The author of this piece wishes to make it known that comments and constructive criticism are quite welcome.

Titleless

by An Oxford Punter

"Holmes, I think you'd better return to the cottage," I called over my shoulder. I had reached the rise ahead of my companion and claimed a clear view of his house, still nearly a mile away. "There's somebody waiting to see you."

"This is a deduction I assume, Russ, and not merely wishful thinking on your part?" Behind me I heard the scrape of a match against a matchbox and a moment later pungent tobacco smoke drifted up the hill to me. I inhaled its sweet familiarity with a smile I hadn't felt upon my lips in many weeks.

"There's a car parked near your front door that I don't recognise," I answered by way of explanation. "Pierce Arrow, recent model. Very expensive." I waited for him to join me at the summit and pointed across the fields. "Mrs. Hudson hasn't taken to entertaining admirers while you are out that I know of, and nobody coming to see me would arrive in an automobile like that." I glanced at my mentor, my friend, my confidante and partner in crime-solving, Sherlock Holmes. "Were you expecting someone? Dr. Watson, perhaps? He did mention that he wanted to come down to check on my recovery the last time I spoke to him."

Holmes shook his head, frowning, and took the pipe from between his lips. "Watson's somewhat lurid and highly romanticized tales earn him an increasingly satisfactory income, but hardly enough to afford the purchase and upkeep of such an automobile, to say nothing of the accompanying chauffeur. Besides, the good doctor makes use of our local taxi service whenever he visits. No, this is someone else, I think." His grey eyes swept the cottage, taking in the car and the surrounding countryside in a single sharp, all-seeing glance. I understood his caution only too well; it was the lingering legacy of a case we had recently completed, one which had been difficult and dangerous for both of us.

"You don't recognise the car either, then?" I asked, feeling something akin to fear begin to unfurl itself along my nerve endings.

"No, I do not." He had been studying the distant automobile but, hearing something of what I was feeling in my voice, he glanced at me. "However, I think we may be safe in assuming that our visitor is someone bent on asking for our assistance rather than doing us harm. This vehicle parked so perilously close to my shrubs has come down the drive in something of a hurry. Do you see where the gravel is rutted? Some of it has actually been scattered onto the grass, there and there." He pointed to the spots, just visible in the waning light. I nodded. "Can we then seriously believe that a powerful and ruthless enemy intent on assasination would wait so many years to exact his or her revenge and then suddenly arrive here in a shower of stones to finish me off? No, I think not; there cannot be another opponent like the one we just faced, Russell. Villains of her calibre are rare indeed."

I allowed myself to be reassured by his reasoning, ever flawless, and relaxed into a smile. "Why Holmes, you sound almost regretful. All right, then, if it isn't a foe waiting for us, what sort of friend could it be? Who do you know of that might drive a car like that?"

He considered the question. "Various peers of the realm, several substantially successful men of business, and those highly placed in his majesty's government."

A thought struck me. "Could it be your brother? That would certainly explain the chauffeur."

Holmes chuckled. "Unlikely. It would take nothing less than a declaration of war to bring Mycroft so far away from his tidy existence in Pall Mall. He would, in any event, be far more likely to summon us to him." He seemed to consider the possibilities for a moment more and then shrugged and replaced his pipe between his lips with a dismissive shrug. "The whole question of the identity of this visitor is, of course, an academic one. We shall simply refuse the case and be on our way to France and Italy as planned." With that astonishing announcement he started down the hill toward his home, leaving me standing open-mouthed and immobile in his wake.

"What? Holmes, wait," I called. "You can't possibly be serious."

He turned, noticed my expression, and retraced his steps. "My dear Russell," he drawled, "I realize that my reputation as an inveterate prankster might give you cause to believe otherwise, but I assure you I am quite serious. If the owner of that automobile is thinking of enlisting my aid, he or she will be disappointed. I fully intend to refuse."

"Without hearing anything about it?" I stared at him. "Holmes, that isn't like you."

"Isn't it?" He arched his brows questioningly. "Russell, I am retired now. I no longer need to listen to every potential client who drives ruts into my gravel in his haste to lay his problems before me. It is entirely up to me whether I take a case and, just now, I elect not to."

