This was directly after The Musgrave Ritual. Before Holmes had even heard of Ricoletti of the club foot or his abominable wife; had reached the crowning glory of his career by recognizing the significance of a second stain upon a wooden floor, or entered into the grotesque and chaotic lives of people such as the pitiable Hilton Cubitt, or Grimsby Roylott of Stoke Moran. There were many other strange characters soon to come parading through the sitting room of our shared flat on Baker Street. But this was before all the Trelawney Hopes, Cadogan Wests, and Tadpole Phelpes. Before even The Woman's picture held its sacred spot amongst his files.
It is a story never before published for the simple reason that I, trusted friend and sometime tolerated biographer, was not there.
I had just come to live with Holmes, in January of 1881, and I spent many restful evenings with him at the flat overlooking Baker Street, after many adventuresome and tiring days. It was not uncommon to find Holmes and myself seated across from each other at the fire, he with his briarwood pipe and I with my cigar, reading the agony columns and sipping innumerable cups of Mrs. Hudson's tea.
On this particular night the ash was thick on the ground, and the room smudged with our combined smoky exhalations, when he fixed me with those grey eyes, sometimes so manic, but now hooded, swimming in the pale gas light, his deathly pallor warmed by the orange half-light of the fire.
I suppose now that the 7% solution had had its way with him, but at the time I did not suspect as much. Perhaps I thought his arm-chair more comfortable than usual, or less so. Whatever the cause, it was on this night that he finally told me his secret, a secret so guarded, so rare, that even I could give it no credit until confronted with proof.
The lengthy nights of summer were giving way to the first chills of autumn when Holmes found himself visited, alone in his cramped rooms on Montague Street, by a woman of no uncommon bearing. The call of newspaper hawkers and the clip of horses' hooves drifted up from the street below and hung in the prolonged silence that lasted well after the door had closed behind her.
"Mr. Holmes," she began, after the hazy interior of Holmes' rooms had settled them both, taking away the novelty of the sight of each other. "My name is Vias Rushford. I am here because I am in terrible need of your particular help."
"Vias?" I interrupted. "How unfortunate. What was she like?"
"What?" Holmes turned from his contemplation of the fire to frown at me.
"Miss Rushford. What was she like?"
"Oh, Watson! You are sometimes as simple as a new barn cat." He cast his eyes around the room again, and then crossed his arms over his breast, drawing mightily at his unlit pipe. "She was not obscenely tall," he said after a moment of thought. "Nor was she short enough to be considered petite."
"How frightfully informative of you to say, old boy," I grumbled. "I was simply curious. What did she want?"
"Ha. What any woman wants: to last in a man's living memory for all time."
"Oh, well. If that's all. Would you mind passing the coal scuttle?"
"You've smoked all your own cigars, then?"
"I have - with your help, Holmes. Now pass it over."
He pulled the scuttle off the corner of the hearth and held it out to me, casting his own pipe down on one of the many spare plates that littered the floor. I selected one and lit it off a glowing coal from the fire. Pushing the coal back into the grate I settled back and gave him my full attention, since I could tell nothing else of any reasonable nature was going to happen until I did.
"I'm sorry old boy," I soothed, not wishing to derail him. "Tell me all. What did this obscenely non-petite woman want?"
"Why, access, of course, Watson."
"Access?"
"Access! To my not unintimidating brain. For the straight steel blade of my logic to cut through her feminine malaise."
"Ah. Of course. These were her words?"
"Hers were somewhat more to the point."
"I cannot pay you, but would instead be forever in your debt."
Holmes' pipe went slack in his teeth, the bowl hitting his chest with a gentle thud. The clock ticked loudly from the wall by the door. Finally, for lack of anything helpful to say, he simply said, "Vias?"
"Yes sir, but most everyone who knows me calls me Kit."
"Ah." The pipe flicked upwards again, and a cloud of bluish smoke billowed from the side of his mouth, some to be drawn into his arched nostrils, while the rest encircled his head and drifted upwards finally to add to the already prevalent stain in the ceiling paint.
"Your mother no doubt is a lover of wildflowers. Since Vias is the assumed root word for Viola, the scientific name for all species in the family Violaceae. I can only assume Kit because it is a reference to one of the more common varieties of Violet, Kit-run-in-the-fields to be precise."
"Or because my middle name is Katherine." She removed her hat and placed it on the table, laying beside it her clutch and damp umbrella. "But you may choose to believe whatever takes your fancy Mr. Holmes. It is never my intention to disrupt a man's confidence in his own reasoning. I find more often than not it spoils the mood."
Her eyes scanned the room, glossed here and there over broken dishware, cutlery scattered on the floor, vials, and bookshelves stuffed to overflowing. Finally she came to rest on the vacant armchair across the fireplace from Holmes. "And yes, I will sit, thank you. It is very gallant of you to ask."
