Work Text:
“Kincaid,” I said a few days after defeating Professor Moriarty. “We need to go back to the scene of the crime.”
Reginald Kincaid gave me a puzzled look, but changed into the garb of Sherlock Holmes.
Nothing remained of that building but a vast blackened space, with a bit of charred brick wall; the gas main beneath the Orpheum Theatre had made sure that the small lantern-fire atop bundles of rags and paper turned the entire edifice – seats, curtains, props, musical instruments, backdrops, Moriarty’s counterfeiting operation – to ash. We picked our way through the mess, past bits of chairs or rigging.
And then before us was a great chasm, where the boards had burnt away; all that was left of the stage itself.
Kincaid stared into the abyss as if into a friend’s grave. “’All broken implements of a ruined house.’”
I looked at Kincaid. “Timon of Athens.”
Kincaid shot me a look, eyes wide.
I smiled a little. “You’re still the expert in that field, never fear.”
Kincaid busied himself with a handkerchief ostensibly to protect his face from the char and dust. “Only things unscathed are probably the bloody roaches,” he mumbled. “Watson, why are we here?”
“So you could say goodbye.” I rested a hand on my actor friend’s shoulder. “It’s always a tragedy when a theatre burns.”