Chapter One: A Complicated and Dusty Scam
My name is Delilah.
It's a feminine name, that's for sure. Based on one of the most treacherous women in history, the Philistine who cut Samson's hair in the Bible, rendering his superhuman strength void.
Although not a believer myself or raised as one, that name still haunted me through primary school, lending itself to schoolyard taunts. Although, I hazard a guess that I would have been ridiculed either way; between my frizzy brown hair, second- hand clothes, and advanced intellect, there was no way I was going to fit in even if my name was Betty or Christina.
Not sure why I was given a Biblical name. My theory is that my mother heard the name Delilah on the radio one night waiting up for my dad to come home while she was heavily pregnant and he was a dirty cop with a drinking problem and a mistress, and she chose the woman with the soothing voice to name her first and only daughter after.
Soon after I was born, my mother died, leaving me in the care of my ill-equipped father. My older brother took care of me for a few years until, around five years old, I was old enough to take care of him instead. My father stopped seeing his mistress but did not stop drinking or taking bribes.
Anyway, the point of this diatribe is that my name is Delilah but I go by Del personally and professionally. The name Del Patrick is viewed immediately as a man's name, and no one goes out of their way to double check that.
Because of this, I was not surprised that when I arrived at the address indicated by the online advertisement- 221B Baker Street, London- I was greeted with a confused look by the fairly short, gray-haired man who answered the door.
"Hello, can I help you?" He asked politely, adjusting the brown and gray fair isle sweater vest he had on over a muted mustard yellow button up.
"I'm here to meet Dr. John Watson." I answered him, and his eyes widened slightly.
"Well, yes. That is me. I am John Watson."
I waited for him to invite me in for a moment before shifting my attaché from my right hand to my left. "Dr. Watson, I am Del Patrick, you scheduled me for an interview for the temporary research assistant position."
"You are Del Patrick." He said. "I thought you would be…older."
I wasn't quite sure how to answer that thought without being snarky enough to wreck my chances for acquiring the position so I just smiled politely, still not managing to avoid creating an awkward silence.
"Oh. Come in, please." He let me in and stepped in front of me to lead me upstairs to a door marked 2, again opening the door to let me step inside. The flat was a bit brighter inside than the foyer, but not much. Light streamed in through a window across from the door, making the dustiness of the room evident as it danced in the light beams. There was a sofa with a blanket draped messily over it, a desk covered in papers and books, a closed laptop sitting on a couple books, two armchairs around a coffee table, and a wall taken up by a bookcase, covered mostly in hardcover books but also with various tchotchkes. Beside that was a fireplace, no fire in the hearth, a broken mirror hanging above the mantle.
"Ah, sorry for the mess." Dr. Watson said, clearing some things off of the coffee table and gesturing for me to sit in the armchair facing the window, while he sat on the armchair across from me.
I pulled down my suit jacket and sat, adjusting my tie and pressing my knees together, loafered feet lined up side by side. On my lap, I opened my attaché and removed my resume, handing Dr. Watson a copy.
"I noticed you didn't have a copy handy. In case you would like to refer to anything on it."
"Oh, great." He took it from me, looking over it downward from over the bridge of his nose. I glanced toward the desk with the laptop on it; I had seen a pair of reading glasses sitting beside a mug there. Dr. Watson began to pat his pockets and I cleared my throat gently. He looked up at me and I gestured toward the desk. He looked in the direction of my nod and point and looked surprised to see his reading glasses there.
"Right, thanks."
He got up and grabbed his glasses and sat back down, looking over my resume again. I could tell he was trying to decide which of my credentials to question first.
"So how oldareyou?" He asked. "Not that that will prevent you from getting this position, of course, but-"
"You wonder how it's possible for someone seemingly in their early twenties to have graduated high school fifteen years ago, obtained two Master's degrees six years later, and now be a PhD candidate nine years later?"
"Well, yes." He looked confused and appreciative of my bluntness on the subject.
"It is a confusing timeline, I agree. I did graduate at fourteen. I am twenty-nine, slightly older than most people assume. I graduated with my dual Master's degrees in Philosophy and Astrophysics/Astronomy from UCLA four years later. And then I took a gap…few years from academics, all of which are accounted for in the litany of menial jobs I kept myself busy with, and during which I accrued not so much as a speeding ticket. A year ago, I enrolled at Oxford in pursuit of my PhD in Biochemistry, having moved to London due to a family matter. If you like, I can bore you with the personal anecdotes and psychological intricacies that led me down this serpentine life's path, I am an open book. But I hope that my history of scholarly publishing coupled with my recent volunteer work as a research assistant at Oxford is enough to persuade you that I can be a reliable and useful tool in whatever research you are currently in need of assistance with."
Dr. Watson blinked at me a few times, a smile creeping slowly over his face, aging him down by at least five years, as he had a friendly and youthful smile. "You don't like to waste time, do you?" He asked, leaning forward over his crossed leg.
"I do not. Not anymore, anyway." I answered. He looked back down at my resume; I assumed to analyze the three years I spent working as a cashier at a department store.
"It's not my research." Dr. Watson said suddenly, raising his gaze back to me from my CV.
I tilted my head, using my pointer finger to push my glasses back up my nose by the underside of the frame. "I'm sorry?" I said, as a means to request clarification.
"My, uh, business partner. And friend." He tacked on the last bit. "It's his research. And documentation needs."
I looked around the flat, noting a pad of dust on the table beside me. "Okay…?"
"Do you know who Sherlock Holmes is?" He asked me, seemingly non sequitur.
