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charleygirlTitle: The Hand of Seth 8/?
Author: charleygirl
Rating: PG
Type: Gen, mystery
Characters Involved: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson, Mycroft Holmes
Summary: Another visit from Mycroft, and Watson discovers that Holmes is not being entirely truthful...
Disclaimer: These characters are out of copyright but still don't belong to me. Doctor Who elements are the property of the BBC
Author's Note: Holmes and Watson as they appear in this story are based on the performances by Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke in the Granada TV series. This fic is ostensibly set between The Sign of Four and The Devil's Foot in the Granada run.
Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven
THE HAND OF SETH
CHAPTER EIGHT
I was late down to breakfast the next morning, my sleep interrupted by dreams involving screaming corpses, hordes of scarab beetles and dancing hypodermic syringes. Slumber only overcame me when the drays were rattling in the street below, and it was nearly nine o’clock by the time I had shaved and dressed and was awake enough to find my way downstairs.
To my surprise, the table was not laid and the room was empty – a quick check of Holmes’s bedroom revealed that to be unoccupied as well. I was incredulous, as only the night before Holmes had been unable to even leave the room, and now he was apparently off gallivanting around the town! The uncharitable side of me suspected him of having taken advantage of my disturbed night to go off alone and cursed him for his recklessness. It was unfortunate that I kicked the coal scuttle in frustration at precisely the same moment that Mrs Hudson entered with a tray.
“Good morning, Doctor,” she said, pointedly ignoring my lapse of self-control.
I felt myself colour with embarrassment. “When did Mr Holmes go out?” I asked.
“Early – before eight,” she replied, laying out my breakfast. “He asked me to assure you that he had eaten, and that he would take care not to walk far. I confess to being surprised at the energy he had, after seeing him so unwell yesterday.”
“It will only be temporary. He has too much faith in his own stamina.” Damn the man! What was I going to do with him? Even the threat of nervous collapse would not stop him from chasing down a criminal.
I ate my breakfast and tried to read the Morning Post, but I could not keep my mind on anything, wondering where he was and whether he was all right.
A ring at the doorbell mid-morning startled me from my chair. I was halfway down the stairs when Mrs Hudson appeared from below to answer the door. She shot me a surprised glare for daring to be in the hall when she was quite capable of responding to the summons, but I remained there, filled with trepidation in case Holmes had indeed collapsed, or even worse…
“Ah, Doctor. Is Sherlock here?” Mycroft Holmes asked when Mrs Hudson had ushered him over the threshold.
I hesitated, rather surprised to see the elder Holmes for the second time in two days. “No,” I said eventually. “I have not seen him this morning.”
“He is feeling better, then. Good. I take it that is the reason you have not been in contact with Doctor Agar?”
“Agar…you sent Agar here?”
“Of course. Excellent man is Agar. You needed the opinion of an expert, Doctor, someone to corroborate what you have no doubt been repeatedly telling that brother of mine.”
My head felt as though it had been stuffed with cotton, fuddled from lack of sleep. “Please, won’t you come up?” I asked, realising belatedly that the hall was not the correct setting for such a conversation.
Mycroft eyed the seventeen stairs with disgust, but said, “Very well, if I must. Why Sherlock could not have taken rooms on the ground floor I will never understand.” I followed him as he began the steep climb to our sitting room.
“I take it that my brother is not following your medical advice,” he remarked, sinking gratefully into an armchair and strenuously mopping his brow.
“I am afraid to say that you are correct,” I said reluctantly.
“He always was stubborn, even as a boy. Caused no end of trouble – I remember his nurse once having to hold him down to pour cod liver oil down his throat because he repeatedly refused point blank to take it.” Mycroft shook his head and took a large pinch of snuff, which caused him to sneeze violently. “I have come,” he said when his eyes had stopped watering, “at great disruption to my routine, I might add, to tell Sherlock that I have had a visit from the earl of Harcourt. I do not take kindly to disturbances within the Diogenes, Doctor.”
“The earl is a…volatile man,” I said, attempting to be diplomatic.
He snorted. “That’s a delicate way of putting it.”
“Holmes should not have spoken as he did.”
