22. THE CASE OF THE PRETTY GIRL

Did she really have fairies at the bottom of her garden?

“There are fairies at the bottom of our garden, Mr Holmes,” said Miss Ava Goodright perfectly seriously.

“Fairies?” asked Holmes, “What do you make of fairies, Watson?” he asked me.

I paused for a moment when I tried to put the ridiculous into some kind of perspective.

“It depends what you mean by fairies,” I concluded.

“Oh, that’s quite easy,” almost whispered Ava, and as I looked at her I knew I’d probably believe every word she said. She was that kind of young woman, exceedingly pretty, immaculately turned out, hair and other feminine wiles done with casual perfection, and a smile most men would do anything for.

“Fairies are little folk,” she said after a moment. “They are, of cause, magical and can perform wonders when they have to. And they can fly. They have the prettiest gossamer wings that they use to soar and dive through the skies and go round and round like a coronet or crown! They’re really rather special, and we have a family of them at the bottom of our garden.”

I could tell that Holmes was trying not to smile. Ava was so serious it would seem cruel to make mockery of her determination to make us believe in the existence of a life-force we had neither seen nor experienced in any way. And as everyone knows, Holmes exists via the gift of logical thought rather than fancy.

But…

“I would dearly like to meet your fairies, Miss Goodright,” he said in all seriousness. “I have long given thought to the possibility that there are some unknown and unsuspected realities that exist on this Earth, realities that keep themselves so well hidden from the five human senses that they might as well not be there.”

Ava’s face slowly blossomed like a delightful flower might blossom when kissed by the newborn sun of a shining summer day. Her smile was rapturous and her eyes bright like twinkling stars in the night sky. I was enchanted by everything to do with her, and to my everlasting shame I found my mind wandering towards the nature of her undergarments as if I was still a teenage boy in the first flush of disgraceful enquiry. But it passed, thank goodness, and I smiled at her.

“We will accompany you, my dear,” said Holmes crisply. “The train, I think, this very afternoon, from St Pancras.”

“But Holmes...” I spluttered, trying to reverse the mischief of my own thoughts.

“I will take no buts, Watson. This matter is of the utmost importance and needs dealing with. I am aware that Mycroft is due to call on me this afternoon to discuss matters of national importance, but I will leave a note with Mrs Hudson. He will have to understand that there are some things that are more vital even than the nation that protects us all! Meanwhile, you may need to wear something a little less threatening to the fairy folk. Watson, we will both wear shorts!”

I was flabbergasted.

“Shorts?” I stammered, “but Holmes, I haven’t worn shorts since I was a babe in arms! And neither have you, I swear it!”

“Quite, Watson, but we both have trousers past their useful prime and you, in your medical bag, have sharp scissors, I believe…?”

“You mean…?” I spluttered.

“Yes, Watson, you will cut the legs off our oldest pairs of trousers, mine as well as yours, and we will be at the station this afternoon by one thirty at the latest, wearing them! Now get to it, man, while I consult my book of the fairy folk and try to determine what they want of us!”

“I didn’t say they wanted you, Mr Holmes,” smiled Ava, “but it would be really sweet of you to come with me and visit them. They will like that. But pray, what is your fee for such a venture? I understand that you are somewhat flexible when it comes to finance…?”

“For you it will be absolutely nothing!” beamed Holmes in the least Holmesian way imaginable. “For me it will be a source of vital information that I will store in my mind and maybe even write a monogram about, and that may prove to be of more worth to me than the shillings you might have to pay me.”

“You are too kind, Mr Holmes,” she bubbled.

It was before one thirty that same afternoon that Holmes and I in knee-length breeches trimmed smartly by myself, and in the company of Ava Goodright, stood on the platform at St Pancras as, with a great burst of steam and smoke, our train rolled to a standstill and the milling crowds rushed to the carriage doors.

“Come!” commanded Holmes as he climbed into the first available carriage and took his seat in an empty compartment.

He looked far from splendid in his knee-breeches. My own snipping had been quite immaculate,for being a medical man I have been used to cutting more precious stuff than trousers, but his legs, starved of sunlight for all of his life, were pasty and tended to be knobbly in the region of his knees and consequently far from beautiful. My own, I’m sure, were equally disgusting.

“You two gentleman look like the perfect escorts for a lady such as myself,” murmured Ava, “I do hope my fairies will be pleased to see you and that they even deign to break their silence and greet you! Oh, that I should have lived to see this day!”

“It is our honour,” said Holmes gravely.

The journey, though short, was completed in silence on the part of Holmes and myself, though Miss Goodright chattered away, it seemed effortlessly, completing our education on the ways and whims of the fairy folk, providing such information as made me wonder at her sanity.

“They visit me at night,” she whispered, “with their little wings all a-flutter and their faces filled with love. And they settle like angels on my bed and sing to me, the girl fairies in voices high and descant like angels and the boy fairies deep and bass like choirmasters in the church, and the hoary old men who sing there. It is so wonderful to hear them!”

And then she went on to describe their home, their ways of living, their meals, their friendships, even the tenderness with which they courted each other in the springtime of their lives, their whispered platitudes, their homely lusts.

“Yet it is sad to think,” she almost wept as the train slowed down to our stop, “that their lives are so brief. They fall in love, they sing and dance, and then they die, and all within a year.”

“It is indeed a cause for concern,” murmured Holmes, breaking for a moment into her monologue.

We arrived, before two thirty, at her home.

I don’t know what we were expecting but it wasn’t what we were taken to. Miss Goodright was, as I have made clear, particular about her appearance in every respect. Her clothes were immaculate and even the subtle fragrance that accompanied her was what I would call heavenly. I suppose we were expecting a mansion at least, a granite house that reflected her particulars. Yet her home when we arrived there … it was little more than a hovel made of splintered wood and with dusty windows that looked very much as though they were tear-stained by the lines made by seasons of rain that had run down them and not wiped away.

“We are here!” she cooed, and then I knew what it was about her that so enchanted me. It was the perfection of her innocence, the sweetness of her belief, the beauty of her soul.

She pushed the door open and walked in, smiling as if she was entering the vestibule of Heaven. And she may have been for all I know.

“Mother,” she called, “I’m home, and guess who’s come a-calling with me? Mother, do you hear, it’s the great detective, Mr Sherlock Holmes! And also his biographer, dear Dr. Watson! They’ve come to meet the fairies at the bottom of our garden.

But there was no reply, no warm response from a fond mater, just the silence of a tumble-down hovel and the buzz of flies.

“Can you hear the fairies?” asked Ava, giggling sweetly at us, “flapping their pretty wings and flying to mother? They do love her, you know, they love my mother.”

“Watson!” barked Holmes, suddenly, it seemed, in his own mind for the first time that day, “Come!”

And I followed him into the only other room in the simple home.

Ava’s mother sat where she must have been sitting for weeks or even months, immobile, incapable of word or thought or deed and bereft of life, and round her head like a vaporous coronet swooped Ava’s fairies.

Though to me and Holmes they bore a striking similarity to bluebottle flies searching for a bed to lay their eggs.

© Peter Rogerson 09.08.17