Of the horrific case of the circus murders, I have had rare occasion to speak of due to the disturbing nature of the details, yet alone write about. It was a thing that challenged Holmes himself, and as we were thrown headfirst into the whole predicament, I had no chance to bargain with him for a more sane and reasonable mystery to occupy our time.
On the day that Ms. Paltrow showed up at 221B Baker Street, washed to the elbows in blood, Holmes was wearing a drab dressing gown and smoking beside the fireplace. He had developed a terrible, wracking cough (smoker's cough indeed) and I shuddered for him as I idly flipped through the morning paper.
"The fog is worse today than yesterday," muttered Holmes. His fingers tapped relentlessly against the arm of his chair.
"You must be patient." I said, with the air of one remonstrating a small child. "It may clear by this afternoon."
"And pray, what would I do then? There's nothing to be done, even if the fog were to evepaorate like so much smoke..." Here he gestured emphatically to the fumes he was blowing out of his mouth with a sardonic espression on his thin lips.
"Go for a walk, perhaps. You could-"
"Pah. I think Brother Mycroft is due a visit at the Diogenes," said Holmes, getting to his feet. "I believe he had some unimportant business to discuss with me."
"By all means." I gestured empthatically at the door. "Don't keep him waiting."
He crossed to the window to look out upon the raucous cabs clacking over the street. "Hello there," he whispered. "Turn left, if you would. Aha!"
The knock came at the door then, softly at first and then with more conviction. Mrs. Hudson darted past Holmes, who was again seated in his velvet lined chair, as though the force of the knocking had swept him off his feet as surely as a gale of wind.
I daresay there was an expression of hope and expectancy on my dearest friend's features. I believe only I could have read it there, for I knew the slight raise of the eyebrows and the small quirking of his lips meant that he was in a state of suppressed excitement.
"Oh!" Mrs. Hudson uttered from the entranceway, and I could tell it took every last ounce of Holmes' reserve to stay seated and not go running out to greet our visitor.
"Holmes, you had better come here!" Said Mrs. Hudson, her voice an octave higher in her distress. "There's a lady here, there's a lady here to...Watson, come along too!"
I was on my feet in an instant, but still slower than Holmes, who reached the doorway in about three seconds and then stopped so suddenly that I almost collided into the back of his dressing gown.
As I have noted earlier, the woman standing in our modest rooms was covered up to the elbows in drying blood with splashes of the same across the front of her blouse. She was crying softly to herself, holding her arms away from her body as though she could not stand for them touching her sides.
Holmes moved aside so that I could take stock of our visitor. "Mr. Holmes, please help me," she whispered. A curl of blond hair obscured her left eye as she bent her head in shame.
"I am a doctor," I said succinctly, wishing very much that I had my medical bag within arm's reach. "Where have you been wounded? We must see to that first."
"I'm not harmed."
Indeed, I could not see a wound on her regardless of the blood.
"Ms. Paltrow," murmured Holmes from behind me.
"You know her?" I turned violently to peer at Holmes, wondering if there was no end to his maddening store house of information gleamed from sources unknown.
"Mrs. Hudson, fetch our dear visitor a shot of brandy and a moist towel." He commanded our harried land lady, who assented with a nod and then was off at a trot, her face blanched and troubled.
"My dear lady, pray come inside! And waste no time. Here, please sit yourself here. Do not be mindful of making a wreck of the sofa. You are not the first soul to leave any quantity of blood upon it."
She had stopped crying, but there was a slackness to her elegant features that I did not like one bit. My medical instincts sang out that this was a look of shock, and that our Ms. Paltrow would soon shut up as surely as the most tenacious of clams should we not do something to counter this.
I sprang to my feet and dashed into my bedroom, my wounded knee giving a twinge of protest at the sudden activity. I seized from the closet an old sheet that I no longer used and returned to the living room to drape it around the lady's shoulders. Sherlock Holmes was bending down before her, holding the glass of brandy to her quivering lips, though she only shook her head and shivered violently.
"Come now, my dear," murmured our land lady, washing the blood from her arms with a towel. She laid a hand on Holmes' tightly coiled forearm and gave him a slight push to the side.
"This may well be a matter in which we currently have no place, old boy," he murmured, as our landlady cleaned and then stroked our client's arms.
Tears oozed silently from beneath our visitor's drooping lids and she gave a violent gasp, such as a swimmer surfacing from deep water, followed by a sob. Sherlock Holmes looked silently at his hands, folded in his lap.
I gave silent thanks that our strange visitor was coming back to herself.
"How did you know my name?" Her eyes, which I now noticed were a queer colour, almost violet, focused suddenly on Sherlock Holmes, whose nerve shot fingers were now steepled lightly beneath his chin.
"I am an admirer, that is all."
"How...you've seen me perform?" She asked. There was a splotch of blood on her forehead and she touched it gently with her fingertip and then shuddered violently and went white to the lips again.
"Dear, dear," clucked Mrs. Hudson, and began to rub the cloth over her face and eyelids. The peculiar violet eyes closed and then reopened, red veined but alert.
"Indeed. I should count you as one of the most fantastic acrobatic performers in all of London."
"Would you care to lay down?" I interjected.
