Chapter Text
Iris Wilson had a very particular morning routine. When the rest of her life was disorganized, she could rely on one thing.
Every day, she rose at seven in the morning. An alarm she had created herself, having rigged up a recording of Tckaikovsky’s 1812 Overture to play at incredibly loud volumes, woke her abruptly without fail. Her own technology could be relied upon. She dressed in her room, donning suspenders, pants, and tall boots with heels worn from walking on roughly cobbled streets. She had modeled the look after Ginny’s a few years ago when she decided she was tired of the frilly dresses her dad bought for her. They were all well and good for a ten year old, but at 16, she found the ruffles inconvenient and itchy.
“Real work,” of course, consisted of investigations of her own. Her homeschooling was completed quickly, as was Ginny’s, and Iris soon found that she could make a pretty penny being hired as a contractor at Scotland Yard for the use of her inventions in investigations, which more than made up for the rent Hurley struggled to make in detective consultation. She insisted on supervision of her own creations, however, and Ginny, carrying on the legacy of her literary predecessor, made Iris’ needs the priority.
In fact, after Inspector Gregson passed, Gina Lestrade began to feature heavily in Herlock Sholmes’ adventures. Iris had asked her if she might like to be called just “G.,” perhaps to protect her scrutiny from the public, but Gina had insisted on her name being published. Gina Lestrade was quite a controversial character as a result--Herlock Sholmes’s Yard counterpart being replaced by a woman was a writing decision the public had never expected, and it was one of the first times they began to theorize about the potential embellishment of certain details of the story. That always made Iris roll her eyes, the fact that no one asked any questions until a woman got involved. Gina took it all in stride, though.
After getting dressed, Iris would go downstairs and prepare tea and breakfast. The house was often emptier than she recalled it in her younger years, with no visiting students posted up in the attic. Of course, Susie and Runo still visited sometimes, but never for more than a few months at a time, and at the moment, they were gone. So Iris made breakfast for two.
Once she and Hurley had eaten, he helped her clean the dishes. If she wasn’t at least present, he wouldn’t do it properly, and Iris, as happy as she was to live amongst junk, would not live among mold or bugs. Then she would spend about half an hour or so at her typewriter, clacking away at a new story. She used to spend longer on it, but as cases filtered out and her own work began, she found the time she devoted to it slowly slipping into overthinking, so she left well enough alone.
They had a conversation several weeks before, though, as she was putting the finishing touches on Herlock Sholmes and the Case of the Curious Coronation.
“Hmm,” she had said, rather loudly, in an attempt to get her father’s attention.
“What are you humming about? Writer’s block?”
“Not really. I was just thinking… Well, I’m out of journals. And I’ve got work of my own now, I can’t keep following you around. You certainly won’t remember your own cases well enough to tell them to me,” she said slowly. “The royalties certainly don’t amount to what I make by lending myself to the Yard. Do you suppose… Well, is this the last one?”
He had turned around in his chair to face her, a familiar creak as its wheels rumbled across the floorboards. She turned hers to face him across the room. “How long have you thought that?”
“Maybe… three or so cases ago?”
“Seven months!” Hurley exclaimed. Iris smiled sheepishly. He had a tendency to forget and lose track of time, but her schedule never slipped his mind. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner, Iris?”
“Oh, I don’t know, I thought I’d finish that one, and then straightaway Mr. Edmund arrived, so I never really had the time before there was another one…”
“Goodness gracious! Drop that manuscript right now, Iris, I shall document my own exploits if need be!”
“It’s… already done, daddy.”
“Ah! What a phenomenal feat from my most excellent biographer! Do whatever you want with it.”
Iris decided about a week later exactly what she would do with it. She would publish it, and for the first time since the first story’s publication eight years ago, Dr. John H. Wilson M.D. would make a public appearance to announce the publishing of the final installment in his series. Hers, rather.
