Chapter Text
“Life is all memory except for the one present moment
that goes by so quick you can hardly catch it going.”
~ Tennessee Williams
“Are you Dr. John Watson?” When she spoke, her voice didn’t just strike a chord in my chest, it ignited a whole orchestra. All I could do was nod in response, watching as she pressing a white hand against the curtain. She looked down towards where I stood on the grass and leaned against the frame of the window, not quite in the light. I had to swallow down my nerves rather hard before I managed to speak.
“I am, Miss.” I replied, leaning a touch heavy on my walking stick, feeling it sink into the earth, and suddenly I wished I took the time to polish it clean of fingermarks before trotting out into town. I strained a little, but still couldn’t quite get the look at her I would have liked to.
“Then do come in.” She replied. “No sense in you standing outside. You can’t live in a place if you’re standing in front of it, can you?”
With that, she vanished, snapping the windows shut and leaving me to find my own way to the front door. It was my doctor that sent me here -- he’d made all the arrangement’s himself. A doctor’s doctor, was Michael Stamford, and as thorough and reliable a friend as ever was bred. My war wounds, he explained, would never properly heal (and my joints never forgive me) in the damp of Seattle. Originally from Georgia myself, I’d only gone north for my education and that was before the army took me in. When I was finished, Seattle just happened to be the only city I had any familiar roots, so it seemed to me the very place I ought to go. Michael though, well he had other plans for me. It just so happened that Stamford had an elderly aunt tucked away in one corner of Mississippi or another. Told me she had a nice set up there with a place for me and that that was what I needed. His aunt’s name, I remembered, was Mrs. Hudson who, at the bright age of seventy, I must say I suspected was not the woman in the window.
That woman, the woman, I was eventually to learn, was named Sherlock Holmes -- and my new address to be 221 Baker Street, apartment C. She resided across the hall in B, as the large estate’s second floor had been split into two nearly-separate, spacious flats, each boasting a sitting area, bedroom and half-bath. Some amenities, such as the kitchen and full bath, were to be shared between the two of us. I was well aware of these conditions before my arrival, but to my knowledge the other half of my share had not been lent to anyone. Not that it made any difference to me, particularly not when it seemed as though I’d be sharing with so pleasing a sight for sore eyes.
My first afternoon, however, was entirely claimed by the dear Mrs. Hudson, my new landlady, who wished to know all about how long my stay might be (‘six months, if you’ll have me’) the nature of my wound (‘I was unlucky enough to have my hip between a bullet and its target’) and general inquiries as to what I might need throughout the months. I waited with more keen interest than patience for Mrs. Hudson to bring up the woman with which I’d be sharing the floor but nothing about her was even hinted at. While I thought it odd I did not want to press the issue. I certainly didn’t want to be seen as an impolite guest during my very first afternoon, after all. By the time I managed to excuse myself from Mrs. Hudson’s hospitality, the sky was turning indigo. I went upstairs to investigate my new home and neighbour on my own.
I used the key I’d been provided to enter my rooms and found them to be quite to my liking. The furniture was simple, and the floor plan roomy, open. Really, I fell in love with the whole place almost at once. After all, it was quite superior to the little bundle I lived in up north -- but then, to be honest, I rather expected it would be. I’d believed that more than just the weather would be better down here and I was just pleased as punch not to be disappointed.
It wasn’t until I found my way to the bedroom that I realised something was amiss: Mrs. Hudson had informed me that my luggage, which had the good fortune to arrive the day before me, had been placed neatly into a corner of the room. As I sincerely doubted that my landlady’s idea of orderly was to open each of my cases and dump the contents about the floor, I’m sure it doesn’t take much to imagine my alarm at finding my belongings all asunder. But even then, my dumbfoundedness was nothing compared to the fright I was about to have.
“You took the wrong train.” Came the voice from behind me. I spun so quickly to look over my shoulder that to this very day there is a tell-tale mark from the heel of my cane in the hardwood. There she stood, the woman from the window. She was still in her hat, but her chin was slanted upwards enough that I could see her eyes -- the very colour Spanish Moss. And there I stood, mouth snapped shut, nearly toppling from ill-managed balance and looking, I’m sure, like quite the fool. I might have tried to think of something to say to her, had I not been so busy holding my breath, thought it probably was for the better that I stayed silent, all things considered.
