Chapter Two
Author's Notes: In case anyone was wondering or hadn't noticed, this sequel is a lot more self-indulgent and possibly OOC than TGH. Mierin-lanfear, I do apologise for my admittedly shallow chemistry knowledge. I barely passed high school chemistry – maybe you should write these things for me? L'Wren, yes, I am back, and it's wonderful that you are, too. Haley Macrae, like I said, I have my reasons for suspecting that Holmes is a Catholic, and one of these days I'll tell you what those are. Whether I'll work it into this fic, or if it will be a separate treatise, I don't know. Just trust me on this one, or ignore it altogether. It's not that important. Elsie Cubitt, your review was so wonderful! Thank you for all your kind words, and yes, Jeremy Brett is my inspiration. He is the Holmes of this sequel, much more than TGH. Curtain Call is all about "finding the cracks in the marble."
"Do you mean to tell me," his wife said, as she poured a thin stream of milk into his teacup, "that the Prime Minister was here, under your roof?"
"That is exactly what I have just told you," Holmes replied, a little peevishly.
"And you did not refuse him, I trust?" she asked, leaning back with her own teacup perched delicately in her lap.
"I could not. I had already refused the Foreign Minister, it is true, but I could not refuse the leader of His Majesty's Government."
"What is it they wish you to do?"
"They suspect espionage, though no one is sure from what quarter. It is my unhappy task to bring the culprit to justice."
"Don't be melodramatic," she said. "You were dreadful to Mycroft. The poor man nearly had an apoplectic fit when he told me what you said to him. Your own brother, Holmes! You should be ashamed of yourself!" She had never called him by his Christian name. She had stopped calling Mr Holmes eventually, but though he could call her Beatrice, she would always call him Holmes.
He raised an eyebrow at her righteous indignation. "Taking this case will mean coming out of retirement, possibly for a significant length of time. It is most inconvenient, particularly now that I am finishing my book."
"Your manuscript is completed, you told me so yourself not two weeks ago. And besides," she added, "you have never before found a matter of international importance 'inconvenient'."
"The case has some interesting features, it is true," he granted.
"So, what will you do?" she asked.
"I was thinking of going up to London for a few days. I will return soon."
When he had made up his mind to return to her, the journey from London seemed easy and pleasant. But he did not find her at the manor, and he stalked the neighbouring countryside, hoping to meet her as she walked. Finally, he spotted her silhouette from an outlook on the cliffs. She was walking slowly on the length of beach left exposed by the low tide, lifting the hem of her skirt as she danced to avoid stepping in the little tidal pools. As quickly as he could do it on the narrow, steep path, he clambered down, until he was standing on a little shelf that jutted out from the rocky cliff, his feet at her full height. But she had not heard him descend over the noise of the waves and the wind, nor did she see him behind her as she stood gazing out at the sea. He called her name, and startled, she whirled around to face him. Her foot, however, slipped on a rock, made slippery by the water, and she stumbled and fell. Torn between amusement and concern, he ran to help her.
"Are you alright?" he asked, as he helped her up.
"No," was her curt reply. She stood, and after fixing him with a look of angry reproach, turned on her heel and began to climb the path up the side of the hill. He wet skirts clung to her ankles as she walked. Strands of her hair fell from underneath her hat and clung to her cheeks, red with feeling. She was much smaller in stature than he, but her fury and embarrassment propelled her to walk at a pace he had difficulty matching.
"We must get you dry," he gasped as they reached the top of the cliff. "My cottage is close by."
She stopped in her tracks, crushing the grass under her boot-heels. "Your cottage?" she seethed. "After you left it for months, without a word to me? It is no longer your cottage." She crossed her arms, and tossed her head slightly to loosen the stray lock of her the wind blew in her face. "I have rented it someone else."
Holmes would not be defeated. "You are bluffing," he said. "I stopped in earlier, and my things are untouched." He had not, as it happened, stopped by the cottage, but he knew her better than to believe such a statement.
She dropped her arms but did not reply. She just turned to walk away. He reached out for her arm, and shouted over a sudden gust of wind, "Where are you going?"
She shrugged off his grip, and without turning to look at him, said, "Home. My home. The Manor."
