CHAPTER 1: WHAT THE CAUSAL PHILOSOPHER WOULD SAY

August 2013

The day Mary Morstan met John Watson, she had fifteen months left to live.

She arrived at St Elizabeth's Hospital early, having taken two buses and the Tube to get there. After some hesitation, she strode almost defiantly to the sliding glass doors, which glided apart and greeted her with a ding. But there, she stopped as suddenly as if the doors had remained stubbornly closed. Now was the moment to rethink the decision, turn back, carry on as she was. After all, she'd never done anything like this before. Not remotely. The rising summer sun was at her back, and her purse containing months' worth of sensitive letters was clutched tightly under her arm. Nerves flared in her stomach, her resolve wavered. She pushed her long ginger hair behind an ear and took a deep breath to pacify the stomach-dwelling butterflies. She wondered if this sort of thing would get her into trouble. Well, more trouble than she was in already.

It had been Samantha's idea to look into hiring a private detective.

'No no, don't go to the police.'

Samantha had always been the sensible one, the older sister with a head level enough for balancing spouse and children in one hand, and a career as a paralegal in the other. Mary, she was the dreamer, the dancer, the lover of yesterday's stories and tomorrow's possibilities. A practical girl in her own right, but with the hope of something special just around the bend. That was why she was still living in London, not Calgary, where Samantha insisted her little sister belonged.

'I've done nothing wrong,' Mary replied.

'I know that, believe me, I know. But think it through. This a civil matter, not a criminal one. There's no plausible deniability. Your signature on that document says you accept legal liability.'

'But it's not my sig—'

'As far as any court is concerned, it is. The police won't help you. Don't give them any reason to charge you. You have to keep law enforcement out of it, Mary, do you hear me?'

'So what do I do? What can I possibly do? Do I consult a barrister?'

'You can't afford one. Look, I know it feels shady, but the best thing for you is to come here, live with me, and just wait for this whole thing to blow over.'

'I can't do that, Sam. I have a life here.'

'The flower shop?' He tone was decidedly unimpressed, just shy of mocking. But she sighed, knowing the fight was lost. This wasn't the first time she had tried to convince Mary to come to Canada. 'Fine. But like I said, you need proof. You need to convince these people that you were never involved.'

'I've been trying, Sam! But I have no way of contacting them, nothing. No phone number, no address, no website. I'm at my wit's end.'

'So hire someone who can find them. Someone discreet but professional.' There was a pause while both women chewed this over. Samantha came up with the solution first: 'A PI.'

'A private investigator? Are you serious?'

'It's what I would do.'

Over the next several days, even while scrolling through page after page of PI services advertised around London, she doubted Samantha's advice and fretted over whether she should actually go through with it. They seemed so dodgy, private detectives, and she had enough knotty problems to be going on with already. But the alternative was an expensive barrister, or law enforcement, and Samantha was probably right on the nose with that one: when it came to legal matters, things could get . . . sticky. Very sticky. She didn't know if her case was sympathetic enough for police to side with her, and she was too afraid to risk it. This was a matter that needed to be settled tactfully. That meant there was only one realistic option available to her.

It was just about the time that she had resigned herself to this unhappy fact that she came across a website buried pages and pages deep on the search browser. Even at first glance, it was a modest though intriguing site: unlike the others, it did not display a long list of provided services (surveillance, tracking, fraud investigation, employee verification, and so on), nor links to costs/fees/pricing, nor boxes and boxes of testimonials cluttering the page. Instead, it made a simple but pointed claim: I'm Sherlock Holmes, the world's only consulting detective.

She didn't know what a consulting detective was, exactly. She didn't know what the science of deduction was. But the name Sherlock Holmes struck familiar chord—though she couldn't quite place him in her memory—so perhaps his work was good enough to afford him something of a reputation. In any case, he wrote with the sort of haughty confidence that instilled in her, right from the start, a measure of trust. Trust, that is, that this was a man who might be able to help her.

If you've got a problem that you want me to solve, then contact me. Interesting cases only please.

She certainly had that. An interesting case, that was.

There could be no harm in going for a consultation, surely. So she searched for contact information on the site, an email or a phone number to call, and that's when she found, at the bottom on the page in cerulean blue text, the instruction: If you want my help, write to me at 221B Baker Street, London, or contact me through John's blog. –SH

A companion site? She clicked the link and found herself on The Personal Blog of Dr John H Watson.

For the next hour, curled up in bed with her laptop, Mary read the entire narrative of the lives and work of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson that had been dedicated to the blog. She was enraptured. The detective was astoundingly clever, delightfully eccentric, and at times surprisingly funny (particularly in the comments). With each new case, she began to imagine her own being narrated alongside them, a chapter in the casebook, and she found herself becoming more and more invested in her belief that this was the man who would right the wrongs in her life and help her to sleep again at night.

But it was the other character, the narrator, the 'I'of all the tales, that partner-in-detective-work John Watson, who had her smiling most often. He was not the star of his own stories, and his attentions were far more often focused on the astounding brainwork of his partner than on his own humble contributions. Nevertheless, it was clear, to Mary at least, that he was quite clever himself, in his own, understated, far more modest way. He had a wry sense of humour and a dry kind of wit that came across in his entries and interactions with commenters; he was longsuffering in his exasperations and compassionate in his concern for others' welfare. Above all, it was obvious how much he admired the man he worked with, how much faith he had in Sherlock Holmes, and that was the final commendation she needed to know that this was the man she wanted to hire.

