V. DIRT
Holmes was with Irene next day sitting in her living room. She had again urged him inside and given him brandy; he hadn't slept and was pale and she cared. Indeed, amongst all mistakes she had made there was the bigger one that all her moves were having their counterproductive effects on her; from the beginning her impression had been that Holmes was the most handsome, intelligent, well-made man she had ever met… now with time, and hugs, and a tired wrecked Holmes she had created, though always with a small impish laugh in her soul she was beginning to care; 'we deserve each other', was what she thought.
– You don't know if he has a house beyond Hackney? Before he had asked in the outsides of London, now he repeated his question though more specifically. He was ruffling his hair as he did in impossible laboratory problems, pressing the bridge of his nose, and then ruffling again, sitting hunched, his elbows in his knees.
- No, nowhere in the outsides of London to my knowledge.
She stood up resolute. – I'll find out. I cannot go running around like you, he'd see me without a shadow of a doubt, I don't have your skills; but I have persuasion and influence over him: I'll make him sing.
"Make him sing", Holmes took mental note of that rascal expression, but contented himself with the notion that he hadn't yet ceased his investigations on the alternate conspiracy case that unfortunately didn't let him focus properly in just one problem, everything having a double meaning, possibilities of interpretation to every fact multiplied, his forces divided as was recommended military strategy.
Irene realized she had chosen the wrong expression, but it was done with. – He'll be drunk, and I'll be around the matter until he says it without the need for me to ask. After all, he doesn't know we're suspecting he has one.
- If you as much as broach the subject a little bit too directly, or a little bit too intently…
- What is the danger? You have him cornered anyway, always observed.
- Yes but it would make my job more difficult.
- Or easier; he'd be there immediately trying to remedy that he had spoken, or you would know where without any added inconvenience.
- Or he would suspect you, and I would have to have you under custody while I look for your husband. I'll find out by myself, I can make him speak too.
- In one of your disguises surely. You forget he isn't talkative, much less with strangers, and he's even more reserved around them when he's drunk. I can do it, I can! Please trust me Sherlock! I'm not that clumsy!
"Sherlock"; he was before reluctant because it was unforgivable, something to do only in desperate cases where there was nothing that he alone could do, to mix the client as if it was a colleague, expose it to any minimum danger, even Adler who having in custody would be much more convenient; but if what she wanted was to send him to some godforsaken place in the woods so that a bunch of thugs would trap and kill him, the joke would be on her.
- Fine then. Make him come immediately; we've got not a second to waste. I'll be here all the time, like the other day, in the kitchen; BE SHREWD. He stressed pointing at her with his index and Irene felt like kissing him.
Her eyes lit up excitedly. – Absolutely! O we will have him! He, is, done! And Holmes was a little bit too exactly reminded of Watson in the prospect of a new and exciting case; his mouth was closed but he smiled, he hadn't smiled since he and Watson discussed.
Robert Kendall Vain arrived to the appointment wearing black boots half English and half from the Wild West, they were covered in mud and he slackly wiped them on the mat, leaving his footprints all over the shiny white tiles of the floor; it was pouring rain outside, as if the weather had cared for his coming on stage. He took off his hat as if saluting humbly, for a moment keeping it against his stomach until Adler took it and put it on the clothes stand. Vain had a deep voice, a deeper voice even than that of Holmes. Holmes talked sometimes as flat as a robot, or as if life had no mysteries before his eyes; Vain talked as if God had revealed to him personally all of life's mysteries, he walked in a wide compass due to the length of his legs and always smiled crooked.
He sat down and drank, drank slowly as she talked of nothing, forty three minutes went by without much progress in his alcoholic state; in another twenty minutes the change wasn't much and she looked at the kitchen's door intently to warn Holmes that with Vain drunk or not she would then try. She started talking about plans, plans for the future of Kendall's and hers, four or five children, a dog and a cat, a big house in London and one in the country; and then just like that, it was the easiest confession ever obtained.