“How can you expect me,” she continued, “to be able to put it all back when you take the wrong train and arrive two hours before you were meant to? I did think about trying while Mrs. Hudson had you downstairs but no--no, you would have heard me.”
“You did this?” I managed, feeling at onceblessed to have regained the use of my faculties.
“Of course I did.” She crossed her exposed arms over her chest and I shivered as though the temperature of the room sank a few degrees. “I could never let you live here until I knew everything -- until I was sure about you and now I am.”
“Really?” I won’t pretend that this was any kind of crowning intellectual moment. Though, in my defense, I was still quite shocked that this woman felt so comfortable announcing that she’d been through my worldly possessions. Had she not confessed, I imagine I might have sussed it out on my own, but I certainly wasn’t thinking about any of that.
“I know that you are a doctor and that you were in the army, serving overseas until an injury sent you home--”
“Surely, Mrs. Hudson could have told you that.”
She paused, green eyes flickering which something I’d later come to know meant annoyance.
“You almost died.” She snipped. “You play off your wound like it grazed your leg and that your dismissal from the army was ridiculously uncalled for, but it wasn’t. No, not at all, because you nearly bled out in the sand. Almost a miracle you didn’t. Mm, and I know you have a sister who feels sorry for you though you wish she wouldn’t. That you were engaged to be married to a woman who wrote to you while you were away to tell you she’d fallen for a friend of yours, tragic but probably better than her telling you she’d going on with him the whole time you were engaged, I think.”
“Now--I say!”
“You say, Doctor Watson, that Mrs. Hudson could surely not have told me any of that.”
I clicked my tongue in disbelief and turned from her, my attention back on my heap of debris as I attempted to recollect what sorts of mementos I’d brought along to my new residence. There were letters from my sister, from Mary, the most recent woman to scorned me (not the first to do so nor, quite tragically, would she be the last), but as far as I knew -- and my army days instilled in my a talent for remaining very familiar with my own personal inventory -- there was nothing in any of my suitcases or trunks that gave insight to the severity of my injury. I’d gone to great lengths to keep that as secret from anyone who’d had no reason to know otherwise.
“How did--” I started to twist around to face her but stopped midway when I realised she was gone. That I was left alone to put my affairs (and socks) back into order. Women have been doing that to me as long as I’ve been interested in them, though, I must say, not quite in this way. .
***
“Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering,
because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.”
~Tennessee Williams
There was a lovely bit of scenery near Baker street. A beautiful park with a shimmering pond, a little stone church with a picturesque white fence erected around yard and cemetery. Stamford was right, the weather was doing wonders for me. But even so, I was much happier inside with a book. Taking the stairs twice daily was nearly all I could handle.
This particular morning started the in much the same way as all the rest. I sat in the kitchen, coffee in one hand and eggs and toast left to get cold as I scanned the newspaper I’d collected during my morning jaunt. Now, the reason my breakfast was so sadly neglected was the tragic story splashed across the front page held my full attention. It detailed the gruesome suicide of a young singer named Irene Norton. She was discovered the previous morning in a bathtub at the Monmouth, wrists slashed. The reporter covering the story did so with minimal sensationalism, speaking about the loss of life and talent and only hinting faintly at Mrs. Norton’s sordid past. I found myself flipping back to the black and white photo of the deceased, just to look at her again. She was captivating with her beautiful tanned skin and eyes so black and endless I felt almost as though I might get lost in even the mere photo of them. I wondered what on earth could possess such a creature to want to end her own life.
“She didn’t kill herself.”
I am proud to say that this time, when Sherlock spoke, I did not nearly leap out of my skin. I nearly dropped my coffee mug, of course, but I managed to tighten my grip before ruining both the paper and my trousers.
“I know it is hard to believe,” I said, flipping the paper open, away from her photograph.
“It’s hard to believe,” Sherlock said. “Because it didn’t happen.”
“The police--”
“The police are incompetent,” she snapped, hooking the chair to my left with her foot and pulling it back to sit beside me. “You have to do something for me.”
I stared at her. We had not spoken, as I’ve said, since my very arrival and so any request for a favour seemed strange, which was exactly why I was interested to hear exactly what she wanted to ask of me and I nodded my head for her to continue.