Until, that is, she came to a post dated June 16, 2011, and read the brief and troubling entry: 'He was my best friend and I'll always believe him.'

Mary stared. It was the final post, and it was over two years old. Where was the rest of it? She clicked backwards, forwards again, and looked for another link, but there was nothing. Dr Watson had written was: he was my best friend. What had happened?

A quick search online provided the answer, and Mary felt her heart sink as she read it: Suicide of Fake Genius and Fraudulent Detective Takes Own Life and Sherlock Holmes Falls to His Death. She couldn't explain it. She was glad no one was there to witness it. But upon learning of the death of this brilliant stranger, now two years past, she broke down and cried. She hadn't known him; she would never know him. But for that one glorious hour, he had seemed so real, and so, too, was his loss. It was the kind of tragedy to which she was no stranger. So it was that, alone in her flat, she felt the sorrow of John Watson, and it was for John that she cried.

When she awoke in the morning, the computer was still open on her bed, and a nudge that brightened the screen recalled her to her plight. It also awoke within her a new and startling resolve: to find John Watson.

She played at being detective herself that morning. In the greenhouse, when the shop was quiet and between waterings and trimmings and ledger work, she searched for him on her phone. There were dozens of John Watsons in London alone, and for a time she thought she'd have to hire a detective to find a detective. But then she remembered he was a doctor, as well as a detective. She had no idea what kind of medicine he practised—his medical career had not featured prominently on the blog—but a search for Dr John Watson and hospital and London brought her straight to him: he worked at St Elizabeth's in South London, right near Kennington Park. A brief biography on the hospital's website named him a junior consultant general surgeon.

Before she lost her nerve, she phoned the hospital. She asked for an appointment with Dr Watson. A consultation. The receptionist asked: Was this an emergency? Was she a current patient, or a referral? What was her ailment? Wincing, she lied and complained of abdominal aches, saying that Dr Watson had come highly recommended, and could she get in to see him as quickly as possible? By the end of the call, and owing to a fortunate last-minute cancellation, she had an appointment for the very next day.

And that was how she found herself at the doors of St E's.

'Just sit tight, Ms Morstan, and the doctor will be right with you.'

She had already de-robed and now sat on the edge of a paper-draped hospital bed wearing a paper gown, her hair now pulled back into a ponytail. Already, she knew, she had taken the charade too far. The nurse had weighed her, taken her vitals, noted everything down on a clipboard, and treated her with the kind of hospital-trained gentleness her apparent nervousness required. At this point, she no longer had any idea how to make the transition from pantomime patient to potential client in need of a detective. Maybe she could just play it through: let the doctor examine her, determine she was well, and prescribe her the mildest medication he could think of to ease symptoms she didn't even have. Then she could flee back to Stratford, pretending none of this had happened, and flush the pills down the toilet. Naturally, she would phone Samantha, and together they would have a good laugh at her foolishness.

The door opened. The doctor came in.

Mary stopped swinging her restless feet as her heart gave a lurch.

Though she had seen photographs online—from both the blog, news articles, and St E's website—she was only now struck with how familiar he was to her, like this wasn't a first meeting at all but a reunion of sorts. Which, of course, made no sense. In a way, though, she did feel like she knew him. After all, she had read so much about the life he had led and the things he had done, and based on those narratives, she had already ascribed to him a personality and imagined his history and was calling him John in her head. She felt like they could fall at once into easy conversation. So good to see you again. And how is Harry these days? she might ask, or I loved the one about the aluminium crutch, or Wouldn't you know it? I actually had tickets to the Vermeer unveiling at the Hickman Art Gallery. I'm still waiting for my refund! But instead, she just stared, a little wide-eyed and open-mouthed. It wasn't celebrity awe or girlish fancy, but an impulse to say, above all else, I know you. And she couldn't.

'Good morning, Ms Morstan,' he said, drawing up a swivel chair. 'How are we today?'

His voice was warm, his smile soft, and when he lifted his dark blue eyes from the clipboard to meet hers, there flickered a moment in which she saw him mirroring her expression, and he knew her, too. But no—she had imagined it, because he recovered himself quickly, cleared his throat, and returned his attention to the clipboard. But a slight flush remained behind to colour his cheeks.

Consulting her chart, he began with a practised air of professionalism, 'You told the nurse you were experiencing some discomfort—?'

'Chest pains,' she blurted out. Yes. That wasn't a lie. She was definitely feeling some sort of ache in her chest now, a little to the left. 'Trouble breathing.'

'Oh.' He flipped a page, eyes narrowing, and she realised her mistake. Dr Watson was a general surgeon, for whom the abdominal pains she had invented over the phone got her an appointment. In his line of work, he would have little to do with chest pains.

Before she could flounder and fluster in correcting herself, Dr Watson rose from the stool and took out a stethoscope, settling the tips in his ears. He wasn't questioning her. He wasn't calling her out on her obvious deceit. Instead, he just smiled, a close-lipped and kind smile, and said, 'Let's have a listen, then, shall we?'

Mary wondered if she was being indulged in the lies of a hypochondriac.

He stepped around, breathed warm air on the diaphragm, and placed it against her back, to the right, and just within the folds of the paper gown. 'Nice, deep breath,' he said. She breathed. 'Hold it.' She did. 'And release.' He moved the diaphragm to the left, and she breathed for him again. Finally, he came back around to the front and held the stethoscope to her chest. 'Just one more . . .' His voice had softened a bit. He cleared his throat and muttered a shy sort of pardon. With the placement of the instrument, surely he was now listening to the rapid thrumming of her heart.

