Holmes looked straight ahead. “I dislike ambiguities, Watson, yet older age means less certainty. As much as it pains me to say it, my opinion is an uncomfortable blend of distaste for murder and distaste for Cyrus Teed and his earthly endeavours of charming earnest widows out of their departed husbands’ fortunes to augment his own ever-increasing wealth and power at the expense of everything else, even as he preached austerity. I can better bear an honest burglar than a false messiah. Let us say that I do not entirely blame the girl, but I also do not condone the act, for murder is by nature repugnant in the extreme.”
“We are in agreement, then,” I answered. “Of all the murderers who have no doubt gone free, I mind her escape less than most.”
Holmes nodded. “You know what it means to kill, Watson. Even when the killing is justified by self-defence or military combat, the death of another human being weighs on the killer. Teed’s death will weigh on Lucy every single day, to the end.”
There was a time, I thought, when my friend would have responded in a more dogmatic way. However, while his body remained as strong as in his youth, time had refined his mind. He was, I thought with pride, now as wise as he was clever.
We arrived at the station in time for the day’s final train.
“Thank you, Watson,” said Holmes, as we boarded with our belongings.
“For what?” I asked, thinking ahead to our dinner and a bottle of wine.
“You know,” said Holmes, with the ghost of a smile.
I thought of cases, of words on walls and locked rooms and Norbury. Perhaps the association of years is too big to be spoken. I did know.
“Yes,” I answered, and we lapsed into the same companionable silence as ever, while the train roared to life.
OUR COMMON CORRESPONDENT
LYNDSAY FAYE
Entry in the diary of Inspector Geoffrey Lestrade
Sunday, 6 January 1889
I must have stared at this confounded page for half an hour. The wretched thing was still blank up to a moment ago. If I weren’t such a practical fellow, I’d have avowed it was laughing at me. The journal’s gutter, a spread of empty pages, the silent mocking of a pale paper mouth.
How can I be expected to write so much as a banking slip on January the sixth?
My tea’s gone cold. The snowstorm is playing hide-and-seek with the chimney ash and pounding at my windows like a plague of white locusts. It’ll be a foot if it’s an inch by morning, mark my words. Then turned to soot stew by the time I’ve trudged to the Yard. And me with my left ankle already kicking up a fuss. Not that I pay it any mind. If I start to limp, people take notice. Jonas takes notice – that tyke’s eyes are as sharp as his mind.
So I don’t limp, and that’s that.
Jonas. He’ll be back at school next week. Did my best to lend a bit of cheer to his winter holiday, oranges and firecrackers and the like. But it frets me to see how solitary a little chap he still is. Always cadging the cook for hot cider, then pestering Dad for another book. Joining Mum with her knitting and pulling out his sketches before the fire. Last night when I paid them a call after my shift he showed me a dragon he’d drawn, a whopping big brute roaring great plumes of flame. Of course I praised it, quick as winking. What kind of an uncle would I be if I hadn’t? I didn’t even have to lie. It was good, very good indeed.
“Jonas,” said I, “that’s just about the snarlingest dragon I ever did see.”
His sombre hazel eyes lit up. I smiled.
Never mind that the entire forest he’d sketched for background was blazing like Christmas trees, with a castle all in flames for good measure. Stick folk running with fire lapping at their heels – a thorough hellscape.
It isn’t fair.
Yes, it’s been a decade to this very dot. And yes, he’s twelve now. But he remembers what happened, for all that he was two and a half. He can’t snap his fingers and undo it any more than I can, for all my efforts.
Every morning it haunts me still. Sometimes it’ll fade, like newsprint hung up to patch a window. Marriages, assaults, deaths, and every sunrise more facts slowly vanishing. Details erased as the article gives up the ghost. Today, though, I’ve hardly focused on aught else. All those hours – weeks, months, bloody years – and for what? Blisters on my feet as a constable, needling my way into crime scenes. Finally hanging up the blue wool and the brass buttons, hearing folk call out “Detective” when I was wanted, the very same year she was lost for good, and so for what, in the end?
Stop this, Geoffrey.