“You must go to the Sheriff, his name is Lestrade, and I promise he will speak with you. Tell him exactly what I am about to tell you.” Before I could say anything, (or, more correctly, before I could think of anything I might say) she began her explanation of the crime: “Mrs. Norton was at the hotel to visit with a former lover. Someone who begged to see her regarding a number of photographs in her possession. If the police are to examine her luggage, they’ll find a letter saying as much. It was by this man’s hand that she met her demise. After she denied him what he’d come for--”
She shut her eyes, sliding her hands across the table, tracing a line with her fingernail. I reached forward, to touch her hand, thinking that perhaps the events that she was recalling had some negative effect. She withdrew before I made contact and shook her head, dismissing any future attempt at comfort.
“She told him to leave, he made as though he did. Instead, however, he hid in one of the room’s wardrobes, his fingerprints can be found on the inside of it’s door --after that, gloves. He waited for the opportunity and then overtook Mrs. Norton while she lay in the bath, pulling her under by the ankles to leave no marks. Unconscious, he slashed her wrists and then left the scene.”
“How do you--” I shook my head. “If all of this is true, why don’t you see Lestrade yourself?”
“Because he won’t see me.” Her voice practically venomous. Sherlock seemed to realise the shortness of her tone. She tried to smile to make up for her error and tapped the table in front of me, again withdrawing before I’d even had the idea to brush her hand with my own. “Please, I promise you that he will understand, you must do this for me.”
Though I did agree, I did so to keep from upsetting the dear woman, and not because I was entirely convinced of what I was hearing. I had no real intention of going to the police and involving myself in an investigation that I had no place in. But I felt I might be ill-equipped to argue my reasons at the breakfast table, and so I waited for her to repeat the details twice more (and have me recite them once) before she rose from the table and returned to her private rooms. I followed suit a few moments later, and sat down at my writing desk to pen a letter for Stamford and give him a full report of how well I was improving. He appreciated the detail with which I could explain my health, given my own medical expertise, but today I found that I was far too distracted to supply anything like a significant amount of information.
No matter what I tried to focus myself with, I was still caught up on Mrs. Norton’s haunting eyes. The more I thought about that printed photo of her in the paper, the more I considered that fact that, if Holmes was right, someone would be getting away with the murder of that sweet singing angel. I still couldn’t vouch for the validity of Sherlock’s claims, or even to explain to myself how it was she’d come to know what she did, but by the time my afternoon stroll came around, I found myself on a new route, heading towards the police station to find this Sheriff Lestrade and tell him everything it was that I thought I knew.
***
When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely,
it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.
~Tennessee Williams
Gregory Lestrade was still a bit shy of fifty, sporting silver hair that made him look wiser but not necessarily older. But he did seem a bit worn, reminding me immediately of the battle-drained soldiers that I had stood alongside during the worst of times overseas. But there was something else, a sort of settled sadness that couldn’t have come just from a day’s hard work. There was something on this Sheriff’s shoulders, I knew it at once, but this was neither time or place nor was I friend enough to inquire.
“I hear you’ve something to say about Mrs. Norton.” He ran his hand through his hair and, while I’ll never claim to be an observant man, it was hard not to notice the white strip across his sun-darkened hand. Evidence of a ring not long removed and I couldn’t help but wonder if that had something to do with the man’s grim exhaustion. “Something I’d better know? Get on with it, then..”
Without even taking a seat, I repeated syllable for syllable all it was that my strange neighbour bid me tell. I offered no embellishments and was quite grateful that the Sheriff didn’t interrupt me seeking explanations because I honestly had none to offer apart from the rather thin excuse that all of this had come from a woman I shared a kitchen with. When I finally finished recounting the details of Mrs. Norton’s murder, I could see the question -- the suspicion -- behind Lestrade’s gaze and I knew I’d have to say something about where I’d come upon my information, less it look like I was the culprit in this terrible crime.
“That is quite the story--where’d you come across it?” Lestrade said at last, sitting back with the expression of a man whose fabric of patience was nearly threadbare.
“I know how hard it might be to believe, but the woman who lives in the apartment next to mine, she told me all of this, and begged me to bring it to you.”
“What’s her name?”
I didn’t know. She’d known my name, called me by it when I’d first arrived and I’d never thought to ask her’s. Of course, given how important information like that would be in these circumstances, I felt an idiot to be standing there without it, but the Sheriff seemed to take in stride my meek reply that she hadn’t told me her name. Once again he shook the fringe of his hair with a tired hand and then fixed his gaze on me.
