A/N: Now, to my wonderful reviewers:
Thanks to pineapple lord, 8477, Nautical Acronym and Queen of Spain for your lovely reviews.
To Zantetsuken-Steel Balded Sword (phew, that's a mouthful)... all will be revealed in part two. Many thanks for your review.
To Hermione Holmes (great name), thankyou! Your review makes a girls day... and yes, I tried to make the style smimilar to the original because, lets face it, no-one does Sherlock Holmes better than the 'voice of Watson'. I do, however, hope that I've put a little of my own style into it as well. And yes, Watson is wonderful... he's much funnier than a lot of people take him to be, though he be far from dim-witted. And as for being a fan-girl, well... nothing wrong with that, and I hope this final chapter satisfies you!
To Haley Moore: I'm glad you're enjoying it! I'm afraid you might feel even sorrier for him at the end of this story... many thanks for your review!
Disclaimer: All credit goes to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for creating the wonderful plethora of characters that is the world of Sherlock Holmes. I've just borrowed him for a little excercise.
The Adventure of the Detective's Marriage – Part Two
As I am sure my readers have already guessed, the marriage between Sherlock Holmes and Catherine St Clair was no ordinary one. But even I, who knew Holmes so well, could scarcely guess at the course which events would soon take.
However, my suspicions – slow as they were – soon took root when I was passing Baker Street one evening and happened to look up at that well-known window. The lights were on inside, and through the blinds I could see two figures, but the second of these did not belong to Holmes. And yet there was the profile of young Mrs Catherine, seemingly leaning against the figure of a tall, burly man.
My anger was instantly aroused, and it did not take much effort on my part to deduce a situation from that black-and-white image. Holmes, of course, was away on a case, and his wife had the audacity to see another man in his absence. In their own rooms! I pledged at once to spare no haste in informing Holmes.
But perhaps I had made the most dangerous of mistakes – theorising without adequate information – for when I informed Holmes of it a few days later he merely leaned back in his chair with a curious smile and languidly put his cigarette to his lips once more.
"My dear Watson." He said, shaking his head. "I am sure that you mean well, but I fear that your taste for sensationalism has somewhat overcome you. I will pass over the slur you have made on my wife's character, however, if you will agree to accompany me tonight on what promises to be a most interesting journey."
"A case?" I asked. Holmes had not involved me in any of his 'little adventures' since his marriage.
"You could say that." He took his watch from his pocket, frowning slightly. "Our appointment is at six o' clock: if you will be so kind as to call Mrs Hudson, that should give us time for tea."
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And so at a quarter to six we were off, rattling along the pavements in a hansom, but not before I received a great shock.
"My wife is to be accompanying us." Holmes told me carelessly, as the young woman entered the living room, a decidedly nervous expression on her young face. I was, it must be said, alarmed.
"Really, Holmes! Is there no danger?" Holmes cocked his head to one side, a ghost of a smile flitting across his lips.
"I should hope not – at least not for Mrs Holmes – but I would like you to have your trusty revolver on hand nonetheless." The words were spoken in a tone of complete calm and coolness, but as I leaned back a few minutes later in the shadows of the hansom I was sure that I glimpsed a flicker of doubt cross my friend's face.
Holmes gave us clue as to where we were going, and the hansom made so many swift turns into dim side-alleys that I soon lost any sense of direction that I may have started out with. Holmes seemed quite calm, his face set and emotionless. But I noted that his hand was on his wife's the whole way, and needfully so, for I watched her anxiety grow with every passing minute.
The cab trundled to a halt after ten minutes of silent, unbearable driving. Holmes stepped out first, and held his hand out to the lady. I followed, and had a vague perception of a tall, dimly lit building rising up before me before my friend quickly pulled me inside the door.
We found ourselves in a dark, musty corridor which had evidently not been used for some time. There was no one else in sight.
"And now?" I asked.
Holmes leaned back against the wall, his face flushed and his eyes bright with the thrill of the chase.
"And now," he whispered in the darkness, "we wait."
