Disclaimer: I don't own "Sherlock Holmes" or any of its characters. That all belongs to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Guy Ritchie, etc.
Inspired by: "Brave" by Idina Menzel.
"Three days before the...accident...I had received a note from my dear Nanny Ruth. I'd not heard from her in three years, as she'd taken a tour of Europe to celebrate her retirement from teaching, but I knew she kept some rooms on Baker Street. Recently she had returned and was readjusting to stable living. She was requesting a visit, as she was missing me dearly and was expecting me the upcoming Friday promptly at three o'clock. I was never one to go completely against my nanny, and so I exited the house at quarter past two that day," Madeline murmured.
Holmes was sat quietly, intrigued. "Where do you live?"
"173 Sloane Street," she rattled off. "I chose to walk for a ways because, well, because I actually wanted to. It was freeing, reminiscent to running without being improper. When I rounded a corner, I noticed a cab waiting down the road. I passed it without giving it thought. The reins slapped loudly against the horses' flanks, and looking over my shoulder I saw it start to trot behind me. Still I gave it no mind, as I was too absorbed in seeing Ruth again. But then, I heard its clattering wheels grunt and moan as I turned onto Park Lane. My heart began to flutter, and experimentally I started sprinting down the cobblestones to see if it was following me. Risking a glance back, I saw the driver whip the horses sharply and compel them to go faster. Then I just threw caution to the wind and ran. I hoped to reach Nanny's door before I got trampled. Recognizing the Baker Street sign when I arrived, I thought I would be safe…until that damned crack caught my heel."
Madeline slumped in the window seat, and rested her burning forehead against the cool glass. Sherlock processed the explanation, but he could see by her fidgeting that there was more to tell.
"Wonderful summary, but that begs the question of who this Lawrence is," he said, twitching the note in his pocket. She sighed, trepidation filling her veins.
"It's simple," she began. "Lawrence is…was…is my brother-in-law. And to be perfectly frank, he has never cared for me. Not since the day his brother began courting me. If he had known what Great Aunt Florence was planning, he most certainly would've prevented my marriage to Simon."
"Hmm…" Holmes hummed, "aside from the stubbornness and maddening inquisitiveness, why would you be of any concern to him?"
Madeline drew a deep breath, hesitant to put her long-secret suspicions into words.
"You have to understand, Mr. Holmes, that for the majority of their lives Simon and Lawrence's parents had been dead. For years they had no one to depend on but each other, and for someone new to enter the picture…did not sit well with the younger brother. I fear he was jealous of me."
She stared coldly into the detective's eyes, driving the point home.
"Unnaturally jealous. I have no real proof of this, but I saw things in his eyes that I've seen in men who are angry when their wives talk to other men, or when a woman is angry with her sweetheart for dancing with someone other than her. And the looks he'd turn on Simon…Perhaps it was foolishness in my mind, wanting to make him more of a degenerate, but…I know what I saw."
Sherlock grimaced at that. "Fine family, that."
Madeline shook her head. "Simon was a good man, but he only saw brotherhood with Lawrence. Seeing something beyond never occurred to him. Which is good, considered I was married to him. Not that such an occurrence would've ended it. My marriage was the only thing keep my family's name out of the muck."
The detective's eyes flicked over her. "Was it opiates or alcohol that took your father's life?"
"Excuse me?" Her cheeks flared red, rage billowing below the surface in an instant.
"You mentioned a great aunt arranging your marriage. Not your mother, who I assume died due to a chronic illness, seeing as how you've only ever spoken of her in the past tense and with a childlike fondness and clarity of memory which belies her passing with you between the ages of five and ten. Nor did your father do it, even though he would normally be responsible for constructing such a match. Especially a match to a barrister, so the question remains why a matriarch did this instead. Only if the elder male was incapacitated in some way, but was still around to comprehend the damage that could be done to a daughter who had reached a marriageable age, could that be possible. So I ask again, for my own edification: opiates or alcohol?"
The woman swallowed, tears held tightly in her eyes and her chin rising. "…Alcohol, Mr. Holmes. Drank himself to a death which was eleven years coming."
He nodded, his demeanor stony. Something in his glare softened as he replied, "Your mother."
