The Detective and the Woman (12 page)

Chapter 19: Irene

That night, I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the future. Holmes had promised that Mycroft would make sure I was taken care of until my assets were sorted, so I didn’t worry about money, but I felt adrift. Singing had been one purpose and the case another, but now I no longer had a desire to sing or a case to concern me. I supposed I would go to London, where I had been before all my trouble started. I had no family to return to in America, and the great British metropolis seemed like my most sensible option, a place I had lived and with which I was intimately familiar. I didn’t look forward to the press of people and the call of society, but I had nowhere else to go, and I knew that Holmes must move on as well. Somehow, as unexpected as it was to realise, I knew that I would miss him.

The next morning was appropriately gloomy, with a light rain and grey clouds overhead as we made for the train station. Holmes had visited the policeman while I dressed, and he assured me that Morris had understood Mycroft’s telegram and agreed that not only Holmes, but I as well, should be kept out of further record or investigation. I was vastly thankful to Mycroft, though I never expected to meet him and express the sentiment. Holmes assured me that, like his own, his brother’s work was its own reward.

As the train carried us away from Fort Myers, I felt as if I had spent far longer there than the days actually indicated. The journey to New York was to take us through the night and the following day, and after that, Holmes and I would part. It seemed strange to leave one another as suddenly as we had come back into each other’s lives.

I sat back in my seat and studied my companion. His long fingers flipped the pages of his newspaper with rapid dexterity, and his eyes flitted from column to column like a fly hopping from one thing to another, taking in all the things he deemed important and leaving the rest. His body was relaxed, and he looked slightly less gaunt than he had at the height of the case, though he would never be anything other than spare.

After a long while, Holmes looked up and met my eyes. ‘I have an offer to make to you, Irene,’ he said slowly. ‘You told me that you desired nothing more than a quiet life.’

‘That’s true,’ I answered.

‘I own a cottage on the Sussex Downs,’ he continued. ‘It’s small—nothing grand or luxurious, but situated in a picturesque part of the country. No one lives there at present, but a lady named Mrs Turner takes care of it for me. I had intended to keep it for my eventual retirement.’

‘I offer this home to you, for your use.’ He looked down, as if slightly embarrassed. ‘I offer it as a friend.’

‘As you know, I’m supposed to be dead, and I do not know if I will ever return to England to live. Watson and Mycroft are the only others who know of the property’s existence. Without me, Watson has no reason to ever think of the place again, and Mycroft will never trouble you. You’d have no companions unless you sought them for yourself. The place would be yours entirely, for as long as you cared to remain there.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ I replied quietly.

I thought about it. My mind turned to nothing else as we barreled toward separation. Holmes’s offer had nothing to do with money. We were both wealthy, the man who couldn’t return home and the woman with no home to return to. I longed for quiet, for contemplation, for a place where my weary mind could rest. Sussex was exactly what I desired, a place where I could be inconspicuous and do as I wished, where the world would not trouble me, nor I it. I accepted Holmes’s offer an hour before we reached New York.

‘Where will you go?’ I asked my companion.

‘Tibet,’ he answered. I saw a gleam in his eye, and I knew that he looked forward to his journey. Because of his kindness, I also looked forward to mine. I felt at peace as we pulled into the station.

Holmes and I parted outside the Central New York Railway. ‘I trust you have enough money to take you to Sussex. Mycroft will send more within the month,’ he said, concern on his face. I nodded.

‘I do.’

‘Be careful. We don’t know where Moran may have eyes and ears.’

‘And you, Holmes.’ The tall detective leaned forward and touched my face for a moment, tracing my cheekbone with his finger, and then he was gone. He disappeared in a crowd of people down the street, blending in the way he was always so capable of doing. I watched the spot where he’d been a moment before, as if he might somehow magically reappear. Then, I squared my shoulders, turned around, and went to book a passage to England.

* * *

On the Sussex Downs, time had an odd way of passing. The days seemed long and luxurious, unburdened by the speed of the world and the concerns of others in it, but the years, in contrast, passed quickly, as if they’d come and gone without my notice. I learned to garden and cook and clean, all things Mrs Turner was more than willing to do for me, but that I desired to do for myself after a lifetime of being waited on by others. I began to feel self-sufficient, like a stronger version of the weary Irene Adler who had dragged herself into the cottage after a grueling ocean passage.

I liked living alone more than I ever would have before James Barnett’s gun had made me confront my own fears. I liked waking up to the sound of my own thoughts and then choosing who would share them, if anyone. I became friends with women in the village who simply knew me as the widow Irene who lived on the hill. They did not intrude on my life any more than I desired, since their families clamored for their work and attention, and I even became friendly with their husbands and children. I was somewhat of a mystery, I knew, but I appreciated the locals’ willingness to let me have my secrets. I believe they enjoyed having such an eccentric resident among them.

