There is a gentle knock at the door, the brass handle turning a moment later to reveal the starched apron and solemn face of the house-maid. (She always looked solemn, Watson had long since decided it was her default expression.)
"Yes, Alice?"
"Begging pardon, sir, there's a gentleman who wishes to see you."
He sighs, the soft sound of a good man who knows his work is never done. "I don't hold surgery on Fridays – why is this so difficult for people to grasp?"
Alice blushes slightly and looks at the floor, unhappy that she has put the doctor to difficulty. "I'll tell him you're not to be disturbed, sir..."
"No, no, well he's here now." A sudden thought. "He's not bleeding on the carpet or anything like that, is he?"
The corner of the maid's lips twitch in a smile, the doctor's a funny one – always so calm but with that double-edge to his voice and she can never decide if he's joking or whether he'd rather she answered 'yes' or 'no' to that sort of question. "Oh, no sir, he seems well enough." She looks for some sign of disappointment or relief, but the doctor just runs a hand across his brow, banishing his own weariness and tugs his jacket straight.
"Send him in then."
She bobs a not-quite curtsey (Mrs Watson had tried to school her out of the habit, saying it made her feel quite the ninny to be lauded in such a way in her own home) and leaves to fetch the visitor.
When she returns, Watson is surprised to see it's with the old bookseller in tow. (He'd been at St Bart's earlier in the day on business for the Yard; as medical examiner on the Wesley-Jenkins case. Just outside the hospital on the corner of High Holburn, despite his best efforts of evasion he'd been careered into by a man with an armful of books.)
The doctor's impression of him when they collided on the street was brief: a gaunt face and a mane of dirty-white hair, an irascible, scratchy voice, a crooked frame packaged in an old suit and char-coloured greatcoat. Now in the light of his study Watson sees also the bushy brows, the thread-bare cuffs, the milky faded eyes and the tremor to the hands that clutch so tightly to their precious books.
"You're surprised to see me, sir," the gentleman says, sounding more jovial than he did in their previous encounter.
Watson nods, feeling a little dazed. There is something wrong with this scene, but he's unable to put his finger on it precisely and it's distracting him.
"Well, I've a conscience, sir," the bibliophile continues, as if his character had been called in to question on that account. "When I chanced to see you go into this house, as I came hobbling after you, I thought to myself, I'll just step in and see that kind gentleman, and tell him that if I was a bit gruff in my manner there was not any harm meant, and that I am much obliged to him for picking up my books."
Thus proving no good deed goes unpunished, the doctor thinks wryly. Monday to Thursday are the days he runs his surgery, Fridays are reserved for the Yard and Saturday he travels to the clinic in Clarkenwell and does what works of charity he can. He has things to set in order if he hopes not to spend most of Sunday hunched over his desk; he is tired and looking forward to an early supper followed by a brandy as he works for an hour or so before bed. Playing host to a stranger who's followed him all the way from Bart's like a stray cat is upsetting his schedule. "You make too much of a trifle," he says, trying to wave the incident away. "May I ask how you knew who I was?"
"Well, sir, if it isn't too great a liberty, I am a neighbour of yours, for you'll find my little bookshop at the corner of Church Street and Edgware, and very happy to see you, I am sure. Maybe you collect yourself, sir?"
Watson wonders if perhaps his geography has deserted him and the upper end of Edgware is in fact several roads eastwards to where he'd previously supposed its position to be. Or perhaps the bibliophile was just of the sort to consider all of the city his neighbour, geography go hang... He realises the old man has spoken again. "I'm sorry?"
"I asked if maybe you collect yourself, sir?" He looks around the study, his gaze fumbling over the shelves of medical texts above the desk and alighting with joy upon the glass-fronted case against the far wall. He totters in that direction, squinting at the spines of Carlyle, Roussaux, Voltaire, and Thackery through the glass, mumbling and nodding at the titles. "Well here – you must have something – a token for your chivalry as it were..." He swings back, dithering for a moment and puts down his bundle of books with the same care a parent might show a child. "Here's 'British Birds' – no, no that will not do. 'The Holy War' perhaps? Hmm. 'Catullus' – no, but something classical. Aurelius! Yes, that will do nicely." Triumphantly he grips a slender volume smartly bound in ox-blood leather; an old printing but not too badly foxed. "Marcus Aurelius' Meditations." He bestows it upon the doctor with a nervous gravitas, anxious that he has made the right choice.
