Fic for Garonne: His Every Mood, PG-13
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acdholmesfestTitle: His Every Mood
Recipient:garonne
Author:saki101
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, OCs
Word count: 6.2K
Warnings: none apply
Summary: Holmes is dissatisfied with his recent cases and Watson strives to divert him.
Disclaimer: This story is firmly set in the public domain realm of ACD's Sherlock Holmes works.
His Every Mood
Sussex
Journal 190-
I glance across the sitting room. Dusk is deepening, shadows gathering in the corners. The fire casts a ruddy glow across the hearth rug. It outlines Sherlock's profile as he bends over his work. He's ensconced in his armchair, feet up on the ottoman, dressing gown slipping off the lean leg nearest me. The draught that creeps from under the door hasn't disturbed his concentration yet. The two new books on apiology that arrived in the morning's post are balanced on the arms of the chair and his notebook is in his lap. He appears to be annotating all three. He has plans to place hives behind the cottage someday when we stay for longer than the occasional few days between cases. He'll be able to study the creatures at first hand here, where the nearest neighbour is at a distance covered by three-quarters of an hour's brisk walk and the wind sweeps sound away with it, except on the calmest of days.
Another summer of our long association is drawing to a close. At the end of the week we will repair to Baker Street and our customary round of clients and concerts, experiments and editing. Until our departure, I shall work on a manuscript that I have been meaning to continue for a good while. Much as I enjoy sharing with the world those adventures of the great detective that can be shared, with a little camouflage here and there to protect national interests and individual reputations, there are memories I would like to preserve that will never be for the public eye. To further this end, I ordered a fine morocco bound notebook before we left London and this morning it arrived along with Sherlock's books. He hasn't seen it, I don't think, but he will understand instantly what story I intend to place between its gilt covers when he does. It is a fine example of the book-binder's art. I have it open to a smooth, blank page and next to it lies a diary from a summer of nearly a decade ago. The entries therein are smudged and brief, full of abbreviations and symbols. They speak volumes to me.
The scene is before me again…
~o~~o0o~~o~
There was a time when you and I were not so free as we are now. My recollection of when we first crossed that bridge together was set down in the first volume of my reminiscences, although I suppose after all the marginalia you added, they might well be called ours. Here, I proceed to the time when we expanded our explorations because of an initiative of mine. Yes, I give myself credit for it, although blame for how long it took both of us to arrive where we did must be borne equally, I think. However boldly we have taken other decisions in our association, we were painfully slow in this area. You may have a different view, but these will be my recollections in the first instance - although I am leaving every other page blank this time, so you may add whatever salient details you feel I have overlooked. I hope the style amuses you. It is my usual.
As ever, my efforts are dedicated to you.
~~~o0o~~~
An exclamation of disgust preceded by an instant the inward crumpling of the broadsheet I was reading. I peered over the pages as I shook the wrinkles out of it. Holmes had leapt from his chair and whirled towards the windows, gesticulating as he went. I folded the newspaper and set it atop the journals and other papers on the table beside my chair, all the while keeping an eye on Holmes. I watch him more closely since he returned to me.
He stood, glaring down into the street, unlit pipe clasped in his outstretched hand, brow furrowed.
I awaited whatever pronouncement was to follow the oratorical gesture. None came. An internal dialogue, then.
"Nothing of interest, I deduce." I leaned down to collect the envelopes that had slid past my knees to the floor after their collision with the morning's news.
"Two cheques, a thank you note, an invitation to some dull lecture on moral rectitude and a notice that Southeran's have located the book you asked them to track down for you. So, no."
I looked through the unopened envelopes and smiled at the crest on one and the return address on another. The cheques within were likely to be large. Both clients had been effusive in their expressions of gratitude at the results Holmes had achieved for them and the speed with which he had achieved them. Neither had even blinked at the sums he had quoted, raising what I knew to be his usual fee for such matters out of pique at the simplicity of their problems. He wouldn't have bothered with either if I hadn't urged him to do so as a favour to me. There had been nothing on for days. I had thought the cases would divert him for a while and hoped something worthy of his attention would turn up in the meantime. I had been wrong on both counts. Too mundane to engage him, too facile to fatigue him, he had been more irritated when they were concluded than before he had taken them on. And he hadn't slept.
My eyes returned to my friend. His arm had fallen to his side. The mid-morning light accentuated the shadows around his eyes, washed away what little colour there was in his pale cheeks. I needed to touch him sometimes to be sure it hadn't been a ghost that had come back to me.
One hand tilted to the left. His silent debate continued.
On that side of him, his chemical apparatus lay dormant upon his worktable, the empty glassware reflecting miniature squares of grey sky. He had written up his latest experiment several days previously, underscoring his findings with a satisfied flourish and sending me out to wire Gregson regarding the ramifications of his results. Nothing had roused his scientific interest since, as far as I could tell. His closed notebook rested, a dark rectangle, amidst the gleaming instruments.
To his other side, his violin case leaned against the leg of the chaise. Not a note had I heard since he tucked the instrument away after playing my favourite pieces following supper two evenings past, despite broad hints from me that an encore would be warmly received. Only the Persian slipper had seen unflagging activity, needing to be re-charged twice, and I feared Holmes would proceed to something stronger than its contents ere long.
I worked a pen knife under the fold of the fine, unmarked envelope that, by process of elimination, must be the thank you note and read over the contents.
"Lady Cressida thanks you again for your help with her nephew's difficulty and asks whether you might have time to help her cousin, Lady Bracknell, with a similarly delicate matter involving her oldest son," I summarised.
Holmes spun from the window, dressing gown awhirl. "Has he mislaid his smoking jacket?" Holmes asked, stepping towards me, hands upraised. "His chequebook? His packet of adulterous billet doux that he was fool enough to leave where his wife would surely find them?" He punctuated each possibility with a downward beat of a hand. A bit of tobacco leaf from his pipe landed on the letter I was holding. "Tell her I've gone abroad, have contracted a dire and highly contagious disease, have been committed to Bedlam. Tell her anything you like to save me from another insipid encounter with what passes for a quandary among the unobservant and uninteresting." He paused in front of my chair, eyes lancing through me. If I had been an animal, I would have feared the dissecting table.
"I could not endure another round of that, my dear fellow." He turned to the hearth and added softly, "Even for you."
I opened my mouth to say something about the chance that the case might have some feature of interest despite its point of origin, but closed it again without speaking. It would probably be better to send a polite reply about his unavailability than invite the relatives to tell their tale and have Holmes reject them on its lack of merit.
He stopped, his face in perfect profile, and I thought he might strike a match to light his pipe. Perhaps that had been his intention, but it wasn't what he did. He scowled and then his brow smoothed. With a delicate movement, so that it did not make a sound, he set his pipe down. Slowly, he angled his head away from me and his right hand glided towards the end of the mantel where the neat morocco case rested.
"Would you reach for me instead?" I spoke without forethought, well, without considering my words just then. I had thought often enough on the topic when I could not sleep because Holmes had disappeared into the depths of London and not returned before I had retired for the night.
His hand halted near the blade affixing several envelopes to the mantelshelf. He did not reply.
It was perhaps a misstep.
I slid a medical journal out from under the folded newspaper. It contained an article that had sparked an idea. So much had changed in the field of Biochemistry since my student days, new secrets of the mind and the body and their intricate interactions were revealed fortnightly, it seemed. I turned the volume in my hands. What might another decade bring? What things understood from experience or in other parts of the world might not find scientific corroboration through the work of my colleagues closer to home?