And so she sat, crossing her hands and ankles neatly, and stared at the detective with a most forward and disarming look.
"Do you like violets, Mr. Holmes?"
He leaned back in his chair, legs tucked snugly under him, and continued to smoke that long disputatious-looking briarwood of his. "Less and less," he said between his teeth.
"I adore them. Or the names for them at least. Pink-eyed John, Love-lies-bleeding, Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me -"
"Yes. Thank you." His nostrils flared. "I am familiar with the over two hundred common names given to that wayside flower, pray, let us not innumerate them all."
"Of course, Mr. Holmes. Just as you wish. I am in need of advice." She leaned towards him then, hands clutching each other, white-knuckled in her lap. "I need the sort of help that only a man such as yourself can give."
He found her unsettling, of that I am quite sure, since Holmes' omissions are more telling than most men's confessions. He told me her hair would have been perfect, if she had not carelessly allowed so many strands of it to escape her chignon. Her eyes were blue, noted because only three to five percent of people with dark hair also had such light eyes. Her hands were long and slender, not unlike his own. Lips petal pink and not too full. She suffered from a certain regularity of feature that marked her out as what society would deem beautiful, and probably would have been so, had it not been for her absurd confidence in her own intelligence. "Which-" he informed me, "-was highly unwomanly."
I nodded across the fire. "Indeed! How dare she?!"
"Silence Watson, I am not finished. The worst is yet to come."
Holmes observed her minutely for a moment, before saying "My dear lady, I am all attention."
"I am being followed."
"Indeed?"
"Yes. Daily."
"Have you any inkling by whom?"
"I do not know him, but he has been there every day for the last week. Never on the same city block as me, but always one behind."
"A ruffian?"
"A well-dressed man. Every day when I leave – "
"- From the stage door of the theatre."
"I'm…I'm sorry?"
"I believe the orchestra members still exit the stage door with the actors. Surely they don't let musicians go out the front door with the audience."
"This is true Mr. Holmes, but how –"
"Through various and sundry means Ms. Rushford." His hands fluttered in the air around him, fingers pointing to various aspects of her person, flicking, eventually coming to rest on his slicked back hair, where they smoothed, and then steepled together in front of his lips.
"Actually, I was going to ask how you landed upon the opera. I could be with the symphony."
"Not good enough."
It was her turn to raise an eyebrow at him. "Indeed?"
"You have a slight dusting of white powder across your left shoulder. It is the base for many theatrical make-ups. I use it myself on occasion. But if it were something you had to wear, it would undoubtedly be on both sides of your collar, from where they rub against your neck.
"And what a neck Watson, a veritable tower of David, built in rows of stone."
"Really old boy? Poetry?"
"For some, one must resort to biblical praise."
"This however seems to be from someone else's cheek," he continued. "An embrace on the way out? An actress acquaintance no doubt, since a man would never be so forward. The symphony has no need of actors. The opera does. Your fingers have that spatulaing at the end common in those that play a stringed instrument. Your chin still has the indent of your violin. You have come straight from work. I heard no hansom arrive before you entered, therefore you have walked. The mud on your boots proves it. The opera house is not close, but not too far for a determined walker to arrive at about this time after a matinee. By this I assume you have not the money for the cab fare, otherwise, why walk in the rain? And yet you love what you do. Why else devote so much of your time to the study of it, and take the trouble of getting to know your co-workers in such an intimate fashion. No. I believe if you were more talented, you would have risen higher."
Kit jolted to her feet, cheeks pink, eyes blazing. She took a few quick breaths to calm herself, not breaking her stare with him.
"You push me Mr. Holmes."
"Theatrics Miss Rushford. It is the truth, and therefore not worth getting upset about."
"These rooms do not strike me as the consulting office of a particularly successful man either. Come Mr. Holmes, those words smack of pettiness. I would expect better from a fellow violin player."
"I make no secret of my love of the instrument. The case lies open on my desk, as you can see."
"I can indeed. I see an instrument more often plucked than played. I see a man more interested in cords, not music, a bow badly mistreated and rarely rosined, and you sir, should be ashamed to play so petulantly upon such a beautiful and rare instrument, though I am hardly surprised, as those who have no worries about their income rarely prize such treasured possessions."
She swept towards the door, gathering her belongings from the table as she went. Regardless of how quickly she moved, Holmes moved faster. His palm landed against the door just as she pulled it open, forcing it shut again. It was not until this moment that her height registered with him. He was no more than half a head taller than her. He took a long deep breath before bringing his face an inch closer.
"Petulant?"
"You have obviously dropped it to the ground more than once. The scratches are evident, even from here."
"And my income?"
