Chapter 9: Present Fears

"Present fears are less than horrible imaginings."

-William Shakespeare


The fog did not lift. It only got thicker. Soon enough, nothing could be seen, not even the misguided shapes that had been there before. Everything was shrouded in a grey, oppressive mist, floating over us like some ghost drawn forevermore to places of gloom.

After dinner, there being a larger number of us, we filed into the drawing room instead of immediately retiring to our rooms.

"Miss Camberwell, did your father have a will?" asked Lestrade, who was pacing near the hearth with his hands in his breast pockets.

Nicole averted her eyes. "Not that I am aware of," she said quietly. "He had no affections, and the majority of his time was poured into the mines. Everything else was pointless to him. Even – especially – his own family."

"What was his motivation for investing so much in the mines?" Holmes asked. A glint was in his eye, but somehow I was afraid to look upon his face for more than a second after his strange behaviour.

"I couldn't say," replied Nicole, shaking her head. "My grandfather was the one who first owned the mine. It's been my father's ever since he died a few years before I was born."

"How did he die?" I asked. I wasn't quite sure what made me ask it. Something was nagging at the back of my mind. Something about the mines and the violence among the townspeople that Nicole had mentioned.

"Consumption, I was told," Nicole answered, looking at me with curiosity in her eyes. "Why? Is that important?"

Holmes looked at me in the same way. "I doubt her late grandfather had anything to do with all of this, Emily."

Lestrade stopped his pacing precipitously. It didn't take any great leap of logic to realize that he had noticed that something was amiss with Holmes as easily as we had. "Holmes…" he started, but did not make any move to finish the sentence. His brow was furrowed in suspicion.

"Yes, what is it, Lestrade? Do make some effort to complete your sentences in a proper grammatical fashion. Kindly don't leave us hanging."

This alarmed Lestrade even more, and as I shifted my gaze to John, I could see that he was just as shocked. While Holmes occasionally slighted Lestrade and the other Scotland Yarders, he never lashed out verbally. Something was really wrong, and from the sharp intake of breath beside me, it was obvious that Andrew now realized it too. I was thankful, for his shushing of me earlier when I tried to tell him earlier had not been comforting to me in the least.

John gave the detective a look that was normally reserved for when he returned from investigations in the middle of the night with blood dripping down his face. "Holmes, you are not acting like yourself. Might I suggest that you retire early tonight? Miss Camberwell has lost her family, and they must be buried within the next couple of days. Your attitude is not helping her grieving process, nor your own investigation."

Holmes gave my brother a piercing look and rose from his seat, departing the room with the grandiose drifting motion that was adopted by so many birds of prey.

"What the devil's the matter with him?" Lestrade asked, looking after Holmes with wonder in his voice.

"We haven't the foggiest idea," I explained. "But it is something, and not something to just ignore until it passes. He's holding onto biased theories as well."

A vacant expression had crossed Nicole's face, and as I looked into her eyes, she seemed not even to notice. "It's the mines," she whispered.

"Pardon?" Lestrade asked, turning to look at her, his eyes narrowed in confusion.

I could all but see her consciousness slowly drifting back into the room, and she took a deep breath, pulling her sleeves down further and not meeting anyone's gaze, looking instead into the glowing embers of the fireplace. "It's nothing," she said, and while her tone was enough to convince the others, I looked into her eyes and knew that it was not true. Something was bothering her deeply. I would inquire about it at a later time.

"I think it's obvious that Holmes' investigative skills are suffering at present, for whatever reason," I said instead. "But that does not change the fact that there is a killer on the loose. And that killer will not be brought to justice while he has his sights set so stubbornly on Simon Camberwell's friends. I think we should launch something of an investigation without him."

"You jest!" Lestrade said with an incredulous laugh. "We can't possibly solve it without his help."

"I'm sure we can do something to that end, at least," said John. "Scotland Yard does it, so I am sure that we can do just as much."

Another laugh elicited from the London Inspector. "Doctor Watson," he said gravely, "we at the Yard hate to admit it, but our success record without Mr. Holmes is dismal indeed. We can't do a whit without him."

"That doesn't mean we can't do it," I pointed out. "For goodness' sake, Lestrade, you've known Holmes for how long?"

Lestrade furrowed his brow and counted off on fingers for a moment before answering. "Why, nearly ten years now!"

I turned to my brother. "John, you've lived with him for how many years?"

"Six," he returned promptly, not even blinking. He had obviously been thinking of the year quite recently, for he did not even hesitate a fraction of a second.