His reply was entirely reasonable; at nearly sixty, he had been officially removed from the Baker Street days for some seventeen years and, at this point in his life, felt compelled to take only the most unusual, the most complex or delicate cases. Coming from anyone else, I would have thought nothing of such an attitude. But Sherlock Holmes was not just anyone else, and four years in his dynamic presence had taught me as much about him as about his curious profession. I was not fooled.

"Oh?" I remarked tartly. "And how many cases have you elected to refuse so far? Don't feel that you need to be exact on this one; a nice round figure will do. For myself, I'd be willing to wager you've never refused a case."

"Russell, such disrespect. I regret to inform you that you would be wrong; as a matter of fact, I have refused three cases."

"Since your 'retirement'?" His disgruntled silence made me smile in spite of myself. "No? I suspected as much. You might as well tell me, then, what is so urgent on the continent that we can't even stay long enough to hear the details of this case."

"I have some research to do," he replied. "I am writing a monograph concerning the effect of soil variation in vineyards upon the wine that is made from the resultant grapes and I need to consult with several experts in the field."

"A monograph?" I narrowed my eyes, sensing deeper, darker things moving beneath the surface whimsy of this mission of his. "Do I understand you correctly? We are passing up a potential case in order to go to France and Italy to talk to some people about grapes?"

"Russell--" He searched my determined face, eyes narrowed against the low summer sun, and sighed in tacit resignation. "Very well. I plan to refuse this case, whatever it may be, because I do not think either one of us are quite ready to embark on another investigation so soon after the last one."

"No, what you mean is you don't think I am quite ready to embark on another investigation so soon after the last one." I was not entirely surprised to learn this was the reason behind his odd behavior, but it hurt nonetheless. All the feelings of betrayal, anger, and shame I had been struggling so hard to overcome flared into life again like malignant vampires emerging with the dusk to feed on my fragile confidence.

"What I think," he amended gently, "is that you have been through a good deal in the last six months. You have sustained a very serious injury--an injury, I might add, which nearly took your life."

"But I'm fine now! My shoulder has healed completely."

"Your shoulder may be strong again," he said, "but you have not healed."

"Of course I have," I argued, but warily this time; instinct warned me that, in the coming fray, he was prepared to leave no emotional stone left unturned in his efforts to ferret out any suspected remaining frailty I possessed, and I knew from our chess battles that he was, with sufficient motivation, a resolute and merciless opponent. "It's been weeks; no, months. The investigation, the trial, the furor in the papers, everything is over. It's done. I'm ready to go on now. I'm ready for the next case."

"Indeed." His tone was all polite disbelief. "And what of Patricia Donleavy? Have you come to terms with her memory also? Do you bear her no ill-will for what she did to you? Do you no longer hate her?" He paused. "Or me?"

"I have never hated you. You are--" I shook my head, unable or perhaps unwilling to capture all he was to me within the clumsy confinement of words. "As for Patricia Donleavy, or whatever her name really was, I don't feel anything about her, not anymore. She's dead and I am alive. Life goes on."

"Mary Judith Russell," he said softly, "you lie. Shall I tell you what has been passing through your thoughts in the course of these last few weeks?"

I faced him with a fine show of defiance. "Please do. This should be vastly entertaining."

"We shall see." His scrutiny bore in it nothing of softness or commiseration or understanding, but simply the cold, clinical detachment of the scientist and I quailed inwardly before it. This, Dr. Watson could tell me with unfailing accuracy were he there to consult, was the look of the legendary reasoner of Baker Street, incisive and utterly tenacious in uncovering the truth. "You are very angry that you were hurt; you dislike being weak in any way because it limits your independence which is something you secretly abhor. You are concerned that your physical injuries will impair your ability to assist me in future investigations, thus putting the future of our fledgling partnership into question. Beyond that, you equate your injury with some sort of failure on your part; if you had only acted differently, or sooner, if you had recognised Patricia Donleavy for the malignant nemesis she was earlier, things might have turned out very differently. But you didn't, and now you think you must begin to prove yourself to me all over again, that now I will find you slow or inept or lacking in some way. You wonder how many mistakes of a similar nature I will tolerate before I rid myself of both you and the partnership. You think you have failed both me and yourself and you worry that you may in the future fail a client who has come to you for assistance, with possibly calamitous results. Am I correct so far?"

He had quite effectively punctured my defiance as he had known he would. "On target, as usual. By all means continue."