“Don’t apologise for my brother, Doctor. I am quite sure that the earl deserved every word. It is a shame, as he used to be quite a steady sort of chap at one time. Wouldn’t have admitted him to the Diogenes had he not been. Hysterical ranting was never his style.”
I frowned. “He has not always been so harsh?”
“That’s not for me to say. But he certainly did not cause scenes within the club walls!” said Mycroft. “The man must have taken leave of his senses.”
This chimed with the comments made the previous evening by Harcourt’s son. My suspicion of the earl began to grow. “I see that you have been successful in keeping Harcourt’s accusations from the press,” I said, electing to keep my suspicions to myself.
“We were ably assisted by the fact that the Egyptian ambassador has gone to ground somewhere. Ah.” Mycroft smiled with satisfaction as Mrs Hudson entered with coffee.
“Gone to ground?” I repeated when our landlady had left.
“What? Oh, yes, can’t be found. And Harcourt has been…persuaded that rash accusations are in no one’s interest, so trouble is averted for now. I never did trust that ambassador – something odd about him. He has shifty eyes. Is Sherlock any nearer to solving the case?”
“A little, brother mine, a little,” said a familiar voice. I looked round to see Holmes standing in the doorway, having come up the stairs without either of us hearing him. His face was still gaunt and grey, but did at least have some life in it.
“You are a fool, Holmes,” I told him shortly, unable to see him standing there with a cheerful smile when I had been going through mental agonies on his behalf. “To go off on your own like that - ”
“Forgive me, Watson, I had a lead or two to follow up. Good morning, Mycroft, what is the news from Olympus?” he enquired, throwing his hat and coat in the general direction of the stand on the landing and heading for the fire.
“You are not taking proper care of yourself,” Mycroft observed sharply. “It would be in your interest to listen to Doctor Watson more closely.”
“But I am obeying the orders of my physician. I have had food, and sleep, and a little energy has been restored to me,” came the smooth reply. “You have never expressed such concern for my health before, Mycroft.”
“You have never looked so damnably awful before,” retorted his brother. “For goodness’s sake, sit down before you fall down.”
This at least Holmes did do, stretching his hands towards the blaze. It was still unseasonably cold, and I realised that he was shivering. “Where the devil have you been?” I demanded quietly as I draped one of the rugs from the sofa around his shoulders.
“The Royal Observatory, at Greenwich. It has been an illuminating morning,” he said, taking the cup off coffee Mycroft handed him.
“And why could you not wait until I was able to join you?”
“You needed your sleep. And the errand was a simple one – I took a cab on both sides of the river, so you need have no fear of my wandering around in the cold. I do not need a nursemaid, Watson.”
Mycroft snorted. “That is a matter of opinion.”
Holmes glared at him. “And to what, precisely, do we owe this honour, Mycroft?” he asked. “Two visits in two days – can the government spare you for so long?”
His brother cast me a long-suffering look. “You can imagine what he was like as a child, can you not? As I was telling Doctor Watson before your unceremonious entrance, Sherlock, I have had to have words with the earl of Harcourt over you.”
“No doubt they were, on his part at least, uncomplimentary ones.”
“You should know better than to antagonise men like Harcourt, especially when there is a chance that they may come running to me!” declared Mycroft. “Heated discussion is no aid to the digestion.”
“May we be privy to what was said?” Holmes enquired, raising an eyebrow.
“No, Sherlock, you may not. Suffice it to say that he will be making no more accusations, against either yourself or the Egyptian government.”
“Bravo, Mycroft. Another international disaster averted.”
“It would appear that there was little danger of one ever appearing.” When Holmes gave him a quizzical look, Mycroft added, “Dratted ambassador has vanished. Hasn’t been seen since Thursday morning.”
“Really? Now that is interesting…” Holmes lapsed into silence, cradling his coffee cup.
Several minutes passed without another word. When it became clear that nothing more would be forthcoming, Mycroft levered his huge frame from the chair. “I must be getting back,” he said, “Luncheon at the Diogenes beckons – without, one hopes, belligerent noblemen turning up to interrupt.”
I rose to show him out, but he stopped by Holmes’s chemical bench. Peering round his bulk I could see that the scarab lay there, on its back with its clockwork innards on display.
“What the devil is that?” Mycroft demanded.
