I was not at all surprised to see, about an hour (one more hour of temporary insanity!) before closing time, the tall fellow – Holmes, his name was if I remember correctly among the dozens of customers I am privileged to serve in a day's time – re-entering the emporium and looking even less happy (which is to say at this point, somewhere between mildly irked and absolutely miserable) than he had last night.
I lost sight of him as even his towering height was swallowed up by the steel-jaws of men's clothing racks. My attention then was fully occupied by a matronly woman in a garish burgundy velvet gown and far too much perfume for my liking or easy respiration, who instantly commenced cooing over me and prattling to the effect that she would so like to meet my Uncle Harold, and isn't his oh-so-lovely store (meaning the money he makes from it) so wonderful, and wasn't I just the most adorable nephew anyone (meaning she wanted to become an aunt; pardon me whilst I attempt to control my rising nausea) ever had, and could I maybe introduce the two of them at the Christmas party at Lord whatever-his-stupidly-long-name-was's house in Westminster, etc., etc., insert random blather of your choice, etc., etc.
An indication of how badly I wanted to be rescued from the self-professed siren was in the fact that I fairly flew at the Holmes fellow when he sidled noiselessly up to the counter, viewing the woman blocking his path with the detached air of a scientist scrutinising a peculiar mutant specimen.
"Yes, certainly, Mrs. Westlake, I shall tell Uncle all about it," I hastily said with a perfunctory bow. "Now I must beg your pardon, but I do have a customer to attend to." Please don't hang around, please don't hang around…
The woman (for I shan't call her a lady if she wasn't) gushed over me in a final deluge of simpering before taking herself off to look at the women's clothing (the larger sizes, naturally). Mr. Holmes stared after her for a moment and then turned to me, raising a half-mocking eyebrow.
I dared him with my eyes to even start with me. I was very definitely not in the mood, and there was still the Christmas Eve rush tomorrow to deal with; I was in desperate need of keeping my sanity at all costs for another twenty-four hours. The man merely smiled knowingly and leant forward over the counter with an air of confidentiality, lowering his voice to a whisper.
"Don't let your uncle marry that woman; she's been wed four times in the last ten years, and her husbands all met rather convenient 'accidental' deaths," said he, unmistakably quite in earnest.
If the odd fellow could somehow find out I spent my last week of holidays in Brighton, I supposed he had some (legal or illegal) way of knowing the woman was a fortune-hunter and/or a murderess. Either way, I duly noted the fact for Uncle's perusal at his leisure, and immediately I felt a bit of pleasure that I was not mistaken in my revulsion of the old trout.
"I must apologise for running off last evening, quite literally," the man went on. Hum, he could be polite enough when he so chose – I knew he was a gentleman, albeit an eccentric one. "There was…something of an emergency that came up."
"So I gathered," I replied dryly.
"Yes, I thought you might," he muttered absently, and commenced tapping a long finger against his lips in obvious contemplation.
"Still undecided on a gift, sir?"
"Quite. And I've only a half-hour before I'm to meet the man down the street for supper…I don't suppose you have any more suggestions? I freely admit to being – "
I stared aghast (along with a passing family of four, the mother gasping in horror and the father covering his little twins' ears as best he could with only two hands) as my customer broke off his sentence via a very loud and very vehement profanity. He stared at the entrance of the shop in what I could only assume was dismay.
"Sir?"
"How the blazes did he end up here?" Mr. Holmes moaned, looking very much as if he would like to either be sick (which I quite definitely did not want in my department, thank you very much) or to sink through the floor like a ghost and disappear (which while it would be good publicity would probably not be beneficial for the emporium's reputation as a whole).
"How did who end up here?"
"That fellow!" Mr. Holmes pointed rather rudely at a gentleman slowly and carefully ambling his way through the horrendously bustling crowd – and I recognised him as well, the peculiar doctor fellow I had dealt with Monday evening. And the same chap for whom this man was shopping for a present; my customer was obviously a novice at the entire secret shopping and gifting idea, and he was now throwing himself into a blind dead panic over a matter that could have been rectified with a bit of easy fibbing and a decent poker face.
This was too hysterical, though Mr. Holmes did not appear to think so as much as I.
"He cannot see me here!" the man hissed frantically, casting his eyes about in every direction for a way out of the melee and finding himself hemmed in on every side by smiling and cheery customers. A wild look suddenly lit in his eyes, that of a trapped animal panicking against an approaching hunter.
