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kittydesadeTitle: The Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Characters: Holmes, Watson, OCx2
Word Count: ~23,000
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Holmes is semi-retired and inclined to stay that way when Victor Callahan of Special Branch knocks on his door and requests his help with a case of murder and suspected treason. Holmes agrees to investigate only under protest, after Callahan appeals to his puzzle-solving mind more than his patriotism. As the case progresses, it takes Holmes to some very dark places in his own life, and the detective becomes more and more erratic while Watson is powerless to help him.
A/N: Written for the Holmes Big Bang
The room was silent but for the crackle of a pine-wood fire behind a wall of copper and brass. There was no footfall, heavy or otherwise, and no brush of fabric or rustle of a newspaper or creak of a chair as someone rose from or settled into it. Occasionally there was the tap of bone pipe against ceramic urn as the ashes rose and the glimmer of a cigarette or the simmering of tobacco in the pipe bowl. But no one discussed the state of the weather outside (dreary) or the last visit (unsatisfying) or their custodian (infuriating) or the state of affairs in England at the moment (despicable). Neither man said much of anything. There was nothing left to say.
"Put that cigarette out."
The cigarette was not put out. The smoker waved it in the air in front of his face and stared. "You complain too much. It smells better than your pipe, at least."
The next clank of the pipe against the urn was considerably more forceful, and deliberate on the first and then the second rap. Then silence.
A log crashed onto the fire, sending up a shower of red sparks and black and white ash. The chair creaked as a heavy body settled back into it.
"The elections are coming up."
"Mm." Puff of smoke. Ash into the tray. "Islington is a cad. And the people in his district will see that. He won't be elected."
"There's always the Irish question."
"Oh, pah." Angry gesture, leaving a smoke trail in the air. "The Irish, the bloody damned Irish. No one cares about the Irish."
"The people do. They are starting to wonder when a solution will be found.They want peace in the streets, and they don't care how they get it. The people are tired of worrying about their safety even in such a simple act as going to market."
Snort of agreement. "There is no sense of honor in the world anymore. What's left of it has faded, now anyone may be hurt, at any time, for no reason. Man does violence to man for nothing, for the sake of seeing something burn. Because they are angry and they have no other recourse."
There was a moment of silence while the weight of that statement was considered. "Nonsense. Philosophical nonsense."
"Perhaps.
More silence. Neither of them quite believed what had been said, but neither was willing to discount it, either.
"The world is going down a dark road, my friend."
"So it is."
Something popped in the fireplace. The tobacco burned in cigarette and pipe. No lamps, electric or oil. No candles. Just the two small glows and their larger, aching brother slowly dying in the shelter of scorched brick and hearth stone.
"We're doomed, you know."
"Don't be so melodramatic."
"Doomed to be locked together like this for eternity. At the very least, for the rest of our lives." And the truth of those words smothered what little air was left in the conversation, and for a while neither of them spoke. There was the rustling of fingers in the tobacco pouch. A cigarette paper was rolled.
"It's better accommodations than you deserve."
"Oh, is that so?"
"It is."
"Then what do you deserve?"
If that was meant to be a dig, it didn't land. The answer was mild, and calm. "The same, I expect. Certainly no better. I've done... questionable things."
"Also extraordinary things."
"We could have changed the world, you and I."
"And who's to say we didn't?"
Two men sat in a darkened room, for once, no longer arguing. Perhaps they were too tired to argue. Or perhaps they had merely come to rest, for the moment, on the point they could most agree on. Or perhaps they were sick of talking and only wanted silence. Broken by the crack as the log shattered in the middle and dropped ash and soot onto the coals, by the tap of bone against ceramic and the rustle of fabric against the seat.
Blackness, no lamps, and silence.
"Holmes. I have a concern."
The other man ignored him with straight-backed efficiency, preferring instead to tend the strings on his violin. Accustomed to this rudeness, the speaker waited patiently for Holmes to complete his meticulous examination of the tuning pegs and resume a more congenial mood, or at least an attitude of listening.
He did raise his head after several minutes. "What was that, Watson?"
"I have a concern."
Holmes' lips thinned in what might have passed for a smile in so-called polite society. "About what, dear fellow?"
"About you. You've been steeped in this mood ever since you finished that Blackfriars business, and I don't like the way..."
Both men lifted their heads and fell silent at Mrs. Hudson's approach. If there was indeed cause for concern, and by Holmes's reaction the other man thought there might be, neither of them wanted to worry Mrs. Hudson with it. They couldn't help whatever she might discern from their behavior, but they could at least avoid any kind of worrying talk while she was in earshot.
"Now, there's your tea, and mind you do finish off those biscuits, or we'll be leaving them out for the dogs. And there's some for you, too, Doctor." She mothered them impartially, and never seemed to have realized that he had moved out. Of course, that could have simply been her choosing not to acknowledge it. Holmes did not do so well with a change in his routine, either.
"Thank you, Mrs. Hudson," they chorused in not quite perfect unison. Force of habit had Watson lifting his cup and smiling at her. "Excellent, as always."
And then she was gone.
The warmth left Holmes' eyes again and he turned back to his violin to forestall any further protests from his friend. It was useless, and they both knew it. "Holmes, I mean it. You haven't been sleeping, you barely eat anything that I've seen, you, you, you subsist off that drug as though it will keep you hale and whole forever, but it won't. Holmes," he added, louder and more strident, as though it would convince his friend if he simply bellowed. "You must take better care of yourself. I can't always be coming over to mind you like a child."
"Then perhaps you should stop, and commence treating me as a responsible, rational adult," Holmes rapped out, the violin playing coming to an abrupt and screeching halt.
That had been a mistake. Watson knew it was a mistake to refer to Holmes as a child when he was in this mood; it wasn't fear of childishness that troubled his friend, or misbehavior, or anything like that. Holmes's childishness troubled him, and these days as they grew older and more tired it troubled him greatly, but the detective didn't see it that way.
Perhaps Holmes was right, regardless. Perhaps Watson had been babying him a bit too much.
"Well, I'm worried about you," Watson retorted. "You can't blame a man for being worried about an old friend who seems to be behaving..."
The sharp upward jerk of Holmes's eyebrows told the other man he was on dangerous ground.
"... as though he had a nest of bees in his bonnet." There, that should be safe enough.
And indeed, Holmes's shoulders dropped a few fractions of an inch, his fingers unclenching on the neck of the violin as he held the instrument less like a weapon and more like a cherished friend. That, at least, was a better sign. And a worse sign, if Watson had missed that Holmes was about to dash his violin to pieces on the floor, the wall, or Watson's own head. Holmes loved that violin, at least the playing of it.
"Perhaps you're right," Holmes said, picking up the bow after a moment and resuming his playing as though nothing untoward had happened. "It has been some time since a suitable challenge has been presented to me. Perhaps I've been a bit cranky. I'm sorry, dear fellow."
Watson harrumphed and made some noises about how an apology wasn't necessary, and it wasn't. He would still worry. But he hadn't been misused or offended.
"Excuse me, sirs."
Mrs. Hudson was at the door again. Holmes' head jerked up like a dog who hears the sound of the hunting horn, alert again and ready for action.
"There's a gentleman to see you. He says..."
"That he's been waiting across the street, yes, I know, I spotted him deciding whether or not to approach this den of crabbed and cranky genius. Send him up, would you?"
Watson gave his friend a look of dry amusement, but it was still good to see Holmes up and animated again. Away went the violin, out came the pipe, and by the time the man was shown up to their rooms Holmes was all but looming by his favorite chair, pipe in hand, as though nothing had ever been wrong.
"Mr. Holmes. Dr. Watson." The man nodded politely as he came in, removing his hat and standing by the door.
"Inspector Callahan."
For the first time in recent memory, at least, the man showed no surprise at Holmes' deduction of his identity. He didn't even ask how the detective had guessed it. Watson's estimation of him grew a few notches. Either the Inspector had already heard enough of Holmes to gather that the detective was a genius who was in the habit of bursting out with statements treated as fact and gleaned from the people and places around him, or he didn't impress as easily as most of Holmes' usual clientele. Perhaps he had been warned by Lestrade or Gregson that Holmes did things in the most dramatic fashion possible to get a reaction. In any case, the Inspector's lack of reaction made Holmes' fingers clench just a bit around his pipe.
"Mr. Holmes, I am trusting you will keep this matter in the utmost confidence. Many lives are at stake, the security of our great country depends on it."
Holmes' eyebrows arched again. "You can be assured of my discretion, doubly so, if you know of my reputation enough to anticipate my deduction of your identity."
"Indeed I can, which is why I approach you with this matter. There has been a murder, a particularly well-placed person in the Foreign Office which, as you may guess, means this is a matter for Special Branch."
"To determine whether it was an ordinary sort of crime or the sort that comes from treachery, the selling of secrets, deals made in shadowed doorways, that sort of thing?"
The corner of the Inspector's mouth twitched. "You should be writing your own adventures, Mr. Holmes. Yes, exactly that sort of thing."
"And you believe I am more qualified to assist you?"
"I believe you are more qualified to determine what exactly is going on, and whether or not it merits an investigation by Special Branch. I also believe that you are least likely to be corrupted by a foreign agency attempting to undermine our investigation or further some other purpose of unrest."
Watson kept an eye on the Inspector and a more worried eye on Holmes. The compliment of being labeled as incorruptible was high praise, and there was something more to the Inspector that neither man was saying. Which meant that Watson was of a mind that there was something fishy about the whole business, some ulterior motive the man wasn't revealing. He liked hidden agendas and covert plots very little, especially when it had the potential to get his close friends killed. He liked it much less now than he did even decades ago in the army.
"Where did this murder of most suspicious circumstances take place?" Holmes asked, and while he still had that heavy-lidded look of disinterest to Watson's eyes he might as well have been rubbing his hands together and cackling in glee. The doctor sighed. Once more, indeed, the game was afoot.
There was nothing particularly special about the house to which Victor led the mismatched pair. It was a row house in a long street of row houses, in a particularly twisty corner of London that catered to the down on their luck titled folk and the aspiring to be nouveau riche. There was enough land and space for a small courtyard in front, and the facades were pale gray stone and could be made to look very grand. Improved upon, decorated, and draped in all manner of finery.
