December 20th, 1894
Change was on the air that winter. Not one of passing seasons, but revision in life itself. It was a strange premonition that weighed on Holmes's mind as he observed the snowflakes flittering outside the cab window in their air like dance. He took another inhale of his pipe and smoke filled the compartment in its dense haze. Their latest case had took them to the countryside and by unfortunate accounts remained unsolved, leaving him dissatisfied with the outcome. The murderer had the liberty of being butchered and quartered himself thus ending the investigation all together. Though that didn't stop Holmes from bringing home a trinket of their escapades. One that was settled nicely in a fishing basket.
He could almost see Baker Street up ahead when the cab abruptly stopped in its journey. There was no outside traffic. So what was the problem? A gust of chilled wind nipped at his face and he caught eye of his companion jabbing away at a newspaper vendor.
"Lord, always worried about that damnable magazine." Holmes's thoughts chided as he rolled his eyes. He longed to get warm by the fire, settle in for the evening and look back through his notes. And, if timing was just right, perhaps engage in forbidden pleasures. And the doctor was wasting precious time.
The detective shifted his hand further up the doctor's thigh, getting dangerously close to…
"Oh!" Watson swatted his hand away and finished up his conversation. "No, no, no, not at all. Good day to you."
The doctor settled back into his seat and gave Holmes a murderous look.
"Was that necessary?" He asked as he shoved up the window.
"How else was I to get you to stop gossiping in the street like some rouged up woman."
"Is that an offer I detect on your words? Or just your way of saying you want to start on some experiment that you have yet to tell me about? What is the secret in that basket?"
Holmes took another draw from his pipe. He truly wanted to say, both. If he didn't get home soon and put the basket in an ice chest it was going to have a foul odor to it.
"Christ, Holmes, what is in the basket?" He warily eyed it sitting on the floorboard by their feet.
"Seeing that you are a medical professional and sometimes my experiments can run along the more morbid side I hope you will be open minded. Especially given the fact I spend most of my time in the morgue…"
"What's in the basket?" Watson cut him off in his explanation. He knew him too well and knew when he was just throwing out words to beat around the bush. It was one habit that always confused him about his dear friend. Was he to be sensitive and spare feelings or blunt and to the point?
"His head." The detective admitted finally.
Watson's eyes widened at him in shock.
"You mean…the Squire?! What the devil for?!"
"Thought my other skull needed a friend."
Their cab finally rounded the corner and arrived at 221B. It was his place of solitude and comfort. And with his time with the doctor it had become to be known as his sanctuary. Behind closed curtains and locked doors he was allowed to silently worship the only body he himself had died for. Both in metaphor and literal language. At least on paper. The only gospel he knew was in silent recognition they gave to each other. The hymns they had sung had been for their ears only. And such music it made. The times they dined together was their holy communion and the only prayers said was when they hoped to see each other again.
The detective was met at the door by his less than pleased looking land lady as he got out of the cab. One thing that he was grateful for was that the elderly woman's hearing was starting to go. Making her a heavy sleeper. She never knew what praises were being sung in the quarters above her head. Or how they were extensionally much louder when she trotted off to church every Sunday morning.
"Mr. Holmes, I do wish you'd let me know when you're planning to come home."
"I hardly knew myself, Mrs Hudson," said Holmes as he took out his pipe. "That's the trouble with dismembered country squires; they're notoriously difficult to schedule."
At that he clamped his pipe back in his mouth and paid the driver.
"What's in there?" asked Billy as he came out to help them with the luggage, peering at the basket in the doctor's hand.
"Never mind." Watson brushed off the boy's curious wonderings.
"Did you catch a murderer, Mr. Holmes?" asked Billy over his shoulder as he took their luggage inside.
"Caught the murderer; still looking for the legs. Think we'll call it a draw."
Once inside he took off his hat and coat putting them in their proper lodgings on the hook by the door. Further inside laying on the mantle piece of the fireplace was new posts for him. Crime, it seemed, never ceased while he was called away. Then again, he could always use the excuse that he and Watson would be busy for an hour or so considering their next case. At least it would give them some privacy.
"I never enjoy them." Mrs. Hudson admitted as she came in followed by the doctor. No doubt complaining about the stories in the papers again and getting him riled up.
"Why not?"
"Well, I never say anything, do I? According to you, I just show people up the stairs and serve you breakfasts."
"Well, within the narrative, that is – broadly speaking – your function." Watson said as he hung his hat and coat.
"My what?!" Mrs. Hudson flustered.
"Don't feel singled out, Mrs Hudson. I'm hardly in the dog one." Holmes replied as he shifted through the post.
