JWP #23:

The Very Worst Tenant in London: Watson copes with his flatmate, and possibly Mrs. Hudson as well.

.

This indirectly references some of Watson's history I established in Alone and A Gift of Music, but you do not have to have read those to enjoy this one

Morning came much too early. I dragged myself out of bed, pulling myself upright to start another day when all I wanted to do was go back to sleep.

Or, rather, go to sleep.

Holmes had not slept in days, and when Holmes was unable to sleep, nobody else could either. The scratching of Holmes' violin continued from the sitting room below as I forced myself to get ready, and I rubbed the grit from my eyes as I stumbled through my toilette, wishing I could simply go back to bed.

I occasionally went without sleep due to patients or Holmes' cases, but that was rarely more than a day or two at a time. Five days was pushing it, and I could not even enjoy the music. I always enjoyed listening to Holmes play, but he was not playing. He was scratching, using the instrument to busy his hands while he thought through a case. I would rather him pace and think aloud than spend another hour screeching on the violin—I would be able to tune out the words eventually—but I could no more tune out the noise of him dragging the bow across the strings than I could ignore a concert, no matter than only one was a joy to listen to.

Love of music or no, when Holmes used his instrument to busy his hands, no one in the flat or the neighboring flats got any sleep.

Holmes ignored me as I walked through the sitting room toward the breakfast table, his violin silent for the moment as he scribbled something on a scrap of paper. He finished writing and rushed down the stairs as Mrs. Hudson entered with the breakfast tray, and she looked no better than I felt.

"Perhaps you should go spend a day or two with your sister," I said as she slowly emptied the tray onto the table.

She shook her head. "She's up north, showing her kids the town where we grew up, but even if I went that would do nothing for you."

I shrugged. "Do not worry about that. Is there somewhere else you can stay for a day or two? This is the longest he has gone since I met him, and he at least shows no signs of flagging yet. It could be days before he finishes this case, and I doubt he will try to sleep before that. Our only breaks will be when he leaves or if he makes the mistake of sitting in one place long enough to fall asleep mid-thought."

She hesitated, considering my words. She had gotten just as little sleep as I had over the last week, but she was not accustomed to staying up even a day or two straight, and the lack of rest was affecting her greatly.

"I will think on it," she told me before making her way back downstairs.

I turned my attention to the food in front of me, nearly too tired to eat. I much preferred to go upstairs and back to bed, but I had promised to cover another doctor's practice today. I ate what I could before taking my coat and hat and starting my day.

"Be sure to change that bandage each evening, and come back if it shows any signs of infection," I said as I ushered the last patient out the door.

"Thank you, Doctor." The door closed before she could start another torrent of words, and I nearly leaned against the door frame as I sighed, grateful the day was over.

Now if only I could be sure of getting some sleep.

I took a cab home, unwilling to walk that far when I was so tired, and I glanced up at the window as I unlocked the door, hoping the sitting room would be dark, empty. I hoped he was getting close to finishing his case, and if he spent an evening laying a trap, the flat would be silent for a few hours.

The windows were lit, however, and I could hear him pacing as I took off my coat in the entry. I resigned myself to another long night.

"Doctor!"

Mrs. Hudson's furtive whisper caught my attention, and I glanced over to see her waving me into the kitchen.

"What is it?" I asked as I hurried closer, wondering if she was hurt.

"Look what someone left in the alley."

She led me further into the kitchen, pointing at an object sitting on the table.

"What is—" My question cut off as I moved closer, and she chuckled faintly.

"Looks just like it, doesn't it?"

An almost perfect twin to the violin on which Holmes was still scratching sat on the small kitchen table, nearly snapped in half, and a grin split my face as I understood how we could use this.

"Exactly like it. Can you get Holmes out of the room for a few minutes right after supper?"

"Of course, but how will you switch them?"

I opened the medical bag I still carried, glad I had decided not to restock my supplies until the next day. "He rarely opens my bag, and as long as it fits…" I let the sentence trail off as I picked up the broken violin and gently set it in my bag. It fit easily, and I hoped Holmes' unbroken one would fit as well. "I should be able to switch the two as long as you can get him out of the room long enough," I finished with a smile. She grinned, as pleased with our subterfuge as with the idea of getting some sleep tonight, but I continued before she could reply. "This will only work for one night," I warned.

