BBC Sherlock: Almost Christmas
Chapter 8
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6 January 2022
"Come through," Mrs. Hudson slipped up her face covering as she ushered John into the foyer. "You're here to see, Sherlock, I expect, yes?"
"Yeah," John nodded and pulled cautiously at his face mask. Mrs Hudson's question gave him a flicker of hope. He glanced around and worked to keep his tone casual. "He's in... then?"
"No, not a sign of him," Mrs. Hudson shook her head and pointed upstairs. "Not since Christmas Day, you know. And, yes...today's his birthday. That's why you've come, yes? Not that he'd want us to fuss even if he were here. But you know him, John. He's out doing his usual thing… It's what he loves…"
"Of course, Mrs. Hudson." His hope dashed, John was not entirely surprised. It had been only a fortnight since Sherlock had gone undercover, obviously not enough time to complete his investigation. John knew Sherlock's style: the detective was either utilizing one of his bolt holes as headquarters or had found a flat in a neighborhood more suitable for his surveillance. Frequenting pubs, building up confidences, becoming one with the community was all part of the disguise and method. Going deep undercover could take weeks, often much longer, to learn the habits and routines of his targets. When Sherlock needed it, he had the requisite patience for the smallest details.
"You have time, perhaps?" Mrs. Hudson inquired eager to have company in the quiet flat. "Fancy a cuppa? Kettle's already on." She turned without waiting for his reply and hurried down the hall.
"Sure. All right. Can stay for a bit before my shift," John called after her whilst pulling a home-made greeting card from his pocket and hanging his overcoat on the peg by the front door. Before following his former landlady into her kitchen, he paused and glanced at the envelope. "Uncle Sherlock" was written in his six-year-old's practiced penmanship. Two years earlier, Rosie had begun drawing and coloring her own greeting cards. With the help of her father and childminder, she distributed her creations to friends and folk—sometimes in person, sometimes via post—for holidays and such occasions the child thought noteworthy.
Sherlock had always scorned the saccharin sentimentality of greeting cards, but he had never expressed objections to receiving Rosie's handcrafted designs. He would inspect each missive with a critical eye, as if discerning a hidden code in her drawings or childish message, although he was more often mystified by the evidence of thought processes he could not fathom. He'd ring the Watson's home, or if an in-person visit were possible, he'd sit down with the little girl, and with a quite-rare-for-him benignity, ask her to validate her art.
"Have you ever actually seen a unicorn, Rosie?"
"Are you aware your rainbows are not spectrum-order correct?"
"What genus of flower were you depicting with three petals…?
John listened to these questions, trying to imagine what Sherlock expected to glean from Rosie's replies:
"Unicorns are pretty. That's why I draw them."
"My pencil set has all the colors of the rainbow, and I use my…my… imagin…imagic… my 'magic-nation, too."
"Dunno if this flower is a genius, like you, Uncle Sherlock, but I've seen it in the park."
In silent amusement, John observed those moments. Would the scientific genius be able to decipher the "logic" behind a child's whimsy? It would be like him to catalogue her answers for a future monograph about how children think.
In turn, Sherlock's keen—and unfeigned—interest delighted Rosie. Her uncle's attention stimulated her any-occasion greeting-card production, making him her favorite recipient.
John's eyes traveled up the staircase toward the empty flat. He had been correct in anticipating his friend's absence. To spare his daughter the disappointment, he had told Rosie he would deliver the card for her, warning that her uncle might be too busy to discuss her artistic composition straight away. He assured her he would place it in the flat so it would be the first thing Sherlock would see upon his return.
John looked again at the tidy letters forming "Uncle Sherlock" and palmed the newel post. "Mrs. Hudson," he shouted over the top of his mask loud enough for her to hear in her kitchen, "...um…first, I want to run up to the flat… Be right down." There was no point in explaining. Besides delivering Rosie's card, he wanted to make sure Sherlock hadn't left a secret message specifically for him—anything, really—requesting assistance.
Recalling Sherlock's appreciation for dust when looking for clues—"Any break in the dust line"—John bolted up the staircase and entered the familiar sitting room, his heart pounding. Dust cannot be faked …"dust is eloquent…." Checking around, he walked through the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom, inspecting the fine film that had settled within the last few weeks. There was not enough for his less-discerning eye to determine if anything important had been left for him. He returned to the sitting room, disappointed that all seemed perfectly ordinary…for Sherlock.