"The 'dog one'?!"
"I'm your landlady, not a plot device." She scuttled off to her own rooms in a huff, leaving the pair in the hallway.
"Do you mean 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'?!" Watson called out as he went after the detective who had made for the stairs.
He couldn't help but smirk to himself. He would never admit he liked Watson's stories of their adventures together. Dashing about London, hunting criminals, the thrill of the chase at their feet. His companion had chronicled their lives at Baker Street like any romance author and even though he fussed to Watson about getting too carried away with it, it secretly warmed his heart. And on nights where they were separated in mind and body he would read those stories and relive those moments under the gaslight of his lamp safely in his bedroom.
Holmes reached the sitting room and suddenly his giddy gait became cautious. Hanging in the darkness was a wavering floral note. A scent that puzzled his mind for a moment, but yet one he knew. And one, he for sure knew, Mrs. Hudson did not normally wear. He threw open the first set of curtains and then the next. The late afternoon light flooded in and revealed a figure in a dress, all black as one does in mourning, including the veil that hid her face.
"Good Lord!" Watson exclaimed as he entered the sitting room and made a once over of their new uninvited guest.
"Mrs Hudson!" Holmes yelled from the doorway. "There is a woman in my sitting room! Is it intentional?"
"She's a client! Said you were out; insisted on waiting." Said the landlady as she called from downstairs.
"Didn't you ask her what she wanted?"
"You ask her!"
"Well, why didn't you ask her?"
This did not sit well with the older woman and her tone became feisty.
"How could I, what with me not talking and everything?"
Holmes rolled his eyes and returned to the sitting room.
"Oh, for God's sake. Give her some lines. She's perfectly capable of starving us." He whispered into Watson's ear before addressing the woman that occupied the room.
"Good afternoon. I'm Sherlock Holmes. This is my friend and colleague, Doctor Watson. You may speak freely in front of him, as he rarely understands a word."
"Holmes."
"However, before you do, allow me to make some trifling observations." Holmes walked closer to her, the floral perfume ever evident than before. He knew the scent. It was always present on Watson's clothing whenever he decided to bless his appearance at his doorstep. No doubt it was the one he had been earnestly trying to beat time in order to get home. That he may have some taste of the Garden of Eden before he was forcefully banished to the outside and made to look inside in torment.
"You have an impish sense of humor which currently you're deploying to ease a degree of personal anguish," He continued as he circled around her and came back to Watson's side.
"You have recently married a man of a seemingly kindly disposition who has now abandoned you for an unsavory companion of dubious morals. You have come to this agency as a last resort in the hope that reconciliation may still be possible."
"Good Lord, Holmes!" the doctor scoffed.
"All of this is, of course, perfectly evident from your perfume."
"Her perfume?"
"Yes, her perfume, which brings insight to me and disaster to you."
"How so?"
There were times when Watson was his beacon of light and other times when the doctor's light was so dim Holmes wondered how he could even see. Surely he would know the very scent of the woman he had chosen to spend his life with, the one he had taken oath at the alter, the one that seemed to be catching on to their habits together. He stepped forward and unveiled the shrouded woman, leaving her face for display.
"Because I recognized it and you did not."
"Mary!" Watson's eyes widened as the veil fell away.
"John." His wife answered.
"Why, in God's name, are you pretending to be a client?"
"Because I could think of no other way to see my husband, Husband."
It seemed as though the desires of the flesh would have to wait for another time. Holmes had noted the increased vigilance of the doctor's wife as of late and it was starting to become more pronounced. Surely by now she would have picked up on her husband's long excursions on cases. Being gone for weeks at a time. Or simply observing how the doctor abandoned their residential home for the comforts of the detective's. Watson was no stranger to Holmes if he showed up unannounced and stayed the night. Those were the times he longed for the most and he had hoped to engage on such actions if it weren't the ill timed arrival of the doctor's significant other.
The couple's banter from the fire place could be heard as he tried to drown out his own misery in the comforting arms of his Stradivarius. But no swaying tune of Mendelssohn or Wagner would console him. Nor would it woo his beloved companion to him in the heat of a triangular lover's quarrel. He could take it no more.
"Enough!" Holmes commanded and the room fell silent. "The stage is set, and the curtain rises. We are ready to begin."
"Begin what?" asked Mrs. Watson.
"Sometimes, to solve a case, one must first solve another."
"Oh, you have a case, then, a new one?"
The detectives heart swelled at the doctor's enthusiasm. One case finished and already so willing to start another. At least for now it would be the waving white flag calling for truce. A subtle distraction for the time being as he revealed their new visitor.
