Decent
o :: o :: o
In Whitechapel, crushed between a dilapidated row of townhouses and a disused apothecary, there is an unmarked, unlocked door, leading down a stairwell that is in a constant state of darkness, for the old building has no gas lines. The end of the stairs open up to a wide, dusty room, which smells perpetually of stale sweat and bitter alcohol.
It is known only as "Roger's", though it is scarcely known at all, for it is not advertised and sees precious little clientele. It is where you go when the world becomes too harsh and too heavy. It is a shroud of anonymity and solitude, an ideal place for those who wish to disappear, whether for to think or to avoid thinking entirely.
In my early years at Scotland Yard, my knowledge of the place was strictly practical. A young bachelor and sergeant with his life in front of him wished for everything but to disappear, and in my line of work it was of interest only as far as whether or not a suspect was hiding there, ducking the hounds of the law.
These days, I see it no less than once a week. My wife, bless her, never wonders, never asks. I am sure she knows. A wife usually does.
It was on one tragically unremarkable winter evening, early in the year, when I sat nursing my gin at the bar. Anything identifying me as a policeman I had left behind, because at Roger's I was simply Gregory Lestrade, shed of all pomp and designates. It was how I preferred it, because no one comes to Roger's to be who they already are.
I didn't notice him enter. I didn't notice him sit down. It wasn't until he began to play the violin that I noticed the raggedy man in the corner.
I would not go so far as to call myself a musician, but I am most certainly an appreciator; when I can spare the time and money, the opera is one of my preferred destinations. It wasn't uncommon for Roger's to hire a fiddle for an evening, but they were usually mediocre players at best, wailing away on the E-string for their supper.
He was different. He was good – very good. I wouldn't have pinned him for a violinist if I'd seen him on the street – he was a thickset man with a long, raggedy black beard and a dirty brown overcoat. But he played with all the skill and finesse of a master; his fingers danced across the strings, drawing out a tragic melody that hung heavy in the smoke-filled air. It was something by Wagner, unless I was much deceived.
So taken was I with this stranger's music that I turned around in my barstool with my gin resting on my knee so I could watch as well as listen. His face, old and wrinkled, seemed so very far away from London and its grit, as if the music was transporting him to someplace better. I sat in enraptured silence for the whole duration of the song. When he was done, I stood, fished a half-sovereign from my waistcoat pocket, and walked over to drop it in his violin case that he'd left open on the floor.
"You play splendidly," I said with a smile.
The stranger's smart grey eyes looked up at me from beneath his large, bushy eyebrows. It was hard to tell from beneath the long tangle of beard, but I think he returned my smile.
"Thank you," he said in a voice that was rough from years of smoking. He inclined his head to me. "You are too kind."
"You are too modest," riposted I. "Where did you learn to play?"
"Austria," he answered. "I went to a conservatory there when I was a boy."
The answer surprised me, I admit. His whole bearing spoke of a man who had never seen the nicer side of London, let alone an Austrian conservatory. I reasoned that perhaps he was once a gentleman who had fallen on hard times.
"Well, your talent eclipses this bar," I said eventually, clapping him on the shoulder. "What is your name?"
"Sigerson," said he, inclining his head again. Before I could return and give him my name, he said: "May I ask of you a favor?"
"A favor?" I repeated, surprised. "Anything."
"Would you have a seat with me at that table—" (here he gestured towards a table not far from us with one thin hand) "—and share a drink? My intuition tells me that your presence will soon be of great necessity."
I admit that I was confused, but his manner was so effusive and polite that I found myself unable to turn him down. With the half-sovereign I'd tipped him, he bought us both a fresh bottle of gin and soon sat back down to pour.
"And what is it that brings a gentleman to such a place?" he asked.
"How do you mean?"
"It is certainly not the liquor, which is sub-par at best, and it is not the company, for most patrons here would just as soon shoot you as speak to you. You have been here no less than five times in the past few weeks, unless I am mistaken."
I gave a violent start, staring at him in astonishment.
"What is it, then," he continued, "that takes a married man to such a place, so frequently and at so strange a time? I venture to presume that it's to do with your wife."
Suspicion broke through my mind like a battering ram. "Halloa, now," I said, straightening, "have you been following me?"
