Hedges

by Maer, aka 'merely a whim'

1.

I closed the doors of the small cabinet in the laboratory and turned the key that I had Old Will make for me on the sly, locking it and its contents safely away from further prying. I very much disliked spying on my long-time employer, but Mycroft Holmes was most adamant on this account: monitor Sherlock Holmes' use of diversionary drugs as closely as possible and contact him for more drastic measures should Holmes take a turn for the worse.

A turn for the worse! I levered myself up from my long-suffering knees and shook my head. Now just what, I wonder, would Mycroft consider qualified as a turn for the worse? Holmes already had consumed enough to throw his great good friend Dr. Watson into despair. I carefully replaced the single hair Holmes had affixed to the lock plate just so, and tried not to consider my duplicity. Long though I have been the housekeeper of the world's greatest consulting detective, the career of household spy was relatively new.

As I pocketed the key and turned to leave the lab, I made sure not to disturb anything that might give my presence away in his absence. I even refrained giving the smudges on the doorknob a swipe from my kid-gloved hands. No doubt Holmes had arranged some sort of code by them. I left the laboratory as I found it, rather relieved that there had been no indication that Holmes had indulged himself of the drugs I was surreptitiously monitoring, and made for the haven of the kitchen and my quarters beyond. As I divested myself of my gloves, I thought back to the day that Mycroft himself approached me to recruit me for this morally ambiguous and thoroughly unwelcome activity.

It was a lovely spring day quite some years after we, Holmes and I, had moved the household to Sussex for an early retirement. In one of my rare days off I had decided to indulge in the expense of a shopping trip to London, Holmes having gone that week for a case on the Continent and so was not expected to need my services for a while. There had been some conveniences and familiar faces I had missed while living the country life, and I took this opportunity to reacquaint myself with as many of them as I possibly could. I had just spent a lovely hour in a favorite tearoom and was walking through one of the more famous of London's many street markets when I spied an elegantly dressed gentleman of tremendous girth and dignity making his way unmistakably toward me. I immediately turned to inspect the wares at the nearest counter (Irish lace, quite a lot of it Carrickmacross, very well made and priced attractively) to watch his progress discreetly, prepared to fend off his advances with all the indignation a woman of my age and station could be expected to heap upon such an importunate fellow, but leaving the way open for him to pass should I have mistaken his intent.

I wasn't to be so lucky.

"Mrs. Martha Amelia Hudson. A word, if you would be so kind." So came the cultured baritone voice at my back.

I straightened my back with the proper amount of offended modesty and I turned sharply to deliver a cutting reply -- a reply, I might add, that died on my lips the moment I saw the credentials held unobtrusively before my astonished eyes. The man cut quite the figure amongst the lace and the ribbons, the various sticks of secondhand furniture and the gleaming gilt-framed mirrors, the motley mounds of used clothing and sleek racks of gently-worn furs, the push carts of flowers and vegetables, the shine of tin ware and the sheen of pottery, the jugglers and the buskers, the hawkers and the buyers; the sight of him sent the vendor behind me to the rear of the stall, ostensibly to ferret out something from the rats' nest of her considerable inventory, doubtless intimidated by the faintly menacing air that radiated from him. I read the name, "Mycroft Holmes," and raised my chin and steeled my gaze.

"What is this all about, sir?"

"Walk with me."

I surmised then that brusqueness must run in the family, as well as a complete disregard for the proprieties of polite society. I suppose something of my thoughts must have shown in my expression, for the brother of Sherlock Holmes (oh, I knew who he was when I saw the name, I had not been the younger brother's housekeeper for all those years for nothing!) merely smiled and said, "I do apologise, dear lady, for my appalling lapse in etiquette. I am afraid I had no one available to make a formal introduction of you and I assure you, Madam, if it is a fear for your good reputation that gives you pause, I highly doubt the patrons of this... Bohemian shopping district would spare us a second glance."

Indeed, I took in the crowd with a critical eye and saw it was true. Despite the lace-seller's instinctive retreat from her counter, other people from all classes rubbed elbows here, thoroughly ignoring us, attracted by the spectacle of the multitudinous wares, with a cheery fare-thee-well for their respective places in life. Savile Row-suited businessmen and fashionably dressed women of quality shared the cobblestones with street sweepers and flower girls, all the while working class men and women haggled with stall keepers for their needs, clergymen attended those denizens of the night that had ventured out into the light of day, and ragamuffins chatted up everyone in the manner of children everywhere. Overlaying the visual chaos was an equally cacophonous patois of the King's English nattering away in all its accented glory. This might very well have been the one spot in all of London we could have met without raising undue speculation or scandal.