“Well, I do suppose you can at least tell me where she lives?” There was a bit of sarcasm there, but it wasn’t really delivered with any real bite, but more in the way a parent might ask a child a rather obvious question.
“Of course, I’m sorry.” I said, a bit embarrassed with myself. “Baker street, I moved into an apartment on the second floor of 221. I’m in C and this woman, who told me all of this, well she’s in B.”
As I spoke, I watched at the poor Sheriff's face slipped closer and closer to the colour of a cotton sheet, scrubbed clean and hung wet and heavy on a clothesline. I recalled my neighbour explaining that, had she come herself, Lestrade wouldn’t have seen her and I wondered if maybe I should have lied about that little detail -- not that lying to a police officer is ever something I’d recommend.
“Sherlock.” He said, his voice icy enough to near frighten me. “That’s--do you think that’s funny? To come in here with your unfounded--and to say that--No, I’m sorry but you need to leave. Do you understand? And, If you’re not gone by the time I’ve counted to seven, I will arrest you where you stand for Norton’s murder -- taking what you just told me as a confession.”
I was gone before I could find out if he meant counting in the figurative sense, or if he was about to start listing off the numbers. Once outside, I realised I hadn’t moved anything near that fast since college sports, let alone before my war injury. And I know that, what with a Mrs. Norton dead, I shouldn’t have been so angry about my own sudden circumstances, but I was. I was upset with that woman I lived with, with that Sherlock. I felt as though she’d lied to me, that she must have, for the Sheriff to become so changed as soon as he learned the source of my information. Perhaps this was something she did often, running to the police with tall tales and ridiculous notions, which was why Lestrade would have never see her, had I thought of that I might have known better than to be pulled into her wicked schemes.
Mrs. Hudson was out when I returned to Baker street, and so the object to receive my frustration was the door to apartment B. I pounded, most impolitely, and demanded Sherlock come and explain herself, but she never appeared and eventually I felt more ridiculous standing there than I had in Lestrade’s office and so I retired to my room for the night.
Sometime, perhaps around midnight when I was tucked beneath my blankets and drifting towards dreams that would offer respite from the events of the day, I could swear I heard violin music and thought for a moment that I should try again to seek an answer from the woman in the other rooms, but the music was sweet and I too exhausted to drag my stiff joints from the comfort of my bed and in the end, sleep won the battle.
***
Truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.
~ Tennessee Williams
Lestrade looked at me and set his jaw. He looked upset, even more so then he had the day before, and cleared his throat gruffly before heading towards the stairs without a word. I was entirely unsure what I should do, and thought to go after him. But, then I noticed that he’d left Sherlock’s door slightly ajar before he departed so I decided to press on into the woman’s room to get answers from the person who’d initiated my current state of confusion. After all, it was my original plan and seemed the safer route to take then to attempt to speak to a policeman who quite clearly had very little he wanted to say to me.
Her room was furnished in almost the same manner as mine, not that that was obvious upon first inspection: Sherlock’s similar spaciously arranged furniture was all but buried beneath boxes and bins filled with papers, what appeared to be chemistry equipment and other collections and clutter that would take me a lifetime to list. There even appeared to be a human skull grinning menacingly from beneath a discarded lampshade. It took me a full minute before I actually saw her among the mess, leaned against the same open window where she’d been when I’d first come to Baker Street. She stared down, and from my position I could see that she was watching Lestrade walk down the path away from the house.
“Sherlock?” I said, regretting it immediately when she turned toward me. She looked, I dare to say, as though she was on one end of crying. Whether she’d started or whether she’d just finished, I couldn’t tell.
And, for the second time in under twenty-four hours, I found myself thrown out of a room more confounded than I was when I entered it. At first, I thought I might knock and offer some apologies for my intrusion through the wooden door but it occurred to me that if I hurried I might still be able to catch Lestrade before he made it too far. And while in my heart I felt it might not be the wisest of actions, I knew that if someone didn’t offer me some kind of mitigation I would never be able to rest. So, miserable joints be damned, I flew down the stairs and out the door to overtake the Sheriff just before he managed to turn down the road towards town.