"As you wish. You would, of course, never have suffered such a dangerous injury had your mathematics professor not been so intent on destroying me. Patricia Donleavy hurt you--she tried to take your life. But that is not what makes you so angry at her; it was the fact that you obviously meant nothing more to her than a tool to use against me. You gave her your trust, your friendship, the confidences of your heart, and she repaid you with treachery and worse; she repaid you with callousness. You thought she was your mentor, your friend and counselor but she was not. She tricked you so completely that you never saw her for what she truly was, never suspected her madness, her passion for revenge and cruelty and murder. She sat with you in her cozy parlor, drank tea and laughed with you, and plotted your abduction in order to taunt me with it. She teased you, toyed with you, hinted at her true identity in your presence and counted on your affection for her to keep you from seeing the truth until it was nearly too late. She raped your ability to trust, Russell, nothing less; she took by violence and deceit from you that which you offered freely as a gift, and now you are uncertain whether you can ever give that gift freely again."

"I think that's quite enough." I made to go past him down the hill but his hand, unyielding as a vice, closed instantly on my good arm. "I have not finished. Lastly, we come to my part in this little matter. You think, in your darkest moments--and there have been many of them--that if you cannot trust your judgement where your mathematics professor was concerned, perhaps you cannot trust your judgement about me either. Am I not also your friend and mentor? Have I not also taken you under my wing, advised and counciled you, shown you friendship, heard your secret thoughts and feelings? And yet did I not also place you in jeopardy? Did I not also use you to defeat my foe? Though I may not have physically wounded you, did I not also cause you pain?" He released me but I could not have moved now to save my life. "Is not my betrayal perhaps the greatest of all, simply because so often those closest to us know how to hurt us the most profoundly?"

"How do you know all these things?" I whispered, apalled. It was as if he had reached deep inside my mind and pulled forth a demon.

He smiled, a humorless curving of his thin lips. "I know them, Russ, because I know you as I know myself. I have felt all of these things before, in similar circumstances and for similar reasons. I, too, have lost faith; I, too, have questioned my beliefs and my abilities, have doubted those closest to me and been shamed by the doubting."

I felt tears suddenly, close and threatening, for the second time that afternoon and drove them savagely away. "It's true, all of it. All these thoughts...I hate them. They're horrible, but they won't go away. You say you've felt them before, but how did you rid yourself of them? How did you keep them from destroying everything you thought or did or felt that was worthwhile?"

"I banished them by acknowledging them, by letting them have their own brief life and then releasing them." His smile this time reached all the way up to his eyes and, reaching out, he cupped my cheek with infinite gentleness. "These thoughts are not the truth, Russell, any more than Patricia Donleavy's affection for you was. They are born of pain and rage, sadness and loss. When you no longer have the feelings that generate them, the doubts will leave you too."

His words as much as his touch were a much needed balm to my battered soul. I took a deep, experimental breath and felt a tightness in my chest I hadn't even known was there begin to loosen. "Holmes," I said slowly, feeling my way with care, "I'm going to ask something of you and I want you to consider it--really consider it--before you answer."

His brows twitched briefly together but his clear grey eyes never wavered. "What is it?"

"I think you already know."

"You wish to take the case of the visitor awaiting our return." He did not wait for my affirmation; he did not need to. "A wise young woman once said to me, if effect, that rashness on my part--although I believe 'stupidity' was the precise word she used--put in danger not only myself but my partner as well."

"I know this young woman," I remarked wryly. "Quite an intelligent, sensible girl. I make it a point of listening to her--more often, at least, than you do."

"Oh, I listen to her," he said, amusement lingering in his eyes, "more than you might think." He studied me for a moment more and then relented. "Very well. We shall listen to the details at least before deciding what to do. But I reserve the right, Russell, to refuse it all the same." One corner of his mouth lifted in the sardonic half-smile I knew so well. "For the good of the partnership."

I watched him walk away down the hill, gratitude and irritation at his casual thoughtfulness warring for dominance in my thoughts. This, too, was a legacy of the case we had just completed. Not that I had never felt this particular duality before in connection with Holmes; I had much indeed to be grateful to him for, and he was likewise regularly capable of inspiring my irritation. But the feelings had never been so pronounced before, so heightened and sharp-edged. It was a telling symptom of the state of my mind and my heart at the moment, and I was concerned because I knew how much it threatened my relationship with the remarkable man striding across the fields toward his home.