He smiled a strange smile and took a sip of his gin, the barest sip. "I have not," he said, "and I apologize for my bluntness. The instep of your boots are lined the red clay from the walk just outside this door. They are interspersed, however, with other colors and compositions of clay. It was no far leap to see that you've been here several times recently in between other destinations."
I looked down at my boots, and it was indeed so. "But my wife?"
"Your hat is dusty," he said. "Your wife has not brushed it in some time. There are few enough reasons that such a thing should occur."
My anger deflated and I took a long pull from my gin. "You are correct, sir," I said wearily. "It is a delicate matter, however."
"Delicate matters are safest explained to a stranger," he said. It may have been my imagination, but he seemed to be looking past me, towards the end of the stairwell that opened into the pub. "Come, sir, share your worries."
"I fear…"
I sighed, low and rushing. He looked to me querulously.
"You have fallen out of love with her, and she with you?" he asked.
"Not quite, sir."
"Ah," said he, "there was never any love there to begin with. Why is that?"
The bitter gin clouded my mind and loosened my tongue. "God save me, but I don't know," I said, lifting a hand to rub the bridge of my nose. "She's the sweetest, gentlest thing under a bonnet in the city. By rights I should love her plenty. I thought I did when I married her."
My new acquaintance sat in silence, his sharp gaze moving between myself and the entrance.
"What disenchanted you with her?" he asked, though he did not seem entirely interested.
"I cannot say," I sighed, for it was true; I had no idea.
"You do not see it as obvious?"
"Obvious…?"
"You married her because you loved the idea of her, not the actual woman," he said. "Had you any romantic dalliances in your youth?"
Truth be told, I had never spent much of my childhood chasing women. I had stuck mostly to my own and to my studies, and I told him as much.
"Doubly obvious," said he. "Your Maker simply did not give you the faculties to love women."
I stood up so abruptly that my chair was knocked backward onto the floor. "You insult me, sir!" I cried.
"I do not insult, I merely observe," he answered, his voice and manner calm as a spring evening. "In what manner do you have grounds to be upset?"
"If you presume I cannot love women, then that rather implies—!"
"I know full well what it implies," he said easily. "And I fail to see how it is an insult."
"It is a sin before God!"
He took a long pull from his gin. He was still watching the door, as if this entire conversation was mere filler for something more important which was soon to happen. "Then it is a spiteful God, indeed, who makes you incapable of holy love and then punishes you for it."
"I—" I blustered angrily, "I am not—!"
"How now," he said. "Look, sir. Do you see the man who comes in?"
He stooped down and spoke into his gin now, his expression one of tightly controlled alarum. I looked round and saw a short, portly fellow with a red face and dark eyes waddle his way towards the bar.
"What of him?" I asked.
"Don't stare," he hissed, and at once I turned forward and sat back down. "Surely you recognize him, Inspector. His posters are all over Scotland Yard."
"How on earth—!"
"Check for yourself for the telling liver-spot on his left hand, but spare no time in arresting him," he said, voice low. "He has his two henchmen stationed outside, doubtlessly. I must attend to them. Go, now! Be careful and godspeed!"
He stood and swept out of the room as swiftly and silently as a shadow. I saw no more of him. When I adjusted my angle to get a better look at the gentleman – I would not make an arrest without due proof – I was astonished to find that he was, indeed, on many posters around Scotland Yard. He was Hans Jorgensen, the infamous Swedish burglar that had recently stolen a precious necklace from the Duke of Gloucester.
After a scuffle, I was able to apprehend him. When I carted him upstairs, neither the strange violinist nor Jorgensen's henchmen were anywhere to be seen.
o :: o :: o
The next few days I spent between furious work and severe melancholy. Again and again I turned the strange man's words over in my mind. Everything about him had been so peculiar! How quickly he'd known about my habits, my personal life, even my job – and then the Swedish thief! He had been so scrupulously precise in all other areas, and I could not help but wonder if he had also been correct in his deductions about my nature.
I scarcely went home. I went to great pains to return late so I would not have to face my wife as I turned the horrible thoughts over in my mind. How could I face her if they were true? How could I face her if they weren't, and my lack of affection for her came from nothing more than the fact that I did not love her? It was an impossible situation.
It was on a Tuesday afternoon when two large, handcuffed men were dragged into Scotland Yard, both of them leashed round the neck with a length of rope. They were bruised and much chagrined, and being dragged by a tall, aquiline man in a black greatcoat and hat.
