18. From Ennui Enigma: A Lonely Violin
A Stradivarius violin is an artful thing. Three woods, hours of carving and shaping, the most delicate strings, varnishing and polishing lovingly. Their craft was beyond compare. Or so my companion told me one night after a series of melodies. I confess I knew little of the significance of such an instrument, and only realized then how it must have been passed down in Holmes' family as an heirloom.
Holmes was thoughtful that night, waxing near poetic, which was not his usual way, but perhaps that night he was grateful to own such an instrument that he could coax beauty and grace from to ease his troubled conscious. Even then, unknown to me, the web of Moriarty drew tighter around us, and my friend was beginning to know the way the struggle must end.
On nights when my grief was staggering, I often wished to hear that violin play again, and be once more in the almost carefree days before the falls and before the shadow of Moriarty fell upon Holmes. I even considered that the violin must still be safely in the rooms Mycroft kept at 221B, and I could go see it, though I could not play it myself. But I knew, all the same, without Holmes it was just a lonely violin.