I had come, a troubled girl of fifteen, to my mother's Sussex farm to recooperate from injuries suffered in the accident that had killed my family. It was while wandering on the downs one day during this time that I first met Sherlock Holmes, retired from Baker Street and an illustrious career as the world's first private consulting detective, living now not more than a few miles away from me. We had quickly and inexplicably become friends, not only because I was not awed by him as so many of those around him were--at least I did not let him know that I was awed--but because we were so alike in ability. I could not only follow his chains of reasoning, I could often anticipate them, and it was this that led him eventually to begin instructing me in the skills of his curious profession.

He had found in me an eager and attentive pupil; so much so that, by the time I entered Oxford I could successfully disarm an assailant larger than myself, formulate a detailed description of the author of a scrap of handwriting merely by studying a sample of it, and identify the effects of over one hundred different kinds of poison on the human body. I could track a person for miles if the prints were fairly fresh, correctly interpret the clues I found at nearly any crime scene, or adopt a disguise so completely that I fooled all but my closest acquaintances. In short, I became his equal in all save experience and it was inevitable, I suppose, that we should eventually work together. He had kept me under his watchful eye for the first case or two, but finally I had, with his reluctant blessing, stepped from the safety and security of his long shadow to take my place at his side.

Unfortunately, my first case with him as his acknowledged partner had very nearly ended the partnership permanently. We had each been injured in the course of the investigation, but the hurts we had suffered had not confined themselves to the merely physical; our curious relationship had suffered as well. In order to confuse and separate our adversaries, we had been forced to play the roles of failing mentor and disillusioned apprentice in a dangerous pretense of estrangement for many weeks--too many weeks. As his words attested, we were just beginning to become comfortable with each other again. And I had, as he so unerringly observed, suffered a loss of faith as well. The nemesis we had battled for so long, the evil, twisted brain behind the kidnapping of a child, a murder, two bombings, and our own near deaths had been none other than my mathematics professor at Oxford, Patricia Donleavy.

Patricia Donleavy Moriarty, the daughter of Holmes's arch enemy, killed by him in self-defense at Reichenbach. She had hunted us, tormented us, separated us, and then tried to kill us, all in the name of revenge; her plan had been to force Holmes to kill himself with a fatal injection of cocaine, leaving behind a suicide note confessing that he had wronged and murdered her father in order to advance his own reputation. Only a precisely pitched ink bottle had stopped her. She had died in the struggle for her gun on the floor of Holmes's laboratory, and with her had gone my confidence, my innocence, and my trust.

"Coming, Russell?" Holmes called. He had stopped and stood waiting for me.

"Of course." I hurried down the hill to join him. Patricia Donleavy's plan had been a good one and could have worked; had circumstances been different, it would have been Holmes lying dead on the floor of his own laboratory, his good name ruined forever. It occurred to me that my loss of faith and another scar to add to my growing collection seemed to be a remarkably small price to pay for not having to learn how to live my life without him.

The light was nearly gone from the sky as we approached his cottage. Holmes paused near the car.

"Quickly, Russell," he said, "let us see what else we can learn before we go in." He circled the car, pausing to stoop and examine each of the tyres, while I peered in at the chauffer.

"It looks like the decision to come and see you was a sudden one," I said, low-voiced. "Our sleeping friend, here, ate his lunch in a hurry, judging by the stains down the front of his otherwise immaculate uniform." I read the title of the book lying print-side down on the seat beside him. "Other than the fact that he has atrocious taste in reading material, I don't see anything that could help us."

"What do you make of the tyres?" Holmes glanced in at the back seat.

I crouched to examine the nearest one, carefully prying dirt and stones from the tread with a stick. "Local soil at the surface, but deeper down some soil I don't recognise."

"If that is not London soil then it is high time I retire and mean it." He poked at the dirt in my hand. "Specifically, West London; St. John's Wood, I should think, or perhaps Picadilly." He gave the car a final cursory glance. "There is little to be learned about the passenger either. Our napping friend unfortunately excels at his duties; the interior is scrupulously clean. Let us go in then, Russell, and see what the lady wants."

I stood up. "The lady?"

"Look there." He pointed at the passenger seat window. I came closer and saw a small, ragged pile of fabric bits on the seat. Narrowing my eyes, I was just able to make out faint threads of color on the white. I straightened, frowning. "It's a handkerchief. A woman's monogrammed handkerchief."

