Work Text:
It has long been my habit to record only those cases marked by some unusual feature—whether through their singularity, their psychological interest, or the heavy toll they exacted upon those concerned. The affair at the Argyll Theatre, though hardly among our more perilous adventures, satisfies all three conditions, if in a manner somewhat out of the common.
I delayed committing it to paper not because it was sensational, but because it bore the faintest air of the absurd. There was no murder, no cryptogram, no lurking miscreant in the wings. There was, however, Macbeth —and that, by theatrical tradition, is misfortune enough—and, as it proved, quite enough to spoil my own evening. I entered the theatre in sound health and good humour; I finished the evening with a cut upon the temple, a protesting leg, and the weary sense that I had offended whatever spirits preside over the Scottish play.
Holmes, naturally, laughed at the idea. He does not believe in curses, though he has been known, half in jest, to accuse me of inviting them. For my own part, I saw it merely as a rare indulgence on his part. He had taken two box seats for a Thursday performance of Macbeth at the Argyll, a recently renovated house in St. Martin’s Lane, and offered no explanation for this sudden interest in Shakespeare. I had not seen the tragedy since my schooldays and welcomed the diversion. A week of sleet and sullen skies had told upon us both, and Holmes had grown restive in the long absence of a case.
“I am told their Lady Macbeth is formidable,” Holmes remarked that afternoon, standing before the pier-glass to give a final touch to his cravat. “And the Macbeth—Jasper Vane, I believe—is said to carry his realism to dangerous extremes. One must admire such conviction, though it serve a man ill.”
The remark struck me as curious, but I chose not to ask more. His mood was uncommonly light, and I had learnt that the quickest way to dispel such humours was to inquire into their cause. When he turned to me, I straightened the knot of his tie—slightly awry from his hasty toilet—and he endured the adjustment with the absent patience born of long familiarity. I permitted myself the quiet satisfaction of an evening unburdened by chemical experiments, cryptic telegrams, or the menace of sudden gunfire.
We dined early at a small French establishment tucked away in a narrow turning off the Strand, the sort of place where the lamps burn low and the air is fragrant with wine and browned butter. Holmes declined the claret but indulged himself freely in observing the evening crowd, his gaze roving with that idle scrutiny he reserved for moments when his mind was untroubled by graver enquiry. As was often our habit, he entertained himself by divining the occupations, habits, and small secrets of our fellow diners, sharing only enough of each conjecture to whet my curiosity in that teasing manner of his.
The fare was modest yet faultless. Holmes ordered trout in a white wine sauce; I, a beef fillet so tender it yielded to the lightest touch. He trifled with his portion in his accustomed way, his gaze following the discreet commerce between kitchen and floor, though he paused to commend the sauce, suspecting marjoram in its making.
I laughed, assuring him I had not come to solve a culinary mystery, and as I reached for my glass, his fingers brushed the back of my hand. He did not look up, but there was the faintest curve at the corner of his mouth before his attention returned to the plate. It was one of those brief, elusive smiles that seemed to escape his notice altogether, though it lingered with me far longer than the taste of the wine.
When we emerged back into the evening, the rain had passed, leaving the cobblestones slick as black glass. Gaslight gleamed in the gutters as the lamplighters began their trade; hansom cabs rattled past, their wheels striking sparks from the stones. Holmes’s arm found mine again without comment, steadying me as we crossed toward the theatre. By the time we reached St. Martin’s Lane, the lamps were fully lit, their glow catching in the fine mist that lingered in the air. The Argyll’s freshly painted façade shone bravely, its gilt lettering picked out in gold, though the older stone beneath hinted at a long and less glamorous history.
Inside, the theatre was all plush and plaster: red velvet seats, gilt mouldings, and painted cherubs gazing down from the ceiling. The illusion of grandeur was artfully contrived, though a discerning eye might note where paint masked a crack or the gilt had been touched with bronze.
