"Troubling news, Holmes?"

"Merely unexpected." Holmes dismissed it with a shrug. "The peculiarities of women! I merely compensated young Mr. Lestrade for the loss of his flute. She seems to feel that I have over-paid and to judge by the sere nature of her wording as well as the force used to engrave said wording upon paper…she feels some sort of insult."

Watson blinked. "I see. How much did you overpay?"

Holmes gestured like a stork, about to put the whole matter out of his mind at the earliest opportunity. "I merely guessed, Watson. Obviously I was in error to the advantage." He put the paper down, and sketched a quick response. A quick ring of the bell, a quicker instruction with the tip, and the note was on its way.

"That should be enough to satisfy even the most difficult of women," the Great Detective muttered under his breath.

"Why, Holmes?" Watson wondered with a sudden attack of his rare foresight. "What did you say to her?"

"Nothing at all, Watson. I merely apologised for my error. Tell a woman they are in the right, and they stop their complaint instantly."

Watson wasn't completely certain of that. The vaunted elephant of fable had been without question, female. He'd known that long before his marriage, and was prepared for it to be that way should he ever be re-blessed in his happiness.

Besides, Holmes' study of mankind was most comfortable with man. Womankind was a much more dangerous field to his cold, logical brain and Watson had to admit, the terrain was fraught with dangers. Holmes' idea of an apology might or might not go the way it was intended.

"Speaking of out latest adventure, Watson, will this be a case for your publishing?"

Watson was so long in answering that Holmes felt his innocent question had fallen quite flat. For his part, Watson was taken aback that Holmes even felt like mentioning it.

"I cannot say at this point," was the slow response. "My publisher had a most negative and strong reaction to the summary."

Holmes' question had initially been to distract Watson from his troublesome worrying. The answer surprised him into his own distraction. He returned his pipe to his lips for a few puffs.

"If they reacted to your romaniticised story-telling, I might be forced to agree. But how the Devil could they find fault with the summary?"

"I made the mistake of mentioning the rituals of the cook." Watson spoke with the most patent reluctance. "I was informed in no uncertain terms that such things did not and could not exist in this modern age."

Holmes pursed his lips, surprised thrice within half and hour. It was not a particularly pleasing sensation, and it only seemed to grow worse with each repetition.

"I shall write it regardless," Watson continued carefully, "But I do not expect to publish it any time soon." He tapped the table with his pencil in thought. "Perhaps I am just too ahead of my time in the theme," he added. "I tried looking for reference to the rituals, but all I could find in the British Library was a book published but a year ago."1

As Holmes watched, Watson shrugged off the disappointment with a low laugh. "That is but one of the many hazards of your profession, Holmes. To encounter worlds undreamt of, and outside the realm of a few imaginations."

-

Dear Mrs. Lestrade:

Please accept my apologies for being in error.

I merely over-estimated the price of a flute.

S.H.

Clea's lips set tightly into her face at the note. Several ripe invectives fluttered in her head like the wind and she stuffed the paper into her apron-pocket as Geoffrey came in.

"You look better," she observed as he tossed his bowler into the coat-tree and shrugged out of his coat. The shoulder muscles were healing first, which gave him a bit more mobility.

"How could I not? It's been ages since I've been outside longer than the news-stand." He sighed. "I believe I have it straightened out with Mr. Victor. He wasn't actually looking at Martin's practice sheets. He didn't realise he was dropping his 9's to add up the rows."2

"Calls himself a teacher of arithmetic." Clea sniffed.

"I don't think he was originally a teacher of arithmetic." Geoffrey ventured. "Most of the books in his office were about…physical fitness and things about the heart-muscle."

"Good to see you're still observant when off-duty." Clea stretched to give him a kiss.

"Just practicing for when they'll let me back." He kissed her back. "Nevertheless, I think I'll be making certain to his abacus." He winced as he managed to get his coat up, but Clea didn't stop him, knowing how important it was to be able to do something.

"Would you mind seeing if Martin wants another drink?" Clea had lifted Margaret to her shoulder. The child was wanting to walk again, and on her tip-toes. "I'm worried that he's going to dry out in that stuffy room."

"Will do, dear…"

Clea hummed to herself. She was beginning to feel better. Margaret wobbled a bit on the carpet, and displayed a shocking glimpse of teeth just burgeoning under the gum-line. Her mother was taken aback; all this time they'd been waiting for one to show up, and now two…three…was that four? Was emerging? Dear heavens. They were in for a show soon!

"Goat's milk for you, my little elf." She tickled the tiny chin. "And oatmeal…with a bit of sweet cream."

"Clea??!"

Geoffrey rarely raised his voice in the house—sound traveled well.

"Yes?"