Their eyes met again, this time only inches apart. He felt it too, and stepped away.

'Well, Ms Morstan,' he said, taking up the clipboard again, making careful study of the notes there, 'breath is strong, lungs sound clear. Can you tell me when you first started experiencing—?'

'Dr Watson, I'm here because I need a detective.'

His head came up sharply, and his hands tightened around the board. His expression, though, was unfathomable. It wasn't anger, or annoyance, or affront, or disgust. Shock came closest, but there was something behind the shock, deeper, more guarded. It was pain. She had caused him pain. Never had she felt more miserable in her life.

'God, I am so sorry. That came out all wrong. What I mean is—'

'Stop.' He put up a hand to forestall whatever she was about to say; even she didn't quite know what that was going to be. Her mouth fell closed and she pressed fingers to her lips. His jaw was tight for a moment, his head lowered, but he lifted his guarded eyes and said, 'Who are you?'

'I'm . . . I'm no one.'

'Who sent you?'

'What? No one. No one sent me. I saw the website, that's all. And the blog. And I needed help.'

He laughed, but not because this was funny. Nothing about this was funny. Mary wished she really were dying.

'Those sites shouldn't even exist,' he said. 'They should be deleted.'

'But—'

'We're not in business anymore, Ms Morstan. I'm sorry, but it looks like you wasted your time coming here. On the plus side, you seem to be in perfectly good health, so you should take comfort in that, at least.' He started for the door.

'John, please!'

He froze, one hand on the door knob.

'Sorry,' she said again, covering half of her face with a hand. How could this have gone so wrong, so quickly? 'Sorry, that's not appropriate. I don't mean to take liberty. Dr Watson, I mean. I shouldn't have come to you like this. I shouldn't have lied. But I didn't know how else to— I'm in trouble, and I don't know who to turn to.'

She watched his shoulders rise and fall with a silent sigh, and his head bowed a little. From behind, she could just make out his eyelashes falling closed while he thought. She clenched the paper gown so fiercely at her chest that she heard a soft rip. Hurriedly, she flattened her hand to hide it.

'If you're in trouble,' he spoke to the door, 'you should go to the police.'

'I can't go to the police. Not with this.'

'There are other private detectives.'

'I don't trust any other detectives.'

He looked back over his shoulder, eyebrows lifted, both surprised and incredulous.

She hastened to explain. 'I know it sounds silly. But I read the blog. All those cases, the fascinating and bizarre and important. You solved them.'

'I didn't solve them. Any of them.'

'Both of you, I mean.'

He turned away again. 'I'm not a detective, Ms Morstan. I'm a doctor. I can't help you. Not with this.'

'I just thought—' She should have backed off; she should have conceded her own stupidity in coming here. She was in the vulnerable position of being half naked in a paper dressing gown, having just been caught lying to a medical professional who should at this very moment be tossing her out or summoning security to come do it for him. But he wasn't doing that. He was denying her, denying himself even, but he was still . . . listening. His hand had left the door and now remained clenched at his side, but he was waiting for her to finish. Mary dared to press her advantage.

'You saw the way he worked. Didn't you? More than anyone else, you saw him solve case after case. And I thought, one doesn't see all that, and write it all down, without learning a thing or two.'

Still, he didn't answer, barely blinked.

'I can pay. I don't have much, but we can work something out.'

He flinched. 'That's not how we— Look. Discussing this, here, isn't appropriate.' He worried his tongued against his teeth behind closed lips. 'My shift ends in a few hours. If you're still mad enough to want me, I'll be across the street at half four. Vivian's Café.'

She was nodding even before he finished.

'Just to talk.'

'I understand.'

'I'm not saying I can do anything for you.' His voice carried with it a warning. 'But I may be able to point you in the right direction. Sound fair?'

'That's all I ask.'

'Good day, Ms Morstan.'

'Can I buy you a coffee?' she asked as he draped his suit coat across the back of a vacant chair and slid into the seat across from her. She silently chided the butterflies that had re-awoken at the sight of him coming through the door. Having spent the last six hours agonising over whether he would actually show, she had half-convinced herself that he would not, but would put as much distance as possible between himself and the crazy woman.

'Ah,' he hesitated. His smile was shy but genuine. His eyes flicked toward the server at the adjacent table. 'No, you don't have to do that.'

'I insist. I'm clearly a wrench in your plans, so the least I can do is buy you a coffee, Dr Watson.'

'John,' he corrected her. 'You're not my patient, after all. Clearly.'

'Mary,' she said. And they grasped hands across the table in proper greeting.

'Mary,' he repeated, 'would be lovely. Coffee, I mean. Coffee would be lovely.' His blush made her smile more brightly. 'Thank you.'

She ordered. For herself, cream and two sugars. For John Watson, black. While they waited for their drinks to arrive, and then while they waited for their drinks to cool, and then while they waited for the sun to shift just enough so that it was no longer in their eyes but sinking behind a tree and dappling their faces and serviettes, they chatted, avoiding the business at hand. It was easy. Comfortable. She had imagined that she'd never recover from the awkwardness of the examination room, but he was at such ease with her now that either he was a remarkably good actor or she wasn't the oddest thing he had ever dealt with in that room. Whatever it was, she was enjoying herself far too much, because for those first lovely minutes, she entirely forgot what had brought her and John both there to begin with.