I was about to suggest he disappear behind a nearby hat-rack (for with his build it would easily hide him completely) but stopped with a sudden cry, completely dumbfounded; for the man cast one more frantic look about as the Doctor politely edged his way through the throng toward our counter, and then he bolted swifter than I could blink around me, skidding to a stop and crouching down behind the counter!
"Oi! You can't do that!" I was absolutely aghast, for his behaviour violated every store policy known to man (and probably a half-dozen unwritten laws of professionalism as well) and Uncle would have me out on my ear were I to allow it.
Besides the ethical factor, there was also that the gentleman looked absolutely ridiculous, rather like an enormous black spider, all legs and arms, hiding from a housewife with a dust-rag. Despite my horror at the man's blatant disregard for policy and protocol, I dearly wanted to laugh at the odd fellow for his childish antics.
"I shan't touch anything, I promise," he hissed, his pale face flushed with the rapid exertion of the last minute, "but I cannot allow him to see me in here!"
"And I cannot let you behind this counter!" I retorted with equal vehemence. The nerve of the man was appalling! Obviously he was completely unaccustomed to not getting his way in matters.
"I give you my word of honour as a gentleman, no harm will come of my sitting here." The fellow appeared to be more pleading now than anything else, and I nearly laughed but stopped myself just in time; it would not do to go over to his side, at least visibly.
"You know there are easier ways of making a Christmas gift a surprise!" I glared down at the huddled-up chap and received for my efforts a scowl that near melted the glass in the case beside me. A finely-dressed, white-haired gentleman passing by the counter paused to cast me a dubious look, no doubt wondering why I was talking to the floor beside me and not to the customers clustering annoyingly about.
"Lad, you simply don't understand!" Mr. Holmes moaned, placing his head in his hand and pinching his thin forehead.
"No, you do not understand, sir, that I cannot just let –" I cleared my throat and hastily looked up with what I hoped was an engaging smile as a young lady, perhaps two or three years older than I, stopped in front of me. "Yes, miss, may I help you?"
I wondered absently if the young man she was purchasing the handkerchiefs for was her father or brother, for she was rather pretty…until I saw a diamond winking from her left hand. Blast.
Finally she departed, and I picked up where I had ended with the lunatic sitting complacently behind my counter. "I can't let you stay there – I could get myself thrown out on my ear if Uncle found out!"
"I thought you wanted to be rid of this apprenticeship anyhow?" he pointed out sensibly, his grey eyes twinkling silvery as he looked up at me. The nerve of the man!
"I – I – well, yes, but – I still can't let you just sit there and – oh…" I gulped as a familiar figure materialized in front of me out of the holiday gloom. "Good evening, Doctor."
I heard a faint repressed snort of amusement from the man sitting close to my legs and sent a booted toe his direction, hoping against hope I would connect with something, preferably that would cause pain. Unfortunately, the fellow is so thin one could make shots in the dark all day and never hit him.
"Good evening," the physician responded pleasantly enough. He spent several seconds in removing his gloves and neatly folding them in half before putting them in his overcoat pocket. "Sorry to see you've not had an easier time of it with the last-minute shopping, lad. I'm not helping matters, am I?"
The good-naturedness that fairly radiated in a holiday golden glow from the fellow was most welcome after a long day, and I found myself smiling despite the fact that I was half-dead on my feet and trying to conceal London's most bizarre shopper behind my counter.
"Quite all right, Doctor. Actually there has been only one customer today that has really given me trouble out of the ordinary." I resisted the urge to glare at the sniggering gentleman crouched beside me, merely bit my tongue and forced the smile to remain upon my face. "I've that merchandise ready for you to look at, Doctor, if you'll be so kind as to wait a moment."
The man nodded and began to absently but reverently thumb through a fine leather-bound volume of Shakespeare that sat upon a nearby book table, and I sent the Holmes fellow a silent warning to not touch anything or I would give him away on the instant before disappearing momentarily to retrieve the heavy Penang-lawyer from the back.
I had nearly reached my department once more when it occurred to me – in all probability this thing was to be a gift for the ridiculous Holmes fellow; he was rather over six feet and looked the type to enjoy a lethal weapon as a Christmas gift.
This situation grew very rapidly more amusing and bizarre with each passing moment.
When I returned, Mr. Holmes was looking highly uneasy and had his eyes nearly rolled up into his skull from attempting to see where the Doctor was without moving his head or making any noise. 'Twould serve him jolly well right if his eyes stuck like that.
