And yet . . .
Why did Holmes emphasize that Southsea, near Portsmouth, is almost as far from Edinburgh as it’s possible to go and still remain in Great Britain? Was he suggesting that I felt compelled to put as much distance between my father and myself as I could?
Why did Holmes seem to think it significant that I didn’t go to my father’s funeral? My father died the same year I killed Holmes. Was he implying that by killing Holmes I was somehow finally ridding myself of my father and my fear that I shared his . . . ?
Stop thinking this way, Conan Doyle warned himself.
But he couldn’t stop the voice inside his head.
Did Holmes nod with suspicion when I described all the traveling I did after I was married the first time? Did he seem to think that I suddenly traveled to Germany not because of the tuberculosis conference, but because I wanted to get away from my wife and two-year-old child?
Did he seem to nod with greater suspicion when I described how my second wife was a medium who received messages from the spirit Pheneas about where we should take vacations and whether I should buy another country house for her?
Conan Doyle picked up the framed photograph of the faeries by the waterfall. He made his way to the chair that Holmes had occupied. It troubled him that the cushion felt warm, as though someone had sat in it recently.
He studied the faeries, so innocent, so free of cares.
Did Holmes intend him to conclude that Jean wasn’t a medium at all? That she’d taken advantage of his beliefs in order to guide his actions?
Madness, Conan Doyle told himself. Stop thinking this way. If I believed that Jean was fraudulent, then I’d need to believe that everything in this room was fraudulent, that my life was fraudulent.
He clutched the photograph of the faeries and stared as hard at it as he’d ever stared at anything in his life. He desperately tried to will himself to enter the photograph, to stand with the faeries next to the waterfall whose chill resembled that of this basement. He had a sudden vision that the basement was a crypt and that Holmes was in it, tearing coffins apart, hurling bones into a corner. Bones. Perhaps that’s all his dead son and his first wife and his brother and his brother-in-law and his nephews and his mother . . . and his father . . . had become. No. He couldn’t believe it.
That would be the true madness.
MRS. HUDSON INVESTIGATES
by Tony Lee and Bevis Musson
THE ADVENTURE OF THE DANCING WOMEN
by Hank Phillippi Ryan
“It’s the end of literacy as we know it,” I complained. I leaned back in my swivel chair, plonked my black boots on my desk, and glimpsed the last of the Wednesday sunrise, wisps of pale lavender, still visible behind the coppery foliage of our town’s famous beeches. This morning, however, I was lured from our front window and the glorious autumn by the curious email that had pinged onto my computer. I studied it, perplexed. I recognized the sender, but there was no subject line, nor were there words in the message section. The page showed only a colorful jumble of tiny graphic symbols.
“Clearly, the human need for language is threatened, do you not agree? Once we descend into ambiguous shorthand?” I reached for my white mug of oolong, grumbling, not taking my eyes from the screen, then removed my tortoiseshell spectacles, wiped away an annoying speck of dust with my handkerchief, and put the glasses back on. “What, pray tell, does a smiley-face mean? ‘I’m only teasing’? Or, ‘I’m happy’? Or, ‘you win’?”
“You’re becoming a curmudgeon at age thirty, girlfriend,” Watson warned. She placed her laptop on her desk, flipped the computer open. It trilled into life, and I heard Watson tapping keys as she talked. “By forty you’ll be totally ancient.”
Watson’s not her true name, but it’s what we all call her now, for obvious reasons. Though enthusiastic, and learning quickly, Watson is sometimes somewhat cavalier with details. She constantly attempts to engage in conversation and simultaneously work on her computer. I’ve assured her that cannot be successful, as the human mind is capable of handling only one problem at a time. That problem may be knotty, and require a delicate solution, but step-by-step and total focus, I often have avowed, is the only method with any hope of attaining success.
“Ancient?” I replied. “If by ancient you meant enduring, worthwhile, and eternal, I welcome it, my friend.”