Mycroft took himself away and it was easy enough to tell that neither he nor Mrs Kendrick were entirely satisfied as to the resolution of the argument, although they parted cordially enough. Holmes had already put the matter completely out of his mind, and as I had no idea as to what the topic of the argument had been, it was an easy enough matter for me to do the same.
Holmes took himself away to change out of his sodden clothes, and I informed Mrs Kendrick as to the progression of events that Holmes and I had witnessed, or rather, the events that we had failed to witness, while we waited for him to return with the envelope. Both Mrs Kendrick and I were eager for more information, but neither of us was more impatient than Holmes, for he was out with us before he had hardly finished dressing.
The envelope, aside from being damp from the weather and smeared with dirt from its resting place beneath the rock, was identical to the other three envelopes that we now possessed. However, the rock had to have offered some protection from the weather, as the paper was not nearly as wet as it should have been for the amount of time that it had spent outdoors.
I had expected Holmes to draw out something exotic and immediately recognizable from the envelope, but instead, the paper did not appear to be anything worth noting. However, as I watched, a broad smile rose on Sherlock Holmes's face as he sat looking at the altogether unremarkable piece of paper he held in his hands. "Rice paper," he said triumphantly after a moment, turning it over in his hands.
"What does it say?" I asked, noting typical four lines of verse scrawled upon it in some sort of reddish ink. Although rice paper was certainly unusual, I saw more information to be gained from the note than from the paper on which it was written.
Holmes passed it across to me with one of his usual instructions. "Read it aloud, Watson, for I should like to hear the words spoken."
I complied. "The lines of blood run both noble and deep,
"E'en into an ever-lasting sleep.
"Ensure that you give our warning proper heed,
"For to you evil's work is
close indeed."
I squinted at the page, looking for distinctions between words that would spell out the hidden message, as had been the case with the other notes. There was nothing obvious but that a few words appeared to be written somewhat darker than the others. I strung the words together and read them out. "Lines run to you."
Holmes snorted with some derision. "They have told us nothing but that which we already know. They could hardly have made things more plain!"
"Before we two again may meet," Mrs Kendrick quoted softly from the previous note. There was something in her voice that made me look to her sharply. The flush from her earlier arguments was entirely gone and her face was as white as the sheet of paper that I held in my hand. "Our trouble need be turned toward defeat."
Holmes also seized upon the reaction. "What is it?" he demanded impatiently, caught up in the throes of the excitement and quite forgetting his usual manners.
"I don't know," she answered distractedly, laboriously pushing herself up to a standing position. I would have made some move to help her, but I didn't think she would welcome any intrusion into whatever thoughts had suddenly consumed her. "I don't know," she repeated, turning away from us and moving to stare out the bow window.
"Mrs Kendrick," said I, with more than a little concern evident in my voice, "are you alright?"
She barely acknowledged that I was speaking to her; only a slight distracted nod of showed that she had heard me. I stood and took a step toward her, only to be waved back irritably by Holmes. "Leave her be," he hissed, holding out his hand for the note that I still clutched. I reluctantly complied, handing him the note and perching myself uneasily on the edge of my seat, ready to spring up at the slightest provocation.
Mrs Kendrick stared fixedly out the window into the rain, but it was obvious that she saw nothing of the grey and dreary night. She was occupied with something else entirely, something that I could not begin to fathom. If Sherlock Holmes knew what things concerned her, he said nothing of them, instead taking up his lens and giving a careful examination to all three notes while I watched Mrs Kendrick with growing concern.
As I watched, I thought I saw her shoulders twitch convulsively, but her face was hidden in the shadows and I couldn't be sure as to the cause. I stood up from my chair and made my way over to the sideboard, with the intent to gain a better observation post without disturbing either of my companions. However, I did detour slightly from the most direct course so that I could pass nearer to her. If Holmes noted it, he said nothing.
I was standing not far from her, under the pretence of examining one of Holmes's newer curios when I saw her shoulders heave. I reacted instantly, grasping the nearest container at hand. It happened to be a large and rather garish vase that had been given to Holmes as a reward from some wealthy and noble client who did not wish their name to be widely known. Although I thought it quite ugly, he was rather fond of it for some reason.
