Author's Note - Jack the Ripper seems to be everyone's favorite real-life serial killer for Sherlock Holmes to battle with, so I decided to do another real-life murderer instead: Marcel Petiot! I was inspired by reading Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris by David King (seriously, check it out, it is a great read). Some notes for the readers, though: there is a past slash Holmes/Watson relationship and past major character death (Watson is already long dead by the beginning of this story).
21 Rue Le Sueur
Chapter 1
I awoke that morning to the sound of a German voice announcing that there would be a curfew beginning at 8 o'clock that evening. I was rather put out by the man's bleating as the army truck rattled its way down the street. German is not the sort of gentle language that makes for a nice wake up call. With a grumble, I rolled over and closed my eyes in a vain attempt to sleep for just a few more hours. Between the aches and pains of old age and my work, I got precious little sleep as it was. Leave the fighting to the French, I say; I had done my duty to King and country decades ago during the first Great War.
It was not meant to be, however, for soon the whole street was filled with traffic as the Parisians flooded out of their homes in a mad dash. It was their own fault, as far as I was concerned. I had tried to tell them that it was only a matter of time before the Nazis took Paris, but they had clung to de Gaulle's lies and Churchill's soothing assurances that America would enter the war any day now. We could hear the fighting outside the city for days now. What did they expect?
I could almost hear Watson's voice chiding me on my harsh assessment of the citizens of this great city. I fear that my disinterest in the human race has descended into full-fledged misanthropy since his death.
I sat up and my head swam at the movement. For a moment I could feel my heartbeat slow to a crawl before resuming its normal pace. The irregularity had been occurring far more frequently as of late and all I can think is, Thank God. My continued existence was beginning to border on the ridiculous. At the age of eighty-six, I had outlived every acquaintance I had ever known in my life. Lestrade, Mycroft, Watson... all had passed before me. Even young Stanley Hopkins, who had been nearly fifteen years my junior, died back in 1934. Though I had been alone more often than not in my early years, I have never been a lonely man. I was that rare creature that not only enjoyed solitude, but thrived on it. I am becoming increasingly maudlin, however, and far more prone to those "black moods" as Watson had called them than ever before. Every year, since 1917, the darkness inside me seems to expand until my organs seem coated in the inky blackness and threatening to choke me. I know of only two things that could cure it and one is lost to me forever while the other is something that I had promised never to indulge in again.
I reached out to grab hold of my nightstand, giving me something steady to lean against as I made my way precariously to the wheelchair. I hated the blasted thing, but it was better than suddenly collapsing when my blood pressure began to drop. I wheeled myself over to the mass of scribbled papers that had seemed to swallow my typewriter whole. I have never been much of a housekeeper and Marcelle would start charging me double if I demanded she added cleaning to her list of duties. It is not like I cannot afford it, but it is the principal of the matter. I am already paying her above rate (Watson would joke that I very well should if I expect her to put up with me) and I would not have that cutthroat woman get one more cent out of me. I shoved the papers off to the side and began to work once more to the tune of a thousand boots marching in time.
Since Watson's death I had abandoned bee culture and rededicated myself to detective work, though of a much different sort than the kind I had previously engaged in. It was 1917 and late summer when Watson passed. Only a few years before had he finally given his marriage up as a hopeless cause. His damnable - admirable - honor had not allowed him to seek a divorce before then. Even though he and the second Mrs. Watson had parted on as amicable terms as possible by that point, it had still be something of a blow. I was not so sorry to see its end; indeed, I was elated to have him returned to me. He had settled into Sussex quite nicely, and although Watson had retired from private practice he was still often called upon by our neighbors for his expertise. In late July of that year, Watson had been requested to treat two cases of influenza. The first case was that of Robert Bartley, the elderly groundskeeper from a nearby manor. The second was my housekeeper's granddaughter, Susan Beech. At this time we knew nothing of this new strain of influenza that would later be termed the Spanish Flu. In fact, the government would even go so far as to suppress any mention of it occurring in England for fear that it would lower morale. A dangerous thing in a time of war. By the end of it, Bartley would make a full recovery and Miss Beech would be dead. Watson had puzzled over it. In most cases of influenza, it was usually only fatal in infants and the elderly. Miss Beech was a healthy woman of twenty-one. It did not fit the usual pattern of the disease. Later, as more cases started to appear, the attack on the nation's youth would be its singular characteristic. However, this by no means infers that the young adults were its only victims, merely its most common. Watson, after all, had not survived.
It was the most horrific thing that I had ever seen, in part because I felt so helpless at the time. It started with only a slight fever, a cough, a headache. The usual mild symptoms. Only within a few hours he collapsed and the pneumonia settled so quickly within his lungs that by the end of the day he was struggling to breathe. His fingers and lips began to turn blue from cyanosis and within the hour he was dead. Typical of the disease, the doctor had assured me.
