Chapter Text
“What in blazes are you doing?”
The incredulous question came from near the door, and I wondered why he was asking such a thing.
“Writing,” I said shortly, my tone announcing that that should have been obvious.
He probably scowled at me, but I could not be sure without looking up.
“You are not left-handed.”
I froze mid-letter before forcing myself to continue. Had I read him wrong?
“I am not,” I confirmed. “You know that.”
“Then why are you writing with your left hand?”
“My other hand got tired.”
Silence answered me as my finger brushed the paper, and I checked to make sure I had not smeared a word before speaking again. “I know you do not believe the superstition about the left hand being the Devil’s hand.”
“Of course not.” He took a step closer, watching my pen skitter over the page, but he said nothing else. Some people were so superstitious as to beat a child that tried to write with their left hand, and while most adults would not attack someone they saw writing with the “wrong” hand, they would ostracize them. He had called many such ideas “absurd” more than once, but I eventually grew worried as the silence stretched. I had thought I knew him well enough to guess his reaction.
The frown on his face when I glanced up was not the reaction I had expected.
It was probably because this was so unusual, but better safe than sorry, as my father had said so many times. I would rather my hand start cramping than this cause a problem, and I muttered an apology, switched hands, and continued writing. I was almost done, anyway.
He realized immediately what I was thinking.
“No,” he said quickly. “You do not—” He cut himself off, and I glanced up, finishing the last word without looking as he stared at the page. “How did you get your left hand to write just as smoothly as your right?” he asked.
I looked between him and the finished manuscript. “What do you mean?”
He pointed at the sentence where I had switched hands. “They are nearly identical, if slanted differently. I am more ambidextrous than you, yet when I write with my left hand, the letters refuse to straighten.”
“It is just practice, Holmes. I started writing something every day, and eventually, I could write as well with my left as with my right. It is useful for if my right hand is occupied—or tired—but I’ll not do it if it bothers you so.”
He quickly shook his head. “Those superstitions are ridiculous. I just did not expect to be nearly unable to tell the writing apart. Can you teach me?”
“You already know how to write,” I answered, putting the manuscript in an envelope to keep the pages together in my desk. “It is just a matter of training your left hand to form the letters your right hand knows from memory.”
He huffed at me but did not ask again, grabbing his pipe from the mantel. “I never get your limits,” carried faintly from his chair a moment later.
I could not prevent a grin from escaping, and I kept my back to him to hide it.
“You can do it, too, if you practice enough,” I replied after a moment. “It is not hard.”
He made no answer, settling deeper into his chair as I put away my writing supplies.
“Were you wanting to do that medical lesson tonight?” I asked after a moment.
I had mentioned a new resuscitation technique I had learned at a recent medical conference, and that and a few other things were to constitute an evening’s instruction eventually. We simply had not yet had the time, with our most recent case, my writing, and the errands he had needed to do today.
Apparently, we would not be doing it tonight, either. A knock on the front door cut off his answer, and two pairs of footsteps sounded on the stairs. Mrs. Hudson opened the door as I took my seat.
“Miss Fiona Stewart,” she announced, waving a young lady into the room.
Ms. Stewart was nearly as lean as Holmes, though slightly shorter. Short, reddish brown hair framed a pale face and highlighted bright green eyes, and she walked with a spring in her step that reminded me of Mary’s joyful personality.
“Mr. Holmes?” she asked in a familiar accent, glancing between us as Mrs. Hudson went back downstairs.
“Good evening,” Holmes said, waving her towards the settee. “What can I do for you?”
“You must be Doctor Watson, then,” she said with a smile and a nod of greeting as she took a seat. She turned back to Holmes. “Did you receive my message?”
Confusion crossed Holmes’ face, swiftly covered. “We did not. Pray start at the beginning.”
“Oh, dear. I do apologize for arriving unannounced.”
“It is of no matter,” Holmes replied, brushing away her worry with a flick of his hand. I pulled out my notebook as he continued, “You would not have come all the way from Northern Ireland for something you believed unimportant.”
She stared at him in surprise. “How did you know that if you did not receive my message?”
Holmes twitched a grin but looked at me.
“Your hair is windblown as only a ferry crossing can accomplish,” I answered after a moment, “but you dripped a bit of gravy from the train supper on your skirt. As you would not take a train to reach this flat from the London docks, nor do they serve but once every five or six hours, it is most likely you came from Ireland through Liverpool. Your surname and accent are distinctly from Northern Ireland, as well.”
Holmes nodded. “A wave also wet your right shoulder near the end of the crossing,” he added, gesturing to the barely-dried patch of fabric beginning to wrinkle. “It would still be wet if you had come from the continent.”