"Ah!" he said as he saw me. "I don't believe in coincidence, and so I am force to conclude that it is Providence which leads us to meet again."
I turned away from the young sergeant to whom I'd been speaking to regard him more directly. I did not recognize him at first. He was long-limbed and graceful in aspect, with thick, dark hair and bright eyes.
"Have we met?" I asked, looking in some confusion upon his two prisoners, who he was leading around like a pair of reluctant dogs.
He seemed amused at my incertitude. "I'm sorry, Inspector; I forget myself. Would you be perhaps more amenable to recognizing me if I had a long beard and a Stradivarius?"
"By God!" I said in spite of myself, and the young Sergeant looked to me in worry.
"Inspector Lestrade?" asked the green policeman at my side, and I quickly shooed him away on an errand.
"Before you ask," he said, "yes, I was disguised."
"Who are you?" I demanded. "You are clearly not Sigerson."
"Quite correct. I am Holmes," he said, extending a hand towards me. "Sherlock Holmes."
I admit that I hesitated to take the outstretched hand, but though the briefest of interactions with this man had shaken me to my very foundation, I could not find it in me to show undue resentment. I shook his hand.
"These are the two accomplices of Jorgensen's." He gave a sharp tug on the makeshift leash, causing them to stumble forward. "And this," he said, pulling a small black box from inside his coat, "is the black diamond which, a few months ago, belonged to Madame de Lioncourt. I believe the Yard would be in a better position to return it to her than I. I have already recovered the Duke of Gloucester's necklace and have given it back to its proper owner in due course."
To say that I was stunned would have been a gross understatement. I called over a few men to take the brutes to a holding cell and another to deal with the diamond, but not for a minute did I take my eyes off the man. He seemed quite happy to wait; he lingered in the lobby and gazed idly out the window till I could attend to him.
"How did you find them?" was my first question, and he seemed almost surprised by it. Still, he smiled amicably and answered.
"I've been tracing them for a few days," he explained. "The Duke of Gloucester hired me to recover his necklace."
"You're a private detective?"
He smiled strangely at me, and it looked like mystery and white heat.
"Not quite. Is this really what you want to talk about? I deduce that you have been avoiding your wife."
I looked frantically over my shoulder, terrified that someone might overhear. Luckily, no one seemed to notice. "Outside," I said in a low voice, and together we pushed out onto the street.
London was still bitterly cold and, to make it worse, was covered in a stiflingly thick fog. I heard a cab rattle past, but though it was only a few feet from me I could only barely see its outline through the mist.
"You must not say such things in so public a forum," I hissed.
"The sentence bears little meaning without proper context," he said.
"How did you guess it, though?"
"I never guess," he said disparagingly. "It is an appalling habit. I merely observe. For instance, I observe that you have dark circles beneath your eyes, and that your shoes show no signs of extra wear since I last saw them. These two observations put together lead me to suspect that you haven't been sleeping as much lately, but not from extra work. It was no great leap."
It seemed simple when he explained it. I sighed and adjusted my waistcoat.
"I've been thinking on your words," I said.
"And?"
He leaned forward to study me intently, his hawkish features focused. He was as remarkable on the outside as he was on the inside. Each individual trait, considered on its own, was handsome and strong, but combined as they were he gave the overall impression of being odd and mismatched. He was beautiful and peculiar.
"And," I said slowly, "you're showing an unusually high interest in it, I think."
"Your answer may be relevant to me," he said.
"Relevant?"
A cold wind rushed past, a refreshing blast of air in the stagnant fog. His scarf caught high in the breeze and we said nothing for several unbearably long seconds.
And then he walked past me down the street. My voice hitched halfway up my throat, unsure if I should call after him. He vanished before I could make up my mind.
It was not for several more hours that I realized he had left his card in my pocket.
o :: o :: o
"The suspect was last seen outside Charing Cross just shy of midnight," Holmes said as he undid my waistcoat and knelt between my thighs. "We can assume that, for all intents and purposes, this account is completely accurate. He had a hat box and suitcase."
I looked down at him and watched in detached amazement as he expertly pushed aside all the fabric that was between him and his goal. My arousal, already half-stirring from the brusque and demanding manner in which he'd ordered me to sit so he could "think the matter over", came free, and scarcely a moment later he was pulling his long tongue up the shaft towards the head. My head fell back and I groaned.
