I was at the market a little before eight o'clock the next day. I had told my mother I was going for a walk and stole from the house with a stealth that was entirely unnecessary. To be truthful, I found the whole adventure slightly exciting.
Mabel was a few minutes late, just enough for a sense of dismay to have settled over me before I saw her weaving her way through the subdued Sunday crowd.
She smiled brightly, and I knew straight away that she had been successful. She pulled the silver flask from the pocket of her apron and passed it to me, grinning. "I had to pick his desk lock. Only he and the missus have the key. I don't think anyone will notice."
I wiggled it. "It's empty."
"I know. That's odd. The master never let it go empty, he was apt to take a swig of his drink quite often."
"Curious," I muttered. "Perhaps someone emptied it after."
"To get rid of the evidence," Mabel murmured conspiratorially. I felt suddenly like a child, playing a game, but I wasn't ashamed. I wondered if this was the sort of pretend young Sherlock would have gotten up to.
Of course, this wasn't pretend. And Mabel could have been entirely correct. I nodded and slipped the thing into my own apron pocket. "You've been of such great help. Mr. Holmes will be beyond elated."
She flushed with pride and said she hoped to see me again the next week. I made a promise to myself to change my schedule from now on to meet her on Saturdays at the stalls. I enjoyed her company, and I felt sorely in need of friends.
I hurried home, having timed my excursion so that I would return when I knew the family was away.
I knocked on his door, saying nothing but merely holding the flask up to him when he swung it open.
His eyes widened with delight, and he snatched the thing from me like a child setting eyes on a brand-new toy.
"You found Mabel!"
"Indeed, she was quite keen to help," I laughed but then sobered. "The flask is empty though. So this may all be for naught."
He hummed thoughtfully and then stepped aside, bidding me to enter his room. I faltered.
"Come, come, Mary. No one else is here."
I blushed. "That is exactly the issue, sir."
He tapped his finger impatiently against the door handle and then bowed a bit. "Compromise. Come in, but the door will remain open."
I still hesitated, glancing down the hallway.
"Please," he urged. "I wish to show you something." He sounded so excited that I found myself agreeing.
His room seemed much smaller with both of us in it; he went to his chemical desk and gestured for me to follow. He sat down, and I took a seat on a rickety stool next to him.
He opened the flask, examining it carefully and smelling it. He frowned, but I could not tell if it was in frustration or simply concentration. Then he took a vial and poured a careful amount of liquid into the flask, capped it, and shook it. "Let's see if there is enough residual in here to get any answers," he explained.
He poured half a spoonful from the flask into a spoon and lit one of the Bunsen burners. "It's a simple test," he told me, "the fire will burn away the water and react with any chemicals."
I watched the contents begin to bubble and sizzle, steam rising for a few moments until hardly anything was left. He flipped off the fire and brought the spoon to his nose, sniffing, and then muttered excitedly to himself.
His eyes were bright, perhaps happier than I had ever seen him. He brought the spoon towards me. "Smell," he ordered.
I took a gentle whiff and then scrunched my nose up at the burned garlicky smell. "What is that?"
"Arsenic," he declared with a tinge of glee.
"Rat poison?"
"Indeed."
I considered this and then, loath to dampen his mood, brought up gently, "The police say the wife was out of town when he died, though. So she cannot be the poisoner."
He grew thoughtful, picking up the flask and rotating it. "That does make her an improbable suspect."
"Impossible," I corrected.
"Improbable," he corrected back. "Never underestimate cold-blooded murderers. They can be exceedingly clever. I just have to work out how she did it." He seemed to fall into deep thought and did not even notice when I stood and left, closing the door softly behind me.
I hoped he worked out his solution, not only for Mr. Carey but for his own peace of mind.
It was the next morning when it happened. Rain was coming down in sheets and you could smell the distinct scent of it from outside even in the warmth of the house. I did not find it unpleasant, generally, but today I felt itchy and confined.
It was after breakfast had been cleared and I stood washing plates as my mother dried them, a task she could do rather easily despite the weakness that seemed to be afflicting her more and more. Jane had departed to her room, although I suspected that she had actually escaped from the house.
The three remaining members of the family were still seated around the breakfast table. Father and son were sitting across from each other and a one-sided conversation was taking place that I was trying my best to ignore.
The treasured violin lay across the table where it had been deposited after the owner had spent the entire breakfast hour polishing and twiddling with it. Looking back, I wish I had followed my instinct to remove it while clearing the dishes, but some things simply cannot be undone.
