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“He raided my kitchen today.”
The mild complaint carried in place of greeting, and I turned to find Mrs. Hudson leaning on the doorframe. I rested my cane in its corner and took off my jacket, but she handed me five wrapped biscuits—probably all of my portion she had saved from Holmes’ thievery—before I could find a reply.
“The Irregulars might take revenge for the loss of their sugar biscuits,” she continued, the barest smirk overriding her irritation, “but the groaning I heard earlier says that the biscuits enacted a revenge of their own.”
Of course they had—and he had. Amusement and dread warred within me. Holmes with a stomachache became far more petulant than any twenty of those children, but after so many years, I could only shake my head. Holmes well knew what would happen if he ate an entire batch of biscuits in one sitting. I would never understand how that could be worth the pain he experienced the rest of the night.
Nor could I do anything about it, though. I quietly thanked Mrs. Hudson for both the warning and the biscuits and made my way up the stairs.
“Holmes?”
A dramatic groan answered me. Rounding the doorway found him in the fetal position on the settee, one arm holding his stomach while the other blindly searched the tin above his head for another biscuit.
“For London’s foremost detective, you don’t learn very quickly, do you?” The half-serious ribbing covered the deft movement swiping two of his biscuits. “If you simply waited for a few hours and a true meal, you could eat more without getting sick.”
“But they taste so good,” he whined. Groping fingers finally located the small pile of sweets at the back of his tin. He would have to clean up the following explosion of crumbs later, but I placed one of my packages in its desk drawer and turned toward the door without comment. He started, as if just remembering something.
“Mrs. Hudson left—ow.” The sentence broke beneath a flinch when he sat up faster than his stomach would tolerate. “Mrs. Hudson left—some by your chair for you.”
I barely stifled the surprise insisting I pause mid step. Holmes had left sugar biscuits alone? Instead of adding them to his own pile? Something did not match.
I would not call him on it, however. Not after last week. I nodded a thank you and detoured to slip the cloth-wrapped biscuits into a pocket before taking my purchases up to my bedroom. Holmes’ cut-off protest did nothing for my suspicions.
Holmes never shared sweets. Any sweets. Not unless he used said sweets as an apology, and even then he usually tried two or three times before the sweets successfully reached the flat. For him to not touch biscuits set aside for me heavily suggested that the experiment I had noted this morning needed testing, but after last week’s argument, I would have expected him to find another test subject—like himself. Should I use this to renew the lesson he had learned last year?
Yes, I decided. While Holmes firmly believed that I could not act, I had more than once built on existing symptoms to lead him to a certain deduction, and four experiments in as many weeks had long ago reached the end of my patience. If he tried for number five, number five was about to go wrong.
I needed to confirm the suspicion first, however, and the day’s fatigue slowed my pace considerably. My limping gait needed several minutes to reach the upstairs landing and another minute to place my medical bag beside my bed. Random pacing and many rests on the covers pretended to organize the day’s errands while I truly compared the two batches of biscuits.
The ones from Holmes’ tin looked identical to the ones Mrs. Hudson had given me. They smelled sweeter than the others, and they crumbled slightly when I bit one. They also tasted exactly like Mrs. Hudson’s every other batch.
The ones near my chair, however, were darker, as if slightly burnt, and they carried the sugar dusting Mrs. Hudson occasionally put on her biscuits but which was absent from today’s batch. An empty syringe created a makeshift beaker, and two chemicals from my bag easily confirmed that the “sugar” contained no glucose. If the “sugar” contained no sugar, then his experiment probably lay in whatever he had sprinkled over these biscuits.
Which meant he had tried to dose me less than a week after his last “experiment.” Only a few minutes of rummaging through my medical bag found the chemicals I needed before I left two of the tainted biscuits in my bedroom desk, put a fresh one from Mrs. Hudson atop the stack, and left my bag at the top of the stairs on my way to the sitting room. Leaning hard on the cane retrieved from the landing pretended not to notice Holmes’ evident relief when I seated myself in my chair. Turning slightly sideways against the arm ensured he would not notice the two different colors in the open napkin beside me, though I changed directions as soon as I finished the biscuit.
For a few minutes. Another readjustment straightened my posture to prop my leg. The next tossed aside my dressing gown and rolled up my sleeves. Sixty seconds later, I set my book aside to replace my dressing gown and pull my chair closer to the fire. By the time I had pulled the quilt off the back of my chair, Holmes had ignored his stomachache to sit up on the settee.
“Alright, Watson?”
No. The dose I had swallowed had clearly started with giving me a mild fever, but I waved off the question and claimed another quilt. I had always hated the chills that followed a raised temperature.
Especially when the chills grew strong enough to make me shiver. I ignored him to layer the quilts as best I could with my trembling, but I had no chance to return to my book before the cramps hit. I did not have to fake the grunt of pain as I doubled over.
“Watson!”
His own discomfort prevented him from lunging off the settee as he clearly intended, and I slumped sideways in my chair as he knelt in front of me. Bleary vision struggled to focus on the concern he failed to hide.
“Watson, can you hear me?”
Yes, but I did not try to respond. Not when another cramp made opening my mouth a dangerous idea. The next twinge blended into a muscle spasm that nearly made me fall out of the chair, and only Holmes’ firm grip prevented me from hitting the floor. I barely provided a token assistance when he helped me onto the settee. Lying on my side significantly helped the cramps.
Though not my overall symptoms. With me shivering under three quilts and obviously in pain, his focus quickly changed from the “scientific curiosity” that had tried to dose me into something closer to worry. A choice word escaped when he discovered my bag missing from its spot, but darting up the stairs to find it in the middle of the upstairs landing only increased his evident concern. Hurried movements nearly stabbed me with the thermometer before he got it into my mouth.
“Watson, look at me.”
No. I kept my gaze on the floor, hugging my knees to ease most of the pain in my middle. Cold fingers brushed my forehead, then pressed against the side of my neck.
“Cramps.” Mutters made his thoughts audible while he waited on the thermometer. “Muscle spasms? Low fever. Confusion? Is his fever high enough to cause that?”
Unlikely, which meant ignoring the indirect question risked negating my other symptoms. Violent trembling made aim difficult, but two wild grabs finally found his arm, then his hand. I kept my gaze on the floor even as I squeezed his palm.
“Watson?”
Yes. The position made my shoulder jerk, but I squeezed once more before pulling my hand back under the quilt. Whether the settee rested too far from the fireplace or I had truly grown chilled, I hated being cold. I had just enough time to completely wrap myself in the blanket before the final ingredient took effect. Effort fought to bury my relief in a pillow as rising fatigue gave the sitting room a dreamlike quality, and a deep breath embraced the darkness waiting to claim me.
By the increasing uncertainty in Holmes’ repeated questions, I doubted he would designate me his test subject for at least a month. Perhaps more, if I found the right balance of irritation and discomfort when I woke.
I much preferred sleeping the day away over dealing with whatever unexpected side effects his own compound would have produced.