She reflexively looked at her shirt before picking at the gravy on her leg. “Well, that is incredibly simple once you point it out,” she replied with a grin. “Yes, I came from Northern Ireland. Armagh, to be specific. My sister and I work at the observatory there under Patrick Conrad, helping with the math required in tracing the path of a comet he found. My other sister also worked there until a couple of weeks ago, when an accident took her life.”
“Her death was not what brought you here today,” Holmes said, though I wondered how he could be so sure.
She shook her head as the lingering half-smile changed to an indomitable control, a control that failed to fully hide her heavy grief. “I know not the details of the accident,” she answered, “just that she was out walking late as she always did after we argued.” She swallowed, continuing, “We found her in an alley the next morning, apparently having been run over by a carriage. What started afterwards is what brings me to you. Ciara—that’s my living sister—and I, along with Conrad, have been receiving threatening, sometimes vulgar notes. Some of them describe disgusting things the sender believes should be done to my sister and I, and all of them call for us to quit or for Conrad to fire us, relegating us to ‘women’s work.’ Other notes in a different handwriting claim to be from Kayleigh, promising revenge for the argument that killed her. Here is one of each, ones with the mildest wordings.”
She handed two scraps of paper to Holmes, who read them before passing them to me. The disgust in his gaze warned me of their content, and I purposely read the one claiming to be from the sister first.
“You are a two-face little brown-noser more concerned with the next star chart than your own sister. You will never leave me behind.”
Weak, but we had seen worse attempts at intimidation. Accompanied by other events, I could see how such a note could cause worry, and she had said the other notes got worse. I glanced at the other scrap.
I read that one in less detail than the first, disgusted at the multiple suggestions and anatomically impossible threats contained in the twenty-word note. The one sending these was either perverted or insane, and I knew which one I thought it was.
“When did these start?” Holmes asked as I copied the basics of each into my notebook.
“There have always been threats,” she answered easily. “Small-minded people—primarily men, but women, too—have no idea how to handle the idea that women have a brain just like men, but the frequency, intensity, and vulgarity picked up a few days after Kayleigh’s death. Most started coming from a single sender, and Conrad first mentioned receiving notes himself at about the same time.”
Holmes took the scraps back to look at again. “How well do the notes capture Kayleigh’s personality?”
Ms. Stewart shook her head decisively. “Not at all. Kayleigh was a beautiful person. She would never say such a thing no matter what had happened, and many of the insults are slang. I doubt she even knew what most of them mean. She was always more focused on what the numbers were doing than any words. That was my job.”
“’What the numbers were doing?’” I asked, glancing up. I had heard that phrase only once before.
She colored. “My sisters and I are extremely good at math because we see the world differently than most people. For me, every object has its own alpha-numeric sequence. Sometimes they are true words, sometimes random collections of letters and numbers, but once I learn the sequences, I can compare them to other objects and find similarities many people miss. I confirmed in minutes the irregularity of shape Conrad took days to define.
“Ciara, however, is strictly numbers. She says the numbers float through everything, defining color, shape, size, even texture. Give her the hardest math problem you can find, and she can solve it in moments using the numbers in the room. She explained advanced calculus to our schoolteachers instead of the other way around, and the only reason she is not doing mathematical research for Cambridge is because she was born female.”
The last bit came out with a tinge of frustration, and she paused, taking a deep breath. I silently commended her for her control.
“Kayleigh had geometry,” she continued calmly, stoic despite the lingering grief in her posture, “primarily repeating geometry. She said everything had shapes that parse into smaller shapes, some of which repeat indefinitely. A table might break into thousands of rectangles, while her notebook divided into triangles. I never could see a pattern to her shapes, but she could. She could look at something, break it down into its pieces, and tell you how big the object was and its composition, all before Conrad could focus his telescope. Between the three of us, we helped Conrad project possible trajectories for his comet as well as define its composition, size, and shape.”
I had heard of this in my medical studies but only seen something similar once before, in one of my early university classes. The professor’s assistant had been unable to tie his own shoes but could coherently explain the fundamentals of algebra and analytic geometry.
“And you and your sisters have always excelled at math?” I asked.
She nodded. “From earliest childhood. Our parents were confused but supportive, and they fought the gender divide for us to receive the schooling we needed. No one else in our family has shown signs of doing anything similar, and we have never met another like us.”
“I have,” I replied, noting the way her eyes lit up at the idea, “though it manifested slightly differently. One of the assistants at my university could tell you everything you never wanted to know about algebra, though I’m not sure he had the coherence of speech to describe how he knew what he did in terms anyone else could understand.”