So on this morning, Iris took an additional step in her morning routine. That half hour she usually devoted to writing she spent instead donning the long, dark, trench coat that John H. Wilson wore in cold weather, and his bowler hat. And most importantly, she let her hair fall loose. There was no mistaking that despite the coat, the hat, and the moniker, Iris Wilson was a woman.
She told Hurley she only wanted him with her for the credibility. He would walk across the platform erected in the square, say John Wilson would be out in a moment, and then Iris would enter and he would leave. She wanted to handle discussions with the paper and radio reporters herself.
So he did. There was a wooden platform temporarily set in Parkerson Square for the grand exit of John H. Wilson and Herlock Sholmes from literary exploits, upon which stood a table and chair in front of a hastily erected curtain. Iris took her place behind it, and on the other end, she could hear the murmurs of the press, drying out her throat. She balled up her fists over the sleeves of her coat, took her top hat on and off, debating its presence, until she decided to slip goggles over the brim until its weight felt right. Every move she made was just stalling, really, a way to put off the crushing anxiety of telling people how she wanted to be perceived. She took a breath.
She pushed through the curtains and sat herself at the table. The murmuring stopped. The crowd watched her, bewildered.
Iris thought this might happen. They thought she was a deeply misguided assistant of some kind. She cleared her throat.
“Ah, hello, all you members of the… ever so valuable London Press. I know my partner has helped a great deal of you. Ah…”
Silence across the crowd. She couldn’t make out any faces. Perhaps the reason for her anonymity became known now, in a way her analysis could never have predicted. She wasn’t very good at public speaking. Not that she was anxious, she could just feel the raw expectation, and she no longer had the impenetrable confidence of a ten year old girl. “My partner,” she repeated, trying to keep her voice firm, “Is, of course, Herlock Sholmes. Many of you know me as John. H. Wilson, the doctor who behaved as both his assistant and biographer for the past eight years. But my name is Iris Wilson. I am a sixteen year old born and raised Londoner, and… yes, I do have a medical degree.” She smiled broadly at the audience (as well as she could, at least). They didn’t appreciate the humor.
She expected questions. In a better world, she would expect questions like “Why are you choosing to retire,” and “Will Herlock Sholmes continue to offer work as a detective.” Being realistic, she expected something more along the lines of “Why are you lying to us,” and “Are you meaning to imply that all those stories were written by some insolent little girl.” Instead, there was nothing.
She cleared her throat. “I have been, over the course of my literary career, regarded by my close acquaintances as somewhat of a prodigy. While this term is perhaps apt, I believe it would be best for my well being if I removed myself from such an esteemed judgement, and instead allowed myself to explore other careers and opportunities. All of that said, my final tale,
The Case of the Curious Coronation,
is sure to provide a fulfilling final installment to this serial, and will additionally be bound and republished with its preceding four stories in a single volume for the public to enjoy in approximately a year’s time.”
Finally, the chatter began. Reporters spoke to one another, held microphones and notepads to the stage, and Iris felt herself flush under the surge of the crowd. “Ah, orderly, please! You there.”
“Ms Wilson, if you’re 16 years old, that would mean you have authored this series from the age of eight. How do you explain that?”
The man was holding a microphone up to the stage and some kind of radio set in his hand as a hush dropped over the crowd. Iris leaned forward a bit, and said, “I was literate, wasn’t I?”
More chatter began in the crowd, more clamor arose between the reporters. Iris gestured to a paper reporter tapping his pen along his notepad’s spiral. He looked a bit surprised to be chosen, but cleared his throat and steeled himself. “You must admit, Ms Wilson, it’s a bit hard to believe. The detective truly had no hand in documenting his own adventures?”
“I mustn't admit anything, all due respect. It is improbable, but I’ve always known it as my life. I wrote them alone.”
“What is your true relation to Herlock Sholmes, if not as a partner?” Someone interjected, before the furious clamor of the crowd began again. Then everyone went pin-drop silent, so it was a bit hard to ignore.
“I do consider myself to be a professional partner of his.” Iris clarified. “I believe my work speaks for itself on that front. However, above that, he is my father.”