At the vestibule, Holmes took my hat and cane with the ease of long practice, leaving me to shed my gloves. When I had done so, he returned the cane to my hand and passed my ticket across to the attendant, all without breaking the thread of his idle observations on the crowd. Our box lay to the right of the stage, and I was glad enough to sink into my seat, easing the weight from my leg.
Holmes remained standing, his hands clasped behind him, surveying the house with the same abstracted expression I had marked over dinner. The murmur of those seated below us swelled and fell like the sea on shingle; the orchestra tuned in a discordant flutter of strings and brass. There is, in a London audience, a certain warmth born of collective endurance; yet even here a nervous current ran through the queue. More than one patron, glimpsing the playbill, murmured the old nickname of “the Scottish play” and crossed themselves as though to avert disaster.
Then the lamps dimmed, a hush fell, and the curtain rose.
The tragedy unfolded with vigour. The Weird Sisters, cloaked and grotesque, seemed to creep from the very floorboards; the clash of swords in the battle scenes rang with convincing steel; and Lady Macbeth—Madame Coralie, of Parisian renown—held the house as in a spell. Holmes betrayed little, save for the rare lift of an eyebrow or the faintest twitch at the corner of his lips, from which I could gather nothing of his verdict.
For myself, I was perfectly content. There is a peculiar charm in the theatre when one is warm, well fed, and seated beside a trusted companion in a dim box—far enough from the stage to command the whole design, yet close enough to feel the actors’ breath. The air was a mingling of footlights and scent: paint and perfume, damp wool and cigar smoke. The audience, drawn into the play’s dark current, seemed to breathe as one.
During the interval I procured a brandy, Holmes declining. We sat in easy silence, watching the throng: critics in velvet collars; couples whispering behind opera glasses; a lady in a green feathered hat whose listless manner betrayed her boredom, though her companion’s eyes strayed often to the leading lady. Holmes’s lips quirked when I drew his attention to it.
“I’ll wager five shillings they quarrel before the curtain falls,” said he. “Ten if she throws the hat.”
“I am tempted to take that bet merely to learn how you intend to collect.”
“She is left-handed and prone to dramatics. The angle of delivery will be of consequence.”
“She will fell the conductor.”
“In which case, I owe you dinner.”
“You already owe me dinner,” I reminded him.
“Do I?”
“I distinctly recall an unpaid wager involving the shoemaker’s apprentice and a disappearing goose.”
He allowed himself the briefest smile. “But I maintain the goose was not his.”
I chuckled and sipped my brandy, letting the silence settle with the ease of long familiarity.
“You are shivering,” he remarked presently, without turning his head.
“It is nothing—the theatre is draughty.”
Without a word, he eased closer, the fold of his coat settling over my shoulder as though by accident, his scarf slipping easily from his neck onto my lap. His hand lingered for a moment in the hollow of my arm before withdrawing, leaving only the steady weight of his sleeve against mine. He did not look at me, but the contact remained until the bell summoned us back to our seats, a quiet anchor amid the darkened hush.
By the final act the house had thinned—the inevitable retreat of the restless and the infirm—but Holmes and I kept our seats. The last image is clear to me still: Macbeth, sprawled in defeat upon the boards, the limp standards drooping above, the air heavy with painted smoke; the lights falling one by one until a single narrow beam picked out the lonely, blood-stained blade lying at his side.
When the curtain descended, the applause broke like surf against the stage. We rose, lending our share of polite commendation, and I turned toward Holmes with a remark on the staging—only to find him already drawing on his gloves, his gaze turned inward, lost in thought.
Still, he rose, reached for my coat, and held it ready, the movement brisk but not without care. I slipped my arms into the sleeves, feeling the swift, efficient tug as he settled it into place. My hat followed, pressed into my hand with the same absent precision, and when I reached for my cane, he had already drawn it from where it leaned against the box rail. I accepted it with a faint incline of the head.
It was not unexpected, this quiet assumption of my needs, and I smiled to myself.
