"Master Holmes just arrived with an injured leg. He seems to be in surprisingly good spirits despite his injury but he may still turn broody and morose. Before he does, and while the doctor we had fetched is with him, go upstairs and change into your best outfit so you can be formally introduced to him."
I was thunderstruck. Stood there, speechless as I was, Mrs. Hudson began to feel alarmed.
"You need not worry. He's quite alright, just a slight fall from his horse onto his leg. The doctor was asked to call on him only as a precaution; though," she giggled, "his good mood might be a sign that something might actually be wrong and so it's a good thing, in any case, that we took the trouble of asking the doctor to call on him." But Master Holmes' condition wasn't what worried me at all. Certainly if I were ignorant of the facts I would have worried when told my employer took a fall off his horse. However, since I was not unaware of my employer's predicament, it was my unguarded words, the words I uttered on the road, which struck back at me like stones and left me dumb: 'And what do YOU think of HIM?' 'Not much for I have never met him.'
In my distress, all I managed to blurt out was, "Oh, you're quite right Mrs. Hudson. No need to worry without reason, especially now that the doctor is here." It was then that I recalled what she had said when I first encountered her when I came in, and just before she turned to leave I asked her to clarify.
"Wait, Mrs. Hudson, forgive me for asking you to reiterate, but did I hear correctly? Did you ask me to put on my best outfit?" Sensing what worried me, she tried to appease my fears.
"Oh, no one expects princely gowns, my dear. Just choose the best of what you have."
"But I have no other clothes except my livery and a suit handed down to me by my family."
"Then just wear your suit and it should be more than acceptable."
I could see it was a losing battle and her argument was reasonable and sensible. I made my way upstairs slowly, hoping I wouldn't have to talk to anyone else of the household about the arrival of our employer; heavy thoughts weighed down my heavy footsteps: 'He knew. He knew who I was, standing on that road. I realize it now. He knew as soon as I opened my mouth. There was recognition in his ghost-like eyes. He was mocking me when asking for my opinion regarding "My employer".' It was then that I started to feel shame for the thoughts that formed slowly, in my mind, as I made my way back to Bakersfield Hall. The pang in my gut which rendered me speechless, when I stood in front of him and dared level my eyes with his. When I took in his features and realized in that moment what I felt, it was the reason I didn't see the recognition that flashed in his eyes. I was distracted by my own emotions.
I reached my room, closed the door behind me and proceeded to put on the only suit in my possession. Flashes of Sherlock's face flashed before my eyes. I tried to stop focusing on my sudden, unexpected and, certainly inappropriate attraction. 'No good can come of it, you stupid child.' There was the pain, which I wholeheartedly expected to appear and even embraced, as I stamped on the sentiments as they began to take their form as fantasies, fantasies that would involve a connection to him; a connection made on that road in such a befitting, violent fashion. The pain was good, for it signified I had not lost my grasp on how the world works and the distance that stands between me and a man in his position.
I checked my reflection in the wardrobe's full length mirror. Finding my attire lacking any distinction, I reached in my desperation, for the small, gilded vase situated on a wooden table located in my room, plucked a flower, and attached it to my coat's front pocket.
I went downstairs, the ominous portraits of the Holmes ancestors reflecting the features that Master Holmes inherited, as I made my way to the drawing room. I decided to wait, for the doctor to take his leave, before venturing in.
I watched through the window as the doctor departed in good humour, despite having been called out to Bakersfield in the late hours of the evening. I followed him with my gaze till he made his way beyond Bakersfield's gates. I realized I was stalling the inevitable and the frustration I felt with my childlike behavior had quite decided me, so I quietly, but confidently, entered the drawing room to face my employer's ridicule.