- I'll take you to my house in Romford.
- Really?
- Really.
- Is it big and pretty?
- Very big and very pretty darling, enough even for your demanding tastes.
- Where is it exactly?
- Beyond Aldersbrook, from the main road there is a narrow dirt lane going to the bridge that is over River Rom, we call it Bridge Close, and if you follow it, just passing the river, the house is there big and in stone, my father left it to me. Soon I'll take you to it.
- Perfect.
And she went on to immediately wave him goodbye under any excuse, let Holmes free to get out of the kitchen and go to the house. – Oh Sherlock I'm so worried! Run, you better run! Bring him well and alive to me!
Holmes however didn't go straight to the house; this wasn't a case for the police, or at least, not for the high-ranked ones (seeing he needed protection because of nothing other than suppositions); in this cases he always used Watson, but Watson hadn't always been there as he wasn't now; this was a task for other police officers who were merely subordinates. He went by to the police station to pick them up; no one had followed him there. No one was following them, in the hansom, Holmes had every sense sharpened and no one had come after them; they parted however with his instructions a bit before Romford, so that if it was trap "they" thought it had worked, and had Holmes alone far in the woods, but the officers, under his instructions, were always near, hiding as well as they could.
He arrived just as Vain had said. The house was big and in stone but the west part of the north wing had collapsed, that was the front left part of the house. He looked around it; it hadn't rained in Romford, and a peculiar trace by the wood back door, on the dirt and later on the grass, made him feel rigid; he kicked the back door open and with a quiet growl he went running the opposite way into the woods, looking at the ground, always looking at the ground, the officers could hardly follow him behind some bushes and keep their steps quiet; he stopped suddenly after almost four hundred meters, looked around him in the ground, suddenly gave five steps southwest, stopped, looked around, knelt down, walked on all fours by the perimeter, stood up and kicked a tree with a raucous grunt; the officers didn't know if they should just still keep hiding; he broke running again, this time back over his steps into the house. There in the back room, which seemed to have been a stockroom for the house, the trace started: a clean floor in an abandoned dusty house, and dry blood starting from the dirt outside the backdoor, dry blood like that of a massive wound, of a slit throat; there wasn't any other evidence in the room than that. The trail of blood died down as it went into the woods, stopping in what probably had been a little pool by the side of a spot where he had felt and seen a patch of flattened dirt be less firm: removed land, somebody had dug there. Without much hope he yet went to the other rooms of the house, cold and inhabited for long, nothing in them.
When he went back again out the back door, rubbing his face with both hands, he shut the door and shouted: - Get out of there Miller! Long!, get out! They barely had emerged from the bushes, walking to him when he ordered. – Get me a shovel! You Miller, fast!, go into town and get me a shovel!
He went back with a shovel and they all walked to the removed ground. – Stay on guard. He said, much less firmly, and began digging. Hours went by. Three hours, he stopped, sat on the edge of the hole he had created, took off his shirt. – Get me water Long. He drank, jumped into the hole and continued digging… Half an hour and he stopped, it was beginning to get dark. – There's nothing here… why is there nothing here? What does this mean Long? !
Long looked scared. – I don't know. He hadn't even seen the traces of blood; they looked after all, like dark stains on the dirt, like stains of darker dirt, and he was just police, not a detective.
- So you tell me somebody just dug here, for three and a half hours, to bury nothing? !
- With all due respect sir I'm saying nothing, - he was shaking his head frantically - I don't know.
- Sir it is getting dark.
- Do you want to leave Miller? !
- No sir!
- I'm not your general Miller! Leave if you want to! Holmes was in a dark hot mood.
- No sir I'll stay 'til you go!
- Irene is tricking me. She has to be tricking me. – He hissed.
- Sir?
