Chapter Text
Mary Morstan Watson waited for her husband to return from dinner, and a case, with Sherlock Holmes. What a funny phrase was that--dinner and a case with Holmes! Like having dinner and a concert or dinner and a walk through the park when one courted! Mary smiled to herself and chuckled in the depths of her armchair by the fire. She nestled cosily in the sitting-room, as lowlit as the rest of the house. She liked to bask in the smell of John's tobacco that clung to his armchair. She contemplated reading a book, but no, her husband would be home soon with a tale that she would much prefer to hear. She was dying to know the conclusion of this most interesting case of Miss Mary Sutherland.
There was a carriage outside then, and yes! his key in the door. She jumped up hurriedly and soon met him in the hall as he was just locking the door and turning around.
She kissed his cheek and took his hat and walking stick from him. "Another one for the books?" she asked. She referred, of course, to the growing collection of manuscripts in her husband's study, to which he had devoted increasing attention since she had shown interest in his short stories and the detective cases they chronicled. "One for the books" had been Mary's pet phrase to use for these instalments of Sherlock Holmes's outré world ever since John had come home that March recounting the amusing final events of a case he called "A Scandal in Bohemia."
He smiled at her. "Well, yes I suppose." He walked with her to the sitting-room, turning down the hallway lamps along the way. She brought along his hat as well, attending it lovingly with a hat brush, in one of those quirky fits of domesticity which she had. They sat at opposite ends of the fire, John exchanging his shoes for slippers.
She smiled. "Holmes has found Mr. Hosmer Angel, then, and solved the case?"
He began to light a pipe. "Yes and no. He has exposed Mr. Hosmer Angel for the villain that he is, but he is having difficulty in finding a way to reveal this villainy to his poor client Miss Sutherland."
Mary looked up from her brushing. "What difficulty? He cannot allow her to remain deceived surely?"
"No, I believe not." He sighed, putting his feet up by the fire. "But I fear it may take some time to accomplish. Let me tell you what happened today."
"Do," she said, frowning down at the hat as she continued brushing. She found that she had to leave off, though, in the course of the narrative, or be forced to ruin the hat.
She sat up. "Her own stepfather?" she repeated after the end of his tale. "And her mother? Plotting against her income like common thieves?"
"I'm afraid so," he nodded. "I could not believe it at first myself. Sometimes I am grateful that Holmes is such a cynic, for I think that no one incapable of believing the worst in humans could have seen through Windibank's atrocious scheme."
She frowned, shaking her head. "But surely, Holmes is not serious about leaving it as it is? Just letting him escape?"
"My dear," he sat forward, patting her hand, "I know how your sympathetic heart goes out to Miss Sutherland. So does mine, but as Holmes has said, there is very little that we could do in the eyes of the law."
"But the young lady! How can he not inform her?"
"I tried to convince him to do so, or to allow me to do so, but he insists that the lady's innocent nature would not be able to take the shock, even if she could actually believe the facts to be true. Holmes is certain that Windibank could easily convince her that the accusations made against him were the fabrications of an unbalanced mind, the schemes of a detective trying to salvage his reputation and his fee once he had realised that finding Hosmer Angel was beyond his capabilities."
"But the young lady!" she repeated, rising from her chair and wringing her hands. She paced back and forth in much distress.
"My dearest," John murmured, "I assure you that Holmes will watch over her and be ready to pounce on that stepfather's next villainous deed."
Mary shook her head. "But that makes no sense!" she vigorously protested. "His next deed may be years from now, when he feels he is out of the shadow of Sherlock Holmes. And the lady will be pining away for her wretched Hosmer Angel in the meantime. Something must be done now."
John half smiled, seeing that he could not after all get round her good sense. "Perhaps so," he said. "But tell that to Sherlock Holmes. Tell him, the detective whom I've noticed has an odd reaction to stepfathers. You recall, dear, how out of character I told you his actions were years ago upon a case with a greedy stepfather? A case in which I strangely found him afterwards repeatedly calling his client 'Miss Roylott' as though she had had some hand, some blame, in the dire plot against herself?"
Mary stopped pacing and turned back to him, watching John's face soften with that special tenderness reserved only for his dear friend's weaknesses. She nodded.
He looked up and smiled at her faintly, pressing her hand. "We can only hope that Holmes may be right and some better result can be won for Miss Sutherland in the near future. I cannot stand to think Holmes's blindness for the moment may condemn this lady to such an undeserved fate. Perhaps a little while is all he will need to get his mind in order enough to take action."
"Perhaps," she whispered.
He rose from his chair. "I will endeavour at least to make it so," he said. "And now my dear, I must get to my study and record the case as it stands now, in the hopes that its final, true end shall not be too far off in time." He kissed her cheek and then padded quietly out of the room in his slippers.
Mary sank down into his chair and stared into the fire for a time. Finally with a sigh, she rose and returned the hat and hat brush to the front hall. Then she passed by her husband working in his study and sombrely went on her way upstairs to bed.