A/N: Sherlock Holmes, John T. Watson, and Mary Morstan Watson are, of course, the creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the property of whomever they're the property of, which is certainly not me. Welcome to Day 10 (frost) of the 25 Days of Fic Challenge.
"Don't be lettin' our ghost bother you," said the maid at the Grand Hotel Davos as she turned down the beds. Or so my Mary translated from the absurd patois of French and German that informs the placid and prosperous national character of the Swiss.
Of course, Mary had to hear every detail of this ghost. My beloved wife is in every way the opposite of my dear friend Sherlock Holmes. While he insists upon reason at every juncture, she thrills to fantasy. He travels with informative monographs; her luggage is incomplete without the latest in fairy stories. The book resting on the polished inlay of her bedside table proclaims itself The Green Fairy Book, and I've no doubt that if there are fairy books in every color of the dyer's imagination, Mary will own them soon enough.
She is tidy; his orderly mind is oblivious to external disorder. She is pale-haired and dimpled; he is dark and acidic. When he says Watson, I know adventure beckons. When she calls me dear John, I know that I've come home.
Her cough as she listened to the maid's ghost story was my painful reminder of the one similarity to my friend. I am doomed to leave both of them to die in Switzerland.
The ghost story was a simple tale, though not quickly told, especially with pauses for Mary to translate the maid's extravagant story-telling into good, plain English.
It seems that, in 1875, the first year of the hotel's operation, this very room was the host to one of those American families that tour Europe in a restless quest to exchange their industrial wealth for culture. Davos was, in that era, a remote mountain fastness; but the industrialist papa foresaw that the snowy valley would bring skiiers and money.
A papa he was, with three near-grown sons and a golden-haired daughter of eleven. One night, the little girl fell from a window. She shattered both legs and an arm but might have lived, had anyone found her. Alas! Her little body in its thin nightdress froze to death before the milkman came on his rounds in the dawn.
Suspicion flew everywhere and fastened nowhere: her father, any of her older brothers, the porter at the hotel, her brothers' tutor, her own governness, any of a number of laborers. No guilt could be established. The local police declared the death an accident, and the matter was closed.
"And so little Alice DeWitt comes back to visit her old room," the maid finished. "She leaves messages for visitors, writes them in the frost on the window, she does."
"Were you working here then?" I asked the maid. Mary translated, but the maid's answer was only a swift shake of her white-capped head and what even I could recognize as a flood of excuses that she must be elsewhere immediately.
"She has work to do, John," Mary said gently when the woman had left. "She can't be entertaining us all evening."
"She knows something about that girl's death," I said. "Holmes would have it out of her in a minute and an answer to this mystery in a matter of hours."
"When all the parties have gone home to America and the trail's been cold for eighteen years?" Mary settled herself in a deep, upholstered chair by the fire, arranging her skirts to reveal neat booted toes. "Even your late friend couldn't do miracles."
"If I apply his methods. . ." I paced the hearth rug. "The maid's hair beneath her cap is pure gray, so she could have been here eighteen years ago. Indeed, she almost certainly was, as the valley was all but empty of businesses then. Maids see everything, making her opinions of the family invaluable—"
"Dear John. Sherlock is dead." Mary toyed with her handkerchief: a stout piece of linen, embroidered only with her initials in the corner, well-designed for wadding to hide the spots of blood that appeared more frequently of late.
Not as long as I remember him. Not as long as London longs for him. The people of London had worn black armbands when Holmes' death was made public. It had become a cruel truth that the same memories that kept Holmes alive in spirit were also the most poignant reminders that he was gone.
Playing at Holmes' methods like children conning their Greek translations might at least have prevented our usual evening squabble. It was invariably conducted in tones of the firmest civility. What we could not make up our minds to was who took which side. One night, I was prepared to take every possible measure to prolong Mary's life—to cure her, if medical science could manage it—while she insisted she preferred to accept her fate and die in the familiar comfort of our home. The next night, I was resigned to Mary's decision, while she armed herself to fight death with every weapon at the physician's disposal. The only unchanging element was that both of us wept.
The next day, we walked the snow-lined streets of Davos and paid a visit to one of the sanitoriums for sufferers from consumption. Mary's first response was hectic enthusiasm—the rooms were immeasurably comfortable, the air had a bracing chill, the doctors were kind, the menu promised every sort of healthfulness, the fellow patients were a charming cross-section of human graces—but as the afternoon passed, she grew subdued. Our conversation moved in halts and pauses as we sipped cocoa at a sidewalk cafe in lieu of afternoon tea. By the time we returned to our room, Mary was entirely silent and appeared preoccupied with the rose pattern of the hotel carpet.
It was only when she'd settled into her chair and shifted to look out the window that her mood changed. "Look, John! It's our ghost!"
So delighted was I at any sign of revival from my dear Mary that I flew to the frost-covered window, determined to humor her fancies.
The sight that greeted my eyes also stopped every sort of humor in my heart.
It's no affair of mine. Settle it your own way.
Childish writing—but no childish thought. "The ghost. . ." If a phantasm were going to interfere in our personal affairs, it might at least offer advice. For a wild moment, I thought of seances and wondered if my dear friend Holmes could be reached on the other side. No doubt even in the spirit world, he'd eschew such nonsense.
"Pray ring for our maid, dear John," Mary said, her dimples very much in evidence. Baffled, I complied. Though I quizzed my wife, she would tell me nothing until the maid silently entered our room, curtseying and wiping her hands on her starched apron.
Mary also refused to translate what she said to the maid, though her dimple grew deeper as she teased me. "Patience, John. Wait and see."
The clock in the corridor struck the quarter-hour before the maid reappeared, leading by the hand a girl of eight or ten, with long black braids, a pinafore, and shiny buttoned boots.
To the girl, Mary said: "Blue bird, blue as the sky?"
"Fly to me now, there's nobody by!" the girl finished, laughing.
"What's your name, dear one?"
"Beatrice, ma'am." She bobbed a curtsey.
"And do you like playing ghost?"
Beatrice looked to the maid—her mother? her grandmother?—for a shrug. "It is an amusement for the guests. Yes. I like it."
"This little girl was in our room?" I demanded.
"Oh, John, don't be stuffy." Mary held out her arms to Beatrice, who after the briefest hesitation scampered to snuggle on my wife's lap. "Would you like to visit and read fairy stories with me?"
That suggestion was met with the highest approval by all parties. It was only after dinner on a tray and the removal of a yawning Beatrice that I was able to ask Mary the question that had been rattling around my brain as I tried to read the paper over the prattling of my wife and her protegée.
"How did you know the maid had a daughter?"
"Granddaughter. It was elementary, dear John." Mary held up The Green Fairy Book. "The writing in the frost is in this very book. It's in the first story, no less."
"I don't see—"
"This very book, published last year. A ghost who died in 1875 would hardly be up on the latest in fairy stories. Therefore, there had to be a breathing, living little girl who was meddling with the guests' rooms. And behold! Beatrice."
Mary lifted her face for my kiss of approval on her flushed cheek. Of course I gave it. My wife is a delight, the joy of my existence.
I could wish, though, that she had nothing at all in common with my dear, departed friend Sherlock Holmes.
A/N: The Grand Hotel Davos is still in operation, now called the Grand Hotel Belvédère.