Watson accepts it with a smile and thanks composed of grace and confusion. "Really – you're too kind, I..."
"I insist," the bookseller says quickly.
Watson strives to keep from frowning as again he is prodded by the thought that something is not right: there is some fact he is ignorant of, and if he only knew it the whole situation would unfold in a very different light. The knowledge that he is missing something important – and is certain he is – is discomforting in the extreme. Like one of those optical illusions where one is supposed to be able to perceive two faces in profile and all he can see is the damn vase. "Thank you," he says, because he can think of nothing else to say.
The bookseller smiles, and for a moment the expression looks strained, but then he is moving again, gathering up his errant volumes, and Watson wonders if he imagined it. "Perhaps you will drop by – Morrison and Rigby – I'm Morrison, and truth be told there's no longer a Rigby – on the corner of Church Street, we'd be glad to see you." He offers his hand, realises it is his left and manages to rearrange his books without dropping them to proffer his right instead.
Watson shakes his hand. "I shall. Thank you for coming by, and thank you for Aurelius."
The old bookseller is tottering towards the door. "Think nothing of it, nothing of it." He pauses as he steps from the study, looking back for a moment. "Well. Good day," he says.
"Good day," Watson responds, watching him depart.
It is only hours later, after both supper and brandy, when his eyes alight once more on the little volume that he realises the bookseller uttered not 'good day' as one would to a stranger, but 'good bye' as one would to a friend. For reasons he still cannot fully grasp he remains uneasy about the whole encounter.
Leaning back in his chair he eyes the book, rather like a fakir with a new cobra, and reluctantly picks it up. He opens it; there is an inscription on the fly-leaf dated 1892. The penmanship is strong and angular, clearly written by a man. The width of the nib-strokes are constant, thickening only on the signature; it was an inscription that had been carefully thought out before it was written in one fluid dash, the nib only re-dipped at the end, suggesting perhaps the scriber had considered a longer signature and not just a monogram.
~For all we must endure
That can never be forgiven~
Yours,
in solitude,
H
Watson tries to swallow past the tightness in his throat and finds he cannot. The book is second hand, he reminds himself, given to him through a chance encounter with a stranger. 'H' likely stands for Henry or Herbert or Humphrey or Hemmingway or Hastings or any other number of names Christian or Familial that England is awash with. It is not a note penned for him. But the echo of sentiment, the resonance it stirs in his soul, is all the more painful for that.
At the corner of Manchester Street a man straightens his back against the wall and then slides down it to crouch on the pavement, dropping his pack of books. His hands are shaking as he clutches at his head, eyes shut fast, mouth a narrow line turned down at either end. "Idiot – idiot!" he growls in frustration, his voice younger than his appearance suggests. He blinks, rubbing at his eyes, and the moisture in them chases the milky dye from their irises, revealing a darker and infinitely more pained colour beneath. He is shivering as the last spikes of adrenalin are drowned out in despair.
"C'est vraiment de ta faute," he tells himself. "Connard!" He stays in that position, body sagged against the wall, the only animation coming from his lips as he continues to swear brokenly in French.
It begins to rain, cold stinging drops like a reprimand from heaven. They fall upon the man and his pile of books; he allows both with equal indifference.
At last – and although it seems an age to him it has been minutes and nothing more – he levers himself to his feet, pushing away from the wall and walking like one drunk or bereft onwards into the darkening streets of the city.
The books sit where he left them, at the corner of Manchester Street, the raindrops battering upon their covers and slowly dampening them to ruin.
The walls are a pale pea-green, the floorboards dark-stained and with much of their varnish scuffed. It's small; stuffy in summer and bitter in winter, but still it is his office. It is like a badge of rank, a sign of battles hard won as well as a comrade in arms in all the battles to come. And he is quietly proud of it; creaking chair, overstuffed file cabinets and all.
He tips back in his chair (it creaks, an alarming sound like a last straw breaking, but he doesn't hear it).
Something is niggling at the back of Inspector Lestrade's head.
