A Study in Sable

by Mercedes Lackey

  “And here are our new companions, Mary!” Watson exclaimed, and rubbed his hands together at the sight of the laden tea table. “I see you have provided us with a feast!” He directed the girls to a chocolate-colored settee on one side of the table and took his seat beside his wife on a mostly-matching settee on the other.

  “I expected that after their interview with Sherlock they’d be hungry as hounds,” said Mary Watson, gesturing that they should come help themselves as she poured out tea for all. She pointed to a spot where there were newspapers and four bowls waiting. “I spread newspapers on the carpet and put cups of water and saucers of chopped fruit on the floor there for your friends, if that will be all right?” she added, a little anxiously.

  “Oi’ druther ’ave yer eye, me ducks!” said Neville, and uttered a bloodcurdling laugh.

  “Neville!” Nan exclaimed in sudden anger at her feathered companion. But then she saw Mary was laughing uproariously, and sighed with relief.

  “Good heavens, he’s like a feathered Penny Dreadful!” Mary exclaimed, and to her unconcealed delight, Neville flapped over to the back of the settee behind Mary and misbehaved his little heart out, alternately demanding she “Give us a kiss!” with threats to her eyes, liver, kidneys, and lungs. When he had her laughing so hard she had to put her hand to her side and could scarcely catch her breath, he finally stopped his antics, flapping down to the floor and stalking over to the papers protecting the carpet, and joined Grey at the feast.

  Grey eyed him as he approached. “Show-off,” muttered Grey, diving back into the apples and grapes.

  “Jealous,” said Neville, doing the same.

  John settled next to his wife and handed her a handkerchief to wipe her eyes with as she finally caught her breath. “I don’t think I have laughed so hard since the last time we were at the theater and saw that wonderful Gilbert and Sullivan production,” she finally said, in a voice still rich with mirth. “How do you ever keep a straight face around that raven? Sugar?”

  “Two please,” Nan said, accepting cup and sugar lumps. “No milk, thank you. He usually is not that much of a cutup. I think he must have decided you were in need of a good laugh.” The tea set was the one thing in the room that really was of very high quality; Nan fancied it was probably one of the few things that remained from before Mary had lost her fortune. As a consequence, she resolved to be very careful with it.

  It felt distinctly unnerving to know as much as she did about Mary and John Watson, since technically she had never seen them before today.

  I wonder if this is how Holmes feels about his clients? I wonder if this is how his clients feel about him?

  “Well, I was very anxious that our mutual friend find you acceptable,” Mary replied, handing Sarah her tea (one lump, and milk). “I know we could have gone right on without his approval, but it would have put a strain on our friendship.”

  Watson snorted. “Meaning he would be dropping his acidic little asides every chance he thought one would irritate me. And the worst of it all would be my knowing he was doing it with the best of intentions, which makes it ruddy difficult to get angry with him. He thinks he is being tolerant of my ‘table tilting’ and doesn’t wish to hear anything that might persuade him that magic is real. Though I’ll give him this, he’s always happy to hear about the frauds we’ve exposed, and he never stints on praise when we’ve done so.”

  Nan looked from John to Mary and back again. “I’ll confess that I find myself in the peculiar position of thinking that I know a great deal about you, when in fact, I might not. It’s difficult to tell what in the fiction is based on fact,” she ventured.

  “Most of it,” Watson assured her. “If anything, Doyle and I have left out the greater part of what goes on around here. As for our friend downstairs, bless him, Holmes can charm birds out of a tree, but only when he needs to do so. The rest of the time—and particularly with his friends—he sees no need to trouble with common politeness at all.”

  “I actually sympathize with him, a bit,” Sarah put in, and grinned. “I’ve often wished I could get away with speaking my mind. Common politeness all too often covers thoughts that are anything but polite. There is a great deal of relief in being able to say out loud exactly what one is thinking.”

  Neville and Grey both laughed at that. Grey sounded just like Sarah when she laughed. Neville sounded like a pirate.