She shrugged. "It is better than nothing, and maybe if he lets himself sleep in the absence of his instrument, he will solve the case that has been plaguing him. Then we can go back to sleeping at night, and the neighbors won't complain to me during the day."

I grinned. "This is better than any idea I had. Thank you, Mrs. Hudson."

She threw a towel at me, and I ducked, chuckling as I beat a hasty retreat. "One of these days, I will get you to call me Martha!" she declared to my retreating back.

I climbed the stairs, still chuckling as she called something about supper being ready soon. I found her irritation at the title much too amusing to stop, and she knew it, though I doubted she would ever stop trying. We had been going back and forth with this since shortly after I moved in, and, anymore, calling her "Mrs. Hudson" was more out of mischief than any sense of propriety, at least behind closed doors.

I was still grinning when I entered the sitting room. As he had this morning, Holmes ignored me as I set my bag by my desk and settled into my chair, and I watched him pace in front of the fireplace, scratching occasionally on the violin in his hand.

"Have you solved it, yet?" I asked after several minutes.

"It makes no sense!" he growled, never slowing his steps though the violin silenced its noise for the moment. "I am missing something. It is highly improbable that Willis had an accomplice, but how else could he have broken into that house?"

Mrs. Hudson entered with the supper tray before he could continue fuming, and we shared a smirk behind Holmes' back.

"Eat something, Holmes. Perhaps after a meal and a rest, the answer will become clear."

He scowled at me, but he did eat a little before he retrieved his violin and resumed scratching. The noise filled the flat, and I winced but said nothing when he hit two notes better left far apart. It would not have made the next half hour any different.

"Mr. Holmes!" Mrs. Hudson's voice interrupted his noisemaking, and I swallowed the last bit of raspberry tart as I saw her in the doorway. "There's a boy downstairs. Says he has a message for you but won't come up."

He bolted for the door, dumping his violin on the table as he passed, and I wondered if he was actually expecting a message. I was too busy lunging to catch his violin to worry about it for long, however. He had set the instrument too close to the edge, and his violin nearly gained the appearance of the one Mrs. Hudson had found. I barely caught it before it hit the floor.

Voices rose downstairs, and I hurried across the room. It took only a moment to switch it with the broken one in my bag, and I limped back to the table as my leg protested the rapid pace.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs as I came around the settee, and I tried to cut the corner too quickly in my haste. I had intended to leave the broken one on the floor near where he had left his violin, but my bad leg caught the edge of the settee. I lost my balance, and Holmes hurried through the door to find me picking myself off the floor three feet away from where a violin lay broken beneath the table.

"Watson!" He strode across the room, and I used the table to pull myself to my feet, already forming the apology I had rehearsed.

"Sorry, Holmes," I told him, using the excuse of regaining my balance to avoid eye contact. I could not lie for anything, and he knew that. "I tried to catch it, but I tripped."

His focus had been on me, but he looked at where I gestured. Disappointment flickered over his face as he spotted the broken instrument.

"It was too close to the edge," I said, easing down into a chair.

He gently picked up the violin, inspecting where the neck had disconnected from the body and the strings that had broken in the process.

"Do not worry about it," he muttered. "I should not have left it on the edge of the table."

"I know a luthier down the street. I can take it to him in the morning," I offered. I was relatively certain that the violin he held was beyond repair, but as long as he did not look inside the body, he would never know that.

He hesitated but agreed, knowing no luthier would still be open this late in the evening, and he set the violin on the table—well away from the edge—before going to his room.

I frowned. I had not expected him to take the incident that badly, but he came back out barely a moment later, carrying a pipe he had left in there the day before. With a disappointed glance at the violin on the table, he resumed his pacing in front of the fire, clouds of smoke billowing from his pipe.

I rose from the chair, hiding a grimace as my leg protested the very real tumble I had taken, as Mrs. Hudson entered to take the supper dishes.

"He came back upstairs rather fast," I commented after helping her fill the tray. We stood on the landing to make it harder for Holmes to eavesdrop. "Was there really a messenger?"

She affected a shrug with a mischievous glance at the closed sitting room door. "The boy must have run off before we could make it downstairs," she answered. I smirked, but she continued before I could wish her goodnight. "What was that crash?"

My smirk changed to a grimace. "Holmes left his violin too close to the edge of the table. I tripped while trying to catch it." A smirk crossed her face before she realized my story was only half-fabricated, and I hurried to reassure her. "I am fine, but I told him I would take the instrument to get fixed in the morning. They are closed by now, and I was planning to go to bed early tonight."