"What?" Holmes's eyebrows arched slightly. "No attempt to hide the location of this office of delicate matters? No blindfolds or trickery..."
"What would be the point?" The Inspector, who had introduced himself as Victor Callahan, didn't bother to turn around to address Holmes' query.
Which seemed to disconcert the detective. "Well, to prevent me from finding it again, for one thing. I understand such things aren't meant for the average citizen to know..."
This time Victor did look over his shoulder at the detectives, and he smiled. "But you're not an average citizen, are you, detective?"
Holmes didn't move, didn't step forward, simply stared. Fingers dancing for a moment on the outside of his coat pocket before he dipped his hands into the pockets of his waistcoat and left them there. Watson could feel the beginnnings of a very strong headache from tension. This would not go well.
They went in. The interior of the house was softer than its granite shell, drapes and furnishings plush and worn enough that they were likely bought either second-hand or some time ago, but still bought with a very good eye for quality. The colors were tasteful and understated, everything matching. Whoever assembled the sitting and dining rooms had done very well on a limited budget.
But it did not in any way resemble an office, and Watson was confused as to why they had been brought here.
"This is your mistress's home," Holmes drawled. Watson gave him a puzzled look but didn't bother to argue it. It was certainly a woman's home, and by the conspicuous lack of policemen around it wasn't a murder scene, sensitive or otherwise. Explanations, he presumed, would be forthcoming.
There didn't seem to be anyone home, either, or they were expected. No one came down to see what two strange men and her lover were doing in her sitting room. Inspector Callahan stepped into the archway between rooms and spread his hands, as if waiting for Holmes to make some deduction or another. It was a test; Watson had seen others draw or push Holmes through their tests before. And it would make Holmes even less inclined to assist, or perhaps more inclined to show off. The headache crept up along both sides of Watson's forehead and down around his orbital sockets.
"It is." Inspector Callahan admitted quite frankly. Watson's eyes drifted down to his hands at that, and saw no wedding ring. Which meant that he could admit such things and it would not be as great a slight on his character. But he hadn't married the woman yet, nor did he correct the assumption of mistress. Interesting.
"Is this a test?" Holmes finally asked, when no explanation was forthcoming. "Is this some sort of evaluation of my abilities? I thought you had enough of that when you visited me at my rooms."
"This is a safe place," Inspector Callahan spread his hands, and Watson thought he realized what the man meant before he had finished explaining. "Treachery is a disease, it must be rooted out wherever it sits before it infects others with suspicion, paranoia, deception, and further treachery."
"You want to talk to us about the case here, before we visit the scene and speak with whoever is there, before we form our opinions based on what they want us to know or not know..." Watson started, and then glanced at Holmes to see how he would take it. On the one hand it did show caution, on the other hand it also showed perhaps a lack of confidence in his friend's abilities. He honestly wasn't sure which one Callahan meant to convey. And the fact that he hadn't told them beforehand would be an irritant at best, and taken as puzzling them for the sake of puzzles.
Holmes took it as an insult which, in this mood, was predictable. He didn't lash out as violently as Watson had expected, though. "By all means, then. Regale us with your mysterious tale of betrayal and murder."
"There have been rumors circulating about the offices, rumors of clandestine meetings, agents of Her Majesty's government acting in an erratic fashion."
"In the manner of someone conducting an affair, perhaps?"
Watson pinched the bridge of his nose and tried not to call Holmes out on his snide remarks, not when the man had been provoked.
"Special Branch has already launched an investigation into several members of Parliament, and of the Home Office, among others. The Foreign Office, thus far, has been exempt. There is sensitive information that has already been lost, that has been tracked down to a handful of people who ..."
"Have access to it, might have been in a position to sell it, yes, I'm familiar with the methods and means of turning men to betray what they hold dear, their closest and most precious-held ideals." Holmes waved a hand, taking a turn around the sitting room, his coat sleeve brushing against a small dish on the mantel, which fell. Callahan's hand shot out to catch it before it hit the ground.
Watson saw it, saw Holmes's eyes dart to the inspector's hand, but he didn't know what his friend was trying to discern or prove by it. Whatever it was seemed to pass between the two men like a gunshot, or an exchange of blows, and then they stepped apart again.
"When we're done here, I'd like you to return to Baker Street, collect whatever you need, and then we will visit the scene of the murder. There are certain details I need you to be aware of before we go."
As though nothing had happened. Holmes straightened, the cool demeanor settling around his shoulders as comfortably as his coat and all sign of insult or irritation vanished. "Then you'd better impart them to me, hadn't you?" But his tone was mild, and only suggested that he was prepared for whatever Callahan might want him to know. The prospect of a new puzzle, Watson decided, especially one that was of such a delicate nature and required someone to take such erratic and elaborate pains, excited him more than the other man's words had irked him.
For his part, Watson hadn't a single idea what was going on above the murder, but he didn't like it. Any of it.
"... well, of course they can't be expected to act like a member of Scotland Yard, they're Special Branch. They don't investigate crimes of London, they investigate crimes of the world. Matters of national security. The question isn't why are they bringing in a private inquiries agent, the question is..."
Holmes kept up the steady pace of chatter through the door and up the stairs, Watson trailing behind him on hunched shoulders and putting down every foot as though it was an effort to lift it up again. The man was infinitely more cheerful than he had been a short time ago.
"Holmes, has it ever occurred to you that you're much easier to get along with when someone's been murdered?"
"Pardon?" Not that it sounded as though Holmes hadn't heard him, but he wasn't sure what Watson was going on about this time. Or he was deliberately ignoring his own failings, which was also extremely likely. "Don't follow, dear boy."
Watson sighed. "Never mind. The question...?"
"The question is..." And now Holmes was busily dashing over to his bookshelf on which he kept his indexes of persons notable to him. "... what prompted such erratic behavior? There are reasons, Watson, there must be reasons. Special Branch provides actions with no basis that we can see, but there is always a basis. They operate with far more information than they ever make anyone else privy to."
Ah-hah. So that was what had his friend all stirred up, the idea that there might be a world out there to which he could not gain access, knowledge which could not be learned. Knowledge that he wanted, at least. There were worlds of knowledge out there that Sherlock Holmes neither possessed nor was inclined to explore. This, however, was a secret he could not have, which meant that in his own childish way he wanted nothing more.
"Perhaps he's merely shaken by the prospect that someone he trusted has betrayed him," Watson pointed out. Gently, lest Holmes think he was speaking up out of empathy for Callahan. "These men, as you say, investigate crimes of the world, and they do so without being able to tell anyone what they are investigating. They cannot confide in their wives, if they have them, they cannot confide in their friends, perhaps they cannot even confide in each other if they are sworn to secrecy on some specific matter. They live their lives surrounded by suspicion, in darkness. And when someone leading you through the darkness lets go of your hand..."
Holmes was staring at him with a cross expression of irritated amusement. "Have I ever told you, Watson, how much I despised your literary turns?"
After all these years Watson was only a tiny bit stung. "You only despise them as they apply to you, or if you have to listen to them. My apologies. You were saying?"
The detective waved away whatever he had been saying with an irritated hand and paused to run through what appeared to be a mental list. "Have you seen my copy of..."
"On the shelf next to the mantel, two books in."
"Ah, yes. Thank you."
Watson occupied himself with a copy of Bell's Manual of the Operations of Surgery while he waited for Holmes to ascertain that he had all that he needed. Considering they still didn't know what they were facing, that could be some several minutes.
"Watson, I do wish you would take something more from that man than his instructions on how to cut up and stitch together a human body."
The doctor looked up to find his friend packing the last of his books and clippings on paper in a bag. "I beg your pardon?"
"Doctor Bell. A most ingenious mind, with a sharp eye for detail. There's much to be learned from even five minutes' conversation with such a fellow."
"I've met the man." Watson smiled a little. "He was quite charming."
He'd said it on purpose, to irritate his friend. Perhaps he shouldn't have. Holmes snorted and latched the briefcase, brushing past Watson on his way towards the door. "Charming," Watson heard him mutter as he trotted down the stairs. He laughed a little, allowing as Holmes was probably happier to have something predictable and familiar to grumble about. Especially with all the uncertainty that was hovering around this case like a bad miasma from the East End.
He'd be glad when it was over, that was becoming more and more certain. Although he was less sure what would constitute 'over,' as when the case was solved Holmes would likely wonder and pick at the loose ends. Damned Special Branch. They should have been satisfied with leaving Holmes out of it, using their own men. Callahan, damn him especially, knew what a problem like this would do to Holmes. Perhaps all the erratic behavior was simply to keep him interested.
If that was the case, Watson would have a good talking with him. He would soon find out that just because Watson was a doctor did not mean that Callahan was immune from his wrath.
"Well, this is certainly a mess."
Everyone in the room was silent. They had all fallen silent, three members of Special Branch and Callahan, when Holmes had entered the room. As though they had been speaking about something which they didn't want the two strangers to know. Or as though they were waiting to see what he would say or do without their interference. Or both.
Most likely both, Watson thought. These were the sorts of men who never did anything without two or three motives and a host of possible outcomes that they considered favorable. They planned for contingencies to their contingencies, eliminating chance from their lives as much as possible, Callahan especially, he decided.
The room was a mess, though. The man's body was surrounded by small pools of blood separated by smears, still tacky but almost completely dry. Papers and books scattered everywhere, some of them bent so that their bindings were almost cracked. Small statues had been broken on the floor, perhaps in the hope that something had been concealed in them. They'd had cases like that before.
Two things were evident even to him; that someone had been looking for something and that someone had very much wanted this person dead. The rest of it was lost in the initial rush of details. Holmes would be able to pick up the slightest clues the moment he set foot in the man's house. Watson took a minute or two to rearrange his focus to find the places where it would do the most good. Though what he lacked in instant perception perhaps he made up for in stability.
"This man was bludgeoned. Severely beaten, his skull cracked, his fingers turned to pulp." Holmes related all of this as though he were describing a society function in a newspaper, with the same amount of drawling indifference. "Had he not been dead already I'm sure he would have found the experience quite painful."