She turned her gaze to her knees. "And my brother. Father began to carry a flask on his person at all times when they were sent away. They died in the sick house of consumption, both of them. Two months apart; Harry went first, and then Mother followed quickly. I was ten. With the family shop failing due to his drinking, I was sent to live with Florence Rogers, his aunt. The woman was the wife of an architect; she could've been one herself, she knew just how to build things. Things that involved people, anyway."
She turned away and rubbed her eyes, the lateness getting to her.
"We never got along, her and I. I was too impetuous, too wild and unladylike for her tastes. She blamed my mother for it, and I hated her for saying such things about my mum. Only two good things came out of my time with the woman: I had Nanny Bray taking care of me, and I had a home again. And then I turned thirteen, and Florence set aside her dislike of my personality to look for ways to better our name again. Once I thought her to be a doddering old fool, but she had plans for me, and very craftily she began to put everything into place. Even now, I have to hand it to her; she had to make sure that every avenue she pursued would be unhindered and profitable for me."
"Avenues that included a boarding school in Yorkshire?"
Off her surprised look, he shrugged. "You have traces of Yorkshire in your accent. You were not born there, otherwise it would be more prominent. It had to come from somewhere, and you had to have picked it up in your formidable years of education."
"True enough, I suppose. Yes, that's where I went to school. It was…well, it was expected of me to go, earn good marks, and I did that. The only important thing for any of us girls to learn was to become proper ladies of society. Though I did meet Julianne and Constance there, and I did earn a couple of bad marks for choosing to run foot races with my dress tucked up so I wouldn't trip."
His eyebrows jumped up, a corner of his mouth struggling to work into a wry grin. "Very ladylike."
Madeline rolled her eyes and groaned, "So I've been told. Is this relevant to the case, Holmes?"
He leaned back in his chair. "Honestly, you've been more to the point than some of my clients have been in the past. More often than not, I hear their life stories, which sometimes holds a clue to motivations and the like. What I'm gleaning from this is that with having similar childhoods and similar upbringings, this bonded you to Simon, but alienated your brother-in-law because you developed a bond. And with you loving him-"
"I didn't love him," she cut him off, her mouth ahead of her mind. She closed her eyes, annoyed with her blatant honesty. She couldn't take it back now, though. "Simon St. James was six-and-thirty years at the time, and still unmarried. My great aunt had stumbled upon the veritable treasure of men for me: not too old, not too young, well-off and respectable. He courted me, sweet man that he was, and we became friends. Being seventeen, I was lucky and glad to marry a friend. I cared for Simon, as much one could care under the circumstances, and perhaps it was a sort of love, but I wasn't in love with him."
Opening her eyes again, she did not find anything like judgment or irritation in Sherlock's gaze.
"I admired him for his intelligence, his well-versed mind of law, his kindness. I was happy to make him laugh and converse with him, and to help him when he needed me. Lawrence failed to see the true nature of the relationship, and he never gave us a moment's peace because of his own delusions. To a young woman, really a girl at seventeen, it's incredibly hard to share a marriage with a third person," she continued. "Years of resentment built up, with bickering between us turning into full-on rows that ended with Lawrence being ejected from the house and me shaking with rage. More often than not, we put Simon between us, which was totally unfair, but I refused to be an outsider in my own marriage. I was so much younger then, and I was so headstrong that no matter what I felt, my marriage was mine, and I wouldn't let anyone ruin it for me."
"I take it making amends did not occur to either of you until well after your husband's funeral."
"Put bluntly, no, it didn't. Lawrence was of a mind to be in a drunken stupor even before Simon got sick, and he was in no state to be seen when we put my husband in the ground. Cholera had been the undoing of their parents, and he had been turning to the drink to cope for years before we'd ever even met, and then it claimed another of his family. What else could he do, really? He packed up his things and went away, to the Continent, to sort himself out. I maintained the family residence, which was left to me in Simon's will. We did not speak again personally until many months after, and I was in no mood to humor him then, either. Rather than demand filial rights, he's been residing in Lewisham since that day, and we conversed only by letter to maintain the illusion of familial harmony."
Madeline snorted. "I've become very talented at denial. Thank you, Father, for the early life training."
Holmes sat up straight, ignoring the jab at herself. "And have you kept up this contact with Lawrence to this day?"
The woman shifted, growing uncomfortable from staying in the window seat for too long.
