The Adventure of Hecate House
Chapter 44: Light and shade
It was approximately ten minutes to six o'clock in the morning. I knew this, despite my pocket watch not having survived the immersion, as the grey dawn was stealing steadily over the silver ocean, yet the sun was still some way below the horizon. I moodily watched its progress, the lightening sky at variance with my sinking spirits. The emotions warring in my breast were as uncomfortable as they were unaccustomed.
Admittedly, one predominant emotion was an old, familiar enemy; dark tendrils creeping around my soul, spreading the vile black clouds of depression, threatening to pull me down into their poisonous embrace.
Then joyful elation, battling the darkness with light. However, my conscience was not allowing the light to win.
Guilt.
Guilt, possibly the most crushing of human emotions. If I always saw my depressive spells as an external phenomenon, the guilt was a rot from within. Inside my brain, it fought with a small, plaintive voice arguing that, indeed, there were worse sins in the world, and that I had been caught in that hinterland between sleep and wakefulness, where normal conduct is suspended and instinct triumphs, when I had begun the particular sin that now tortured my conscience. I sternly discounted the voice.
"Let me once in my life feel how much I am to blame." I muttered, the words familiar from some mostly forgotten corner of my brain-attic. How many times had I admonished a client for improper conduct? How often had I insisted that emotion interfered with logic, and should be avoided?
My shirt and trousers were still damp, and the cold, salty air stung my skin. I welcomed the discomfort as I might a hair shirt. I focussed upon it, and attempted to use it to sharpen my mind, to attempt to consider this rather knotty problem more rationally.
I had behaved most improperly towards Violet. Hopeless to call her Miss Hunter; formality was rather pointless under the circumstances. I had not compromised her entirely, I was not so far lost to common decency as all that. However, I had certainly committed indiscretions that would expose her to scorn and shame if they were ever discovered by the world at large. My present transgression had seemed to magnify those of my past, and, for the first time, made me feel steeped in sin for activities I had previously regarded as the mere satisfying of an appetite with a suitable partner.
Watson has often described me as an automaton, and doubtless presumes my hitherto indifference to women is also inexperience. However, I have not been inexperienced since I was seventeen, when a predatory actress I played alongside, who had an eye for a pretty youth, taught me the art of satisfying her needs. I have since lived a varied life, and am still a young man with a young man's appetites. I had found numerous advantages in having had the acquaintance of several women of various classes, the majority of whom were preoccupied with extracting their own pleasure from our liaisons, initially by instruction, and later, by following my lead. I had never previously been ashamed of this, feeling a certain impatience with the pruderies of our age, and knowing that I was never toying with an innocent. Now, my own arrogance in setting my own rules seemed despicable, and I could understand why society insisted upon celibacy outside the confines of marriage. If I were as uninitiated as some of those who attended Raddison's private clinic, for example, possibly the unfamiliarity of certain sensations would have brought me sharply to my senses.
I felt I must have been out of my senses for some time. I could not deny that Violet had insinuated herself into my very heart and soul, disturbing the smooth workings of my mind. To use Watson's fanciful phraseology, she was a whole handful of grit in a currently very sensitive machine. With a lowering sense of inevitability, I admitted to myself that I had harboured strong feelings for her for months, possibly years. The sight of the grin she flashed me as she brandished a wielded chair-leg. The ease of conversation when she joined me on surveillance. Her laughter where hysterics may often have been the more apposite response. Her intelligence. Her kindness. Her pragmatism. A hundred memories hammered themselves into my reluctant brain all at once, staggering me with the evidence of my own blindness. It was enormously incongruous, but could not be denied. This case had brought the whole sorry business to a head.
My eyes narrowed sharply. I remembered the nagging impressions that I had had repeatedly in Hecate House; that I was missing something, overlooking some detail, possibly vital. The case had seemed simple enough. But now I had finally accepted that I had been working under a powerful distracting influence, was there more to it? Would I arrive back ashore, and discover a hole in my plans?
Firmly, I set my unwelcome and rampaging emotions to one side, and concentrated my mind upon the unadulterated facts and events. However, a powerful interruption occurred when a figure, clad in white petticoats and wrapped in a blanket, flopped itself down next to me upon the rocks. The sure, deft exertions of my brain shattered, like reflections upon water when a stone is cast into them, and the fragments of memory flew apart yet again. The disturbing shadow they had been about to cast was temporarily forgotten: but it was none the less sinister for that.
Holmes! As one of my kind reviewers put it, this behaviour is very incongruous. Things have been left deliberately vague - what did happen? Up to you!
I do apologise to those of you who quite justifiably dislike any matchmaking with our matchless detective. Part of my challenge to myself when I started this story was to see if I could do it convincingly (as it often really annoys me, and it is one of the most difficult things to do without turning Holmes into another character entirely), yet part of the reason this chapter has taken so long to post has been my nervous prevaricating in case I totally disappoint some of my favourite readers! It would have been cowardly to back out at this point though. I should beg "Please don't leave me!" – but please don't worry too much either, as I hope you know my methods by now – and there is method in it. I couldn't have Holmes behaving so unlike himself if I didn't have a purpose for it, could I?...
We'll get back to some proper, unadulterated plot soon. I'm not sure I like the sound of those disturbing fragments of memory...
I will still appreciate your reading and reviewing, and will take any criticism on the chin.
Erm...those of you who don't like Holmes matchmaking, please skip to chapter 45 and don't read the blurb below.
For those of you who actually do like a bit of Holmes matchmaking, there is a rather obvious missing chapter here. It has been written, but I REALLY didn't want to post it here. Suffice it to say I blushed furiously when I wrote it, and it is not in my normal vein... in fact it is more than a little bit... rude! I will probably post it to another location in the near future, but if anybody would like to read it in the meantime, log in and send me a personal message, plus the assurance that you are an adult – I'd be flattered and delighted to send it to you. Please don't be embarrassed – it's the sort of thing I'd probably do!