That caused something of a murmur among those assembled, although it was hard for Watson to tell whether or not it was because Holmes had found something that contradicted their expectations, or because he had found exactly what they knew was already there. By the look of Callahan he had expected the result, shoulders still relaxed and face still. The others didn't seem to have any expectations whatsoever. A raised eyebrow here and a quirk of the mouth there said that they hadn't expected it, but weren't surprised.
"There's nothing of relevance missing here," he said, straightening.
One of the agents didn't appreciate that. "I beg your pardon, you can't possibly know what was here to begin with, how could you..."
"If what we are looking for is a traitor rather than a simple thief or murderer, it would have been an inside man. It would have been someone who, in all likelihood, knew where to look. At the very least it would have been someone who knew how to trick the location of the papers out of the man. Yet this room is destroyed as though someone was looking for something, either a ruse meant to be cunning or someone who was looking for something else."
Holmes stepped over a dead and broken arm. "And then we have the corpse. Brutalized, to be sure, but far too little blood for the injuries and the bruising is barely present. Which indicates that he was killed before he was beaten, and made to look as though he either interrupted a robber or a traitor. If there was any information to be stolen it was copied or lifted from his own lips rather than his papers."
Callahan chuckled behind his gloved hand. The agent who had snapped at Holmes glared at him, which Callahan ignored. Which Watson took to mean that of all the people here, he was the senior amongst them.
"It would help," Holmes said finally, rounding the room and facing the three agents and Callahan with the air of a man who expects a battle of some kind. "If I knew what was missing."
"Nothing is missing," Callahan's eyes were wide and disingenuous.
"Then what am I doing here?"
Watson moved to step in, but Callahan seemed to be refusing to engage. "Studying a murder, not a robbery, Mr. Holmes. Whether or not the information was taken this man has been murdered, and since you seem to be ruling out a traitor..."
"Oh, I've ruled out nothing yet." Holmes commented waspishly, but his face had smoothed. "It would be premature to say what has or has not taken place."
"... then you had better be narrowing your search to what suspects you find likely. A crime has still been committed, no matter how interesting you may or may not find it."
One of the other men came up to Callahan and murmured something; Watson didn't hear, but the nod that the Inspector gave the man in returned seemed like a dismissal. Two of them left. The third remained, but ignored him and Holmes, pulling out a small notepad and making notes as he walked gingerly around the body.
Holmes arched an eyebrow at Callahan, still too icy to be what Watson would consider safe to leave on his own.
"Come with me," Callahan said, and beckoned them to a doorway at the back of the room.
Inspector Callahan led them to a tiny garden at the back of the house. A garden that was mostly herbs and had been overgrown with weeds, it may have been the cook's garden once upon a time but today it was their quiet place of meditation and deduction. Holmes normally quite enjoyed the outdoors, but today it did very little to dispel his bad mood.
"Was this a test?" Watson asked, taking umbrage on behalf of his friend. "Was this some sort of test of..."
"No, no test, but I did need to confirm, without prior bias, what I suspected." Callahan held his hands up to defend himself from Watson's admittedly tepid wrath.
Holmes, to his surprise, spoke up too. "It is a sound practice, Watson. There is basis for it in scientific method, which you should know, yourself. Confirming a hypothesis by repetition of..."
"Yes, yes, I remember." Watson shook his head, irritated at the way Holmes seemed to be claiming the privilege of snapping at the Inspector himself. Apparently the only people allowed to be upset with detectives were other detectives.
Callahan took one of the tiny seats at the two-seater table, leaning back as though taking lunch in his own home. "I tested your abilities once, before. They were adequate. Now I needed to find out what an independent observer with skills and experience makes of the scene we found today. You say he was poisoned..."
"I said he was murdered before he was beaten, although, yes, poison is highly likely." Holmes arched an eyebrow, and Watson knew what he was getting at without any more cue than that. The fact that Callahan suggested poison initially suggested at the very least that he had some prior knowledge or predisposition to think of poison, and at worst that he knew what was going on before any of them did and was only playing them still.
Callahan shook his head slightly. "More likely than you might think. You might not have recognized him but..."
"William Bennett, Assistant to the Foreign Office, to the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, in the Hong Kong area if I remember right, which I believe is one of the currently favored positions for an officially sanctioned spy?" One long, slim finger tapped the case of papers he held in front of him, which Callahan might not recognize but Watson knew then that the man had been in one of Holmes's files.
The Inspector nodded. "A spy, rather than an actual assistant or diplomat or administrator, with access to certain specific poisons and required to keep one at hand at all times, in case of capture and potential torture and coercion. Someone in the same branch, the same office might have known where he habitually kept it and used it on him. Someone in the same office might have used their own poison capsule, there are any number of possibilities but poison, with the conspicuous lack of blood spilled, is the most likely tool of the spy. Strangulation would be the next, but there were no signs of petechial hemorrhage and no bruising around the throat."
Holmes and Watson both gave Callahan a look of equal parts amusement and curiosity. Watson was the one who spoke up, impressed despite himself. "I don't believe most inspectors familiarize themselves with the details of death."
"I would rather be knowledgeable about all the aspects of my profession than trust my conclusions to another's possibly faulty judgment," Callahan's tone was dry, but his posture was rigid and uninformative.
Holmes nodded. It was the sort of position Watson had heard him espouse, perhaps not in those words directly but in similar terms. Observation, data, things to be seen and noted down with his own eyes and in his own experience so that he could draw his own conclusions and not those tainted by outside presumptions. Watson himself, in the medical profession, preferred to do the same, although his observations and deductions were confined to the state of the body.
"You lack the seniority to conduct this investigation as you wish, so you hire a private inquiries agent whose methods are similar enough to your own to be acceptable. Was this your idea or your Miss Katherine Walsingham's."
Callahan rose to his feet. It was the first time Watson realized that Callahan was not only as tall as the detective, he was actually a little taller. Or at least he was certainly giving that impression, and for a moment Watson braced himself for a physical confrontation between the two, squaring his shoulders and settling into a familiar boxing stance.
Only to relax again with a baffled look at Callahan as he turned and walked around the garden to the gap between the row houses, heading to the front. Holmes smiled his shark-toothed triumphant smile and followed. Watson trailed behind them, wondering if Holmes would even need his help or if he could return to the much less frustrating practice of medicine.
"I admit to a certain curiosity as to why you haven't married her yet," Holmes pressed. "You obviously consider her judgment closely enough to take us to be observed by her in her own home..."
Watson stopped between the houses and stared at them.
"... and you take her with you on your investigations in the country."
That was pure guesswork. There was no way Holmes would have had the opportunity to look into Miss Walsingham's comings and goings, much less Callahan's, who would have been much more clandestine about the whole thing. And yet Callahan did stop, and turn. Watson knew how much Holmes hated guesswork.
Watson himself, by contrast, was not above prodding the patient to get him to reveal more details, even if he had to guess a little. "Is this why your standing in Special Branch is somewhat less than your experience and your ability should dictate?" he raised his voice so that it would carry to the two men, watched with some triumph as Callahan turned towards him. "Because you trust your judgment to a woman with little experience, no standing, no means but ..."
"Her family's small trust, the house, and what you provide," Holmes offered. "She was in the public eye somewhat for capturing the attention of a young and foolish Lord, but she refused his attentions and sought yours instead."
Callahan smiled a little. "She preferred conversation of substance rather than an endless string of enduring pleasantries in the hopes of some scraps of stimulation."
Watson and Holmes exchanged a look, neither of them understanding, Holmes less than Watson himself, or so the doctor suspected. Watson had been married for long enough to know that there was sometimes elements of a person that appealed to another without seeming reason or due cause. A prospect of friendly conversation and being able to mentally engage with another person would make for a much happier life, marriage or no, than being courted by someone you had no interest in. It made Watson think of his conversations at night with Mary, discussing her friends or his adventures or the practice.
Holmes had no such memories. He had no such experience with women; he had very little experience with women beyond what his cases brought him, all of which was colored with the need to solve the puzzle he was presented. It made him react to Callahan's softness in an ugly way.
"If you persist in involving her in your cases, she will suffer the consequences," Holmes told him. "She will be hurt by your enemies, possibly even killed."
"I know," Callahan said. Quietly, not rising to confront Holmes or answer the challenge, but still clearly affected by his words. "It is a risk she accepts gladly."
That, Watson thought, he understood.
They left Callahan to pick up the investigation at the scene of the murder itself and instead went to the offices at Bow Street to see what could be learned of the dead man and his work.
Holmes was silent for most of the way there. Staring out the window of the cab and no doubt turning over the problem of the murdered man in his mind, not that Watson could see any way out of the muddle just yet. The man had been murdered, yes. It had been made to look like something else, yes. Callahan's theory about poison was plausible, which could be confirmed as plausible by the man's fellows at the offices, but there was no way to know until he could examine the body. Which had to be taken to the city's morgue and then examined by their own doctors first.
They could, at least, take a look at the man's colleagues and his place of work in the meantime. His offices were closer in a more well-to-do and official part of the city just in Covent Garden. Sandwiched between the Metropolitan Police and the office of the Chief Inspector, it would have been easy to walk by it if they hadn't known what they were looking for.
"Sirs," the man inside the door said, nodding to them as though they were expected. His eyes were just a little wider than they should have been. Watson imagined some out of breath courier arriving bare minutes before them to tell the man that they would be coming. "Mr. Sherlock Holmes and..."
"Dr. Watson, yes." Holmes' voice was just a hair past impatient. "We would like to speak to..."
"Inspector Callahan, yes, you were mentioned, if you'll follow me this way to his offices, please, he asked that you be shown there and bid to wait until he arrives..."
For a moment it seemed as though Holmes might do the exact opposite out of contrariness, or maybe the belief that Callahan had instructed thus because there was something he did not want Holmes to see.
Ridiculous. It was a perfectly reasonable thing to say, expecting that Holmes would make his way there eventually. Especially after the comments made earlier about poisons and things expected, and how everyone was suspect. After a moment of hurried and whispered conversation, one of the young men shuffling papers at a desk rose and beckoned them dow a hall.