"I could send someone with it."

The footsteps froze in the sitting room, and I nearly laughed at the confirmation that he was listening. "No, no. He would hate that. I'll take it myself after I get up. The owner knows me, anyway."

Footsteps resumed as she smothered a chuckle. "As you wish," she managed to say normally. We exchanged goodnights, and I ducked her swat when I used her title again.

Silence reigned in the sitting room as I lay on the bed, and I breathed a sigh of relief, falling asleep immediately.

It was well after nine when I finally woke, and I lay there a moment before getting up, enjoying the feeling of a full night's sleep for the first time in a week.

It was too bad such a trick would only work once. He would recognize the broken violin if I tried to pull the same thing again, but it had served its purpose for the moment. I descended the stairs ready to either pretend to take the broken one to the shop or, if he had caught onto the trick in the night, face his irritation.

I did not have to do either, however. I was halfway down the stairs when an "Aha!" sounded from the sitting room, and he raced down the stairs and out the door. I glanced out the window to see him hurrying toward the Yard.

Good, I thought. I would be able to take my time before taking both his and the broken violin with me down to the luthier.

I lingered over breakfast, noticing that Mrs. Hudson appeared as refreshed as I felt, and lingered over a paper. I had nowhere to be this morning, and I had at least an hour before Holmes would return. It was a gorgeous day outside, and some thirty minutes after Holmes had rushed out, I slipped a novel into my bag next to the violins on my way out the door.

I did go to the luthier, as I had told Holmes I would, but only because I knew he would be able to tell if I did not. I did little more than walk by the shop on the way to the park, where I spent the next several hours reading on a bench. No matter how much I wished otherwise, I knew better than to think the luthier would be able to save the instrument Mrs. Hudson had found. There was a long crack going through the body, visible only from the inside, and the cost to repair the instrument would be more than the violin was worth.

Not that it would do me any good to repair it, I thought with a frown, flexing my bad shoulder.

I put the thought out of my mind, absorbing myself in my book as the hours sped by. I did not look up until the clock tower tolled one. Clouds were beginning to roll over the city, and I tucked my book in my bag as I turned my steps towards home.

Holmes' attention snapped away from his pipe as I entered the sitting room.

"You are back early," he said as he stood from his armchair, setting his pipe aside.

"I had no patients today," I told him, "and the break was an easy fix. Here."

I had left the broken violin with Mrs. Hudson, so he only saw the one violin resting in my nearly empty medical bag. I handed it to him, and he took it gently, removing it from the case to inspect it thoroughly as I refilled my bag from the supplies I had left in my desk. Finished, I set my bag in its place and moved to inspect the luncheon Mrs. Hudson had laid out.

"How did he fix the long scratch down the side?" Holmes asked as I filled a plate.

I kept my back to him. "I did not ask."

There was a pause. "How much was it?"

"I called in a favor. Don't worry about it."

I glanced over my shoulder in time to see a frown cross his face, followed closely by suspicion, and he stared at me for a long moment even after I started eating. I could not in good conscience charge him for a violin that had not broken, but he would not have expected me to pay the luthier unless I had broken it instead of failing to save it. Good luthiers were expensive.

"You should not have paid for it," he insisted, shuffling to pull out his wallet.

All I could do was shrug. "I already told you; I called in a favor. Put your wallet away. I don't want your money."

He stopped, wallet in hand as he stared at me, and I turned back to the plate of food in front of me.

"Watson?"

"Hmm?" I asked around a mouthful.

"If I go to the shop down the street, is the owner going to say he saw you today?"

I sighed. So much for hiding it from him. "Depends on which one you ask," I answered. "What does it matter, Holmes? Your violin is fixed, and faster than you expected. Be careful where you set it. I doubt I could call in another favor should it drop again."

Suspicion remained in his gaze, but he dropped the topic, returning his attention to the violin in his hand.

"You were not pacing when I came in," I noted a few minutes later. "Did you solve the case?"

He frowned. "I fell asleep in the chair before I could finish thinking it through last night, but I realized what I was missing this morning. Gregson should have Willis in custody by now."

I chuckled. "So, a meal and a rest did help."

He harrumphed but could not deny my words, and I turned back to my food with a faint grin.

Maybe tonight would be as quiet as last night.