To solve other people’s crimes, is for what. Giving them a bit of justice, a scrap of peace. Being a policeman is honest work – or at least, to you it is. So you’d like some of the same redress for yourself, some for Hannah and Jonas?
It’s times like these I wonder why I ever started a bloody journal in the first place.
No, I know why. It was my police reports. Always the sense when I’d finished writing one up of a case closed, like bringing down a curtain. No more of the nagging what-ifs or maybes or on-the-other-hands or perhapses. Puts a full stop to the sentence, lets me know I can rest. Tells me I’m finished.
I’m a fool. Ten years gone in a blink.
Ten years, and I’ll never be finished.
Entry in the diary of Inspector Geoffrey Lestrade
Monday, 7 January 1889
Just once – just once, for the love of Queen and country and heaven and all its saints – just once, I’d like for Mr. Sherlock Holmes to arrange an appointment with me.
Or send a wire.
Or call out a view halloo. So I can hide in the filing room.
Just once, instead of interrupting me when I’m deep in thought over a possible crime. And yes, I am capable of being very deep in thought indeed, thank you, Mr. Holmes.
Good Lord. It’s like I can hear him in my head sometimes, and I’d not wish that on the lowest rascal in St. Giles. That’s how much Mr. Holmes wormed his way under my skin this afternoon when I was busy cogitating over a fresh case.
The account itself was… well, the account was odd. It bears setting down in my personal journal, since there wasn’t nearly enough material to merit a police report. But something queer may well be afoot. I’ve been twelve years on the force now, I should be able to sniff out when the fish has turned.
I hadn’t any time to puzzle over it, though. Because Sherlock bloody Holmes arrived. My office door flew open with the throaty rasp it always gives as it scrapes the flooring.
“No, there’s absolutely no way round it,” the amateur announced. He removed his shining hat and flicked his muffler from his long neck in one frustratingly smooth motion. “What cannot be avoided ’twere childish weakness to lament or fear.”
“Afternoon, Mr. Holmes. Please take a—”
He sat before I’d finished inviting him to. Folding himself into the chair like some massive, though spindly, jack-in-the-box.
Sherlock Holmes studied me. Some folk at the Yard are put off by his scrutiny, unnerving as it is. It isn’t as if he looks at you when he studies you, oh no. Feels more like he’s peering at the wall behind you, or at what your opinion of the current parliament is, or at last Tuesday.
I returned his stare. It’s a talent of mine.
A flicker of a smirk twitched his lips.
Next, he took a cursory glance round. There wasn’t much to give away any hints, I thought with satisfaction. My directories were neatly shelved, my map of London free of any telling pins or notes, my desk clear. I’d dined on cock-a-leekie at the Black Sheep down the road, so he couldn’t even sniff out what I’d brought with me for lunch (as if it mattered). The clump-clump of the constables outside and the soft crackling of the coals were the only sounds. And if Mr. Holmes can tell anything about a bloke from his recently polished boots, then I was ready to eat one of those boots myself.
“Well,” I coughed, “if the unavoidable you’re referring to is a case we’re working on, you’ve lost me. I’ve just settled a drunken ass
ault dispute – it certainly didn’t call for Shakespeare.”
One eyebrow snaked inward. “You know the speech?”
“I’m fond of the Henries, yes.”
“Ah, naturally – I ought to have guessed so. Plentiful derring-do and ribald jokes.”
“I’m not the one who quoted it, Mr. Holmes.”
My visitor grinned.
Sherlock Holmes is a menace to peace and good humour, but I’ll say this for the man: he never fails to own up when you’ve scored a point. It’s not generally so easy, but then Mr. Holmes doesn’t usually barge into my office with a nick in his jaw from shaving and a smear of pomade on his left ear. That was odd enough to be almost alarming.
“Somebody’s been burning the candle at both ends,” I remarked.
“Dear God, please don’t tell me that the faculty of deductive reasoning is contagious. I’ll have to seek out another field altogether – I’ve always felt something of a yen to run off and join a travelling carnival. What do you think?”
I think that would serve me for the next ten Christmases.
