The Prodigal Son

In which Mary Russell shakes the Holmes family tree,
and Sherlock reveals a bit more of himself than he had planned.

by "My Lady's Daughter"

Part Three

All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

The morning dawned bright and clear, but instead of searching for swaddling clothes, I took a detour into the room Sherrinford had pointed out as having belonged to Holmes in his childhood. The room was sparsely furnished, with the chief items being a narrow iron bedstead and a large wooden bookcase. The latter was filled with a strange assortment of books and the general clutter usually found in pockets of small boys: coins from far off places, marbles, a lock with no key, and pocket magnifying glass. I ran my fingers over the spines of the books, and reflected on the old adage that the child is the father of the man.

The lowest shelves were the most amusing, as they held what must have been his first books, read while they travelled on the Continent. I imagined him at his mother's side, engrossed in Das Marchen vom harten NuB and La Maistre Chat, ou le Chat Botte. As he got older, he seemed to have developed a penchant for adventure and tales of discovery. There was Schlieman's account of the discovery of Troy and Richard Burton's The Guidebook: A Pictorial Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. I was not surprised that there was little fiction, and picking up a copy of a work of Jules Verne, saw that he had not read past the first chapter. It had been a Christmas gift from Tante Yvette and Oncle Pierre.

The upper shelves had more sober fare, and were heavily weighted toward the study of the biological and chemical sciences. There were also more earnest tomes, discussing the serious issues of the day, such as Huxley's Man's Place in Nature and an exceptionally worn copy of The Martyrdom of Man. I pulled the latter from the shelf, and was half way through its discussion of "The Natural History of Religion" when the sound of his breathing alerted me that Holmes was standing in the doorway, watching me.

"On the trail of my nonage again, Russell?"

"Yes, and finding it quite, um, fascinating reading. This really is quite something."

"Ah, Winwood Reade! I once recommended that book to Watson, but I doubt he got much past the fly-leaf. Then again, he was perhaps more occupied with our impending assignation at the Lyceum Theatre.

"My father gave me that book when I was about 15. I think it was one of the few times I can remember his taking an interest in what I read."

"Was he not interested in your intellectual development?"

"In general, only if it went in a direction consistent with his plans. From the time we were born, he mapped out a path for each one of us. My failure to fall in line with his goals for me was the cause of a rift between us that never healed. His hostility was too much to bear, so I grew to avoid coming to Mycroft. After my mother passed away, I stopped coming altogether."

"What was the path he had chosen for you?" I asked softly.

"For me to become an engineer, of all things. As if sitting in an office with a slide rule in my hand calculating the mass of a load-bearing wall could bring any satisfaction to me. He simply refused to even hear of the idea of my becoming a consulting detective. Perhaps because he saw no value in it. Or, I suppose, in me, for that matter." And with that, he dropped onto the bed beside me, his gaze fixed on a point far away.

His silence spoke volumes, and for the first time, I had a true sense of the source of weariness that I had so often heard in Holmes's voice. I had always attributed it to his sense of sadness at life in general, the ennui that had driven him to retirement in Sussex (for when a man is tired of London...). But now, I saw things more clearly. It was not melancholia in his tone, but the undercurrent of frustration at a life that it never measured up to a father's standards. That sense of inadequacy must have cast a very long shadow over his years at Baker Street, and been the source of his relentless drive.

"It is something I have never understood," I said flatly.

"What is that?"

"Why people are so utterly incapable of understanding that from the moment a child is born, it is already its own person. Instead, parents seem so determined to treat it as if it is unfired clay, to be moulded and shaped to their own will. Why can't they just sit back, and watch their child unfold?"

Holmes stared at me, astonished. "Do you know, Russell, your ability to turn the world as I know it upon its head has never ceased to amaze me?

"It has never occurred to me that we come into this world as anything but raw material to be shaped by those around us, for better or for worse. And yet, I look at my brothers and see it is just as you say. Each one of us, born to the same parents and exposed to the same external stimuli, but each of us possessing such crucial differences. You have missed your calling, my dear Russ!"

"But what of your calling, Holmes? How did you ever decide to become the 'world's first consulting detective'?"

He chuckled at the phrase. "Ah, yes, I see that Watson's hyperbole still haunts me. It was at university, actually. For the first time in my life, I was made aware that the deductive powers Mycroft and I had taken for granted were actually unique. At first, my talents were treated as some sort of new parlour trick, like being able to balance a salt cellar on a single grain of salt. But after a while, a fellow on my staircase, Victor Trevor, drew me aside and pointed out the value and importance of my skills.

"I spent the first month of my second term brooding about it. I came home and told my father of my decision, but to say it did not meet with his approval was an understatement." He was silent for a moment, then stood up as if to rouse himself from the past. He looked at me, and taking the Winwood Reade from my hand, brightened and said that he was sure that he could find something more to my taste in the library.

As I uncurled my now cramped legs, I commented that if he had decided to try his luck with the parlour maid, he would have had a devil of a time with such a small bed.

"Don't be ridiculous, Russell. That is what the summer house is for."

He was halfway down the stairs before I could catch him.

The library shelves were lined with an abundance of leather bound books which were no doubt chosen for their decorative quality than content, the sort purchased by the linear foot by gentlemen eager to establish the appearance of a well stocked library. But there were also books that showed the habits of a studied reader, grouped on the lower shelves for ease of reference. Sherrinford's books were few, it seemed, and focused primarily on the estate management and horse breeding.

I sat on the step-ladder which was affixed to a brass rail which ran around the perimeter of the room, and began my hunt like a child seeking out Easter eggs on the front lawn. Holmes sat in one of the leather chairs, his long legs stretched before him, as if warming himself on a non-existent fire.

"We you ever allowed in here, growing up?" I asked while balancing a large volume across my knee.

"On occasion. Mostly to receive a scolding for some childish misdemeanour or the doling out of pocket money. And later for serious discussions about my future. Certainly not to linger over the volumes of centuries, if that it what you mean. I much preferred my own books.

"It was mostly Mycroft who used this room. He took a keen interest in the financial pages, and would pour over them, performing quantitative analysis on stocks and commodities. He even went so far as to fire off a few of his theories to the Chairman of the Exchange, but I doubt the old man had a clue that his correspondent was only 15." He rolled his eyes up in an expression of mock exasperation, and I was pleased to see his sense of humour returning.

"What about Sherrinford?" I asked.

"He had been sent off to Oxford when we were still living in London."

Before I could ask for any more of the family history, the bookcase captured my attention again. In trying to replace the oversized book, I had dislodged something that had been secreted across the tops of the books. Drawing it out, I was stunned to hold in my hand a copy of Beeton's Christmas Annual from 1887. The pages fell open to the first of Watson's stories, A Study in Scarlet. So strange was it to find this here, my hands began to tremble as I passed the volume to Holmes. "Is it Sherrinford's?" I asked.

At first he did not reply. He ran his fingers down the pages, as if to see better the cramped marginalia with his finger tips. He looked up at me, and shook his head. "No. It is my father's hand. How utterly inexplicable that he should have read, let alone kept this."

From my vantage-point on the ladder, I looked over his shoulder to see the hand written notes. While time had faded the ink, it did not fade the sense of pride their author had in his son's talent. A note beside the denouement in the final chapter said it all - a brief "well done!" Holmes walked from the room, holding the volume, with a look of complete astonishment on his face that I have never seen repeated.