We did not wait long, for, barely five minutes after we had entered there came a scuffling from the doorway. Holmes urged us both back, and stepped forward, his shoulders hunched over and his face expectant.
"Quiet." He murmured. "Let us see if they will take the bait." His eyes were eager: transformed by the thrill of the chase, the languid, morose tenant of Baker Street had all but vanished, and in his place there was a bloodhound, straining against the collar.
And sure enough, our patience was rewarded, for the door creaked open and in came three men, one tied and struggling against another. But as the moonlight streamed in through the open door, I held back a gasp of recognition – the bound man was the individual I had seen silhouetted in the Baker Street window.
The third man – who had somehow deigned to separate himself from the struggle – did not seem at all surprised to see us.
"Sherlock Holmes." He said, nodding stiffly to my companion. He was a tall, elegant man, and there was something about his nose which whispered of the aristocracy. "I am unsurprised. You would, of course... Catherine?" His eyebrows rose slightly as he surveyed the woman standing next to me. To her credit, her courage never faltered.
"My lord." She said, nodding curtly, before motioning towards the bound man. "Release him." But the man simply laughed.
"The audacity! Well, my dear, I thought it best... we victims of your rejection should pair together, after all." His eyes flickered towards Holmes, and though his voice never lost its graciousness his lips hardened in bitterness. "Though I cannot understand for what you turned me down."
Holmes seemed quite delighted by the turn of events. He motioned me forward.
"Dr Watson, Duke Every Wilson. Duke Wilson, as you may know, Watson, is a distant relative of the queen... and as you probably will not know, one of the most dangerous criminals in London. He has evaded my net for many months now, but no longer."
"Indeed, Mr Holmes? So what has this ruffian to do with your master plan?" The Duke indicated his prisoner with a sour expression. Holmes smiled. I was not anxious – when Holmes wore that expression there was going to be serious trouble, and not for us.
"Release him." He ordered, and the man holding the prisoner instantly complied. The Duke looked on in astonishment.
"Your orders!" He exclaimed, but the man simply raised his hat to Holmes and departed.
"If you will insist on putting an advertisement in The Times for a man to do your dirty work, my dear Duke... it was a childishly simple thing to send a man in my own employ in answer to your request." Holmes turned away from the Duke and held a hand out to the other man in the room. The man moved forward, smiling in a simple, open manner.
"God bless you, sir!" He exclaimed, grasping Holmes's hand. "I did all as you said, and all happened as you said it would. God bless you, sir! You have kept her safe for me." And, to my eternal astonishment, he moved across to Holmes's wife and took her in his arms. I was not the only person in the room surprised by this display: the Duke was looking on open-mouthed. Holmes took his arm, firmly but not unkindly.
"I could not know what it would be like to be in your position, my good Duke, and I fear that I have taken advantage of your love-sickness. No, I cannot doubt that you loved the girl, but love can sometimes turn to darker things. But come now – I fear you have more serious crimes than that of loving a woman to answer to when we get outside."
I am afraid to say that at this point the Duke lost any control he may previously have had over his actions, His face transformed into that of a hunted beast, and even as his hand slipped towards his pocket and his revolver I was on him, and together Holmes and I restrained him. As if on cue, Inspector Lestrade burst in through the door and, within moments, the handcuffs were around the wrists of ' one of the most dangerous criminals in London'. Lestrade favoured Holmes with a triumphant look.
"Well, you have done it again, Mr Holmes. We have been following this man for weeks, and yet he has not yet slipped up well enough for us to arrest him. Has he made a confession?"
"Yes." It was not Holmes who spoke, but rather the young man, who had extricated himself from the lady's embrace. "When I went to meet him, after he had bound me – I would swear before a judge the things he boasted to me then, and I am glad that he will soon be behind bars. The things he has done!" The young man threw his hands in the air. He spoke with a slightly simple air, and even I could tell that he was not of the same class as the young lady. But Lestrade frowned up at Holmes.
"And this young man?"