"It is a Stradivarius Mr. Holmes. If I could afford such an instrument, I would not be playing at what is to your mind, the lowly Opera house."
Holmes' lips parted, revealing straight white teeth, grey eyes searching hers unabashedly.
"Play it."
"What?" She drew away from him, until her back was pressed against the door. He wondered if she was considering how long it would take someone to get up here if she screamed.
"It is a treasured instrument, as you say," he continued. "Show me what you can do with it."
Holmes left the doorway then, crossing back to the couch, and threw himself across it with no attempt at decorum at all. Instead the back of his hand came to his brow, and then slid down over his closed eyes. Obviously he was prepared to listen.
Kit Froze. Her hand was on the knob, her wrist exerting pressure. He felt he could see into her mind at that moment. It was a Stradivarius. And she might go the rest of her life before running into another chance to play one. Especially in so odd a place as the living room of a man who fancied himself the world's greatest detective.
She went to the desk and picked the instrument up, gently fitting it under her chin. It must feel odd, of course, as every instrument new to the player invariably does. She fingered the bow for a moment, turning her mind over what to play.
She let the bow rest on the strings for a moment, before taking a deep breath and pulling into Franz Shubert's rendition of "Der Erlkonig" for solo violin. Holmes eyes snapped open as the manic notes flew from the instrument at the breakneck speed of a galloping horse. He watched her wrist flicking the bow skillfully back and forth, while her elbow flared and dropped. Her fingers were a twitch of movement, subtle, perfect, the music pushing, grabbing him and dragging him along with it. Something welled in him, threatening to burst and overflow.
He could imagine the father of the story riding through the drear, desperately clinging to his son, pursued by the Elf King, the long strides of the horse's flight, the cries of the terrified boy, and the horror of the homecoming, the father arriving in his courtyard to find his son dead in his arms. Holmes felt a delicious shiver run up his spine.
In a slight lull he realized that his lips were parted, mouth open. His hand, moving in a rhythm of its own accord, halted, balled into a first at his side. His eyes cut over to Kit, assuring himself that she had not seen him. He was satisfied at a glance that she had not. Her eyes were closed. Transported, the sensations hit him in waves of impatience, thick trepidation, scintillating joy.
He stood suddenly, and the bow shrieked to a halt over the strings. They stood eyeing each other, panting.
"Why did you choose to play that?"
"I thought you might appreciate it."
He reached over and grabbed the violin from her hands, noting how the wood was still warm from her touch. It occurred to him how humiliating this detail was, how lewdly intimate, that her body had touched his in a way he had not foreseen or allowed.
"Please leave. I am no longer seeing clients today."
"But…What of the man following me?"
"If he is there again next week come back and see me. I suspect he is an admirer with nothing more than autographs on his mind."
He slammed the violin case shut, and she gathered her things on the table, moving quickly to distance herself from his sudden vehemence. He wheeled and stalked after her towards the door.
"Mr. Holmes, please, I'm sorry if I have offended you -"
"Nonsense. It's just that there are so many demands on my time."
Kit jumped as he flung open the sitting room door and ushered her out into the hall. "I would call you a cab of course, but we both know you would not use it."
"But…"
With that he shut the door in her face.
I will say this about my dear friend, that although his actions are often impulsive, even arrogant, they are always heart-felt.
"But, why ever would you do such a thing, Holmes?!" I threw the stub of my cigar into the fire with indignation. Who would have believed that even Holmes could behave so badly to a woman in need of aid?
"At the time I saw no danger in her situation. Her concern seemed unfounded."
"But to throw her out the door, my dear fellow, what were you thinking?"
"Why, that I must be rid of her immediately, that her continued presence could only be detrimental to both of us."
My shock must have been visible in my face, for he paused a moment, letting his gaze rest in the flames. "Because she saw me, Watson, this woman. She came unbidden and un-looked for to my very home, to my inner sanctuary, and recognized me, so easily. It was as if my strong built and lasting defenses were non-existent. I am a man who does not wish to be touched."
"Was her playing really like that?"
"Yes. Her playing was like that."
The fire seethed in the hearth. An ember skittered out onto the worn red carpet at our feet. I crushed it out with the toe of my shoe.
"It sounds like you gave her almost no chance to explain her circumstances to you."
"Watson, many would consider Der Erlkonig as one of the most difficult violin pieces ever composed. Obviously she had made mistakes, she isn't a virtuoso, but...I did allow myself to be distracted."
"And so what did you do?"
"I locked my door to her. Confident that our paths would never cross again."
"And did they?"
"The next morning over breakfast I received a telegram from one of her friends in the orchestra."
"She had seen her man again?"
"She had been attacked by him shortly after leaving my rooms."
"My dear boy, how awful!"
"She was unconscious in a bed at Charing Cross Hospital. He had crushed both her hands."