I was greeted by the sight of Master Holmes giving Adelmar a boxed gift. Master Holmes was seated in an armchair, the same armchair Mrs. Hudson had offered me on my first night, and had his back to the door and so did not register me immediately upon my entering the room. He watched quietly as Adelmar, who was sitting on the carpet, began to unwrap his present. The box was of white colour; elongated with a blue silk ribbon and bow. Gregory was standing by the door watching the room silently and greeted me with a wide smile, while Mrs. Hudson did the same as she sat in a comfortable armchair further away from Master Holmes and Adelmar, yet still close enough to enjoy the hearth's warmth, as she quietly knitted. As soon as Master Holmes saw her smile he turned back to look at me with his ghostly eyes, which I could see now, by the strong light emanating from the fireplace, were the colour of verdigris and hauntingly beautiful. It was a realization which I did not welcome gladly.
"Merci beaucoup Monsieur!" Adelmar exclaimed, as he pulled a toy rifle from the box. Master Holmes took a few seconds before turning away from me and towards the child.
"I can see I won't be able to deny you anything. Fitting, as that is how your lovely mother got to my lovely pocket." Adelmar looked confused upon hearing this but was dismissed with a smile and asked to sit aside quietly and play with his new toy.
I was at first shocked to see Adelmar take the rifle apart as soon as he sat himself back down on the carpet and I immediately turned my gaze to Master Holmes, worrying he might see the action as stemming from ungratefulness, but he seemed almost delighted. Perhaps he felt pleased that Adelmar wanted to satisfy his curiosity regarding how the rifle functioned before actually using it. Master Holmes values curiosity it would seem.
I stood for quite some time, hoping to be acknowledged. At length, Master Holmes stood up, despite his injury, and walked towards the clock situated upon the mantelpiece, opened the glass cover and began to wind it with a small key.
"May I have the time John?"
It took me a few seconds to realize he was talking to me since I was so unaccustomed to being called by my Christian name.
"Uh, oh, yes."
I took my pocket watch out, along with my handkerchief, to wipe the glass in order to bring out the shine, as I always do, out of habit and respect, I suppose, to its former owner.
"It is 23 minutes past 8 P.M."
"Thank you John."
Master Holmes set the time, closed the glass cover and walked slowly back to his seat, gesturing for me, without looking back, to take the armchair set in front of him, the one that faced the drawing room door but had it's back to Mrs. Hudson. I felt somewhat embarrassed to be given a seat closer to the fireplace than the one Mrs. Hudson currently occupied, and one that was situated in such a way as to obscure her from my view, but she did not seemed fazed in the slightest by it and even reassured me with a kind smile when I averted my eyes automatically towards her, seeking her approval I suppose, when I was asked to sit.
"Were you meeting with your kin on that road, as I suspected?"
Again I was taken aback. I expected him to reproach me for having spoken so honestly about him, to, what at the time I perceived to be, a stranger.
"I am no Hauflin, Sir." I answered boldly. "They have all left England. It is no longer savage enough to neither house them to their satisfaction nor shelter them from the big people. They have all retreated to Germanic and Slavic forests, the woods' thickness and darkness providing them with far more comfortable homes and much better hiding places." He smiled at this and then proceeded to keep his gaze upon me for a long while without saying another word, a gaze I felt rendered me naked under a harsh light. He did not desist even as Sally walked in briskly with a tray of refreshments in her hands, as if in rather a hurry. She slowed down her pace as soon as she entered the room, however, and set the tray on the table Mrs. Hudson had used on the night I had first arrived to Bakersfield.
After what seemed to be a rather long time for her to set the refreshments down, Sally turned towards the door but seemed somewhat reluctant to leave, shuffling her feet and seeming to be looking for something to dust in the room.
"Sally. Go and assuage your curiosity somewhere else. We have no further use for you." Master Holmes suddenly said, without even turning to look at her, as his armchair was facing away from her and the drawing room door.
Sally stopped what she was doing (or rather not doing) immediately and ran from the room covering her mouth with the palm of her hand as if she were about to cry. I was confused as to what Master Holmes was referring to but I was far from willing to ask him what he meant by the words he directed at Sally, nor why they had elicited such a violent reaction from her. I guessed that I was not acquainted enough with the man to understand his actions just yet.
"So... What is your tale of woe?" Master Holmes directed his question at me.
"I have no tale of woe."
