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London had been generously granted a beautifully mild forecast for one pleasant Saturday afternoon in April. Wide swaths of blue sky let in the warming rays of the sun that dazzled the rich green spaces dappled around the city. A fresh breeze tousled the persevering patches of daffodils and encouraged the early blooming bluebells. There was a true sense of springtime in the air, and the city’s inhabitants at large were not letting the opportunity to take it in pass them by if they could help it.
In the first-floor suite of the lodgings at 221B Baker Street, there was yet one young resident who found herself much too busy to be spending her day out of doors. She needed to finish this piece within the week if she wanted to make her deadline, so Iris had at most opened the windows of their sitting room for the light and air while she sat at her writing desk, typing out next month’s installment of ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’.
The success of her work had been a great surprise to her, but even more pleasing, she found, were the reviews. In particular, their effects on Hurley when Iris read them aloud to him. For the most part, he would redden with pride in her accomplishments, but occasionally there came a comment that would rankle and he would act like a pampered cat who’d had the misfortune of being slightly dampened. Iris knew it only encouraged his pouting when she laughed, but she often couldn’t help herself.
Most recently, the Holmes of her stories had been praised as being on par with the “likes of Loveday Brooke, were she a man!” Iris thought this was really only the highest of compliments, but for some reason or other Hurley had gotten very petulant about it. He was not ‘on par’ with some lady detective, he bemoaned. He was clearly far better than that—but not because ladies could not be good detectives! Or even great detectives, he conceded through clenched teeth. No, obviously, the issue was that Loveday Brooke was purely fictional whereas he was very much real, and therefore there could be no suitable basis for comparison, Iris, do remember that, and who was it again, did you say, that published such libelous nattering anyhow—
Regardless, she had put off writing about The Woman until a later date. For Hurley’s sake, though, Iris wanted this next story to be a real hit. Which meant she needed to settle in and focus and not let herself be distracted by things like sunshine and blue skies.
As she paused in her writing to consult her father’s case notes, the titular consulting detective himself swept into the room, returned from an errand. Sherlock Holmes removed his hat and overcoat and went to toss them aside before—without needing to look, Iris pointedly cleared her throat—smoothly redirecting his momentum to hang the articles in their proper places by the door.
He then disappeared into his bedroom and reappeared with a pipe hanging from his lips. It was the cherrywood. Though she readily knew what this choice of Hurley’s implied, Iris checked her notes for the simple pleasure of doing so and confirmed her own findings with those of her father’s: “cherrywood over the old clay—disputatious rather than meditative.” Nearly a year had gone since she’d found the diaries and it still brought her a little zing of joy to think she had so much in common with her daddy. She was further pleased to notice that Hurley did not go to the mantle for his tobacco kept in the Persian slipper; perhaps she had finally gotten through to him during her latest lecture on the ill effects of smoking.
“Hello, Hurley,” Iris greeted over her shoulder. “Find what you were after?”
“Hm? Yes, hello, my dear.” He both looked and sounded distracted.
“Something bothering you?”
“What? Who says I’m bothered?” He was absentmindedly humming a snatch of a tune as he searched the room with sharp eyes.
Iris let him be and determinedly returned to her typewriter with the sounds of Hurley moving about the room behind her fading into the background. She’d managed another paragraph into her Holmes’s deduction when Hurley spoke again.
“Iris? You haven’t seen my violin about lately, have you? I’ve not pawned it again, surely?”
“Your…violin?”
Sherlock halted in his examination. “Iris, my dear,” he asked with mounting incredulity, “my beloved biographer, my dearest girl…have you, perhaps, stolen my violin?”
The typewriter stopped clacking. “Oh? So sorry, Hurley, but I can’t help you. I have a deadline!”
He stared at her back in utter disbelief. “Have you ever heard of such betrayal! Shall you tell me where you’ve absconded it, or will I be forced to extract the information out of you?”
“Could you wait a little longer, please? I’ve done over this scene three times now; I really do need to focus to get it right.”
“And I need my violin to get this dreaded tune out of my head! I cannot put my finger on where I’ve heard it before, and,” he started lifting seat cushions to check beneath them, “I am certain to be driven entirely mad if I cannot work it out, and then where should you be, hm? We’d be driven out of this place, no doubt! To think, the two of us, cold and lonesome and forgotten out on the streets, and all the while I have this godforsaken unidentifiable melody plaguing me to the end of my days!”
Iris clicked away at a few more keys and returned the carriage. “Mrs. Hudson would let me stay here, I think. It would certainly be quieter, and I’d be able to write more stories to pay the rent that way.”