"And I may have only been acquainted with him for a little under two months, but I've picked up a great deal, and I was no stranger to logical reasoning balanced with intuition before coming to Baker Street. Nicole isn't dull in any sense of the word either. And Andrew? Regardless of what you say about his experience and qualifications, Lestrade, he has spent just as much time as you soaking up the police environment. None of us are imbeciles. There's no reason we can't do this."

"There is one stipulation," John said after I was finished, crossing his arms and casting a glance towards the door as though Holmes himself may be eavesdropping on our covert conversation.

"What's that?" I inquired.

"Holmes can't under any circumstances know that we're investigating without him."

"Well how in God's name can we expect to be able to keep that from him?" Lestrade asked, a harsh and disbelieving tone in his voice. "He's bloody Sherlock Holmes. If he can tell by a scuff on a man's finger the last time he was out gambling, then sure as hell he'll know if we're withholding anything from him."

"I have a lot of experience watching dealings with diplomats," Andrew said, speaking for the first time, and I turned to see him leaning casually against a panel of bas relief depicting what appeared to be the Spanish Armada. His hair wouldn't lay flat, as usual, and he had obviously long ago abandoned any attempts to discipline it that he had been raised to follow. Something about his quiet and relaxed demeanour made my stomach churn lightly as if dozens of butterflies were fluttering around inside it. It caused a warm feeling to spread all throughout my abdomen and chest cavity. I quickly averted my eyes from him, for fear the bubbling heat rising inside me would flush my cheeks.

"Go on," I said, nodding to him once I had composed myself for a short moment.

"Often our government will be required to withhold certain information from foreign dignitaries with whom we are liaising," he elaborated, "not for any malicious purpose, but because we are protecting them or ourselves. By doing this, they are involved, but we play a different hand when they're not looking."

Nicole cocked her head in confusion. "But I get the impression that Sherlock Holmes is always looking."

But I knew exactly what Andrew was trying to say. "Holmes is affected by something, Nicole," I said in response to her statement. "He's far less conscientious than usual. What Andrew is saying is that Holmes needs to feel as if he's in charge. Of course he won't be as suspicious if we keep him comfortable in a leading position. We let him lead, and we follow. He won't notice anything amiss with our actions in the background because he's accustomed to leading and dismissing anything below that. That leaves us free to commence an investigation of our design. Trying to butt heads with him on his theories won't cause anything but more friction. If we just let him think whatever on earth he's thinking, we'll be free to take our own courses of action."

I shivered as I said this. I may be unorthodox in my levels of independence, but I too was accustomed to being under Holmes' lead on cases, however few I'd encountered so far with him. This was different than what I had encountered in the Moriarty and Ivanov cases. In those, I had a rather painful suspicion that Holmes knew exactly what I had kept from him, though whether or not that was any fault of mine, I would probably never know. This time, he must not know. As strange and foreign as the feeling seemed at the time, I feared what would happen if he did.


I knew Nicole was not in her room. I had been on the verge of drifting into some semblance of sleep when I heard the creak of what could only have been her door across the hallway and seconds later soft footfalls moving towards the stairs leading down to the ground floor.

Alarm shook every part of my mind, but at first I was too drowsy to realize why. Whether or not Holmes' judgment was logical and trustworthy, he had still placed Nicole under my personal protection. He had trusted me with her life. Her sneaking out of her room and off to some unknown place in the middle of the night was certainly not safe in any regard, especially considering that an intruder had been far too close for comfort only last night. Then again, she was a kindred spirit of mine, and I knew that in her place, I would do the exact same thing. A bit of space to breathe and release from omnipresent constraint trumped a risk of being murdered. Especially when said risk of being murdered felt too surreal to truly be anything of this world. But a desire for space did not change the fact that her experience in protecting herself from harm was scant at best. She wasn't even aware of the dangers of wearing upper class clothing into the slums.

Once I was filled with enough adrenalin to comprehend all of this, I tossed back the covers and got out of bed, pulling a candle and match from the drawer of the desk in the corner so that I could see where I was going. I took the empty candleholder from the top of the desk and placed the candle I held in it, fumbling to light the match in the darkness. After wasting a precious moment, I had the candle lit and cautiously left my room, letting the fluttering flame guide my way down the dark and still unfamiliar hallway.

Slowly, I made my way to the stairs. A door squeaked open, and I started so much that I feared my candle might snuff itself out. In the dim light, I could barely make out Andrew's ruffled hair. I squinted and moved the flame closer to him. He was in a nightshirt, and had hastily pulled on trousers underneath. "What's going on?" he whispered, sounding even more groggy than me.

