Story: Auld Reekie (4 of 5)
Author: Garonne
Warnings: a bit angsty...
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I decided it would not be advisable to lie there feeling miserable any longer, and determined to rise. I checked my wound cautiously, as well as I could while being the patient as well as the doctor, and gave myself permission to quit my bed.
I appeared in the drawing room half an hour later, dressed for going out. Mildred Gordon was inclined to protest, reiterating that Mr Holmes had instructed her to oversee my well-being. Fortunately for me, my fellow practitioner appeared at this juncture, he who had treated me in the early hours of that morning, and pronounced me entirely fit.
Having won my freedom, I was not quite certain what use to make of it. I stood for a moment in the hallway in my hat and coat, attempting to think of some agreeable pursuit with which I could while away a long afternoon, whilst my mind returned continually to Holmes, his cold words of dismissal and his heartfelt expression of misery. I heard a door open behind me, and turned to see Margaret Donnelly crossing the hallway, her arms full of clean linen. She stopped, seeming to hesitate as if she wished to broach some subject with me, and I summoned up the will to give her an encouraging smile, despite it being at odds with everything I felt inside.
"You look to be in better form now, I'm glad to see. Is everything all right?"
She blushed. "Yes, sir, thank you sir."
"You weren't looking so well this morning."
"Oh, I've hay-fever, sir."
I was quite sure that was not the only explanation for her red-rimmed eyes, but there was possibly some truth in the statement. It was indeed the season for such an affliction.
"If I can help at all - I have my medical bag with me."
"Thank you, sir. It's very kind of you, but I'm fine." She looked down at the pile of sheets, biting her lip. "Your friend, Mr Holmes - he offered to help me too. Not with hay-fever, of course, but with - " She came to a confused halt. "He seems a good man too. Is he - can I - ?"
"I trust him with my life," I said firmly.
She seemed to come to a sudden decision. "He said he would be at St Giles' Cathedral at one o'clock. I cannae - it's my afternoon off but I have to be elsewhere. Could you give him a note for me, sir?"
"Of course."
Having placed the pile of linens at the foot of the stairs, she took a sheet of paper from the hall table, and wrote something in a slow, careful hand. She folded up the note, and gave it to me. "Thank you sir," she said and hurried away, as if she were afraid she would change her mind.
On the sheet of paper was printed just one line:
5 Wyndmire Close
I had no idea what to make of this, but was nonetheless determined to investigate. Fortunately I was already familiar with the location of the street, and lost no time in directing my way thither.
It was some ten minutes short of one o'clock when I reached Wyndmire Close, which was in the Old Town, in the shadow of the looming hulk of rock from which the Castle rose. Number 5 was a perfectly innocuous cabinet maker's establishment. I walked past twice, debating whether to go inside and investigate further, but my musings were interrupted by the sound of the one o'clock gun from the Castle above, and I knew I would have to hurry to reach the Cathedral before Holmes abandoned the rendezvous.
I was relieved to see him still there when I arrived, standing on the Cathedral steps. He came down the steps towards me, his face unfathomable, but there was no mistaking the sincerity in his voice when he said:
"I am very glad to see you up and about so soon, Watson."
"Yet not so glad to see me quite so soon?" I said, not bitterly, but in a matter-of-fact tone.
He winced visibly. "I admit that the resolutions of whose soundness I have spent the past two hours trying to convince myself are threatened by the mere sight of your person. I should be thinking about the case, for I am at a critical juncture, and yet I cannot keep anything in my mind for more than three seconds at a time but you. Watson, I - " He stopped, making a quick, despairing gesture with one thin hand. "The high street is no place for such a conversation."
Holmes was as white as he had been earlier, and his eyes had not left my face since I arrived. He seemed to be wondering whether I would stalk away or punch him in the face. I did neither, of course.
Although I had no intention of letting him adhere to his bleak resolutions, I thought that for the moment, I should turn the topic of the conversation before one of us uttered something foolhardy. "So you mean to say you have almost cleared up this matter at the Gordons?"
He took the cue. "I know almost all of the facts of the case. Only one detail remains to be determined before the whole matter is clear before me. That will only be the commencement of the work, however, for I still have no way at all of proving the matter satisfactorily in a court of law."
"I might very well have that final detail," I said, handing him the note from Margaret Donnelly.
He unfolded it quickly, and his face lit up. "Excellent."
"Wyndmire Close is not far from the Castle; it connects Grindlay Street and Spittal Street," I said helpfully.
"Thank you, Watson," he murmured, still studying the paper. Surely he could not already know the map of Edinburgh well enough to be aware of that fact! On the other hand, I would not put any feat past that great brain.