“Excuse me?” Sherlock pulled his head out of the fireplace and gawked at her. “You would be so cruel to your most devoted caregiver, would you?”
“Hurley, please, I’m working.”
“Your problem has only the simplest of solutions.” Having struck out with the most obvious hiding places, he now began opening the cabinets. “All you must do is consent to tell me where you have secreted away my favourite accompaniment. I warn you, if I cannot find it, I am not above resorting to singing aloud.”
“Why not have a pipe then, to help think it through?”
“I beg your pardon, but it was you, was it not? Who just last week implored me to cut back on the tobacco?”
“Well, maybe—”
A knock at the door to their suite cut their tiff short.
Sherlock paused in his hunt and went to answer, but not before pointing a finger in Iris’s direction and declaring, “We will return to this matter, my girl, make no mistake.”
On the other side of the door, he found two small, decently-clean children crowding the landing: a stocky boy and a younger girl half hiding behind him, both with identical white-blond hair. Sherlock frowned. Now, why did they look familiar…?
“Hello, Mr. Holmes, sir,” the boy piped up. “We were wanting to know if Iris can come out to play.”
Sherlock stared him down, trying to place them. “And you would be…?”
The boy blinked but didn’t lose courage. “Oh! Um, I’m Sammy, and that’s Milly.”
Milly gave a little wave and smile but otherwise remained ensconced behind, presumably, her brother, if their hair was anything to go by.
Sherlock squinted harder. The children shuffled back an inch. That’s when it clicked at last.
“Aha! Young Samuel Hudson, is it?” Sherlock snapped his fingers triumphantly. “And Miss Millicent as well, I gather.”
“Oh, yes, sir, that’s us! We’ve, uh, we’ve been here before?”
“But of course you have, my dear boy. I knew I’d laid eyes on you somewhere—a great detective never forgets a face! Just one moment, if you please.” He turned and called back into the flat, “Iris, dear, Mrs. Hudson’s grandchildren have come to ask if you would like to join them outside.” He knew that Iris had in all likelihood heard the conversation at the door, but they had been working on enforcing more polite methods of eavesdropping lately, and this was excellent practice.
Iris pursed her lips as she thought it over. A warm breeze brushed her cheeks from the open window. It was tempting…
“I do believe it would be a splendid idea,” Sherlock prompted. “Some fresh air and exercise is sure to be just the thing for a young creative mind stuck in a rut, wouldn’t you agree?”
She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “You only want me to go out so you can find where I’ve hidden your violin.”
“So! You admit to the theft then, do you?”
Iris turned pink to match her hair. “Oh, I would so love to go outside!” She hopped down from her seat, pointedly ignoring Sherlock’s remark. “I’ll need to put on my shoes, just a minute, please!”
Iris scampered off to do just that, leaving Sherlock to relay her answer to their visitors. As she made to leave, he intercepted her. “If you would be so kind,” he entreated, “as to direct me to the last known whereabouts of my prized instrument?”
“Hmm, I’m sure I couldn’t say,” she responded, ducking around him to the door, “but you might check the bookshelves. Behind the books, that is.” Iris flashed him an impish smile before dashing away down the stairs to meet with the two young Hudsons.
Sherlock sighed as he heard the front door open and close behind the children. Though he’d never dream of saying so, he did sometimes wonder if perhaps Iris was too clever for, well, anyone’s good.
He went to his bookshelf and reached a hand behind the tightly-packed barriers of books until he came to the one closest to Iris’s eye level, whereupon his fingertips brushed the polished wood of his Stradivarius. He knelt down to examine the line of books. Every stray volume, notebook, and folder looked, even to his keen eye, untouched. The very dust itself remained undisturbed. How the devil…? There was scant room enough to slip his hand back into the gap, to say nothing of an entire violin. Most definitely, his girl was too clever indeed.
Outside, meanwhile, the three children smartly crossed the street together, all of one mind to lay claim to the unoccupied hopscotch grid drawn in chalk at the opening of an alley. Iris found a broken off corner of brick to use for a marker. Sammy declared that he would go first, being newly turned ten and therefore the oldest, then Iris in the middle at eight, and then Milly, who was just shy of seven.
“Do you play by East or West rules?” Iris asked. “Or maybe you know City-style! That’s fun, too.”
“Ooh, what’s that?” Milly wished to know, but her brother interjected.
“We’ll play my way, all right? That’s the only right way to do it.”
