Chapter Text
Dear Algernon,
How are you? How is Germany? I read in The Vagabond that Kiel is very pretty this time of year, and that the leaves coat the parks in beautiful rusty colours as the children toss them around to play. I miss the trees we had in Boston, don’t you? The big one behind the Childs house, the one you bumped your head into when we were chasing that fox. Jolly times, these were. I don’t suppose you have much time to play these days, building the canal and whatnot, but an engineer is a mighty fine job and we are all proud of you for working so hard.
There is really nothing interesting going on here at all, but I love to watch the changing of the seasons. Sometimes I go to the park with Mary and we search for interesting looking leaves. I am enclosing an interesting looking leaf and I wonder what you might think it looks like. Mary is well, by the way. We are all well.
Please write to me again soon, and use that beautiful paper.
All the best, and send my love to the trees,
Your sister Cecily
“Oh, yes,” Holmes said, tossing the paper aside, “this is very bad.”
It wasn’t Cecily’s letter, it was a newspaper clipping, but she couldn’t look at it because it made her stomach turn.
“Do you mind if I—”
“By all means, go on.”
She grabbed the crumpled paper and tossed it into the fire, sparing a final look at it as the fibres disintegrated. “Very bad,” she said, crossing her arms.
It was hot inside Holmes’s sitting room. He kept a lively fire blazing and the visitors’ chair was turned to its direction, perhaps to soothe their nerves. But it was also hot in the way all rooms can be hot, in the way they make your cheeks burn and the air feel insufficient, when you have something very important to say and you don’t want to say it.
“This publication is unfortunate enough in itself,” Holmes remarked, “but I cannot imagine that it alone has made you abandon the comfort of your home and seek my conversation at this hour.”
The publication in question had initially seemed like nothing more than a silly pamphlet. It was called In Defence of Certain Mistreated Persons in England and the Broader World, and it made a case —a very weak one— for the kinder treatment of those men who had a habit of loving other men. By extension, the discerning reader could glean a similar sentiment for women of this persuasion. Cecily had only heard of it because Mary, her particular friend, had a habit of scouring disreputable newspapers in search of something interesting. They’d had a good laugh over it, which turned into horror three days later when they saw the very same essay reproduced and minutely scrutinized in every paper under the sun.
“Do you know what the worst of it is?” Holmes asked, and promptly went on. “It’s that, for all the panic it has caused, the object of all this upheaval should be such a badly written piece of text. I tell you, Miss Wise, if I were to make a case for such a practice, the very least I would owe to the world would be a masterful command of language and grammar.”
Cecily laughed, in spite of herself.
“Is there any particular reason why this paper should concern you?” he asked. His voice was gentle but she could tell he was curious.
“Yes, there is,” said she. “ You see, you made my acquaintance many years ago, when you helped me with that little affair with my purse. And just recently you met my friend, Mary Morstan, and took care of her own case. Hers was much grander, admittedly.”
“Oh, yes, I remember she came here on your recommendation. At this rate, Miss Wise, the two of you will be supplying the whole of my clientele very soon.”
“I should hope not, Mr Holmes,” she said with an uneasy smile. Then, she cleared her throat. She didn’t know how to go on.
“As you no doubt know, there are certain people who partake in the activities talked about in the paper.”
“Yes, so I have heard,” said he, looking impassive. “Indeed, in such a large city as London, one could reasonably expect to encounter at least one instance of anything.”
“How do these people seem to you? Do you find them repugnant?”
“I find very few things repugnant, Miss Wise,” said he. “Though I fancy myself an observer of the lesser-known goings-on in this city, there is still so much that occurs without my knowledge. If I were to concern myself with every single activity that might be transpiring behind closed doors, I would be lying face down with a knife on my back at the back door of one of those illustrious establishments of the East End.”
There he paused. “I do, however, reserve a special place in the dark recesses of my heart for those who use the habits of others to hurt them for their personal gain.”
“You find me in agreement,” she said quickly.
Cecily had a timid suspicion that Holmes might turn out to be that way, but she didn’t want to be presumptuous. Mary sometimes told her that only if you are presumptuous will your stories be sumptuous. Was this the right time to ask?
No, she couldn’t pry. Mary could make those inquiries if she visited Baker Street again.
“Miss Morstan and I have been sharing rooms for six years now,” she said. “We have no wish to marry, no wish to change the way that things stand. We find that the gift of each other’s company is more than enough to keep us happy.”
She hadn’t told anyone before, except people she knew would understand. Even then, she couldn’t be easy in her mind about it. There was no way to be certain of Holmes’s reaction. What if he kicked her out? What if his kind features hardened into reproach and he asked her to stop talking, to stop implicating him?
