived by my entire life, one of the many reasons that we were so well suited.
It is also why I found that the habits of my fellow lodger so rankled with me during my years at Baker Street. It wasn’t to say that the man was slovenly. Indeed, when it came to his appearance, Holmes was fastidious to the point of obsession. However, any man who would amuse himself by shooting bullets into the wall of our drawing room was obviously someone whose ideas about tidiness were at the raffish end of the spectrum.
I still wonder why I agreed to store Holmes’s archive when he finally moved out of 221B. Thankfully, my wife had been out on the day that wagon after wagon had trundled down Cheyne Walk, each fully laden. That evening, after everything had been crammed into its new home, she had paid a brief visit to the attic, but had quickly descended again, her face as pale as snow, vowing never to venture up into such “chaos” again.
Now, as I opened the attic door, I sympathised. The merest glance at the jumbled mess of crates and boxes was enough to send the sanest mind into panic. There had been no plan, no organisation. My friend had simply deposited his life’s work into the empty space and shut the door behind him.
“I thank you, Watson,” he had said that day fifteen years ago, as he opened the bottle of champagne that he had purchased to toast the end of an era. “I shall have little use for the archive in my new life, but I cannot bear the thought of it being discarded.”
I had suggested that he could donate both his library and the vast index to Scotland Yard. Needless to say, the proposal was met with considerable disdain.
And so, in the subsequent years, his collection of books, clippings and periodicals had mouldered, gathering dust. Now, as the musky stench of paper welcomed us, Holmes all but danced up the stairs, the sight of his once precious volumes a positive elixir.
“Excellent, Watson. Simply excellent.”
I tried to hush him, not wanting to upset my wife any more than I already had. Holmes seemed conveniently oblivious to my pleas.
“It is good to be among my things again, Watson, even after all this time. A man could lose himself up here.”
“Or break his neck,” I suggested, stepping over a pile of books only to narrowly avoid turning my ankle on a discarded phrenology bust.
“Watch that,” Holmes said, already rummaging through a tea chest. “It was a gift from dear Hollander.”
“If it means so much to you, then maybe you would like to keep it, or at least return the wretched thing to Bernard at the first opportunity.”
Holmes made no reply, but instead abandoned the chest to continue rummaging through other boxes. “Watson, I sincerely hope you have not been moving things around up here?”
“Perish the thought. Besides, I would have no idea where to start.”
“But they should be here, next to the obituary albums.”
“I promise you, I haven’t touched a thing. What are you looking for?”
Ignoring me, he went to work, pulling the tops off boxes and nine times out of ten not replacing them, having failed to find whatever he was looking for inside. All the time he muttered about my suspected interference in his filing “system”. I half decided to leave him with his books and boxes, but, while bed was calling me, my curiosity had been piqued by this sudden activity. What was he hoping to uncover?
“Aha,” he finally exclaimed, straddling a mahogany trunk to pluck a hefty-looking tome from a straining bookcase.
“What is it?”
“Butterworth’s Almanac of Medical Curiosities,” came the reply, as Holmes sat on the trunk and opened the book on his lap. “Have you not read it?”
“I can’t say I have. When was it published?”
“Oh, 1867 or thereabouts.”
“And you think it will help identify the bone?”
“Do you think I would go through all of this if it could not?”
“Stranger things have happened, Holmes.”
Perching on the edge of an overturned crate, I waited patiently for him to flick through the yellowed pages, pausing to peer at faded illustrations.
“No… no… no… no… no…” he said, dismissing one page after another.
“No luck then?”
Holmes’s face darkened, until he turned the last page and a sheet of paper fluttered down from where it had nestled between the endpaper and the back cover.
“There it is!” he exclaimed, throwing the almanac aside without a second thought.
“Careful, Holmes.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that old thing. Dreadful book, barely worth the pulp it’s printed on. No, this is what I was looking for.”
He snatched up the scrap of paper, poring over its text.
“Yes, this is more like it.”
“And do you intend to share exactly what it is?”
“It’s yours,” he replied. “Or at least it was, until I liberated it from one of your medical journals.”
“You did what?” I exclaimed, outraged.
“Come now, Watson. The crime took place some twenty years ago. Far too long to bear a grudge.”
“I’ve only just found out about it!”
“Are you going to sit there and split hairs all night, or shall I tell you what it says?”
“Perhaps I should have asked you to pack yourself off to the Goring when I had the chance. Go on then. Astound me.”
Holmes held the paper up so I could see a small illustration on the other side. Trying hard to ignore the jagged line where it had been ripped from one of my precious journals, I focused on the picture.
“Do you recognise anything?” Holmes asked.
“A scapula, but it has—”
“The same growth as our misplaced clavicle.”
“Not so much misplaced as misappropriated.”
“Whether it is in our possession or not, we now know what caused its mutation.”
He passed the paper over.
“Myositis ossificans progressiva,” I read.
“Quite literally ‘muscle turns progressively to bone’. If you read on you will discover that it is one of the rarest diseases in the world, afflicting just one in every two million, thank heavens.”
Read on I did, the horror of the condition becoming clear. According to the author, sufferers from the malady would in effect grow a second skeleton over the course of their life, extra bone sprouting from limbs, fusing them in place. Over time their joints would seize up, transforming them into living statues. The passage was short but chilling. I looked up at Holmes, barely able to imagine the torment the condition would bring.
“So the bone—” I began.
“Came from a victim of that dreadful condition,” concluded Holmes, “although how it ended up in that operating theatre I have no idea. But perhaps tomorrow, after a good night’s rest, we can throw ourselves on the mercy of your Harley Street colleagues. Surely someone in London must know more about the disease?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A MOST SINGULAR SKELETON
Rested, if not completely refreshed, we could be found the next morning up with the lark. My wife was courteous towards Holmes, although I received a reception so frosty that even an Eskimo would feel the chill.
It was a relief to make our exit into a thankfully dry mor
ning. My head clearer than it had been for days, I decided to drive, pleased to take the wheel once again. As soon as we were entrenched in Queen Anne Street, I started consulting my books, looking for an expert in the rare condition Holmes had uncovered. We were in luck, and before the hour was out, were sitting in the consulting room of Dr Gapton of Harley Place, the country’s leading authority on Myositis ossificans progressiva. He was a thin fellow, dressed smartly in a stiff collar and tie, with the look of a man who spends too long in the library and not enough in the sun. I must admit that seeing him did bring a shudder, as his pallid complexion awoke memories of the encounter with our unnatural assailant at Abberton Hospital.
I described the bone that had been taken, and Gapton nodded, inviting us into an adjacent room. It contained a library of medical tomes and, most strikingly, a full human skeleton, but one unlike any I had ever seen.
“This fellow suffered from M.O.P.,” Gapton said, stepping aside to let us take a closer look. “I treated him myself and when he died he left his body to medical science.”
The specimen was ghoulishly fascinating, and I had to remind myself to treat these human remains, like others, with the respect they deserved. The skeleton, hung in the traditional way, was twisted, its bone structure smothered in the same growths as we had seen on the clavicle. However, the mutation itself was more advanced. Where there should have been ribs, a gnarled armour plate was grafted to the contorted frame, while the jaw of the skull was similarly fused together. He must only have been able to take soup through a straw. Chewing would have been impossible.