As a rule, Iris almost never saw the point to arguing; it was no business of hers if someone wished to be wrong (arguing was, of course, distinct from debating, which was more like a game. Iris was even now in a protracted debate with her Uncle Mykie about whether stamps could be considered a form of currency). Rather than press him on his statement, though, Iris prompted Sammy to outline his rules.
“It’s just like normal,” he said. “First, you hop to the top and back on two feet, then you do it on one foot. Next, you do it on one foot again but kicking the marker along only once in each square. If you’re still in after that, you walk there and back with one foot in each square keeping the marker on one of your feet. Simple, see?”
“Do you keep points?”
“What? No, there’s no need to. Look, just watch me do it and you’ll see.” Sammy snatched the marker up from the first square and set to hopping through the entry round.
As he did, Milly stepped over to Iris and asked, “How does one play hopscotch with points? I didn’t know you could.”
“It’s easy,” said Iris, “and it helps more in larger groups where there are ties and everyone is really practiced. Points are earned for every square you reach, but the values are compounding for each round as well, so the later rounds are worth more, naturally. Are you familiar with matrices? It’s sort of like that.”
Milly was lost. “And…you do all those sums in your head?”
“Of course. Why, can’t you? It just takes practice and memorisation, really. I could teach you, if you’d like!”
“Milly doesn’t want to do boring maths.” Sammy had completed the first round and was beginning the second. He was a bit miffed to have been abandoned by his audience.
“I don’t think maths are boring!” Milly protested.
Sammy rolled his eyes. “You aren’t even any good at them. All the teachers think so, too.” He hopped away on one foot before Milly could argue any further.
“I wouldn’t mind it,” Iris said once Sammy was halfway down the track. “That’s what’s so fun about learning—one isn’t expected to be any good at it to start with. Hurley always says so.”
But Milly had apparently lost her interest in maths. “Why is it that you call Mr. Holmes ‘Hurley’ when he’s your daddy?” she asked.
“Well,” Iris blushed, “I sort of always have. It’s because Hurley isn’t actually my daddy; he just looks after me because my real daddy is somewhere far away.”
“Oh my!”
“My daddy’s in a faraway land, you see,” she explained. “He had to go on urgent business, and he’ll be gone for a very long time.”
“Ha!” Sammy had made his way back to them and startled both girls at his remark. “But you do know what that really means, though, don’t you?”
“What?” said Iris, almost reflexively.
“Don’t you know anything? ‘Going far away for a long, long time’?” Sammy mocked. “That’s just what grown ups say when they don’t want to tell you something’s dead.”
“Oh!” Iris flinched. “Oh, no! That’s not true at all! Don’t say such things.”
“It is too true!” he spat back, crossing his arms and trying to lord his one extra inch of height over her. “When our pet canary died, that’s what our mum said about it—that it had to fly somewhere far away and wouldn’t be back for a long time. But of course I know that really it just died and Mum didn’t want to upset Milly by saying so because she’s a baby.”
Iris interrupted Milly’s protests. “You’re wrong, Sammy Hudson! My daddy isn’t dead and I know because Hurley wouldn’t lie to me.”
“That’s what you think,” he sneered, “but I reckon he is and Mr. Holmes didn’t tell you for the same reason our mum didn’t tell Milly. Girls are always babies about things like this.”
Very, very distantly, Iris had the thought that this must be what rage felt like. Her ears had ceased accepting sound as her vision came in flashes, her limbs felt light and heavy at same time, and a thousand words crashed and strangled in her throat behind clenched teeth. This mean, stupid boy was wrong and she wished to shout at him all the dozens of reasons why—but nothing could get past her quivering lips.
“Sammy, do stop it! You’ve made her cry now!”
“Don’t be such a bother, Mil. Only babies cry, or did you not know that—”
A girl’s scream shot through the open window and pierced Sherlock’s violin reverie.
The Stradivarius disappeared from his hands and between one blink and the next he was out of the sitting room and bursting through the front door onto the street. He scanned wildly for a plume of pink hair and, finding it, was across the road before he could think, traffic be damned, kneeling in front of Iris, his hands fluttering around her and checking over for any hurt.
She was upright and not bleeding, at least visibly, and only after confirming this did his mind come back to him to take in the scene.
Iris had been crying. In fact, tears were still running down her cheeks, but at the moment she was quiet and seemed to be in a state of some shock. She was also clutching her right hand to her middle.