  “Young woman, you terrify me,” said Watson, helping himself to seedcake. “Common politeness is all that stands between us and anarchy. I shall next expect to discover you have been making bombs in your lumber room.”

  “No,” said Sarah with a twinkle. “In the linen closet.”

  • • •

  “When did you start taking the cases that your friend calls ‘twaddle’?” Nan asked, when tea had been disposed of, the birds had eaten anything that was left, and the tray had been left on a stand on the landing for Mrs. Hudson to take away.

  “A few months after I joined him on that initial case,” John replied. “Sherlock sent a frantic young man off in disgust. I intercepted him before he got too far down the street and offered to help him myself.”

  Nan could not help but get some of the thoughts of their two new friends, so she knew that the young man in question had deceived a girl below his station and left her “spoiled.” And she had been something of a Fire Magician, and determined to have revenge on him until he “did right by her.”

  And to his credit, when Watson untangled the mystery, he had seen to it that the young man did just that. Marriage was out of the question—not, in Watson’s mind, because the difference in class between them, but because the young man would inevitably betray her again and again, and the whole situation would turn into a tragedy. No, Watson saw to it that the blighter settled enough money on the girl that she could set herself up in a little cookshop. “Make a success of this,” Watson had told her, in the most kindly way he could, “And you shall have any man you choose. Good cooks are very much run after. Good cooks with an independent living are jewels, and an honest man knows that. And confine your magic to helping yourself in your work, if you please, or sterner men than I will come bring you to judgment.”

  That, in Nan’s estimation, was the best thing he could have done. Evidently the girl had gone and done exactly that, as no more was heard from her.

  “My parents and my native friends knew I was possessed of gifts when I was quite young, even before I really knew about them,” Sarah said. “Mama and Papa knew they weren’t Elemental Magic like theirs, but they knew I had something, and when M’dela told them what it was, they knew I needed to go where I could get better training than they could give me. When did you know you were magicians?”

  “Oh, I think I knew from the moment I could reason,” Mary said. “My earliest recollection is of playing with sylphs, or rather watching them in my crib as they played to amuse me. Mother and Father were also Air Magicians, so they quickly understood what was going on, realized I was a budding Air Master, and began training my magic as well as teaching me to speak and walk.”

  John chuckled. “You had an earlier start than I, my love. I knew I was an Elemental Magician from the time I was ten, when I began to see Water Elementals; my father, who passed the gift and Mastery on to me, made certain I got training immediately. Unfortunately, my elder brother did not share our gifts.” His face darkened. “I sometimes wonder if that was what led to his—later problems. We never could convince him that the gift is as much curse as blessing.”

  Nan felt very sorry for him, as she got a flash of the beloved older brother, so promising a student, losing his focus at university, taking to drink, then slowly losing himself to it.

  “It is very hard to persuade them otherwise,” Sarah said sadly. “Not without taking them on expeditions which they are ill-suited for, ill-armed for, and would prove hazardous in the extreme.”

  “W
e’ve done that, actually,” Nan added. “It proved to be so traumatizing that the friend in question distanced herself immediately, and we have not heard from her since.”

  John coughed. “Well, to get back to your question, I sorted out the first young fellow who was rejected myself, and that was my first case. It took less than two days to deal with him. The second was more of a puzzle. Sherlock was asked to investigate a haunting. Obviously he laughed in the poor man’s face and sent him away. I intercepted him and undertook to solve the situation, once I realized that the symptoms of the so-called ‘haunting’ more closely matched the powers of an Air Magician. I discovered the perpetrator was a street urchin taking revenge on the fellow for knocking him down into the street, practically under the wheels of a cab, then shouting at him for ‘being in the way’ and calling a constable on him.”

  “Served him right, if you ask me,” Mary said crossly. “I’d have done more than throw stones at his window and wake him, up, blow his casements open during a rainstorm and soak his furniture, or drop random trash down his chimney to put out his fires. I’ve no patience for a man who treats others as if they were less than the dirt in the street. Especially children.”