It's like a flea bite being rubbed by the seam of a shirt; a small and constant irritation that can't be banished no matter how much he picks at it. But as has been remarked upon by many, what he lacks in genius Lestrade more than makes up for in patience: so he scratches away at the corners of thoughts throughout the day, bit by bit unearthing what it is that bothers him.
It isn't until quarter past five when Constable Clark taps quietly at the door and then enters to bring him a cup of tea and the reports on the Wesley-Jenkins case, that Lestrade is able to forge enough of his disquiet together into a thought that could be verbalised. He takes the cup and its forever cracked and Indian-ink-stained saucer and finds a place for it amidst the ordered clutter of his desk. "Constable?"
"Yes sir?"
"Did you happen to see Mr Holmes arrive at court this morning?"
"I did sir." More accurately he had seen a steel-haired and pastey-faced gent with an obnoxiously purple cravat enter the court and, as the gent had passed him, he'd smiled ever so slightly and muttered, 'Clarky' in greeting. "He was in the gallery sir."
The ever-present scowl deepens. "I didn't see him."
"He was disguised sir."
Lestrade makes a hrmph of irritation.
"Left in quite a hurry too sir. After the Colonel made his speech, when there was that ruckus due to what he said."
The disquiet is now not only forged, but forged into something the inspector doesn't like the look of at all. Holmes' disguises, Watson's absence, Moran's smugness, society's ignorance...
When the detective requested those few of the Yard who knew of his return to keep it quiet, Lestrade assumed it was all part of the Moran case. Believed that soon after he would stage a return to London in a suitably theatrical style. Now... now he fears he's entirely missed his mark. "I don't like it," he grumbles to his teacup. "Be happier when I know Moran's at the end of a rope and Mr Holmes is back in Baker Street with the doctor."
"Everything in its proper place, as per usual," Clarky quips with a smile.
Lestrade looks at him blankly.
He doesn't shuffle his feet, but he has the slightly sheepish look of one who'd dearly like to. "Sir."
"Suppose that bloody rat Murdock was at court too..." Lestrade in his time has been accused of looking 'ferrety', but in fairness his features are more pleasing and infinitely less vermin-like than those of Murdock, a reporter for the Police Gazette with a line in sensationalism that runs a mile wide. The inspector hadn't seen the newsman, he'd been watching Moran and scowling a good deal, but it was a sure bet he'd been there.
Clarky looks troubled. "Sir, the Colonel's speech..."
Lestrade grimaces and swallows a mouthful of scalding tea.
"Do you think Murdock'll - I mean..."
His voice is a growl, but his ire isn't aimed at the constable. "Do I think Murdock'll pick up on all that rot about tigers an' know he was talkin' about Holmes? No, I don't. The man's a bleedin' fantasist but even he ain't gonna say Holmes is back from the dead. Oh, he'll write a page o'swill makin' out he knows who Moran meant an' swearin' he'll reveal all tomorrow. Never will." He sniffs. "Christ, any penny-whore who did that'd get a slap, yet all o'London takes it from the press-men an' queues up f'more."
The constable wonders how he can leave Lestrade's office without it looking like he's creeping away. The inspector is becoming both dour and acerbic – not a combination that boded well.
But instead of the expected rant there is a question instead. "You on the beat, Constable?"
"Yes sir. Start at six in Bread Street Ward Sir."
The inspector nods absently.
Clarky pauses. "Do you need an errand run, or somebody checked up on, sir?"
For a second Lestrade's scowl lessens and it seems he is about to agree; but his expression toughens again almost immediately. "Don't be bloody ridiculous. This is Scotland Yard, not a working charity." His voice drops a notch. "Silly bastard can look after himself," he affirms stoutly.
"Sir."
NOTES
Manchester Street – at the time of The Adventure of the Empty House I believe Watson was living in Kensington, but it was more convenient to have him in Paddington, so there =P
C'est vraiment de ta faute. Connard! - French: This is your fault. Idiot!
Breadstreet Ward – the City of London is divided into Wards and Parishes. Bread Street is between St Paul's and the Bank of England.
Colonel Moran's hanging - In The Adventure of the Illustrious Client (set in 1902) Holmes mentions Moran is still alive. Moran is also mentioned in His Last Bow as an example of those of Holmes's many adversaries who have futilely sworn revenge against him.