'So. Mary.' He set his mug down on the table at his right elbow and smiled again, that soft, shy smile, like he was out of practise. 'You said you were in trouble.'

Of course. To business. This was, after all, a business meeting. She chided herself for forgetting. With an apologetic grin, she set her zipped purse in her lap and began:

'About a year ago, I received a letter from my father. It was posted from Mumbai and dated September 2, 2012. It was written in his hand, and signed with his signature, which I know as well as my own. In the letter, he said there was an emergency and asked me to wire him twelve thousand pounds.'

'Was this request unusual for him?'

'John,' she said, 'my father, Arthur Morstan, has been dead for five years.'

He straightened a little, his attention—already piqued—now elevated. She knew then that she had him. Interesting cases only, Sherlock Holmes had written, and based on what she had read on the blog, they stuck to the policy. Apparently, it was a rule that appealed to John Watson, too.

She was pleased. She very much wanted his interest. Blushing a little herself now, trying to dispel such irrational thoughts, she continued.

'Naturally, I didn't believe it was him.'

'Do you have the letter?'

'I have all of them.' She opened her purse and pulled out a short stack of envelopes bound together with a rubber band. She handed them over.

He removed the rubber band and fanned them out. 'Just these five?'

'Yes.'

'Over the past year?'

'Yes.'

'All from someone posing as your father?'

'No, but that's how they began.'

She proceeded to explain all that had happened. Believing that someone, somewhere, had been playing a cruel joke, she dismissed that first letter easily as a fake. Though the handwriting was a startlingly accurate duplication of her father's, the tone was not, and no details spoke to the closeness of the relationship they had once shared. Upset, she had called Samantha, who shared in her anger over the insensitivity and deceitful nature of the letter, and received the advice, "Ignore it. Burn it. Don't make this your problem."

She did ignore it, but she didn't burn it. To be truthful, though it upset her that someone was impersonating her father and requesting money, she didn't think it particularly malicious. Rather, she regarded it in the same vein as Internet spam, tucked it away in the bottom drawer of her bureau, and carried on, otherwise unperturbed.

When the second letter arrived in November, reiterating almost verbatim the monetary request of the first, she didn't call Samantha but wrote back to the return Mumbai post box address an angry letter explaining that her father was dead and demanding the cessation of letters, and if they didn't stop, she would consider this harassment and take the matter to the police. For four more months, she believed that had done the trick, until one chilly March morning, the post delivered, on top of a stack of bills and the latest issue of House and Garden, a third letter. Or rather, a bill.

'A statement,' Mary said, unfolding the letter and spreading all three pages in front of John, 'for debts attributed to my father. Businesses I've never heard of, expenses I don't understand. I knew he had financial troubles. For years, he had, right up until the end, but I had no idea that they sang to the tune of—'

'Two hundred and sixty-four thousand pounds,' John said, noting the total at the bottom of the page. 'Jesus.'

It had been so long since the previous letter requesting a comparatively meagre sum that she didn't automatically connect them, not until she noticed that the first item on the statement was for an unspecified loan in the exact amount the first letter had requested of her.

She didn't know what to do. Mary, who couldn't cover even the initial demand of twelve thousand quid, balked at the thought of more than two hundred and fifty thousand. Frightened, believing there had been some grave error, she again went to Samantha, who assured her that, according to British law, a deceased man's debts could not follow his children. If the estate one left behind could not cover the debts, they died with the man.

But someone clearly thought Arthur Morstan was still alive, and in trying to track him down, contacted instead his nearest living relative. Again, Mary drafted a letter, and with it she included a photocopy of her father's death certificate.

The fourth letter arrived less than a month later: a copy of the bill with a rubber stamp inking the top of the page in red: Past Due. A monthly interest penalty of 25% had been accrued, bringing her debt to £330,000. The final page was a photocopy of the terms and conditions for an unsecured loan, and at the bottom were two signatures: Arthur Morstan's, and Mary Morstan's. Evidently, she had signed and dated a joint-liability agreement.

'That's not my signature,' she told John, laying the page before him. Her voice shook with emotion, and she swallowed hard to clear her throat of the lump that had grown there. 'I mean, it looks like mine. It looks exactly like mine, but I promise you, I never signed this. This wasn't me.'

John lifted the page and turned it toward the sun, angling the paper this way and that, but it was a photocopy. Though dated February 21, 2008, there was no way to discern when that signature had actually been made.

'That was three months before he died,' she said. Then, morosely, 'We were barely speaking.'

'Forgive my asking: why not?'

'Please don't misunderstand. We were close. Most of my life, it was just Dad and me. My mother and sister lived in Canada. But those last few of years, he was depressed. He withdrew. I didn't know what he was up to half the time. But he never asked me to co-sign on a loan.'

'Might he have forged your signature?'

'He would never do something like that.'

'Do you have writing samples?' John asked next. He dug into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a notepad. 'Yours and his? A variety would be ideal.'

'I can find some.'

'Thank you. And . . . the last letter?'

She opened the final envelope containing her most recent correspondence.

In addition to a new statement that brought her debts to nearly a half million quid, the letter included a veiled threat: actions will be taken to satisfy this debt, by force if necessary. All she had was a financial account to which she was expected to wire the money. But internet searches and phone calls couldn't trace where the letters were coming from, and Mary, believing herself to be in serious financial, if not legal, straits, sought advice from her sister once again.

'What am I to do?' she asked through tears, and she pressed the phone to her ear like it was a lifeline. 'They say I owe hundreds of thousands of pounds! I'll never be able to pay it back, not in ten lifetimes, and every month it gets worse. The interest alone—!'