Outside, the night was hushed. The theatre’s patrons drifted away in little knots beneath the lamps, their voices fading into the fog. Across the street, a cabman stamped his feet and shook the reins over his steaming horse. Holmes glanced at the line of waiting vehicles, then turned away without comment. He knew I disliked the cramped, jolting ride when my leg was stiff, and the distance home was not so great as to warrant it.
He struck a match, the flare lighting the lean angles of his fingers before subsiding to the glow of his cigarette. Without looking, he passed me one; I accepted it for the camaraderie more than for any desire to smoke.
We walked several blocks in silence. My gait was uneven, and his pace—without remark—adjusted to match it.
“Not a wasted evening, I trust?” he said at length.
“Far from it.”
The cold had deepened—not the bracing sting of open air, but a settled chill that pressed through wool into the bone. A low ground-fog blurred the lamps into trembling haloes and dulled the slick gleam of the cobbles.
Holmes walked beside me, hands clasped behind him, collar turned high, his long stride cutting a sure path through the vapour. I knew the signs: the narrowed eyes, the lifted chin, the way his course drifted toward the middle of the street, heedless of mud or wheel-ruts. Some fragment from the play or the theater had lodged in that quick mind and was turning over, quietly germinating. I had learnt not to disturb such growth.
Content to let him walk in silence, I kept to my own pace. But the stiffness was spreading now, the ache that had begun near Covent Garden—a mild protest above the knee—working its way deep until it became a steady, unwelcome throb. I shortened my stride, unwilling to draw attention, yet unable to keep the discomfort at bay.
The cane shifted in my grip; I adjusted my weight, masking the wince that followed. The wind, sly and persistent, found its way beneath my coat, probing every joint. Baker Street lay quiet beneath the lamps, our own stoop a familiar shape at the far end. Yet the single step to the door, so trifling in daylight, seemed at that moment a needless cruelty.
Holmes, key in hand, mounted it without pause.
I slackened my pace, shifted my weight, and felt the cold bite at my temple.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” he called over his shoulder, already shrugging out of his coat.
“Give me a moment,” I murmured.
I set my foot to the first stair with care—or meant to—but my knee betrayed me. Whether from damp, misjudgment, or the joint’s simple treachery, it gave way. My foot slipped; the cane clattered aside; my hand shot out—and met only air.
The fall was short but hard. I struck the stair-edge with hip and shoulder; my temple met the riser in a dull, solid blow that drove the breath from my lungs.
Holmes’s voice was close at once. “Watson!”
“I’m all right,” I managed, though the ringing in my ears said otherwise. My thigh spasmed; I clenched my teeth against the sound it would have dragged from me.
He was beside me in an instant, crouching without ceremony, hands hovering but not yet touching. “Where?”
“Nowhere serious. Only slipped.”
His gaze swept over me—shoulders, wrists, ribs, knee—halting at the scrape high on my temple where the skin had broken.
“You’ve struck your head,” he said flatly.
“It is nothing. The leg bore the brunt.”
His jaw tightened.
“I do not require an ambulance,” I added, attempting a levity I did not feel. “I am merely—”
“Bleeding and half-stunned,” he interposed, quiet but absolute. “You need a chair. Up.”
There was no space for protest. Between us we contrived to get me upright, though my vision swam and his grip on my arm tightened with sudden urgency.
“You’re weaving,” said he, worriedly.
“I shall manage. Stop looking as if you had seen a ghost.”
“I have not,” he said curtly. “But I have no wish to find one at the foot of my stairs.”
He drew my arm more firmly through his, and together we mounted the narrow flight. His step was unhurried, his body angled just enough to shield me should I falter. The dim light from the hall lamp cast our shadows long against the wall, rising in uneven rhythm with our progress.
We gained the sitting-room at last, the fire low and shadows high. I sank into my chair with more gratitude than I cared to admit, trembling not only from pain, but from the cold and the sudden loss of mastery over my own body.
Holmes vanished into the next room without a word.