He didn't answer, instead he asked for a hand out of the hole and looked around; everything around was grey, some shadows turning to completely dark black. Holmes continued muttering as he walked randomly around, looking for any other trace. – Why then? I'm here, they could take me, I'm here, in the woods, with two minor officers in the dark. Then he saw it, barely visible in the omniscient grey, he felt it with his foot, knelt down and touched it, took a long stick and sunk it with strength. – No! This was louder; Miller and Long were by his side in an instant. He walked around again, farther away into the woods, in frenzy, felt with his foot and sunk the stick, another two times, stepping every time farther into the woods until they all feared they would get lost. – The shits!
- What's going on Mr. Holmes?
- They told me he was smart, why didn't I listen?, they told me! – He was speaking to himself.
- Mr. Holmes sir?
- The shovel! He asked, stretching his arm; Long brought it running to him. He began digging again, at it he ordered more quietly: – Miller, go bring one or two candles.
He did, but when he came back and lit up Holmes' work he realized the absurdity of it. – Mr. Holmes sir, with all due respect, if someone is buried there, unless he was buried alive there is nothing we can do, wouldn't it be better if we came back when there was light again, with support, and when the danger that someone came for you as you told us wasn't as big as it is right now?
Holmes stopped, listened to Miller, and came into realization that he was being irrational who knew for what other time in those ten days; he wasn't letting them dig because he felt responsible, if Irene's husband was there he should be the one digging him out, but it was impossible that he dag every tomb there in the day, not even with their help; and if Kendall found out and his irregular let him escape yet again, he could flee from justice; each patch he dug was a step away from hiding the evidence that he had been there looking for Irene's husband; but if it all was a trap, as he couldn't yet stop having a glimmer of suspiciousness, because all he knew was that something was escaping him, then why stay there in the dark, with two tired young officers who didn't deserve such treatment.
He put the shovel over his shoulder and walked back to the hole he had made, took a shovelful from the mount of dirt he had created and threw it back in the hole. – Help me, we have to cover it again. With their hands and feet they helped him, covering it was much easier, but it was already completely dark when he put on his shirt to the light of the candles, his vest, coat and hat, and when they took a turn to get out of the woods, avoiding the house.
Miller was falling asleep in the hansom and Holmes couldn't help being irritated by it, it was dark but it was only six in the afternoon, he felt like strangling him but instead only glared at him, who was happily unaware of it. They all went down in the police station and Holmes had to send another minor officer to watch Kendall's house in the night; he climbed back to the hansom.
He went to the post office nearest to Irene's house (in a lot of them in London they used to keep the messages for him if he or someone in his name asked for it); Perry, his irregular on Kendall at the moment, was supposed to send him wires there if an emergency was reported, so that a post boy there went running looking for him at a corner very well visible from his selected spying spots, but there was nothing; this meant that at nine he would receive a wire telling him what had happened during the day; so instead he sent one to Perry, telling him not to mess up again and why he said so, and went to Bailey to tell him he could abandon for the moment.
He knocked Irene's door because she was waiting to know what had happened in the house, bracing himself to give her the ill news. She opened the door, noticing first the amount of dirt Holmes had on the visible parts of his white shirt and on his face, then she noticed the tightening of his jaws; her smile vanished, immersed in her performance.
- What happened? She looked afraid.
- Yesterday, Kendall directed to Romford and deviated halfway, back to his home as if hesitant like the other day with the dun bag.
She nodded frowning, her lips thinning, and then her eyes widened a bit and she opened her mouth: - How rude of me! Come in! Let's go to the sitting room. Her face was insistent though already anguished enough for him to know she was expecting bad news. Holmes would have preferred to stay in the doorway for his sake, for her sake it wasn't right to give her the news in the doorway. They sat down, again because she insisted.
