"How could I have known?"
I half listened to the moan. My head was bent upon the recent medical journal, scanning with heavy lidded eyes.
"Excuse me?"
"If you didn't hear the first time, I won't bother repeating myself," he declared, peeking from behind a set of formidable beakers. "As is, the question was highly irrelevant to the task at hand. It was just a passing thought."
"Well now you've captured my interest, there's no getting away from it, so go on." I gave up the journal; this Baker Street bread and circus was enough entertainment for me.
"I was thinking of the poison cyanide as I mixed these chemicals. You can find it in apple seeds, as you are doubtlessly aware. Then I thought, how can something so seemingly harmless as an apple be so damned deadly? I then thought about legions of criminals that are innocuous on the outside with a cyanide core within, if you will. My thoughts progressed to a contemplation of Irene Adler, the woman you recorded in that tale of yours. But how was I to know what a poisoned apple the woman was?"
"I suppose if you had viewed the fairer sex with an optimist view…"
"Balderdash, Watson!" He declared sharply. "Any ill feelings I had before have been banished."