"It is the address of a cabinet maker's," I added.
He looked up sharply. "You have already been there?"
"I merely walked past. I assure you, I didn't go inside or do anything foolish. It appears to be a perfectly ordinary establishment."
"Very well." He crumpled the note up in one hand, his eyes abstracted in thought.
I ventured a question. "So the maid Margaret Donnelly is deeply involved?"
"Yes indeed. This morning I managed to convince her to divulge almost everything which I had not already guessed. She held back at the last, still in fear of her life, but it seems she finally acquiesced - that address that you brought was the final detail I required."
"So the cabinet maker is also in some way relevant to the case?"
"My dear Watson! The cabinet-maker is the murderer, of course!"
Rather affronted, I protested that I could hardly have been expected to know that, having nothing to go on but the man's address and his trade.
"Precisely. He is a cabinet maker. Why, his profession is central to the entire conundrum!"
This did not enlighten me any further. After all, the man in the Gordons' hallway had not been stabbed with a wood-chisel or any such instrument, but shot through the heart.
Holmes was scowling, his dark brows drawn together in frustration. "I know everything now, and yet still the monster eludes me. It is absolutely imperative that I find some way of trapping that fiend. I cannot bear to see him walk free a day longer."
The strength of the epitaphs he applied to the man surprised me. "You mean to say that he is more than just a burglar, then? More, even, than a burglar who has killed once in the heat of the moment?"
"The mainstay of his trade, if we can put it in such terms, is burglary. But he is doing something far more cruel and horrible than merely depriving the rich of their wealth. He is at the centre of a web filled with poor trapped flies like Margaret Donnelly, who must jump at his every command, their lives no longer their own.
"I have no doubt that were the police to raid his shop, they would find evidence enough to at least convict him of dealing in stolen goods. But that is not enough of a punishment to satisfy me, or to free his victims from their living hell. It is only murder that will be enough to take him out of their lives for good, but I cannot see my way to proving his guilt in that matter, without ruining innocent lives."
He paused, still frowning. "There must be a solution to this conundrum, but I cannot for the life of me think of it."
"If you wish me to leave you alone, Holmes - "
"No, please - " He stopped. "That is, as you wish. I perfectly understand it if you would rather not be in my company at the moment."
"I prefer to stay," I said firmly.
He stared down at me, as intently as if I were a footprint or a scribbled cipher. It was a gaze I had learnt to take as a compliment. Finally he said abruptly:
"Have you eaten?"
We repaired to a small, quiet public house, where Holmes drank tea while I ordered some of the hearty Scottish fare for which I was at times nostalgic since relocating to England.
Although I kept my attention concentrated on my plate, my mind still distinctly unsettled, I could feel his intense gaze on me throughout my meal.
"Really, Holmes, you will put me off my lunch if you keep on staring at me in that manner."
He blinked. "I beg your pardon, Watson. The fact is, I can scarcely believe you are sitting here. I had rather thought you would be furious."
"I am, but not at you."
His hand twitched, as though he longed to reach out and take mine. "You are one in a million, Watson, and I am a fool. And yet I cannot change the way I am." His hand clenched convulsively on the table, in a fierce though restrained display of anger such as I rarely saw from him.
I leant across the table to him and said in a low voice: "If you think I am going to give you up that easily, and for such feeble reasons, you are gravely mistaken. I have not spoken my last word on the subject, but I shan't do so here. Let us talk about this cabinet maker – Brodie is his name, if we can believe the sign above his shop."
He took a deep breath. "He does not make for such a pleasant topic either. Indeed, I find it unbearable to know that we are sitting here helplessly, and all the while that villain is making his preparations for tonight."
I stared at him. "So you know when his next burglary will be! And where as well, I suppose?"
He hesitated, already seeming to divine my thoughts and not finding them to his liking, but finally nodded.
"In that case, my dear fellow, our task is simple. All we have to do is be present in the house at the time of that next burglary, along with the police. I shall show myself, he will recognise me and most likely panic and attempt to shoot me, the way I suppose he did when he startled the man in the Gordons' hallway – though what he was doing there I still don't understand. Then we shall have him for attempted murder, which will see him hang."
Holmes shook his head impatiently. "The idea had already occurred to me, of course. But I will not hear of it."
"Isn't that for me to decide, Holmes? And it must indeed be me: he is far more likely to panic at the sight of me than that of anyone else. If you think it will work, then my mind is quite made up. I shall be on the alert, and I certainly shan't let myself be shot. I am not afraid. And we simply cannot allow him to go on terrorising people, as you say he does, if it be in our power to stop him."