The Doctor carefully closed the Shakespeare volume and set it aside as I returned to hand the heavy walking-stick over the counter for his inspection. He lifted it and gave a sudden exclamation, hastily switching it from his left hand to his right…odd, perhaps his left was weaker for some reason. For a moment he tested its balance, happily oblivious to the wary looks that passing men and the admiring looks that passing women were casting his direction. Then he smiled and glanced back to me with a nod of approval.
"That's perfect," he declared with a sense of relief I was well-acquainted with in customers this late in the shopping season. "Is it too late to have it engraved, with Christmas Eve being tomorrow?"
"Not at all," I replied, beginning to add up the total on a piece of paper and calculate the difference in cost for the engraving. "But it won't be ready until tomorrow afternoon, and we close at six for the holiday."
"That's all right, then. Have you a paper for me to fill out or something?"
"Yes, here. I'd keep it to three lines, probably less, considering the surface area of the plate," I said helpfully and pushed the appropriate form across the counter.
Mr. Holmes was craning his neck to peek and see what it was that the Doctor was paying for, but this time my toe connected with flesh and he gave a sort of stifled yip and settled back, glaring the promise of a slow and torturous grey death at me.
The Doctor paused, cocking his head to one side like a puppy listening for a chow-whistle. "Did you hear something, Master Timothy?"
"No, sir," I replied, the picture of helpful innocence. "Probably a child over in the toy section, they can be rather raucous when excited."
"I'll wager you grow weary of it after a while this time of year, eh?" He nodded sympathetically, scribbling quickly but neatly (specially for a doctor, as the only ones I've ever seen have a scrawl that makes David's seven-year-old letters look like copper plate) on the paper.
I shrugged easily. "It's a job. And to be frank, some adults are far worse – one would think they were adolescents in an adult body, the way some people carry on. Ow!" I ended with an embarrassingly high-pitched yelp as something pinched my leg in reaction to my veiled comment, made for the benefit of the eccentric at my feet.
The Doctor's eyebrows rose an inch or two at my outcry. "You all right, lad?"
"Erm…yes, quite," I muttered. I could feel my face flushing; that Holmes fellow was so very dead as soon as I had his money in the till. "I thought…I thought something ran over my foot; we've had a mouse problem due to the number of chocolates and so on."
Ridiculous and humiliatingly effeminate explanation, but it was the best I could come up with on such short time to cogitate an excuse. I need not have worried, however, for apparently the doctor is so honest that he gives everyone the benefit of the doubt; he merely nodded and continued his scribbling, biting his lip as he searched his mind for the proper phrase.
I took his distraction as an opportunity to send my darkest warning look (one that could have Estella in tears within three and a half seconds – I had timed it down to a science) at the maniac huddled long-limbed behind my counter, only to receive a frantic look in return, accompanied by some ridiculous hand-signals that I had absolutely no interpretation of what he was trying to say. Seeing my confusion, Mr. Holmes sighed through his nose in (undeserved) exasperation, and then he made a clenched fist and moved it in an up-an-down gesture that looked like manning a water-pump.
Oh. Pump the doctor for information about a Christmas present. Psh, I was not going to make a fool of myself for the sake of an eccentric genius hiding behind my counter; he would get what he could get, thank you very much.
"There we are, I think that will do…what do you think?" the Doctor asked hesitantly, pushing the paper over to me. I inspected it and grinned inwardly, for the inscription was to a Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
Honestly, what type of dreadful mother would name her child Sherlock? I would never complain about bearing the name Timothy Cratchett again, I could tell you that right off.
"Very nicely, Doctor. Could I interest you in anything for yourself?" I gave the gentleman a verbal nudge whilst attaching the paper to the walking-stick and beginning to add up the total.
"After what I spent on that present? Not a chance," he laughed ruefully.
"Nothing at all?"
"No, lad. I am sorry to have you waste your sales pitch, but I'm afraid much else in this store is slightly beyond my means at the present," he chuckled, reaching inside his snow-speckled overcoat to remove his cheque-book from an inside pocket.
I received an elbow to the side of the knee and sent a helpless look toward the idiot crouched behind my counter. What the devil else was I supposed to do, say "By the way, Doctor, a friend of yours asked me what you want for Christmas"? Come on, now.
I had thought that the evening could not possibly get any more bizarre, but as seems to be the pattern every time I make the colossal mistake of thinking such, the night began to spiral into an even more bizarre and barely controllable tailspin.
When Mr. Sherlock Holmes decided to shift his weight from his numb legs, this apparent genius accidentally tipped over the fully-stocked hat-stand – straight onto the Doctor and me and the collection of Christmas music boxes.
To be concluded.