"Is an ally." Holmes responded at once. "James Johnson by name, should you need him when it comes to sentencing. But I am almost entirely sure that a search of the Duke's coat-pocket will provide you will all the evidence you need – a gold watch belonging to one Mr Rose, who died last week in suspicious circumstances after a dispute at the card table. Duke Wilson has a most peculiar racket going on, you see; he will have anyone murdered, and all he asks for his pains is an object of value belonging to the departed. These magpie-like tendencies at last proved to be his comeuppance when he latched on to the finest treasure of all – this young lady."
The Duke cursed.
"How in the deuce did you find out about this place, Holmes?" Holmes shook his head wryly.
"If you will insist on taking such an obvious place as your hideout... and it was no complex matter to have you followed the first time you came here." The Duke shook his head, amazed. It was an effect Sherlock Holmes had on a great many criminals. When they realised the genius they were up against, they bowed graciously to their superior.
"Well, Mr Holmes, I have no shame, at least, in being caught by one as astute as yourself. I believe I can safely say that you will never meet your match in the great web of the London underworld. You caught me, after all, and I was one of the best." Holmes shook his head once more, and there was something like sadness in his eyes as he responded.
"There is one far greater than you in that great web, Duke Wilson, and in him I will meet my match. But no more! I am afraid that there is a prison-cell awaiting your arrival."
Silently, Lestrade took the prisoner off, and the four of us were left alone in the darkness. Holmes leant back against the wall, his eyes partially closed. I could see that the evening had, for him, been a trying one.
"It is a curious thing, Watson, that a criminal can be the most charming man in the world. I feel almost sorry to see him go." He said, breaking the silence at last. Then he caught sight of my face, and laughed. Now that the crisis was over, I was greatly perplexed by the situation. "I am sorry, Watson, that I had to keep you in the dark. But there was never any marriage between Miss St Clair and myself."
"Oh." There was little else to say. Holmes shook himself from his introspection, and moved towards the door.
"But this is hardly the place for such a discussion. And so, Miss St Clair, it is time for us to go our separate ways." The woman moved forwards, smiling kindly. She took Holmes's hands in her own.
"I thank you from the bottom of my heart." She said slowly. "You are just as great a man, if not greater, than dear Dr Watson has said in his stories."
"Yes, well, Watson knows of my opinion of his, ah, 'stories'..." Holmes trailed away. Such an emotional situation was indeed an uncomfortable one for him, but fortunately there were few words left to be said. The young lady shyly stretched up on tiptoes to brush her lips against his cheek, and then young Johnson stepped forward, and grasped him warmly by the hand once more.
"Take care of her and yourself, Mr Johnson." Holmes said seriously. "Now, disappear! This web of crime and deceit that is the London upper class is no place for the likes of you. I wish you every joy in your new life." And as he spoke, Holmes slipped the gold wedding band from his finger and placed it into the palm of the boy. Johnson nodded, and both he and his beau vanished into the darkness, leaving Holmes and I quite alone.
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"A singular case." Holmes remarked later that night as we sat in Baker Street with our pipes. "Perhaps it did not require those deductive skills for which I am more frequently employed, but the staging of the catch was certainly not without merit."
"I should say so!" I exclaimed. "Especially since it required you to appear to have married the favourite debutanté of the season. Now, Holmes, surely it is time to tell me the whole story?"
"Indeed." Holmes watched the flickering flames for a moment, gathering his thoughts. Then he took a breath and began. "I suppose it all begins with Duke Wilson. He is well known as a wooer of unsuspecting young women – less so as the mastermind behind one of the shadier criminal enterprises in London. As you heard earlier, he will take on 'cases' in which a person needs to be dealt with – permanently – and the only payment he asks is an object of value from the body of the victim. Not quite as safe as hard cash, but certainly more impressive as trophies, and worthy when sold on. I have, by the way, been in touch for some time with the pawnbroker he supplies. That link has been a most useful one in this tangled chain.