'Mary, calm down.'

'I'll lose my flat, I'll lose everything.'

'I want you to calm down and listen.'

'I think . . . I think I have to go to the police.'

'No no, don't go to the police . . .'

John Watson's eyes grew more and more concerned the further down the page he went. His lips moved with what he was reading until he got to the end, and she heard him speak softly, as though to himself, 'By force if necessary.'

'They'll garnish my wages,' she said without breath. 'They'll take everything I own, down to the doorknobs, and I'll be out on the streets. And I can't even prove that I didn't co-sign on that loan. My sister's husband is an attorney in Canada, and she's a paralegal, and they say that the contract, the one I supposedly signed, makes my claim against it a civil matter, not a criminal one, so going to the police is pointless, if not dangerous. I'd have to take it to court, but a court will see my signature as legally binding. I know that's not my signature, but I can't prove it. I can't even find these people and talk to them, explain things. If you . . .' She straightened in her chair and leant into the table, 'I don't know, if you could find them, as a detective, and help me prove that I never signed anything, they would have to remove my name from my father's debts.'

His eyes were filled with doubt, his expression troubled. She knew that he had said he was only there to talk. Maybe he thought he had made a mistake and couldn't help her after all, not even to point her in the right direction. And here she was, confiding in him, a practical stranger, the details of her life, ready to answer any and all questions. The only other people on the planet who knew the extent of her plight—besides those perpetrating it—were Samantha and her husband Gayan. And now there was John Watson.

'People like this,' he began slowly, 'can't simply be reasoned with.'

'But,' she protested, smoothing out the latest letter beneath her hands and feeling her throat thicken again. 'But the law . . . If they realise that I never co-signed on a loan with my father, then they'd have to . . .'

'The law means very little to crooks.'

'Crooks?'

John sighed, though not in annoyance. More like . . . sadness. 'The first letter you received was obviously forged. Your signature was, too. My guess is that these people's true business is fraud. That is a criminal matter.'

She shook her head in disbelief, horrified at the thought that she, of all the lowly people in the world, could ever be involved in such a horrendous thing. 'But the loan,' she said, flipping through paper to produce the proof of it.

'You shouldn't be so quick to trust people, Mary. The world is filled with liars and thieves.'

'Not everyone is a liar and a thief,' she said weakly.

He smiled, but not as though he believed her. 'Enough of us are.'

'Are you saying I shouldn't trust you?'

'Probably not,' he said, but his smile remained. Maybe it was just her imagination, but it seemed to be glowing brighter the longer they sat there. 'But only because I'm certain to disappoint you.'

'If that's your aim, I'm afraid you'll have to work a fair bit harder,' she countered.

There was a beat of silence, a moment of bright-eyed awkwardness that had the potential for both regret and brazen shamelessness. Then John laughed, and Mary with him, and for a few seconds her troubles seemed to weigh less around her neck.

'I want to help you, Mary,' he said. 'I do. I want to find these people and get them off your back. At least, get you something solid to take to the police. But I have to warn you, I'm a little out of practise. And to be brutally frank, I never really did fly solo. You're getting the monkey, not the organ grinder.'

But his self-doubt did not dissuade her. Nor did his own cautions against trust. Despite having known him for little more than an hour, all told, she trusted John Watson. And it was with that confidence that she entrusted all five letters to his care and gave him her phone number. At last, their coffee mugs drained and the sun fully hidden behind the trees, John and Mary arose, shook hands, and exchanged promises.

'I'll call,' he said, 'once I've got something . . .'

'Or if you need anything else from me . . .'

'Or just to tell you . . .'

'. . . how things are going . . .'

'. . . just so you know I haven't given up on you.'

She smiled. 'I'll have my phone on me,' she said. 'Night and day.'

With that, they parted, he going south to her north. Mary couldn't explain it, not then, not in that exact moment, but she knew that calling on John Watson was the most wonderful thing she had ever done in her life. Fifteen months later, and down to that final second, she wouldn't regret it, not one moment, not for half a breath or an arrested heartbeat.

That night, John didn't sleep. Alone in his studio flat in Camberwell, South London, with its sterile walls, bare floors, and spotty electricity, he re-examined the letters, reading them slowly and taking notes. But he didn't know what he was looking for, and his notes were as scattered as his thoughts as he kept reaching dead-ends and so-whats.

He had come to the conclusion that, even if Mary's father were still alive, it was highly doubtful that he had written that letter. It lacked all the characteristics of a letter penned from father to daughter. Yes, there was a Dear Mary at the top of the page, and a Love, Dad at the bottom. There was even a polite but detached how are you and I am well. But virtually nothing else about the letter suggested a personal relationship. How, then, was the handwriting so spot on that it convinced his own daughter? For that matter, how had her exact likeness of signature appeared on the unsecured loan application?

Forgery. Obviously.

'I already know that,' John muttered to himself. 'What am I supposed to do with it?'

There was no answer.

He turned to the billing statements, poured over them, scrutinized them without knowing what he was doing or what he should be looking for or what he might do if he stumbled upon something useful. By three in the morning, he found himself working out the figures on a calculator, just to see whether they added up, just to feel like he was accomplishing something. When he realised the futility of all his work, which amounted to nothing, he shot out of the chair, which overturned and clattered to the floor, and spoke aloud to himself, 'What am I not seeing? Tell me! What don't I observe? Damn you, why did you have to leave me? I'm no good on my own.'

