Chapter III. The cello, the attic and the father

That very evening I moved the few possessions I had in the hotel to my new lodgings at Baker Street. On the following morning Sherlock followed me with several boxes and portmanteaus. For a day or two we were busily employed in unpacking and laying out our property to the best advantage. That done, we gradually began to settle down and to accommodate ourselves to our new surroundings.

During the first week or so we had no callers, and I had begun to think that my roommate was as friendless as I was. It turned out that I was right; Sherlock Holmes didn't have any close friends. However, I soon found that she did have many acquaintances. There was a big, black-skinned man, with dark eyes and a crooked nose who was Sherlock called mister Lestrade. He came three or four times in a single week. Another morning a young girl of around twenty came around, fashionably dressed with blond spiky hair, and stayed for half an hour or more. The same afternoon brought a grey-headed, seedy visitor, who was closely followed by a respectfully dressed elderly woman. When any of these nondescript individuals put in an appearance, Sherlock Holmes immediately took them to the study with the three chairs, and I would retire to the sitting-room out of hearing distance. After they left, she always apologized to me for putting me to this inconvenience, and I didn't intrude in her personal life.

Holmes was certainly not a difficult woman to live with. She was quiet in her ways, but her habits were irregular. It was rare for her to go to bed before two at night, but she had invariably breakfasted and gone out before I rose in the morning. Sometimes she spent days at the Ingold institute, using the chemical laboratories or the dissecting-rooms. Nothing could exceed her energy when the working fit was upon her. So much so, that she seemed to be energized far beyond any normal person. On occasions such as there, I noticed her dilated pupils a hasty expression. And then there were times when a backlash would seize her. She would lie upon the sofa in the sitting-room for hours on end, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night. There where times when I suspected her of being addicted to the use of some sort of amphetamine. At the time, however, I ruled it out as an impossibility. After all, the woman was a brilliant chemist and very well aware of the hazardous effects of adding unwanted chemicals to the human body. But sadly, it was just this brilliant mind that formed the greatest threat to her health. It was something that I would have to keep an eye out for, as I found out much later.

Above everything, Sherlock adored her cello. Her skills were very remarkable, both as a musician as a composer. She could play difficult pieces any professional player would have struggled with. I knew well, because at my request she played Prokofiev's Sinfonia Concertante, and simply breezed through it. When left to herself, however, she would seldom produce any written music or even attempt any existing melody. Leaning back, she would just close her eyes and strike away at the cello. Sometimes the chords were sonorous and melancholy. Occasionally they were fantastic and cheerful. But mostly they didn't fit together harmoniously. Clearly, they reflected the thoughts which possessed her. The music stopped as soon as she opened her eyes again. But whether the music aided her thoughts, or whether the playing was simply the byproduct of a whim or fancy was more than I could determine. It was relaxing however, and I didn't complain about it.

As the first weeks went by like this, filled with mysterious clients and cello-playing, my interest in Sherlock and her aims in life gradually deepened and increased. You may set me down as a hopeless fool, when I confess how much this woman stimulated my curiosity, but don't get me wrong. My curiosity wasn't simply the biological reaction of increased levels of adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and testosterone that a lot of men get by spending a certain amount of time with a woman! To put it more bluntly: I didn't fall in love with Sherlock. Heck, I didn't even feel a physical attraction towards her! Just imagine how objectless was my new life in London was. I had no friends or relatives who would call upon me and break the monotony of my daily existence. I didn't know the city yet, and with the start of the school year - and my new job as a professor still a few months away - there was very little to engage my attention. Under these circumstances, I eagerly hailed the little mystery which hung around my companion, and spent much of my time in endeavoring to unravel it.

And Sherlock Holmes was quite the mystery. Except for the fact that she did not study chemistry or medicine – she made that very clear when I asked it of her – I didn't have a clue what she did for a living. Surely, no one would work so hard or attain such precise information unless he or she had some definite end in view. After all, no one burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.

But her ignorance in some areas was as remarkable as her exact knowledge in others. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics she appeared to know next to nothing. One afternoon, I quoted J.K. Rowling and she inquired in the naivest way who this 'mister Potter' might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that she was ignorant of the of the composition of the Solar System! That any civilized human being in this twenty-first century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun was such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.

"You appear to be astonished," she said, smiling at my expression of surprise.

"Of course I'm astonished! How can you not know this? Didn't you see this in school?"

"I might have. Now that you've refreshed the memory, I shall do my best to forget it again."

"To forget it?!"

"You see," she explained, "I consider the brain to be like an empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. Now, a fool takes in everything that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out. At best, it is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. There comes a time, my dear Watson, when for every addition of knowledge, you have to forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones. Therefore, I do not acquire knowledge if it doesn't bear on the subject I'm working on."

"But the Solar System…" I protested.

"What the deuce is it to me?" she interrupted impatiently; "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."

-"What do you do for a living, anyway?". I had said it out loud before I could think about it twice.

"Well, I have a trade of my own. I suppose I am the only one in the world."

-"The only one of what?"

"I'm a consulting detective, if you can understand what that is."

There was a short silence, in which I pondered this. Vague images of Sherlock sitting in a chair, giving therapy sessions to the large, black man know as Lestrade laying on divan chair sprang to mind.