"What's this about Mr. Holmes paying for Nick's flute?"

"Hmph!" Clea waited for Geoffrey to come back down stairs. He tried to move in a way that didn't jostle his aching arm. "I'll say he paid for it! Over twenty times what the thing was worth!"

"Tw—" Geoffrey stopped. He thought a moment, and winced, putting his hand to his head. "Well, the man plays a Stradivarius, and if I remember right, he has another one almost as pricey! Probably never occurred to him it wasn't worth a pound!"

"Dearest, it is a pennywhistle. A pennywhistle. Pennywhistles are so named because they used to be a whole penny, though it's gone up slightly since then…and before that, they were called ha'penny whistles!" Clea's teeth glinted through her lips. "Megs for short, as you might recall."

Geoffrey knew better, but he defended Mr. Holmes anyway. "He probably just didn't know, dear. He might be eating at Simpson's whenever he feels like it, and Marcini on the week-end, but when I first knew him, he was living on Montague Street in the cross-hairs of a war between rats and roaches!

Clea paused. "I fail to see the point."

"He was living in those digs because it was more important to build up his library-subscriptions and foul chemical collections. My point is, he absorbs and sacrifices for everything he can that has to do with his career, which is privateering detection, if you ask me—but I don't think anyone in his personal history has ever asked him to deal with a lost, stolen, or damaged pennywhistle." Geoffrey flinched as a sore thought struck him. "Unlike any of us," he added to himself.

Clea knew well just how much of her husband's job had to do with sheer ridiculousness, such as stolen photo-albums, madmen who sliced up umbrellas when the owners weren't looking, childish pranks, laundry-thieves, and complaints in the nature of, 'there are too many Urchins on my street, can't you police arrest them?" The one underlying and never-empty source of envy the detectives had against Mr. Holmes was the fact that he had the luxury of being able to pick and choose the cases he wanted…and he could actually turn down a person regardless of birth, connections, or their ability to ruin your career in a fit of pique.

Give a policeman the choice between a pay raise, a promotion, or the power to turn down a fool, and they would probably struggle with their conscience for quite a while before they gave you an answer.

"You're saying he's a smart man, but…limited." Clea fished about.

Geoffrey's shoulders drooped with relief. "Yes. He's a Jemmy, and he does a lot of work for us without taking so much as the credit—well, publicly," that last was added sourly. "He has his ways of taking credit for his work later…" He shook himself. "In truth, he's got his limitations like anyone else, only…they aren't limitations just like anyone else."

"I still can't see how he would think a pennywhistle would be worth a pound!"

"Dear, Mr. Holmes still thinks the American States will come back to the British flag someday, and if I told you his views about the Cornish language, you'd be asking me why I haven't done my duty and called Bedlam." Geoffrey shuddered like a cat suddenly drenched with dirty water.

Clea rolled this over in her mind a few times while Geoffrey discovered the pot of special tea she kept on the stand for his consumption. For a minute there was no other sound save that of his drinking another serving of knitbone, boneset, and Wolf's-milk3 steeped in rosehips.

"I found another pot of that chestnut-honey." She said absently. "You take a spoonful before bed."

"I'll need more than that to keep this down."

"Well." Clea said at last, "I don't like feeling the unthinking and slightly high-handed generosity, but I sent him the remainder back. That ought to finish it."

Geoffrey quickly grabbed up a cloth from the side-board and daubed up the tea on his face. "You sent him the remainder?" He swallowed hard.

"Why, yes. I had to even it out, you know. Is something wrong?"

Geoffrey was clearly weighing several potential answers, but as she watched, he discarded them one by one.

"I would have kept it and found a use for it--like a charity, but...Probably not, love." He said at last. The last person to "send back" something Mr. Holmes had sent had reason to regret it.

"Are you certain?"

Another pause. "He's a bit daft, but he is a gentleman…I doubt he'd argue with a lady."

Especially this one, he thought. On the other hand, there were a few advantages to having a thorn like Mr. Holmes in one's life…the man was so logical and cold he wouldn't blame a certain professional detective for any fireworks erupting between himself and said detective's wife…

1 Leslie S. Klinger argues convincingly that The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge (Published originally in two parts as "The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles" and "The Tiger of San Pedro" is the first literary mention of voodoo. A book was referenced by Mr. Klinger as being on the topic in 1893 in the British Museum, but the book was not mentioned. It was not, however, the fictitious title Holmes referred to: "Voodooism and the Negroid Religion"

2 An Arabic trick to add the numbers of a problem together, dropping the 9's, and seeing if the total is the same as that of the original problem. While it sounds complicated, it was a simple way of re-checking one's problems with a little practice.

3 Comfrey, Eupatorium, and Solomon's Seal