“Holmes believes it to be the murder weapon,” I told him, feeling rather foolish to be suggesting such a thing.
He screwed his eyeglass in place and regarded the thing with distaste. “An unpleasant specimen,” was his analysis.
No more was said as we descended the stairs, Mycroft puffing the whole time like a steam engine in need of a tune up. When we reached the front door, he turned to me and said, “I happen to know that Agar is out of town for a day or two. I think it would be best if I asked him to call…perhaps on Monday? Do you agree?”
“If Holmes will listen to no one else, then it would appear that we have little choice,” I replied.
“Yes,” Mycroft rumbled. He put on his hat. “We will settle the matter, Doctor, never fear. Sherlock will see Agar, even if I have to sit on him as I did when we were children, and that action would be fitted neither to his dignity or mine. Good day to you.”
I watched him go, and then made my way back upstairs. In my absence, Holmes had spread papers all over the table, and was poring over them, his glass in one hand and the fingers of the other beating a nervous and discordant rhythm on the cloth.
“Mrs Hudson will be bringing up luncheon before long,” I told him, shutting the door behind me.
He merely grunted in response, pulling the papers closer and frowning at their contents. Interested despite myself, I looked at them over his shoulder. On some were his unmistakable scrawl, and a series of diagrams that appeared to my untrained eye to be some kind of planetary movement. Others had more rough sketches - which could be described as rudimentary at best, Holmes possessing little artistic talent - line drawings of a building. The tapping became louder, and I was suddenly aware that he was humming below his breath, something that I rarely heard him do.
“What have you there?” I asked.
His fingertip tattoo moved to the drawings of the planets. “The earl of Harcourt spends a great deal of time in study at the Royal Observatory,” he said. “According to the curator with whom I spoke, his particular interest of late has been the expected eclipse of the moon.”
“Eclipse? That is when the moon and the sun - ”
“ – are in such alignment that the one appears to obscure the other. And this conjunction will take place as the first of March becomes the second.”
“You believe that to be significant?”
“Consider what we already know. Your mysterious friend from the museum drew our attention towards the date. And now we discover that the earl, the owner of the missing statue, has been studying a lunar phenomenon that it so take place at the very same time. Of course it is significant!” Holmes exclaimed in exasperation. He fell to coughing, and I poured him a glass of water.
“Could you not simply have sent a telegram to discover that fact?” I asked, watching him pull the rug more closely around his shoulders, long nervous fingers clutching at the material.
“There is far more to detection than merely asking questions,” came the hoarse reply.
“There is more to looking after your health than sleeping a few hours and eating a little,” I countered. Mycroft had been right – he did look dreadful. The life that had been in his face only a short time earlier had fled, leaving behind it gaunt features and a ghastly pallor. I could not believe that the brief rest he had had would have given him the strength he needed to make the journey to Greenwich, but my mind shied away from making the obvious connection. I did not want to believe that he would be so reckless, so utterly heedless of my concern...
He did not respond, engrossed once more in his papers, those fingers tap, tap, tapping again, as though beating on my nerves. Suddenly I could not bear to be in the same room as him.
“I am going out,” I announced, and left without waiting to see whether he had even noticed that I had spoken.
By the time I had put on my hat and coat and reached the front door, I was shaking with anger, and did not even stop to inform Mrs Hudson that I would not be requiring luncheon. I had always known that Holmes was a capricious man, with moods that could fly to the heavens and descend to the very depths with alarming rapidity, but I had never even considered the possibility that he might be determined upon his own destruction. Since his return from the dead three years before, he had been constantly busy, engaged in cases which involved every section of society from the simplest of people to the very highest in the land. There had been no cause, no time for boredom, and as the years and months went on I had gradually made the assumption that he had foregone the cocaine, no longer had the need of artificial stimulation. Now, however, I could only make the appalling conclusion that his dependence had only increased during our time apart, and that now he was taking greater pains than he ever had to conceal it from me. Despite my attempts to wean him from its dreadful influence, it had a greater hold over him than ever, a hold that he did not seem to wish to break. The cocaine had him in its thrall, and it was doing its deadly work.