Holmes nodded. "She sat back here during the drive and shredded her own handkerchief in her distress."

"Then we'd best not keep her waiting any longer." I followed him to the door and we entered to light and warmth and the heady smells of Mrs. Hudson's cooking. My empty stomach responded instantly and I was wondering if I might be able to slip away to the kitchen for a quick bite before our prospective client began her tale, when Mrs. Hudson came to the doorway and saw us.

"Ah, here they are now," she remarked to someone in the shadowy direction of Holmes's desk. To Holmes she said, "There's someone here to see you, sir. She arrived while you and Mary were out."

"Thank you, Mrs. Hudson." He gave her a brief smile and a nod. "Perhaps some refreshment, if our visitor would like some?"

"The lady declined, but I'll bring some for you and Mary. Marching this girl all over the downs as if she weren't still getting her strength back." She shook her head disapprovingly. Holmes sent me a look that made me bite the the inside of my cheek.

"It's all right, Mrs. Hudson," I told her, lying gamely. "I'll get something later, if that's all right. Our visitor is no doubt anxious to attend to her business and be on her way."

"All right, Mary. Come into the kitchen when you're finished and I'll find something for you." With a last thin-lipped frown for Holmes she bustled off, brisk and businesslike, leaving us alone with the shadowy presence of our unseen visitor. Darkness had pooled beneath the window in the west wall and all I could see was the dim outline of a figure sitting behind the desk. I glanced at Holmes; he appeared to be simply waiting, casual and confident. But I knew better; he was holding himself in readiness, every sense attuned to the slightest change in the situation, ready to fight or flee instantly should the need for either arise.

And then the presence spoke, in a voice that was sweet and melodic.

"Hello, Sherlock."

My first thought was of Patricia Donleavy Moriarty and her malicious insistence on addressing Holmes by his Christian name. I turned to the cane rack, already searching for a weapon even as my mind whispered her name. But Holmes's hand on my wrist stopped me. He shook his head.

"She's dead, Russ," he said softly. "I give you my word, she's dead." He leaned past me to turn up the flame of a nearby lamp and tilted its shade so his desk was bathed in light. The sharp hiss of his indrawn breath warned me that there might still be danger and I glanced quickly from him to the woman revealed by the light, but her attitude was hardly one of menace. She sat back in his chair, completely at ease, pages of his work in her hands and on her lap; she had obviously been reading it until the light faded. I found myself staring at her, not just because she was such a stunning beauty but because I was certain that, without actually having met her before, I had seen her picture somewhere. The lustrous black hair, styled simply and only just beginning to thread through with silver, the large, dark expressive eyes set like jewels in her flawless face, and her perfect, graceful figure were all for some reason disturbingly familiar.

"It's very good, this 'Whole Art of Detection'," she said to Holmes, and her American accent brought a poignant pang to my heart; it was the accent of my father's homeland and until I was fourteen I had heard it every day of my life. "I've been passing the time with it. Quite precise and informative. But then, I would hardly have expected anything less, given the author." She studied him, her head tilted to one side. "Have I really surprised you so completely? I was sure you would deduce that it was I waiting to see you. It seems I have done the impossible, then; I have left the great Sherlock Holmes at a loss for words."

Holmes recovered quickly. "Doing the impossible is becoming something of a habit where you and I are concerned, madam," he said, his tone clipped and cold. "Even I may be forgiven a noticeable lack of polite conversation in view of your, shall we say, somewhat unexpected appearance after all these years."

(Who was this woman, I thought, this stranger who was evidently no stranger at all? Who was she that she could inspire in Holmes such ambivalence? For that was what I sensed in him beneath his surface irritability, an unsettledness and an uncertainty utterly foreign to his nature. I sidled closer, studying her, trying to puzzle it out.)

"Ah. I see." The smile slowly left her face and she set the papers down carefully on the desktop with a sigh. "Well, I knew what I would be risking by coming here; do not for one minute believe otherwise. Don't you think I realized how difficult this would be, for both of us? Do you think I would willingly have subjected myself to this unpleasantness if I did not have the best of reasons? I remember how angry you were, as if it were yesterday, and I know your damnable pride well enough to be sure it would not let you believe what I did was really the best thing in the end." She looked down at her hands, clenched before her on the desktop. "I had hoped, of course, that I was wrong--"

(Her make-up had been applied with considerable skill; although evidently close to Holmes' age, she still managed to look youthful, the more obvious signs of her accumulated years being hidden to all but the harshest light and the closest scrutiny. But, as Holmes had surmised, this was no casual visit; the lady had come bearing a problem of handkerchief-shredding proportions. Beneath her professionally applied cosmetics, beneath her air of sprightly self-assurance, lurked fear and concern.)