"Have you given any thought to what we were speaking of?" Mr. Holmes asked, not looking up from his paper, as per was usual for him. "The colonel is still amenable to taking you on. Unless, of course, you've finally decided to take your brother's advice and return to Oxford with your tail tucked between your legs?"
The son twisted his spoon in the air. "I've decided to become an actor."
"Sherlock," his mother reprimanded under her breath, attempting to forestall whatever argument was brewing. My mother seemed tense as she passed by me into the kitchen, also clearly attuned to the danger in the air.
"I'm being quite serious, mother," he continued, a decisive edge of maliciousness to his voice. He was in a bad mood, and I suspected that did not bode well. "I'll take to the London stage to make my way in the world. Under an assumed name, of course." His grey eyes glinted dangerously. "I wouldn't want to embarrass my father." He drew out the word with deliberate exaggeration.
If he meant to elicit a response, he got his wish. Anger clouded the older man's face and when he spoke, it was through clenched teeth.
"The gall of you, young man, to speak to me like this. After everything I have put up with."
His son dropped his spoon, sitting back in his chair and cupping his chin in his hand with patently false curiosity. "Put up with?" he echoed. "And what exactly have you put up with?"
"Housing and feeding some illegitimate brat, for one thing. To be cuckolded and then subjected to such blatant impertinence by both a whoring wife and bastard son is more than any sane man could bear."
The son stood abruptly to take his leave, but his father followed suit, shoving the table forward towards him as he rose with deliberate violence. The younger Holmes narrowly avoided the edge of the table in his stomach by a quick, lightning-fast reflex that toppled his chair over behind him.
The cups and saucer rattled, falling over and spilling tea everywhere. Mrs. Holmes had not been so lucky, and she grunted with the force of the impact to her ribs, thankfully not as severe for her, having not been the intended target.
She stood hastily, sliding a hand across her stomach. This seemed to aggravate her son more than anything, and he pushed his toppled chair away and began to circle the table towards his father.
His mother caught the movement and grabbed at his arm, stilling him.
"No," she ordered, "il n'en vaut pas la peine," she murmured.
"We speak English in this house," Mr. Holmes spat, and I worried now that he would add French spies to his list of paranoid concerns.
"Je ne suis plus un enfant," the son responded, shrugging her off.
His father did not appear nervous about his son's anger, though I suspected he should have been. He brought a fist down onto the table and swung his arm out, swiping at the dishes and aiming particularly for the boy's treasured violin.
"I said to speak English!" he demanded, and I watched as the table's contents went clattering to the floor.
The young man stared at the fiddle, which now lay near my feet in pieces before turning to look at his father with a cold loathing that seemed not quite at home on his face.
His mother grabbed his arm, attempting to pull him away though she wasn't strong enough to budge him. He disentangled himself, and with measured step and a tight jaw moved from the table and his parents. Standing a good deal away from his father, he studied the older man for a moment with a shrewd eye.
"You seem to lose some of your vigor when faced with a grown man," he sneered. "Or perhaps it's just your old age slowing you down."
He then took off out the back door into the pouring rain, sans coat and hat, and disappeared somewhere in the fog and gloom. Mrs. Holmes stared after him with barely concealed concern.
I willed my heart to slow and removed my mother's tight grip from my arm. I bent down to receive the instrument. My hand was halfway there when Mr. Holmes's enraged voice screamed at me.
"Leave it be!"
I froze and then raised myself up. I avoided his gaze, not used to being roared at in such an intimidating and ungentlemanly fashion.
"Please, stop yelling," Mrs. Holmes pleaded tiredly.
"I will yell anytime I please! First, he shoots his impertinent mouth off at me and now the hired help defies me! I will not have it!"
"She was not defying you." Mrs. Holmes's voice had calmed slightly and she gathered herself enough to gesture me out of the room. I took my mother's hand and took flight, but managed to collect the broken instrument before escaping while his back was turned.
The violin was beyond repair.
He did not return home that day or in the early evening. Around four in the morning, I crept into the kitchen with the pretense of a parched throat. I was looking for some clue to his presence.
When I skulked past the main room, I saw her silhouette on the wall. She sat in the dark, in her nightgown and shawl; her hair was down, cascading over her shoulders. She was looking out of the window into the rain and darkness.
I turned to depart, thinking that she had not noticed me. Her soft voice caught me, "I do not think he is coming back." I faced her, but she did not turn away from the window, a shadow fell diagonally onto her sharp profile. In the gloom of the corner, she resembled her son.
I did not reply, and she continued, speaking so delicately that I wondered if she were really talking to me. "He has no reason to, nothing here for him." She finally rotated her head to regard me. She looked unbearably sad.