"All right," I agreed.

So we walked, and the elder brother laid out his proposal succinctly and quickly -- the conversation barely took the length of time necessary to traverse a single city block. I was to ascertain Sherlock Holmes' intake of the loathsome substances many considered merely harmless and recreational, and inform Mycroft through Old Will, the gardener and groundskeeper that had hired on just a few months before, of any drastic changes in the detective's habits or health.

"Is Old Will one of yours, then?" I didn't feel a need to elaborate on the use of the possessive, for I had my own suspicions about the man with the weathered hands of a gardener and the graceful stealth of an assassin.

"One of the best. In his day, God would have been hard put to find him, should Old Will not want to be found."

Having my guess confirmed, I decided to let this slight upon the Almighty slide just this once. I considered instead what I should do.

I had long since noticed that retirement had not been kind to Sherlock Holmes. Try though my escort -- I could hardly call him my companion -- did to send interesting cases his way, the countryside of Sussex was unable to provide the sufficient intellectual stimulation the detective's mind craved. Hence the drug use, slight now, but should the stultifying life of the bucolic continue, the possibility of abuse was all but assured. So said Mycroft, given his reports from Old Will; and so said my own assessment of my one-time lodger and current employer, prompted and honed by my maternal instincts.

In the light of the matter, I felt I had to comply, for Mycroft Holmes could be implacable and formidable when the situation called for it, backed as he was by the not-inconsiderable power at his command. I also felt a deep personal responsibility and an infinite debt of gratitude toward Sherlock Holmes, for he had once saved my only son from a fate worse than death. Therefore whatever I could do to ensure Sherlock Holmes' well being, I would do. So, before we had reached the nearest street corner, we had reached an agreement.

Oh, how I hated it! The secrecy of it all weighed heavily upon my soul, and while I had later marveled that day that I had been able to take such a surprising turn of events in stride (much less take on the commission!), I since then had, over the past few years, ample time to regret my decision. I would assuage my conscience (and put off the mandated snooping) by trying on Holmes various tricks of indirect persuasion and distraction, such as any mother of an active little boy has learnt, in an effort to lead the detective off from using the dreadful stuff. It was a gambit that worked perhaps one time in six. Mostly I could only stand by and watch as he gradually succumbed to the siren call of the needle, seldom at first then, since the previous autumn, with increasing frequency. I wouldn't like to think what the chemist's bill amounted to these days. It was a thing that Holmes insisted he pay himself.

And while I had agreed to monitor the contents in those horrid little chemist's bottles, I absolutely drew the line at rummaging through the contents of my employer's wallet in search of receipt slips. Let Old Will or Mycroft himself do it!

I shut the drawer on my gloves and, wishing I could likewise put away my misgivings, I took off for the garden to putter amongst the plants and work off the sense of spiritual unease such spying inflicted on me.

It was a beautiful spring morning, with a brightly shining sun sharing the blue sky with those few clouds the ocean breeze had yet to clear. Birds sang and somewhere from afar I could hear trimming shears being applied to one of the many hedges that surrounded the cottage grounds. Soothed by the sound and the rhythm of the blades opening and closing, I settled to the task of weeding the kitchen garden beds. As I worked my way down the rows, I checked the young plants I had set out from the cold frames a week ago. They all seemed to be doing well, the rosemary especially. Soon I would have enough for a bordering hedge as well as for the kitchen. I was sure Holmes would approve. Its flowers made a most interesting honey.

The cramped feeling from spying lifted from my conscience as the pile of pulled weeds beside me grew and it wasn't long before I was content again.

Feet crunched on the gravel behind me and, try though I had to banish it, my guilty conscience returned before I realized the cadence of the footsteps was not Holmes', but that of Old Will's. I came about and shaded my eyes from the overhead sun to see the man approaching with the attitude of someone annoyed and trying not to show it. Something was up. I planted my weeding tool firmly in the good Sussex soil and called out to him.

"What is it, Will?"

"There's summat wrong wi' the far hedge, a piece of it... s'taken out." Will's Yorkshire accent made its appearance when he was put out by something.

I grew alarmed.

"Oh, no, don't tell me that Tom Warner's bull is on the loose again -- If I've told him once, I've told him a thousand times to keep a closer eye on that crafty animal! We've a fair number of little ones in the Village, and he really should consider them if nothing else."

"No bull did that sort'a damage. I'd think it a prank, 'cept --"

"All the young men who'd do that sort of thing are off across the Channel, or training for the day they leave for it. I see. Have you asked Seth if perhaps he'd seen anything?" I asked Will of his grandson, now eight, who had started helping his "grand da'" about the place on his days off from school.

