Echoes of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon(29)
Perhaps he didn’t notice the smear of lip rouge on his cheek, but I certainly did. “And left you the chatelaine as a memento?”
“Not only that.” He held up a heavy leather sack. A smell of mildew overwhelmed me when he opened it, and the soft sound of clanking coin could be heard from inside. “Quite a lot of gold, actually. And as Sewall is under arrest, Miss Hartley, as the lawful inheritor, has apparently disbursed funds as she’s seen fit.”
“This will certainly set us right enough,” I said. “That much gold will get our feet under us!”
“Indeed, Watson.” Holmes looked around the place with such an air of contentment as I had never seen before. His quiet calm affected me similarly. He reached over to a bloom, and, with infinite gentleness, ran his finger along the bee lingering there in the lantern light. “Ubi mel, ibi apes. Where there is honey, there are bees. A hive is a kind of utopia, is it not? One could learn much from the study of bees.”
And so, in spite of our wounds, and our failure in locating the treasure for our client, it had been a very successful outcome. Sewall, the would-be smuggler, was in prison; a dangerous revolutionary gang was eradicated; and Miss Hartley had safely fled to start a new life.
We found our way to the train and were back in London before midnight. After stitching up our wounds and eating a cold dinner, we retired.
I slept for nearly eighteen hours. The next evening, Holmes and I determined to celebrate our good fortune. The mood was festive, and the wine flowed freely. We shook hands as we parted, I to find Dermody, and Holmes to visit a philosopher friend to discuss bees. We vowed we could now proceed as we’d always planned, live more quietly, and settle into a comfortable life, now that our situation was not so precarious.
It was with a great sense of pride and purpose that I paid off Dermody. He agreed that we were square, and we shared a drink to commemorate the occasion. A good-natured argument broke out and a small wager was placed. Pleased at being found correct, I allowed Dermody to make another, about the color of the scarf of the next gentleman to walk in.
You may imagine what followed. I must, for I have no clear memory of the rest of the evening.
I woke the next afternoon in Margaret Hudson’s bed, searing pain behind my eyes and a coppery taste of blood and bile in my mouth. A tooth was loose and my stomach was distinctly unwell. The wallpaper pattern seemed to slither up the wall, and my shame and self-disgust threatened to swallow me once again.
Mags appeared, a cup of tea in her hand. Noble woman, she had laced it heavily with brandy and honey. She didn’t say a word, and while I expected to see pursed lips or hear some rebuke from her, I saw only concern and love in her face. “That chaos in your sitting room . . . was that you, too?”
“What chaos?” But a terrible memory, one that had resulted in me finishing off the brandy bottle at home, suddenly emerged from my mental fog. My medical bag up-ended, several vials of morphine gone. “No, no. No, that was Holmes.”
My friend had fared no better than I. Sadness, anger, frustration welled up inside me, and there might have been tears, if it had not been for Margaret.
“Bloody Sherlock Holmes,” she said. I recognized her ruse of disparaging him so that I might think of something other than my own misery.
“He’s just a man, with weaknesses, as any of us,” I said. “Oh, Mags—”
“Here, now. None of that.” She pulled a pen and paper from her apron pocket. “Write it down. Set yourself your own example. You said it yourself, you’re just a man, with weaknesses, same as all of us.” She paused at the door. “We can only keep striving to find our better selves.”
BEFORE A BOHEMIAN SCANDAL
by Tasha Alexander
Although he could not deny its effectiveness, cruelty as an art repulsed him. He viewed it as unbecoming to a gentleman of his status. This status was precisely what had insulated him from, as yet, ever having to employ it. Others could take care of any unpleasantness with which he preferred not to deal. Usually. Tonight, however, as he pressed his back harder against the scarlet silk hanging on the wall of the reception room to which he and his friends had retired, Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, hereditary Crown Prince of Bohemia, feared cruelty would prove the only way out of a most inconvenient predicament.
If only she would stop talking, he thought, chastising himself for ever having found her wide blue eyes beguiling. He had not expected an affair of three days to prove so difficult to end, but his subtle attempts to brush off Magda had made not the slightest impression upon her. Firmly up against the wall, his exit was blocked by an inconvenient buffet table on one side and a large potted palm on the other. He dared not step forward, as doing so would put him even closer to her. She was laughing, a coarse, throaty chortle unsuited to a woman of her profession—opera singers should never sound rough—and suggested, too loudly, that they return to his suite.
“Magda, darling, you do realize, I hope, that this—” Irene Adler, celebrated contralto, stopped mid-sentence as she approached, looked each of them over in turn, and raised a single arched eyebrow before continuing. “—this dalliance will never amount to anything. I could see the horror writ on your companion’s face from across the room. As he stands a good two heads above you, perhaps you were not in a position to notice.”
Magda had spun around to face the newcomer. “Miss Adler, forgive me, I—”