After a year, I bought a piano. At first, I only sang for myself, but after one of the village farm wives walked up the hill and heard me practicing, I became something of a desired commodity. I played for funerals and sang at weddings, and I enjoyed being a part of the life of the community as much as I had ever liked singing under theatrical lights.

My other passion was my bees. I discovered them as a result of my habit of subscribing to all sorts of magazines and journals. I was happy to lead an uneventful village life, but I still enjoyed reading about the exploits of others and learning what I could about many things, so I collected many periodicals, one of which was published by naturalists. One day, I came across an article about beekeeping, a perfectly normal sort of animal husbandry analysis of which the publication was inordinately fond, but I was intrigued in a way I had not been before. I pored over the drawings of hives and the advice about how to make the environment harmonious enough for good honey to be produced. The information about bee existence fascinated me—their logical, methodical lives that all contributed to the good of their society. The perfect collectivists, bees.

Soon, I ordered one book about beekeeping and then another. I thought the passion was to be a purely academic one, a quest to learn all I could about the bee kingdom and amuse myself by applying what I knew in my imagination, but the itch became too strong. I determined that I must have bees.

I spent months methodically acquiring all the necessary equipment, crowing with delight over the bee paradise I intended to create. Finally, the creatures themselves arrived, buzzing with life, and I became a beekeeper. I didn’t love the pastime at first, and I made many mistakes, some of which angered the bees and resulted in painful stings. But I kept at it. After several months, my hives were in good order, and I was devoted to beekeeping in earnest.

* * *

One windy morning in April, I went to my hives to check on the bees and see how they were getting on. I’d been in Fulworth nearly three years then, though I rarely thought about the passage of time. I was due to sing for a wedding the following Saturday, and I hummed a love song to myself, hoping the weather would be nice for the couple.

Unbidden, my mind turned to the disturbing tale I’d read in the newspaper that morning. Reportedly, a London man named Ronald Adair had been shot in a seemingly impossible way—by soft-nosed revolver bullet in a locked room that had no signs of being breached. The story was strange enough to reach even the country papers, and I tried to reason it out for myself, though Scotland Yard was reportedly baffled by the scene.

I thought of Holmes then, of course. I wondered what he’d have said about the case, whether it was one he’d have solved simply from reading the account, or if he’d have wanted to inspect the scene. Those thoughts brought others forward, and a pang inside me told me that I still missed my friend. Very few days went by that I failed to think of him, because my gratefulness for the life he’d offered me was often in my mind. I wondered if he was still in Tibet, or if he was even still alive. The world, at least the small part I inhabited and the larger part I read about, seemed to bear no imprint of the detective’s life whatsoever.

Later that day, I went into the village to purchase dry goods at the shop on Lamb Street, and I was met by a disturbance. Lionel Warren, who operated the village’s seldom-used telegraph, was standing on the street surrounded by Mr Sykes, who owned the shop, and Mrs Carlyle and Miss Rose of Wilmont Farm, all of them speaking over each other in excited voices.

‘There’s a telegram for you!’ said Miss Rose excitedly as I approached. Lionel nodded, his eyes bulging.

‘First telegram I’ve had in weeks!’

I was surprised that I’d received a telegram at all, but its contents shocked me far more:

Coming to visit 12th on 9:40 if convenient
STOP
and Watson
STOP
Please advise
STOP
SH

I gave my affirmative reply to Lionel in a shaky voice that he interpreted to be the result of my amazement at the immense honour of receiving a telegram, and then walked home, my heart beating rapidly. Holmes, alive in England! And then the doubts began. What if someone was impersonating Holmes to get to me? I began sleeping with my pistol near my pillow and listening for any odd noises in the night. Florida had been far away for some time, both in place and memory, but the case returned to my mind with absolute clarity. I dreamed about the face of James Barnett, long in jail, and the dead young man who’d threatened to put a bullet in my head. In my waking hours, I hoped for Holmes.

April 12th was a beautiful day, sunny and pleasant, and I went to the train station early in the morning to wait for my visitors. I took a seat on a bench, keeping my hand on the gun inside my bag. I hadn’t carried it even once since my arrival in Sussex, but I didn’t want to take a chance that one of Holmes’s enemies would be getting off the train.