No, he wouldn’t do that. He could be trusted. Her friends agreed that he could be trusted. She had seen it firsthand, she was safe.
“Now, I suppose you have all the information you need to make an inference about my relation to Miss Morstan,” she said quietly.
“As to the nature of your arrangement?” he asked.
“As to the nature of our arrangement.”
He sat in silence for a bit, as if processing the mechanics of the phenomenon.
“It is not against the law, you know,” he said. “You are not in any danger, especially not from such a putrid publication.”
“I know that, Mr Holmes. The problem is the attention it has attracted. Everyone is more aware of us now, of the way we live, and it places both of us in a very compromising position. Mary is employed as a journalist, as you know, at the Deptford Dispatch. And I play the piano and the violin and I write librettos for Miriam Grosvenor.”
Cecily had been employed under Miss Grosvenor for some years now, and her responsibilities had gradually broadened and allowed for her creative development. She played the piano during rehearsals and during those performances that called for it. She wrote music and composed librettos, primarily for the curtain raisers and the afterpieces. She helped her companions rehearse, ran errands for Miss Grosvenor, and, in broad terms, kept the general machinery in motion.
“Miriam Grosvenor of the Bellevue Theatre?” Holmes asked with some interest.
“The very same,” said Cecily. “The theatre has been most prominent under her charge. Unfortunately, I fear we may attract a most unpleasant kind of publicity in the coming days.”
The Bellevue was an establishment of decided bohemians, artists and actors at the peak of their craft, and it catered to certain sensibilities on occasion and in secrecy.
“Yes, I heard something of it,” Holmes said. “It’s that leading actor of yours, another mistreated person. I know that he is being extorted by nefarious individuals, in view of the essay, because I have been engaged to eliminate the compromising material.”
“Yes,” Cecily exclaimed. “He said you could be trusted.”
“The matter will be taken care of,” Holmes said flatly. “No need to worry at all.”
But Cecily worried. Holmes could see her fidgeting in her seat, bringing her teacup to her lips and not drinking, blowing brown curls off her face and then sighing.
“Why are you here, Miss Wise?”
He asked quietly, like Algernon did when she struggled with a problem at school, or her friend Belle when she found her crouching over a music sheet with her face scrunched up. If there was one thing she liked about Holmes, it was that he never raised his voice.
“What is going to happen if somebody else is extorted or a scandal erupts at the Bellevue? If my name is connected, if Mary’s colleagues start asking questions? I cannot imagine what I should do in such a case, for we are really quite powerless.”
“These are all excellent questions,” Holmes said. “But there is something else.”
Yes, there was, and she had to tell him, but she couldn’t get the words out.
“It is a silly thing,” she said, her voice getting shrill. “It is my fault.”
“Still, I see no point in keeping it hidden.”
It was a maddening thing. Only Mary knew about it and she hated to have to say it out loud, in the silence of a room too big for the two of them.
“I cannot find my letters from Mary,” she said. “I have a stack of them, letters she sends when one of us is away from London, and they are compromising, most compromising. It is entirely possible that I misplaced them; I always misplace things. But it is a small set of rooms, at Mrs Brook’s boarding house, and not very hard to break into.”
“Why would someone be interested in your letters?”
“Because there was a time, a few months ago, when Mary was poised to become the wealthiest heiress in London.”
“Oh, yes,” Holmes said. “I always did wonder how that rumour spread over the course of so little time.”
“These things have a way of getting out,” said Cecily, who had no wish to go into it.
He nodded. She couldn’t make out his expression very well in the dim light of the evening, but he looked attentive.
“And then, yesterday, I received a letter,” she said. “I am sure you understand what kind of a letter it was.”
She handed it over and he read, frowning. Then, he raised his eyes, looking at her as if to say I’m sorry.
“I know whose work this is,” he said. “Our paths have crossed before. He dabbles in all kinds of extortions, but appears to be favouring the Bellevue as of late. It seems a targeted attack.”
“It has to be,” said Cecily, “because Bel— another friend of mine, had her rooms broken into yesterday. They could not find anything, but we are sure that it is the same person.”
She turned her gaze away from him. “I believe I was targeted, too,” she said. “I have no particular assets of my own, but my godparents are— were people of some wealth. They are still well-known in some circles.”
Cecily’s godparents, old friends of her mother and father in Boston, had been wealthy when she had first arrived in London. Their fortune had steadily diminished in recent years, owing to a series of misfortunes and bad investments, but a rumour remained of an emergency stash they might draw from, should something drastic occur. Cecily had plans to see them over Christmas, but she was terrified to face them. What a dreadful mess she had made of things.
