Prompt: Grief, from W.Y. Traveller
His public, enamored of detectives, donned black armbands for a man they did not know except through a doctor's pen, sending desperate missives to the Strand to confirm what no one wanted to believe.
His Irregulars heard another of their fellow street boys saying that the man couldn't be that good a detective if he got killed, and made certain he regretted it. It would not bring their benefactor back, but they could ensure his memory was respected.
His landlady fended off anxious concerns and well-intentioned casseroles from her neighbors. She spent many evenings listening to the suffocating silence of the house, devoid of gunshots or explosions, until finally, she sat in his sitting room, left just as he liked it, prepared for a return that would never come.
His sometime rivals in the force, united by nothing except that they had been chosen by the eccentric amateur, marched down the church aisle at attention, with their hats respectfully off. There was no casket to carry, so they lifted his memory on their shoulders instead.
His former client and now friend fixed a black border on the framed photo of her husband and his friend that sat on their mantelpiece, as if the grief that hung over their house needed a physical manifestation. As if she was not looking at one every time she saw her husband's face.
His friend sat in his writing room, trying in vain to think of the words that would do his friend's memory justice, never finding any, for there were no words to convey the magnitude of such a loss. Empty was a truth too small to hold it.