I had hardly let myself think about what I would say to the detective or how I would feel when I saw him. The strength of my anticipation had surprised me, and I was glad, too, to think that Dr Watson was no longer grieving as the result of a deception. But I had no idea how I would respond when the spare form stepped off the train. I had supposed for so long that he would never come that my mind had trouble accepting the notion that he would soon appear.

I was still lost in thought when the train arrived. Startled by the noise, I came out to watch the passengers disembark, but only two emerged: a short man in a bowler hat and a tall man with piercing eyes.

Chapter 20: Holmes

Irene was the only person on the platform. Holmes watched her as the train pulled into the station, noting with approval that her hand was inside her handbag, no doubt clutching her firearm in case she should need it. She looked well, better than she had been in Florida, with colour in her cheeks and bright, clear eyes. Fulworth had agreed with her, as he’d known it would.

Watson got off the train first, complimenting the country air, and Holmes followed. Three long years he’d been away from England, and even now he’d only been in London for a few weeks. He’d missed the English countryside. He’d also missed the company of The Woman, which he hadn’t expected. She stood calmly, waiting and watching. He wondered if she was pleased to see him.

‘Good afternoon, Miss Adler,’ said Watson in his gallant way, stopping in front of Irene.

‘Dr Watson, I’m glad to see you.’ Her smile showed relief.

‘Not at all,’ said the small man, smiling broadly, ‘it’s Holmes we’re all pleased to see.’ He meant it, Holmes knew. John Watson hadn’t given more than a moment’s thought to his years of thinking his best friend was dead. He’d simply accepted things as they were and his friend back into his life.

‘Indeed we are,’ said The Woman, smiling first at the doctor and then up at the detective.

‘I’m glad to see you well,’ he said.

‘Likewise,’ she answered. It felt natural to be with her again, as if mere days had passed since the Floridian case.

* * *

That night, Mrs Turner insisted on cooking the two men their favourite foods, almost as excited to see the younger Holmes as Irene seemed to be. That was the thing that gave the detective the most satisfaction. For all The Woman’s calm coolness, he could tell that she was genuinely delighted to see him, and he was glad.

Watson went to bed early in the evening, tired from the journey and eager to read his beloved medical journals, but Holmes and Irene stayed up late into the night, talking and drinking tea. They spoke about Florida, and then he told her in detail about the case of Ronald Adair and how it had intertwined with the apprehension of Sebastian Moran. He could see the worry leave her as he finished his tale, as if some part of her that had remained tense ever since the Floridian case had now relaxed.

‘Thank you for telling me, Holmes,’ she said quietly. ‘Now, will you tell me about your time away?’

The question was so artless that it took Holmes by surprise. He hadn’t intended to tell Irene about the dark nights and hungry days or the near-misses and tense moments, but he found himself doing so, more fully than he had told anyone else. His words painted the simple life of the Dalai Lama, the fjords of Norway, and the worshippers of Mecca. She even wrinkled her nose as he described the tar pits of France.

‘I nearly returned to Tibet at the last,’ he said, as he neared the end of his tale. ‘It is curious how many similarities exist between the life of the logician and the life of the mystic.’

‘But you came back to England.’

‘Yes, I came back.’

‘Why?’

‘It was The Game, Irene. I am hardly suited to a life of contemplation.’ She laughed then, and he enjoyed hearing it as much as he had three years before.

‘And what of you?’ he asked after a moment.

She smiled mischievously. ‘I am a beekeeper.’

He stared at her a moment, wondering if she was joking, but her eyes were serious.

‘Logical creatures, bees,’ he said.
Like we two
, he thought to himself, but he didn’t say it aloud.

The next morning, she showed him her hives. He watched as she carefully, almost reverently, opened each door and pointed to queen and subjects, explaining the functions of each part of the society. It was odd, Holmes thought, how much it suited her. She was at home in this activity that seemed simple on the surface but was vastly intricate and complex just below it. Her perceptive mind took pleasure in the tiny details that made her hives the pinnacle of perfection, and she cared not one whit if any other human being ever knew or cared. The detective admired her precision, but he knew that he could not have borne such serenity. He needed friction to keep his engine running, but she was like a tree that simply needed the earth and the air.

She was different here, freer. Her world was smaller, but she was less constrained within it, less wary and afraid. He no longer heard the brittle bitterness that her voice had contained before. She was once again the Irene Adler who had fooled the greatest detective in the world. No, he thought, she was more. She was older and more complete, and happiness sat well on her.

The three friends walked to the station five days later, amid Dr Watson’s effusive compliments to Miss Adler’s home, which she received with a smile. She truly liked the little doctor, and that fact gratified Holmes. Watson bid The Woman fond farewell at the train, but Holmes was silent, and his eyes were upon her as the locomotive pulled away.

