Chapter 16

March 14th, 1867

The day started as harmless and boring as all the others in the Victorian era had before – he woke up in his bed. The thing was he had deliberately concentrated to not start the entry into the mind palace like this because over time he found it quite annoying to have to actually go through a morning routine every time he arrived in 1867.

Apparently, his efforts didn't have the desired effect.

The room was cold and his discomfort rose.

Sensing it was not something he could do in his current mood, so he hurried out off his bed to escape the bleak room. He had seen way too much of it in the past week and was starting to despise it.

The living room was equally cold and dark.

He tried to change the setting by concentrating on warming it up. His body in real life was tucked warmly into the bed, he shouldn't be cold.

To his dismay nothing happened.

His mind palace seemed as faulty as his dishevelled mind.

A wave of sadness hit him, and he tried to fight off the idea that he was broken beyond repair and it was not worth the effort to try to fix this. It was just prolonging the inevitable.

Well aware that he was not allowed to give up he tried a second time, closing his eyes to improve focus, but once more the environment remained the way it was. The only thing that happened was that suddenly someone was snapping his fingers in front of his face.

"Holmes?"

His eyes jerked open.

"What are you doing here, standing in the dark?"

Watson was right in front of him, letting his hands sink.

Sherlock just stared at him, his face working to contain the desperation and hollowness he felt.

"Let's lit the fires," Watson continued when Sherlock remained silent. Or maybe he just feared Sherlock might have a breakdown and wanted to give him the chance to collect himself. "Mrs Hudson isn't up yet," he added and turned away.

It was not fast enough to prevent Sherlock spotting the look of worry on his face.

Watson started to pile wood into the fire place and Sherlock walked towards his study, which was where the kitchen was in 2016, to lit the fire there. He was a bit overwhelmed by the sudden unexpected company.

They worked in silence for a short time, until Watson finally couldn't stand it any longer.

"Any interesting theories about the new case?"

"New case?"

"The young man that came in yesterday? He was worried about his fiancé, he failed to contact her in days. She seems to have vanished."

Sherlock frowned, unable to remember.

He still felt dazed and couldn't shake the tiredness.

"Your notes are still here, on the table," Watson pointed at the messy piles of papers on the dining table before he went over to wind up the clock.

It was early, half past six, and still dark outside.

The dim light of the lamp Watson had obviously carried in tinted the room into flickering yellow light that superseded the cold darkness.

Why didn't he remember?

Sherlock picked up a few sheets with notes and a picture from the table. It showed a young dark haired women and the photographic paper looked frayed, as if someone had carried it for a long time.

All the sheets lying around were filled with his own handwriting but he couldn't remember any of it.

For a moment, it felt like waking up in a strange place with no idea how one had gotten there. But then his gaze fell onto a small newspaper clipping, which then gave him access the allegedly lost memories.

A young man, planning to marry a woman who loved him.

Son of a wealthy doctor.

Had been abroad to study for two years.

When he had returned to his parent's home, they had presented him with a letter that his fiancé Emilia had sent. In it, she explained that she had married someone else and moved to Australia with him.

The abandoned husband to be - Avery Portmann was his name - didn't want to believe the letter was true and had claimed she was missing.

He reported that he had been experiencing problems with his parents in the past, who weren't too fond of her, but had finally accepted their son's choice.

Their reluctance had a lot to do with her rural upbringing, another issues were that she was intelligent, spoke her mind and loved her work.

For his parents she hadn't been home keeper enough and they were afraid she wouldn't be able to be a good housewife any time soon.

Avery had tried to first contact his fiancé's mother, Mrs Rowe (her father was dead). But the letter addressed to the mother came back and the young man then went to see her himself.

Only to find new tenants in the house who knew nothing.

"You wanted to see the landlord to find out when the mother had left and why," Watson provided.

"Right," Sherlock agreed, remembering every detail now, "Get dressed."

"What? No! It's way too early to knock at respectable people's doors," his friend protested while lighting up the other kerosene lamps in the room.

"The best way to get detailed and honest answers it to not wind up people by disturbing their sleep."

"Right. Make tea then."

"I am not a maid, you know."

"You were about to make it anyway."

"That's not the point."

Out of boredom and the need for a stimulant, Sherlock filled one of the clean beakers with water from a carafe and kindled the Bunsen burner. He then placed it in a holder over the flame and started searching the messy shelf behind the table for the metal can with his special tea blend.