- Yesterday then, he makes as if returning home. She nodded. – I actually follow him home and stay outside it for a whole hour in case he changed his mind again; he doesn't, so I leave an agent anyway to be on his back the whole time while I think that maybe, in the nearby villages, if I ask for Kendall they can tell me what house he was going to; but they didn't, because no Kendall or Vain for that matter has lived there for years or ever, the house is infested with a decade long dust, the whole west wing has collapsed and some windows are broken; we're also yet a little bit far from Romford, but more than the distance (because I actually started asking a little bit farther down the road, knowing that where he turned around wasn't yet where he was going), the problem is that if anyone around knows him it is not many people anymore; the abandoned constructions I looked at weren't the right ones.
She nods again, realizing she was about to be caught if it hadn't been by that happy coincidence that Holmes had noted, but not her; she should have told Kendall to go back even sooner, even farther from Romford.
- Hoping then that I can know the location of the house some other way today, certainly impossible while he's sleeping; because already thinking before that he or his drunk friends could have a property or live or work near some abandoned house where they could be keeping your husband, I had already asked every possible person that could have information on them, I even checked his not very close friends' houses, his, the surroundings, there was nothing and no one knew nothing; so I would have to know it from him.
She nodded again, not believing what Holmes managed to do without her even imagining it, believing all this time that she was dictating in every detail what he was spending his day investigating.
- Meanwhile, as you told me and I was too presumptuous to listen, Kendall knew I was following him at least on the way to Romford.
Irene doubted that, she only told him what to do almost without any explanation.
- So he leaves in early morning; - his dread reinvigorated – my agent probably fell asleep or abandoned the job without my consent. So Robert leaves for Romford… - he stops himself, he couldn't say it like that, not related; he finds a more proper way – Today you find out where the house is so I go, I looked around… - he clenched his jaw again, as if mad with himself, and turned his head to the right.
- Just say it. She asked in a little voice, anguished.
- There was a trail of blood starting from the back door into the woods…
- No! She gasped.
- He had cleaned the back room's floor. In the woods there are a lot of patches of removed ground, a lot of them, and they're profound. I didn't notice but one at first…
- No! It was a little whine, a sigh; coming as a delayed reaction.
- So I dug the one where the trail of blood stopped, but it was empty. The holes would have the purpose of making more difficult to find a body (some were far into the woods and well hidden), and of telling him if anyone had gone looking for your husband so that then he could remove him before he was found, because it was already the job of a whole time of daylight digging even one. Of course he had planned it before, he's too thoughtful to be rash; he spent at least a week digging all those holes… - He stopped himself, he realized he was telling atrocious things.
Irene was quiet, for a good forty seconds. – So you think he killed him yesterday?
There was nothing else that he could reply; in the universe of a real missing husband there was only one sensible answer: - We still have to find a body…
She covered her mouth with trembling hands and whined again – Oh no!
- I cannot say that it is definite until… I'm sorry. - He was going to continue with details, about how a trail of blood that led to a lot of empty holes probably wouldn't serve for solid conviction; but he decided not to, if this was the reality it was already too bad.
She hugged him as she began sobbing, asking to be hugged in time. – It's not your fault… Oh if anything it is my fault!... No, it is Robert's fault!, say it is his and his alone!
He put his arms around her. - It is not your fault. He replied though he wasn't quite sincere; if he felt guilty and was never forgiving himself, how was it only fair that she felt?
She continued sobbing, her narrow back and waist were trembling in his arms with the rhythm of her sobs. She separated only slightly to look at him, her hands previously on his back now on the sides of his neck; Holmes was pale, because of everything he was pale; Irene felt sympathy for him, a Holmes who had worked so hard in a case now disappointed in himself, worried for her, she felt sorry for what she was doing to him. – Come now say it isn't your fault either. She told him, tears still dripping freely from her eyes; she gave him a little smile. – Because it isn't your fault Sherlock. She put her head on his shoulder and murmured, very near to his neck: – You're so great… I can't believe I'm never seeing him again… This is so terrible!..