He was completely in over his head. What he should do, he knew, was turn it all over to the police, insist that there was something fraudulent afoot, and let the pieces fall where they may. He was a doctor, for chrissakes. What he was not was a detective. He never had been. Who was he fooling? Why had he believed he could help? Yes, he had been a witness, a modern-day chronicler of sorts, but that was a far cry from seeing what to everyone else was invisible and then making brilliant leaps of logic. He had been barely useful then, and he was sure as hell useless now. Monkey indeed.

Frustration and exhaustion eventually drove him to curl up on the unforgiving single bed in his pitiful bedsit and sleep fitfully. There, he dreamt of piles of forged letters written in languages he'd never even heard of, then of books stacked to the ceiling and a task to read them all under an impossible deadline, and on the walls, important messages concealed in yellow spray paint.

Concentrate. I need you to concentrate.

His head twitched against the pillows. Tucked to his chest, one hand clenched and unclenched as though holding a stress toy.

I need you to maximise your visual memory.

And the thought arose, unbidden: Check the envelopes.

John's eyes snapped open. Morning light streamed through the sitting room windows. He sat up, stretched his sore muscles and massaged the crick in his neck. Even before he had rubbed the sleep from his eyes, he returned to his pile of notes. This time, he ignored the letters in favour of their casings. And that's where he found the faint watermarks, maybe a stamp: white on white, a circle, no larger than a penny, unobtrusively placed at the bottom of the flap where it was easily torn through upon opening. And in the centre of the circle, discernible only by tilting the paper to catch the light at just the right angle, were the tiny letters in all caps: A.G.R.A.

July 2012

The bustling city of Mumbai, India, was alternately known as a city of gold and a city of paucity, on the one hand a city of dreamers, on the other a city of the downtrodden. It was there that, years before, two down-and-out brothers, seeking their fortune, came up with a plan. They had the brains for it, the unmatched and prodigious talents for penmanship and forgery. The elder brother could replicate any hand, any at all, which he had once performed as a party trick. The younger had a talent for schemes. What they didn't have were the connections, or the means, to get it off the ground. Until one day, one of the brothers heard whispers of a man who could provide both. A business tycoon, or an investor, they couldn't be too sure. They never did meet him, after all; there was no real contact. But through his people, they acquired the needed funds, made invaluable connections, and maintained a discreet profile. Within a year, they were in business.

They never heard from their benefactor again, but it didn't matter: their little scheme continued to develop into a full-grown, underground organisation. Their targets, which they coded as clients, were specially selected Westerners—gullible, fearful, and rich—and, exploiting these factors, it wasn't long before the brothers themselves were sleeping on money-stuffed mattresses.

Which is how, when seeking to expand their client pool, they were able to afford new names, new identities, from a different organisation desperate to sell. Among the names they acquired was one Arthur Morstan, whom they did not know was deceased.

Late June 2012

There were those who called them terrorists, and not just as a slur. Yes, their names could be found on registries in Islamabad and nations in the West, categorised under 'terrorist and extremist groups' alongside forty-eight other domestic and transnational organisations quartered in Pakistan. But terrorist was just a name the fear-mongers gave to rebellions they sought to quash in the interest of maintaining hegemonic sovereignty. They didn't understand the injustices being fought for, the balance that needed to be restored, the infidels deposed and the righteous lifted up.

But the People's Force was struggling. Its funds were suddenly drying up as their streams of resources were being pinched, though where and how and by whom they did not know. Finances were critical—to purchase artillery and intelligence, to sway votes and make good on threats—and they had none.

So they looked to their assets and what they could liquidate. Names. They had names. Names from around the world of men and women who had made 'charitable donations' to their cause. Names that could be sold to the highest bidder. There were many names. Oh, so many.

Early June 2012

Earlier that month, a man who had died in Kyoto was resurrected in Perth. His Australian passport gave the name William Upfield, but in his few and brief introductions, he never once spoke it aloud. He was a solitary man, tired and melancholy. He said little, and when he did, his accent was British. But no one asked what he did, why he was there, whether he had eaten, though a few did wonder, privately. None knew he had arrived in Perth following an invisible line of spider's silk.

He had followed the vibrations, stronger, stronger, until he reached a point where several strings intersected. It was here he met his quarry, a small spider he had been chasing for thousands of miles and hundreds of days, and it was here that he crushed the spider and snapped the string, not knowing how long it would take for that string to unravel. He did not pause to watch the dominoes fall across the hemispheres. Instead, he kept moving. Another vibration tickled at his feet, pulling him across an ocean. By the time the unravelling thread reached Mary Morstan, he was no longer William Upfield but Harun ibn Yahya, and he was about to fall into a trap.

June 2011

Word fell off the rooftop and into the gutter of the world below: The king is dead. Long live the king.

But his throne sat empty.

Before the headstone was laid, before his body was set in ground, and before the death certificate was signed, more than one disciple rushed to claim the throne.

March 2011

He descended into a hole in the earth. Above his head, an archway of blackened red brick, and below his feet, fireclay. Dusty, dirty, no matter. He had already exchanged his dark blue Anthony Cleverley Oxfords for nondescript workmen's boots.

The man flanking him on the left, just over his shoulder, coughed. The noise of it echoed like a rock dropped down a metal pipe.

'Don't make me push you down a shaft,' he droned.

'Sorry, sir.'

They pointed their torches straight ahead and kept moving.