  John chuckled. “Well, it did become a bit of a Dickensian adventure. Before I banished his ‘ghost,’ I made sure he was suitably contrite for his hard-heartedness, and I got the lad to someone who was pleased to take him as an apprentice.” He glanced over at Mary. “I knew what Mary was the moment I met her, of course, just as she knew what I was.” He coughed. “I’m just grateful to Divine Providence for arranging things the way they came out. It isn’t often a man is blessed with the perfect partner in all things.”

  “Not all things, John,” Mary chided. “You could not persuade me to help you in the surgery for anything.”

  “Not even that new hat?” he teased.

  “Not even that,” she said firmly.

  “So what are you doing now, dearies?” asked Grey, causing all of them to stare at her. She gave an evil chuckle at their reactions.

  “Just latterly, I was responsible for putting the little sylph as a guardian on Holmes,” Mary replied first. “John wanted to, but it would have been useless to try, because he is Water.”

  “That’s odd, isn’t it?” Sarah asked, as Nan paid close attention to the give-and-take between the husband and wife, and was pleased to see that they were as close a couple as Memsa’b and Sahib Harton.

  “It is,” Mary acknowledged. “Physicians are usually Earth, but if he’d been Earth he likely would have found living in London to be intolerable.”

  “Not that living in London is easy for any Elemental Magician except Fire,” John pointed out. “But Earth Magicians have the worst time of it. And it would have been no good putting a Water Elemental on Holmes, he’s too far from water most of the time for one to have been of any use as a watchdog.”

  “Besides,” added Mary, “The poor thing would wear itself to a droplet, trying to keep up with him.”

  It was Neville’s turn now to remind the company that the birds were equal partners in all of this. “You need us, why?” he croaked.

  “Too many of the obviously occult cases are things Mary and I can do little about,” John explained, turning courteously to speak directly to the raven. “Real hauntings, psychical poltergeists, fraudulent mediums taking advantage of people—we finally asked Lord Alderscroft if he could recommend someone in London who could assist us, and he sent you, after consulting with Mycroft Holmes.”

  Nan furrowed her brow. “Why consult with Mycroft, when our business is with you and not his brother?”

  Mary and John looked at each other and laughed. “Have you ever tried to keep a secret from either Holmes?” John asked. “The moment you started associating with us in any way, he’d have begun investigating you. In fact, he would have taken it on as a priority, regardless of whatever else he was working on at the time.”

  “And that might have ended . . . unpleasantly,” Mary pointed out. “You two young ladies have had quite a number of adventures, and you are quite prepared to defend yourselves when you detect someone skulking about. And as for those servants of Memsa’b Harton . . . I am not sure even Holmes would be the equal in combat to three veterans of Indian regiments, much less when two of the three are a Gurkha and a Sikh.”

  “I wouldn’t discount Selim either,” Sarah said with a laugh. “Magically, he is the strongest of the three, and he does not hesitate to use his magic if he feels it is called for.”

  Nan thought that over a moment. “True, things could have gone badly,” she agreed. “Karamjit, Agansing, and Selim may not be as young as they once were, but I do not think even Sherlock Holmes’ formidable talents at singlestick, boxing, and Japanese fighting would help him if all three tackled him at once. And they would have; I do believe they miss the days when the Harton School was in London, and they got to run off ruffians on a daily basis. I think undergoing the trial-by-interview was the wisest approach.”

  “It was tempting to give him a comeuppance,” John admitted, with a slow smile. “When he graces me with that patronizing smile and pulls the curtain away to reveal his legerdemain, and says condescendingly that even though I know his methods, I still cannot apply them, I often wish I could give him a taste of his own medicine.”

  “He needs his moments of applause, dearest,” Mary pointed out. “The dear Lord knows he’s earned them, he often doesn’t get any other payment, and often can’t get any accolade at all from the people he’s helped. Never mind the cases he has lost, rather than won.”