“Cigar?”
“Please,” he exhaled, pulling his fingers down that pale beak of a nose. “The solace of tobacco will soon be all that is left to me in this vale of tears. How did you determine I was rather the worse for wear, by the by?”
“You seem unwell, that’s all.”
Yes, it would be fair play to explain to Mr. Holmes how I work things out, when I work things out. God knows he peacocks every chance he gets. But it’s more fun to let him assume I made a lucky guess. It gets me a little of my own back, knowing he’s dead wrong about someone – even if that someone is me.
And he really did look a fright. Skin more oysterish than pearly, and his hands, I now noticed, not quite steady. Not that he was any the less eerie-looking than usual. He’s enough to give your average chap the creeps even when dead asleep.
He doesn’t fool me, though. Most of the force find him off-putting because he doesn’t give a fig what people think of him. That’s a joke. Sherlock Holmes cares so much what Yarders think of him that he swans about like he’s the star of his own panto, and I’ve worked alongside the ridiculous man probably twice as much as any of the other inspectors. Strangely enough, he singles me out for the punishment of his company. I passed him a cigar to pep him up and took another for myself.
“All right,” I sighed. “How can I assist, Mr. Holmes? You might not think so by appearances, but I’m busy.”
“Dear me! Has PC McGettigan’s cat sallied forth to conquer unknown lands again and missed its breakfast?”
I nearly laughed. “No, Socks is accounted for and sleeps in his cellar now.”
“You cannot possibly understand how relieved I am to hear you say so.”
“That was quite the ruckus over a cat,” I admitted, referring to McGettigan’s near-hysteria a fortnight prior when his feline friend had gone a-wandering.
“I very nearly called in the Baker Street Irregulars for a city-wide sweep.”
“Well, never mind. She’s back. She apparently brought in some half a dozen mice last week, presented as trophies.”
“Half a dozen? What a remarkable undertaking.”
“Socks is no loafer. When she sets her eyes on her prey, she flushes it out and carries it home.”
“Every detective, one and all of us, should be so lucky.”
This time I did laugh. Couldn’t help myself – Mr. Holmes does own a wit as well as a brain, and he has a trick of drawing you into his small circle when he chooses. Generally, it’s when he wants something, or is planning on wanting something later, or notices that you just did something he wanted. He took a pull of the cigar, weary lines creasing his high forehead.
“If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you got cockeyed last night,” I realised.
Instead of contradicting me, Mr. Holmes made a sound like a calf in distress.
“By George, so you did!” I exclaimed, dropping my fist to my knee. “Ha! Oh, that’s rich. The world’s most famous amateur detective—”
“Independent consulting detective.” His eyes as he glared at me were bloodshot beyond the clear, queer circles of steel.
“He of the keen insight and the deep intellect: potted.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Inspector.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it!” I chuckled, making my way to the cupboard in the corner. “Last night, you were swilled to the gills, I’d bet my pension on it.”
“How many ghastly slang synonyms for immoderate intoxication am I to endure?”
I poured a single whiskey for me and a double for the sufferer. “As many as I like, taking into account that yesterday you managed to get stewed as a hare.”
“If you are possessed of the smallest drop of the milk of human kindness, pray desist.”
His face was buried in his hands now. Nudging his knuckle with one of the tumblers, I cleared my throat.
“Drink this.”
Head lifting, his troutlike complexion shifted from grey to green. “What the devil for?”
“Because it’ll help. And I happen to know that not twelve hours ago, you were as swizzled as a stevedore. Go on.”
I pushed the drink into his hand and clinked mine against it. Pupils boring into me, Mr. Holmes downed half at one go. With a grimace I almost pitied, he did so again and set the glass heavily on my desk.
“This is all Watson’s fault, confound the fellow.”
I drew back, surprised. “Dr. Watson is the last man I’d suspect of dark designs.”
“Of course, you needn’t suspect him of dark designs. He is incapable of designs,” Mr. Holmes scoffed, affronted. “January the sixth is my birthday.”
When I burst into peals of laughter, he gave me a sheepish, lopsided smile. It wasn’t a look I’d ever seen on Sherlock Holmes.