I sat very still. The first edge of shock had gone, leaving the ache to settle in like frost—bone-deep and most unwelcome. My temple throbbed in time with my pulse; the scrape burned. For a moment—absurdly—I felt the sting of tears. I mastered them and closed my eyes.
Holmes returned sooner than I expected, a tray in one hand, the other steadying a small teapot that steamed faintly in the dim light. He set it down without flourish, then knelt beside my chair, his movements quiet and deliberate.
“You should be lying down,” he said.
“I prefer to remain here,” I replied, though the truth was that the effort of standing again felt intolerable.
He made a faint sound—half sigh, half something less resigned—and angled the lamp so the light fell across my face. I turned away instinctively.
“Hold still,” he murmured, brushing the hair back from my temple. His touch was careful but certain. I felt the slight pause as he took in the extent of the scrape.
“It is worse than you think,” he said.
“It is not,” I countered, perhaps more sharply than intended. His hand did not move.
“You have bled enough to prove me correct,” he said, his tone even but carrying a weight that pressed against my stubbornness.
I shifted under the scrutiny, the heat of the lamp joined by the faint warmth of his breath. “Holmes—”
“Watson,” he said, low, and the single word held both rebuke and something gentler—something that made my throat tighten in ways I preferred to ignore.
He rose, fetched a folded cloth from the tray, and dampened it with hot water. Without asking again, he pressed it to my temple, firm enough to sting. I caught my breath; his hand steadied me by the shoulder until the pain dulled.
“You jarred yourself,” he said with concern.
“It is nothing that will not pass,” I murmured.
“Perhaps. But I prefer to see it pass on my watch.”
There was no answering that, so I closed my eyes and endured the careful work of his hands. The silence was punctuated only by the soft rustle of cloth against skin and the faint clink of china when he exchanged one compress for another. Each touch was precise, but lingered just long enough to suggest precision was not the only motive.
When he had finished, he set the cloth aside and rested his palm briefly against the uninjured side of my face. The gesture was so slight, so swiftly withdrawn, that I might have imagined it had it not left behind a warmth that outlasted the touch.
“You will take my room tonight,” he said, already straightening to his full height. “It will spare you the stairs.”
“That is unnecessary—”
“It is settled.” The words were clipped, but his eyes, when they met mine, had softened.
He drew me carefully to my feet, his hand steady at my elbow, and steered me toward the open doorway. “I will bring up what you require. You are not to move more than is needful.”
In the narrow passage, his shoulder brushed mine before he stepped ahead to open the bedroom door. The bed had been turned down, the fire in the grate newly coaxed to life; I had not heard him make the preparations.
“You will forgive me,” he said as I sat, “if I choose to keep you in my line of sight this evening.”
I closed my eyes, telling myself his watchfulness was only habit. And if it eased something in me I would not name—well, no one was listening.
I woke to the muted sound of pages turning. For a moment I could not place myself, the dim light and muffled quiet combining into the stillness that follows a snowfall. Then the stiffness in my leg made itself known, and the throb in my temple gave its own reminder.
I was in Holmes’s bed, the counterpane drawn up to my chin, the faint scent of tobacco and his cologne lingering in the air. Across from me, settled in the chair beside the hearth, Holmes sat with the Times folded over his knee, spectacles balanced low on his nose. He looked up as soon as I stirred.
“You should have woken me,” I said, easing myself a little higher against the pillows.
“You were sleeping,” he replied, removing the spectacles and setting them aside. “An activity I did not care to interrupt after last night’s acrobatics.”
“I hardly think slipping on a stair qualifies as acrobatics.”
“No,” he said dryly, “but the landing was theatrical enough.”
I made a face, then regretted it as my temple pulled. Holmes noted the wince, rose, and came to stand beside the bed, his hand resting lightly on the coverlet near my arm.
“The swelling has not worsened,” he observed. “Nor has your colour. These are favourable signs.”
“You have been watching me sleep?”