"Lestrade!" Holmes beckoned over his shoulder. "Do stop loitering by the door and come in."
As on cue the door of the sitting room burst open to a disgruntled looking Inspector. His heavy breathing and anxious expression was of near fright. Whatever could the Inspector want at this hour to come charging to his door like a dog with its tail between its legs? He gave a once over of the room and his eyes caught onto the table by the window for the briefest of seconds. It held no doubt in the detective's mind that what had happened to the Inspector it definitely warranted a hard drink.
"How did you know it was me?" Lestrade focused on the detective as Holmes sat in his chair.
"The regulation tread is unmistakeable; lighter than Jones, heavier than Gregson."
"I-I-I just came up. Mrs Hudson didn't seem to be talking."
"I fear she's branched into literary criticism by means of satire." He explained as he filled his pipe with tobacco from the Persian slipper on the table beside him. "It is a distressing trend in the modern landlady. What brings you here in your off-duty hours?"
Lestrade took a brief glance to his right, then looked back at Holmes.
"How'd you know I'm off-duty?"
"Well, since your arrival you've addressed over forty percent of your remarks to my decanter." He pointed to the table by the window on which laid a silver tray that held various bottles and glasses, including a whisky decanter. "Watson, give the Inspector what he so clearly wants."
At his request Watson walked to the table across the room and poured a drink for their new guest.
"So, Lestrade, what can we do for you?"
"Oh, I'm not here on business. I just thought I'd ... drop by."
"A social call?" Watson asked as he handed him the drink.
"Yeah, of course, just to wish you the compliments of the season."
Holmes took his pipe from his mouth and stared pointedly at the Inspector. This was yet another trial upon his patience. True, he would admit that Watson's softer refineries of manners had rubbed off onto him on the art of conversation. However, even he had his own preference to certain people where he was more lenient to his friend than to the Yard. Making him more impatient for his clients to simply get on with it and stop blabbering at the mouth. He could tell he was making the Inspector even more nervous from his silent regard as Lestrade held his gaze and then raised his glass.
"Merry Christmas?" said Lestrade.
The trio exchanged their holiday salutations to the anxious man.
"Thank God that's over." Quipped Holmes. "Now, Inspector, what strange happening compels you to my door but embarrasses you to relate?"
Lestrade took a long drink from his glass and closed his eyes before shaking his head. Possibly trying to rid his mind of ill thoughts before he beheld the world again with open eyes.
"Who said anything happened?" Lestrade defended.
"You did, by every means short of actual speech."
The Inspector took another deep drink of the liquor draining the glass dry.
"Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah, Holmes?," Watson held up a finger to pause Sherlock's deductions. "You have misdiagnosed."
Sherlock grinned.
"Then correct me, Doctor."
He loved to see how Watson's brain worked. Whereas the doctor was the more sentimental of the two of them and Holmes the more logical, he regarded his way of thinking with the highest esteem. Rarely did people tolerate his company and even more rare to understand his methods in ways of deduction. It amazed him, from time to time, to see his Watson do both.
"He didn't want a drink …" Watson took the Inspector's glass to reveal the emptiness of the crystal. "... he needed one. He's not embarrassed; he's afraid."
With a quick glance at the evidence the doctor set before the detective from the drained glass to the frightened wear upon Lestrade's face, he knew he was right. Employed in his company he knew this was more valuable information than anything Watson could learn from married life.
"My Boswell is learning. They do grow up so fast." He threw a proud smile towards the doctor's wife who returned it.
"Watson, restore the courage of Scotland Yard. Inspector, do sit down." He gestured to the chair with his pipe.
"I'm-I'm not afraid, exactly." Lestrade took the offered seat.
"Fear is wisdom in the face of danger. It is nothing to be ashamed of."
Watson brought over the refilled glass and gave it to the Inspector.
"Thank you." Lestrade said graciously.
"From the beginning, then."
And with a stroke of Holmes's match the flames engulfed the memory.
It was the ticking of his wristwatch that brought Sherlock from his trance back into the darkened room of the present. All was still throughout the flat and the grayish hue of the dawn barely brought color to the morning. Checking the time it was only a quarter after five. It was at times like these, searching his mind palace, that time became relative. He could stay succumbed for hours, even days if he so chose. However, again just like the premonition long ago, he felt as though time was not on his side. Like an irritable itch on ones back that won't be rid of. No matter how much you scratch at it.
Sherlock rose up from the sofa and made his way towards his room. Locking the door from the outside world to his small refuge.