“Oh, Lord,” I gasped. “All these years I’ve known you, you never let a personal detail slip, until Dr. Watson gets a little free with the libations! How old?”
“Neither old nor young, but at the crossroads.” Mr. Holmes glowered at his empty tumbler. “Five and thirty. The precise middle, taking stock of all of life’s many fruits and many poisons, the sweet and the bitter, the gales and the doldrums, and questioning which events land in the one or the other column.”
“Heaven save us!” Pouring more liquor, I raised my arm. “You’re still sack-sopped – best to keep ahead of it until you can catch forty winks, or your head will split like a melon. Waxing philosophical isn’t your style, Mr. Holmes.”
“You would be surprised, perhaps,” he returned coolly.
“No offence meant. You natter philosophy as well as any, I suppose.”
“And you speak with admirable aplomb regarding techniques by which to avoid a sore cranium after a night of barbarous hedonism.”
“I was a bobby on the beat once, same as the rest. I’ve seen plenty of good sorts deep in their cups – bad sorts, too.”
An image flashed before me of Hannah. Her mirth muffled behind her hand, pretty pink cheeks turned wan excepting the occasional lurid streak of purple. Like a paint smear, or a streak of rot on a fruit. It wasn’t until well over four years of it that she started into the lush with as much gusto as he. But I know how to cure a woollen mouth, all right.
Mr. Holmes needn’t know about any of that. Ever. And Mr. Holmes needn’t know that I’m well aware he has a stronger taste for needles than he does for hot toddies.
“Are you ever going to tell me what you’re doing here?”
Mr. Holmes tugged a book from within his frock coat and shoved it against my ribs.
Mystified, I examined the title. The Matrimonial Guide for Bachelors: A Textbook of Courtship and Marriage. Published in America and written by a chap named Mr. H. William Snooker.
“I don’t follow,” I admitted.
“Off to our traditional start, then! Capital. If you’d understood everything, I’d have been all at sea.”
“A
re you tying the knot?”
“The female of our species is lamentably capricious and ultimately unfathomable, Inspector. I keep my distance.”
“For heaven’s sake, Mr. Holmes, out with it! I’m a working man. What’s so vexing that you can’t even say what it is?”
He frowned. “Miss Mary Morstan’s employer – I say employer, but her dearest friend in a matronly fashion – has inherited a moderate sum and wishes to take a European tour with her family, never having previously experienced the wonders of Italian sculpture or the miracles of French cuisine. In short, Miss Morstan will be cordially sacked in a fortnight.”
“Aha,” I ventured.
“The estimable lady is engaged to the good doctor.”
“Yes, he told me. And so?”
“So instead of waiting for spring’s soothing climes, they are to chain themselves together body and soul in a fortnight in Lower Camberwell!” he exclaimed, stabbing the air with his cigar.
The familiar tinkle of a constable’s keys jangled past. The fire, I thought, needs a bit more coal. My brain had hit one of those irksome walls which seem to crop up so often when near Mr. Holmes, because Mr. Holmes doesn’t believe in bridging the gap between one fact and an unrelated one. Oh, no. He simply points at the chasm and crosses his arms over the pile of bricks he’s left for you.
“All right… Dr. Watson and Miss Morstan are bringing forward their wedding date. What has this book to do with anything? And what has any of it to do with me?”
Sherlock Holmes looked so disappointed that I swear he’d have thwacked me with a ruler if he could.
Then it dawned on me.
“Don’t tell me he asked you to be his best man?” I cried, not hiding my dismay.
For that matter, neither did Mr. Holmes. “He did! Last night of all occasions, confound him, after he’d plied me with enough brandy to get Goliath himself owl-eyed, as you would no doubt so eloquently phrase it!”
Whistling, I shook my head.
“I know, isn’t it horrendous?” Mr. Holmes fluttered his hands. “It has only been three days since we solved the murder of Sheikh Yousef Al Sharqi, Inspector Blakesley has me attempting to trap a cracksman who jauntily leaves a wax seal on his plundered safes—”
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