The Heart Of The Matter

by Maer, aka 'merely a whim'

2.

You two put your faith in reason and intelligence highest and first...so what happens when your faith in them is utterly destroyed...? What happens when...all you know for certain truth in your mind was nothing but a cruel lie?

Mrs. Hudson's words echoed in Holmes' mind long after the woman had left the room. Reason and faith, Holmes thought. How does one gain them back, after something like this? Sighing, he inspected the tray and poured himself a piping hot cup of Earl Grey. He wrapped his fingers around the topmost sandwich on the plate and spent the next few minutes eating, thinking all the while.

Holmes thought about his past failures, those few in his career that had shaken him badly. He recalled the conversation he'd had with Russell while preparing for the Jessica Simpson case, when he'd ranted of how his failures ground away at his conscience and kept him awake at night. Bitter those nights had been, with insomnia and remorse bedeviling him straight into the cocaine bottle. Those had been the cases in which honest, innocent people had been harmed in pursuit of justice because he had dropped the ball. What was that child's name, the bank clerk's youngest daughter? It had taken him weeks to get over the sight of her pitiful body, her throat cut, stuffed into a dirty burlap sack and thrown out in an alley like so much garbage. An end that could have been avoided if he had only listened to his heart to follow another avenue, instead of being beguiled by the apparent facts of the case. It was one of his very first, well before his Baker Street days with Mrs. Hudson and Watson, and one he did not like to dwell on. Mary, his own purgatorial ghosts whispered. Her name was Mary.

Holmes nearly choked on his sandwich.

Eyes tearing from the effort of coughing, Holmes quit his chair and his morbid memories, and took to the outdoors. There was a pleasant breeze coming off the ocean, cool, though the day was warm. The sun shone, the birds sang, the sheep and the cows bleated and lowed. It made for a lovely postcard. It made for a depressing walk.

What am I doing here? What am I going to do? I can't reach her. I am part of the problem, damn Providence's blasted sense of humour! Thinking back on those hellish days after the funeral of that poor child, when he had alternately contemplated suicide by overdose and picking up the shattered pieces of his self-respect again, Holmes remembered something the child's father had said and which it had taken him nearly eight weeks to take to heart:

You did the best you could, lad. You had no way of knowing which way the affair would turn. To the best of your reckoning, you felt you had to do this, instead of doing that. So now Mary is gone and you're angry with yourself. Don't be. Be angry with them bastards as did it to our Mary. Save your anger for them. Them as deserve it. So, be happy that you tried. No one else would, Mr. Holmes, and that's a fact. You tried when no one else would. The Lord God above us knows you did, lad, and He blesses you for it. Be happy with that.

It took nearly two months for the wisdom of the words to sink in, almost two months in which he had alternately drugged himself into a self-negating stupor or viciously lashed himself with guilt and blame. Two months of avoiding his studies, his friends, and even his family, until the final inevitable showdown with his Father, at the worst possible moment (when Holmes was under the influence of a heavy injection), wherein angry blows and irrecoverable words were spoken, in the very last substantial encounter they would ever have with one another.

Look at you, his father had raged, despair and loathing dripping in equal measure from his words. Look at what you've done to yourself. No self-respecting man of our line would ever do such a thing! Set aside this foolish notion of yours that this...this starry-eyed avocation could ever work, and pull yourself together! For once in your life, be a bloody man, get on your feet and do something sensible!

Holmes had refused to go back to the bosom of his family as the prodigal son grateful for the chance to grovel and grind under the strictures his Father had lain before him. If he had, his life would have been a very different thing, a life as an engineer or a doctor or a barrister - anything but what it had become. Instead, he had packed up his belongings the very moment he was sober, and made his way to the great cesspool of London, burning his bridges behind him. A year later saw him ensconced at St. Bart's with a handful of classes and only a handful of coin remaining for either food or lodging. It had come to that. The next day Watson entered the lab and Holmes, his life so painstakingly glued to a semblance of order, felt the last piece of the puzzle click into place with a near audible snap. Thus began his life anew, and the legend he was to become was born. "You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive..."

This is all rather interesting, old man, but it hardly solves the problem of Russell's reluctance to come back to us, now does it? Just what must I do, here and now, to bring her back?

Something was niggling at him, some elusive bit of memory, something very important. Holmes walked on, down the long gravel drive, through the gate at the entrance of his property, taking the road to the Village. He distracted himself with bits of opera, which he flung heedless to the wind in his (surprisingly rich, if untrained) tenor voice. He solved mathematical formulae, recited Shakespeare, quoted poetry; he even stopped to pet a farm nag over the wall of its pasture. He thought of anything but of that which he was trying to recall, knowing that active digging would only bury it, like a gold nugget in quicksand, deeper into his subconscious.

It came to him as he gained the Village market square. Of course! The solution is not with me but with someone else. Blast me but I am an idiot! Changing his course, he went straight into the telegraph office. Five minutes later, he was back on the road home, rapidly calculating the passage of time. Two and a half hours would be the best-case scenario, the absolute minimum.

He prayed it would be soon enough.

The sun was gently lowering towards sundown when the bell outside rang. As was now all too frequent, Russell had stormed out, leaving Holmes and Mrs. Hudson alone in the cottage.