When her sobs had quieted down he took her upper arms and gently pulled her a bit away from him, her hands sliding to his sides; he looked at her face to assess her condition; her nose was red and she had puffy eyes and ran down mascara, and yet her face was so beautiful. He took his handkerchief from his pocket and cleaned the traces of the tears and some of the mascara; when he was done and put the handkerchief back in his pocket she was smiling sweetly to him, for once sincerely though in appearance there was no difference, Irene was truly very moved by his actions.
She put one hand on his cheek. – You're so sweet. She stated quietly.
Holmes looked at her wide eyed; she was bold to say the least. Irene looked at this and recovered her place on his shoulder, murmuring. – I'm sorry, I'm just so sad and you're so perfect, I've no doubt lost my mind.
Holmes didn't like unfaithful people; he shouldn't have liked her and yet he was liking her so bad; the warm feeling in his chest was also a problem because Watson was at Baker Street, no doubt, he thought, waiting for him with more insults, 'Was he leaving then or wasn't him? Did he or didn't he love him still?' "Little prick!"; even now that gave him the sensation that his eyes were sinking.
She knew she shouldn't, but she was feeling turned on, heat in the low of her abdomen at a Holmes who had spent the day digging under the hot sun for her and smelled of wet dirt; so at last miscalculating, that is, being more reckless than calculating, she reincorporated a bit only to whisper in his ear: - Do you think I'll ever find myself another husband Sherlock? One who loves me as much as he did?
He shivered when feeling her breath, much against his will. – Of course you will.
- That's why I'll miss him the most; no one loved me more than he. With the heat in his ear he couldn't help closing his eyes, if only briefly. She smiled slightly. – I find myself wishing that you could love me as much. She let her head fall back to his shoulder. – I know what you'll think of me! And you'll be right, probably! She suddenly laid little kisses all over his face; he was paralyzed. – Please console me Sherlock!, be gentle to me. I'm so miserable!, I need out. Then she kissed him deeply, leaving him with heavy-lidded eyes. – I know what you'll think of me. She clawed the cushions of the seat of the couch and stated suddenly as a furious capricious child, in complete possession of her judgment furious at him: - I don't, care!
She was demanding it and his one true love was calling him "little prick" and about to leave him, so he might as well satisfy her. He took her messed up face in his hands and inclined to kiss her, firmly; Irene had wanted it and yet hadn't seen it coming, the kiss was further making her lose her head; she moaned softly, wasn't pretending at all anymore when in a ruffle of fabric from her dress she knelt astride him, taking the back of his head in her trembling hands, allowing the kiss to continue while he took her waist. His hands could have covered it almost completely, he rounded it with his arms then; they were too long, he felt he could have given with them two turns around it; she was a woman, and so rousing in her differences from Watson, and from himself. He separated from her to kiss her jaw; she motioned as if she was going to sit on her heels but she didn't, returning to her previous position, all this being so suggestive, her eyes always closed. From her jaw he went to her neck; she stuck her body to his, her bosoms right there, for him to kiss; he only brushed his lips over one of them with a whine from her, taking her face to kiss her lips again. When they separated it seemed she melted down, coming to sit astride him; she looked at him, her eyes glowing. – Take me to the bedroom.
He lifted her and took her to the nearest one; but also still with some sense, because that was the guestroom and not that of hers and a dead man's (of course he knew the house).
Eventually, after the dress, and the hundreds of layers of petticoats that he, once opened, slid in a single time down her legs; he was able to begin to undo the knot of her corset and pull from the laces; once deprived from pressure as if fluffing around her, he pulled it down along with the short sleeves of her chemise, her breasts naked before his eyes; they were round and firm, white and looking more delicate than the rest of her skin, the nipple pale and pointy just around the spot where maternity milk could once emerge; he cupped the right one by the side and kissed the bottom of it gently, pecked her nipple and went up to kiss her again, while she finished retiring her corset, and he, whose shirt she had already unbuttoned, finished taking his shirt off; she unbuttoned his trousers then. He kissed all down her chest, without skipping her breasts, he took the hem of her drawers, and after the smallest of pauses, he pulled them down along with her chemise, leaving her naked.