"It was a large suitcase, by the marks I found," he said, his baritone voice sending vibrations straight through my cock and into my spine, "with enough space to fit about three weeks' worth of clothes. We can therefore extend the radius of his possible destinations to most of the Continent."
He ducked his head and began to suck me, and immediately I forgot everything he'd just told me. In the past, I'd always done my best to follow along and try to offer suggestions. More often than not, he'd waved them away or told me to be quiet. Your role is to sit back and enjoy while I think. And I think best when I have free reign of your body.
His head was bobbing on my shaft now, and I knotted a hand in his hair. By God, he was good at this. He was good at almost everything he tried his hand at, both in and out of the bedroom. I'd stopped being surprised by his endless talents months ago.
"Holmes," I breathed, "Holmes, you—!"
He'd ducked his head so low that I could feel the tip of my cock buried in the back of his throat, a sensation that nearly did me in. He pulled off so slowly and languidly that my kneejerk reaction was to grab him by the hair and force him back down.
"Yes, Lestrade?" he asked, his voice nothing but self-satisfaction and amusement.
"I forgot what I was going to say," I admitted, my chest heaving.
I heard him chuckle. "Good man," he said before he closed his mouth around the tip of my cock again, sucking in earnest.
"No, wait, I remember. I can – Christ, Holmes – I can get a few boys down there to help… to help find records of a ticket he might have…" The verb I'd wanted to end the sentence with escaped me as Holmes did a particularly devilish trick with the tip of his tongue.
He pulled off just long enough to say, "A not entirely unbecoming idea, Lestrade." Then he went back down.
Climax was welling in my gut, hot and frothing and desperate. He spent the better part of three more agonizing minutes coaxing it out of me with every languid, lackadaisical movement of his lips and tongue. I held on for as long as my body could handle the sweet torture. When it ended, I was blinded and jerking on the settee, one hand knotted in his dark hair, the other gripping the cushion.
He pulled off me easily, dragging a thin finger around the corner of his mouth to remove the evidence of my climax.
"I think I've worked it out," he said mildly. "As always, Lestrade, your assistance has been invaluable."
And then he was gone. I watched him vanish out my drawing room door, conflicted as always and wondering what would happen if I asked him to stay just a little longer.
I knew exactly what I was to him because he'd told me the first time it happened. This was what he did when he needed to think – a healthier replacement, he'd explained, for the cocaine habit he'd recently shaken off. When that exquisite mind of his had a particularly complex knot to unravel, he came and found me, and he'd work off some of the frantic, nervous energy that pounded through his veins on each new case.
He was brilliant and fascinating and just watching him theorize had me learning something new about my own craft every time.
I loved him, and I was means to his ends.
I wondered if he knew.
o :: o :: o
"I'm changing my address," he told me one evening.
I looked up from my notebook. "Finally found a flat-share?"
He hummed. "An army doctor, just invalided home from Afghanistan," he said. "I've only just met him, but he seems extraordinary."
I didn't say anything, and it was a mercy that Holmes's attentions were so sharply focused on the dead body because I'm sure he would have been able to read every emotion running through my head in a second.
"Good," I said. "What's his name?"
He looked back at me over his shoulder and I cleared my throat, hoping that any lingering emotions were gone.
"Watson," he answered, rising. "Doctor John Watson. We'll be sharing lodgings at 221b Baker Street."
"Good," I said again, feeling like a cad.
"Something the matter, Lestrade?"
"What could be the matter?"
He watched me silently with those bright, grey eyes and rose to his full height.
"What, indeed."
o :: o :: o
I sent my card up with Mrs. Hudson and a moment later she escorted me into his new sitting room. It was nice, decorated with rich scarlet curtains and overstuffed furniture. The hearth was roaring and piles of papers all around were nothing short of mountainous. It looked more or less like his old flat, save that it was larger.
"Lestrade," he said, clasping his hands behind his back. He was in his mouse-grey dressing gown and slippers. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
His new roommate was sitting in an armchair with a medical journal and looking between us with utmost interest. Then he noticed that we were both looking back and he cleared his throat politely.
"I'll ah—" he began, "—I'll just…"
He was tall, I noticed, though not as tall as Sherlock, with wide shoulders and a moustache. He nodded to me and retreated into what I presumed was his room.