"Haven't you now? Was it your Uncle or your Aunt then?" I perceived Gregory begin to form a knowing smile. Something was happening.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Was it your Uncle or your Aunt who resented you enough to send you away at the very young age of ten, never to return?" Gregory seemed pleased, standing by the door.
"It was my Aunt. How did you..?"
"Your handkerchief. It is hand-woven silk. Decorative, and so not intended to be used but rather displayed on a coat's front pocket; seen better days. Comes from money but obviously not your own; family money then, yet you are obviously an orphan, any fool could see that just by the simple fact of you having been educated in Lowood. By the state of the material I would say you have been holding on to it from the moment you left for Lowood at the age of 10 which is the youngest age in which you would be admitted. Not allowed from that day to return and exchange it for one in a better condition. In fact, your suit was handed down to you by your Aunt so you would have a better chance at finding employment and so you would not have any reason or excuse to come back. You are resented by your family then; a feeling that is mutual but not towards all of them since you kept the handkerchief out of obvious sentiment. You mentioned your Aunt so I'm assuming her husband was your blood relative but he is no longer alive otherwise you would not have been sent away.
"The watch you keep did not belong to you originally, that is to say, you were not the one who had purchased it; far too extravagant. It was given to you by a revered authority figure at the school as a keepsake. You left the school as soon as he did so no special attachment to anyone who remained at the school but there was someone, since such a long period of loneliness would have impelled you to seek companionship at the school and try to experience friendship for the first time, even a single friend would have done well enough for you to feel fulfilled. No keepsake from him meaning he died young, perhaps from the typhoid outbreak that took the school in the spring of 1840, perhaps not, and he did so before he reached the age in which he would have been able to acquire anything he could have given you. And he himself was not very well loved by his own family, a shared experience which brought the two of you closer. It also means he would not have any personal effects to give you on his deathbed because he most likely brought none with him to the school. The poppies in your coat's front pocket hold a meaning I'm just not sure if it involves the boy or someone else. It's not usually a flower one uses for decoration, even if it is done with the sole purpose of deflecting attention from the drabness of an article of clothing. Being the person who touched you the most during adolescence, though he most likely passed away very early in your adolescent years, I would hazard a guess that he is the one who inspired you to take up the church as your life." He said all this in what appeared to be a single breath though I know it could not have been. I had no thoughts running in my head while he dissected me; there was no space for thought. Only after he had finished tearing me apart could I see the rubble and what each boulder, belonging to the small edifice that is my life, represented; Aunt and Uncle Reed, their children and the rejection and loneliness I felt when I was isolated from them, the day I was sent away, Lowood and Michael Stamford, my decision to join the church… Poppies and Mark…
'He's Brilliant… He's heartless…' I did not even realize it had been poppies I had taken from my room. He guessed, no… no, not guessed. He construed my short life's entire story from 4 articles on my person.
"You reveal so much Master Holmes… Is that what Sally wanted to see? Why you chased her out of this room?" He made no comment.
"Am I entertainment?" I could not keep the hurt from my voice when I made the last statement. 'Was this how he decided to punish me for the candor I had shown in the mist?'
"Come, come. There was a part of you that enjoyed it. Was it 'Genius' or rather 'Brilliant' that sprung to mind? "
"'Brilliant'… and 'heartless'."
"Honest enough." He repeated the assessment he had made on the road. "As for sentiment versus sense, I would rather have the brain, which is far less likely to be tricked if one is paying attention, than the heart."
"Will you bare yourself so readily to me? I think not. No employer would." Bitterness seeped in against my will.
"I have nothing I would wish to hide. You can ask as you desire and I will gladly answer."
I hesitated. 'Could he be trying to trick me? Was this how he planned to discharge me from my post? By having me speak openly and frankly and so give him an excuse to dismiss me from my charge by claiming I have hurt his pride with my bluntness? Bluntness…' I suddenly recalled Gregory's words.
"Who were the Deverell Twins?" Master Holmes gave another knowing look in the direction of Gregory standing by the door.
"A gruesome murder case." At this Adelmar raised his head for he seemed to understand the ghastly word despite me never having taught him.