Once again, she was alone on the platform. She was dressed in a brown skirt and blue shirtwaist, a plain outfit, but her face was anything but plain. The eyes that watched him depart were deep and quiet, and the mouth was ironic, as if The Woman would be ready to make a joke at any moment. But her hair—her chestnut hair was bundled loosely on her head, far wilder than she’d ever worn it in her life before the cottage. The day was windy, and pieces of it had escaped and framed her face. She lifted a hand and waved goodbye to the detective, and he waved in return.

Holmes didn’t know when, but he knew he would come again.

* * *

It was two years before the detective again made his way up the hill to the little house. This time he was alone, since Watson had chosen to attend a medical conference in Zurich. As before, he found The Woman in good health and spirits, and pleased, as ever, by her bees. She had purchased more hives, and now the honey they produced had begun to bring her a small income, which amused her greatly.

For three days, they roamed the countryside together, and Holmes told Irene about plants both poisonous and curative. She seemed far from alarmed when he explained the connections of various herbs to cases he’d solved, and the accounts of even the most grisly of murders appeared to interest rather than sicken her. He acted out for her the circumstances one of his more mysterious cases in which a body had been found with no tracks leading to its resting place, using the Sussex grass as his stage, and she clapped delightedly and solved the case herself before he’d told her the solution.

The third night, he found himself discussing his current case, a slow, delicate affair involving a foreign head of state, which had required him to be absent from London for a short time. Irene listened intently before offering her own thoughts, to which Holmes listened objectively. That night he did not sleep, but he considered what The Woman had said and realised that it might help him reach a solution. When he left for London two days later, he asked if he might write to her in future and ask for her opinion of perplexing cases.

So began a correspondence that was sometimes frequent and copious and other times filled with long silences. If Irene helped Holmes and Dr Watson with several cases after that, no one ever knew, and if her opinion occasionally kept them from erring, Watson promised to keep her secret and never write a word of it in his stories.

The detective visited the white cottage twice the next year, both times after the end of a case when dreaded boredom gnawed at his mind. Each time, he found the woman unchanged, except, if possible, that her company was even more restful and her wit more engaging. Each time, too, she succeeded in drawing him out and keeping his mind occupied until a new problem presented itself.

After that, he came to Sussex whenever he was between cases, sometimes with Watson and other times alone. No doubt the villagers wondered about the relationship between the tall man and the lady beekeeper, but they kept their thoughts to themselves because they liked her, and after a long time, they began to like the man as well, in spite of his strange ways.

* * *

Holmes had noticed Irene’s piano during his first visit, and he’d been glad to see that she had not abandoned her music. In subsequent visits, he often brought his violin to Fulworth and spent many evenings playing whatever she or Watson requested. At those times, he wished The Woman would follow suit, but he did not press her, and she did not offer.

Christmas Eve of 1902 was different. Holmes came to the cottage alone, as Watson had chosen to spend the holiday with his family. The doctor had been unwell, and the detective believed he might soon retire from medical practice. He, too, no longer felt young, but when he saw The Woman waiting for him on the platform, those thoughts vanished.

How was it possible, he wondered, that she had stayed the same? The world had changed—Mycroft had told him that international war would not be long in coming, and even London, his friend of so many years, was beginning to fill with motorcars instead of hansom cabs. But Irene Adler looked the same as the girl who had so cheerfully beaten him more than a decade before.

‘Good morning, Holmes,’ she said, taking his arm. He could tell that she was cold in the December chill, so he took off his wool scarf and wrapped it around her neck. She smiled up at him, and they continued up the hill in companionable silence.

They spent the day visiting the bees and talking about cases they had solved, until evening came and Holmes opened the bottle of champagne he had brought to mark the holiday. ‘To your health, Miss Adler,’ he said, raising his glass to her.

‘And to yours, Holmes.’ Her spirits were unusually high, and the detective tried for several moments to deduce the cause, but he could not.

Finally, when she had drunk her fill of the golden liquid, Irene went to the piano on the far side of the room and sat down at it, smiling at Holmes. ‘I would like to sing tonight,’ she said quietly, her eyes shining.

She lifted the lid of the instrument, and he could see in her face that the act was significant beyond the present. When she began to play, he understood why. The song was becoming old-fashioned then, reminiscent of a vanishing time, but it was the song between The Woman and the detective.

Oh, promise me that someday you and I

Will take our love together to some sky

Where we can be alone and faith renew,

And find the hollows where those flowers grew

He looked into her eyes, and for the first time, she was singing to him.