Did he even realise it himself? I wondered. Did he understand that the weakness, the cough, the multitude of vague and uncomfortable symptoms that were plaguing him were ultimately due to the drug? It may seem incredible to those only familiar with his habits from my writings, but though possessed of perhaps the greatest brain in England, he was quite ignorant of some of the simplest facts. And when it came to issues regarding his own health, he was apt to shut down and shut me out, despite professing to trust my medical opinion. I could only hope that, with Agar to support me, he might finally listen and accept the truth. If he did not, then I hardly dared to think of the consequences.
Pushing that thought from my mind, I took refuge at my club, wishing to be far away from complex cases, Egyptian gods and murdered aristocrats. My mind cried out for normality, something which, at Baker Street at any rate, was often in very short supply.
***
I will confess that after a few hours in the company of my old friend Thurston, and a game or two of billiards, I was in a calmer frame of mind when I turned once more towards home. A chance encounter with an old college acquaintance resulted in my being offered the loan of his cottage in Cornwall, as I was apparently looking much in need of a holiday. The West Country in March, and especially in such unseasonable cold, would be rugged and wet, but it might just be the very thing that Holmes needed. I returned to Baker Street with the determination to confront him over the cocaine, and to tell him quite plainly what would happen if he persisted with the drug. If I waited much longer, it might well be too late.
The chill evening air caused my breath to billow before me as I let myself into the house. Mrs Hudson must have been busy in her own quarters as there was no sign of her when I entered. For this I was grateful, as it would give me the opportunity to take Holmes by surprise and allow him no chance to manoeuvre away from the subject I intended to raise.
All was quiet as I reached the landing and hung up my coat and hat. Making as little noise as possible, I opened the sitting room door…
…and stopped on the threshold. Standing by the sofa was a man I had never seen before, a well-dressed man with tanned skin and cadaverous features. He appeared to have risen at my entrance, and smiled slightly as Holmes said,
“Ah, do come in, Watson. Professor Scarman was just about to tell me all he knows about the earl of Harcourt’s Seth.”
TBC
Author: charleygirl
Rating: PG
Type: Gen, mystery
Characters Involved: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson, Mycroft Holmes
Summary: Another visit from Mycroft, and Watson discovers that Holmes is not being entirely truthful...
Disclaimer: These characters are out of copyright but still don't belong to me. Doctor Who elements are the property of the BBC
Author's Note: Holmes and Watson as they appear in this story are based on the performances by Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke in the Granada TV series. This fic is ostensibly set between The Sign of Four and The Devil's Foot in the Granada run.
Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven
THE HAND OF SETH
CHAPTER EIGHT
I was late down to breakfast the next morning, my sleep interrupted by dreams involving screaming corpses, hordes of scarab beetles and dancing hypodermic syringes. Slumber only overcame me when the drays were rattling in the street below, and it was nearly nine o’clock by the time I had shaved and dressed and was awake enough to find my way downstairs.
To my surprise, the table was not laid and the room was empty – a quick check of Holmes’s bedroom revealed that to be unoccupied as well. I was incredulous, as only the night before Holmes had been unable to even leave the room, and now he was apparently off gallivanting around the town! The uncharitable side of me suspected him of having taken advantage of my disturbed night to go off alone and cursed him for his recklessness. It was unfortunate that I kicked the coal scuttle in frustration at precisely the same moment that Mrs Hudson entered with a tray.
“Good morning, Doctor,” she said, pointedly ignoring my lapse of self-control.
I felt myself colour with embarrassment. “When did Mr Holmes go out?” I asked.
“Early – before eight,” she replied, laying out my breakfast. “He asked me to assure you that he had eaten, and that he would take care not to walk far. I confess to being surprised at the energy he had, after seeing him so unwell yesterday.”
“It will only be temporary. He has too much faith in his own stamina.” Damn the man! What was I going to do with him? Even the threat of nervous collapse would not stop him from chasing down a criminal.
I ate my breakfast and tried to read the Morning Post, but I could not keep my mind on anything, wondering where he was and whether he was all right.
A ring at the doorbell mid-morning startled me from my chair. I was halfway down the stairs when Mrs Hudson appeared from below to answer the door. She shot me a surprised glare for daring to be in the hall when she was quite capable of responding to the summons, but I remained there, filled with trepidation in case Holmes had indeed collapsed, or even worse…
“Ah, Doctor. Is Sherlock here?” Mycroft Holmes asked when Mrs Hudson had ushered him over the threshold.