I cleared my throat and looked up.
He had turned towards me. His eyes flicked to the journal in my hands and back to my face. Perhaps he had read through it, too, and would be offended that I might think the article on addiction could have any bearing on his circumstances. I readied myself for a rebuke, albeit a gently-worded one, because those had been the only sorts of words Holmes had directed at me since his return. Indeed, he had never spoken harshly to me despite the many times I know I tried his patience on the subjects of cocaine and morphine, although I had driven him to sarcasm on more than one occasion.
"You propose I exchange one type of addiction for another?" he asked quietly, facing me more fully. His hair, without the restraint of pomade, fell across his brow. Long, pale fingers brushed it absent-mindedly away.
I held his gaze, which is an unnerving thing to do.
"You are more potent than any drug, Watson. Surely you know this."
It was a heady thing to hear. I waited for the retraction, the cynical follow-up. It didn't come. What untrodden land were we entering?
He regarded me steadily and each word he had uttered reverberated in my head, the syllables overlapping. My eyes dropped to his lips. They were moist. Who was whose drug?
The clatter of iron on stone rose from the street. The drivers of two carriages rattling past our windows, hailed one another loudly. I glanced away. What if I had an addiction, too? It didn't mean he didn't.
"The effect would be different," I finally said and looked back up at him.
He raised an enquiring eyebrow. About his lips there may have been the hint of a smile.
Holmes had read all the medical literature on the subject of addiction long before he had met me, and had withstood my earnest reiterations of its warnings over the years. He could talk circles around all of it. Their admonitions didn't pertain to him. He was stronger; he was special…
His eyebrow was still up.
I know the feel of the hairs that form that arch. I like to trace them with my fingertips. His eyes close when I do it and I touch the fragile skin of his lids with my lips.
The slight upward tilt at the corner of his lips grew as he studied me, the direction of my thoughts no doubt crystal clear to him. I don't mind that he knows. I hid it long enough, or imagined I did.
When I thought he was dead, I had a lot of time to ponder just how special he had been to me. And then he came back. Not many people get the chance to live their 'if only'. I let him know, didn't hesitate too long in taking that first step. Now was perhaps time for another. I wouldn't recite what some doctors, who don't know the texture of his skin, wrote in some journal about addiction. I'd be dead honest. It has been more my habit since he returned to me and we have been the better for it. Still, it wasn't always easy.
"The cocaine and the morphine take you away from me," I murmured. Even to my own ears, my voice sounded forlorn. I hadn't expected that.
He had not ceased his study of my visage.
I blinked to hide.
He was closer when I opened my eyes again, staring down at me. "What form does your treatment take, Doctor?"
He was letting me hide a little.
I brushed past the open sides of his dressing gown and rested my hand on his hip. My fingers tightened until I could feel the muscle beneath the fabric. "Reach for me as you would the syringe, at dawn or dusk, midday or midnight." My thumb found the ridge of his pelvic bone; I watched as I rubbed over the cloth above it, the skin of my fingertip growing warm with the friction. "I will see what is needed then and administer treatment accordingly."
"And if you are not to hand?"
"Summon me! I will come from wherever I've gone, whether it's convenient or not."
He nodded thoughtfully and his hand came to rest on my shoulder. "Since you are to hand, Doctor, tell me, what do I need now?"
I covered his hand with mine and lifted my gaze along the buttons of his waistcoat, past his chin tucked between the points of his collar, to his eyes. They glittered.
I felt breathless. I squeezed his fingers. "Let me show you."
~o~
"Don't move yet."
He was still panting, as was I. "I need to catch my breath before I start removing them."
"I should like to see."
"Do you really need to? Aren't your other senses sufficient?"
"Touché."
"You can inspect them when I'm done."
I moved the paraffin lamp closer to the edge of the night table. His skin shone in the lamplight, his face flushed above and below the bandage I had used to cover his eyes. One of his fingers was tapping rhythmically against the bed linens. Along his arm and across his chest small loops and spirals of copper winked in the lamp's flame.
"Not even a finger. Not yet," I admonished.
He huffed, but his finger stilled. I removed the first needle and set it carefully in the appropriate groove in the metal box on the table. There was the faintest chime as I let go and it dropped into place.
"They're much finer than any syringe I've used," Holmes said.
"Yes," I replied and dabbed alcohol on his skin. I held my breath as I drew out the second and set it alongside its mate. I needed more practice. The metal rang lightly.
"Shorter, too."
"The ones I used today are, yes." I moistened another bit of cotton wool, wiped his skin, set it aside and removed a third needle.
He said nothing and I removed a fourth and a fifth. His breathing was steadier, but the flush on his skin had not subsided.
"Is it always like this?" he asked.
I cast my eye along his long form and noted his reaction. By the time I had drawn out the last needle, he was fully engorged again.
"According to the treatises I have studied, it affects some people this way."
"Not you, though," he stated in his inimical way.
My cheeks grew hot. I was glad he couldn't see. No doubt he could tell from the breath I drew in.
"Your teacher didn't have your delicate touch," he continued.
Surely, I was scarlet. I had suspected that with his refined senses, he might be one who would.
Holmes hadn't moved since I finished, hadn't asked me to take off the bandage either.
"There was not the emotion between us…" I began, but Holmes reached up, his hand curving about my neck and pulled me down to him.
"A crucial catalyst," he whispered and his other arm hooked around my hips and urged me up onto the bed.
"Don't you want the bandage off?" I asked.
"Not yet. You are were right about limiting me to my other senses," he said and half lifted me on top of him. "How long did it take you to learn?" One hand slid up my back to my good shoulder. Holmes bit down next to his fingers.
"Nearly a year," I managed to say.
"Practising how often?" he asked, before nipping a little nearer to my throat.
I bit back, a sharp nip to an earlobe. In answer, fingers dug into my buttocks.
"How often?" he repeated, lifting his hips beneath me.
"Once a week…if we could find…the time," I gasped and pressed him into the bedding. "Twice, now and then…when we could manage."
Holmes rolled us over and murmured in my ear. "How long do you think it will take you to teach me?"
~o~
I set the towel aside and took up a comb.
"Is this all part of the treatment, Doctor?" Holmes asked, stretching his hands high above his head, rotating his wrists and splaying his fingers. The sheet I had tucked carefully about him slipped down to his hips, the muscles of his arms and chest clearly defined beneath his pale skin as he moved. A litany of their names ran through my mind as I paused to watch them flex, admiring how relaxed they were when his arms came to rest at his side again.
"It is."
I set the comb back down and ran my hand over his shoulders. The skin was chilled, the warmth of the bath having faded more quickly than I had thought it would. I went to his dresser, took out a cotton nightshirt from the middle drawer, and rolled up the hem to slip it over his head. He lifted his arms once more, leaning forward from the mound of pillows I had arranged behind him in aid of my efforts to make him as comfortable as possible. He eased back into them when the garment had fallen into place. I pulled the sheet up to his chest, tucked it under his arms and retrieved the comb.
He rubbed his fingertips along his jaw.
I heard the slight rasp. "I could have taken care of that in the bath."
"Reverting to the roots of your profession?" he asked with a gleam in his eye.