Sherlock glanced around for further clues and gathered in an instant what must have occurred. Sammy Hudson was laid out on his back on the pavement, gasping and groaning, most likely only winded from the surprise and the fall as Iris surely could not have hit him hard enough to knock the breath out of his lungs by her strength alone. The scream he heard would have come from little Milly Hudson who was unharmed but sobbing from the fright.
“H-Hurley…”
He turned back to see Iris’s face contort like a thundercloud about to burst. He had her in his arms before the first shudder wracked her hunched shoulders, and he carried her briskly back across the street and through the front door he’d left flung open.
Mrs. Hudson, her son and her daughter-in-law were gathered standing agape in the entryway, their faces displaying variations of concern and confusion. Sherlock glowered past his landlady at the couple and snapped, “See to your own children.” Then he was up the stairs two at a time to bundle away Iris back home.
Back in their suite, Sherlock set Iris down on the settee and knelt in front of her. Her jittering breaths were calming even as her face remained creased.
“Now then, it’s all right. You aren’t in any pain, are you? Can you tell me what hurts?” He coaxed her balled up fists into his hands to inspect them. There didn’t appear to be any cut or scrape or bruising that he could see.
But Iris was still wincing with her eyes screwed shut against her tears.
“Iris?” he tried.
She shook her head.
Sherlock frowned and reconsidered his approach. “Might I have your permission to make a deduction?”
Iris pried her eyes open just enough for him to see their colour, an even brighter blue against her ruddy cheeks. She nodded.
“In that case,” he began, “it is obvious that there was a minor altercation between yourself and the young Mr. Hudson. As I know it is not in your nature to be needlessly aggressive, there must have been some provocation on his part, I’m sure. And, seeing as there are no physical injuries to your person, I would say his attack was likely verbal, yes? ”
Iris nodded again.
“Then we must ask what would cause a smart, even-tempered, self-assured girl like yourself to be driven to such action. I do wonder…” he thought aloud, “it wasn’t anything to do with me, was it?”
She looked away, biting her lip.
Tenderly, Sherlock squeezed her hands. “Iris, dearest, I am afraid I shall need your assistance to complete this deduction. I cannot resolve this matter without a good deal of help.”
Iris shuddered and let her gaze fall to their hands. “It wasn’t…all to do with you…”
“Oh?”
“Sammy—he said th—that you were lying,” she sniffed, “about my daddy.”
Sherlock’s expression hardened like ice. “What did he say?”
“He said, it was like their mum and when she lied about their canary—and that you didn’t want me to know that he—that he was really—” Iris dissolved once more into tears. “But, but you wouldn’t! So he’s not! Right? You’d tell me, Hurley, wouldn’t you? If he was…if he had…”
“See here, Iris,” he said firmly, looking into her eyes. “I assure you, dearest, the author of your precious diaries is alive and well. I swear to you, I should know it in an instant if he were not.”
Iris might have trusted her intuition and probed further had she not been so lost at sea among her emotions. As it was, she yielded to the easy comfort and threw her arms around his neck, letting herself be held.
It never grew any easier, seeing Iris cry. It pained Sherlock as well that she was apparently struggling to get along with the two children best positioned to be her playmates. He knew all too well what that felt like, and that itself had been a driving force in his decision to let Iris be educated at home rather than among dismissive peers and instructors. Sherlock thought he understood better now some of what his partner had once confided in him, about his fears that little Susato was doomed to have her great intellect always overshadowed by the presence of a man no matter how much brighter she shone. Sherlock had never allowed Iris to be discouraged from following any of her passions on the basis of her sex, but he did worry at times if she wouldn’t be happier with a more average intelligence. He had thought similar things about himself when he was younger and yearned so greatly to fit in and be liked that he had carried a near-constant ache for it.
But these were insubstantial thoughts, ones he’d long ago learned to brush away out of hand. He would love Iris always, and he would never wish her to be anything different than she was. Of all the responsibilities of a guardian, that was one he had never found any difficulty in fulfilling.
In time, Iris relaxed and regained her composure. Sherlock smoothed out the back of her dress before letting her go. “Are we feeling better now? Good. Then what say you to washing your face and reading out to me what you’ve written of your latest chapter thus far, hm? And I am rather close to mastering that French plaiting technique as well, if you wouldn’t mind allowing me to practice.”
Iris cracked a smile and agreed to this plan, but she lingered a moment longer on the settee.
“Hurley?” she asked quietly. “Do you miss him?”
Constantly. “Yes, I do.”
“And I will get to meet him one day, won’t I?”
“It is my sincerest hope that you will indeed, dearest.” He swallowed back the lump in his throat. “Now, run along and clean up, and fetch your hairbrush too.”