But, then, was it really her fault, or that of the horrible ruffian who had wrought havoc on all their lives? It wasn’t fair at all to do such a thing. It wasn’t right to weasel about with people’s secrets when they tried so hard to make something of themselves.
She felt herself getting worked up. “I want that ruffian dealt with, Mr Holmes. I don’t care that the loot has no value now that Mary is not an eligible match for the city’s young men. I don’t want that man having my letters, and if you can do anything to bring them back to me, I shall be more grateful to you than you can ever imagine.”
Holmes looked at her, at her face growing red. Suddenly she was deflated and came back to her senses, but she was still blushing.
“I’m no good at looking threatening, I know,” she said. “I have no wish to threaten you. I really am sorry for that awful display. I hate to speak to anyone this way, much less a gentleman who has done me a tremendous service in the past.”
“No need to worry, Miss Wise,” Holmes said. “This is not the first I am seeing of you. Our paths have crossed before, under equally distressing circumstances, and I know that your heart stands firmly in the right place.”
It was almost like he knew she might cry about it later.
“That was so long ago, was it not?”
“Yes, it must be coming up to seven years now.”
While still a newcomer to London, Cecily had been the victim of a mugging on the train to the City, losing her purse and three months’ worth of wages which were meant to be shipped to her parents. It was desperate, she wasn’t expecting to see the money again, but she followed a friend’s advice and paid a visit to some detective who lived in town and liked to hear about interesting things.
Holmes had welcomed her very cheerfully and assured her that whatever her problem was, he would do his very best to solve it. When the specifics of her case were made clear, he had frowned and admitted that a man who robs you in broad daylight and disappears into thin air would be exceptionally hard to locate. Still, he said he would try, because Cecily was terrified and he could see it.
Three days later, a handbag matching her description was found next to the train tracks, containing the money but not the little brooch she had tossed inside when the buckle had broken. This was curious. She had thanked Holmes profusely and tried very hard to pay him, but he refused and said the absence of the brooch interested him more than the presence of the bag. And sure enough, a week later he’d invited her to tea and explained how he had apprehended a notorious jewel thief who had misplaced his loot: a little ruby carefully concealed between the unremarkable stones of a cheap brooch. When she had taken off the brooch on the train, the man noticed, and snatched her purse right out of her hands before she could react. Upon finding the jewel perfectly regular, he’d got rid of the bag and set off in search of similar ornaments.
The story had helped a younger Holmes promote his trade, taking him from the nosy wunderkind trailing behind Scotland Yard to a glamorous thief chaser you could trust with your secrets and your valuables. And Cecily did send the money to her family, using the extra cash from an interview she granted to buy a mechanical pencil for Algernon. But always, when she thought of the story, she remembered Holmes’s gentle voice telling her that it would be all right, asking if she had any relatives who might help her, telling her outright that he wouldn’t let her starve on the street if it came to that.
They both sat reminiscing for a second before she raised her eyes to meet his gaze.
“You helped me then,” she said.
“I will help you now.”
His voice was firm but there was a softness to it, a quiet confidence that the case was well within his control. Whether that was true or not, Cecily needed to hear somebody, besides Mary, speak with such conviction.
“I intend to take care of this little matter in the coming days,” he said then. “If I find that your letters are in the possession of this man, I shall be glad to return them to you with compliments. I would greatly encourage you, however, to destroy them afterwards. I have found, in many cases, that the sentiment behind them does not seem to outweigh the risk.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you very much,” she said, standing up to shake his hand. “Miss Morstan and I owe you a great debt of gratitude.”
“Do not mention it, please,” he said with a wave of his arm.
He looked sort of lonely. Dr Watson must have been out for the evening. Looking at him again, she felt she wanted to talk to him more. It helped calm her nerves.
“What is that?” she asked, pointing to a peculiar object that sat in a glass jar on the table next to her. It looked like a piece of clay, a bit, and it had a brilliant sheen the colour of the sea.
“Oh, it is a sediment,” he said, perking up. “This particular one is nickel sulfate. I have grown very fond of them of late.”
“Very sedimental of you to keep them around,” she remarked.
Indeed, the little objects, whatever they were, could be found on nearly every surface. They glistened in all kinds of colours, from the red of a ripe pepper to a piercing green that made Cecily dizzy to look at.