The secretary held the door for them with an unctuous bow that made Watson feel as though he were trying to get a look inside Callahan's office. Not that Watson liked the Inspector very much, but he was coming to respect him at least for his meticulous attention to duty and his quick mind, and peeking behind doors at one's superiors' secrets was not something a young man in his position should be doing.
Holmes, in a moment of pettiness, almost closed the door on the secretary's nose. Watson didn't bother to chide him for it.
This time, there was a woman in the office. Dressed in pale gray and pale rose colors, dark hair upswept in a manner that wouldn't have passed for a garden party but would do for business or a meeting in a parlor with some necessary tradesman, she sat next to Victor's desk in his chair, while Callahan stood at her shoulder. The impression Watson had was that she was almost in charge, or at least that Victor unofficially deferred to her. It was disconcerting for him and he could only imagine how strange and upsetting it would be for Holmes, if upsetting was even the word. Distasteful, perhaps.
It also, if the front office knew that she was here even unofficially, explained the young man's curiosity to get a glimpse inside the room.
"Mr. Holmes," she smiled, giving them a courteous nod and extending her hand, which Watson at least stepped forward to take. "Dr. Watson. It's a pleasure to meet you both."
The way she said it gave Watson the impression that not only did she mean it, she had formed that opinion based on what she had heard from the newspapers or from Inspector Callahan, and was prepared to defend or explain it if questioned. Which was more than the usual lip-service most people gave to the formality.
"Of course," Holmes brushed her words aside with a gesture and ignored the offered hand-shake. It should have been offensive, but it wasn't. "If you'll excuse us..."
"I'll just be in the next room," she nodded, without question or argument, and strode out the door. Or perhaps strode was too strong a word. Swept. She was regal, and swept out the door. Watson still wasn't sure what to make of her.
He called her back when the detective and his friend were gone. His partner and handler, she thought. Holmes had, true to his reputation, been curt but polite, never pressing the boundaries of rudeness even when he was at his most cold. He would treat a lady as a lady, even when the lady herself was pressing the boundaries of what was appropriate to a lady. And he would never, ever look at her in a certain way that a man looks at a woman. In the way that Victor, when they were alone together, looked at her.
Not the way he looked at her now, of course. They had business to attend to. "What did you think of him?"
Katherine folded her arms lightly over her bodice and thought about it for a moment, frowning.
"That well, eh?"
"Hush, Victor. I'm thinking."
He smiled, hushed like an impatient child, which she sometimes fondly accused him of imitating. Her fingers tapped lightly against the topmost ruffle of her bodice, smoothed down her skirt. Then stilled.
"He's impetuous..."
Victor, predictably, interrupted her. "I could have told you that from five minutes' meeting..."
"Will you let me finish?"
Her tone of voice suggested that the next time he interrupted her she might do something drastic like roll up one of those sheafs of papers and beat him with it. His eyes widened, playful and innocent in the surface but still with the seriousness of wanting to know the answer and yet stalling because he was afraid it might be what he thought.
Katherine sighed. "He's impetuous, quick-minded and intelligent, and entirely too impulsive. He has no patience for those who are not up to his standards of thinking, and, as polite as he is, he can be incredibly insulting for those with wit enough to see what he is doing. He makes leaps in judgment based on the presumption that he is interpreting the data correctly, which is often true but not always. He has no patience for anyone's fallibility, including his own, which makes him particularly snappish and dangerous."
Victor's mouth twisted. "You think he is dangerous."
"I think he might well be the most dangerous man in London." Katherine sounded more saddened than intimidated by this piece of psychoanalytical guesswork, though.
He shook his head, rose from his chair and went over to the cupboard, pulling out a crystal bottle and tumbler glass. Katherine narrowed her eyes at him but said nothing.
After he had poured himself a glass and had at least enough to swish around his mouth for a moment, he looked over at her. "Why do you say that?"
"Because he has no restraints. His doctor friend has been with him for so long that he no longer sees all of the traps in all of his faults. And he never got into the habit of restraining him from his more dangerous impulses in the first place."
"You think Mr. Holmes needs restraint?"
Katherine snorted. "Don't you?"
Victor grimaced, acknowledging the point. Both to underscore and to soften the statement, she stepped to his side and laid a hand on his arm, lowering the tumbler to the top of the desk again.
"Mr. Holmes needs restraint for the same reason you do, because neither of you is capable of temperance on your own. You jolt from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows without any ability to catch yourself and ease the jump, and so does he. You know what that means."
Victor grimaced. Similar to her own expression when she watched Holmes at work on the case in her house, in her drawing room. She knew that dance a little too well, a little too personally. The pressures of a mind stumbling to catch up with itself, leaps in logic buoyed by facts that just fit together, only half aware of how he was doing it at all. She continued on in her thoughts aloud, at least for Victor's benefit.
"Holmes is not able to explain the foundation of what he does. He calls it deductive reasoning as though that explains everything, and then is frustrated when others are not able to do as he does. It does not occur to him that these are things that must be explained; he takes for granted that everyone has access to the same mental faculties as he."
"You've accused me of that before," Victor did not smile, this time.
"It's still true. And for all that he is reputed to be as solitary and dispassionate as a stone, he does reserve great stores of passion for what matters in his life. They are simply not the things that would matter to most men."
"And what are they?" Not that Victor didn't know already. He couldn't resist testing her, though.
Katherine gave him a steady look. "That's another thing you two have in common, this constant need to test those around you and make certain that they are paying attention to you, that they are worthy of your company. He cares about his mind, his mental state, his deductive abilities. He dedicates himself to learning and honing his craft. He is passionate about his friend, fiercely protective because it is the one achievement in the world in which he is peculiarly unable to achieve nothing, that world of the heart and the spirit rather than that of the mind."
"Emotionally crippled," Victor chuckled a little, drawing a curious look out of her. "You've accused me of the same thing more than once."
"That's because it's true," she retorted, pointing a finger at him. He caught her hand in his and turned it to bow and kiss the back.
"It is not, and you know it. Otherwise you would be as concerned about me as you are with Mr. Holmes, and you would be having this conversation with someone else equally capable of..."
Neither of them wanted to finish that sentence, so they both fell silent. He dropped her hand and she watched as he turned and paced a slow circle around the room, debating the already-decanted beverage for a moment before rejecting it as a bad idea.
Katherine went to him and tucked her arm through his eventually. "You knew it was a possibility. And you knew we might have to."
He looked over his shoulder at her, curious and tired. "How long have you suspected?"
"A year, maybe less. The signs were there. They were simply never quite so clear before now." Her hand squeezed his arm enough to draw his attention back to her. "We will give him a chance. If he fails, we will take matters into our own hands. That is all we can do."
Victor sighed, covering her hand with his more for his own comfort than hers. "I don't like it," he told her, and she knew he meant the implication that he might end up that way as well.
"I know," she murmured, letting him comfort her. "But it's the best we can offer for now."
The man in question was lurking outside the door as she left. No doubt he would have used a different word, but she in her own mind called it lurking. He leaned against the wall so that the door hid him when she first stepped out, most likely meaning to ambush her as he swept out from behind it.
“Did you find out what you wanted to know?"
His tone was as acerbic as he would let it be around a woman who was still unfamiliar to him, who was not in his care as an investigator on her behalf or on the behalf of someone else. She meant nothing to him beyond an irritation because she was looking, watching, and he did not know why.
And she was connected to Callahan, which must infuriate him. Connected to Callahan meant connected to the case, and he wouldn't be able to unravel why because of his insistence that women were a non-entity in most circumstances.
"I already know all I need to."
She watched his mouth open to deliver another comment contradicting that and interrupted him as his lips shaped the word. "All that I need to in order to help Victor, I mean, of course."
"Hm."
Just a noise. Something of a thoughtful grunt. She was undoubtedly meant to ask what it meant, except she had a feeling she knew what it meant. The sound itself meant nothing.
The way his eyes were focused on her face, first on her eyes and then on her mouth and back to her eyes again meant he was considering what she had said and wondering why she had said it. The way he swung his hands behind his back to clasp them there, one hand around the other wrist, spoke to his uncertainty over his own self control. Though that didn't need to be because of her, given the circumstances and how Victor had been giving him the run around to test his patience. The set of his shoulders and the way his jacket hung down the barely-there slope meant he was tense, most likely angry.
Provoking him further was not, at least for the moment, in her best interests. "Would you like to know what I told him?"
One dark eyebrow arched ever so slightly. "Would you tell me if I said that I did?"
"Of course." And it was the truth, and he would hear that. She had no reason to lie. She also had no reason to tell him the entire truth, but the part that Holmes couldn't know was not among the things she had told Victor just now. They'd discussed that and made their agreements prior to the body ever being discovered.
Holmes gestured for her to go on. Narcissistic, but also natural. If someone had been talking to an employer about her behind her back, she would be curious. Perhaps survival instincts would dictate that curiosity.
"I told him that you're arrogant and dangerous." His lips twitched upwards in a smile; it flattered him that she thought that. "Don't be amused, it's not a compliment. I told him that you would try his patience and that of those around you. I told him that I wasn't sure you were worth the trouble you bring."
The smile left but the measuring gaze stayed on her, focused. She watched him unraveling her piece by piece.
"Are you finding out what you want to know? My clothes are very carefully tailored second-hand, made to look more expensive than I can afford, perhaps to give the impression that I am of higher wealth or standing than I am. You think this makes me arrogant or ambitious, and you don't consider that I simply might like the cut or the color."
"Do you?"
Katherine smiled. "I do. And I am ambitious. And I am as arrogant as you are, as Victor is. If there is a person of any virtue in all of this it is most likely your friend the doctor."
His eyes both hardened and melted a little at that. Invoking Watson's name brought out a fraction of the humanity left to him, but that an enemy had invoked Watson's name made it automatically a threat of some kind, even if he hadn't unraveled yet how she would threaten him.
She didn't mean to be threatening. She was used to people underestimating her, and that made finding her footing with him more tricky.
"I'm sorry," she started, but it was the wrong beginning.
He gave her a curt nod. "Miss Walsingham."
"Mr. Holmes." She gave him the nod back, shoulders straightening. There would be no more talking to him today.
"Excuse me," he said, and strode into Victor's office with the air of a man who was about to have a confrontation. Katherine sighed, and descended to the street again to find a cab to take her home.