"You won't find anything up there, dear," he heard Mrs. Hudson announce at the base of the stairs. "I've checked. Oh yes. Don't worry. I haven't dusted."
John grinned, instantly hearing Sherlock's praise from so many years ago: "Mrs. Hudson leave Baker Street? England would fall." His former landlady had been neither a dizzy, simple-minded housekeeper—giving truth to her claim: "I'm not your housekeeper"—nor a nagging property-owner. Rather, Martha Hudson—for the most part—had hidden her shrewd insights behind an unpretentious and naïve façade. Her act of being witless had proven an excellent defense on numerous occasions. Doubtless, it not only had helped her survive a marriage with a high-ranking drug dealer, it had enabled her to outfox the occasional scoundrel targeting her tenants. Knowing this amazing woman was a loyal friend and, more importantly, an ally who had Sherlock's back, was a comfort to John.
"Coming, Mrs. Hudson!" He placed Rosie's card on Sherlock's grey-green leather chair and descended the well-remembered seventeen steps.
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John's routine practice since Rosie's infancy had been to scan his emails and the headlines for cases that might interest Sherlock—as he once had done when he actively worked alongside his friend. Accompanying the consulting detective on an investigation had become rare and haphazard in recent years; more commonly, John kept up with the detective's doings through the news or vicariously, during infrequent visits to Baker Street. He was eager to hear every detail, including the ones for which Sherlock had remained anonymous. Sherlock rarely refused confiding in John about his cases, even if there were certain investigations that were too confidential to be posted.
"Not that the parties involved," Sherlock sniffed, "would recognize themselves after you've overly romanticized their cases in your ever-popular fiction you call a blog."
After this-just-past Christmas morning when Sherlock had warned John that he would be "undercover" and "out of touch," John had scrutinized the news sources for scraps of stories more carefully. Breaking news about the pandemic restrictions and impact on the world, the Mid-East clashes, economic revivals, medical breakthrough—even discoveries on Mars—dominated streaming news services and social media, but nothing, to John's dismay, about the security company or drugs cartels.
The weeks passed in heavy silence. Always cautious about making inquiries that might blow Sherlock's cover, John did not speak about what he knew of Sherlock's affairs to anyone, all the while wondering whether there might be official enforcement organizations involved, albeit secretly, in Sherlock's ongoing case. That Lestrade hadn't rung John throughout all of January to complain that their friend was interfering with investigations nor even to ask after Sherlock was unusual. More curious was the DI's behavior whenever he and John met up for an occasional pint. Between their mutual rants about their favorite clubs and players, their heated discussion about politics, their shared experiences with the frustrations and heartaches of a country and world struggling with the pandemic and its variants, they stayed away from the one topic toward which all previous conversation would have eventually drifted—Sherlock.
On one such evening in early February, a marginally pissed Greg raised his one-for-the-road pint to John in a toast. "To the joys of good drink, good women, and good friends…" Then, he winked.
They exchanged looks that spoke volumes, acknowledging what John had long suspected—that the Met knew about Sherlock's case. Whatever Sherlock was investigating, it was critical, covert, and collaborative. Certainly, if national security were at stake, Mycroft would not be far away.
"Greg?" John pushed.
"Time to shut my mush," Greg drained his pint, wiped his lips with the back of his fist, and pushed back from the table. "And don't trouble yourself. There are directives…in place…" he pointed toward John. "If things go …you know…" he grunted. "… you'll know, but for now, it's under control and near its conclusion. Enough said. See you, mate." Greg left quickly, leaving John to ponder the update the DI had risked sharing.
In the days following Greg's broad hint, John ignored the constant, back-of-his brain niggling and his suspicions about Sherlock's alien-encounter case. Rather, he concentrated on thwarting the "winter surge" of cases at the surgery, raising a daughter on the cusp of turning seven, and too-often dealing with mind-numbing domestic routines.
But at night his dreams lay bare what he spent his conscious mind repressing—what if his friend's dangerous predilections took a bad turn? Did Sherlock need my help? He'd wake with a start and sit up in bed in an attempt to shake sense back into his head. That failing, he'd rise to get a glass of water, all the while trying to convince himself that straddling both lives—as the detective's right-hand man and the father of a small and very dependent child—was impossible, at least, until his daughter was fully grown with a life of her own. Reconciling himself yet again to the only possible decision, John Watson would return to bed, too troubled to sleep, his vivid imagination envisioning the challenges and dangers for Sherlock Holmes undercover.
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