"Mrs. Hudson. Please take Adelmar to the kitchens and have Molly give him some of the ginger cookies she mentioned having made for him as a treat. She has a very good story to tell him before you take him to bed so he'll be mightily entertained while he has his sweet delight." Needless to say I did not think Master Holmes would refrain from obscuring or even softening the harsher details of his account so I gave my goodnight to both the child and Mrs. Hudson and turned my attention to Master Holmes. He stayed silent for a few minutes gathering his thoughts and then preempted his account with a warning.
"Are you sure you possess the stomach to hear the details of this affair? I will not censor myself nor will I refrain from sharing with you the more lurid and violent parts of this tale."
"I may be young, Master Holmes, but my mind is open. I do not fear evil and certainly not when it is being retold. However, I do ask of you to refrain from discussing the affair in the same style you used to dissever my life, namely, to revel in the horror and pain and treat it as entertainment."
I could not read his expression. I almost sensed a twinge of hurt in his guarded eyes. 'If he can manage to say so little with such startling eyes, how will I ever be able to believe his words?'
"Twelve years ago (I was 23 at the time), on one of my infrequent visits to the neighbourhood from my travels in the continent, the local authorities approached me regarding a very unusual murder. The confusion in the case was great and the people involved very unwilling to give any evidence. I shall refrain from explaining their reasons for approaching me and will explain those circumstances at another time. The case was two-fold. It began with the murder of a very beautiful but simple minded 15 year old girl, Rebecca Tattsyrup, who was found hanging from a wooden beam in a burning barn. Her body was found to have been mutilated and it was assumed she had been forcibly taken. The horses had been released just after the fire was set." I tried to hide my disgust. My mind could not help imagine that poor child, hanging, as the flames licked higher and the horses rushed in a panic out of the barn doors.
"The release of the horses was done in a juvenile attempt to create confusion and chaos. The guilty parties were easy enough to sniff out without my involvement for they stood nearby after the wreckage, pretending to be part of the crowd that had gathered, in curiosity, around the barn she was found in. The barn belonged to the girl's parents, Edward and Tulip Tattsyrup (local shop owners), and they had been bidden, very cruelly, by the Deverell twins, to come and quench the fires with their tears, for the fire was in a state too far gone to do anything about by the time they were called to witness it. The twins were found hanging about stifling their grins and even seemed somewhat pleased. As I say, I was not brought in to bring the culprits of this murder to justice, for their guilt was plain enough to see, as they made no pretense in hiding it. No. The problem was compounded by the fact that the boys had escaped justice through, as it turned out, the influence of their powerful and wealthy family. No one was willing to come forward, and the evidence was circumstantial. Surely there is nothing unlawful in standing around the scene of a tragedy and seem merry at your neighbour's misfortune. Certainly the girl had been seen in their company and she had revealed to one of her friends they had enticed her with tales of chivalry, which the girl could not resist, being, as she was, fanciful in her tastes. But even that fact was not enough to bring about any sort of conviction. The truth was hard to swallow. She had not been ravished but had given herself freely… to both boys. This she did not reveal to her friend, naturally, but it was plain to see when I looked at the physical evidence. She was a simpleton, tragic though it may seem to you to pronounce her so." I felt my stomach turn and the bile rise. I tried to hide it during the first stages of the retelling but I could disguise it no longer.