"Perhaps," I said and drew the comb through his hair.
Silently, he tilted his head forward so I could reach the hair at the back, turned so I could reach the far side.
"I never had the slightest inkling that you possessed these esoteric skills, my dear fellow," he said after a while.
I wiped the excess water off the comb. "That I could comb hair?" I enquired, teasingly.
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. "How long has it…" He turned to face me. "You've used them on yourself since your return to England."
"When my shoulder still troubled me, I tried a few times. The effect isn't as salutary when one cannot be in the proper position."
He half turned away, one corner of his mouth lifting. His eyes slid back towards me. "For no other purpose?"
I shook my head. "For that, there are less complicated remedies, which don't require boiling anything afterwards."
He nodded as his attention drew inwards, no doubt bringing order to the new information and attendant sensations I had been able to provide. Acupuncture was a complex art and I was far from a master of it, but I hoped I knew enough to continue to divert him. I didn't have another such skill with which to surprise him.
"After you've wielded your blade along my jaw, you should bring your books down and stretch out just here," he said and patted the mattress beside him. "I want you on hand to field any practical questions that arise as I read."
I didn't move from the side of his bed.
He'd closed his eyes, as he so often did when he was thinking, but aware, of course, that I was still there. Without opening them, he waved at the door to the bathing chamber. "Hurry, Doctor!"
And I did.
~o~
"Mrs Hudson excels herself this evening," Holmes said as little Martha cleared away the dinner things.
The girl bobbed and smiled, eyes firmly on the plates she was stacking on her tray. Mrs Hudson had been sharing a few of her culinary secrets and my understanding was that Martha was proving an apt pupil. Clearly, she had had a hand in something we had consumed, even if it had only been the peeling and chopping of the vegetables.
As she made her way down the stairs, Holmes leaned back in his chair and regarded me. "We have not been the only ones experimenting today."
I felt my cheeks flushing. The statement would not sound unusual to anyone in the house, Holmes's experiments were famous among its residents, or infamous, depending on how malodorous or combustible they turned out to be, but of course, I was privy to its fuller meaning.
"Port?" I asked, pushing back my chair and standing.
"Only a little," he replied, pulling the thickest of my tomes closer and opening to the page he had marked with an envelope when dinner had arrived.
"We should answer that," I said as I poured appropriate amounts in our respective glasses.
Holmes glanced up from the diagram of meridian lines he appeared to be memorising and raised an eyebrow.
"The note from Lady Cressida about her cousin's son," I supplied and set his glass on the table. "I wouldn't have minded a trip to Paris."
"Paris was notably absent from our previous discussion of the correspondence, Watson."
"You weren't in the mood to hear further particulars this morning," I replied.
He picked up the envelope, narrowed his eyes at it as though he might absorb the enclosed letter's contents without troubling to extract the paper from it, then extended his hand towards me, the envelope held between two fingers like a cigarette.
It was one of the gestures in his repertoire that I particularly admired, which, of course, he knew.
"If you would be so good as to read it aloud, Watson," he said, eyes already back on the page of my book.
I plucked the paper from his grasp, stroking his fingertips as I did in a form of silent applause and settled in my chair to read out Lady Cressida's missive in full now that Holmes had the patience to hear it.
~o~
The train rounded a bend and my notebook slipped off my knee for perhaps the fifth time since we had steamed away from the platform at Gare d'Orléans.
"Leave off your notetaking and enjoy the scenery, Watson. You won't be able to write up this adventure for a long while considering who's involved."
Without raising my head, I glanced across the carriage that we had the good fortune of occupying alone.
"Ah," he said, leaning forwards, "my Boswell has plans for an even more scandalous tale."
I didn't deny it. It was as if the idea had gone from seed to full blossom even as Holmes spoke.
"But for your eyes only," I said, in case he thought I had taken complete leave of my senses.
He scrutinised me from head to toe, then settled back against the seat. "It's like your third eye," he said. "You don't see things fully until you've written about them."
"And so, despite the best efforts of the Paris-Orléans line, I hope you will approve of my jotting down the key points of this last case, which surely has to be the most rapidly-solved case in the history of detecting."
"I've solved ones more quickly from my armchair in Baker Street," he rejoined.
"Well, amongst the ones that caused you to bestir yourself," I insisted, "although if we take away the travel time, I'm not so sure it did take you any longer than when you think quietly at home."
He smiled at that and I wasn't certain if it was my admiration or my use of the word home that called it forth.
"Their faces, Holmes, when you looked around the drawing room with the violin in your hands, sniffed once and asked who had painted the portrait over the mantle." I slapped the cushion beside me. "They were so befuddled and exchanged such doubtful glances."
He had taken his pipe out from its travelling pouch and was packing it with tobacco, but I could see the pink that was brightening his cheeks even at that downward angle.
"Not too befuddled to answer," he said, extracting a silver matchbox from an inner pocket of his coat.
"No, indeed! And when you eyed the empty space above the mantle on the other side of the room and asked which member of the household was currently sitting for the artist, how they scowled, as if on cue. I do believe, Holmes, that Huntingdon thought he was in charge of the investigation and rather resented your questioning."
"Personally, I enjoyed how my query as to whether they had also commissioned statues for the garden flummoxed him," Holmes said.
I flipped back a few pages in my notebook and read out: "'Although wood is clearly the medium in which he excels,' you said. 'If he is currently occupied with the sitter for the portrait intended for that wall, we should repair to his room at once to settle the matter'."
"I think they were considering showing us the door at that point," I said, laughing.
"It would appear Lord Huntingdon hasn't read any of your stories in The Strand, Watson, else he would have been more familiar with my methods."
"But how did you know? You barely looked at the violin they handed to you."
Holmes inhaled, then let out an aromatic plume of smoke before replying. "While you were recovering at the hotel from the effects of our rather rough crossing, I went round to visit Maestro Rivarde and had a chance to examine the violin he claims was substituted for the Stradivarius that he had brought to Huntingdon's home for the recital he played at Lord and Lady Huntingdon's anniversary party ten days ago. At Huntingdon's request, Rivarde played his final piece of the evening on the Stradivarius that Huntingdon had acquired last winter and recently had restored. Rivarde agreed that Huntingdon's instrument was indeed a Stradivarius, but possibly a somewhat 'younger' one than his own. It was not a case of the two violins being swapped, however. Rivarde explained that it couldn't even be played. What he had was a sculpture of a violin, with strings and beautifully carved parts from wood of an appropriate age, but lacking the correct internal structure to produce a beautiful sound."
I scribbled a few words in my notebook. "But it doesn't matter, I suppose. There's no need for evidence, since Rivarde and Lord Huntingdon both have their respective violins back and neither care to involve the police."
Holmes looked thoughtful in that particular way he sometimes has when I've said something that sparks a new idea. "He had read your stories though."
"Who?"
"Maestro Rivarde. I think if Huntingdon hadn't had the family connection to us through Lady Cressida, Rivarde might have contacted us first. He said he'd been thinking of it when I called on him."
"Why do you think he didn't involve the police?"
"It's a pity you were indisposed when I went round the first time and still asleep when I returned his violin the next time. You could have formed your own opinion if you'd been with me. I think you would have appreciated him and he would have been delighted to make your acquaintance. He was effusive in his admiration of your writing and he's a handsome fellow. You always do a good job of describing such men in your stories."