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Characters: Holmes, Watson, OCx2
Word Count: ~23,000
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Holmes is semi-retired and inclined to stay that way when Victor Callahan of Special Branch knocks on his door and requests his help with a case of murder and suspected treason. Holmes agrees to investigate only under protest, after Callahan appeals to his puzzle-solving mind more than his patriotism. As the case progresses, it takes Holmes to some very dark places in his own life, and the detective becomes more and more erratic while Watson is powerless to help him.
A/N: Written for the Holmes Big Bang
The room was silent but for the crackle of a pine-wood fire behind a wall of copper and brass. There was no footfall, heavy or otherwise, and no brush of fabric or rustle of a newspaper or creak of a chair as someone rose from or settled into it. Occasionally there was the tap of bone pipe against ceramic urn as the ashes rose and the glimmer of a cigarette or the simmering of tobacco in the pipe bowl. But no one discussed the state of the weather outside (dreary) or the last visit (unsatisfying) or their custodian (infuriating) or the state of affairs in England at the moment (despicable). Neither man said much of anything. There was nothing left to say.
"Put that cigarette out."
The cigarette was not put out. The smoker waved it in the air in front of his face and stared. "You complain too much. It smells better than your pipe, at least."
The next clank of the pipe against the urn was considerably more forceful, and deliberate on the first and then the second rap. Then silence.
A log crashed onto the fire, sending up a shower of red sparks and black and white ash. The chair creaked as a heavy body settled back into it.
"The elections are coming up."
"Mm." Puff of smoke. Ash into the tray. "Islington is a cad. And the people in his district will see that. He won't be elected."
"There's always the Irish question."
"Oh, pah." Angry gesture, leaving a smoke trail in the air. "The Irish, the bloody damned Irish. No one cares about the Irish."
"The people do. They are starting to wonder when a solution will be found.They want peace in the streets, and they don't care how they get it. The people are tired of worrying about their safety even in such a simple act as going to market."
Snort of agreement. "There is no sense of honor in the world anymore. What's left of it has faded, now anyone may be hurt, at any time, for no reason. Man does violence to man for nothing, for the sake of seeing something burn. Because they are angry and they have no other recourse."
There was a moment of silence while the weight of that statement was considered. "Nonsense. Philosophical nonsense."
"Perhaps.
More silence. Neither of them quite believed what had been said, but neither was willing to discount it, either.
"The world is going down a dark road, my friend."
"So it is."
Something popped in the fireplace. The tobacco burned in cigarette and pipe. No lamps, electric or oil. No candles. Just the two small glows and their larger, aching brother slowly dying in the shelter of scorched brick and hearth stone.
"We're doomed, you know."
"Don't be so melodramatic."
"Doomed to be locked together like this for eternity. At the very least, for the rest of our lives." And the truth of those words smothered what little air was left in the conversation, and for a while neither of them spoke. There was the rustling of fingers in the tobacco pouch. A cigarette paper was rolled.
"It's better accommodations than you deserve."
"Oh, is that so?"
"It is."
"Then what do you deserve?"
If that was meant to be a dig, it didn't land. The answer was mild, and calm. "The same, I expect. Certainly no better. I've done... questionable things."
"Also extraordinary things."
"We could have changed the world, you and I."
"And who's to say we didn't?"
Two men sat in a darkened room, for once, no longer arguing. Perhaps they were too tired to argue. Or perhaps they had merely come to rest, for the moment, on the point they could most agree on. Or perhaps they were sick of talking and only wanted silence. Broken by the crack as the log shattered in the middle and dropped ash and soot onto the coals, by the tap of bone against ceramic and the rustle of fabric against the seat.
Blackness, no lamps, and silence.
"Holmes. I have a concern."
The other man ignored him with straight-backed efficiency, preferring instead to tend the strings on his violin. Accustomed to this rudeness, the speaker waited patiently for Holmes to complete his meticulous examination of the tuning pegs and resume a more congenial mood, or at least an attitude of listening.
He did raise his head after several minutes. "What was that, Watson?"
"I have a concern."
Holmes' lips thinned in what might have passed for a smile in so-called polite society. "About what, dear fellow?"
"About you. You've been steeped in this mood ever since you finished that Blackfriars business, and I don't like the way..."
Both men lifted their heads and fell silent at Mrs. Hudson's approach. If there was indeed cause for concern, and by Holmes's reaction the other man thought there might be, neither of them wanted to worry Mrs. Hudson with it. They couldn't help whatever she might discern from their behavior, but they could at least avoid any kind of worrying talk while she was in earshot.
"Now, there's your tea, and mind you do finish off those biscuits, or we'll be leaving them out for the dogs. And there's some for you, too, Doctor." She mothered them impartially, and never seemed to have realized that he had moved out. Of course, that could have simply been her choosing not to acknowledge it. Holmes did not do so well with a change in his routine, either.
"Thank you, Mrs. Hudson," they chorused in not quite perfect unison. Force of habit had Watson lifting his cup and smiling at her. "Excellent, as always."
And then she was gone.
The warmth left Holmes' eyes again and he turned back to his violin to forestall any further protests from his friend. It was useless, and they both knew it. "Holmes, I mean it. You haven't been sleeping, you barely eat anything that I've seen, you, you, you subsist off that drug as though it will keep you hale and whole forever, but it won't. Holmes," he added, louder and more strident, as though it would convince his friend if he simply bellowed. "You must take better care of yourself. I can't always be coming over to mind you like a child."
"Then perhaps you should stop, and commence treating me as a responsible, rational adult," Holmes rapped out, the violin playing coming to an abrupt and screeching halt.
That had been a mistake. Watson knew it was a mistake to refer to Holmes as a child when he was in this mood; it wasn't fear of childishness that troubled his friend, or misbehavior, or anything like that. Holmes's childishness troubled him, and these days as they grew older and more tired it troubled him greatly, but the detective didn't see it that way.
Perhaps Holmes was right, regardless. Perhaps Watson had been babying him a bit too much.
"Well, I'm worried about you," Watson retorted. "You can't blame a man for being worried about an old friend who seems to be behaving..."
The sharp upward jerk of Holmes's eyebrows told the other man he was on dangerous ground.
"... as though he had a nest of bees in his bonnet." There, that should be safe enough.
And indeed, Holmes's shoulders dropped a few fractions of an inch, his fingers unclenching on the neck of the violin as he held the instrument less like a weapon and more like a cherished friend. That, at least, was a better sign. And a worse sign, if Watson had missed that Holmes was about to dash his violin to pieces on the floor, the wall, or Watson's own head. Holmes loved that violin, at least the playing of it.
"Perhaps you're right," Holmes said, picking up the bow after a moment and resuming his playing as though nothing untoward had happened. "It has been some time since a suitable challenge has been presented to me. Perhaps I've been a bit cranky. I'm sorry, dear fellow."
Watson harrumphed and made some noises about how an apology wasn't necessary, and it wasn't. He would still worry. But he hadn't been misused or offended.
"Excuse me, sirs."
Mrs. Hudson was at the door again. Holmes' head jerked up like a dog who hears the sound of the hunting horn, alert again and ready for action.
"There's a gentleman to see you. He says..."
"That he's been waiting across the street, yes, I know, I spotted him deciding whether or not to approach this den of crabbed and cranky genius. Send him up, would you?"
Watson gave his friend a look of dry amusement, but it was still good to see Holmes up and animated again. Away went the violin, out came the pipe, and by the time the man was shown up to their rooms Holmes was all but looming by his favorite chair, pipe in hand, as though nothing had ever been wrong.
"Mr. Holmes. Dr. Watson." The man nodded politely as he came in, removing his hat and standing by the door.
"Inspector Callahan."
For the first time in recent memory, at least, the man showed no surprise at Holmes' deduction of his identity. He didn't even ask how the detective had guessed it. Watson's estimation of him grew a few notches. Either the Inspector had already heard enough of Holmes to gather that the detective was a genius who was in the habit of bursting out with statements treated as fact and gleaned from the people and places around him, or he didn't impress as easily as most of Holmes' usual clientele. Perhaps he had been warned by Lestrade or Gregson that Holmes did things in the most dramatic fashion possible to get a reaction. In any case, the Inspector's lack of reaction made Holmes' fingers clench just a bit around his pipe.
"Mr. Holmes, I am trusting you will keep this matter in the utmost confidence. Many lives are at stake, the security of our great country depends on it."
Holmes' eyebrows arched again. "You can be assured of my discretion, doubly so, if you know of my reputation enough to anticipate my deduction of your identity."
"Indeed I can, which is why I approach you with this matter. There has been a murder, a particularly well-placed person in the Foreign Office which, as you may guess, means this is a matter for Special Branch."
"To determine whether it was an ordinary sort of crime or the sort that comes from treachery, the selling of secrets, deals made in shadowed doorways, that sort of thing?"
The corner of the Inspector's mouth twitched. "You should be writing your own adventures, Mr. Holmes. Yes, exactly that sort of thing."
"And you believe I am more qualified to assist you?"
"I believe you are more qualified to determine what exactly is going on, and whether or not it merits an investigation by Special Branch. I also believe that you are least likely to be corrupted by a foreign agency attempting to undermine our investigation or further some other purpose of unrest."
Watson kept an eye on the Inspector and a more worried eye on Holmes. The compliment of being labeled as incorruptible was high praise, and there was something more to the Inspector that neither man was saying. Which meant that Watson was of a mind that there was something fishy about the whole business, some ulterior motive the man wasn't revealing. He liked hidden agendas and covert plots very little, especially when it had the potential to get his close friends killed. He liked it much less now than he did even decades ago in the army.
"Where did this murder of most suspicious circumstances take place?" Holmes asked, and while he still had that heavy-lidded look of disinterest to Watson's eyes he might as well have been rubbing his hands together and cackling in glee. The doctor sighed. Once more, indeed, the game was afoot.
There was nothing particularly special about the house to which Victor led the mismatched pair. It was a row house in a long street of row houses, in a particularly twisty corner of London that catered to the down on their luck titled folk and the aspiring to be nouveau riche. There was enough land and space for a small courtyard in front, and the facades were pale gray stone and could be made to look very grand. Improved upon, decorated, and draped in all manner of finery.
