Shirley’s voice dropped so low, the wind almost took it away. “Why did she do that?”
Well, I was just burbling by then. I said, “Margie told me, she said, ‘Killing a friend’s husband is bad, Alison, but if I say I killed my own husband, people will always suppose he did something. We can tell them that, Alison, and I’ll get two years.’”
Shirley was standing back from the cops, she was shaking her head softly, warning me, but I wouldn’t be told what to do. I shouted again, “Margie said, ‘If we tell them you came to the house in one of your moods, your odd moods, and just hid and jumped out and killed him, they’ll put you away forever, Alison. They’ll never let you out!’ But you can’t know that, Shirley, not from Margie crying and footsteps and visitors’ books and pancakes! How can you know all that?”
Shirley’s eyes were wide and shining. The bitter wind shrieked as it pulled at her cape.
“Alison,” said Shirley quietly, “I didn’t.”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION
by Cory Doctorow
Holmes buzzed me into his mansion flat above Baker Street Station without a word, as was his custom, but the human subconscious is a curious instrument. It can detect minute signals so fine that the conscious mind would dismiss them as trivialities. My subconscious picked up on some cue—the presence of a full stop in his text, perhaps: “Watson, I must see you at once.” Or perhaps he held down the door admission buzzer for an infinitesimence longer than was customary.
I endured unaccountable nerves on the ride up in the lift, whose smell reminded me as ever of Changi airport, hinting at both luxury and industry. Or perhaps I felt no nerves at all—I may be fooled by one of my memory’s many expert lies, its seamless insertion of the present-day’s facts into my recollections of the past. That easy facility with untruth is the reason for empiricism. No one, not even the storied Sherlock Holmes himself, can claim to have perfect recollection. It’s a matter of neuroanatomy. Why would your brain waste its precious, finite neurons on precise recall of the crunch of this morning’s toast when there are matters of real import that it must also store and track?
I had barely touched the polished brass knocker on flat 221 when the handle turned and the door flew open. I caught a momentary glimpse of Holmes’s aquiline features in the light from the hallway sconce before he turned on his heel and stalked back into the gloom of his vestibule, the tails of his mouse-colored dressing-gown swirling behind him as he disappeared into his study. I followed him, resisting the temptation to switch on a light to guide me through the long, dark corridor.
The remains of a fire were in the grate, and its homey smell warred with the actinic stink of stale tobacco smoke and the gamy smell of Holmes himself, who was overdue for a shower. He was in a bad way.
“Watson, grateful as I am for your chronicles of my little ‘adventures,’ it is sometimes the case that I cannot recognize myself in their annals.” He gestured around him and I saw, in the half-light, a number of the first editions I had gifted to him, fluttering with Post-it tabs stuck to their pages. “Moreover, some days I wish I could be that literary creation of yours with all his glittering intellect and cool reason, rather than the imperfection you see before you.”
It was not the first time I’d seen my friend in the midst of a visit by the black dog. Seeing that man—yes, that creature of glittering intellect and cool reason—so affected never failed to shake me. This was certainly the most serious episode I’d witnessed—if, that is, my memory is not tricking me with its penchant for drama again. His hands, normally so steady and sure, shook visibly as he put match to pipe and exhaled a cloud of choking smoke to hover in the yellow fog staining the ceiling and the books on the highest cases.
“Holmes, whatever it is, you know I’ll help in any way I can.”
He glared fiercely, then looked away. “It’s Mycroft,” he said.
I knew better than to say anything, so I waited.