He let her walk a few paces before following her. Keeping back in this manner, he followed her to the red oak door. Though she had stumbled twice, he did not help her. Though she knew he was behind her, she did not look back. Holmes watched from the gate to the gravel courtyard as she walked inside the grey mansion. He lingered in the garden for some minutes, then walked up and knocked at the door himself.
Once admitted, he was divested of his coat and hat. He took the stairs up to the first floor two at a time. Abigail passed him, her arms filled with her mistress's soaked wardrobe.
He knocked on her door softly and entered, one hand behind his back. She was dressed in dry clothes, a printed cotton housedress. Her black hair was still in disarray, and she was fixing it at her dressing-table, her hands deftly plucking pins here and there. The fabric stretched taut over her back, between her upraised arms. She saw him in the mirror, and his gaze met hers.
"It's your fault if I look like a drowned rat," she said bitterly.
"No worse than I did when you first found me, no doubt," he replied amiably. The remark was meant in jest, but she frowned and stopped fussing with her hair, letting her arms drop to her lap.
"You fell out of the cart, and your face was covered in mud and dried blood," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "The soles of your boots had split. The cobbler didn't know what to do with them. Your clothes were torn and dirty. I had to cut you out of them, and then I saw the bruises on your body." Her voice trailed off, and she placed her hand on her cheek as a reflexive gesture of grief. "You spent days in delirium, and then, just as I thought the fever had broken, you overpowered the maid and screamed like a madman at me. We had to restrain you with ropes. And when you finally woke, and asked where you were, your cheeks were sunken, and your eyes gleamed wildly. It's a miracle you didn't die, really." She looked up at him, her anguished face reflected in the mirror.
He extended his hand to her, and in it was single flower: a pink rose in full bloom. "I was outside, waiting," he said by way of comfort, "and I saw it and thought, 'Is there anything so beautiful as a rose?"
She turned around in her seat. "Don't try to make love to me," she said, but took the flower and put it carefully in a small vase on the table. "Go now. I don't want to see you any more today. You've done quite enough." And, as an answer to his look of feigned innocence, she added: "Trying to drown me first and then pilfering from my garden! I shall try very hard to forgive you by tomorrow."
But he could see that she had forgiven him already.
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He sat in a tiny cramped office in Scotland Yard behind a desk piled with folders that leaked loose sheets of paper. From the corridor, sounds of gruff men and hysterical women combined with an endless parade of footsteps. Beside him, a young constable named Japp, with a face like a hound, fussed with yet more reams of documents.
"Don't know where they've gone, sir! They were here last week, when I showed them to the Chief Inspector…"
"Surely you would have put them somewhere you could find them easily?" suggested Holmes languidly.
The younger man clapped his hand to his forehead, exclaiming, "Of course, Mr Holmes! I got them ready when they told me you were coming!" Extracting a stack of thick reddish folders bursting with paper, he set them down in front of Holmes with a satisfied look. "These are the files of the agents that have been arrested so far, and these," he reached for a pile of similarly thick green folders, "are the documents of the aborted operations. Some of the details have been blacked out, of course," the constable said solemnly, rocking back and forth on his feet, "to preserve national security."
"Indeed," replied Holmes, raising his eyebrow at the prolific results of a prosperous investigative bureaucracy. Lifting the edge of the topmost folder, he extracted a few sheets and began to read the carefully type-written pages. Japp, suddenly aware of his extraneous presence in the now-silent office, muttered something about tea, and exited.
The documents were written in thick prose, heavy with missing details and implied information. After reading the contents of several folders, Holmes could, with some certainty, piece together the situations that had led to the frustrated British secret service operations. Yet the person, or persons culpable were never apprehended. The sheer grey anonymity of the opposing force reminded Holmes of the careful subtlety of the mathematician-turned-criminal whom he had finally defeated at Reichenbach Falls.
Holmes gazed out of the grimy windows of the office to the London streets below. It seemed there were always enemies worth catching.
A/N: Making love did not have the same connotations then as it does now. It meant making romantic advances, not sexual intercourse. And Japp (I love doing cross-over characters!) is the Inspector Japp of the Poirot novels. But surely, he had to start his career somewhere!