"Did you indeed, madam?" Holmes frowned forbiddingly. "And, pray, what do you believe would have compelled me to change my mind since then? You have never given any indication to me in all the years since our parting that you have altered any of the opinions you favored me with so thoroughly the last time we spoke. I, on the other hand, have altered my opinions profoundly about a good many things." He strode to the front door and opened it, a clear and unmistakable sign of dismissal. "I regret that you came all this way for nothing. If you will excuse us--"

"Sherlock, please." She was around the desk and by his side before he had finished. Laying her small, soft hands on his arm, she looked up into his face, her own pale and beseeching. "Please, for God's sake! Haven't you heard anything I've said? Don't you understand? I need your help, desperately; that's why I came, even knowing this was how you would react. I'll beg for it on my knees if I must, but I won't leave until you at least agree to hear me out." She paused, then added lowly. "The stakes are too great for anything less."

(Being a contemporary of Holmes, she had most likely come to know him in his professional capacity, either as a client or as an adversary. Clients, I had observed, generally came into his purview when they needed his help, then left it when he had solved the case and they no longer required his assistance. He was more likely, as a rule, to hear from adversaries again simply because, if they did not land in prison at the conclusion of the case, they often went on to commit other crimes. So the odds were with this woman being an adversary, but since he had made no effort to arm himself or telephone the authorities, she didn't appear to be a dangerous one.)

He stared down at her clasped hands for a moment in silence. I saw a muscle twitch in his jaw, but otherwise he was as still as stone. At last he disengaged himself from her grasp.

"Very prettily played," he said, but without the intensity of his former words. "I certainly cannot deny that it appears to be something significant indeed to prompt you to abase yourself to me of all people. However, as you may or may not have heard, I am retired now and no longer dash off into danger on behalf of every lady in distress who crosses my path."

(Her clothes were obviously French, exquisitely tailored and very expensive. Her jewelry was authentic; the brooch pinned to her lapel, in the shape of an apple, had the redness of rubies, and the serpent twined around it was gold with glittering diamond eyes. She wore no wedding ring. Well-to-do, then. Prosperous. But how? She didn't marry into it. Did she steal it? No, Holmes surely wouldn't have let her escape him with ill-gotten gains of that magnitude. How did she earn it, then, no small feat for a woman in these post-war days, to say nothing of the times of Victoria and Edward.)

"I heard of your retirement." She stepped away from him. "The people at Baker Street--"

"You've been to Baker Street?" He glanced at her sharply. "Why?"

"To find you! As if Baker Street held any other attraction for me." A wan smile hovered around her lips. "As I was saying, the people who live in your old rooms were quite happy to take me on a tour of them. Evidently it's a request they receive on a regular basis. They did mention, however, that they were forced to do quite a bit of renovation when they first moved in. There were the bullet holes, of course, and traces of the fire. Why, they said the mantlepiece alone--"

(Those hands, which had rested with such surprising familiarity upon his arm, were white and smooth; she did not use them, then, to earn her living. That voice, on the other hand, strong yet controlled, had been long and carefully trained. A singer then...no, not just a singer, but an opera singer... a contemporary of Holmes who knew him well as an adversary... Of course! My mind promptly supplied me with the reason for her familiar features. I could see, as easily as if it stood before me, the photograph on his mantlepiece of the only woman ever to best him. I bided my time, waiting for the opportunity to test my theory.)

Holmes closed the door with decidedly more force than was necessary. "Irene--"

(Yes! It was her.)

"Well, when they couldn't tell me where you had gone, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to find you at all," she rushed on, sensing perhaps that he was about to put an end to her story. "I didn't know where else to look; I remembered from Dr. Watson's accounts of your cases that your brother lived in London, but I coudn't think where. And then it came to me. Dr. Watson! He could tell me where you were, if anyone could. So I had George--my chauffeur--drive me home just long enough for me to disguise myself--"

"Tell me you did not do it," Holmes interrupted dangerously.

