Not the lighthouse, then.
Walking back up the silent lane, I decided to abandon my tracking of Holmes across Sussex to Alfriston or Seaford—or wherever he had gone. All I wanted was to deliver an apology, that my presence in his life promised not only to complicate matters, but to do so without even such benefits as doing open battle for his ancestral manor. Perhaps if I offered to accompany him on his next tedious and uncomfortable investigation, by way of recompense?
Both apology and offer could wait until he was restored to his aired-out home.
However, it had been a long cold walk across frost-crisp Downsland, with an equally long and frigid way back again. I could always throw myself on Mrs Hudson’s hospitality and thaw out my toes before her fire, but it might be simpler (and less dangerous, when it came to letting slip Certain Pieces of News) to plant myself before the considerably larger and less socially fraught hearth at the nearby Tiger Inn. The innkeeper might even have a pot of soup on the hob.
Naturally, having decided not to seek after Holmes, the Tiger was where I found him, stockinged heels propped up before the crackling logs, beer in one hand and pipe in the other.
The sight of that ravaged scalp over the back of the chair gave me pause: his barber had made an attempt at tidying the results of the fire, but short of taking a razor to it, ear to ear, only time would restore normality. His head was currently an odd mix of neatly cropped greying hair and frizzed stubble, with traces of nearly bald skin here and there. It looked curiously…vulnerable.
With that thought came another—one that would not have crossed my mind for a thousand years, were it not for the events of this past week: should I present my cheek for a demure but affectionate kiss? It was the done thing, between two people on the edge of marriage, but…Holmes? I stood there a moment longer, studying that mottled scalp, but in the end, the thought of the reverberations of such a greeting—through Sussex and to the world beyond—swept any faint impulse out the door.
That decision, I would realise a very long time later, both reflected and set the pattern for our future behaviour: affection between us remained a private thing. Private even, occasionally, from one another.
“Hello, Holmes,” I said.
He tipped his head as I came around his chair to the fire; his eyes were still a touch shot with red, which I did not think was from the cold. “Ah, Russell,” he said. “I see you have been down to Birling Gap. Did Mrs Hudson tell you where to find me?”
I wavered briefly over how he’d known, then refused the bait. “Mrs Hudson seemed to think you were headed to the lighthouse—or to the beach, at any rate. She’s got all the doors and windows wide open.”
“Yes, I’m not sure what went wrong. I may have added sulphur when I meant to reach for the saltpetre. Nothing seriously wrong, but the air was a touch thick.”
“I’m glad the walls are still standing. No, I was heading for home, but thought I’d have something warm first.”
“Do sit,” he agreed, making no move to fetch me a seat.
I had a word with the innkeeper, returning to the fire with another chair. As I arranged it as close as I could get to the heat without risking combustion, my foot brushed something that clanked. I looked down—noticing first the distinctive black hairs on my trousers that betrayed my encounter with the lighthouse keeper’s dog, then the object on the floor.
“What on earth is that?”
“It would appear to be a sterling silver flail.”
Did I want to know? Wellington boots; a peasant’s weapon made from an aristocratic metal; its source in the tiny hamlet of East Dean—the combination bore all the hallmarks of one of his outré cases, and I wished merely to get the matter of the Holmes family chapel off my mind. However, he took my brief pause as an invitation, and launched into an unlikely tale that seemed to involve a well-digger, the restoration of a nearby abbey, a lesser title from an Eastern European country, and strange marks on a stone bridge. Or perhaps it was an aristocratic bridge-restorer and strange digging marks in an abbey: I admit I was not paying much attention.
My bowl of cock-a-leekie soup was half gone before he drew breath, but I did not leap to interrupt him. I was enjoying the sensations of the moment: the fire at my knees felt as if it had been burning for two centuries, the beer in my glass was cool, the soup was a comfort within. The satisfaction made me aware that, once we were married, we could come here anytime, day or night, with no concern for village proprieties.