"He says he has'na. He's a good hand t' me here, and shows a flair for the spy work, yoong as he is -- but he's honest as the day is long, and he knows when t' tell the truth and when t' say nowt. He says he does'na know, Missus. I b'lieve him."

"Let's have a look, then."

Old Will -- not as old as his name might suggest, being more like to Holmes' age than mine -- gave me a hand up and showed me the way to the spot on the northern edge of the property.

"It looks solid to me, Will. What is it I'm supposed to be looking for?"

Will guided me gently to the right spot and pointed. Bending halfway over and cocking my head, I saw it.

In the hedge was a cunning little shaft, a space just wide enough to squeeze through the greenery on hands and knees. Yet because it was diagonally placed, light could be seen through the space only at an oblique angle, and it was not an angle commonly arrived at on either side of the hedge in question. It was in the midst of a glorious tangle of shrubbery and bramble canes, and I pitied the person or persons responsible for cutting it out, for I shouldn't like to be in their shoes when the task was over: it would have torn clothing to shreds and cut skin to ribbons, as I have had reason to know, after harvesting the brambles for jelly one season soon after we'd come to the place. Since then I'd cultivated a healthy respect for the bramble thorns, giving them a wide berth and seeking elsewhere for jelly makings.

Only someone who diligently maintained the perimeter would have noticed, someone trained to have a suspicious mind. Someone, in short, like Old Will.

"Couldn't this be from some sort of an animal, Will?" He shook his head. He had himself in hand now, and his voice when he answered lacked any accent at all.

"Too regular, too big, and what animals would go through the hedge wouldn't need a tunnel in the first place. They'd just wiggle through near the roots... And there were these."

He held up a few colored strands that I realized were threads. They looked new, hardly faded at all.

"Whoever's done this left these behind on the brambles and snags. I doubt they were left by Miss Potter's rabbit slipping through here in his little blue coat. No. We've got other vermin to worry about." Will carefully placed the threads in a small fold of paper and buttoned them into a breast pocket.

"I'll have to tell The Boss about this." Will frowned over the damage.

"What are we going to tell Holmes?" I had no illusions who "The Boss" was, but I felt that my employer should be informed as well. With his skills and intellect going wanting, he may find this little mystery a welcome diversion. I firmly told myself it was only a diversion, nothing more. Surely that spy business of the previous summer had not come home to roost?

"That depends on Holmes. He may very well find evidence that I missed. Please ask him to see me about it? Meanwhile, I'll make a call to O'Neill's. He should have something fast growing I can plant in there. Mind if I use the telephone, then?"

"Of course not. If you have to run out, remember that lunch will be ready in about an hour."

Will escorted me back to the herb garden and continued inside to the telephone.

I retrieved my garden tools and cleaned them in the scullery before replacing them in the conservatory's potting bench. What would make someone cut out a passage in the north hedge? What could be gained by entering the property by such means? I thought on it as I made the noon meal, my hands making up the baking automatically, leaving my mind free to ponder the matter.

The north side of the property held nothing, no outbuildings, no gardens, and no temptations for unneighborly filching. Many were the times when the Market day gossip carried the tale of how one farmer or another had discovered some fruit missing off his trees, and the common consensus ruled the deed being the prank of youngsters. However, those incidents ceased after the War began and the rationing started. People in this District appreciated the work involved in bringing food to the table and in these hard times would not add to anyone's hardship by stealing.

Scones now in the oven, I contemplated other possibilities. There were several reasons we had Will, an old spy, about the place. One reason, obviously, was to spy on others. Not the household (not exactly, so my conscience reminded me), but on those others who would disturb Holmes in his retirement. The tales of his exploits as published by Dr. Watson's literary agent had made something of an international celebrity of Sherlock Holmes. In the tourist season, some days the cottage would have a large group of well-wishing fans rubbernecking over the fences and the hedges, the sight of which would either drive my employer upstairs to the laboratory -- it had no windows -- or he would call up the taxi service run by a car-mad neighbor to take him to the train station, whereupon he would depart for places unknown, often for several days, much to the disappointment of his erstwhile fans, and much to the relief of everyone who had to share the cottage with the disgruntled detective. Such intrusions on his privacy invariably left the man in an exceedingly foul mood.

(It was a similar mood that came off of Holmes this very morning, when he stalked into the kitchen as I was just getting his morning tray set up. He gave me a curt greeting, and standing there in his boots consumed the top cheese-and-bacon scone off the pile, along with a hastily downed soft-boiled egg, and would accept only a hot bottle of tea before taking off on an errand over the Downs. I heard something clinking in his rucksack as he threw it over his bony shoulder. Then he was out the kitchen door and gone.)