"Watson," cried Holmes in dismay starting up from his seat as he saw me take it up, "what are you doing? That was a gift…"
The rest of his protest was cut off by the lady's retching and he offered no more difficulty as I held the vase before her with one hand and restrained the her loose hair with the other. She was trembling like a leaf by the time she had finished and I ushered her without protest to the sofa, forcing her to lie back and rest.
"Perhaps you should retire," I suggested gently after a moment, not wanting to further upset her in any way.
"Mr Holmes," she started, ignoring me completely, "my father comes from generations of sea-faring people, and, had I been a son, I should have followed without hesitation in his wake. As it was, I followed as nearly as I could, becoming first a naval nurse and then marrying a sailor. Although my father died when I was still a child, I have hopes that he would have been pleased to have the sea remain in our family's blood."
"Were you an only child then?" Holmes inquired gently. Although he was still fairly trembling with excitement, realizing that we were on the verge of a revelation, his manner had completely changed from his impatience of only a few minutes ago.
"No," Mrs Kendrick told him. "I was not. I am the eldest of four daughters. And I once had an older brother."
"Once?" pressed Holmes. He was drawing something out of her, and I had the distinct impression that he knew the information already but just wanted to hear it from her own lips.
"In actuality, he was only a half-brother," said Mrs Kendrick. "He was the son of my mother's first husband, and although he was nearly ten years between he and I, I was closer to him than I was to any of my sisters. He was more than a brother; he was a very dear friend, and I felt his loss keenly, perhaps even more keenly than my mother, for all that she held him dear.
"He joined the Navy because he thought that it would have pleased my father, whose dearest wish had been to have a son follow in his footsteps. He did this although he himself had no great love of the sea," continued Mrs Kendrick, her voice starting to tremble. "His vessel was lost with almost all hands on his first voyage out of home waters, on their return from India."
"Almost all hands?" Holmes prompted.
"There were a few survivors found washed ashore, clinging to pieces of the hull," Mrs Kendrick said softly, "my brother not among them. However, two of his closest friends were, and one sent my mother a letter not long after, telling me what had happened."
"Did he not tell your mother as well?" I asked when she paused. I could not help but have noticed the shift in pronouns. The letter had been sent to her mother, but she was the one who had been told what happened.
"We wrote to one another in code, my brother and I," she answered, completely unsurprisingly. "His two friends knew the code, for the three of them invented the system together. We would indicate sections within the letter, and then mark words within that section to give a message. That message would then give the key to the sections that had been indicated, which would give the final concealed text, which was encoded in telegraph code. The number of letters per word would combine with the key to yield the dots and dashes, which would then have to be decoded for the message. It took hours to write and nearly as long to decode because it was so subtle. If one thing was missed, the entire message would be completely unreadable."
Her voice had taken on a wistful quality and it was clear that she was spent. But despite that, I was torn. As a medical man, I should have immediately insisted that she retire and not stir until the morning, at the very least. But my curiosity had been aroused and I was anxious to see what coded messages the notes held, and she was the only one who knew for certain how to do that.
I hovered on the brink of indecision for a moment too long and Sherlock Holmes made the decision for me. "There will be time enough for decoding in the morning," said he, although with some reluctance. "There are four messages and if each takes as long as you had indicated, we will have a hard morning's work before us to reveal all. A good night's rest will do us good."
I concurred immediately, more than a little abashed at my previous reluctance to follow what I knew to be the best course of action. I more than made up for it though by insisting firmly that Mrs Kendrick was not to stir from her bed until I had seen to her in the morning. She was weak and ill enough to not put up an argument, and Holmes gave me her word that he would guard against any unnecessary activity on her part.
I had thought to sit up with Holmes and talk over these newest revelations, but he settled himself on the sofa with his pipe and a large quantity of tobacco, the notes spread out before him in sequence. Rather than spend the night in the chair while Holmes filled the room with thick tobacco smoke, I too retired, anxious to see what the morning would bring.