Despite Sherlock Holmes's low opinions of the intelligence of women, there was a single member of the sex who commanded his respect as an equal.
Yet her mind was of no value to society while housed in a female body, and an unattractive one at that. Too tall, too heavy, too uncaring for conventions, she was an old maid barely tolerated in her occupation – a bookkeeping clerk with a formidable command of numbers.
She asked for no pity, especially from a man seven years her junior. Still, it pained Holmes that his older sister Murella had not been born male.