"No...no, I should think I am quiet comfortable enough." Her violet eyes roamed freely around our lodgings. She laughed, an hysterical, high pitched, note. "It's exactly as I imagined it from his stories," she cried out.
Conscious of her eyes upon me, I followed Holmes' suit and looked at my hands curled in my own lap.
"Shall I leave you?" Asked our landlady.
"No, do stay," cried Holmes, more abruptly than was perhaps necessary. "You do, I would say, have a touch of a nurse's able bodied hands in you."
He turned his face to our visitor.
"You've come from the Thames district, at a hurry, there is blood on you, not your blood though. Please do tell what causes a lady such so distinguished as yourself to end up in our humble lodgings under such circumstances."
"They're dead..." She looked earnestly at my companion. "My friends, my fellow performers. I was at the docks, that's where Robbie, one of the other performers lives. Every Saturday we like to gather together before the show, a sort of routine we've had as long as I can remember. Only today when I got there, Robbie was..." She swallowed hard, and we waited.
"Dead. And so was Kimmy. Both of them, lying in a pool of blood. Shot. Mr. Holmes, I don't understand!"
"That is very upsetting," murmured Holmes. "Do continue."
"Oh, it was! I...I don't know what got into my head, but I found myself on my knees next to them, taking their pulses, trying to determine if they were alive, even though I knew they couldn't be. There was no chance anyone could lose so much blood and survive. Hence, the blood all over my blouse."
"How terrible," I murmured, wondering if it would be unpolite of me to offer any physical gesture of companionship, such as a pat on her arm. But our good landlady was standing right beside her chair, gently stroking her hair.
Holmes was leaning forward and surveying our visitor with an abundance of interest.
"Pray tell, what else do you remember?" When she did not answer straight away he cried out, "take your time. Details are of the utmost importance."
"They were so white. Vampiric, I suppose. Like the belly of a fish. An unnatural white that comes from losing so much blood. They were both shot through the chest, sir. I can't..." She began to choke over her words. "The pain of that, it must have been awful."
Her lips began to quiver again and I feared for a fresh downpour of tears.
Sherlock Holmes waited patiently for her to compose herself. "It is fortunate that you have not been yet to see Scotland Yard."
"But how...how did you know?" Ms. Paltrow's expression of pure astonishment was one I had often worn over the years.
"Blood tells its lurid stories," answered Holmes. "I have written several of my own monographs on the very subject of blood spatter and analysis. The blood on your blouse is not entirely dry and tells me you have come here straight from the docks. Also, had you consulted Scotland Yard, you would have come down Baker Street from the opposite direction."
"It's simple when you explain it that way."
I felt a sudden comradirie with our strange visitor. "It always is," I said wistfully.
"What is the address?" Enquired Holmes.
"Number 302. It's a cottage by the docks, across from Patrick's Bar."
Holmes rose from his chair and stretched out his long limbs. "Watson, grab your service revolver from your desk and we will be on our way."
Ms. Paltrow rose from the sofa, her features still palid and sickly, her eyes suddenly alight. "I should like to come along."
"No, no," Holmes said sharply, "You stay here. Would you be so kind as to get our client a cup of hot tea, Mrs. Hudson?"
I rushed to my desk and withdrew the revolver, which had not seen much action of late. At the door, Holmes put on his top hat, then dramatically took it off again, tipping it to Ms. Paltrow, who in turn blushed red to the roots of her blond hair. He stared at her for a moment with such absolute absorption that I would have ventured to call it attraction had I not known his feelings towards the fairer sex.
When he had shut the door, he turned to peer back at the apartment for a beat. "This whole thing is beyond queer. Have you your notepad? This may be one for your chronicles."
"I have it here."
"Excellent." He rubbed his hands together.
We climbed into a hansom and clattered off towards the docks. "The fog is beginning to clear," remarked Holmes, though I was uncertain if he referred to the actual cursed smog surrounding London or the mystery of the dead circus performers. I was glad to see his mood lifting either way.
"Not that there is anything to do when it does," I remarked sardonically, patting his knee, thinking of his earlier comment.
"Oh, there is plenty to do now. Though I fear it will all end in more tears and hysterics than I can entertain."
I didn't know what to say.
"You are attracted to Ms. Paltrow," I remarked after a beat.
"Eh, Watson?" The look he gave me in return was so sharp and startled I had to laugh.
"She is a puzzle, waiting to be solved. That attracts you strongly. The longing was plain on your face before she even walked in the door."
"It would not spring for attraction as my choice of words. She is helping me to escape boredom. And cocaine. Nothing of her physical attributes is a draw to me."
"You don't contradict an attraction though?"
"Violently, old fellow." His eyes sparkled with mirth. "If I don't you will have me as Ms. Paltrow's gentleman lover in your next feature story. As it stands, you have bungled the telling of the Irene Adler affair, by indicating by she was the woman for me."
"She was."
"She was not."
"Her picture is in your desk drawer."
He turned to face me with carefully concealed surprise. "Which is locked."
"And I live with the world's greatest consulting detetctive. I know a few things about observation."
We had, by this point reached our destination. Holmes leapt from the carriage, a tightly coiled bundle of unsuppressed energy, and paid our driver. My heart beat faster and heavier in my chest, for I felt ahead lay ominous waters.