“That one is cobalt,” Holmes said, following her gaze, “and the other is nickel hydroxide. But I like this nickel sulphate the best. It was the first one in the batch; an amusing story, really. I had in my possession, never mind how, a Swiss coin— a 20-rappen, they call it. They make them out of pure nickel these days to scare off counterfeiters. I was tossing it about in my hand one day when it fell into a beaker of sulfuric acid. This is not standard practice, by the way,” he said hastily. “I ought to exercise more caution with my strong acids. Anyway, with a touch of encouragement, the coin began to form this beautiful compound you see here. It charmed me enough to keep it after it crystallized. I believe I did well; see how brilliant its colour is.”
Cecily was fascinated by it. Even in the dim light of the fireplace, it shone, the way Mary’s eyes did in the sun.
“It is beautiful, is it not?” said Holmes. “And yet it was not supposed to be a sediment at all. It was supposed to be a coin. It really knew nothing else besides being a coin, but still, into the acid it went, and it emerged completely changed.”
“I have not seen anything quite like it,” said Cecily.
“You have now,” said Holmes. “And it is not an isolated phenomenon, either. Look at its friends, the cobalt, the hydroxide. They are all in the same family. I have put them in beakers, so you need not worry.”
Cecily nodded, feeling a little dizzy.
“You can keep that one, if you want,” Holmes said, placing the beaker in her hand. “Watson says I have too many of them.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” she said. It felt like denying a very expensive pastry. “Do they serve a purpose?”
“There are all kinds of sediments to be found in a laboratory,” said Holmes. “Most chemists are not pleased to see them in the dregs of their beakers, because they indicate problems in their experiments,” he went on, taking the sediment in his hand. “But their study can be very educational. And there is some beauty in them, is there not? Some of them may look funny, their colours garish and gaudy, but it is useful to know that one’s experiment has not been altogether successful. That the circumstances under which his research is conducted are, perhaps, not ideal for every reagent. Call it a messenger, a truth-teller. A sacrifice of material, if you will.”
She shook the beaker and watched the chemical inside, took in its shape and the way it felt to hold it.
“There’s nothing wrong with a sediment,” she said.
“You are right,” said Holmes. “There isn’t.”
Later in the evening, the matter had to be talked over with Mary. She listened intently with her eyes wide open and her blonde hair cupping her face as she untangled it. It was curly in the front and cut into a fringe, as was the fashion, and the overall effect reminded Cecily of the Princes in the Tower. She thought it looked very sweet.
“Would you describe the overall encounter as inconclusive?” Mary asked.
“Inconclusive, in the sense that we do not know yet if he is that way,” said Cecily.
“Did you not ask?”
“No, Mary, I could not ask,” Cecily said. She looked scandalised. “Who asks?”
“I might have,” Mary shrugged.
“You should come along if I visit him again,” Cecily said, giving her a little kiss on the tip of her nose. “My little angel of confrontation.”
“I do the best I can,” Mary laughed, settling next to Cecily and their cat, Peaseblossom. She was a thorny person and she liked to attack before she had to defend, but she melted right into Cecily’s arms.
“He promised to help,” Cecily added. “He is very kind when it comes to these things, and very discreet.”
“I get the impression that he does not like me very much,” Mary complained. “He mistrusts me, I think. It felt obvious to me when he was working out my case.”
“Oh, yes, the pearls,” said Cecily. “I shall miss those pearls, you know. They were such a regular occurrence. We came to expect them after the first few years, like a gift from Santa Claus.”
“A fresh pearl down our chimney every year,” Mary laughed.
“Anyhow,” said Cecily, “I believe his mistrust stems from the simple fact that you are a journalist. That is certain to worry him if people suspect that he is like us.”
“Oh, but I am not that kind of a journalist,” she protested. “I have self-respect and a moral compass.”
“People cannot always tell the difference.”
She huffed as she pulled Peaseblossom into her arms and ran a hand through her fur.
“Or perhaps he wanted a share of your pearls and the whole story made him jealous,” Cecily added.
Mary laughed and pulled her closer. “Yes, that must be it. Sowing the pearls of discord and whatnot.”
Neither spoke for a moment. Then, Cecily made a sound, as if she was crying. She wasn’t, it was only the weight of the last few days that threatened to burst out of her. She was afraid, she had no control, and she wanted her letters back.
“I should not have held on to them,” she said in a squeaky voice.
“Nonsense,” said Mary. “I should not have written them in the first place. They are compromising.”
“They are full of love,” Cecily said, trying to gain control of herself. “How did they do it, do you think?”
“It must have been that day when we were both out. Do you remember? There was a man to see us and he said he had a note from you— a forged one. Susan let him in that day.”
Susan, who lived next to them at the boarding house, was an otherwise exemplary neighbour they were both fond of.
“Is it not terribly unfortunate that this is all happening now, before your premiere?” said Mary.