My eyes widened a bit. Holmes had never evinced any sensitivity before to my habit of drawing a sort of portrait in words of the characters in my tales.
Holmes noticed my reaction, of course. He lifted his eyebrows ever so slightly and carried on.
"For a musician whose career is still in its first flower, accusing a wealthy, well-connected patron of the arts might not be the best move. And, I gathered the impression, although he didn't out and say it, that he thought the theft might have been planned by Huntingdon, who is a collector, after all. Collectors have been known to go to extreme lengths to possess something they desire." Holmes scowled at his pipe, which had gone out while he spoke. "Rivarde was understandably focussed on who might covet his instrument. He hadn't given much thought to what he'd received in its stead, which was a vital clue regarding at least one person's involvement in the case." Holmes pulled out his matchbox again.
"Do you think the artist, Stanton, will try something like that again? It was obviously a ruse planned over a considerable time."
"I disagree with you there, my dear fellow. Stanton had been residing with the Huntingdons for months, working on a series of four portraits. In the library hung one depicting the daughters of the family and in the entry hall, the boy with his hunting dogs is by Stanton as well."
"So, you think he conceived the idea on the spot, as it were."
"Huntingdon bought the violin while Stanton was in residence and an insurance broker and an expert valuer paid a visit while Huntingdon was sitting for the portrait we saw in the drawing room. On that occasion, Stanton withdrew while the matter was discussed, but he probably heard some of it and Huntingdon had been rather proud of what an excellent bargain he had made when he purchased the instrument - dinner table conversation and so on. Your interviews of the staff proved that most of them knew at least a bit about it."
"I imagine it was worth much more than Stanton could charge for a portrait," I mused. "And he is rather good." I watched Holmes relight his pipe. "Do you think envy was the motive?"
"Impossible to say since Huntingdon didn't give us a chance to interview the artist." Holmes fell silent. "Maybe Stanton took it as a challenge."
I was puzzled and surely looked it.
"To see if he had the talent to mimic something so costly."
"Poor use of his talents, I'd say."
"Interesting lot, forgers. They throw a spanner into the efforts of commerce to capitalise on the work of artists."
"You almost sound like you sympathise with him. Do you think it was right for Huntingdon to simply send him away without consequences."
Holmes chuckled. "Prudent would be the better word, I think. He wouldn't want to advertise that he had been played the fool nor turn his family portraits into the works of a criminal. As for Stanton, his last painting was all but finished; he'd been putting the final touches to it while we were searching his room so fruitfully. His commission for all four paintings had already been deposited in his bank, his bank statements were in his room as well, and the total should be enough to finance the next stage of his career even though he has put little else by. Not that it was an extravagant figure considering the skill and the scale of the works."
I raised an eyebrow.
"I knew the deposits represented payment from Huntingdon as I happened to see the matching entries in his chequebook while I was in his study collecting our fee. You got to have the much more pleasant duty of taking tea with the rest of the family out in the garden as I recall."
"Not too keen on the good lord's company?"
"If there hadn't been two Stradivari at stake and a trip to France, I shouldn't have cared to take him on as a client. His reputation is hardly a secret and I would challenge your use of the adjective good as well."
"Arrogant? Self-important?" I asked. "I had misgivings about leaving you alone with him. I wasn't sure who might throw the first blow though."
Holmes harrumphed. "Exploitative," he suggested around the stem of his pipe. "I am warming to the possibility that Huntingdon commissioned Stanton to carve two violins, using the one he had bought as a model, for a bit of insurance fraud. It would provide a strong reason for his depriving us of an opportunity to speak with the artist. If that is the case, he must have been most annoyed at his mother's bringing us in and foiling his plan."
"So, what do you think is the next stage for the artist?" I asked, turning a fresh page in my notebook.
"I know as much as you."
"You think the excuse Huntingdon gave us was true and Stanton actually dashed off to take ship for New York?"
"It's easily enough checked if you are truly curious," Holmes said, "although it doesn't particularly interest me. A wire from town before we take a carriage out to the gîte overlooking the vineyards should suffice. We can collect the answer before we catch our return train, unless you are too curious to wait a week."
I looked up from my notetaking. Holmes was gazing out the window at the verdant countryside, his eyes half-hooded. He had not told me what our ultimate destination was, nor even where in the Dordogne we would disembark, and I had been happy, as I so often am, to go along without knowing.
"And might this picturesque gîte be an isolated dwelling?"
"It might be." He didn't turn away from the view.
"And might we be the sole occupants?"
"Yes," he replied, drawing out the syllable.
"No one coming in to do for us?" I pressed.
He shook his head.
I glanced at the violin case beside him on the seat. "So, you might play at three in the morning and no one's slumber would be disturbed."
"No one's," he confirmed.
"Will we come down to town to dine?"
"We should find the larder and the icebox packed with delicacies we need only unwrap or decant for our delectation," he explained and I watched the play of muscles in his cheek as he kept a smile in.
"To keep our strength up," I observed solemnly.
"Indeed, so."
"And will there be plenty of oil for the lamps, that I might practice my skills after sunset?"
"You refer to your literary endeavours?" he asked.
"I do not," I said.
~o~
Dawn gilded the mountaintop framed by our bedroom window. I took a deep breath of the cool air and rubbed my hand along the gentle curve of Holmes's spine, stopping when I reached the symmetrical swells at its base.
"It is tempting to stay on," I said.
Holmes rolled onto his side and faced me. "We will miss London before long."
I pulled the covers up to his shoulders, rubbing circles in the cloth to warm him. "I suppose we will." My eyes returned to the scene beyond our window. "Perhaps we need a retreat closer to London."
Holmes's piercing eyes were trained on me when I looked down at him. "Easy to get to when the criminal classes have a bout of lethargy," he said.
"Perfect for treatments that sometimes make you shout," I added.
"And you, too, Doctor," he said.
"And me, too," I agreed.
Gold light was pouring down the slopes of the mountain, our room growing brighter. "We should sleep a bit before the carriage comes," I said. "It's a long journey."
"We can doze on the train," he replied.
"Not so companionably," I observed and slipped down under the covers.
~o~
"Ha," Holmes shouted after he'd opened the telegram on the train.
"What?" I asked.
There had been a small and very-slowly moving queue at the post office when we stopped to see if there had been a reply to our telegram. There had been no time even to read such a short communication as we had had to run in the end to reach the station to get our tickets. Fortunately, the cart driver had already unloaded our luggage and stood ready to receive our monetary appreciation for his efforts. We did not disappoint him, as without his initiative, we would not have made our train.
Holmes smiled. "Stanton did reach Cherbourg in time to board the Hope bound for New York." Holmes's smile grew into a grin
"What else? Come now, I've waited a week."
"You have indeed, Doctor." Holmes leaned forwards. "He didn't board it alone. The eldest Miss Huntingdon was accompanying him."
I laughed.
Holmes tapped the telegram against his lips. "Another possible motive has presented itself, but, for us, the case is done."
~o~~o0o~~o~
"You have been rather vague, John. From a medical man, I would have expected more specifics."
I blot the page in the morocco-bound journal as his arms close around my shoulders and the words spoken next to my ear break through the haze of my reverie.
"How long have you been there?" I ask, glancing about the lamp-lit room.
"Long enough." He releases one of my shoulders to flip the pages of the journal back to the beginning. "Are you expecting me to supply the scientific detail?"