"That's him?" I asked once he was gone.
"Obviously," returned Holmes as he struck a match on the mantelpiece to light his cigarette.
"He's extraordinary?" I wondered aloud, in spite of myself.
Holmes watched me critically as he shook the match out and took the first few drags. "For now he is just curious. I interest him. My work interests him. At the moment he's just too polite to admit it or do anything about it. Why are you here, Lestrade?"
I frowned. "It's been weeks, Holmes," I said. "You go this long without a case and usually you're clawing at the wallpaper."
"I've had cases," he told me, flinging himself onto the sofa.
Which could only mean one thing: "You haven't seen me, then, because…"
"It's not just that."
"You're back on cocaine," I said through my teeth. "Holmes—"
"Oh, spare me the theatrics, Lestrade," he drawled. "I'm living with a doctor now; I'm sure I'll get plenty of this nonsense without you."
I felt my lips pursing in anger. "You're that close, are you?"
He rested his head on one hand and studied me idly. After a while, a smirk tugged on the corner of his mouth. "We will be," he said.
"And you know that?"
"It's highly probable," he answered in that infuriatingly smug way. "His curiosity has been growing exponentially since we moved in. It's only a matter of time."
I looked towards the doctor's bedroom door. The heat of Holmes's gaze didn't leave me once.
"He can't give you what I give you," I said eventually, looking back at him.
"He could," was his immediate response. His thin hands made a triangle just beneath his chin, which rested upon its apex.
"Could he?" I asked, my voice rising. "Does he know this?"
"Do calm down, Lestrade. You have no grounds to be this upset."
"Oh, don't I!"
He rose and walked toward me. His cigarette was dangling, loose and nearly falling, from between his lips. He was half a breath away from me, so close that the heat from the cigarette glowed on my jaw.
"You knew what this was from the start," he said.
I pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and threw it into the fireplace. He looked, if anything, a little hurt.
"That was my last Egyptian cigarette!" he told me, petulantly.
"Holmes, you're the smartest man I've ever met. I refuse to believe that you can't work this problem out on your own."
"I had to have them specifically imported."
"Holmes—!"
"Yes, Lestrade, I know."
We looked at each other for a long while, silent and still. I felt like an interesting insect under his magnifying glass, stripped bare of all my efforts to hide my emotions.
"You knew what this was coming in," he told me in a low voice.
I shut my eyes. "Yes, I did."
"It's your own fault for getting attached."
I will not lie and say his words did not sting. "What was I supposed to do?" I asked. "Have you seen yourself? Do you know what sort of a man you are?"
He sneered. "Lestrade—"
"I mean, don't get me wrong; you can be an absolute pillock sometimes," I said, and I flinched at my old Cockney accent flaring up as it usually does when I'm upset, "but you're like a burning building, Holmes. You're terrible and deadly, but you burn so brightly."
"What does that make you, then?" he asked. "A moth?"
I should have known better than to expect any sympathy from him. I grit my teeth and turned toward the door.
"Lestrade." His hand was on my shoulder. "You're a good man. A decent man."
"Decent? But not extraordinary?" I said, nodding towards the doctor's bedroom door.
He did not answer. Though to be fair, I did not wait very long for one. I hurried back down the steps, and it felt like I had been shot.
o :: o :: o
"Didn't I tell you so when we started?" cried Sherlock Holmes with a laugh. "That's the result of all our study in scarlet: to get them a testimonial!"
"Never mind," I answered, "I have all the facts in my journal, and the public shall know them. In the meantime you must make yourself contented by the conclusions of success, like the Roman miser— Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo Ipse domi simul ac nummos contemplar in acra."
I threw my copy of The Strand into the fireplace. The edges of the paper turned black and curled towards each other.
I saw it now. I understood. Dr. John Watson was extraordinary and they completed each other. Even if Holmes never did those terrible, lascivious things with him as he had done with me, it didn't matter. Watson gave him something that I never could.
Watson was extraordinary, and I was nothing more than decent.
I looked down at my wedding ring. I thought of Isabelle, and how I could never love her like I loved Holmes. The thought of it nearly ripped my heart in two.
I heard the front door open below me. I could hear her knocking the loose snow from her boots and pulling off her jacket.
God as my witness, I wouldn't let it hurt this much for her.