“You knew about this neighborhood circus?”
He looked at me with disappointment. “I never do anything without knowing everything in advance. I was certain Moriarty would feel quite comfortable in this setting. Bold and, I speculated, reckless.”
“Why didn’t he just skip town?”
“Because I’m Holmes and he was Moriarty. Just as I thought, he couldn’t resist the confrontation. A simple push, that was all he thought it would take. But because I’d anticipated his move and held to him, my own weight carried him over the edge along with me.”
“Except that you had the rope around your ankle.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you just talk to the police?”
“He was a clever fellow. He slipped them in California and Portland and Denver. There was no reason to believe he couldn’t slip them here. No, Watson, this was something I had to take care of myself.”
The detective finally arrived, a tall fellow in an ill-fitting brown suit. “We’ve called your aunt and uncle,” he informed the boy. “When they get here, we’ll all sit down together and talk.”
“May I stay with him?” I asked.
“For now,” the detective agreed.
I looked at Holmes. The crowd had cleared away from him but still stared, as if he was just another of the oddities of the evening. He was a lonely boy, with no friends. But I thought he needed one. Didn’t everybody, even the most brilliant and solitary among us?
“When this is all over, I’ll still expect to see you in my office on Thursday,” I said, then added with a gentle and genuine smile, “my dear Sherlock.”
THE FIRST MRS. COULTER
by Catriona McPherson
Miss Cordelia Grant did not mourn the world of damp dressing rooms, damper lodgings, and Sunday travel in a third-class railway carriage. True, her current role—lady’s maid to Mrs. Gilver—was performed on a smaller stage than that of even the lowliest provincial theater and her cast of one worked hard at thwarting most of her best ideas when it came to costume but still she thought herself lucky. There were men marching for work, women queuing for bread and soup, and her parents’ little acting company was reduced to church halls and social clubs. Miss Grant was accordingly grateful for her settled home, steady wage, and security.
Sometimes, however, the quiet comforts of rural Perthshire in wintertime failed to satisfy appetites formed during a theatrical childhood and Miss Grant’s efforts to supplement those comforts only made her chafe the more.
Today was typical. Moriarty, wheeled out during the matinee at La Scala, had riled up all her lusts like a stiff wind in a pile of leaves, and reading “The Adventure of The Veiled Lodger” in a back issue of the Strand on the way home had worsened matters—for, where the picture was silly and melodramatic, the story was clever and thrilling and left Miss Grant longing for clients to visit her, to pour their agonies into her willing ear, to gasp in astonishment when she deduced all.
She would, she decided, put in some practice right here on the Perth to Pitlochry omnibus, just in case. Reading was making her feel rather sick anyway.
There was precious little to see out of the window now the town was behind them, so she scrutinized her fellow passengers and, being a lady’s maid, it was their clothes that drew her eye: the nap of a felt hat that knew careful brushing though of average quality; the tiny holes along a hem hinting that a skirt had been taken up to get more wear from it after the fashion changed; the crisp fit across the shoulders on the bespoke coat of a Dunkeld solicitor, and the stretched seams and bunched gussets on the ready-made coat of the butcher who sat beside him.
Rolled brims, covered buttons, invisible darns; all were of note to Miss Grant. She was so intent on a beautiful lace handkerchief—needle-made, corners turned without a pucker, rosettes point-ironed so their petals were cupped, not flattened by pressing—that she had been looking at it for several minutes before she realized it was held to a weeping face. She withdrew her gaze.
That was Mrs. Coulter, she thought, and looked back again out of the corner of her eye. Yes indeed, that was Mrs. Edward Coulter.
Edward Ernest Coulter was an architect, but he married well, took up residence at Benachally Castle, and lived there quietly. It was the talk of the county when all of a sudden FOR SALE signs went up at the gate lodge and the Coulters removed themselves to a semi-detached sandstone villa where Mrs. Coulter gave piano lessons by the hour. Mr. Coulter was only fifty at the move but if he had done any more architecting, Miss Grant had not seen him at it.