I twist about in my chair to look over my shoulder and up at him.
"Yes," I reply.
~o0o~o0o~o0o~o0o~o0o~
Recipient:
garonneAuthor:
saki101Rating: PG-13
Characters: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, OCs
Word count: 6.2K
Warnings: none apply
Summary: Holmes is dissatisfied with his recent cases and Watson strives to divert him.
Disclaimer: This story is firmly set in the public domain realm of ACD's Sherlock Holmes works.
His Every Mood
Sussex
Journal 190-
I glance across the sitting room. Dusk is deepening, shadows gathering in the corners. The fire casts a ruddy glow across the hearth rug. It outlines Sherlock's profile as he bends over his work. He's ensconced in his armchair, feet up on the ottoman, dressing gown slipping off the lean leg nearest me. The draught that creeps from under the door hasn't disturbed his concentration yet. The two new books on apiology that arrived in the morning's post are balanced on the arms of the chair and his notebook is in his lap. He appears to be annotating all three. He has plans to place hives behind the cottage someday when we stay for longer than the occasional few days between cases. He'll be able to study the creatures at first hand here, where the nearest neighbour is at a distance covered by three-quarters of an hour's brisk walk and the wind sweeps sound away with it, except on the calmest of days.
Another summer of our long association is drawing to a close. At the end of the week we will repair to Baker Street and our customary round of clients and concerts, experiments and editing. Until our departure, I shall work on a manuscript that I have been meaning to continue for a good while. Much as I enjoy sharing with the world those adventures of the great detective that can be shared, with a little camouflage here and there to protect national interests and individual reputations, there are memories I would like to preserve that will never be for the public eye. To further this end, I ordered a fine morocco bound notebook before we left London and this morning it arrived along with Sherlock's books. He hasn't seen it, I don't think, but he will understand instantly what story I intend to place between its gilt covers when he does. It is a fine example of the book-binder's art. I have it open to a smooth, blank page and next to it lies a diary from a summer of nearly a decade ago. The entries therein are smudged and brief, full of abbreviations and symbols. They speak volumes to me.
The scene is before me again…
There was a time when you and I were not so free as we are now. My recollection of when we first crossed that bridge together was set down in the first volume of my reminiscences, although I suppose after all the marginalia you added, they might well be called ours. Here, I proceed to the time when we expanded our explorations because of an initiative of mine. Yes, I give myself credit for it, although blame for how long it took both of us to arrive where we did must be borne equally, I think. However boldly we have taken other decisions in our association, we were painfully slow in this area. You may have a different view, but these will be my recollections in the first instance - although I am leaving every other page blank this time, so you may add whatever salient details you feel I have overlooked. I hope the style amuses you. It is my usual.
As ever, my efforts are dedicated to you.
An exclamation of disgust preceded by an instant the inward crumpling of the broadsheet I was reading. I peered over the pages as I shook the wrinkles out of it. Holmes had leapt from his chair and whirled towards the windows, gesticulating as he went. I folded the newspaper and set it atop the journals and other papers on the table beside my chair, all the while keeping an eye on Holmes. I watch him more closely since he returned to me.
He stood, glaring down into the street, unlit pipe clasped in his outstretched hand, brow furrowed.
I awaited whatever pronouncement was to follow the oratorical gesture. None came. An internal dialogue, then.
"Nothing of interest, I deduce." I leaned down to collect the envelopes that had slid past my knees to the floor after their collision with the morning's news.
"Two cheques, a thank you note, an invitation to some dull lecture on moral rectitude and a notice that Southeran's have located the book you asked them to track down for you. So, no."
I looked through the unopened envelopes and smiled at the crest on one and the return address on another. The cheques within were likely to be large. Both clients had been effusive in their expressions of gratitude at the results Holmes had achieved for them and the speed with which he had achieved them. Neither had even blinked at the sums he had quoted, raising what I knew to be his usual fee for such matters out of pique at the simplicity of their problems. He wouldn't have bothered with either if I hadn't urged him to do so as a favour to me. There had been nothing on for days. I had thought the cases would divert him for a while and hoped something worthy of his attention would turn up in the meantime. I had been wrong on both counts. Too mundane to engage him, too facile to fatigue him, he had been more irritated when they were concluded than before he had taken them on. And he hadn't slept.
My eyes returned to my friend. His arm had fallen to his side. The mid-morning light accentuated the shadows around his eyes, washed away what little colour there was in his pale cheeks. I needed to touch him sometimes to be sure it hadn't been a ghost that had come back to me.
One hand tilted to the left. His silent debate continued.
On that side of him, his chemical apparatus lay dormant upon his worktable, the empty glassware reflecting miniature squares of grey sky. He had written up his latest experiment several days previously, underscoring his findings with a satisfied flourish and sending me out to wire Gregson regarding the ramifications of his results. Nothing had roused his scientific interest since, as far as I could tell. His closed notebook rested, a dark rectangle, amidst the gleaming instruments.
To his other side, his violin case leaned against the leg of the chaise. Not a note had I heard since he tucked the instrument away after playing my favourite pieces following supper two evenings past, despite broad hints from me that an encore would be warmly received. Only the Persian slipper had seen unflagging activity, needing to be re-charged twice, and I feared Holmes would proceed to something stronger than its contents ere long.
I worked a pen knife under the fold of the fine, unmarked envelope that, by process of elimination, must be the thank you note and read over the contents.
"Lady Cressida thanks you again for your help with her nephew's difficulty and asks whether you might have time to help her cousin, Lady Bracknell, with a similarly delicate matter involving her oldest son," I summarised.
Holmes spun from the window, dressing gown awhirl. "Has he mislaid his smoking jacket?" Holmes asked, stepping towards me, hands upraised. "His chequebook? His packet of adulterous billet doux that he was fool enough to leave where his wife would surely find them?" He punctuated each possibility with a downward beat of a hand. A bit of tobacco leaf from his pipe landed on the letter I was holding. "Tell her I've gone abroad, have contracted a dire and highly contagious disease, have been committed to Bedlam. Tell her anything you like to save me from another insipid encounter with what passes for a quandary among the unobservant and uninteresting." He paused in front of my chair, eyes lancing through me. If I had been an animal, I would have feared the dissecting table.
"I could not endure another round of that, my dear fellow." He turned to the hearth and added softly, "Even for you."
I opened my mouth to say something about the chance that the case might have some feature of interest despite its point of origin, but closed it again without speaking. It would probably be better to send a polite reply about his unavailability than invite the relatives to tell their tale and have Holmes reject them on its lack of merit.
He stopped, his face in perfect profile, and I thought he might strike a match to light his pipe. Perhaps that had been his intention, but it wasn't what he did. He scowled and then his brow smoothed. With a delicate movement, so that it did not make a sound, he set his pipe down. Slowly, he angled his head away from me and his right hand glided towards the end of the mantel where the neat morocco case rested.
"Would you reach for me instead?" I spoke without forethought, well, without considering my words just then. I had thought often enough on the topic when I could not sleep because Holmes had disappeared into the depths of London and not returned before I had retired for the night.
His hand halted near the blade affixing several envelopes to the mantelshelf. He did not reply.
It was perhaps a misstep.