"I went through all the ordinary procedures – I hunted out his den, to where he retired when suspicion towards him was aroused. I had my net, but as yet I did not have the bait with which to attract him into it. Then fate seemed to play a card, when into Baker Street entered Miss St Clair and Mr James Johnson, her young suitor.
"As I am sure you perceived, Mr Johnson was not exactly – equal, shall we say – to his fiancée in social standing. But Miss St Clair is a remarkably stubborn woman, and she was determined to marry him. She has no parents to prevent her from her course – there was only one thing standing in her way."
"The Duke?" I offered, and Holmes nodded, his eyes distant.
"Yes. It seems he had met his match in young Catherine St Clair. The pitiable man had set out to trick her and had ended up falling in love with her. See, Watson, why love is such a fickle emotion? It makes fools of the best of us, and jailbirds of the worst of us.
"The Duke wanted her, but he could not have her. And when he discovered that the source of his rejection was a pauper's boy with scarcely a shilling to his name – well! He determined to take his revenge upon the both of them. And that, dear Watson, is where I came in. The rest should be fairly self-evident – the apparent marriage between Miss St Clair and myself was a blind, leading the Duke to even greater levels of carelessness. It also served, perhaps, to protect her from any revenge he may have planned. He invited Mr Johnson to visit him, and I advised the boy – if his heart was willing – to accept. The dangers he went through for love! The plan, by the way, was his – he is not as simple as he looks, Watson.
"The Duke's plan – predictable, I must say – was to try and make Johnson his ally, as a link to Miss St Clair. He reasoned that as they had both been rejected by the same woman this would not be such a great leap of faith, but Johnson – as I advised him to – refused. The Duke began to make some most threatening advances, but was interrupted by a carefully-timed disturbance outside his home involving our good friend Lestrade. The Duke took fright, and so hurried – with the boy – to his hideout. I believe that more or less covers it. It was Mr Johnson who you saw at the window of Baker Street, and he was there with my permission. Catherine St Clair and James Johnson are to be married next week, and no one will ever guess in coming years that the mother of a happy country family was ever the famous debutanté named Catherine St Clair."
We sat in silence for a long time after that. I eventually roused myself to ask one bothersome question.
"But the boy, Holmes? What if Wilson had just killed him?"
"In a stylish flat in the heart of fashionable London, Watson? I think not. And Wilson is not a killer – he has orchestrated murders, no doubt, but it has been his paid thugs who have done the deeds, not he himself. He is to be sentenced for those murders, since they were his handiwork, but he is not a man with enough courage to pull a trigger and watch his victim's lifeblood flow from him. In a way, it makes him all the more dangerous." I nodded: my friend's logic was, as ever, impeccable.
"And what of the scandal, Holmes? What will you say when people ask after your wife?"
"I will say she has left me, as she quite rightly has." Holes answered with a smile on his lips. "But I do not think they will: there will invariably be a new scandal to wash away the memory of this one. Gossip has a surprisingly short memory."
There was but one more thing troubling me.
"Do you not think it... inappropriate, at all, Holmes? To use the institute of marriage in such a way? It all seems rather sacrilegious."
Holmes surveyed me for a long moment before answering.
"Marriage is the temple in which human life is created. All I have done is used that temple to protect an already existing life. Does that seem so terrible to you, Watson?"
"No." I said at last. "But I do mourn the fact that you are now quite alone. Miss St Clair seemed rather... appropriate for you, in a way."
Holmes laughed heartily, a sound I rarely heard.
"Come Watson, you are far too melodramatic, and you know full well that marriage is as much an anathema to me and my work as cocaine is to your delicate sensibilities. And now, let us pass over such foolish talk, and turn our minds to slightly less strenuous things. I have been handed a curious little case by a friend of Lestrade's, and though it does not seem serious it does promise a few points of interest. It involves a parrot, a businessman and a most curious selection of literature. I intend to look over the papers tonight. I take it you will be joining me?"
Finis
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A/N: So, there you have it: my first foray into the realms of Sherlock Holmes fan-fiction. I hope you've all enjoyed it - it was intended as a bit of slightly silly fun. Please tell me what you thought of it!