I hesitated, rather surprised to see the elder Holmes for the second time in two days. “No,” I said eventually. “I have not seen him this morning.”
“He is feeling better, then. Good. I take it that is the reason you have not been in contact with Doctor Agar?”
“Agar…you sent Agar here?”
“Of course. Excellent man is Agar. You needed the opinion of an expert, Doctor, someone to corroborate what you have no doubt been repeatedly telling that brother of mine.”
My head felt as though it had been stuffed with cotton, fuddled from lack of sleep. “Please, won’t you come up?” I asked, realising belatedly that the hall was not the correct setting for such a conversation.
Mycroft eyed the seventeen stairs with disgust, but said, “Very well, if I must. Why Sherlock could not have taken rooms on the ground floor I will never understand.” I followed him as he began the steep climb to our sitting room.
“I take it that my brother is not following your medical advice,” he remarked, sinking gratefully into an armchair and strenuously mopping his brow.
“I am afraid to say that you are correct,” I said reluctantly.
“He always was stubborn, even as a boy. Caused no end of trouble – I remember his nurse once having to hold him down to pour cod liver oil down his throat because he repeatedly refused point blank to take it.” Mycroft shook his head and took a large pinch of snuff, which caused him to sneeze violently. “I have come,” he said when his eyes had stopped watering, “at great disruption to my routine, I might add, to tell Sherlock that I have had a visit from the earl of Harcourt. I do not take kindly to disturbances within the Diogenes, Doctor.”
“The earl is a…volatile man,” I said, attempting to be diplomatic.
He snorted. “That’s a delicate way of putting it.”
“Holmes should not have spoken as he did.”
“Don’t apologise for my brother, Doctor. I am quite sure that the earl deserved every word. It is a shame, as he used to be quite a steady sort of chap at one time. Wouldn’t have admitted him to the Diogenes had he not been. Hysterical ranting was never his style.”
I frowned. “He has not always been so harsh?”
“That’s not for me to say. But he certainly did not cause scenes within the club walls!” said Mycroft. “The man must have taken leave of his senses.”
This chimed with the comments made the previous evening by Harcourt’s son. My suspicion of the earl began to grow. “I see that you have been successful in keeping Harcourt’s accusations from the press,” I said, electing to keep my suspicions to myself.
“We were ably assisted by the fact that the Egyptian ambassador has gone to ground somewhere. Ah.” Mycroft smiled with satisfaction as Mrs Hudson entered with coffee.
“Gone to ground?” I repeated when our landlady had left.
“What? Oh, yes, can’t be found. And Harcourt has been…persuaded that rash accusations are in no one’s interest, so trouble is averted for now. I never did trust that ambassador – something odd about him. He has shifty eyes. Is Sherlock any nearer to solving the case?”
“A little, brother mine, a little,” said a familiar voice. I looked round to see Holmes standing in the doorway, having come up the stairs without either of us hearing him. His face was still gaunt and grey, but did at least have some life in it.
“You are a fool, Holmes,” I told him shortly, unable to see him standing there with a cheerful smile when I had been going through mental agonies on his behalf. “To go off on your own like that - ”
“Forgive me, Watson, I had a lead or two to follow up. Good morning, Mycroft, what is the news from Olympus?” he enquired, throwing his hat and coat in the general direction of the stand on the landing and heading for the fire.
“You are not taking proper care of yourself,” Mycroft observed sharply. “It would be in your interest to listen to Doctor Watson more closely.”
“But I am obeying the orders of my physician. I have had food, and sleep, and a little energy has been restored to me,” came the smooth reply. “You have never expressed such concern for my health before, Mycroft.”
“You have never looked so damnably awful before,” retorted his brother. “For goodness’s sake, sit down before you fall down.”
This at least Holmes did do, stretching his hands towards the blaze. It was still unseasonably cold, and I realised that he was shivering. “Where the devil have you been?” I demanded quietly as I draped one of the rugs from the sofa around his shoulders.
“The Royal Observatory, at Greenwich. It has been an illuminating morning,” he said, taking the cup off coffee Mycroft handed him.