"Yes," she confessed, toying with a loose string on her skirt. "But only monthly, and it has since changed to claiming belated brotherly affection. I don't care one whit about him anymore one way or another, to be honest, but I still try to reply politely. Guess I'm trying to make it up to Simon after years of not doing so."
"The last time he contacted you was…?"
"The day Mrs. Bray contacted me. Lawrence's primary messenger, a maid named Millie, was at my door with his letter. He's employed her for years, trusts her to manage his affairs like a secretary of sorts. Although I don't know what sort of affairs he deals with; in all the time I've known him, his business ventures have failed more often than not."
Holmes felt his foot begin to tap impatiently. He murmured, "Did anything seem peculiar about that day, when she came?"
Madeline squinted, thinking hard. "Not that I can say. I do remember speaking with her, though. She was being a little smart for my taste, but then again, look to her employer for that answer. Millie sneered at me when she delivered the letter, looking down her nose at me. I thrust the envelope into my dress pocket and told her to send my regards to Lawrence. 'Will do, ma'am,' she spat, spinning on her heel and striding down the steps. As she swept away, a folded note settled on the threshold. When I called her back to give her the paper she'd dropped, she smartly replied that the letter was wedged under the door when she got there. Of course, this was Ruth's note, and then...everything I mentioned earlier happened."
She smiled, exhaustion in her countenance shortening the expression.
"And the next thing I knew, I was in this room, broken, dazed, and wondering exactly who those two men bickering in the corner were," she finished. "Has any of this helped you?"
"I believe I have a firm grasp of the situation," Holmes murmured, stroking his chin. "I have just three questions to ask of you, and then I'll bid you good night."
Rather than speaking an affirmation, she nodded her consent and blinked sleepily. Sherlock cleared his throat sharply to make her jump to attention.
"Right, stay awake now, madam. What is the size of your household at the moment, meaning servants?" he queried, watching her face scrunch in concentration.
"Just three. My maid Janet, the butler Mason, and the cook Mrs. Talbot. They served my husband since before we married, but they like me well enough."
"Good, good. And in your brother-in-law's?"
Madeline raised an eyebrow. "I believe it's just Millie who serves him on a permanent basis; they are accustomed to one another. He does have a vicious temper when intoxicated, so that tends to work against him as an employer."
Holmes smirked confidently. "Just as I thought. One last question for the night: have you noticed any differences between Ruth Bray's letters and the note you received that fateful day?"
A spark of understanding lit up the lady's face.
"I do recall a certain slant and shakiness on the words. She explained though that her carriage was incredibly rocky and that was the cause of the discrepancy in a postscript."
"I see...it's all become significantly clearer, madam," Sherlock announced, rising from his seat and placing her good arm across his shoulders. Once her weight was supported and she was balanced, he walked her slowly over to the bed. Madeline shrugged him off quickly, sitting on the mattress and swinging her legs up without aid. Undeterred, Holmes steadied her, and then impulsively covered her with the sheets. Blinking, he recalled the words Watson had drilled into his head.
'Perhaps I am finding her likeable now,' he thought, coughing awkwardly before retrieving the flickering candle. 'She has a brave soul, and that is a hard thing to not admire.'
Aloud he said, "Good night, Mrs. St. James."
In three quick strides he was at the door, but Madeline's voice caught him on the threshold.
"Sherlock, this was…not an accident," she said calmly, sounding resigned to the truth. As the minutes passed, she began to think he'd gone, but then he spoke.
"What happened to you was nothing short of attempted murder. I will find the person responsible," Holmes told her, his face creased with care in the candlelight. Her words were not unnoticed; using his christian name indicated to him that she was desperate for an answer. Bobbing his head, he departed from the room and sat in the lounge downstairs. Sleep would not come to him easily to him that night, if at all. At daybreak, he would venture out and search for the vital evidence to capture Madeline's assailant. But until that time came, he could only think of the widow upstairs and her convoluted story.
"Watson might be interested in this endeavor," he mused to himself, preparing himself mentally for the day to come.
Author's note, edited 12/4/12: Seems like I keep making major revisions to this story every few months or so, but the original version of this chapter just bothered me, even after I'd first wrote it. I feel like this works a lot better than the first one I put out here. In any case, I hope you enjoyed it, and please review!