"What?" Holmes's eyebrows arched slightly. "No attempt to hide the location of this office of delicate matters? No blindfolds or trickery..."
"What would be the point?" The Inspector, who had introduced himself as Victor Callahan, didn't bother to turn around to address Holmes' query.
Which seemed to disconcert the detective. "Well, to prevent me from finding it again, for one thing. I understand such things aren't meant for the average citizen to know..."
This time Victor did look over his shoulder at the detectives, and he smiled. "But you're not an average citizen, are you, detective?"
Holmes didn't move, didn't step forward, simply stared. Fingers dancing for a moment on the outside of his coat pocket before he dipped his hands into the pockets of his waistcoat and left them there. Watson could feel the beginnnings of a very strong headache from tension. This would not go well.
They went in. The interior of the house was softer than its granite shell, drapes and furnishings plush and worn enough that they were likely bought either second-hand or some time ago, but still bought with a very good eye for quality. The colors were tasteful and understated, everything matching. Whoever assembled the sitting and dining rooms had done very well on a limited budget.
But it did not in any way resemble an office, and Watson was confused as to why they had been brought here.
"This is your mistress's home," Holmes drawled. Watson gave him a puzzled look but didn't bother to argue it. It was certainly a woman's home, and by the conspicuous lack of policemen around it wasn't a murder scene, sensitive or otherwise. Explanations, he presumed, would be forthcoming.
There didn't seem to be anyone home, either, or they were expected. No one came down to see what two strange men and her lover were doing in her sitting room. Inspector Callahan stepped into the archway between rooms and spread his hands, as if waiting for Holmes to make some deduction or another. It was a test; Watson had seen others draw or push Holmes through their tests before. And it would make Holmes even less inclined to assist, or perhaps more inclined to show off. The headache crept up along both sides of Watson's forehead and down around his orbital sockets.
"It is." Inspector Callahan admitted quite frankly. Watson's eyes drifted down to his hands at that, and saw no wedding ring. Which meant that he could admit such things and it would not be as great a slight on his character. But he hadn't married the woman yet, nor did he correct the assumption of mistress. Interesting.
"Is this a test?" Holmes finally asked, when no explanation was forthcoming. "Is this some sort of evaluation of my abilities? I thought you had enough of that when you visited me at my rooms."
"This is a safe place," Inspector Callahan spread his hands, and Watson thought he realized what the man meant before he had finished explaining. "Treachery is a disease, it must be rooted out wherever it sits before it infects others with suspicion, paranoia, deception, and further treachery."
"You want to talk to us about the case here, before we visit the scene and speak with whoever is there, before we form our opinions based on what they want us to know or not know..." Watson started, and then glanced at Holmes to see how he would take it. On the one hand it did show caution, on the other hand it also showed perhaps a lack of confidence in his friend's abilities. He honestly wasn't sure which one Callahan meant to convey. And the fact that he hadn't told them beforehand would be an irritant at best, and taken as puzzling them for the sake of puzzles.
Holmes took it as an insult which, in this mood, was predictable. He didn't lash out as violently as Watson had expected, though. "By all means, then. Regale us with your mysterious tale of betrayal and murder."
"There have been rumors circulating about the offices, rumors of clandestine meetings, agents of Her Majesty's government acting in an erratic fashion."
"In the manner of someone conducting an affair, perhaps?"
Watson pinched the bridge of his nose and tried not to call Holmes out on his snide remarks, not when the man had been provoked.
"Special Branch has already launched an investigation into several members of Parliament, and of the Home Office, among others. The Foreign Office, thus far, has been exempt. There is sensitive information that has already been lost, that has been tracked down to a handful of people who ..."
"Have access to it, might have been in a position to sell it, yes, I'm familiar with the methods and means of turning men to betray what they hold dear, their closest and most precious-held ideals." Holmes waved a hand, taking a turn around the sitting room, his coat sleeve brushing against a small dish on the mantel, which fell. Callahan's hand shot out to catch it before it hit the ground.
Watson saw it, saw Holmes's eyes dart to the inspector's hand, but he didn't know what his friend was trying to discern or prove by it. Whatever it was seemed to pass between the two men like a gunshot, or an exchange of blows, and then they stepped apart again.
"When we're done here, I'd like you to return to Baker Street, collect whatever you need, and then we will visit the scene of the murder. There are certain details I need you to be aware of before we go."
As though nothing had happened. Holmes straightened, the cool demeanor settling around his shoulders as comfortably as his coat and all sign of insult or irritation vanished. "Then you'd better impart them to me, hadn't you?" But his tone was mild, and only suggested that he was prepared for whatever Callahan might want him to know. The prospect of a new puzzle, Watson decided, especially one that was of such a delicate nature and required someone to take such erratic and elaborate pains, excited him more than the other man's words had irked him.
For his part, Watson hadn't a single idea what was going on above the murder, but he didn't like it. Any of it.
"... well, of course they can't be expected to act like a member of Scotland Yard, they're Special Branch. They don't investigate crimes of London, they investigate crimes of the world. Matters of national security. The question isn't why are they bringing in a private inquiries agent, the question is..."
Holmes kept up the steady pace of chatter through the door and up the stairs, Watson trailing behind him on hunched shoulders and putting down every foot as though it was an effort to lift it up again. The man was infinitely more cheerful than he had been a short time ago.
"Holmes, has it ever occurred to you that you're much easier to get along with when someone's been murdered?"
"Pardon?" Not that it sounded as though Holmes hadn't heard him, but he wasn't sure what Watson was going on about this time. Or he was deliberately ignoring his own failings, which was also extremely likely. "Don't follow, dear boy."
Watson sighed. "Never mind. The question...?"
"The question is..." And now Holmes was busily dashing over to his bookshelf on which he kept his indexes of persons notable to him. "... what prompted such erratic behavior? There are reasons, Watson, there must be reasons. Special Branch provides actions with no basis that we can see, but there is always a basis. They operate with far more information than they ever make anyone else privy to."
Ah-hah. So that was what had his friend all stirred up, the idea that there might be a world out there to which he could not gain access, knowledge which could not be learned. Knowledge that he wanted, at least. There were worlds of knowledge out there that Sherlock Holmes neither possessed nor was inclined to explore. This, however, was a secret he could not have, which meant that in his own childish way he wanted nothing more.
"Perhaps he's merely shaken by the prospect that someone he trusted has betrayed him," Watson pointed out. Gently, lest Holmes think he was speaking up out of empathy for Callahan. "These men, as you say, investigate crimes of the world, and they do so without being able to tell anyone what they are investigating. They cannot confide in their wives, if they have them, they cannot confide in their friends, perhaps they cannot even confide in each other if they are sworn to secrecy on some specific matter. They live their lives surrounded by suspicion, in darkness. And when someone leading you through the darkness lets go of your hand..."
Holmes was staring at him with a cross expression of irritated amusement. "Have I ever told you, Watson, how much I despised your literary turns?"
After all these years Watson was only a tiny bit stung. "You only despise them as they apply to you, or if you have to listen to them. My apologies. You were saying?"
The detective waved away whatever he had been saying with an irritated hand and paused to run through what appeared to be a mental list. "Have you seen my copy of..."
"On the shelf next to the mantel, two books in."
"Ah, yes. Thank you."
Watson occupied himself with a copy of Bell's Manual of the Operations of Surgery while he waited for Holmes to ascertain that he had all that he needed. Considering they still didn't know what they were facing, that could be some several minutes.
"Watson, I do wish you would take something more from that man than his instructions on how to cut up and stitch together a human body."
The doctor looked up to find his friend packing the last of his books and clippings on paper in a bag. "I beg your pardon?"
"Doctor Bell. A most ingenious mind, with a sharp eye for detail. There's much to be learned from even five minutes' conversation with such a fellow."
"I've met the man." Watson smiled a little. "He was quite charming."
He'd said it on purpose, to irritate his friend. Perhaps he shouldn't have. Holmes snorted and latched the briefcase, brushing past Watson on his way towards the door. "Charming," Watson heard him mutter as he trotted down the stairs. He laughed a little, allowing as Holmes was probably happier to have something predictable and familiar to grumble about. Especially with all the uncertainty that was hovering around this case like a bad miasma from the East End.
He'd be glad when it was over, that was becoming more and more certain. Although he was less sure what would constitute 'over,' as when the case was solved Holmes would likely wonder and pick at the loose ends. Damned Special Branch. They should have been satisfied with leaving Holmes out of it, using their own men. Callahan, damn him especially, knew what a problem like this would do to Holmes. Perhaps all the erratic behavior was simply to keep him interested.
If that was the case, Watson would have a good talking with him. He would soon find out that just because Watson was a doctor did not mean that Callahan was immune from his wrath.
"Well, this is certainly a mess."
Everyone in the room was silent. They had all fallen silent, three members of Special Branch and Callahan, when Holmes had entered the room. As though they had been speaking about something which they didn't want the two strangers to know. Or as though they were waiting to see what he would say or do without their interference. Or both.
Most likely both, Watson thought. These were the sorts of men who never did anything without two or three motives and a host of possible outcomes that they considered favorable. They planned for contingencies to their contingencies, eliminating chance from their lives as much as possible, Callahan especially, he decided.
The room was a mess, though. The man's body was surrounded by small pools of blood separated by smears, still tacky but almost completely dry. Papers and books scattered everywhere, some of them bent so that their bindings were almost cracked. Small statues had been broken on the floor, perhaps in the hope that something had been concealed in them. They'd had cases like that before.
Two things were evident even to him; that someone had been looking for something and that someone had very much wanted this person dead. The rest of it was lost in the initial rush of details. Holmes would be able to pick up the slightest clues the moment he set foot in the man's house. Watson took a minute or two to rearrange his focus to find the places where it would do the most good. Though what he lacked in instant perception perhaps he made up for in stability.
"This man was bludgeoned. Severely beaten, his skull cracked, his fingers turned to pulp." Holmes related all of this as though he were describing a society function in a newspaper, with the same amount of drawling indifference. "Had he not been dead already I'm sure he would have found the experience quite painful."