"I'm not sure," I replied, suppressing a harsh shiver as a draft swept through the corridor, "but Nicole just left her room and went downstairs. I'm going to make sure she's not in danger."

"Where did she go?" he asked, concern and alarm flitting across his face, still half bathed in shadows.

I was about to open my mouth to reply that I didn't know when another draft from behind me made me turn and look at the window.

The night outside was as thick and black as fresh pitch. There were no stars and there was no moon. The fog was still hanging over the land, cloaking everything in secrecy. I felt a strange pull inviting me to it, begging that I would come and be a part of the mystery. And then I knew. It wasn't an intuitive guess. I knew. "She's outside," I said finally, turning back to Andrew.

The alarm left his face and was replaced by unbridled fear. "Let's go," he said, putting a hand on my back and gently guiding me down the stairs. I was stumbling over the hem of my long nightgown. I couldn't move fast enough. With a glance at my feet, Andrew realized this and took my hand instead, taking the steps two at a time and pulling me after him.

I stopped him at the landing. "Here, take the candle," I whispered, holding it out to him. "I'll trip if I don't hold up my skirt."

He nodded and took the candleholder from me, and I busied my right hand with holding up my nightgown off of the ground. Satisfied, Andrew pulled me on down the rest of the stairs and then towards the front doors.

The air was far colder down here, where the floor was stone and continuous drafts from beneath the door seeped into the house and settled into the very foundation, soaking through my stockings and chilling me to the bone.

I shivered, but had no time to stop and reflect on the temperature, for Andrew was at the door, pushing it open and dragging me out into the cold night air with him.

Nicole was sitting on the steps in front of the house. She didn't start or turn around or say anything when the door opened, she only hung her head in disappointment that she'd been discovered so quickly.

"Nicole?" Andrew said to her softly. "It's not safe to be out here. Come back inside with us."

She made no reply.

I pulled my hand out of his grasp and descended the steps until I was right beside her, putting my hand gently on her shoulder. "Nicole, Andrew is right," I said. "I'm supposed to be keeping you safe. We should go back inside."

She lifted her head to look at me. Fear was in her eyes. It was the kind of fear that was absolutely heartbreaking to see. It was the sort of fear you feel when you find yourself directly in the middle of your worst nightmare. When you find yourself in the midst of a battle you never wanted to fight. One you'd been running from for what seemed like an eternity. It was a resigned fear. It was misery and impending doom. "It's the mines," she replied simply, echoing her words of earlier this evening.

I turned to Andrew. "Go on inside," I told him. I'll be there in a moment."

He looked wary, and rightfully so. "Emily…"

"Go." I fixed him with a stern look. He knew better than to protest and tightened his lips, turning to go wait for me inside.

I gingerly sat down on the stone steps beside Nicole, wincing as the bitter cold met the thin cloth covering my body. Despite the fact that I could already feel the loss of sensation in my hindquarters, I did my best to ignore the chill. "What do you mean, about the mines?" I asked her.

She drew a shaky breath, coughing as her lungs expelled the frigid air she had tried to inhale. "There's stories," she said finally, her voice hushed, as though some consciousness in the fog or the trees might be listening. "The people in the town would never talk to me, but I was around enough to hear them talk. They said that something was disturbed when my grandfather first opened the mines. No one knows what, but they say something lives down there, under the earth, and that it lay imbedded in the rocks for hundreds of years. I never believed it, but something killed both of the men who would have had authority to keep the mines open, and something's affecting Holmes' mind."

I confess that I could not help but shudder at the thought of what she was saying. I had myself been raised on mysterious tales of monsters and demons living deep inside the hollows of the earth, but every logical part of my brain dismissed it immediately. I turned to face her, and I took both of her hands in mine. "Nicole, I want you to listen to me. I know how hard it is, what you're going through. You've just lost all you had left of a family. But it was not some monster, some mere legend that did this to them. You heard what Holmes said. From what I heard, you saw the results for yourself. It was poison that killed them. Monsters wouldn't have any need of poison, if I may so boldly say so. This is the work of no monster. It's only a mere mortal, I can assure you. You must look at this another way. You must focus on the logical scenario, the one far brighter and less terrifying to you. A monster I doubt we'd have the resources to beat. But a killer we do."

From the way Nicole gave me a shaky smile, it appeared that I had convinced her, at least for the present. Now if only I could convince every fibre of myself.

I helped her stand and led her back to the door. But as I did, a thought struck me. The legend Nicole had recounted to me told of something wanting the mines closed. She was entirely correct when she said that the two men dead were the ones with the power to keep the mines open – the owner and his heir. Someone did want the mines closed. And they were willing to kill to see it done.