He should have thrown it in the fire the second after he’d read it.
He truly didn’t understand his need for courting disaster, for any scrap of paper Irene Adler touched was full of the devil’s script, her brand of apathy always disquieting and legally balanced on the periphery of ethics. But he was addicted to it now, this odd correspondence that had grown between them, flowering like a mushroom into something thick and plump, seemingly harmless but occasionally poisonous. The paper she had written her letter on was thick and heavy, like the ironed cotton variety used for official government documents, and could well have been from such a supplier. Her ink strokes were bold and solid, every curve of her script made with a confidence that one rarely found in people who were not great leaders. She had proven herself formidable.
Her influence could be felt as clearly as a kiss upon certain international decisions and she influenced history as she murdered her way through one country after another, a secretive hired gun that left political mayhem in her wake. She repeatedly wrote that she had no qualms about her work. It was a career, and she was an expert in her field. She slept well every night and possessed no regrets over any of her deadly actions. This was a source of fascination for Mycroft who, with the slightest perceived notion that he may have offended another in an unknown degree, would toss and turn and bemoan his words or decisions for years, the guilt occupying every thought until he brought the world into karmic equilibrium once again, usually through an unnecessary apology.
The guilt over these letters was insurmountable, however, for he did not wish to stop receiving them and he did not wish for Lestrade to know about them This caused periodic sleepless nights full of pacing and the occasional wheeze as stress got the better of both his soul and his ill lungs.
The latter problem has been alleviated thanks to their current summer spent at Holmes Manor, his family home situated in a small village near Bath. The clean country air scrubbed his inner lungs and even his skin took on a ruddy complexion indicative of good health, a feat that no surgery could muster. Every breath he now took was without effort and filled his veins with sparkling molecules of oxygen, giving him a feeling of health and vigour that he couldn’t possibly experience in London with its poisoned Thames and crowded streets, the facades of every house stained black due to the burned coal belched out of every chimney.
He could not give up his cane, however, which was always with him, for those unexpected periods of vertigo would still assail him even here and he would lean heavily on it for balance more than true physical support. This morning it was propped against the empty chair next to him, conspicuously absent of Lestrade’s messy bulk, a small trail of crumbs left behind on an empty, flowered plate. The plate was imported recently from France via his cousin Emigene, who was also absent from the breakfast table, and in fact had never shown up for the repast at all that summer. She was not at the Manor when they arrived two weeks ago. She was busy ‘elsewhere’, Mrs. Healey told him, though a specified country or region hadn’t been telegraphed to them yet. As a biologist with a specialization in obscure sparrows, he guessed she was still on the continent, though one never knew with Emigene. She could just as easily have left port for Africa. Women were free to travel unaccompanied all over the world these days. Some of them could do whatever they liked.
He took the letter out from the pocket of his silk dressing gown, his cup of coffee steaming on the tea tray placed on his table. His hands trembled slightly in anticipation of his rereading it. The cotton paper thumbed to suede, and the words softened by his handling of it, spread out flat before him like a piece of treasured, ironed linen:
July 2, 1908
Mon Chere!
How beautiful Greece is this time of year! So many white sands and miles of blue ocean! The people here are friendly enough, and treat a single French woman alone as an amusement. I fear I draw too much attention, and the women seem to know their husbands are safe from me. The shopkeeper in town begs of me to date her brother, and he is solid and handsome enough, but sadly he is a devout Orthodox, and ah, we both know…I am not the sort who deserves a good man no matter how much he forgives my sins.
I have heard you have escaped to Bath, that place of Romans, and here I am among the Greeks. Quelle coincidence! Ah, alors, I am not so convinced of that either, for we are both brought together by the Fates, are we not? We are intertwined in a drama that is both beneficial and detrimental. It is an unexpected friendship, and one that I cling to despite the risk. You will be my end or I will be yours or perhaps the Fates will simply tire of us and walk away, leaving us alone.
We can hope, yes?
Do watch over your dear Inspecteur for ennui is a terrible disease and can do damage to a person’s mind and health, though it sounds as though your wild cousin is making up for it in her own dramatic entrances and exits. Has she made true on her promise of being gone for the summer? Are you free of her yet? I imagine she is of the kind who can rarely stay in one place–How I can relate!–And unlike you I am feminine enough to have more empathy for her need to get away. An intelligent woman must create her own life on her own terms. However, I agree that this wanderlust of hers has little to do with the advancing of science and les etudes biologiques–To abandon a daughter of that tender age is an irresponsibility and great damage can be done, as the girl is also as intelligent as her mother, from what I have learned from your descriptions. There are a great many dangerous influences that can visit an impressionable girl. Beneficial dangers, for an open-minded, highly intelligent feminine soul. I have heard whispers of certain meetings, but I can tell you only this at present: I am a social scientist of a type myself and do not give out half truths–The fairer sex is about to go to war.
As for the assassination of Queen Draga, I am sorry to say that I had little to do with that, and am annoyed that I was not employed by Dimitrejivic, for I can assure you I would have been more subtle. Ah, there is a great disquiet in the world, mon ami, a world of those who are very powerful and those who are not and who are increasingly noisy about being seated at the table of kings and queens. It seems poverty is becoming unacceptable even among the poor. The masses again recognize their power. All we can do, for now, is watch. And wait.
How are the medicinal baths, and how often do you indulge in them? I hear they are as soothing and healing as the Dead Sea itself, and considering how many sickly Englishmen and women flock to them every summer and put their swill into them, I should advise you against such company. I have heard some of the more ignorant believe the Baths can cure syphilis–Quelle horreur!