At the end of a passageway, they spotted the poor bastard, just where they had left him. The abject man, stripped of all but his underwear, wavered on splayed knees as the sounds of their footsteps drew nearer. Wrists bound to a metal track on one side and an iron rod on the other stretched his arms taut, prohibiting him from either rising or lying down. One thumb was discoloured and grossly swollen, broken from attempts to wrench himself free. Futile, had he managed it. It was dark as pitch without torches or lamps, even if he had managed to remove the bag from his head. His clothes—a pair of jeans, t-shirt, and jacket—were folded and stacked a few feet away, trainers laced and resting on top of the pile.

'Let me see him.'

The man on his right stepped forward, and the sad, kneeling sod whimpered as a hand came down on his head, fisted the dark cloth, and yanked it away. Three beams from torches fell on his face. Squeezing his eyes, he tried to turn his head away. He had been blinded for more than forty-eight hours and could not now abide the light.

'His name.'

'Calls himself Brook. Richard Brook.'

'Rich Brook,' he repeated. Then suddenly he laughed. 'You don't say! My very own Reichen Bach.' He crouched down in front of the man called Brook, took hold of his chin, and pulled it straight. Then he stared, evaluating.

'It's uncanny.' He slapped the man's face lightly. 'Oi. You. Brook. Eyes open, brother. There you go, gorgeous, you're doing so well. How tall is he?'

'Five foot eight,' said his right-hand.

'Eleven stones,' said his left.

'And such pretty, pretty brown eyes,' he finished.

The man's eyes were open and streaming, and he might have said something but for the gag in his mouth, so all he did was whimper.

'Actor by trade,' his right added.

'Ah, a seeker of fame, is he? Looks like someone is about to get his wish.' He smoothed down the man's dirty hair and whispered, 'You're going to be famous, Richard Brook.' Then he patted his cheeks and laughed before rising to his feet. He pulled out a kerchief and wiped his hands clean.

'No blood,' he said. 'Just make sure the body is never found.'

The man's eyes widened with trepidation. He moaned in objection behind the gag and shook his head with pitiful futility.

'Yes, sir. We can take him to—'

'No details, thank you, I don't need the particulars. Just get it done. Off you pop.'

He retrieved his torch and turned to go, leaving the man Richard with his executioners. But he paused midstride, looked down at the pile of clothes, and reached for the shoes. They were heavy in his hands, the way a good pair of shoes ought to be.

Richard Brook, he mouthed, trying out his new name as he walked away, a little bounce in his step. It had a nice, innocuous note to it. Richard Brook, an actor, in his greatest role yet.

Summer 2010

'And these pretty little webs of yours, they spread across England, do they?'

Moriarty tutted. 'Naughty naughty, Mr Holmes, you're not playing by the rules. It's my turn.'

Stretching his legs out in front of him and crossing on ankle over, he brought his palms together and fingertips to his lips, perfectly replicating Mycroft Holmes' nasty little brother. It didn't matter that he was in cuffs. The pose would be recognised, and it was designed to unnerve. Sure enough, he detected a scarcely controlled flinch in the corner of Mr Holmes' eye.

'The skull on his mantelpiece,' he said, imitating the voice, too, when in deduction mode, 'and the one hanging on the wall, and the painting by door. How very indecorous of him. How it borders on the obsessive. Not a new hobby for him, is it. So tell me. When did it all begin, this skeletal fascination of his?'

Across the table from him, Mycroft Holmes' eyes had gone dark. His crossed arms locked in position, and James Moriarty withheld a smirk. He'd touched a nerve and set Mr Holmes' whole corpus afire.

But he answered in clipped measure. 'I couldn't say.'

Moriarty gave him a dubious stare.

'I was little involved in the affairs of his childhood.'

'So he was a child, then.'

Mycroft frowned; he was a man unaccustomed to being caught out. But he made no reply.

Tutting again, Moriarty said in a voice of childish disappointment, 'No fair, Mr Holmes. You're not playing the game.'

'Sherlock memorised the human skeleton when he was very young,' Mycroft answered quickly, as though to get it over with. 'He's always had an inquisitive mind, a brain for memorisation, and a propensity for science. Hardly remarkable he should know his anatomy.'

'I'll add my own commentary, thank you. But you didn't answer my question. When did it begin? Why skulls?'

Mycroft Holmes appeared to be chewing his tongue, debating whether to answer. But he did. 'An uncle died, as uncles do. It was Sherlock's first real experience with death. Quite normal for a child to have questions. Even more normal for Sherlock to seek answers, ad nauseam.'

'And he liked it, did he? Death. The stink of corpses? The decay of flesh? The dissolution into nothing but a pile of hard, white bone? Does he find it comforting, the dead? Sensible? Sexy?'

'There are rules to this, Mr Moriarty, lest you forget. It is my turn to ask a question.' Mr Holmes unfolded his arms and leant his elbows on the table. 'I'll repeat. How far does this web of yours stretch?'

'Ah, Mr Holmes,' he groaned, 'don't be boring. It's pointless, this line of inquiry. After all, you can't topple the world.'

January 2010

His kingdom. His life's work. A vast, complex nexus of anarchists and terror cells, criminal underbellies and amateur crooks—thieves and liars, murderers and rapists—and he alone saw them all, and he alone could make them all dance with a flick of the wrist and turn of the puppet.

Sometimes, though, too often anymore, he was just so bored with it. They were all so predictable, so easy to manipulate, and there was no satisfaction in sponsoring dastardly deeds or organising destructive plots. Too easy, it was all too easy.

