Title: The Grand Tour
Author: Garonne

Thanks to Reflekshun for the prompts: 'form' and then 'write'

Note: I've written poor Mary out of existence for this one – I didn't want Watson to spend the whole story in mourning! Hence the reason for Watson still living in Baker Street during the events of The Final Problem.

.. .. ..

As a young doctor I was involved in a campaign against the wearing of heavy black crape mourning veils, not only due to the respiratory problems and catarrhal diseases that arose from breathing through the heavy cloth for such a long period, but also because of the cases of blindness and cataract of the eye many of my colleagues believed to be correlated with the practice. We were well-meaning and our concerns well-founded.

Later, however, when I returned alone from Switzerland and sat, numb, in our sitting room in Baker Street, I understood why none of the ladies whom we addressed had cared to listen. What did trifles like the health of one's eyes matter, when one felt as though the entire world were painted in shades of grey? Was it not even fitting that the body should reflect the suffering of the spirit?

The news of Holmes' death was all over the papers, of course, but everyone in the country seemed to be avid for a more detailed account. Everywhere I turned, I was overwhelmed with a barrage of eager, inconsiderate questions, as though I had been some objective and detached chronicler of Holmes' exploits, instead of his only friend. My agent wrote several times to suggest my writing up the case immediately, as did the editor of The Strand. I longed for the protective walls of mourning garb, so that unthinking people should be dissuaded from tormenting me, but Holmes was no brother of mine and society's forms dictated otherwise.

As it was, I laid off my black cravat after the memorial service and removed the weeds from my hat. I ordered reams of black-edged paper and replied to a small selection of the inquiry cards and letters of condolences that had been flooding into Baker Street, as befitted my role as Holmes' biographer and, if I am honest, erstwhile secretary. If I had been vaguely hoping to find catharsis in the task, I had been mistaken. I soon abandoned it and threw myself into the medical practice I had so long neglected. Indeed, I found a peculiar solace in the mind-numbing parade of gout, bed-sores and diphtheria.

Eventually Mrs Hudson took the black crape off the front door. I transferred the remainder of my belongings to the rooms above my practice in Paddington, where indeed I had been practically living since Holmes' death. Baker Street was entirely too silent and haunted.

Almost a year had passed thus, my days filled with work and my evenings spent alone in the midst of acquaintances at my club, when one morning's post brought me a letter I still keep among my mementos to this day.

Even before I knew its contents, the letter's external appearance caught my eye. The brightly coloured stamp was partially obscured by a postmark in an ornate and indecipherable script. The address was written in a copperplate painfully similar to Holmes' hand, but I had long grown accustomed to anything and everything calling him to mind. I turned the letter over, but there was no return address.

The envelope contained a single sheet of plain writing paper, with the message:

Kindly take the Leith-Oslo steamer on Tuesday the 9th of August. Sincerely yours, Sigerson.

I let the missive fall to the breakfast table, my throat constricting in anger and disgust. It was not the first time someone had written to me pretending to be Holmes returned from the dead, and usually the letters were as foolish as they were painful.

This one, however, gave me pause for thought once my first flare of anger had faded. How many people in the world knew that Sigerson was the name of Holmes' maternal grandfather and a pseudonym he had often used in the past? Like many other details of his cases, I had omitted it from the accounts which appeared in The Strand. Indeed to do otherwise would have defeated its purpose.

My gaze fell to the letter once more. Suddenly, I saw that what first I had taken for a smudge, just after the signature, was in fact a fingerprint. My heart skipped a beat and I snatched up the letter to examine it more closely. Holmes had often demonstrated the utility of fingerprints to me, and their unique nature. Why would the author of the note have placed a fingerprint after his signature, if not to prove that he was indeed "Sigerson"?

I found that I was clutching the sheet of paper so tightly I had crumpled and almost torn it. I smoothed it out, my mind filled with one sole, overwhelming thought: no body had ever been found downstream from the falls of Reichenbach. Surely, somewhere among his archives, Holmes had his own fingerprints on file?

As soon as I could liberate myself from my patients that morning, I hurried to Baker Street and let myself in with the key I still always carried. The sitting room upstairs was dark and airless, mounds of Holmes' belongings lying just as he had left them, all shrouded in dustsheets. Under normal circumstances the mausoleum-like air of the room would have cut me to the quick, but today I was too impatient to even pause and look around. I threw open the shutters before hurrying to the corner where Holmes' files were stored. Tearing aside the dustsheets, I began to pull out every dossier I could find under the letter F. Obscure information on frigates and flaxseed oil lay among notes on the Lord Farnham case and opportunities for foul play in forges and foundries. Many of the documents stirred old memories in me and within my heart, reawakening grief warred with new hope. I was too impatient to linger over anything, however, too desperate to know the truth. Could it possibly be Holmes himself who had written to me? Was he really on his way to Oslo to meet me there?

Holmes' archives were well-organised and I soon found what I sought: a thick sheet of bond paper covered with a series of fingerprints in ink, soot, blood and other media, all of the same finger. Additional details were written in Holmes' hand beside each print and at the foot of the sheet was the date, some five years previously.

With trembling hands I held this document up to the light, side by side with the letter. The fingerprints matched.