My voice was barely above a whisper, "He will come back, ma'am. He will come back for you."
"Will he?" She sounded truly curious. She gazed out the window again, "even if he does come back, will it be for me?"
I crept back to my room and left her there. I stayed alert while I lay in bed, listening for any sound.
Around half past five in the morning, I heard the mistress's tread up the stairs and her bedroom door close. Barely an hour later, I heard the kitchen door squeak open.
Without a thought, I bounded out of bed and towards the hall. I slowed when I reached the open door, seeing his hunched form sitting at the table, lighted only by an old and nearly useless candle. He had a large decanter of dark liquor next to him. It took me a moment to understand that he was pouring it on his hands and then dabbing it on his face.
I moved forward, seeing the blood that soaked his collar and the sweat that dampened his hair until it hung in limp, wet curls around his neck. His head snapped up when he heard the shuffle of my bare feet on the floor.
"Get out of here, Mary," he ordered without looking at me.
I moved back, just barely out of the room, trying to obey him without letting him out of my sight. He either didn't notice my presence or was now ignoring me, and stripped off his outer shirt. His undershirt was speckled with blood as well, but he didn't remove it.
After a moment of smearing some brandy on the cuts on his neck and lip, he snorted dryly.
"You aren't half as clever as you think you are, Mary."
I smiled weakly from my hiding place in the shadow of the hall. "I'm not sure how to take that, sir, since I don't really consider myself very clever at all."
He was quiet for a great while, staring at the tabletop, and then he took a large swig from the bottle and gestured me further into the room.
He looked much worse close up - his hair was wet and matted not only with sweat but with blood and gravel. The same was true for the back of his shirt, his face, and his trousers.
He lifted the back of his shirt. "Am I bleeding?" he asked.
I peered at the flesh around his sides and spine. There were no cuts, but the skin was red and angry.
"No," I responded, "but you look burned. Were you boxing?"
He nodded.
"I've never known you to allow yourself to be dragged around the ring, sir," I commented. And it was true, I knew he boxed quite a bit, but he had never come home this badly torn up before.
"Mary," he warned. Silently, he lowered his shirt back down. Then he pulled at the bloody collar, down the nape of his neck. I leaned forward, assuming he was asking me to look for more injuries. Here, he had a few teeth marks sunk into his flesh. I gasped.
"It's very bad then?" he asked.
"You've been bitten!"
"McMurdo is a rough one. I don't think he likes me very much since the last time we fought."
He handed me the bottle over his shoulder.
Instead of dabbing it on with my fingers, I tipped the bottle down, pouring a bit down his neck and back, hoping to wash away some of the dirt and gravel from the boxing ring floor that was sticking to him.
At the first touch of brandy on his wounds, he jerked forward, upsetting the table and cursing so loudly that I yelped and backed away from him.
"I'm sorry!" I apologized, "I didn't know it would hurt so much!"
He shook his head, dismissing my apology but his face was still contorted with pain. When he leaned over, his shoulders shaking, I thought for a horrible moment that he was actually crying.
He was laughing.
It was a bit wild and a few tears may have been mixed in, but it was definitely laughter he was indulging in.
"You didn't think it would hurt," he repeated, amusement and pain making his voice tremble.
I moved forward, putting the bottle back onto the table next to him. "I am so sorry, sir. I was hoping to wash off some of the dirt, is all. Sorry, sorry, sorry-"
"Stop," he murmured, "it's fine. But really, Mary, I can take a bath to get rid of the grime. Just pat a bit on so that I can make sure I don't get infected, please. Lord only knows what McMurdo has going on in that rotten mouth of his, and I tend to favor Semmelweis's theories enough to be cautious."
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I took the bottle up again and dabbed some on the handkerchief he handed to me from his discarded jacket pocket. I wetted a corner and pressed it against the ugly, crescent marks. He didn't even squirm this time.
After I was done, I squeezed a curl of his hair between my fingertips and came away with the pads of my fingers wet and pink.
"Do you have a head injury?" I asked.
He shook his head.
"Let me see your face," I commanded.
He stood, but ducked his face and grabbed his clothes from the table. "I'm fine, Mary, I just need a warm bath. And I don't need your help with that."
I blushed, but I was sure (hopeful) that he could not see it in the dark. In the weak firelight, he was bruised and bloody and soaked in sweat and dirt, but he was fairly glowing. I stepped aside for him and let him pass me.
When he was gone, I sat at the table and drank the rest of the brandy.