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Much like during our time at Baker Street, Holmes and I quickly developed an everyday morning routine after retiring to our home in Sussex. Holmes would rise early, take his morning tea and breakfast, and would typically be out tending to his bees by the time I rose at a conservative nine or ten am. As I fixed and ate my own breakfast, I would read through the papers that Holmes had already discarded. It was his habit to circle or note any articles or stories in particular that he thought I might take interest in, and leave small notes for me in the margins to enjoy while I read them. By the time I was finishing my breakfast, he would typically re-enter the cottage, and we would go about the rest of our day from there.
There was one exception to this daily routine, and that was the day that the Strand was delivered. Once a month, if one of my stories happened to be newly published, Holmes would go about his morning routine in the opposite order, tending to his bees first and then taking his breakfast and doing his morning reading. This meant that we typically shared breakfast, and that I was privy to his initial reaction of that month’s Sherlock Holmes story. It was in this way that on one September morning in 1908, I came downstairs to find my partner preparing a pot of tea, with our breakfast already sitting ready on the table.
“Good morning,” I mumbled, walking over to him and pressing a small kiss onto his cheek. He grinned, but kept his focus on the tea.
I watched as his hands reached up to the cupboard for two tea cups, placing them deftly on the tray that he had already prepped with a sugar bowl and cream jug. He then picked it up and nodded at me to head towards the table.
I took my spot and we both quietly made ourselves comfortable, each in turn making our cups of tea and settling down with a respective paper to read through.
I cherished these mornings. I loved the routine of it, the comfort of sharing our breakfast in contented silence, occasionally voicing a thought about something that one of us had read. In spite of it being entirely mundane, it still felt special.
I had just read about the opening of the the autumn exhibition at the Brighton Art Gallery, and was trying to think of a way of enticing Holmes to a small trip to the city, when over the top of my newspaper I caught a glance at him picking up the Strand and thumbing to, presumably, the page that contained that month’s Sherlock Holmes story. I paused my own reading and lowered my paper slightly, so as to take in his full reaction of the story. This month the first part of the Adventure of Wisteria Lodge had been published, and I eagerly awaited his comments on my recount of the event.
Holmes had found the page and had settled ever so slightly back into his seat, he did not look up, but knew that I would be watching him and waiting for his reaction. I indeed did not have to wait long for the first one. As soon as he began reading he let out a singular, sharp bark of laughter, and immediately lowered the magazine so that he could look over at me with a haughty grin.
“Well, what is it?” I asked after a moment, a small frown on my face.
“My dear, it’s simply that, if I recall correctly, in 1892 I believe that I was presumed to be dead.” I gave him a blank look, and Holmes cleared his throat and read to me:
“‘I find it in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy day towards the end of March in the year 1892. Holmes had received a telegram while we sat at our lunch, and he had scribbled a reply.’”
My frown deepened. “It doesn’t say that!” I put my own paper down hastily and reached across the table to retrieve the magazine from Holmes’ hands. I quickly skimmed the page and found his reading to be correct, the date was written there as “1892” in plain black ink. I let out a groan, and looked over at Holmes, who was barely containing his amusement at the matter. Looking back down at the magazine, I let out a laugh at the absurdity of the error - to think that neither myself nor my publisher had caught it!
“Oh how embarrassing,” I remarked after I was done. “I’ll have to make sure to have my publisher issue a correction in the next printing.” At that, Holmes gave me a small, conspiratorial smile.
“Or you could leave it.”
“I think if I do that there’s no doubt that I’ll receive endless letters noting my error.”
“Perhaps, but think of the theories that your dedicated readers might dream up to explain the erroneous date.”
“I don’t see how anything could possibly explain you temporarily returning from the dead, and my subsequent amnesia about the whole affair!”
“Hmm…” Holmes put on a pensive look before suggesting, in a completely serious tone: “Hypnosis, perhaps?”
We both let out a hearty laugh and I shook my head, handing the magazine back to Holmes without further comment on his suggestion. He took it with a smile and continued his reading of the story, thankfully finding no other errors of the like in the text.
Our day continued on as usual after breakfast, with the error forgotten shortly afterwards, especially with my efforts instead turned to convincing my partner to take a short and spontaneous vacation. I never had a correction issued for the date, but Holmes and I did pass a lovely afternoon at the Brighton Art Gallery the following weekend.