I slid a medical journal out from under the folded newspaper. It contained an article that had sparked an idea. So much had changed in the field of Biochemistry since my student days, new secrets of the mind and the body and their intricate interactions were revealed fortnightly, it seemed. I turned the volume in my hands. What might another decade bring? What things understood from experience or in other parts of the world might not find scientific corroboration through the work of my colleagues closer to home?
I cleared my throat and looked up.
He had turned towards me. His eyes flicked to the journal in my hands and back to my face. Perhaps he had read through it, too, and would be offended that I might think the article on addiction could have any bearing on his circumstances. I readied myself for a rebuke, albeit a gently-worded one, because those had been the only sorts of words Holmes had directed at me since his return. Indeed, he had never spoken harshly to me despite the many times I know I tried his patience on the subjects of cocaine and morphine, although I had driven him to sarcasm on more than one occasion.
"You propose I exchange one type of addiction for another?" he asked quietly, facing me more fully. His hair, without the restraint of pomade, fell across his brow. Long, pale fingers brushed it absent-mindedly away.
I held his gaze, which is an unnerving thing to do.
"You are more potent than any drug, Watson. Surely you know this."
It was a heady thing to hear. I waited for the retraction, the cynical follow-up. It didn't come. What untrodden land were we entering?
He regarded me steadily and each word he had uttered reverberated in my head, the syllables overlapping. My eyes dropped to his lips. They were moist. Who was whose drug?
The clatter of iron on stone rose from the street. The drivers of two carriages rattling past our windows, hailed one another loudly. I glanced away. What if I had an addiction, too? It didn't mean he didn't.
"The effect would be different," I finally said and looked back up at him.
He raised an enquiring eyebrow. About his lips there may have been the hint of a smile.
Holmes had read all the medical literature on the subject of addiction long before he had met me, and had withstood my earnest reiterations of its warnings over the years. He could talk circles around all of it. Their admonitions didn't pertain to him. He was stronger; he was special…
His eyebrow was still up.
I know the feel of the hairs that form that arch. I like to trace them with my fingertips. His eyes close when I do it and I touch the fragile skin of his lids with my lips.
The slight upward tilt at the corner of his lips grew as he studied me, the direction of my thoughts no doubt crystal clear to him. I don't mind that he knows. I hid it long enough, or imagined I did.
When I thought he was dead, I had a lot of time to ponder just how special he had been to me. And then he came back. Not many people get the chance to live their 'if only'. I let him know, didn't hesitate too long in taking that first step. Now was perhaps time for another. I wouldn't recite what some doctors, who don't know the texture of his skin, wrote in some journal about addiction. I'd be dead honest. It has been more my habit since he returned to me and we have been the better for it. Still, it wasn't always easy.
"The cocaine and the morphine take you away from me," I murmured. Even to my own ears, my voice sounded forlorn. I hadn't expected that.
He had not ceased his study of my visage.
I blinked to hide.
He was closer when I opened my eyes again, staring down at me. "What form does your treatment take, Doctor?"
He was letting me hide a little.
I brushed past the open sides of his dressing gown and rested my hand on his hip. My fingers tightened until I could feel the muscle beneath the fabric. "Reach for me as you would the syringe, at dawn or dusk, midday or midnight." My thumb found the ridge of his pelvic bone; I watched as I rubbed over the cloth above it, the skin of my fingertip growing warm with the friction. "I will see what is needed then and administer treatment accordingly."
"And if you are not to hand?"
"Summon me! I will come from wherever I've gone, whether it's convenient or not."
He nodded thoughtfully and his hand came to rest on my shoulder. "Since you are to hand, Doctor, tell me, what do I need now?"
I covered his hand with mine and lifted my gaze along the buttons of his waistcoat, past his chin tucked between the points of his collar, to his eyes. They glittered.
I felt breathless. I squeezed his fingers. "Let me show you."
"Don't move yet."
He was still panting, as was I. "I need to catch my breath before I start removing them."
"I should like to see."
"Do you really need to? Aren't your other senses sufficient?"
"Touché."
"You can inspect them when I'm done."
I moved the paraffin lamp closer to the edge of the night table. His skin shone in the lamplight, his face flushed above and below the bandage I had used to cover his eyes. One of his fingers was tapping rhythmically against the bed linens. Along his arm and across his chest small loops and spirals of copper winked in the lamp's flame.
"Not even a finger. Not yet," I admonished.
He huffed, but his finger stilled. I removed the first needle and set it carefully in the appropriate groove in the metal box on the table. There was the faintest chime as I let go and it dropped into place.
"They're much finer than any syringe I've used," Holmes said.
"Yes," I replied and dabbed alcohol on his skin. I held my breath as I drew out the second and set it alongside its mate. I needed more practice. The metal rang lightly.
"Shorter, too."
"The ones I used today are, yes." I moistened another bit of cotton wool, wiped his skin, set it aside and removed a third needle.
He said nothing and I removed a fourth and a fifth. His breathing was steadier, but the flush on his skin had not subsided.
"Is it always like this?" he asked.
I cast my eye along his long form and noted his reaction. By the time I had drawn out the last needle, he was fully engorged again.
"According to the treatises I have studied, it affects some people this way."
"Not you, though," he stated in his inimical way.
My cheeks grew hot. I was glad he couldn't see. No doubt he could tell from the breath I drew in.
"Your teacher didn't have your delicate touch," he continued.
Surely, I was scarlet. I had suspected that with his refined senses, he might be one who would.
Holmes hadn't moved since I finished, hadn't asked me to take off the bandage either.
"There was not the emotion between us…" I began, but Holmes reached up, his hand curving about my neck and pulled me down to him.
"A crucial catalyst," he whispered and his other arm hooked around my hips and urged me up onto the bed.
"Don't you want the bandage off?" I asked.
"Not yet. You are were right about limiting me to my other senses," he said and half lifted me on top of him. "How long did it take you to learn?" One hand slid up my back to my good shoulder. Holmes bit down next to his fingers.
"Nearly a year," I managed to say.
"Practising how often?" he asked, before nipping a little nearer to my throat.
I bit back, a sharp nip to an earlobe. In answer, fingers dug into my buttocks.
"How often?" he repeated, lifting his hips beneath me.
"Once a week…if we could find…the time," I gasped and pressed him into the bedding. "Twice, now and then…when we could manage."
Holmes rolled us over and murmured in my ear. "How long do you think it will take you to teach me?"
I set the towel aside and took up a comb.
"Is this all part of the treatment, Doctor?" Holmes asked, stretching his hands high above his head, rotating his wrists and splaying his fingers. The sheet I had tucked carefully about him slipped down to his hips, the muscles of his arms and chest clearly defined beneath his pale skin as he moved. A litany of their names ran through my mind as I paused to watch them flex, admiring how relaxed they were when his arms came to rest at his side again.
"It is."
I set the comb back down and ran my hand over his shoulders. The skin was chilled, the warmth of the bath having faded more quickly than I had thought it would. I went to his dresser, took out a cotton nightshirt from the middle drawer, and rolled up the hem to slip it over his head. He lifted his arms once more, leaning forward from the mound of pillows I had arranged behind him in aid of my efforts to make him as comfortable as possible. He eased back into them when the garment had fallen into place. I pulled the sheet up to his chest, tucked it under his arms and retrieved the comb.
He rubbed his fingertips along his jaw.
I heard the slight rasp. "I could have taken care of that in the bath."
"Reverting to the roots of your profession?" he asked with a gleam in his eye.
"Perhaps," I said and drew the comb through his hair.
