The professionally high pitched scream of a violin echoed in Sherlock Holmes' mind.
Hooper always took this route.
A left three streets back and keep on going until you reach the theatre, tonight, somebody was murdering Paganini.
He began noticing it on the third month, Hooper wasn't the type to skip on work, but for the past six months Hooper had been acting strange, afraid-though honestly mentally aroused by the thought-that another Emelia Ricoletti was being plotted Sherlock Holmes had taken it upon himself to watch over the spinster in disguise.
Hooper walked swiftly from one side of the road to another, Holmes waited.
Every month for a week Hooper would disappear from Bart's and Stamford would give no explanation, COULD give no explanation.
The stirrings in his abdominal muscles told him the truth of his opinions, Holmes had begun to feel worried. He had agreed with his brother, along with the Watsons, that this was a war they could not win, would not fight against, however, no matter how hard he forced himself to stop caring, there was something about Hooper that made him unbearably curious.
He would spend hours, days, weeks on end distracting himself from Hooper's mysterious activities and plotting to bring down the patriarchy by working on surely more than one case higher than an eight a week.
Regrettably, he could not keep himself from being seduced by Hooper's disappearances, it must be a reason good enough to have Mike Stamford close his mouth, not a twinkle in his eye.
If this was a fight for the women, he could not fight back, he would not, he thinks, he would choose to stay quiet, to stay away.
There were always more 'buts'
Holmes had been hunched against the alley beside the building, filthy cloak over him, a smudge of coal on his nose. After Hooper disappeared into the building he, as dramatically as one could, flipped the filthy blanket up and off of his body, pulling out a handkerchief he dampened it using snow on a low window sill on the Hotel he wiped off the dirt on his nose.
After fixing his top hat like a gentleman on his head he entered the building.
This was the first in those three months of stalking and waiting for suspicious activity to arise that the Detective opted to choose an earlier arrival than Hooper in order to wait and see if there was anyone already in the room, the same room Hooper had requested for in all these months.
For every time he followed Hooper he would see no signs of any other person entering the room after Hooper, and he had made sure that the help from his homeless network made sure that no one entered before Hooper.
If he was right in his observations there was no other living person that entered those rooms before or after Hooper, he however had been so shaken by the case of The Abominable Bride that he had had to study more about the illusions of the living dead. If there was no living person entering those rooms, could it be possible it was an undead one?
Hooper never did disappoint when it came to playing cryptic.
"Holmes, you could have just asked."
His heart pumped hard in his breast, to his right in the stairwell stood Hooper in her woman's clothes.
Taking his hat off, straightening his back, and bowing Sherlock greeted her "Miss Hooper."
"I've been waiting for your courage to build up and finally come in.."