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We had not spoken of Holmes’ outburst at the crime scene. No doubt he was flustered, uneasy at the exposure. I’d expected him to withdraw, perhaps even turn icy or aloof in reaction.
But Holmes was nothing but his usual quiet cordiality as I hobbled up and down the stairs wincing at the burn of my bullet sting, to me and Mrs. Hudson. I whimsically wondered if my friend had simply removed the entire uncharacteristic moment from his lumber-room.
“Jefferson Hope,” Holmes said, in the middle of a quiet evening.
I looked up from my manuscript, only aware at first that he had spoken. As comprehension of what he had just said came, I blinked and stared at my friend’s back. Good God, a reference to my first “romantic twaddle” from a case over 20 years old? What on Earth…
Realisation stunned me silent. Say, rather, the man who’d spent 20 years single-mindedly tracking down the two men who’d caused the death of his beloved. The man whose motives Holmes had airily dismissed at the time as proof positive that love had a deleterious effect on the brain, to cause someone to waste his life on such an errand.
“And Leon Sterndale, our lawless lion hunter from Cornwall.” Holmes never looked away from the flames. “Now, Watson, I understand them both.”