This startling idea kept my mind well occupied until he leant forward to crack the dottle of his pipe into the fire. I noticed that his glass—and apparently his story—had come to an end, and I cast a quick glance around us to make sure we were not overheard before speaking.
“Look, Holmes, about the…the wedding.”
“Have you another regiment of guests we would offend if they went uninvited?”
I opened my mouth to deliver the speech I had so carefully composed, about how sorry I was that we weren’t able to use his family chapel, and what we might do instead…and yet I heard a very different set of words coming out. A set of words, moreover, that said one thing, but meant another.
“Do you suppose your cousin could be bought out?”
The moment I said it, I knew what the question represented: the bride’s gift to her husband. You’ve spent your life straightening out the problems of others, I was telling him; let me do this for you.
“It’s not his to sell,” he said automatically. “And if it were, he’d refuse to sell it to me.” Then he paused, his right eyebrow quirking up as he turned his gaze from the fire. “Do you mean, would he sell to you? Good Lord. Why would you want that old pile?”
“I don’t especially want another house. But buying it might simplify matters. For you and Mycroft, that is. Unless—is the property entailed?”
He let out a bark of laughter and sat back, fingers laced across his waistcoat. “The Holmes family is hardly grand enough to entail a property in the interests of primogeniture. And I assure you, ownership of that house would trade one small and symbolic problem for a cart-load of mundane nightmares. No, I for one am perfectly happy to allow my cousin to continue fretting over tax bills and the state of the roofs and the return from the tenant farmers. I merely refuse to withdraw from the field of battle and cede my rights of access and usage.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, in that case.”
“Yes?”
I took a deep breath. “Holmes, if we can keep Mrs Hudson and Dr Watson from being peppered with bird-shot, I should be honoured to accompany you in breaking into your family chapel and having the words of marriage recited at speed over our heads.”
—
However (Why is it, I wonder, that my accounts of adventures with Holmes so often employ that word?), our window of opportunity promptly slammed down upon our fingers, a bare two hours later. My first exploratory telephone call was to Dr Watson. He was not at home. His housekeeper informed me that her employer was currently visiting friends in Edinburgh, and although he would return in two days, he would be at home less than seventy-two hours before boarding a ship for New York, where a band of literature lovers (or at any rate, fans of the Doyle tales) were to present him with an honour and—more to the point—a paying lecture series. The dates, unfortunately, were set in stone.
It was now Monday evening; the good Doctor would return on Wednesday; his ship sailed at midday on Saturday.
I hung up the telephone earpiece and gazed down at the scrap of paper on which I’d made some quite unnecessary notes. Holmes and I were in my newly painted and partially refurbished house a few miles north of his, where the air smelt not of sulphur but of varnish, paint, the fresh dyes of carpets and curtains, and the eggs I had scorched for our supper. In the current absence of my neighbour and occasional housekeeper, Mrs Mark, the only sound was the whisper from the fire. “This is not going to work.”
“Don’t sound so disappointed, Russell. You were not keen on the venue to
begin with.”
“I am now.”
“We could proceed without Watson.”
“We really couldn’t. No, Holmes, it’s just not practical. Even without posting banns for a church—assuming we could convince a rector that I counted as one of his flock—we’d still need a fifteen-day period for the Registrar.”
“When Watson gets back, then.”
I looked sadly at my final note on the page: July 7. Five whole months. An eternity.
But what did it matter? Holmes and I would go ahead as we were—as we had been before I stood on a London pier and, seeing him resurrected from a fiery death, literally embraced an unexpected future. Patience, Russell.
And yet, I was afraid. That real life would intervene. That doubts would chew at our feet, causing one or both of us to edge away from the brink. That neither of us had really meant it, and the memory of those dockside sensations would turn to threat. That my gift to him was nothing but the selfish impulse of an uncertain young girl.
I felt his gaze on me, and put on a look of good cheer before raising my face. “Of course. July will do nicely—and will give us plenty of time to arrange a distraction, to get your cousin and his shot-guns away from the house.”