Best to enjoy the pastoral landscape as you English are so fond of doing. I will keep hope that they will not put a filthy factory there to poison it. Breathe in the air filled with flowers and pollen and a simple, clean life! It can end so quickly, that world. And it will, when you must take leave to your Quarter Session in August. I shall be in Sudan when you hear of me next, mon ami, and do not worry, your letter sent to the usual address will find me, bien sur.
Tout ma vie, toute ma couer, etre bien
I.
“She is an insufferable brat!”
Mycroft quickly stuffed the letter from Irene Adler into his pocket, heedless of how he wrinkled it. Lestrade didn’t notice, and was instead on his usual tirade as of late, a crisp piece of paper in hand that had the letterhead from the Bathroyal Society of Young Ladies printed in a bold black ink that seeped through the back of the correspondence. He tossed it in front of Mycroft, who tutted over the now predictable contents. He shook his head and handed the small letter back to Lestrade who paced the large windows of the breakfast room like a caged lion. “It’s rather silly for her to be boarding there, anyway. It’s literally a twenty-minute walk from this estate and, frankly, the exercise would do her good.”
“You can’t walk evil out of you.”
“She is not evil, Gregory. She is merely a girl.”
“You haven’t met many sixteen-year-old girls, have you?”
“East End unfortunates are another matter entirely, Gregory, and you cannot place Ingrid in their company. She is merely a young woman afflicted with an insurmountable amount of intelligence who has had no parental guidance whatsoever in her young, albeit privileged, life.” Sighing once again at Lestrade’s continued fuming as he stared out the large window onto the back of the Holmes estate and its rolling hills, Mycroft picked up his cane and left his seat at the breakfast table to join him. He placed a pale hand on Lestrade’s shoulder and gave it a light squeeze of reassurance. “We shall have a chat with the headmistress later about the issue. Ingrid, being rude to her teachers and having too much influence on the younger students, has been an ongoing problem. Headmistress Yearwood’s request that she not remain boarding at the school is a fair compromise.”
“Bah!” Lestrade exclaimed. “The girl doesn’t need to learn the finer graces of a bloody boarding school, she needs only one thing–Her mother! What influence can we possibly give her? Your flighty cousin has been here for five years now, her care for the estate minimal and she is simply occupying it as a squatting lodger who hasn’t paid one cent in rent and leaves her child to roam free and wild with no social upbringing whatsoever.”
Mycroft shook his head. “That is unfair. Mrs. Healey has tried…”
“Mrs. Healey is your elderly cook who has had her fill of raising other people’s problems and it is unfair to foist yet another on her in her advanced age! Have some sense, man!”
He tried to protest, but Lestrade would have none of it. “Five years we have watched this problem stew, Mycroft. Five long years. Your cousin Emigene is nothing but a world renowned harlot for ornithologists, and I dare you to argue otherwise. We do not know who Ingrid’s father is…”
“I’m assuming someone of the Norwegian nobility as she has travelled to that region often in the past…”
“We have no idea who her father is,” Lestrade repeated. “and as far as we know, her mother is the mattress for every noble blooded science minded moron the world over, and it matters nothing to her to have a new fancy man to fund her research every year. Who is it this time? Some fellow in the Highlands with a suitable lab and family stipend? She’s abandoned her daughter and all the problems of her growing into womanhood upon us and not given a damn about the consequences, not the least of which is being prevented from boarding at her school as she’s too bloody miserable to deal with on a twenty-four-hour basis. Read between the lines, my lovely. The Headmistress is tired. She needs a break from Ingrid’s constant challenging, sour attitude. The girl is too much work.”
“She is far easier to cope with than Sherlock’s mad shenanigans,” Mycroft primly reminded him. “Or have you forgotten that difficult work, as you put it so easily?”
Lestrade was having none of it. “Sherlock is mad. He has a reason for being the way he is, and he is being treated quite well for it.”
Mycroft raised a brow. “I shall have to pass along the compliment to Dr. Watson.”
“Perhaps we can throw Ingrid to him in the bargain.”
“We tried therapy, remember? It did not go well.”
Indeed, Ingrid was so adept at debate and well researched on psychiatry that Dr. Watson’s methodology was hindered. He found it impossible to diagnose her let alone treat her, and his only advice to the two men was to ’Handle her carefully and whatever you do, do not turn your back on her for she’s a clever little wench and has nothing wrong with her save an overactive female ego, brought about a late starting menses. This has delayed her development into womanhood and kept her headstrong. From what I’ve witnessed, there is little feminine about her, and I would dare say her faerie looks are deceiving…She holds all arguments like a man and defends as such, and if she could become a defense lawyer, I daresay no one would swing at the gallows.'
“She is family, Gregory. There is nothing I can do about that.” Mycroft tapped the tip of his cane impatiently against the clay tiles of the breakfast room. Gregory’s restlessness was getting on his nerves. “Your coat is going on again! Where are you going now?”
“For a walk,” Lestrade snapped.
“You just got back from one!”
“And now I will take another as there is nothing at all else to do in this damned fresh aired paradise! Perhaps I’ll get stung by a bee on the way back, or get challenged by a bleedin’ badger, or trip over a hell’s own hedgehog. The list of potential perils is endless!”
“You are being childish.”
“I am bored, Mycroft. Nothing does my head in more.”
With that he stormed back outside, his hulking form stumbling over patches of clover, thick dew clinging to his thin wool trousers and their hem, his trench coat already slid off of his shoulders and held in the crook of his arm as the morning was sticky and warm. He was as out of place on the horizon as a tiger sleeping among patches of moss and Mycroft had to force himself to turn away from the large window and its display of pastoral beauty and ruminate, not for the first time, that surely he was better off selling the Holmes estate and finding some other, more alien clime with bustling life and terror within it fit to keep Lestrade happily distracted solving murders and himself free of bronchitis.