But ah, London. There was his salvation, his relief from caustic boredom. Because Sherlock Holmes was in London. He felt it like prophecy but knew it to be sheer, unadulterated logic. With Sherlock, he would never be bored again.

October 2009

He kept a weather eye on the work of his acolytes, of course. In San Salvador, he orchestrated a string of kidnappings-for-ransom to help fund drug trades with Caracas and monitored activities via watchdog websites. In Burundi, he coordinated the assassination of a diplomat with one of his very own and favourite snipers, knowing that the blame would fall to the man's own security detail (and the news reported that it did). In London, he sponsored a hard-luck cabbie to commit random murders of his patrons, and he read about the first of them in the papers. With a grin, he slid a few thousand pounds into the man's bank account, the promise of more to come.

But while gathering intelligence on this latest activity in London, he came across a name that plucked a string in his memory, one he'd not heard since he was a child, and it gave him pause. A detective, a consulting detective, some sort of self-described 'specialist', called Sherlock Holmes. Twenty years, and his once-opponent had come back to play.

1989

Carl Powers was dead. Drowned. A seizure, they said, laying blame on the body, lamenting the malice of happenstance. A tragedy, they said, when death comes so unexpectedly to the young.

But Jim Moriarty laughed—at their foolishness, their blindness—and clipped another article out of the paper. Anyone with eyes should have seen. It was not unexpected at all. In fact, it was only fitting that an athletic, well-liked, but black-hearted boy such as Carl, who ceaselessly tormented another kid with cruel names like duffer, bog-trotter, and freak, solely because he was different, should be meted out his just comeuppance. Jim believed in punishment for hubris.

In the end, it was easy. Clostridum botulinum. It was a soil bacterium he had read about in an encyclopaedia, when all his interests and private studies had orbited around disease and death. He liked death. He was fascinated by it. He found it comforting. Sensible. Stimulating. It was the one sure thing in the world, certain to come to everyone, including him, and certainly including little blighters like Carl Powers. Death—and those who dared to wield it—held the greatest power on earth.

For a few days, Carl Powers' name was sprinkled throughout the London papers, and Jim devoured every letter that erroneously attributed his death to natural causes. He laughed at the incompetence of the police, the laziness of the coroner, the grief of the family. But the story of a natural death, even that of a child, was not newsworthy enough to hold anyone's attention for more than a few runs of ink. Powers disappeared from the London papers. Jim's brilliant work had been a little too brilliant: not one eyebrow was raised, not one person came out to play. In the end, the whole affair was rather . . . disappointing.

He had kept the shoes. At first, in a box beneath his bed, but eventually in more treasured and more secure places, and once in a while he took them out to admire. The shoes of a dead boy—they excited him. They were a reminder of the thrill of snuffing out a life and not getting caught, and a promise that he could feel the same again, if he was of a mind to.

And then, some four weeks after Carl Powers' poisoned corpse was laid in the earth, Jim spotted it in The Argus: a letter to the editor, printed near the back.

I find it curious that no one has questioned the disappearance of Carl Powers' shoes. What, did he eat them? I find it even more curious that the London police force have a policy to employ only imbeciles to investigate the suspicious nature of the death of an 11-year-old boy.

It was signed Sherlock Holmes of Eton, Berkshire (age 13).

A tingle of excitement chased up Jim's spine, titillating his brain and setting his nerve endings aglow. His work had been noticed, admired, appreciated. Someone had noticed the shoes! Of a sudden, he felt as though he had set a board and moved a pawn; all he had been waiting for was someone to occupy the seat across from him. A worthy opponent. Was it he, this Berkshire boy of an age with him, this Sherlock Holmes?

But nothing happened. The letter made no ripples, and the boy apparently had lost interest and pursued the issue no further. With a stab of resentment, Jim closed the door on the chess board, though he didn't clear it away. Not yet. There was always the chance the one day, he might like to play again.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

The room was bare but bright, so bright his eyes burned and he struggled to keep his lids parted as they adjusted. Was it a room? The floor beneath his feet was solid like tile, and each step he took clipped but did not echo, and he could see no edge, no wall, as if the floor stretched on and on in every direction to a far-distant horizon. The ceiling or sky was just as white. Or maybe just blank. Maybe it was nothingness. Maybe oblivion was not darkness after all, but a vast, blank slate.

Behind him, he heard a chink, stone against stone. He turned. There stood the table, and on the table a board, and on the board, the players were set. A game was in progress.

Seated at the table, reclined in a chair with hands folded in his lap, his opponent sat in suspension.

'I've been waiting for you,' James Moriarty said, tone droll, expression bored, nearing impatience. He nodded to the empty seat. 'Are you finally ready to play?'

He reviewed the board, recalling the history of every move, every victory, every sacrifice. Removed from the black and white squares and set to the side, no longer a part of the game, were the pieces that had been lost. Among the remaining black pieces stood two queens, and he remembered that, too. When the Woman had slipped past his defences, when her pawn had reached the other side, she had been promoted to a queen. Facing off, his own white queen stood in danger, having ventured too far from the line of defence.

'Yes,' he said, resuming his familiar seat.

Moriarty sat forward in his chair, hands on the table, leaning his body toward Sherlock. Surrounded in oblivion, his eyes were as black as nightfall. Once, they had been like a mirror. Now, they were two empty pits, threatening to swallow him whole.

'Your move, Sherlock.'

Sherlock selected his knight.

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