Iris had washed and dried her tear-stained face and had just ducked into her bedroom to retrieve her hairbrush and ribbons when there came a knock at the door to their suite. Worried about who it might be, she stayed put by her dressing table and waited for Hurley to answer.
“Why, Mr. Hudson,” Hurley greeted. “What might I do for you?”
A modest man’s voice replied, “Hello, Mr. Holmes. I wished that I might step in and have a brief word with you, one father to another, as it were, about the, ah, minor disturbance earlier.”
“I believe I can spare you as much. Do come in.”
Iris heard the man, Sammy and Milly’s father, come inside and the door shut neatly after him. She crept to the side of her open bedroom door and pressed her back against the wall to listen in.
“To cut right to the point, Mr. Holmes, Sammy told us what happened.”
“Did he now? And how does the young man fare? I can only assume he’s rather poorly, as I see you’ve not brought him along to apologise for himself.”
“Well, now, sir,” Mr. Hudson cleared his throat. “I don’t see why all that would be necessary—”
“Oh? But he did tell you what happened between him and Iris, did he not? I have heard Iris’s account of the matter, and surely the two would not differ so considerably.”
“Yes, but…you know how boys are. He wasn’t doing any real harm, the way he tells it.”
“And what was Miss Millicent’s version of events, pray?”
“What? Milly?” The man sounded surprised. “Well…Milly’s a sensitive girl, you see. She’s very easily excited, and all children are prone to exaggerate, especially at her age.”
Hurley’s voice was like steel. “That does not answer my question, Mr. Hudson. Tell me, which is it? Did you not ask her, or did you not listen? No, in fact, you needn’t say anything at all; I’m quite certain I know already. Just as I know that you have not come to me in good faith, ‘one father to another,’ as you said, but that you are here to secure some form of an apology from Iris that you will take as a patriarchal victory to soothe yours and your son’s slighted egos. You will have no such thing from us. Even if you could, you would only have proven to your son that he need not be held accountable for his mistakes—that it is more important, as a man, to save face than to be honest. Your daughter would come away knowing that you care little for the truth, as would your mother, I should say. No, there really is no need for you to explain at all, and therefore you had best be on your way out, wouldn’t you agree?”
Iris didn’t catch Mr. Hudson’s curt, mumbled parting. There was a weight seizing her insides. Gingerly, she stepped out from behind the doorframe and into the sitting room where Hurley was glaring into the space where, presumably, Mr. Hudson had just been.
“Hurley?”
“Oh!” he spun around, startled. All his anger was tucked away in an instant. “Yes, Iris? I ask that you disregard all you heard. Let none of it bother you for even a minute more. If I know our Mrs. Hudson, I say she’ll have some rather strong words in store for her son when she hears of this.”
Iris nodded along, but she couldn’t be assuaged. She clutched her hairbrush to her chest nervously. “Do you…don’t you think that I really ought to say sorry after all?”
“No, Iris, I don’t.” He beckoned her closer and knelt down to meet her eye. “That boy is a bully, and if anyone deserves an apology here, it would be you.”
“But I shouldn’t have pushed him.”
“…Perhaps not,” Hurley conceded. “I will leave the choice to apologise in your hands, then.”
She thought this over, then said, “We must say sorry when we’ve done something wrong, yes? Even if he won’t, I should still do the right thing…”
“…But?”
Iris chewed on her bottom lip. “But I sort of…really don’t wish to see him at the moment, is all. Unless you think that I should?”
It would very likely be frowned upon by the general parenting ethos, he admitted to himself, to tell her truly what he would do in her situation. His heart tugged him away from even thinking it. After a moment’s consideration, he said, “What about composing a brief note? That way you may arrange your words to your liking and without the need for confrontation. Direct to the point and impersonally delivered.”
“Yes, that could work, I think.” She warmed to the idea as she thought it out. “I’ll get started right away. I can practise my passive aggressiveness just like Uncle Mykie uses in his letters!”
Sherlock couldn’t help chuckling as Iris skipped away to gather her stationery before positioning herself on a cushion on the floor in front of his armchair with her hairbrush and ribbons handy. He was sure his brother would be tickled by the impact he was having on Iris’s education.
He smiled as he joined her, kicking himself for ever worrying as he had. Iris was a wonder—how could he have forgotten? Through some miracle, she was turning out perfectly fine. He could not say where she had come by all her wisdom and maturity, but he decided, just this once, to let the mystery pass him by.