That caused something of a murmur among those assembled, although it was hard for Watson to tell whether or not it was because Holmes had found something that contradicted their expectations, or because he had found exactly what they knew was already there. By the look of Callahan he had expected the result, shoulders still relaxed and face still. The others didn't seem to have any expectations whatsoever. A raised eyebrow here and a quirk of the mouth there said that they hadn't expected it, but weren't surprised.
"There's nothing of relevance missing here," he said, straightening.
One of the agents didn't appreciate that. "I beg your pardon, you can't possibly know what was here to begin with, how could you..."
"If what we are looking for is a traitor rather than a simple thief or murderer, it would have been an inside man. It would have been someone who, in all likelihood, knew where to look. At the very least it would have been someone who knew how to trick the location of the papers out of the man. Yet this room is destroyed as though someone was looking for something, either a ruse meant to be cunning or someone who was looking for something else."
Holmes stepped over a dead and broken arm. "And then we have the corpse. Brutalized, to be sure, but far too little blood for the injuries and the bruising is barely present. Which indicates that he was killed before he was beaten, and made to look as though he either interrupted a robber or a traitor. If there was any information to be stolen it was copied or lifted from his own lips rather than his papers."
Callahan chuckled behind his gloved hand. The agent who had snapped at Holmes glared at him, which Callahan ignored. Which Watson took to mean that of all the people here, he was the senior amongst them.
"It would help," Holmes said finally, rounding the room and facing the three agents and Callahan with the air of a man who expects a battle of some kind. "If I knew what was missing."
"Nothing is missing," Callahan's eyes were wide and disingenuous.
"Then what am I doing here?"
Watson moved to step in, but Callahan seemed to be refusing to engage. "Studying a murder, not a robbery, Mr. Holmes. Whether or not the information was taken this man has been murdered, and since you seem to be ruling out a traitor..."
"Oh, I've ruled out nothing yet." Holmes commented waspishly, but his face had smoothed. "It would be premature to say what has or has not taken place."
"... then you had better be narrowing your search to what suspects you find likely. A crime has still been committed, no matter how interesting you may or may not find it."
One of the other men came up to Callahan and murmured something; Watson didn't hear, but the nod that the Inspector gave the man in returned seemed like a dismissal. Two of them left. The third remained, but ignored him and Holmes, pulling out a small notepad and making notes as he walked gingerly around the body.
Holmes arched an eyebrow at Callahan, still too icy to be what Watson would consider safe to leave on his own.
"Come with me," Callahan said, and beckoned them to a doorway at the back of the room.
Inspector Callahan led them to a tiny garden at the back of the house. A garden that was mostly herbs and had been overgrown with weeds, it may have been the cook's garden once upon a time but today it was their quiet place of meditation and deduction. Holmes normally quite enjoyed the outdoors, but today it did very little to dispel his bad mood.
"Was this a test?" Watson asked, taking umbrage on behalf of his friend. "Was this some sort of test of..."
"No, no test, but I did need to confirm, without prior bias, what I suspected." Callahan held his hands up to defend himself from Watson's admittedly tepid wrath.
Holmes, to his surprise, spoke up too. "It is a sound practice, Watson. There is basis for it in scientific method, which you should know, yourself. Confirming a hypothesis by repetition of..."
"Yes, yes, I remember." Watson shook his head, irritated at the way Holmes seemed to be claiming the privilege of snapping at the Inspector himself. Apparently the only people allowed to be upset with detectives were other detectives.
Callahan took one of the tiny seats at the two-seater table, leaning back as though taking lunch in his own home. "I tested your abilities once, before. They were adequate. Now I needed to find out what an independent observer with skills and experience makes of the scene we found today. You say he was poisoned..."
"I said he was murdered before he was beaten, although, yes, poison is highly likely." Holmes arched an eyebrow, and Watson knew what he was getting at without any more cue than that. The fact that Callahan suggested poison initially suggested at the very least that he had some prior knowledge or predisposition to think of poison, and at worst that he knew what was going on before any of them did and was only playing them still.
Callahan shook his head slightly. "More likely than you might think. You might not have recognized him but..."
"William Bennett, Assistant to the Foreign Office, to the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, in the Hong Kong area if I remember right, which I believe is one of the currently favored positions for an officially sanctioned spy?" One long, slim finger tapped the case of papers he held in front of him, which Callahan might not recognize but Watson knew then that the man had been in one of Holmes's files.
The Inspector nodded. "A spy, rather than an actual assistant or diplomat or administrator, with access to certain specific poisons and required to keep one at hand at all times, in case of capture and potential torture and coercion. Someone in the same branch, the same office might have known where he habitually kept it and used it on him. Someone in the same office might have used their own poison capsule, there are any number of possibilities but poison, with the conspicuous lack of blood spilled, is the most likely tool of the spy. Strangulation would be the next, but there were no signs of petechial hemorrhage and no bruising around the throat."
Holmes and Watson both gave Callahan a look of equal parts amusement and curiosity. Watson was the one who spoke up, impressed despite himself. "I don't believe most inspectors familiarize themselves with the details of death."
"I would rather be knowledgeable about all the aspects of my profession than trust my conclusions to another's possibly faulty judgment," Callahan's tone was dry, but his posture was rigid and uninformative.
Holmes nodded. It was the sort of position Watson had heard him espouse, perhaps not in those words directly but in similar terms. Observation, data, things to be seen and noted down with his own eyes and in his own experience so that he could draw his own conclusions and not those tainted by outside presumptions. Watson himself, in the medical profession, preferred to do the same, although his observations and deductions were confined to the state of the body.
"You lack the seniority to conduct this investigation as you wish, so you hire a private inquiries agent whose methods are similar enough to your own to be acceptable. Was this your idea or your Miss Katherine Walsingham's."
Callahan rose to his feet. It was the first time Watson realized that Callahan was not only as tall as the detective, he was actually a little taller. Or at least he was certainly giving that impression, and for a moment Watson braced himself for a physical confrontation between the two, squaring his shoulders and settling into a familiar boxing stance.
Only to relax again with a baffled look at Callahan as he turned and walked around the garden to the gap between the row houses, heading to the front. Holmes smiled his shark-toothed triumphant smile and followed. Watson trailed behind them, wondering if Holmes would even need his help or if he could return to the much less frustrating practice of medicine.
"I admit to a certain curiosity as to why you haven't married her yet," Holmes pressed. "You obviously consider her judgment closely enough to take us to be observed by her in her own home..."
Watson stopped between the houses and stared at them.
"... and you take her with you on your investigations in the country."
That was pure guesswork. There was no way Holmes would have had the opportunity to look into Miss Walsingham's comings and goings, much less Callahan's, who would have been much more clandestine about the whole thing. And yet Callahan did stop, and turn. Watson knew how much Holmes hated guesswork.
Watson himself, by contrast, was not above prodding the patient to get him to reveal more details, even if he had to guess a little. "Is this why your standing in Special Branch is somewhat less than your experience and your ability should dictate?" he raised his voice so that it would carry to the two men, watched with some triumph as Callahan turned towards him. "Because you trust your judgment to a woman with little experience, no standing, no means but ..."
"Her family's small trust, the house, and what you provide," Holmes offered. "She was in the public eye somewhat for capturing the attention of a young and foolish Lord, but she refused his attentions and sought yours instead."
Callahan smiled a little. "She preferred conversation of substance rather than an endless string of enduring pleasantries in the hopes of some scraps of stimulation."
Watson and Holmes exchanged a look, neither of them understanding, Holmes less than Watson himself, or so the doctor suspected. Watson had been married for long enough to know that there was sometimes elements of a person that appealed to another without seeming reason or due cause. A prospect of friendly conversation and being able to mentally engage with another person would make for a much happier life, marriage or no, than being courted by someone you had no interest in. It made Watson think of his conversations at night with Mary, discussing her friends or his adventures or the practice.
Holmes had no such memories. He had no such experience with women; he had very little experience with women beyond what his cases brought him, all of which was colored with the need to solve the puzzle he was presented. It made him react to Callahan's softness in an ugly way.
"If you persist in involving her in your cases, she will suffer the consequences," Holmes told him. "She will be hurt by your enemies, possibly even killed."
"I know," Callahan said. Quietly, not rising to confront Holmes or answer the challenge, but still clearly affected by his words. "It is a risk she accepts gladly."
That, Watson thought, he understood.
They left Callahan to pick up the investigation at the scene of the murder itself and instead went to the offices at Bow Street to see what could be learned of the dead man and his work.
Holmes was silent for most of the way there. Staring out the window of the cab and no doubt turning over the problem of the murdered man in his mind, not that Watson could see any way out of the muddle just yet. The man had been murdered, yes. It had been made to look like something else, yes. Callahan's theory about poison was plausible, which could be confirmed as plausible by the man's fellows at the offices, but there was no way to know until he could examine the body. Which had to be taken to the city's morgue and then examined by their own doctors first.
They could, at least, take a look at the man's colleagues and his place of work in the meantime. His offices were closer in a more well-to-do and official part of the city just in Covent Garden. Sandwiched between the Metropolitan Police and the office of the Chief Inspector, it would have been easy to walk by it if they hadn't known what they were looking for.
"Sirs," the man inside the door said, nodding to them as though they were expected. His eyes were just a little wider than they should have been. Watson imagined some out of breath courier arriving bare minutes before them to tell the man that they would be coming. "Mr. Sherlock Holmes and..."
"Dr. Watson, yes." Holmes' voice was just a hair past impatient. "We would like to speak to..."
"Inspector Callahan, yes, you were mentioned, if you'll follow me this way to his offices, please, he asked that you be shown there and bid to wait until he arrives..."
For a moment it seemed as though Holmes might do the exact opposite out of contrariness, or maybe the belief that Callahan had instructed thus because there was something he did not want Holmes to see.
Ridiculous. It was a perfectly reasonable thing to say, expecting that Holmes would make his way there eventually. Especially after the comments made earlier about poisons and things expected, and how everyone was suspect. After a moment of hurried and whispered conversation, one of the young men shuffling papers at a desk rose and beckoned them dow a hall.
The secretary held the door for them with an unctuous bow that made Watson feel as though he were trying to get a look inside Callahan's office. Not that Watson liked the Inspector very much, but he was coming to respect him at least for his meticulous attention to duty and his quick mind, and peeking behind doors at one's superiors' secrets was not something a young man in his position should be doing.