He stared at me in amazement. "You make this incredibly courageous offer, without knowing any of the details, any of the reasons that make it worthwhile - "
"You know them, and I trust you."
The expression on his face was worth putting myself in the line of fire a thousand times.
I called for the tab. "We are going to the police next, Holmes."
He did not protest, and so we paid a visit to the senior members of Edinburgh's constabulary, with whom Holmes turned out to have already become quite friendly. He spent a good two hours in deep discussion with them, but finally, when they had reassured him once again that they would follow his instructions to the letter, nothing remained for us to do but wait for night to fall, and we left the station.
Once out on the street, we stood together in silence, side-by-side, the crowd swarming around us. It had been raining, and the cabs and delivery carts which passed splashed the pavement before our feet with muddy water. Over everything hung the distinctive malty smell of the city, arising from its many breweries.
All of this was noted with the part of my brain which Holmes tried continually, with some small success, to render as observant as his, but they were mere incidentals. The central part of my attention was concentrated on the man beside me, and I knew without needing to look that the same could be said of him.
Then Holmes leant closer to me, and said in a low voice "Watson - "
I knew what he meant to say without needing to hear it. "Come with me. I know a quiet place."
A short bus ride took us out of the city, and to the shores of the Firth of Forth, the coastal inlet near which Edinburgh is built. We left the main road, and walked down toward the water. We now found ourselves on a long deserted stretch of path, with the firth on one hand and dense deciduous woods on the other. In one direction the coast stretched along until the open sea. In the other, we could see tiny, stick-like figures swarming over great piles of steel that reached from the water towards the sky. Holmes' interest was immediately sparked, of course.
"They're building a railway bridge," I explained. "It will be the longest in the world, apparently."
However the construction site was far in the distance, and here we were quite alone.
We soon came to the place I had had in mind, a boatman's hut where I had sheltered once when caught in an unexpected downpour. It was clear that no one had passed this way in months. There were no tracks in the ground before the door, and small climbing plants were growing undisturbed by the threshold. Inside there was a wealth of old ropes and crates, and even some mouldering cushions on the wooden bench by the wall. I pushed these aside and sat down, as my leg had been demanding for quite some time now.
Holmes remained upright in the middle of the floor. Although he must have been ruminating on what he would say throughout our walk, it nevertheless took him a few moments to begin hesitantly to speak.
"I know I have no right to ask anything of the sort, Watson, but I wish – I would like – that is to say, I find I cannot bear the thought of letting you go into danger tonight with your last thoughts of me being that I am a heartless bastard."
"I assure you, I don't think that."
"And yet I suppose it is true."
"It is far from true, Holmes! I believe I know you better than that – despite the evidence you have furnished to the contrary today."
He winced at that. "I feel heartless, nevertheless. My reason tells me that it is wrong to risk ruining your life through my foolishness, even when I am perfectly happy to risk my own life. My reason will always win, Watson, no matter what my heart holds."
"No, I must protest, Holmes! You are just playing with semantics. You wouldn't care about ruining my life if you didn't have a heart."
"I am afraid you must think my depth of feeling is less than your own, when that is far from being the case. Indeed it could not be deeper." He had begun to pace back and forth, but now he came to a halt, and stood looking down at me, one hand pressed to his temple.
"I often dream that I am at your trial," he said in a low voice. "I am not on trial, only you. Sometimes, in my dream – " His voice broke. "I often wonder how many such cases end in suicide before a trial is even spoken of."
"Holmes," I said sternly. "I can promise you that is one thing that will not happen."
For once, I could read his thoughts in his face: he was plainly thinking that no one can say what the future will bring.
"Precisely," I said aloud. "No one knows what the future holds. Why, one of us could be run over by a runaway horse tomorrow, God forbid. Afghanistan taught me to live in the present, and I want to spend every possible second of that present with you."
He was still standing some way away, his thin lips pressed together, his eyes dark and pained.
"Holmes, come here."
He came slowly, and sat down beside me.
"We're together now, my love. Don't spoil it by worrying about the future."
He buried his face in my hair. "I cannot lose you, Watson," he said in a muffled voice.
"Well, you're certainly doing a bloody good job of driving me away." I said it gently, taking his hand in mine and kissing it.
We sat in comfortable silence for a long time, wrapped in each other's arms. Notwithstanding the lack of resolution, I felt the better for our talk, although my contentment was tinged with trepidation when my thoughts turned to the deadly risk I intended to take later that night.
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