It took him only a moment to find it. He fetched the filtering paper, which he then folded into an improvised tea bag. His hands were still stiff from sleep and it was difficult to shake the dried tea leaves into the tea bag. Then, he pinned it close with one of the needles he kept on the table.

Only after that he realised Watson was watching him, grinning. Immediately, Sherlock feared this little detail might make it into the next edition of the 'Strand Magazine'.

"Don't," he said and Watson made an exaggerated innocent face that told Sherlock he had been right.

"I'll get milk and sugar then," the doctor muttered and headed for the door to fetch the items from downstairs.

This gave Sherlock a welcomed moment to compose himself and take another look at the evidence and notes.

He remembered now that Avery had been a quite nervous, almost 30 year old man, unsettled about his fiancé's - Emilia's - disappearance. He had stated that even if she loved another man he wanted to know she was all right and did it out of free will. Nevertheless, he was completely convinced there was foul play at work.

The fact that he was marrying this late had been due to the fact that his studies had taken a long time and that he had been to India and parts of the orient to study anthropology.

Avery seemed intelligent, educated, a bit shy and adored his fiancé for her emancipation, especially after seeing other culture's ways to treat women. It was a topic that was not as 'hot' as during his first visit in the Victorian era in the 1890s, but the attention was clearly growing.

From Avery's*1 carefully hidden anger Sherlock deduced that the topic was a sore spot. The most likely cause was probably the parent's attitude.

Watson's return interrupted his musings.

The water was almost at the boiling point and Sherlock waited a bit longer, then killed the flame and threw the tea bag into the beaker.

An hour later they were on the way to interview the landlord, Mr Thompson. The man and his wife told them the whole story in detail, over a cup of tea Sherlock refused but was served nevertheless. Watson accepted it gratefully.

It turned out Mrs Rowe seemed to have had some kind of breakdown or episode of hysteria over the anniversary of her husband's demise. She had been taken away by the newly established ambulance service after screaming for half the night.*2

The daughter had been there and accompanied her to wherever the carriage had brought her. But they hadn't returned, not even the daughter.

After a month the landlord had still received no message.

In the end, they had to rent the flat to someone else and give away the furniture when even a request at the police brought no news.

The elderly couple seemed still a bit agitated about it all, although it had happened almost six months ago.

They seemed to have liked their tenants and when Watson asked if the mother had suffered from depression or hysteria before, they described she had been melancholic for quite some time and was sometimes a bit odd, but it had never escalated like that before.

A bit to Sherlock's surprise, Watson promised them that they'd search for mother and daughter. The Thompsons expressed their gratefulness and asked them to tell the daughter to contact them.

"What is left of their belongings? Did you keep pictures?" Sherlock probed suddenly, although he internally had already decided it was time to leave.

"Yes, yes. There are pictures. We had to decide which of their personal objects to keep. It was so awful!" Mrs Thompson said with tears in her eyes. "But we couldn't store it all, we already were two months back with the rent, which is our only income."

"Sarah, please!" her husband protested when she revealed this little detail.

"I'll go and get the photo album for you then," he hurried off.

Mrs Thompson smiled at John.

"It really put a dent in our finances that we waited this long. Our Henry would have liked her."

"Henry? Who's Henry," Sherlock pricked his ears.

"Our son. We lost him in the war."

Sherlock's interest immediately flagged and he turned to look at a painting on the wall, a portrait that was at least 100 years old, if the style of the strokes wasn't deliberately made in an old-fashioned way.

"That's my grandfather," the landlady explained.

"Obviously," Sherlock said dryly. The family resemblance was stunning, especially in advanced age.

A moment later slow steps on the stairs could be heard.

Mr Thompson re-entered the room and placed a thin album on the table, which Sherlock quickly opened and browsed through.

"This is the family?" Sherlock pointed at one of the last pictures that seemed to have been taken, because the following page was blank, as were the ones after that.

But another picture was lying loosely face down in between the pages. Sherlock picked it up and turned it.

It was clearly a post mortem photography of Emilia's father.*3 Overall there weren't many pictures, which made it quite clear that the family hadn't had enough money to afford more. There were five of Emilia growing up, a slightly blurred wedding picture of the parents and some of other family members shown in poses that displayed their profession.

"I will take those three," Sherlock picked the family picture and the latest portrait of mother and Emilia and gently removed them from the black carton pages.

"We will inform them that their things are here and ask them to contact you. Good day." Sherlock bent down his head slightly in greeting and headed for the coat rack in the hall. He then slipped into his winter coat.

A bit surprised by the sudden hurry, Watson thanked the couple and followed him before Mrs Thompson had time to politely show them the door.