For the first time in my life I felt purposeless. I was unsure what I was to do and what I wanted. That is not correct; I knew what I wanted, but he was gone. About a month later Mr. Doyle, Watson's literary agent, requested that he might take the last six stories published by Watson in The Strand and put them in a collection. As the inheritor of Watson's estate, I agreed and even gave him the rough outline that he had been working on at the time of his death, a little story that would become "His Last Bow." Mr. Doyle, himself, actually wrote the final draft of that one. He would also later come to write "The Mazarin Stone." In 1926, I discovered cache buried amongst some of his things filled with notebooks and papers. There were quite a few stories in various states of completion that Watson had, for some reason or another, decided not to send to Mr. Doyle. There were also a few letters from me during that time of estrangement between us after I retired, when we were slowly cultivating our friendship once more. They were mostly professional in nature; I wasn't quite sure what to say to him then, but he had always liked listening to me talk about my cases. Out of the very few that I took on after I retired he had seemed to like the Dodd and McPherson cases. I sent off the completed - or mostly completed - copies of the stories I found to Mr. Doyle, including the rough draft of "The Mazarin Stone", and set down to write what would become "The Blanched Soldier" and "The Lion's Mane" myself. Though the Practical Handbook of Bee Culture did quite well in certain circles, I do not think my literary talents lie within sensationalism. Mr. Doyle was displeased with my efforts, at any rate. He gave me rather a hard time about the use of my tenses, for example. "It should not be 'Watson has some remarkable characteristics,'" he had bemoaned. "But 'Watson had some remarkable characteristics'! Everyone who has picked up a book in the last twenty years knows that John Watson is dead." I refused to allow him to change it, however. In these books Watson is, and will always be, alive. It is the same sort of sentimental romanticism that I had so often criticized Watson for, but it is something I feel strongly about nontheless.
At any rate, I have left the world of popular literature behind me, and let me assure you that Mr. Doyle was delighted to hear of it. My career in writing is now singularly devoted to analytical and scientific pursuits; specifically, the origin and distribution of infectious diseases. After Watson had died, I thought it was simply a horrible tragedy, but not completely unexpected. Watson's constitution had never been as robust as other men's after that bout of typhoid fever and he was no longer a young man, after all. Then the reports starting coming in as more and more people died of this horrid disease. It had become a pandemic, one that killed at an even greater rate than the Black Plague. No one knew where it came from and the detective in me could not let the case lie. I followed the trail. Watson had been infected by either Bartley and Miss Beech. Bartley had most likely contracted it from Miss Beech as well, for she had a beau who worked as a groom at the manor. I found that Miss Beech's brother, Harold, had also died of the flu while convalescing in London. He had been wounded in battle, sent to a military hospital where he had likely picked it up, and then home to England. Miss Beech had visited him at the hospital, returned home, and died. It is not so very different from my old work, but its been decades now and what little evidence is left disappears with each day. I have traced it to the battlefields of France, possibly in Étaples, but unfortunately any further work must be put on hold for the time being.
At that moment, Marcelle entered the flat in such a state of panic that she looked possessed. She was a young woman, of about twenty-two years, with hair as dark as mine used to be. As loathe as I am to admit it, I now require the use of a nurse and Marcelle fills this need adequately enough. There have been very few women that I have met in my life that I have found to be interesting and worthwhile to know; Marcelle is certainly not one of them. However, I have found that with the proper motivation - usually involving currency of some sort - she can be called upon to dredge up some admirable quality about her.
I watched in bemusement as she ransacked my wardrobe, throwing everything into a suitcase in such a haphazard fashion that I doubted it would even close. "Aren't you going to help?" She demanded, before snatching up my papers.
I took them from her before she could add them to the pile. "Why should I help you in destroying my own rooms?" I inquired. "At any rate, you seem to be doing just fine on your own."
She huffed and towered over me with her hands on her hips. "The Germans are here!"
"I am aware of that."
"You're English!"
"Astounding deduction," I drawled. "However did you come to it? Could it possibly be that I told you?"
Perhaps I should not take so much pleasure in seeing her fluster about in anger, but then again her bedside manner is really quite appalling. Or perhaps Watson merely spoiled me. Either way, I rather enjoyed the way she gaped about like a fish on a hook. "My dear girl," I soothed, finally taking pity on the creature. "You are the only one here who knows who and what I am." It was true. I have found it easier to travel under an assumed name; I had hoped that my popularity would eventually fade, but Watson's little stories about me have continued to endure. "I speak French fluently. I have all the proper documentation. There is no reason for the Germans to think I am anyone but Monsieur Jean Moreau. Besides, how do you expect me to leave now? I can barely walk twenty paces before collapsing. Travel had been hard enough for me before the Nazis invaded, do you think it is possible for me now? If you want to go, I will not try to stop you, but I cannot leave."
For a moment she just stood there with a look like I was the most irritating man alive. It was a look I had long gotten used to. "I'd hate to have to find another job when this one pays so well," she finally stated.
"Excellent. Now, go make a cup of tea. I have work to do."
To be fair I was able to maintain my disguise for quite a long while. Then the Commandant of Greater-Paris, Lt. Gen. Ernst Shaumburg, came knocking on my door.