I must apologise, because I seem to have delved into the book world without meaning to. If you've read the short story The Final Problem, then excellent. If you haven't – I must warn you that there are a few spoilers ahead.
This chapter sort of follows on from the previous ones, but is disconnected in that it is set in 1891, and concerns our friends' historical doppelgangers. It's just a bit of backstory that I quite wanted to write. I hope you like it.
I must also apologise that this chapter is rather darker than the other two. I have taken a good deal of inspiration from another of my fics - The Sound of Silence.
The house was dark and empty without the two occupants in it. They'd gone to the Continent, which was a fairly ordinary thing for people to do; however, these were not ordinary people, and their trip was not an ordinary one.
Mrs Hudson was rarely let in on the business of Mr Holmes and his friend Dr Watson, but she knew it to be at once remarkable and dangerous (because, in truth, nothing is ever all that remarkable if it isn't slightly dangerous). She also knew that whatever purpose had driven them to Switzerland was something more risky even than usual, because only a short time ago Mr Holmes had sent her from the house for a day whilst he "welcomed" a visitor who posed a great threat to him, and potentially to everybody else in the vicinity as well. Mrs Hudson had at one point pondered if evacuating the whole of the City of London might not have been a step too far.
She had caught the name Moriarty. She knew a handful of people called Moriarty, most of them Irish, most of them friendly. However, she thought she might have heard the name in the papers, and so had a glance through all of the recent newspapers and books and journals to see if she could locate anyone by that name. The nearest she got was a Professor J. Moriarty, a scientist with a few lesser-known papers to his name. Doubting that she was on the right path, she gave up and left the matter to Sherlock Holmes, trusting that he knew what he was doing.
They had been away for a week, and Mrs Hudson was starting to worry for them, when there came to the door a haggard-looking John Watson, who brushed into the hallway and up the stairs without so much as a hello to Mrs Hudson – indeed he did not seem to see her. She might have gone after him had she not been struck by the emptiness in his eyes, the red rings around them that told her that he had been crying.
About half an hour later he returned carrying a small bag, and it was with more than a hint of optimism that Mrs Hudson asked him if he was all right. The doctor said nothing audible, though the briefest hint of a humourless smile flickered at the corner of his mouth; then he tipped his hat at her in a brief, respectful gesture, and left the house. Something about his expression then, though quite what she could not place, told her that he might not return.
So Sherlock Holmes was dead. The newspapers quietly announced the news; a handful of Scotland Yarders and people whom Mrs Hudson recognised as the detective's former clients attended a short, sombre church service in his memory; and 221 Baker Street was plunged into what felt like a cold and clammy darkness.
For the first couple of weeks she didn't dare go into 221B. It seemed almost sacrilegious even to place her hand on the handle that Holmes had so often turned. But eventually it did occur to her that Sherlock Holmes was not the tidiest of men, and she hadn't the least idea what state the flat might be in. She held her breath whilst opening the door, but found that it wasn't as bad as she had thought it might be, and that the main problem was dust. When all else had been and gone, there was always dust, that grey vague approximation of a substance that tried to hide what had come before. A tentative finger crept out, brushed a line of it from one of the books stacked on the floor, revealed a surprisingly bold shade of red.
And she walked around the room, staring without seeing at the fireplace, the bookshelves, the stacks of papers and books – the armchairs, good God, those armchairs. Holmes had chosen them himself, which was surprising, because he didn't really care for furniture, only that there was some, but he had insisted on these particular ones, because he knew he would spend a lot of time in his armchair. Perhaps she had underestimated quite how much time.
But the thing that struck her about Holmes's armchair was that he had left his dressing-gown in it. The blue one. It sat there, moulded to his own shape, looking just like a person – good God, it looked so much like a person, no, a ghost, a shadow of a man.
Mrs Hudson shook her head, bit her lip and turned away so that she didn't have to be reminded of him. Her glance fell onto the fireplace again – which then seemed to lend coldness to the room, where lit it heated it – and at last on the coffee-table.
The table was covered with dust, like everything else, but the piece of paper that lay upon it was somewhat less dusty than the rest, and had evidently been placed there more recently. The most recent visitor had been Dr Watson – and indeed it was his writing upon the paper.
She picked it up gently, held it to the light – saw it to be folded, and that the name written upon it was Sherlock Holmes. A letter, then. A letter from Dr Watson to his friend. A letter that he knew would never be read, but had still –
Her hand flew to her mouth and she blinked back a wave of tears. Poor man! Poor dear sweet John Watson, her friend and Holmes's, a wonderful man now reduced to a wreck by – Oh!
And it was at this very moment that it all dawned on her, and though she hadn't known Holmes that well – had anyone, truly? – she fell into Watson's chair and, unrestrainedly, began to cry.
Watson didn't come back, and Holmes remained present only in the memories of those who had known him, memories that were fading faster than they might have liked. Mrs Hudson left 221B for a long, long while – years, even. Perhaps she still fostered some vain hope that Watson might return, that Holmes might return, indeed, showing his usual aplomb in accomplishing the impossible. It took a long while for her to accept that times had changed and that 221B would not be occupied again. She wouldn't hear the gunshots that had so unceremoniously drawn a V.R. into her beautiful wallpaper. She wouldn't hear their voices, sometimes chatting, occasionally arguing, often speculating. She wouldn't hear them coming and going, she wouldn't hear Holmes's thoughtful pacing, Watson's walk with that slight limp that may or may not have been real. No, silence reigned in 221 Baker Street, that terrible sound of silence that endures even when all other sounds have given up.
And she found that she wanted above everything to remember but to forget, if that was even possible.
Therefore she went upstairs, and somewhat timidly into 221B; she picked up the letter; she picked up one or two other papers; she brought from her own flat a couple of letters he had sent her; she picked up his pipe and tobacco-box, which he had left on the mantelpiece. Then she located an old jewellery-box of hers – a sturdy affair, and locked with a key – and placed all of these things inside it; and, after a quiet moment of reflection, perhaps a prayer, she closed the lid and locked it.
She put it in the attic. She hadn't often been in the attic, and there wasn't much up there, but it seemed the logical place to place this box that meant so much, out of reach of everyone, of almost all things. When she clambered back down she locked the hatch, and glanced back up at it before heading back downstairs. She wondered whether after she had gone, a couple of decades' time perhaps, the next owners of the house would find the box and wonder whose it had been. It didn't occur to her that it would be a lot longer than that. It most definitely didn't occur to her that those who found the box would be Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.