Holmes, in a moment of pettiness, almost closed the door on the secretary's nose. Watson didn't bother to chide him for it.
This time, there was a woman in the office. Dressed in pale gray and pale rose colors, dark hair upswept in a manner that wouldn't have passed for a garden party but would do for business or a meeting in a parlor with some necessary tradesman, she sat next to Victor's desk in his chair, while Callahan stood at her shoulder. The impression Watson had was that she was almost in charge, or at least that Victor unofficially deferred to her. It was disconcerting for him and he could only imagine how strange and upsetting it would be for Holmes, if upsetting was even the word. Distasteful, perhaps.
It also, if the front office knew that she was here even unofficially, explained the young man's curiosity to get a glimpse inside the room.
"Mr. Holmes," she smiled, giving them a courteous nod and extending her hand, which Watson at least stepped forward to take. "Dr. Watson. It's a pleasure to meet you both."
The way she said it gave Watson the impression that not only did she mean it, she had formed that opinion based on what she had heard from the newspapers or from Inspector Callahan, and was prepared to defend or explain it if questioned. Which was more than the usual lip-service most people gave to the formality.
"Of course," Holmes brushed her words aside with a gesture and ignored the offered hand-shake. It should have been offensive, but it wasn't. "If you'll excuse us..."
"I'll just be in the next room," she nodded, without question or argument, and strode out the door. Or perhaps strode was too strong a word. Swept. She was regal, and swept out the door. Watson still wasn't sure what to make of her.
He called her back when the detective and his friend were gone. His partner and handler, she thought. Holmes had, true to his reputation, been curt but polite, never pressing the boundaries of rudeness even when he was at his most cold. He would treat a lady as a lady, even when the lady herself was pressing the boundaries of what was appropriate to a lady. And he would never, ever look at her in a certain way that a man looks at a woman. In the way that Victor, when they were alone together, looked at her.
Not the way he looked at her now, of course. They had business to attend to. "What did you think of him?"
Katherine folded her arms lightly over her bodice and thought about it for a moment, frowning.
"That well, eh?"
"Hush, Victor. I'm thinking."
He smiled, hushed like an impatient child, which she sometimes fondly accused him of imitating. Her fingers tapped lightly against the topmost ruffle of her bodice, smoothed down her skirt. Then stilled.
"He's impetuous..."
Victor, predictably, interrupted her. "I could have told you that from five minutes' meeting..."
"Will you let me finish?"
Her tone of voice suggested that the next time he interrupted her she might do something drastic like roll up one of those sheafs of papers and beat him with it. His eyes widened, playful and innocent in the surface but still with the seriousness of wanting to know the answer and yet stalling because he was afraid it might be what he thought.
Katherine sighed. "He's impetuous, quick-minded and intelligent, and entirely too impulsive. He has no patience for those who are not up to his standards of thinking, and, as polite as he is, he can be incredibly insulting for those with wit enough to see what he is doing. He makes leaps in judgment based on the presumption that he is interpreting the data correctly, which is often true but not always. He has no patience for anyone's fallibility, including his own, which makes him particularly snappish and dangerous."
Victor's mouth twisted. "You think he is dangerous."
"I think he might well be the most dangerous man in London." Katherine sounded more saddened than intimidated by this piece of psychoanalytical guesswork, though.
He shook his head, rose from his chair and went over to the cupboard, pulling out a crystal bottle and tumbler glass. Katherine narrowed her eyes at him but said nothing.
After he had poured himself a glass and had at least enough to swish around his mouth for a moment, he looked over at her. "Why do you say that?"
"Because he has no restraints. His doctor friend has been with him for so long that he no longer sees all of the traps in all of his faults. And he never got into the habit of restraining him from his more dangerous impulses in the first place."
"You think Mr. Holmes needs restraint?"
Katherine snorted. "Don't you?"
Victor grimaced, acknowledging the point. Both to underscore and to soften the statement, she stepped to his side and laid a hand on his arm, lowering the tumbler to the top of the desk again.
"Mr. Holmes needs restraint for the same reason you do, because neither of you is capable of temperance on your own. You jolt from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows without any ability to catch yourself and ease the jump, and so does he. You know what that means."
Victor grimaced. Similar to her own expression when she watched Holmes at work on the case in her house, in her drawing room. She knew that dance a little too well, a little too personally. The pressures of a mind stumbling to catch up with itself, leaps in logic buoyed by facts that just fit together, only half aware of how he was doing it at all. She continued on in her thoughts aloud, at least for Victor's benefit.
"Holmes is not able to explain the foundation of what he does. He calls it deductive reasoning as though that explains everything, and then is frustrated when others are not able to do as he does. It does not occur to him that these are things that must be explained; he takes for granted that everyone has access to the same mental faculties as he."
"You've accused me of that before," Victor did not smile, this time.
"It's still true. And for all that he is reputed to be as solitary and dispassionate as a stone, he does reserve great stores of passion for what matters in his life. They are simply not the things that would matter to most men."
"And what are they?" Not that Victor didn't know already. He couldn't resist testing her, though.
Katherine gave him a steady look. "That's another thing you two have in common, this constant need to test those around you and make certain that they are paying attention to you, that they are worthy of your company. He cares about his mind, his mental state, his deductive abilities. He dedicates himself to learning and honing his craft. He is passionate about his friend, fiercely protective because it is the one achievement in the world in which he is peculiarly unable to achieve nothing, that world of the heart and the spirit rather than that of the mind."
"Emotionally crippled," Victor chuckled a little, drawing a curious look out of her. "You've accused me of the same thing more than once."
"That's because it's true," she retorted, pointing a finger at him. He caught her hand in his and turned it to bow and kiss the back.
"It is not, and you know it. Otherwise you would be as concerned about me as you are with Mr. Holmes, and you would be having this conversation with someone else equally capable of..."
Neither of them wanted to finish that sentence, so they both fell silent. He dropped her hand and she watched as he turned and paced a slow circle around the room, debating the already-decanted beverage for a moment before rejecting it as a bad idea.
Katherine went to him and tucked her arm through his eventually. "You knew it was a possibility. And you knew we might have to."
He looked over his shoulder at her, curious and tired. "How long have you suspected?"
"A year, maybe less. The signs were there. They were simply never quite so clear before now." Her hand squeezed his arm enough to draw his attention back to her. "We will give him a chance. If he fails, we will take matters into our own hands. That is all we can do."
Victor sighed, covering her hand with his more for his own comfort than hers. "I don't like it," he told her, and she knew he meant the implication that he might end up that way as well.
"I know," she murmured, letting him comfort her. "But it's the best we can offer for now."
The man in question was lurking outside the door as she left. No doubt he would have used a different word, but she in her own mind called it lurking. He leaned against the wall so that the door hid him when she first stepped out, most likely meaning to ambush her as he swept out from behind it.
“Did you find out what you wanted to know?"
His tone was as acerbic as he would let it be around a woman who was still unfamiliar to him, who was not in his care as an investigator on her behalf or on the behalf of someone else. She meant nothing to him beyond an irritation because she was looking, watching, and he did not know why.
And she was connected to Callahan, which must infuriate him. Connected to Callahan meant connected to the case, and he wouldn't be able to unravel why because of his insistence that women were a non-entity in most circumstances.
"I already know all I need to."
She watched his mouth open to deliver another comment contradicting that and interrupted him as his lips shaped the word. "All that I need to in order to help Victor, I mean, of course."
"Hm."
Just a noise. Something of a thoughtful grunt. She was undoubtedly meant to ask what it meant, except she had a feeling she knew what it meant. The sound itself meant nothing.
The way his eyes were focused on her face, first on her eyes and then on her mouth and back to her eyes again meant he was considering what she had said and wondering why she had said it. The way he swung his hands behind his back to clasp them there, one hand around the other wrist, spoke to his uncertainty over his own self control. Though that didn't need to be because of her, given the circumstances and how Victor had been giving him the run around to test his patience. The set of his shoulders and the way his jacket hung down the barely-there slope meant he was tense, most likely angry.
Provoking him further was not, at least for the moment, in her best interests. "Would you like to know what I told him?"
One dark eyebrow arched ever so slightly. "Would you tell me if I said that I did?"
"Of course." And it was the truth, and he would hear that. She had no reason to lie. She also had no reason to tell him the entire truth, but the part that Holmes couldn't know was not among the things she had told Victor just now. They'd discussed that and made their agreements prior to the body ever being discovered.
Holmes gestured for her to go on. Narcissistic, but also natural. If someone had been talking to an employer about her behind her back, she would be curious. Perhaps survival instincts would dictate that curiosity.
"I told him that you're arrogant and dangerous." His lips twitched upwards in a smile; it flattered him that she thought that. "Don't be amused, it's not a compliment. I told him that you would try his patience and that of those around you. I told him that I wasn't sure you were worth the trouble you bring."
The smile left but the measuring gaze stayed on her, focused. She watched him unraveling her piece by piece.
"Are you finding out what you want to know? My clothes are very carefully tailored second-hand, made to look more expensive than I can afford, perhaps to give the impression that I am of higher wealth or standing than I am. You think this makes me arrogant or ambitious, and you don't consider that I simply might like the cut or the color."
"Do you?"
Katherine smiled. "I do. And I am ambitious. And I am as arrogant as you are, as Victor is. If there is a person of any virtue in all of this it is most likely your friend the doctor."
His eyes both hardened and melted a little at that. Invoking Watson's name brought out a fraction of the humanity left to him, but that an enemy had invoked Watson's name made it automatically a threat of some kind, even if he hadn't unraveled yet how she would threaten him.
She didn't mean to be threatening. She was used to people underestimating her, and that made finding her footing with him more tricky.
"I'm sorry," she started, but it was the wrong beginning.
He gave her a curt nod. "Miss Walsingham."
"Mr. Holmes." She gave him the nod back, shoulders straightening. There would be no more talking to him today.
"Excuse me," he said, and strode into Victor's office with the air of a man who was about to have a confrontation. Katherine sighed, and descended to the street again to find a cab to take her home.