"No. Is that your friend?" I asked. Was this someone I should know? Is this a setup? Is Sherlock Homes the name of a shady human trafficking porn company? I shifted forward in my chair, placing my weight into the balls of my feet in case I needed to bolt suddenly.
"Yes. Sherlock is a Consulting Detective. He has worked with Scotland Yard, the British government, and private individuals to solve mysteries and crimes over the last decade."
I kept my question of 'how is a consulting detective different than a private investigator?' to myself.
"Until recently, I was his partner in that and also his…blogger."
"Blog?"
"Oh surely I'm not that old. A blog is-"
"I know what a blog is. I just haven't heard anyone mention that term in probably ten years." I said, impatiently. "I'm not really sure what any of this has to do with the position I applied for." I narrowed my eyes, trying to assert myself but deep down a tad worried I had fallen for a complicated and dusty scam.
Dr. Watson made a face, closing his eyes and holding up his hand as he realized how this must have looked to a young woman from out of the country. "Hold on, I can explain. It's been a rough last couple years for us. I lost the mother of my daughter. We lost a dear friend who Sherlock was close to like a second mother. The cases have become…uninteresting to Sherlock. He is a man who needs to be…intellectually stimulated to…stay out of his own way."
I nodded, continuing to wait for what my part in this mystery man's exciting and sad life would be.
"In the earlier years of our partnership, Sherlock found great value in the documentation I provided of his cases. He would like to start documenting his cases again, and is also intent to work on a book based on…well, two years of his life which were full of adventures but as yet, undocumented and a bit…unexplored in general."
"So, why don't you just start blogging again, or whatever?"
He looked very, deeply sad for a moment. "My daughter is already down one parent. She is going to be starting school next year. I need to be there for her. To stay safe for her."
"Implying the job is unsafe?"
Dr. Watson cringed at my catch. "I understand now that this job may not be…a fit for you." He sighed.
"Or perhaps misrepresented, almost entirely by the online job listing?"
He closed his eyes. "That might also be the case."
"So really this is field reporter, personal historian position with possibility of bodily harm."
"Well, the bodily harm not so much. Sherlock said he doesn't intend on bringing whoever gets the position to anything dangerous."
"He took you."
"That was…different. He needed my medical expertise on the cases. And I have a military background, you see."
"My father was a detective with the LAPD. A better detective than he was a father, and he was not a great detective. I spent a lot of my life in dark places and young girl shouldn't have been."
Dr. Watson looked surprised by my personal admission, at first looking at me with sympathy, and then asking, "Wait, are you considering taking the job?"
"I'm saying that danger is not a dealbreaker for me. Are you interested in offering me the job?" I countered.
Dr. Watson glanced at the kitchen behind me and I looked at the reading glasses still on his face. I thought I saw a figure reflected in the lenses but as I looked harder there was no figure, only appliances and counters and a table covered in more oddities.
Dr. Watson spoke to me again, his voice lowered. "I think you would be a competent personal historian and…aid. Take the weekend to think about it, yeah?" He looked at me hopefully.
I looked over his face for a moment. I could tell he had reservations about me, unanswered questions. Unspoken comments. I held his gaze perhaps longer than I should have, because he seemed to shift under my scrutiny.
I myself had a couple unanswered questions but instead I rose from the armchair, again adjusting the bottom hem of my suit jacket, and proffered my hand for shaking. Dr. Watson rose, adjusting him sweater vest and shook my hand. His hand was warmer than expected and his grip tighter. He stepped around the coffee table with my hand in his, closing the distance and making our handshake more secure. He was about six inches taller than me, which by men's standards wasn't tall, but not many people I ever met were shorter than me.
He smiled down at me, nervously at first, it seemed, but then genuine as he stood closer to me and I could see more detail of his face, my own reflected in the lenses of the reading glasses he had forgotten to remove. I observed to myself that he seemed to dress much older than he actually was, mentally placing him in his late fourties, although he dressed like he was twice that age.
As always, I kept these observations to myself.
"Thank you for coming to our appointment, Miss-" And then he stopped himself. "Miss, is it? Not that it matters, of course-"
"Miss Patrick." I said, interrupting his foot from mouth extraction project. "And it seems like it does matter, in this job position, specifically." I saw his expression change, caught off guard by my bluntness. "I am unmarried, no children. No attachments that would preclude my seeing this project through to the end."
We released our handshake through mutual unspoken agreement. Although I had not meant to, I seemed to have hit a nerve with my statement. Rather than try and back out from the implications of what I had said, I let the simple fact hang in the air between us and let Dr. Watson decide to defend himself for nothing to a stranger, or show me to the door.
He politely chose the latter option and promised to be in touch with me on Monday as he shut the door to 221B Baker Street behind me. I looked at the door once it was shut and motionless and for a moment let myself reflect on how strange an experience that had just been.
I turned to my motorcycle, parked on the street and unhooked my helmet from the back, popping it under my left arm as I replaced it instead with the attaché, hooking it securely to the back of my decade old MT-10. I nestled my helmet down onto my head, tucking my braid up inside and mounted my bike. As I started it and kicked the kickstand away, I felt eyes on me from above and looked up at the window from 221B, which overlooked Baker Street directly. The sun was gleaming off of the glass in such a way that I could not tell if someone was indeed watching me, or who that person was. I couldn't shake the feeling that though the flat looked quite unlived in, someone else had been there during my 'interview' with Dr. Watson.
I checked traffic behind me and pulled away from the curb, gunning it in the direction of home.