“And why could you not wait until I was able to join you?”
“You needed your sleep. And the errand was a simple one – I took a cab on both sides of the river, so you need have no fear of my wandering around in the cold. I do not need a nursemaid, Watson.”
Mycroft snorted. “That is a matter of opinion.”
Holmes glared at him. “And to what, precisely, do we owe this honour, Mycroft?” he asked. “Two visits in two days – can the government spare you for so long?”
His brother cast me a long-suffering look. “You can imagine what he was like as a child, can you not? As I was telling Doctor Watson before your unceremonious entrance, Sherlock, I have had to have words with the earl of Harcourt over you.”
“No doubt they were, on his part at least, uncomplimentary ones.”
“You should know better than to antagonise men like Harcourt, especially when there is a chance that they may come running to me!” declared Mycroft. “Heated discussion is no aid to the digestion.”
“May we be privy to what was said?” Holmes enquired, raising an eyebrow.
“No, Sherlock, you may not. Suffice it to say that he will be making no more accusations, against either yourself or the Egyptian government.”
“Bravo, Mycroft. Another international disaster averted.”
“It would appear that there was little danger of one ever appearing.” When Holmes gave him a quizzical look, Mycroft added, “Dratted ambassador has vanished. Hasn’t been seen since Thursday morning.”
“Really? Now that is interesting…” Holmes lapsed into silence, cradling his coffee cup.
Several minutes passed without another word. When it became clear that nothing more would be forthcoming, Mycroft levered his huge frame from the chair. “I must be getting back,” he said, “Luncheon at the Diogenes beckons – without, one hopes, belligerent noblemen turning up to interrupt.”
I rose to show him out, but he stopped by Holmes’s chemical bench. Peering round his bulk I could see that the scarab lay there, on its back with its clockwork innards on display.
“What the devil is that?” Mycroft demanded.
“Holmes believes it to be the murder weapon,” I told him, feeling rather foolish to be suggesting such a thing.
He screwed his eyeglass in place and regarded the thing with distaste. “An unpleasant specimen,” was his analysis.
No more was said as we descended the stairs, Mycroft puffing the whole time like a steam engine in need of a tune up. When we reached the front door, he turned to me and said, “I happen to know that Agar is out of town for a day or two. I think it would be best if I asked him to call…perhaps on Monday? Do you agree?”
“If Holmes will listen to no one else, then it would appear that we have little choice,” I replied.
“Yes,” Mycroft rumbled. He put on his hat. “We will settle the matter, Doctor, never fear. Sherlock will see Agar, even if I have to sit on him as I did when we were children, and that action would be fitted neither to his dignity or mine. Good day to you.”
I watched him go, and then made my way back upstairs. In my absence, Holmes had spread papers all over the table, and was poring over them, his glass in one hand and the fingers of the other beating a nervous and discordant rhythm on the cloth.
“Mrs Hudson will be bringing up luncheon before long,” I told him, shutting the door behind me.
He merely grunted in response, pulling the papers closer and frowning at their contents. Interested despite myself, I looked at them over his shoulder. On some were his unmistakable scrawl, and a series of diagrams that appeared to my untrained eye to be some kind of planetary movement. Others had more rough sketches - which could be described as rudimentary at best, Holmes possessing little artistic talent - line drawings of a building. The tapping became louder, and I was suddenly aware that he was humming below his breath, something that I rarely heard him do.
“What have you there?” I asked.
His fingertip tattoo moved to the drawings of the planets. “The earl of Harcourt spends a great deal of time in study at the Royal Observatory,” he said. “According to the curator with whom I spoke, his particular interest of late has been the expected eclipse of the moon.”
“Eclipse? That is when the moon and the sun - ”
“ – are in such alignment that the one appears to obscure the other. And this conjunction will take place as the first of March becomes the second.”
“You believe that to be significant?”
“Consider what we already know. Your mysterious friend from the museum drew our attention towards the date. And now we discover that the earl, the owner of the missing statue, has been studying a lunar phenomenon that it so take place at the very same time. Of course it is significant!” Holmes exclaimed in exasperation. He fell to coughing, and I poured him a glass of water.