  “True, and it’s only Christian charity to let him have accolades in abundance.” John nodded decisively. “He’s certainly earned that charity. He’d hate me to say it, but the fellow is damned selfless when it comes down to the way he handles anything that comes his way that interests him. For every King of Bohemia, there’s fifty people who can’t pay him a penny, and many an impoverished innocent he’s saved from prison or the gallows.”

  “Well, I have heard enough about Sherlock Holmes,” Nan said decidedly. “We are not here to help him, we are here to help you. Have you anything on the boil you’d like us to tend?”

  John filled his pipe, thinking for a moment. “Mycroft gave us to believe that you, Nan, are psychically receptive, and you, Sarah, are mediumistic. Is there anything more you can do?”

  “Grey is an Astral Guardian, as is Neville,” said Sarah. “Nan manifests on the astral plane as a Celtic warrior-woman, and she is able to read things about the past of objects by handling them. We both were permanently granted the ability to see Elementals by the Oldest Old One in England.”

  “The Prince of Earth?” Mary said in surprise. “The tricky fellow in Midsummer Night’s Dream?”

  “The very one,” Nan confirmed.

  The married couple looked at each other. “Number 10, Berkeley Square,” John said, and nodded as their guests’ eyes widened in recognition. “It’s claimed another life. It’s time to put a stop to this—thing—whatever it is.”

  “We’ve encountered it before,” Sarah murmured, “But we were children at the time . . .”

  “The place is ruinous, and I don’t know that there is even an owner now,” John told them. “It’s killed a sailor off the HMS Penelope. His sweetheart came to Holmes, who dismissed her, of course. Mary and I looked into the case. He definitely died after he and three shipmates took a dare to stay there overnight. The official verdict is ‘heart failure.’ The girl says he died of fright. Of the other three lads, two said they suddenly felt absolute terror and ran, the fourth looked back over his shoulder and swore he saw a ‘black spirit’ chasing them. Holmes dismisses it all as drunken hallucinations caused by tainted gin; he feels sorry for the girl, but after he went to the house and found no clues, he dismissed it as ‘twaddle.’ It is true they were drinking, but there’s more to it than that.”

 
“It’s very likely that being drunk opened them up to that thing, whatever it is,” Sarah replied thoughtfully. “And if the house is as ruinous as you say, that’s all the more reason to put the damned thing to rest. Anyone could break in. Children, even. It could even have claimed vagrants we know nothing about.”

  Mary sighed, with distinct overtones of relief. “I was hoping you would say that. Well, what do we do?”

  “We need a battle plan,” Nan said firmly, as Grey nodded and Neville quorked his agreement. “This is no ordinary haunt. Memsa’b was certain it was something that had been bound there. So the first thing we do—”

  “Is our research,” put in John Watson, putting down his pipe unlit and looking more than ready for the task.

  “Preeeee-cisely,” said Grey.

  2

  THIS was the first time that Nan and Sarah had been inside the Exeter Club. Mind, not even the patronage of Lord Alderscroft was going to get them into the sacred precincts of the “public” rooms, but he did arrange to smuggle the girls and Mary Watson up to the Hunting Lodge’s archive room on the top floor via the servants’ stairs. It was not the first time Nan and Sarah had made use of such a thing, and Nan was certain it would not be the last. Unlike the lushly carpeted, wide stairs used by the (exclusively male) members of the club, the servants’ stairs were narrow, just painted wood without any carpet, and the treads themselves were narrow, poorly lit, and drafty. Had any of the three women been wearing fashionable gowns, they’d likely have trodden on each other’s hems and probably killed each other in the subsequent tumble down the stairs. Fortunately Mary Watson was as fond of Ladies’ Rational Dress as Nan and Sarah were, so they all climbed to the archives without mishap. John Watson, bless him, declined Lord Alderscroft’s invitation to ascend via the “proper” stairs and came with them. Nan was glad he had, since if any of them did take a tumble, he was probably ready to catch them.