“It is a perfect storm of misery,” Cecily agreed. “Twenty-five years of operation and not a single black page, until now. Of course, we are hardly the only ones in this predicament. Think of Mr Howell. It breaks my heart just to think of how he must be feeling.”
Mr Howell, Emrys Howell, was the unfortunate actor who had initially engaged Holmes’s services. He was starring in the season’s great premiere, The Barber of Seville, along with Cecily’s friend Belle.
“How is Belle holding up?” Mary asked. “She and Rhea, I mean.”
“Tolerably well,” Cecily said with a nod of her head. “Rhea says that if this blackguard shows his face anywhere near the Bellevue, he will have to answer for his deeds. Of course, she does not know what he looks like, so she is relying on her acute discernment to sniff him out.”
Belle was a mezzo-soprano who lived with her companion, another actress at the Bellevue. Though they were not directly involved in the proceedings, the consequences of a theatre-wide scandal would certainly leave a mark on their professional standing.
“Holmes said that this is all the work of one man,” Cecily said. “He seemed a little fearful of him.”
“Nonsense,” said Mary. “He fears nothing. And neither do I, excluding those poisonous little tales they spread in the papers.”
Following the strange and unsettling conclusion of the case Mary had brought into Baker Street, her father’s whereabouts had been thoroughly cleared up, and any hope of her inheriting something from him was dashed. This fact, however, was not made entirely clear to the public, owing to certain tales spread by constables and others who were present during the proceedings. One of the most popular rumours ran to the effect that she was only waiting for the fuss to die down before making a spectacular society debut. Mary resented it, but her efforts to squash the tall tales were made impossible by a public ravenous for spectacle.
“I wish it were easier to spread the truth instead of those tall tales,” she said. “Evidently, that man who has our letters thought it best to believe it rather than risk losing my mountains of gold. Or those of your godparents, at any rate.”
“Imagine,” said Cecily. “Even now that we are being extorted, we are hardly the crux of the operation. “He is simply hoping to acquire something from us, anything we might have, if it exists at all. All that fanfare simply because of a rumour.”
“Rumours are powerful things,” said Mary. “But I should not have liked to receive that money, Cee. It is full of blood. Sometimes I wonder if my father did anything else besides subterfuge and crime and deceit. I do not trust military men, not anymore. The only men of that lot whom I respect are doctors, for they, at least, have a purpose in being there.”
Cecily nodded but she knew she couldn’t understand. Her own parents were musicians and honest almost to a fault.
“And even if he were a perfectly upstanding officer,” Mary went on, “which he was not, what business had he being there in the first place? What business have we going about planting our flags on the rest of the world?”
“Expansion?”
“To what end?” Mary wondered. “Everything seems to be about money these days.”
“Even our letters are being held against their will for money.”
“Money which we do not have.”
“If we did have those letters back,” Cecily said carefully, “we might toss them into the fire for a bit of warmth in the evenings.”
Mary laughed. “Poetic, no?”
“It is to be expected of an artist of my calibre,” Cecily said with aplomb.
Mary groaned and stretched herself. “Are we not a pitiable sight? Me, with my ideas, you with your librettos no one reads— oh, come, I was only joking. I am sure your actor friends read them. You are brilliant, you know, though I tease you. It is what I do when I try to be good-natured. You are my shining star, Cee.”
Cecily blushed in spite of herself and looked into Mary’s eyes. They were soft and very blue, but they were liable to turn icy when she glared— and she often did.
“You needn’t worry at all,” Mary said easily. “Mr Holmes will work it out.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“Then I shall take the fall for it,” she said decisively. “There is no need for you to be implicated. We will say it was all unrequited, the ravings of a madwoman deluding herself and misreading your correspondence.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Cecily.
“All press is ridiculous,” said Mary. “All journalists are ridiculous, too, the whole lot of us. It is because we are all fools that the great gears keep turning and people believe the preposterous things we write. One only has to believe in oneself, to arrange words in just the right direction to steer the public’s view where he wants.”
“Perhaps,” Cecily conceded. “But still, I cannot force you to do such a thing.”
“Nobody ever forces me to do anything,” Mary said easily. “I will do it if I must, because I love you.”
Cecily was once again moved and pulled Mary in for a kiss. What she had done to deserve someone like her, she’d never know. She closed her eyes and felt Mary’s presence around her, her hair touching her cheek, tickling her, and she tried to think of nothing else. She only wished for everything to be over. She had prayed to Saint Cecilia about it, of course, and to other saints besides, but it didn’t seem to help. Something had to be done about it right there in drab, ordinary London.
“I hope someday to have my own opportunity to be brave,” she said.
“I imagine you shall,” said Mary. “Sooner or later.”