“Could you not simply have sent a telegram to discover that fact?” I asked, watching him pull the rug more closely around his shoulders, long nervous fingers clutching at the material.
“There is far more to detection than merely asking questions,” came the hoarse reply.
“There is more to looking after your health than sleeping a few hours and eating a little,” I countered. Mycroft had been right – he did look dreadful. The life that had been in his face only a short time earlier had fled, leaving behind it gaunt features and a ghastly pallor. I could not believe that the brief rest he had had would have given him the strength he needed to make the journey to Greenwich, but my mind shied away from making the obvious connection. I did not want to believe that he would be so reckless, so utterly heedless of my concern...
He did not respond, engrossed once more in his papers, those fingers tap, tap, tapping again, as though beating on my nerves. Suddenly I could not bear to be in the same room as him.
“I am going out,” I announced, and left without waiting to see whether he had even noticed that I had spoken.
By the time I had put on my hat and coat and reached the front door, I was shaking with anger, and did not even stop to inform Mrs Hudson that I would not be requiring luncheon. I had always known that Holmes was a capricious man, with moods that could fly to the heavens and descend to the very depths with alarming rapidity, but I had never even considered the possibility that he might be determined upon his own destruction. Since his return from the dead three years before, he had been constantly busy, engaged in cases which involved every section of society from the simplest of people to the very highest in the land. There had been no cause, no time for boredom, and as the years and months went on I had gradually made the assumption that he had foregone the cocaine, no longer had the need of artificial stimulation. Now, however, I could only make the appalling conclusion that his dependence had only increased during our time apart, and that now he was taking greater pains than he ever had to conceal it from me. Despite my attempts to wean him from its dreadful influence, it had a greater hold over him than ever, a hold that he did not seem to wish to break. The cocaine had him in its thrall, and it was doing its deadly work.
Did he even realise it himself? I wondered. Did he understand that the weakness, the cough, the multitude of vague and uncomfortable symptoms that were plaguing him were ultimately due to the drug? It may seem incredible to those only familiar with his habits from my writings, but though possessed of perhaps the greatest brain in England, he was quite ignorant of some of the simplest facts. And when it came to issues regarding his own health, he was apt to shut down and shut me out, despite professing to trust my medical opinion. I could only hope that, with Agar to support me, he might finally listen and accept the truth. If he did not, then I hardly dared to think of the consequences.
Pushing that thought from my mind, I took refuge at my club, wishing to be far away from complex cases, Egyptian gods and murdered aristocrats. My mind cried out for normality, something which, at Baker Street at any rate, was often in very short supply.
***
I will confess that after a few hours in the company of my old friend Thurston, and a game or two of billiards, I was in a calmer frame of mind when I turned once more towards home. A chance encounter with an old college acquaintance resulted in my being offered the loan of his cottage in Cornwall, as I was apparently looking much in need of a holiday. The West Country in March, and especially in such unseasonable cold, would be rugged and wet, but it might just be the very thing that Holmes needed. I returned to Baker Street with the determination to confront him over the cocaine, and to tell him quite plainly what would happen if he persisted with the drug. If I waited much longer, it might well be too late.
The chill evening air caused my breath to billow before me as I let myself into the house. Mrs Hudson must have been busy in her own quarters as there was no sign of her when I entered. For this I was grateful, as it would give me the opportunity to take Holmes by surprise and allow him no chance to manoeuvre away from the subject I intended to raise.
All was quiet as I reached the landing and hung up my coat and hat. Making as little noise as possible, I opened the sitting room door…
…and stopped on the threshold. Standing by the sofa was a man I had never seen before, a well-dressed man with tanned skin and cadaverous features. He appeared to have risen at my entrance, and smiled slightly as Holmes said,
“Ah, do come in, Watson. Professor Scarman was just about to tell me all he knows about the earl of Harcourt’s Seth.”
TBC
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coherent comment is coherent
Date: 2008-04-13 05:02 pm (UTC)Re: coherent comment is coherent
Date: 2008-04-14 04:11 pm (UTC)Professor Scarman is a bit of an enigma where characterisation is concerned - we only see him for about 30 seconds before Sutek takes him over in Pyramids of Mars, which isn't much to base a character on! Still, I'm having a go... *g*