Silently, he tilted his head forward so I could reach the hair at the back, turned so I could reach the far side.
"I never had the slightest inkling that you possessed these esoteric skills, my dear fellow," he said after a while.
I wiped the excess water off the comb. "That I could comb hair?" I enquired, teasingly.
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. "How long has it…" He turned to face me. "You've used them on yourself since your return to England."
"When my shoulder still troubled me, I tried a few times. The effect isn't as salutary when one cannot be in the proper position."
He half turned away, one corner of his mouth lifting. His eyes slid back towards me. "For no other purpose?"
I shook my head. "For that, there are less complicated remedies, which don't require boiling anything afterwards."
He nodded as his attention drew inwards, no doubt bringing order to the new information and attendant sensations I had been able to provide. Acupuncture was a complex art and I was far from a master of it, but I hoped I knew enough to continue to divert him. I didn't have another such skill with which to surprise him.
"After you've wielded your blade along my jaw, you should bring your books down and stretch out just here," he said and patted the mattress beside him. "I want you on hand to field any practical questions that arise as I read."
I didn't move from the side of his bed.
He'd closed his eyes, as he so often did when he was thinking, but aware, of course, that I was still there. Without opening them, he waved at the door to the bathing chamber. "Hurry, Doctor!"
And I did.
"Mrs Hudson excels herself this evening," Holmes said as little Martha cleared away the dinner things.
The girl bobbed and smiled, eyes firmly on the plates she was stacking on her tray. Mrs Hudson had been sharing a few of her culinary secrets and my understanding was that Martha was proving an apt pupil. Clearly, she had had a hand in something we had consumed, even if it had only been the peeling and chopping of the vegetables.
As she made her way down the stairs, Holmes leaned back in his chair and regarded me. "We have not been the only ones experimenting today."
I felt my cheeks flushing. The statement would not sound unusual to anyone in the house, Holmes's experiments were famous among its residents, or infamous, depending on how malodorous or combustible they turned out to be, but of course, I was privy to its fuller meaning.
"Port?" I asked, pushing back my chair and standing.
"Only a little," he replied, pulling the thickest of my tomes closer and opening to the page he had marked with an envelope when dinner had arrived.
"We should answer that," I said as I poured appropriate amounts in our respective glasses.
Holmes glanced up from the diagram of meridian lines he appeared to be memorising and raised an eyebrow.
"The note from Lady Cressida about her cousin's son," I supplied and set his glass on the table. "I wouldn't have minded a trip to Paris."
"Paris was notably absent from our previous discussion of the correspondence, Watson."
"You weren't in the mood to hear further particulars this morning," I replied.
He picked up the envelope, narrowed his eyes at it as though he might absorb the enclosed letter's contents without troubling to extract the paper from it, then extended his hand towards me, the envelope held between two fingers like a cigarette.
It was one of the gestures in his repertoire that I particularly admired, which, of course, he knew.
"If you would be so good as to read it aloud, Watson," he said, eyes already back on the page of my book.
I plucked the paper from his grasp, stroking his fingertips as I did in a form of silent applause and settled in my chair to read out Lady Cressida's missive in full now that Holmes had the patience to hear it.
The train rounded a bend and my notebook slipped off my knee for perhaps the fifth time since we had steamed away from the platform at Gare d'Orléans.
"Leave off your notetaking and enjoy the scenery, Watson. You won't be able to write up this adventure for a long while considering who's involved."
Without raising my head, I glanced across the carriage that we had the good fortune of occupying alone.
"Ah," he said, leaning forwards, "my Boswell has plans for an even more scandalous tale."
I didn't deny it. It was as if the idea had gone from seed to full blossom even as Holmes spoke.
"But for your eyes only," I said, in case he thought I had taken complete leave of my senses.
He scrutinised me from head to toe, then settled back against the seat. "It's like your third eye," he said. "You don't see things fully until you've written about them."
"And so, despite the best efforts of the Paris-Orléans line, I hope you will approve of my jotting down the key points of this last case, which surely has to be the most rapidly-solved case in the history of detecting."
"I've solved ones more quickly from my armchair in Baker Street," he rejoined.
"Well, amongst the ones that caused you to bestir yourself," I insisted, "although if we take away the travel time, I'm not so sure it did take you any longer than when you think quietly at home."
He smiled at that and I wasn't certain if it was my admiration or my use of the word home that called it forth.
"Their faces, Holmes, when you looked around the drawing room with the violin in your hands, sniffed once and asked who had painted the portrait over the mantle." I slapped the cushion beside me. "They were so befuddled and exchanged such doubtful glances."
He had taken his pipe out from its travelling pouch and was packing it with tobacco, but I could see the pink that was brightening his cheeks even at that downward angle.
"Not too befuddled to answer," he said, extracting a silver matchbox from an inner pocket of his coat.
"No, indeed! And when you eyed the empty space above the mantle on the other side of the room and asked which member of the household was currently sitting for the artist, how they scowled, as if on cue. I do believe, Holmes, that Huntingdon thought he was in charge of the investigation and rather resented your questioning."
"Personally, I enjoyed how my query as to whether they had also commissioned statues for the garden flummoxed him," Holmes said.
I flipped back a few pages in my notebook and read out: "'Although wood is clearly the medium in which he excels,' you said. 'If he is currently occupied with the sitter for the portrait intended for that wall, we should repair to his room at once to settle the matter'."
"I think they were considering showing us the door at that point," I said, laughing.
"It would appear Lord Huntingdon hasn't read any of your stories in The Strand, Watson, else he would have been more familiar with my methods."
"But how did you know? You barely looked at the violin they handed to you."
Holmes inhaled, then let out an aromatic plume of smoke before replying. "While you were recovering at the hotel from the effects of our rather rough crossing, I went round to visit Maestro Rivarde and had a chance to examine the violin he claims was substituted for the Stradivarius that he had brought to Huntingdon's home for the recital he played at Lord and Lady Huntingdon's anniversary party ten days ago. At Huntingdon's request, Rivarde played his final piece of the evening on the Stradivarius that Huntingdon had acquired last winter and recently had restored. Rivarde agreed that Huntingdon's instrument was indeed a Stradivarius, but possibly a somewhat 'younger' one than his own. It was not a case of the two violins being swapped, however. Rivarde explained that it couldn't even be played. What he had was a sculpture of a violin, with strings and beautifully carved parts from wood of an appropriate age, but lacking the correct internal structure to produce a beautiful sound."
I scribbled a few words in my notebook. "But it doesn't matter, I suppose. There's no need for evidence, since Rivarde and Lord Huntingdon both have their respective violins back and neither care to involve the police."
Holmes looked thoughtful in that particular way he sometimes has when I've said something that sparks a new idea. "He had read your stories though."
"Who?"
"Maestro Rivarde. I think if Huntingdon hadn't had the family connection to us through Lady Cressida, Rivarde might have contacted us first. He said he'd been thinking of it when I called on him."
"Why do you think he didn't involve the police?"
"It's a pity you were indisposed when I went round the first time and still asleep when I returned his violin the next time. You could have formed your own opinion if you'd been with me. I think you would have appreciated him and he would have been delighted to make your acquaintance. He was effusive in his admiration of your writing and he's a handsome fellow. You always do a good job of describing such men in your stories."