He did not reply. Under his gaze, my smile faltered a bit. “It’s fine, Holmes. You have commitments in Europe next month; I have much to do in Oxford. I will be here when you get back.”
Abruptly, he jumped to his feet and swept across the room to the door. I watched him thrust his long arms into the sleeves of his overcoat. “Thursday, Russell,” he said, clapping his hat onto his head. “Be ready on Thursday.”
“For what?” I asked, but he was gone.
For anything, knowing him.
—
Tuesday morning dawned. I expected…I don’t know what I expected. Excited telephone calls from Mrs Hudson, a disapproving telegram from Mycroft. Earthquakes…
What happened was precisely nothing. A pallid sun crawled above the horizon, setting the frost to glittering. Patrick, my farm manager, let the horses out and wrestled with the aged tractor for a while, achieving a few moments of roar and a stink of burnt petrol over the landscape. Mrs Mark let herself in and pottered dubiously about the newly equipped kitchen. The children from up the lane hurried by for school. An aeroplane passed overhead.
Normal life, it appeared, was going on.
I dressed and went downstairs, eating the breakfast Mrs Mark cooked for me and drinking her weak coffee without complaint. I tried to settle to a paper I had been working on, back in the days of innocence before I turned twenty-one and reached out to seize my majority, but I could make little sense of it. None of the crisp new novels I had bought in London bore the least interest. Even the newspapers were filled with faraway events and two-dimensional problems.
Another day, I might have taken the train to London, but London was filled with Margery Childe and all the uncomfortable elements of that case, that life. Or Oxford, where normally I would have happily fled at an instant’s notice—but its beloved spires seemed awfully…far away.
At midday, I found myself staring out of the window wishing I smoked.
With a sound of irritation, I went to find my warm clothes and set off for the sea.
The Downs were thick with gravid ewes, head-down to the close-cropped grass, scarcely bothering to move out of my way. I wandered along the cliffs, watching all manner of ships ply up and down the grey Channel waters. The new owners of the old Belle Tout lighthouse—the one atop the cliff—were out in their wind-swept garden, hands on hips as they surveyed the exterior. They invited me inside, ushering me up the defunct tower to admire its predictably magnificent view of the new lighthouse, standing with its feet in the water (where it might actually be of some use when the sea mists rose) five hundred feet below and well out from the cliffs. Once we had exhausted the conversational possibilities (the view, the weather, and the sheep), I continued on, greeting shepherds, ramblers, and lighthouse-men as I went, to where the track turned north below the old smugglers’ path. The Tiger Inn, perhaps?
No.
Mrs Hudson had the windows snugly shut again. Smoke trickled from the main chimney, but lights burned in the kitchen, so I circled the house, rapped loudly at the back door, and let myself in.
When I saw her face, I realised that I had been hoping Holmes had told her, so I would have someone to talk to about…it. But her face betrayed no sign of excitement, no shared knowledge—not even a faint reproof from her brown eyes, that I had said nothing…
She didn’t know.
Of course, there were all kinds of things this good woman did not know, even when it came down to the events of one previous week: that Holmes and I had nearly died; that both of us had done violence to the other; that there had been drugs and death and kisses and a startling revelation of Holmes’ warbling soprano voice.
Not all weeks were quite that eventful. Still, as with Sherlock Holmes long before I came on the scene, I had grown accustomed to hiding things from Mrs Hudson, lest she be shocked or, worse, disappointed in me. My face gave nothing away now as I greeted her and exclaimed at the aroma from her oven.
She had not seen Holmes since the previous afternoon. As she reached for the flowered teapot, giving a little arthritic wince, she said, “He was here, though. The house was still cold after I’d finished in the kitchen, so I took to my rooms early, but I heard him come in about eight o’clock—no-one else slams the door quite like he does. He was on the telephone for a time, then I heard him crashing about upstairs. And this morning I found half the clothes from his cupboards strewn all about.”
