Sherlock Holmes Saves a Marriage - 3
"What would be these terrible consequences?"
"You are asking what I cannot answer."
"Then I won't waste any more of your time. I don't blame you, Mr. Holmes, for refusing to tell me everything. And I hope that you don't think badly of me for wanting to share my husband's troubles. But please, don't tell him I came to see you."
She had stood up, and shaken our hands, and at her final words turned and walked resolutely out the door.
Sherlock and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows, then walked over to the front windows to watch Mrs. Hope leave our building and walk down the street. Once she was out the front door, Sherlock turned to me.
"Well John, you're the expert on women," he said smiling in what seemed like an almost malicious manner, "what was her goal in coming here? What did she really want?"
For some reason his words and attitude irritated me so I answered shortly, "She sounded pretty clear to me, and it makes sense that she would be concerned for her husband."
"Hmmmm," mused Sherlock, "she seemed almost ready to fall apart. She's the wife of a top politician, she should be more practiced at hiding her emotions than that."
"Not everyone is a polished faker," I said crossly.
Sherlock gave me one of his searching gazes, then continued, "She seemed so adamant that it would be best for her husband that she knew all the circumstances. What did she mean by that? But women can be so difficult to build theories on to explain their behavior. You don't know if they're guilty of a crime or just upset about a bad hair day."
"Women are human beings just like us, Sherlock. Our differences are nothing compared to our similarities. If you're such a great detective, you should have deduced that by now."
I could feel that my face was red with anger, but I wasn't quite sure why I was reacting this way. I stomped over to my chair and picked up the paper again and began emphatically pretending to read it.
"Well, I'm off out then," said Sherlock.
I noticed that his earlier "we" had turned into "I", but I didn't point it out.
"OK," was all I said.
"I'm going to check out the crime scene in Godolphin Street, hopefully Lestrade will be there. I'm sure Eduardo Lucas has to have had something to do with our little problem. If you're going to stay here...let me know if there are any more interesting visitors."
"Will do," I replied from behind the paper.
I could hear him pause for a few seconds, but when I still said nothing more I heard him gather his coat and leave the flat.
After he had gone I put down the paper and pondered over our conversation. I tried to make sense out of my feelings, and why I had reacted so strongly to Sherlock's asking me about Mrs. Hope. After several minutes, I concluded that I was reacting to what I felt was his condescending attitude toward me for my fondness for women.
I am fond of women, more than fond, actually. I love women. Back in my salad days I had loved women on three different continents. Those days were now over, maybe, but I still loved women. And I missed them. And how dare Sherlock try to put me down for it!
I sat there fuming. It was so unfair! Here I was, in a period of self-imposed celibacy mostly because of Sherlock, yet he still had the audacity to look down on me for my love of women. Well, that has to stop! I'm not going to be ashamed of what I am!
I thought long and hard about how to remedy the situation without it turning into a row with Sherlock, but I didn't come up with any answers. I especially felt reluctant to bring up emotions or related issues while Sherlock was on a case. He disliked emotional discussions at any time, but when he was working it would be especially aggravating to him.
Sherlock never came home or contacted me again that day before I gave up waiting to hear from him and went to bed at midnight.
The next morning I awoke to find that Sherlock had never come to bed. When I got up to make my tea, I found him on the couch, still dressed, laying down with his eyes closed, but with his hands steepled under his chin, indicating that he was not asleep, but thinking.
He made no move to acknowledge my presence, so I got ready for work and left without saying a word.
The next three days passed pretty much the same way. Sherlock was gone most of the time I was home. When he was home our conversations were minimal. It was as if we were both afraid of saying anything of importance. He went through an alarming number of nicotine patches and never came to bed. Sometimes late at night I heard his violin, playing mournful melodies. I assumed that he was probably working out his frustrations with the case.
I tried to get him to talk about it a few times, but he flatly refused to reveal anything about what he was doing or what he had learned. I took that to mean that he had nothing of importance to tell, and that was probably making him morose.
I continued to follow Lucas' murder case in the news, but nothing new was reported there either. The suspect was still unknown, and nothing of value had been taken from the house. It came out that Lucas had been conducting affairs with quite a few women in London, but other than that there was nothing found to indicate why he might have been murdered.
All that changed on the morning of the fourth day since our visit from the Prime Minister and Secretary. I was scanning the morning's news on my laptop when I choked on my tea.
"Sherlock!" I called, "Come and look at this!"
It was an article on the Telegraph's website reporting that a woman in France had been arrested after confessing to Lucas' murder. It turned out that Eduardo Lucas' real name was Henri Fournaye, and he had skipped out on his wife some years ago and created a new identity. Madame Fournaye had apparently caught up with her husband in London, stabbed him in a fit of jealousy, and immediately returned to France where she began to lose her sanity. She was arrested in Paris for being a public nuisance, and subsequently confessed to the murder of her husband. An investigation tracked her movements by train, and it all fit the timeframe of the murder.
"Well Sherlock," I sad after he was done reading over my shoulder, "what do you think of that?"
Sherlock began pacing the sitting room, running his hands through his curls.
He sighed impatiently and said, "This doesn't help me much at all, except to reinforce my conviction that women are completely irrational creatures. She goes to the effort to track down her husband, presumably because he's important to her, but then she kills him. To prove what? How does she gain by that? And then, supposing her motivation was just revenge, she then confesses to the murder! So she's ended the life of someone she supposedly loved, and ruined her own. It's completely irrational!"
"What is with you and your misogynistic comments lately?" I asked. "You of all people should know that the majority of domestic murders, as well as murders in general, are committed by men. And their reasons are no more rational than a woman's."
"Misogynistic comments!" Sherlock exclaimed, "I'm not making misogynistic comments!"
"Well what would you call what you just said, and the rubbish you said about Mrs. Hope earlier this week?"
"I'm not...I..." Sherlock seemed to be temporarily at a loss for words. Finally he said, "I can't talk about this right now. I need to think about the case."
With that he grabbed his coat and slammed out of the flat and out of the building.
TBC...
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