The crowd
erupted
before she could say another word
.
Iris could hardly hear the blood pound in her ears over the sound. She’d already ruined it, she hadn’t even managed to defend her claim to the stories before she had to defend her claim to her own father. She could hear snippets of conversation and clamor that she couldn’t bring herself to dwell on, and before anyone could push themselves to the front to demand more elaboration from her, she felt hands on her shoulders, pulling her up from the chair, guiding her away. Maybe she had been silent longer than a moment, and it was clear something was wrong. She was led, gently, to a carriage with its door already open for her as she stumbled inside, head spinning. The door slammed shut.
“You didn’t have to answer questions, my dear, you have accomplished what you must. Let it lie.”
You didn’t hear that from Herlock Sholmes often, did you?
“Should I not have said? Or maybe just been more clear…” Iris murmured.
“I would never have stopped you. As far as I’m concerned your relation to me, if considered negative at all, should reflect worse on myself as a bachelor than you as an accomplished young woman.”
“Perhaps that’s a bit bold. They’ll say all kinds of things about illegitimacy, won’t they?” She asked, the toe of her boot digging into the slatted floor of the carriage car.
“Would you like me to clarify for the presses?”
She laughed halfheartedly. “Some papers would be bound to ignore you. No, no, I said I’d take what I got. I’m done.”
Iris wanted, at least, to be done. She had sort of hoped, in the back of her mind, that this announcement would be the end of it. The sheer revelation of being a woman would strike her public career in its infancy, and she would be allowed some privacy to practice what she chose. Perhaps it was a bit too reliant on disparaging herself and allowing herself to be disparaged, but there was very little she cared for that sort of thing anymore.
It was exhausting, to be as highly regarded as she was. Not that it was hard to be intelligent, it was simply hard to be held to the standard that intelligent adults often were. Iris, even at 16, bore so much emotional and intellectual labor that her ability to process her own emotions, and development, and desires, were deeply, deeply stunted. Half of her entire life she had spent devoted to the adventures of Herlock Sholmes, and as much as she loved her father, life laid itself out very simply when she thought she wanted to follow in the footsteps of who came before her. Get a medical degree like her then-assumed birth father, adopt inventing and deduction like Hurley. Well, it was all well and good, it kept her childhood home well furnished and the public entertained and her compulsive need to know where things were and why they were under control. But more so than that, she wasn’t even sure she particularly liked it, in the most general of terms. She liked things that exploded and she liked bringing them to Ginny for work, but that was hardly a permanent position. The Yard would have its official, legal forensic methods in the next ten years, by Iris’ calculations, and her contracting would be obsolete.
Iris Wilson had her entire life planned out at the age of ten. By 12 she was absolutely sure of it, she had it all down to details, how much she would be making and when and how. And suddenly, at 16, she had no drive, no job, and a grand total of zero friends her age, unless you counted being six to seven years older than her “her age.”
Her father nodded in his seat. “Alright. Well, you’ve got whatever time you want to decide. I’d never want you to be the sole breadwinner in our home.”
That was some relief. It’s a lot of pressure to put on a child. That said, just because he didn’t want it to come to that didn’t mean it wouldn’t, did it?
Iris leaned her head on Hurley’s shoulder in the carriage, like she was ten again, falling asleep on the way home from one of his eccentric field trips. Sometime before she closed out the lull of the carriage and the clattering of cobbles, she felt his arm over her shoulders, holding her in place so a jolt of the cart wouldn’t move her.
The next day, the morning paper thudded against the door of 221b Baker Street. Iris, who always woke up earliest, got to it first. Somewhere on the second page was an article about Herlock Sholmes’ secret illegitimate daughter, rumors of her parentage, a slight mention of her bold but “unconfirmed” confession of having written London’s beloved detective stories. She pulled the page out of the bundle and folded the rest on the table for Hurley. She would use it to line Wagahai’s litter.
“Piss on this, Waggy,” she muttered.