Outside, Sherlock stopped at the gutter, mulishly staring up into the sky. It was sleeting and muddy, the cobblestones slippery.

He had no luck this time, no cab or any carriage could be seen nearby.

The moment Watson caught up with him Sherlock started to walk towards the nearest bigger street.

His friend knew him too well to talk. He would, as soon as he was sure Sherlock had finished thinking about the facts they had just learned.

Sherlock was sure that his friend also noticed his hunched shoulders and that he was still feeling poorly. But even aware of this, Sherlock failed to relax his muscles an fake being better than before.

Sherlock was glad to be out of the stuffed house. Every corner and free space had been filled with typical Victorian nick-knacks, memorabilia and status symbols of times long past.

He wondered briefly if the green wallpapers were so old they were still dyed with arsenic colours. No one in his right mind - and especially a landlord - should've missed the regular news (that had started in the early 1850s) about the risks for several chemical in dyes that were a severe health hazard.*4

Sherlock wasn't claustrophobic but the dark walls with rich floral designs, filled to the brim with cupboards and little shelves, had made it hard for him to breathe – either as a result to physically or mentally feeling cramped.

It had been hard to concentrate on the relevant facts. But in the end he was quite sure their worries were genuine.

It would've been easier to just throw out all the Rowe's personal belongings and deny to know anything about the disappearance than keep all the stuff and even get in trouble for not having an income. Mr Thompson had been so ashamed when his wife mentioned it, Sherlock absolutely believed it was true.

Their next stop would be Avery's mother who was supposed to be home according to the son. Avery and his father were at work.

Sherlock had planned it like this on purpose, to interview the women without her husband present.

Somehow his issues to stay focussed seemed even worse than the other days. While the hansom cab moved towards the wealthier parts of town, Sherlock drifted off.

Not back to reality, but to very unpleasant and dark thoughts that were hard to keep at a distance.

One of those were that he found the suspicious and frequent covert glances Watson gave him somehow more alarming than usual. The doctor's expression seemed to have turned from worried to annoyed, maybe even slightly angry.

Because Sherlock was keeping things from him?

Sherlock was aware that he was doing so. His efforts to make his friend forget about what had happened in the bathroom the other day seemed to have worked.

Watson had not addressed nor even hinted at the events and Sherlock was sure he would have if he remembered.

But something seemed to have woken an old anger, caused by the fact that Sherlock hadn't informed him that he was alive after the Moriarty debacle – for years.

Against his will, Sherlock felt his own agitation level rise with the annoyed body language and the rising number of one syllable answers. He had not noticed it at first, but in hindsight, he realised that both factors had gained intensity over the day. He had finally noticed it during interviewing the Thompsons Watson had shown it both within minutes, repeatedly. Of course Sherlock couldn't be sure his friend's gruffness was due to something he had done when he hadn't asked, but it was only logical.

During the cab ride on a normal day he would concentrate on preparing his questions for interviewing Mrs Portmann and run the details through his head to make sure he'd forget nothing, bring it to the forefront of his mind.

But all tries to do so ended in unsorted facts just hovering around in the dark, drifting away when he tried to sort them into a useful arrangement – or any order at all.

He was paying the price for saving John and up to now Watson had been the John he missed.

Real John was emotional, difficult and sad.

Watson incorporated the friend he missed, he suddenly understood.

Now that Watson was showing anger something difficult began to stir.

The realisation caused a flicker of shame.

He was recreating the person he missed instead of facing the real life version and solving the problems.

Once more doubt welled up and he feared that real John would leave as soon as he was starting to recover from his drug escapades. The idea was nagging at him and filled him with fear he wanted to deny.

He felt unusually melancholic and down today, had to kick himself to execute any action – mental as well as physical.

If left alone, he'd probably only sit in a corner and stare into nothingness, overwhelmed with just existing.

He was just so overwhelmingly tired.

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*1 It was uncommon in the Victorian Era when speaking to or about other people to use their first name, if you were not very close to them or past the age of childhood. Since Sherlock is struggling with names in general, he used the names he can remember more easily here. It will play a role in the future so just bear with me, this is not a mistake.

*2 Wikipedia: 'History of the ambulance'

*3 Wikipedia: Post-mortem photography

*4 www. ancient-origins history-ancient -traditions /arsenic-poisoning- 0010336 (copy and remove all the spaces)

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A/N:

I left the citations in for a change, in case anyone is interested in background reading.

Is anyone? Or is it hindering the reading?