“Wait!” I shouted, far more out of breath then my pride allowed me to act. “Wait--please, Sheriff, please, you must tell me the meaning of all of this!”
Lestrade did wait, stopping and turning to me with the same grave expression he held when he’d exited Sherlock’s room. He looked me over once and then shook his head before finally beginning to speak. “I don’t know how you knew all that about Mrs. Norton’s death, but you were right. We found the letter -- found the fingerprints like you said we would. I was at it all night myself. We brought him in, the man who wrote to poor Irene and he confessed to the whole ordeal. He was married, you see, and worried she might show his family the photographs. But how you knew--”
“I told you,” I breathed, pulling a handkerchief from my pocket to wipe my forehead. “It was Sherlock, I heard the whole thing from her, just yesterday before I brought it to you, I met with her in the kitchen and--”
“Sherlock-- she isn’t there.” he replied, sinking his hands against his hips and looking at me as though he wasn’t sure what to make of my insistence. Or, really, what to make of me in any regard I expect. He certainly didn’t look pleased to have been followed, or to be pressed for any kind of answers now.
“What? But she--you just saw her yourself -- you were in her room!”
Lestrade stood in silence once more, looking at me with obvious disbelief and clearly unsure what to say. He ran his tongue absently over his bottom lip and then turned to gesture to the road before us. “I think, Dr. Watson” he said, in a very quiet voice, “there might just be something that you ought to see.”
We walked in silence along the path I strolled nearly every morning, past the park with its glistening pond and toward the little churchyard with its quaint little gardens and bright picket fence. Greg pulled the gate open and gestured me inside before taking the lead and bringing us through the yard and towards the graveyard that flowed along the side of the church and back behind it down a very gentle slope. I hadn’t the faintest clue why he’d thought to bring me here, and without my walking stick I fell behind at the hill, taking shorter steps to descend. I watched as the Sheriff came to a halt in front of one of the stones and limped over, ashamed with the effort it took. I looked at the man, and then followed his gaze to the stone -- which is about when I felt as though my heart had stopped and gone dead in my chest. My hand fell to Lestrade’s shoulder, suddenly needing him to keep myself upright as I read the engraving.
Sherlock Holmes Lestrade
Loving Wife of Gregory Lestrade
Death is one moment, and life is so many of them.
~Tennessee Williams.
“Sherlock,” he spoke at last, “used to live in the rooms above Mrs. Hudson until we married a good two years ago. She insisted on keeping them, though, as an office -- she was, she was a detective and a damn good one, but--but she-- three months ago, now. Murdered.”
“But I just--” I started.
“I don’t know.” Greg cut me off, shaking his head and stepping away from me once he was certain I could stand on my own feet. “I don’t know who you spoke to and I’m not sure that I want to. But it wasn’t my wife and I would-- I would very much appreciate if this went no further. Thank you, again, very much for your help but that’ll be all, Dr. Watson.”
With that, the Sheriff stretched forward his hand and touched the corner of his wife’s stone, and I could see once more, the angry white scar on his tanned hand, the line where a wedding ring ought to be. He sighed, face contorted in a heart-breaking attempt to keep his emotions to himself, and then he turned his back towards me, wished me a broken ‘good day’ and left me standing there to sort out some kind of solution to what had happened. It had to be fifteen minutes or more before I found the ability within myself to move.
Slowly, numbly, I returned to Baker street. I thought about finding somewhere else to turn, a hotel for the night perhaps, but in the end it was the only familiar place I knew that called to me. I climbed the stairs, stopping after every other step to rest my leg, until I made it to the hallway between our two apartments. I tried Sherlock’s door, though I’m not sure why, and pushed it open. The room was exactly how it had been that morning when I’d seen her by the window. The only difference now being the fact that she wasn’t there. Truthfully, I suppose I hadn’t expected her to be.
I sank into a chair at the kitchen table with a stout glass in my left and a bottle of bourbon in my right. It wasn’t yet noon but such restrictions didn’t seem to matter as I poured myself a double and then another. The alcohol and the warmth of the room washed over me as the tide of adrenaline from the morning’s realisations slowly went out. One hand still around the bottle, my head sank into the folded arm I’d rested on the table.
“I told you,” said a voice, and I didn’t have to look up to know it was her, whatever she was. “I told you that he couldn’t see me.”