"I had to! How else was I to find you?" She did smile then, not the least bit chastised by his tone. "What do you think he would have said if he'd known who it really was behind the heavy veil I wore?"

"He would have said nothing, having succumbed to apoplexy and perished upon his own hearth rug," Holmes replied sourly.

"And serve him right, too. How dare he call me an 'adventuress' and how dare you let him! But I have had the last laugh on the good doctor; he was quite forthcoming when he heard my sad tale and told me everything I wanted to know."

"Dr. Watson labors under the delusion that everyone who comes to him for help actually needs it." Holmes glared at her, then spread his hands in a show of defeat. "So now you have found me. What is this urgent matter which compels you to deceive an honest man and force your chauffeur to drive like a lunatic all over England in search of me?"

"Yes," I chimed in, "perhaps Mrs. Norton--or do you prefer Miss Adler?--you would do well to tell Mr. Holmes what it is that brings you here. The sooner he hears the details, the sooner he may be able to assist you."

Two pairs of eyes, one of stormy brown, the other of icy grey, fastened on me. They had both obviously forgotten I was there. Irene Adler recovered first.

"Perhaps it would be better if I spoke with you privately, Sherlock. There is surely no reason to involve your daughter--"

"This is not my daughter." Holmes acknowledged me with a glance and a strange half-smile. "Allow me to present my partner, Miss Mary Russell. Russ, this--as you have already obviously surmised--is Madam Irene Adler Norton, late of the Warsaw Imperial Opera."

"Miss Russell." The woman known to thousands, including myself, as Irene Adler, the somewhat tarnished heroine of 'A Scandal in Bohemia' and the only woman to defeat Holmes, gave me a look of cool appraisal which took in everything from my braids to the casual chaos of my clothes, then turned to Holmes. "Your partner, you said? How very... intriguing."

"Only those unfamiliar with Russell's abilities find it so." Holmes frowned. "Now, Irene, perhaps you had best heed her excellent advice and tell us the reason for your journey here, to say nothing of your efforts to run me to earth. What is this urgent matter?"

"Not what. Who." She rose and came around the desk to place something into his hands. Their fingers brushed for an instant, but Holmes seemed not to notice. Bending closer to Holmes, I saw that it was a photograph of a thin, tired-looking young man in an army uniform. He was sitting on a stump near what appeared to be a foxhole, eating his meal from a tin plate; his gun was propped nearby, within easy reach, and beyond him I could see the bare and blasted countryside. The French frontier, perhaps? Belgium? Impossible to say. I concentrated on the person in the foreground. For all of the desolation around him and his obvious physical and mental exhaustion, his was an elusively arresting face, dark-eyed and good-looking. His resemblance to the woman standing before us was also unmistakable. I glanced at her. "Your son?"

She nodded, and her eyes were soft as she, too, studied the photograph. "His name is James, but I've called him Jamie since he was a baby. He prefers it; James is much too formal, he says. Said."

"He is dead, then?" Holmes glanced up sharply.

For the first time since making her presence known, Irene Adler's poised, confident elegance began to crumble. She swallowed, as if her mouth had suddenly gone dry, and the eyes she turned up to him were haunted. "I don't know--" she began and swayed.

"This chair, Russell," Holmes indicated it with a brief nod, his hands already under her arms to support her. I swept the footstool out of the way and he lowered her into it, crouching down before her.

"Irene, tell me," he urged her softly.

"Thank you." With a grateful glance, she took a sip of the brandy I fetched for her, and then smiled wanly down at him. "I'm sorry, Sherlock. You must think I've become fluttery and weak in my old age, I who dared to tweak the nose of the hereditary king of Bohemia, to say nothing of the world's first consulting detective."

"I think that you are worried about this young man, so much so that preys upon your well-being. You say you do not know if he is alive or dead; is this the matter upon which you wish to consult me? If he disappeared during the war--"

"No, he didn't." She took another sip of the brandy and set it aside. I seated myself on the footstool, sensing that she was ready to begin at last, and Holmes perched himself on the edge of a nearby table. "Jamie was fortunate enough to come home from the war, something I give thanks for every day of my life. No, it is what has happened to him since that terrifies me so. He's missing, Sherlock. He's disappeared, and I can't find him anywhere."