I knew without asking that she’d have put everything away, grumbling all the while. “Was anything in particular missing?” I asked casually.
She was not fooled, and fixed me with a sharp gaze. “Mary, what is going on?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “He was at my house yesterday evening, then put on his hat and said he’d see me in a few days.” It was, strictly, the truth, though hardly the whole of it.
“Well, from what I could see, he either went to Town, or to a cricket match.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s right. His silk hat, good suit, and ebony cane are missing. I thought that was it until I got down to the lower levels and found that his cricket whites were gone as well.”
“He owns cricket clothes? I didn’t know he played.”
“Near as I can tell, Mr Holmes tries everything at least once,” she pointed out, a voice of long experience. “Though this being winter, it’s more likely to be for a fancy-dress party.”
I tried to envision his head—particularly in its current bedraggled condition—topped by a cricket cap; those piercing grey (and somewhat bloodshot) eyes looking out from under that diminutive little brim. I failed. Worse than the deerstalker with which the public mind had cursed him.
“Ah well,” I said. “We’re sure to find out eventually. Are those scones done yet?”
(In fact, I should note here, we never did—at least, I never found out why he needed cricket clothing that day. One of the many unsolved mysteries of Sherlock Holmes.)
When Mrs Hudson had stuffed as many scones into me as she could—to my complete lack of argument, since among other things, this past month had seen me locked in a dark cellar on a bread-and-water diet—I finally pushed away my plate, drained my final cup of tea, and asked if she would like me to carry the last few in the basket home to Patrick.
“Oh, Patrick’s away, dear.”
“Away?” One might as well say the roof had gone missing. “Patrick’s never away.”
“Something about a horse. Buying one? Taking one of the mares to one? I can’t remember.”
At this last claim, I frankly stared: Mrs Hudson remembered everything. She blushed faintly. “He caught me when I was washing my hair,” she said. “We spoke through the bath-room door.”
Modesty, thy name is Hudson—particularly, I thought, if Pat
rick had said he was putting one of the mares to a stallion. I pushed down a smile. “I see. But, why didn’t he tell me?” He lived a stone’s throw from my house, yet several miles away from this one.
“Oh, he’d just decided. Spur of the moment, I’d say. He was here to pick up something I had for Tillie. Are you sure you want those, dear? They’ve gone quite cold. It’ll take no time at all to make a fresh batch, if you’d—”
“Good heavens, no, you mustn’t make any more just for me. I can barely walk as it is.” I watched her wrap the remaining three golden treats into an old napkin, and as I put out a hand for it, a belated thought occurred. “But, that leaves you with none. And you must have been making them for yourself.”
“Make scones for myself? Never. I sometimes bake just because my hands feel like stirring. If you hadn’t shown up, I’d have taken them to the rector. His wife means well, but she’s a bit absent-minded when it comes to the oven.”
I allowed myself to be convinced, and tucked the still-warm parcel into my pocket, to supplement my supper. But as I arranged my hair beneath my woolly cap (wincing a touch at the still-tender knot on my skull), I saw from the clock that it was barely three: so much of the day left, then another day to get through…
“Mrs Hudson, would you like to do something tomorrow? Go to the cinema, perhaps? Tea on the Front, in Eastbourne?”
She looked surprised—and something else. Apologetic? Evasive? “Oh, Mary, I’m sorry, I have things to do. While Mr Holmes is out. You understand.”
“Oh, absolutely,” I hastened to say. “No, really, I have a hundred tasks myself, what with spending the last month in London, and everything there, and, well…” What with recent trauma and abandonment and a loathing of darkness that might have me sleeping with lights on for the rest of my life…“I just thought you might be, that you’d—I’ll go now.”
And I did.
When I reached home, the house was dark, the kitchen empty. A lone saucepan stood on the sideboard, with a note propped up against it from Mrs Mark: stern instructions on how to heat up the soup without ruining the pan.