My eyes widened a bit. Holmes had never evinced any sensitivity before to my habit of drawing a sort of portrait in words of the characters in my tales.
Holmes noticed my reaction, of course. He lifted his eyebrows ever so slightly and carried on.
"For a musician whose career is still in its first flower, accusing a wealthy, well-connected patron of the arts might not be the best move. And, I gathered the impression, although he didn't out and say it, that he thought the theft might have been planned by Huntingdon, who is a collector, after all. Collectors have been known to go to extreme lengths to possess something they desire." Holmes scowled at his pipe, which had gone out while he spoke. "Rivarde was understandably focussed on who might covet his instrument. He hadn't given much thought to what he'd received in its stead, which was a vital clue regarding at least one person's involvement in the case." Holmes pulled out his matchbox again.
"Do you think the artist, Stanton, will try something like that again? It was obviously a ruse planned over a considerable time."
"I disagree with you there, my dear fellow. Stanton had been residing with the Huntingdons for months, working on a series of four portraits. In the library hung one depicting the daughters of the family and in the entry hall, the boy with his hunting dogs is by Stanton as well."
"So, you think he conceived the idea on the spot, as it were."
"Huntingdon bought the violin while Stanton was in residence and an insurance broker and an expert valuer paid a visit while Huntingdon was sitting for the portrait we saw in the drawing room. On that occasion, Stanton withdrew while the matter was discussed, but he probably heard some of it and Huntingdon had been rather proud of what an excellent bargain he had made when he purchased the instrument - dinner table conversation and so on. Your interviews of the staff proved that most of them knew at least a bit about it."
"I imagine it was worth much more than Stanton could charge for a portrait," I mused. "And he is rather good." I watched Holmes relight his pipe. "Do you think envy was the motive?"
"Impossible to say since Huntingdon didn't give us a chance to interview the artist." Holmes fell silent. "Maybe Stanton took it as a challenge."
I was puzzled and surely looked it.
"To see if he had the talent to mimic something so costly."
"Poor use of his talents, I'd say."
"Interesting lot, forgers. They throw a spanner into the efforts of commerce to capitalise on the work of artists."
"You almost sound like you sympathise with him. Do you think it was right for Huntingdon to simply send him away without consequences."
Holmes chuckled. "Prudent would be the better word, I think. He wouldn't want to advertise that he had been played the fool nor turn his family portraits into the works of a criminal. As for Stanton, his last painting was all but finished; he'd been putting the final touches to it while we were searching his room so fruitfully. His commission for all four paintings had already been deposited in his bank, his bank statements were in his room as well, and the total should be enough to finance the next stage of his career even though he has put little else by. Not that it was an extravagant figure considering the skill and the scale of the works."
I raised an eyebrow.
"I knew the deposits represented payment from Huntingdon as I happened to see the matching entries in his chequebook while I was in his study collecting our fee. You got to have the much more pleasant duty of taking tea with the rest of the family out in the garden as I recall."
"Not too keen on the good lord's company?"
"If there hadn't been two Stradivari at stake and a trip to France, I shouldn't have cared to take him on as a client. His reputation is hardly a secret and I would challenge your use of the adjective good as well."
"Arrogant? Self-important?" I asked. "I had misgivings about leaving you alone with him. I wasn't sure who might throw the first blow though."
Holmes harrumphed. "Exploitative," he suggested around the stem of his pipe. "I am warming to the possibility that Huntingdon commissioned Stanton to carve two violins, using the one he had bought as a model, for a bit of insurance fraud. It would provide a strong reason for his depriving us of an opportunity to speak with the artist. If that is the case, he must have been most annoyed at his mother's bringing us in and foiling his plan."
"So, what do you think is the next stage for the artist?" I asked, turning a fresh page in my notebook.
"I know as much as you."
"You think the excuse Huntingdon gave us was true and Stanton actually dashed off to take ship for New York?"
"It's easily enough checked if you are truly curious," Holmes said, "although it doesn't particularly interest me. A wire from town before we take a carriage out to the gîte overlooking the vineyards should suffice. We can collect the answer before we catch our return train, unless you are too curious to wait a week."
I looked up from my notetaking. Holmes was gazing out the window at the verdant countryside, his eyes half-hooded. He had not told me what our ultimate destination was, nor even where in the Dordogne we would disembark, and I had been happy, as I so often am, to go along without knowing.
"And might this picturesque gîte be an isolated dwelling?"
"It might be." He didn't turn away from the view.
"And might we be the sole occupants?"
"Yes," he replied, drawing out the syllable.
"No one coming in to do for us?" I pressed.
He shook his head.
I glanced at the violin case beside him on the seat. "So, you might play at three in the morning and no one's slumber would be disturbed."
"No one's," he confirmed.
"Will we come down to town to dine?"
"We should find the larder and the icebox packed with delicacies we need only unwrap or decant for our delectation," he explained and I watched the play of muscles in his cheek as he kept a smile in.
"To keep our strength up," I observed solemnly.
"Indeed, so."
"And will there be plenty of oil for the lamps, that I might practice my skills after sunset?"
"You refer to your literary endeavours?" he asked.
"I do not," I said.
Dawn gilded the mountaintop framed by our bedroom window. I took a deep breath of the cool air and rubbed my hand along the gentle curve of Holmes's spine, stopping when I reached the symmetrical swells at its base.
"It is tempting to stay on," I said.
Holmes rolled onto his side and faced me. "We will miss London before long."
I pulled the covers up to his shoulders, rubbing circles in the cloth to warm him. "I suppose we will." My eyes returned to the scene beyond our window. "Perhaps we need a retreat closer to London."
Holmes's piercing eyes were trained on me when I looked down at him. "Easy to get to when the criminal classes have a bout of lethargy," he said.
"Perfect for treatments that sometimes make you shout," I added.
"And you, too, Doctor," he said.
"And me, too," I agreed.
Gold light was pouring down the slopes of the mountain, our room growing brighter. "We should sleep a bit before the carriage comes," I said. "It's a long journey."
"We can doze on the train," he replied.
"Not so companionably," I observed and slipped down under the covers.
"Ha," Holmes shouted after he'd opened the telegram on the train.
"What?" I asked.
There had been a small and very-slowly moving queue at the post office when we stopped to see if there had been a reply to our telegram. There had been no time even to read such a short communication as we had had to run in the end to reach the station to get our tickets. Fortunately, the cart driver had already unloaded our luggage and stood ready to receive our monetary appreciation for his efforts. We did not disappoint him, as without his initiative, we would not have made our train.
Holmes smiled. "Stanton did reach Cherbourg in time to board the Hope bound for New York." Holmes's smile grew into a grin
"What else? Come now, I've waited a week."
"You have indeed, Doctor." Holmes leaned forwards. "He didn't board it alone. The eldest Miss Huntingdon was accompanying him."
I laughed.
Holmes tapped the telegram against his lips. "Another possible motive has presented itself, but, for us, the case is done."
"You have been rather vague, John. From a medical man, I would have expected more specifics."
I blot the page in the morocco-bound journal as his arms close around my shoulders and the words spoken next to my ear break through the haze of my reverie.
"How long have you been there?" I ask, glancing about the lamp-lit room.
"Long enough." He releases one of my shoulders to flip the pages of the journal back to the beginning. "Are you expecting me to supply the scientific detail?"
I twist about in my chair to look over my shoulder and up at him.
"Yes," I reply.