-"I'm not sure.", I said hesitantly. "You consult detectives in their work? How exactly?"

"Here in London we have lots of government detectives and even more private ones. When these fellows are at fault - which basically is all the time - they come to me, and I manage to put them on the right scent. They lay all the evidence before me, and I am generally able to set them straight."

I looked at her curiously. This sturdy woman didn't seem the type for police work.

-"So, all these people that you meet in that study are detectives?" I asked, thinking of the blond-haired girl and the big black man known as Lestrade.

"They are my clients, my dear Watson. But not all of them are detectives. Some are, like Lestrade. He is a well-known detective in Scotland Yard. One of the best actually. Not that that's saying much. Still, he's got some merit for trying. He got himself into a mess recently over a forgery case, and that was what brought him here."

-"And these other people…"

"Are mostly sent on by private inquiry agencies. They are all people who are in trouble about something and want a little enlightening. I listen to their stories, they listen to my comments, and then I pocket my fee."

I looked astonished at my companion.

-"Do you mean to say," I said, "that without leaving your room you can unravel some knot which other men can make nothing of, although they have seen every detail for themselves?"

"Not only that," Sherlock replied while grabbing her cello bow, "people pay me to do so. There are no real crimes and no real criminals in these days," she said, starting to play her cello with a melancholy tune. "I know very well that I have it in me to make my name famous around the world. No man or woman lives or has ever lived who did the same amount of study and had the same amount of natural talent to the detection of crime as myself. But to what result? There is no crime to detect! At most, there's some plain petty villainy with motives so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it."

I was beginning to get annoyed at her high and mighty attitude. For someone playing a cello whole day, she had the air of a queen. I walked towards one of the great windows and looked outside on the street.

"I wonder what that fellow is looking for?" I asked, looking at a hesitant individual who was walking slowly down the other side of the street, looking anxiously at the numbers. He had a large blue envelope in his hand.

"Do you mean the schoolboy who is contemplating his budding bi-curious nature while texting, or the postman who's an expecting father with the blue envelop across the street?" said Sherlock Holmes, without looking up from her cello.

"Show off!" thought I to myself. "She knows there is no way I can verify her guess."

The thought had hardly passed through my mind when the man whom we were watching caught sight of the number on our door and ran rapidly across the roadway. We heard a loud knock, the door opening and deep voice of mister Hudson, and heavy steps ascending the stair.

"For Mrs. Sherlock Holmes," he said, stepping into the room and handing my friend the letter. "It needs to be signed."

Here was an opportunity of finally taking some of that misplaced bravado out of her.

"May I ask, sir," I said, in the blandest voice, "do you have any children?"

"Not yet, sir." he said, gruffly. "Why do you ask?"

"Just curious, that's all. Just one more question, if you don't mind: What do you mean by "not yet"?" I asked, with a slightly malicious glance at my companion.

The man gave me a strange look.

"I mean, sir, that I will be a father within this very month. My wife in highly pregnant. But if you don't me asking, what does this has to do with anything?"

Sherlock chuckled at the look of my awestruck face.

"Is he alright, miss?", the sailor asked.

-"Quite fine, thank you. He just lost a bet he didn't even know he made." She took the envelop out of his hands and signed for it. "Anyway, thank you so much for all your trouble and good luck with your new baby-girl."

Now, both the man and me stared at Sherlock, with huge eyes.

"I never said I was expecting a daughter", the man said suspiciously. "How did you…"

-"Just a lucky guess, I suppose." Sherlock said with a benevolent smile. "I had a fifty percent chance, after all! call it a woman's intuition! Have a nice day, sir!"

The man didn't look convinced, but said goodbye and left the apartment.

"How in the world did you deduce that?" I asked, after I heard the door slam shut.

"Deduce what?" said she, petulantly.

-"Why, that he was an expecting father of a baby girl."

"I have no time for trifles," she answered, brusquely. Then she recovered with a smile, "Excuse my rudeness, my dear Watson. You broke the thread of my thoughts; but perhaps it is as well. So you actually were not able to see that that man was expecting a daughter?"

"No, of course not!", I said angrily.

-"It was easier to know it than to explain why I knew it. If you were asked to prove that two and two made four without concrete objects, you might it hard to do so. Yet you are quite sure of the fact. Even across the street I could see blotches of pink paint on the back of the fellow's hand. That pointed to painting a room, likely for a girl, most likely his daughter. He had heavy bags under his eyes, however, indicating stress and sleep deprivation. There we have either a young child that keeps him up or insomnia due to stress. He was a man with some amount of self-doubt but also a certain glow of happiness and excitement. You must have observed the way in which he held his head and the envelop, with gusto and a certain joie de vivre. An excited, worried-looking, mid-thirties man with pink paint on his hands—all facts which led me to believe that he had been painting a nursery for a new addition to his family."

"Wonderful!" I blurted.

"Birth is always a wonderful thing, indeed." said Holmes, though I'm sure she understood the compliment just fine.

Then, her face darkened as she looked at the content of the envelop.

"What's wrong?", I asked.

- "I said just now that there were no criminals. It appears that I am wrong."