She chuckled at my wording, eagerly leaning forward on the settee. “Is he still there? Which school did you attend?”
I shook my head. “Finn had some medical issues at the time, and his mathematical competency offset the fact that he needed constant care. His funeral was the year I graduated. I do, however, remember reading about a similar ability later. I can try to find that old textbook, if you would like.”
She nodded quickly, her disappointment at being unable to meet someone like her fading behind excitement at the idea of putting a name to what made her unique. “Please!”
“You say Kayleigh was walking the streets after an argument?” Holmes asked as I noted that down. “Could the sender know of this?”
“I have no idea how,” she said after a moment to consider. “It hardly qualified as an argument, anyway. The three of us shared rooms, and we had a large deadline the next week. The admittedly loud discussion that sent her on a walk was more high stress than anything. We would not have even mentioned it on her return.”
“Have there been any other occurrences besides the notes?”
She hesitated. “There is a small lake on the observatory grounds,” she finally said. “Kayleigh often went there to unwind after a long day. If I didn’t know better, I would say she was haunting her old spot. Twice now, I’ve seen a tall woman in flowing white staring out over the water. She always disappears before I can get close.”
Holmes raised an eyebrow. “Can you describe her?”
Ms. Stewart shook her head. “All I am able to see is that she is the right height and shape to be Kayleigh. She is wearing a flowing white dress, and she only appears when the light is imperfect enough to muddle her figure. The first night I saw her was extremely foggy, and her dress nearly glowed in the faint light. Ciara has seen her three times, the last the night before Conrad agreed I should come to you.”
“What is his view on this?” I asked. “Has he voiced an opinion?”
She nodded. “He called it ‘despicable.’ Conrad has never treated us differently because of our gender, and he has stood up for us to his colleagues more than once. A couple of them have stopped working with Conrad because he hired us, but he doesn’t care. He agreed immediately when I suggested coming to you, as his own attempts to trace the harassment have gotten nowhere. Ciara and I cannot properly grieve Kayleigh with someone using her name like this.”
“How long have you worked at the observatory?” Holmes continued.
“A little over a year. Our mother’s brother works in one of the other departments—I forget which one. We are not close—and he suggested us when Conrad and several others were bemoaning all the calculations that go into astronomy. None of the others would take us when they discovered our gender, but Conrad called them idiots and hired all three of us. We have gotten further in Conrad’s research in the last two months than any of them have in the last year, largely due to Ciara’s prowess. What the others must calculate by hand she can figure in seconds, then she scribbles down the process for our records.”
“Do you know who might be doing this?” That was usually Holmes’ final question, and I knew we were drawing to a close. I hoped this case had captured his attention as it had mine.
She shook her head ruefully. “That is why our own investigation has gone nowhere. We go only to work and back to our rooms, and neither Ciara nor I know of any enemies. The notes appear in the communal mailbox addressed to one of us, and while I am sure other people tried to get the position we have, I would have expected them to be over it by now.”
He did not answer for a moment, reviewing what she had told us and giving me a chance to finish writing.
“Are you going back tonight?” he asked.
“I would not arrive until after midnight,” she answered, obviously wishing she could. “I didn’t want to leave Ciara alone, but she promised me she would stay at the observatory with Conrad. We spend so many nights there anyway, working, that purposely doing so once will not matter.”
“There is a decent boarding house nearby,” I told her, “near the Diogenes club. It is reputable, safe, and the rates are affordable.”
She nodded her thanks, taking the note on which I scribbled an address.
“The next train leaves at eight tomorrow,” Holmes told her a moment later, “so if you will be ready by seven, we will meet you in the lobby. We can discuss fees on the journey.”
Relief bloomed in her expression as she realized we would take the case. “Thank you, Mr. Holmes, Doctor.”
Leaving her card as well as our final address in the event we were separated in the morning, the door shut behind her a moment later. I broke the silence almost immediately.
“You suspect something more than just harassment.” I did, too, but I wanted to know why he thought so. I could not put this induction into words.
He nodded hesitantly but said nothing.
“What?”
He still refused to answer. “Something is not lining up, but I cannot be sure without more information. Pack for several days’ journey. I expect this one will take at least a week.”
Mrs. Hudson opened the door, and he directed the topic to other matters over supper and declined to answer when I brought it up again later. I quickly located the medical text I remembered, and, leaving only briefly to get another copy, I packed and went to bed early.
None of our cases were ever what they appeared at the start, but something about this one seemed different from the others. I could only hope that premonition did not bode ill for either of us.