“From time to time,” he said with such unstudied frankness that I found no ready retort.
He adjusted the counterpane—needlessly—then turned to coax the fire back to life. I listened to the familiar rhythm of poker against grate, the fall of coal, the faint sigh as the flames caught.
“I have brewed tea,” he said over his shoulder, “and brought bread and honey, lest your pride insist you can take nothing more substantial.”
“I am perfectly capable of breakfast,” I said, though in truth I felt more weary than hungry.
He returned with the tray and set it within reach. As I poured, I caught his gaze on me with the same quiet intensity I had endured the night before. At last I set down my cup.
“You will worry a hole through me if you continue to stare like that,” I said.
He leaned back, steepling his fingers. “If you choose to court the ill fortune of that play again, I will make my peace with it. But you might have spared me a demonstration of the curse before the week’s end.”
I laughed despite myself. “You don’t believe in such nonsense.”
“I don’t,” he said. “And yet I cannot deny the sequence of events: you leave the theatre hale enough, and within the hour you have blood on your temple and a limp worse than when you went in. Were I a man inclined to superstition, I might call it cause and effect.”
“I slipped on the stair,” I reminded him.
“And I slipped in offering you an evening without hazard,” he returned, though more softly now.
“If this is your idea of a curse, it is a very tame one.”
“Perhaps,” he said, and the faintest smile touched his mouth, “but I will take no further chances.” He glanced toward the window, where the fog clung stubbornly to the glass. “We shall remain indoors today. I can read to you—something without swordplay or prophecy.”
“So long as it is not Macbeth .”
His hand, warm through the coverlet, rested briefly on my forearm. “Agreed,” he said.
And though I might have protested the confinement, the hand remained there, light but steady, and I found my objections less urgent than I had imagined.
The fog never lifted. It pressed against the bedroom windows until the daylight was little more than a grey wash, the fire in the grate doing most of the work to keep the room warm.
Holmes read aloud for a time—an article from The Lancet he claimed bore on a chemical test he was considering, followed by the history of an obscure Roman general. I listened with half an ear, the cadence of his voice far more compelling than the material itself.
By mid-afternoon the book had slipped to the bedside table, and he had taken up his violin. The notes came softly, idly, drawn out like threads in the dim air. I lay back against the pillows, the counterpane drawn close, content to let the hours go unmeasured.
Once or twice I felt his gaze on me between phrases. He said nothing, only let the bow wander back to the strings.
When he set the violin aside, he crossed to the bed and stood looking down at me, hands in his pockets, head tilted as though weighing a decision.
“You are pale,” he said.
“I am tired,” I admitted.
“Then proper rest will serve you better than sitting up all day.”
I smiled faintly. “You are relentless.”
“It is the only method that ever succeeds with you.”
I might have replied, but he bent and brushed his fingers lightly along my jaw, warm where the air was cool. “Come,” he murmured, the word less an invitation than a quiet summons.
He drew the covers back enough to help me shift down into the bed more comfortably, his hand lingering at my elbow as I moved. The stiffness in my leg made me falter, and without comment he stepped closer, adjusting the pillows and settling the blankets into place with brisk competence. It was not a gesture for public view, nor even for friends, but here, with no eyes but ours, it was allowed its full steadiness.
When he straightened, I looked up to thank him, but whatever words I might have spoken caught in my throat. He seemed to read them all the same. His hand came to rest, light but certain, at my temple, his thumb brushing just beneath my hairline before sliding to my cheek. The kiss, when it came, was brief but unhurried—less a question than a quiet statement—leaving behind a warmth that outlasted the moment.
“If the Macbeth curse is real,” he said at last, his voice low, “I trust we have now satisfied it.”
“And if it is not?”
“Then,” he said, dimming the lamp, “we may thank it for giving us an evening in.”
He slipped in beside me, the warmth of his presence easing what the fire could not, and for the first time since the curtain had fallen the night before, I felt entirely at rest.