Irene was a sight to behold; the constant use of corsets had given pronounced curves to the sides of her waist, after which, her being thin naturally, the ribs protruded only to be hidden again by those pretty breasts of middle size; beneath her waist her flat abdomen prolonged widening with her hips; on her mount of Venus she had a small trimmed bush of black hair, covering the lips of her vagina but letting them be guessed; her legs were long and perfectly sculpted down to the tip of her big toe.
She was shameless. She was an American and had a horrid past; only one with a horrid past and quick wit could turn out as Irene had turned out. When she was five her mother had died and her father had raised her alone, spoiling her limitless with his limited resources, only to have her become an orphan when she was eleven after his murder in a drunk fight; their parents had gone to America alone and lost contact with all family, and because they were renting their house, she was left alone and homeless; for a while she took a job as a maid where she was treated like any other nigger, and just when she was twelve she couldn't take it anymore… Irene had learnt everything to get by, from petty thievery to grand crimes, to the art of seduction. She was a professional liar and unconsciously full of resent; however she also had lust for life, and a vigor and natural capacity to be happy that far surpassed her resentment.
She opened her legs wide, inviting him to touch her. She was enjoying Holmes kissing her legs, his bare torso came into contact with one or other part of her at all times and she adored that, because his torso was rigid, hard like concrete, the carved shape of his muscles was the only variation; Irene liked Robert Kendall Vain with his swollen belly and bony Christ-like figure, but she had to admit Holmes was much better. As he kissed the skin surrounding her groin, after going down her leg, he was taking her buttock in one hand, enjoying the feel of its softness; she was panting, she wasn't noisy but when she was pretending though from time to time she would sincerely moan softly.
Uneasily stirred she suddenly sat up, reaching for his trousers and underwear, she pulled them down when she could; Holmes helped her, for a moment drawing a mocking smile at her eagerness. – Laugh all you want, she whispered loudly – maybe you should have seen yourself a while ago with the petticoats. - I hate those things. Was all he replied and they both smirked.
He was then sitting naked and she sat astride him; they kissed slowly and sensually, tongues against cheeks, against any place that could be found there inside.
With an amused smirk again he whispered to her ear: - How do I undo your hair?
She chuckled. Hair pins gathered in her hands as she moved them by her head, and then her locks fell down to the middle of her back. – Voilà… she said. He was right in thinking she would look beautiful like that.
After that, and after Holmes had kept her head immobile with a hand on her nape, while he kissed at will her mouth and her cheeks, they pressed their bodies tightly together; her moist vagina was against his penis, her soft breasts against his hard chest; it was a wonderful sensation. She ran her hands over his abdomen and then her right one took his swollen cock, pushing it harder against his abdomen, to later leave it and have her hand travel up the middle of his chest until circling his throat.
- Why do you always do that? He murmured but pecked her bottom lip. – You really want to strangle me don't you? He wasn't joking.
- I like your Adam's apple.
He took her butt cheeks and that way hauled her up, making her kneel, he put the tip of his penis against her entrance; that was another moment when Irene moaned softly. He lifted himself off the bed and that way the head penetrated her. Her head fell back; she didn't have inconsiderable experience in the sexual realm and yet she didn't remember a time when the head of a cock briefly penetrating and leaving her (which wasn't unused) had caused her as much pleasure. Next time he held her against him, penetrating her farther and for longer before getting out; she circled his head with her right arm in an attempt to find equilibrium, if she had been noisy she would have asked aloud what her mind asked: 'Dear Lord, where did you learn to do that?' The next time she was sitting on him and it all was much easier; he went in completely and two inches out only to immerse himself all again. He was careful in having her orgasm, and once she did he got out, holding his cock against his stomach so that he would come in his hand or chest, not near her uterus, never near her uterus.