"I was brought in when the two boys were found drowned in the nearby river. The girl's parents were immediately suspected, to be sure, but the authorities could not, for the life of them, make out how the twins had been enticed to go with the Tattsyrups. There were no signs of a struggle; neither in their rooms nor on their bodies. Yet it was I who recognized the red rash that is a classic sign of Belladonna poisoning; in small doses, a sleeping aid, but in large quantities, a tasteless killer. On one body it would have been a coincidence. On both it was clear evidence of poisoning. I hadn't quite worked out how they had managed to administer it to the boys, when news broke out that the Tattsyrups had managed to escape, possibly helped by the person who had aided them in the poisoning. It was only later, after the shop was searched for clues that would give some hint as to where the Tattsyrups might have gone to, that their family history came into the light. Edward and Tulip were not married legally for they were brother and sister. They had moved to the area as husband and wife but a careful study of their diaries revealed unspeakable truths. According to the earlier entries, they had another son, David. He was a monstrosity and kept in the basement, the scratch marks and chains found within it confirmed his existence. Disguised, it was he who had helped them escape the local constabulary station during the night by using brute force. At this point I was asked to withdraw my involvement in the investigation but I could not until I had found the poisoner. It did not take me long to reach the answer: By the river, further upstream from the spot where the twins had drowned, there had been found a nearly empty box of sweets. It transpired that the box contained ginger cookies which Rebecca had received from her parents and had given to the boys." My thoughts went immediately to little Adelmar, asleep by now in his bed, full of ginger cookies. Master Holmes could see it, just as he could see everything else it would seem, and after a small pause, in which he allowed me to compose myself, he continued.
"The girl did not find it odd that her parents had given her ginger, to which she had an aversion to. An aversion that her parents were more than aware of and so ensured she would not partake in the treat herself. She also did not suspect they had laced it with Belladonna. For, as it turned out, the Tattsyrups meant to murder the boys without the initial incentive of revenge. They did not approve of the friendship they had struck with their daughter. I suppose evil recognizes evil. It was just bad luck for the boys that they had been carousing by the river banks when they decided to eat the poisoned treat."
I could not think of what to say. I had been left speechless, a feeling I was fast becoming accustomed. Before I could not find anything reasonable to say, Master Holmes shocked me even further by revealing a final piece of information.
"That is also how Lestrade came into my brother's service until he passed away four years ago. Gregory was the officer who had brought me in, having known me most of my life through my brother Mycroft, and he was held the most responsible regarding the failure of the investigation, when the case ended with the escape of the Tattsyrups. My involvement was not what had made their escape possible but blame had to fall on someone. Gregory seemed to be the easiest target and so it fell on him. My brother never let me forget my 'culpability' as he put it. Though I can't for the life of me understand how he could be so resentful towards me, considering how... happy, Gregory had made him." Lestrade gave out a small cough.
'Ask him what he felt.' The words seemed to resonate.
"How did the whole abhorrent affair make you feel?"
"Annoyed."
"Annoyed? Is that all you felt?" I could not perceive what he meant by it.
"Of course! The guilty party had fled. The case is still open and unsolved to my degree of satisfaction."
"How… how can you only feel frustration at your… thwarted pleasure? A girl is dead. Brutally killed and made a spectacle of! Her brother living a caged existence…"
"What is that to me? Caring for them will not bring her back nor make her any less of an object of gossip and local legend and it would certainly not change her brother's fate. I am sorry her life ended in such a horrid fashion but if you are asking me whether I care, I am afraid I would disappoint you were I to answer."
'Can he really feel nothing? Could he care so little, knowing what he knows?'
"I'm afraid I must excuse myself, Sir. I did not realize how late the hour had become and I have much to do tomorrow for Adelmar's schooling." I could not bring myself to stay in the room any further. I felt as if the walls themselves had been drenched in the evil that had reverberated off of them while Master Holmes told his tragic tale. Of course, I could not fool him with any excuse I could come up and so did not try to come up with anything better.
"Good night John." he said, as I was halfway between him and the door.
"Good night Master Holmes."
I passed Gregory on my way out but he seemed to me somewhat subdued. Something was revealed in that room he did not wish for me to know. If I were being honest with myself, I would agree with his sentiment completely.
I made my way back to my room, numb and sick, passing, yet again, the portraits of the Holmeses, their features still reminding me of their descendant. I did not feel the least bit surprised to find that sleep eluded me and would continue to do so for quite some time. I had no one else to blame but myself.
Author's Notes:
I made quite a few references to things outside the world of A.C. Doyle. If you have any questions I'll be more than happy to answer them.
As for the fictitious case, it's the best I could do. I'm not a thriller writer, nor am I very well versed in the art of deduction. Hopefully the case was JUST under the level of being ridiculous. If you do not know who Edward and Tulip "Tubbs" Tattsyrup are, shame on you.