Might some enterprising soul have cut a way through the hedge for the tourists? Oh, come now, Martha Amelia! What, is he or she is going to advertise and charge admission? Furthermore, charge admission to do what? To gawp like city folk at the back fields and the view over the Cliffs? One could stand in the road and do that for free!

Could it be the Village children playing at soldiers? Pretending to slip under the barbed wire of no-man's land to kill the enemy? That would explain the threads left behind, blues and tans from sturdy farm clothes, if my eyes saw aright. I could just imagine the sight of those children coming across Old Will -- he'd put a fright into them and end the tunneling nonsense.

However, if Will was keeping a sharp eye out for tourists and troublemakers to run off the property, he was also watching for signs of a more sinister nature: Over the years of his fantastic career, Sherlock Holmes not only had acquired honors in great number, he had acquired a collection of enemies as well. Could another such person from Holmes' past be making an attempt on his life? I still remember vividly the night I spent on my hands and knees in my own home (albeit the portion I'd rented to the man) playing an elaborate trick on one of his more implacable adversaries, slowly turning a waxwork bust behind a drawn window shade. It was not something that had left me entirely sanguine about the risks engendered by my lodger's profession.

However, the genuine and deep concern of the man for the welfare of his fellow beings, and the driving force behind it, convinced me that Holmes would spare his household what dangers he could. He would take no unnecessary risks. Furthermore, with Mycroft's man about the place with the resources to call up more guards if needed, we were as safe as we could reasonably expect to be, short of having His Majesty's army camped on the grounds...

I gave up speculating. I really couldn't think of anything to explain what Will had shown me this morning. As to the matter of Holmes' enemies, I knew that if Old Will felt us to be in danger, he would not have wasted a minute in calling up reinforcements from Mycroft. That he showed me the break in the hedge was oddly reassuring, for I doubt he would have done so if the matter were all that serious.

The midday meal saw only Old Will, myself, and the two cats in attendance. Will devoured the rosemary-onion scones, the Cornish pasties stuffed with mutton and potatoes, the preserved vegetables from last summer in a simple sauce, and the lemon tart I put in front of him. A place setting for Homes sat unused on a tray nearby and I tried not to think of the skimpy breakfast he'd had. I distracted myself by clearing my throat and fixing on Old Will a stern eye: he was feeding the cats under the kitchen table, as usual, in blatant disregard of the house rules. Also as usual, he just ignored me and kept right on doing it.

"You really shouldn't, you know. The cats have become shamelessly spoilt by it." I said in my best mother's-watching-you tone.

"What, leave them to eating field mice and crickets, when there's all this lovely food to be had? You're a hard woman, Missus Hudson. Heartless, is what you are." Will chuckled and gave the big orange tom a bit of meat from his pie. "I know you sneak cream to them in the morning."

"What would Mycroft say, Will, seeing his agent dragging about bits of string on the terrace for the cats?" I gave back as good as I got. "I've seen you at it, and don't deny it."

"Oh, aye," he agreed affably. "Just keeping my reflexes up, or haven't you noticed this gentleman's paws are lightening fast, his reach amazingly long, and his claws razor sharp? Perhaps I should enlist you for guard duty, eh, old man?" Will gave the cat's ears an affectionate rub and stood up from the table. The orange tom voiced a throaty "mreow" in perfect accord and hied off to the chair beside the stove to wash up.

Before Will left for the Village to complete some errands and to send off to Mycroft's, I scribbled my report to Mycroft on the back of an old shopping list for Will to include in his report of today. He whistled as he left on his bicycle. If he hurried, he would make it back in time for tea.

I put away Holmes's unused plate and inwardly sighed, trying not to dwell morbidly on his declining condition. The situation had reached a vicious stalemate: short of forcing Sherlock Holmes into a straightjacket and hauling him off to an asylum, or otherwise restricting his access to the drugs, there was little else we could do. If only there were something he could bend that great mind of his to doing, something for the long term. His beehives, though blighted by that frost of three months ago, were little more than an automatic chore for him now. His violin had lain untouched for weeks. Nothing interesting had come from Mycroft's direction for months. I doubted even the matter of the hedge would occupy him for long.

The man would have to determine for himself whether he sank further into oblivion or swam his way clear of it. I prayed to the Almighty to send Holmes the strength to resist the only diversion he now seemed to enjoy. I prayed for a miracle.

Little did any of us know just how soon that prayer would be answered and the surprising form that answer would take.