53. THE CASE OF THE GRIEVING WIDOW

I'm trespassing on part of Holmes's life not even dreamed of by the late Arthur Conan Doyle...

Doctor Watson was still in Rome where he was to speak at a medical conference concerned with the long term effects of conflict on damaged young men, and Sherlock Holmes was standing sadly next to a freshly-dug grave in the churchyard in Dumfries where his long-time friend and landlady, Mrs Martha Hudson, had been lain to rest.

“It’s so sad, don’t you think,” said a voice at his elbow. The funeral service was over, yhe few mourners, and they had been very few, were drifting away, one here and one there, and he was bidding a last farewell to the woman who had cared for his life over many years, and then he intended to return to London and life without either Watson or Martha.

He looked round to see who had spoken to him.

It was a woman, maybe middle aged, maybe a little older, and there were trails down her face left by tears that must have flowed freely during the funeral service. And that face, thought Holmes, was almost lovely in a sad and mournful way. It shocked him when he thought that. It simply wasn’t like him.

“Yes, it is, Mrs… er ….” he replied.

“Annabelle. You can call me Annabelle,” she replied, “I’m not married, not any more, though some things never really end.”

“It’s just that … I noticed your ring,” he told her.

She smiled at him, a pretty smile contrasting with the sadness that still haunted her eyes.

“I was married,” she murmured, “but he died. It’s what you men seem to do, is die. It’s ten years now, but I still wear his ring. We were both young when he gave it to me. It seems wrong, somehow, to take it off. Did you know Martha?”

“Mrs Hudson? Oh yes, I knew her well and she was a good woman. She was my landlady on Baker Street far away in London.”

“Oh. So you’re Sherlock Holmes, the great detective?” she asked, her eyes opening wide. “Martha spoke of you often, in her letters. She wrote many letters over the years and I got the impression that she … that she had feelings for you.”

“I was of some practical use to her some years ago, over a personal matter,” nodded Holmes. “And she served my friend and colleague Doctor Watson and me very well. She will be sadly missed, and not just for simple reasons like the way she helped us stay reasonably human! And it’s out of respect for her that I arranged to have her repatriated to the land of her birth, so to speak. She had a family plot here.”

“I’m so pleased to meet you...” The woman, Annabelle, sounded hesitant, and then, “I feel that I know you already!”

“And I’m delighted to meet you. I’m sorry it’s such a brief meeting, but I must catch the train very shortly. I’m due back in London very soon. There are things to do there, matters to be sorted out, her effects to be gone through… it seems cruel, but some things must be disposed of.”

“I suppose there’s nobody?”

“You mean, to cart her things away? The house is hers, you know, but her will gives it to me for the remainder of my life or until I wish to leave, and then it must be sold and the proceeds used to provide for the poor and needy. She was very firm on that, was Mrs Hudson.”

“I meant, nobody to help with her effects?”

“I believe she married away from her family and settled with the late Mr Hudson on Baker Street, and when he died...”

“He wasn’t the best of men. She should never have married him, but she wouldn’t listen!”

“I believe she loved him. There’s no accounting for the way our minds work when it comes to the emotions, Mrs...”

“Annabelle. Annabelle Hyde.”

“Mrs Hyde.”

She shook her head. “There’s not,” she agreed. “I hope you don’t mind, but I need to ask: can I travel with you?”

“What? To London?”

“Of course. I told you Martha and I were in contact over all the years, and she would have wanted me to help with her affairs. I’m on my own. I’ve got nobody to consider, not now, now that they’re all dead… Martha was the last of my friends, and my husband and I had no children even though we would have welcomed them had they come along. And anyway, you might … appreciate … the company. Funerals are such sad affairs.”

“Then I suppose … yes, of course, you must!” nodded Sherlock Holmes, nodding too vigorously as it crossed his mind that the railway journey down to London was a long one and he would welcome the company, even of a stranger. And Annabelle, there was something about her, the way she held him with her eyes instead of looking shyly away, the way she spoke of the sadness she must have experienced in her own life, with a kind of inner strength that warmed him.

“You never married?” she asked. It was half statement and half question.

He shook his head. “No, I suppose the trite thing for me to say is I never found anyone and I’m still looking, but no. I’ve lived a busy life and believe that in some small way I’ve been useful in the great scheme of things.”

“I suppose you know that’s an excuse?” There was that little, almost teasing, smile again.

“Mrs Hyde!” he murmured, and “I suppose that you’re right again.”

“Again?”

“Well you were right over me appreciating company on the journey back to London, and you may well be right about my personal life. I’ve had a substitute, of course, with my friend and colleague doctor Watson, though for several years he was married to his Mary, and it was tragic when she died. But he was someone for me to test my hypotheses on, to use as a sounding-board for my sometimes abstruse theories.”

“I wish I’d had a friend like that, after Johnnie died,” she whispered.

“Look,” said Holmes suddenly, “I don’t want to hurry you, but there’s a train to be caught, and if we’re to travel together we’d best not miss it!”

“Of course.”

He looked at her again. She was careworn, yes, her face was streaked the residue of tears, but this woman had about her something that was so precious it must be preserved. He knew that with a certainty that shocked him.

He didn’t usually consider women in this way. It wasn’t the Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street. Maybe, and there was a hollow beating in his chest when he thought it, maybe it was the Sherlock Holmes of tomorrow…

They turned and walked away together. The rest of the small funeral party had dissolved away. There hadn’t been many there to bid Martha Hudson a last goodbye. But, he thought with a twinkling corner of his mind, there wouldn’t be many when he passed away either.

Preoccupied with detection, he’d never made many friends. Not the sort that go to funerals anyway. But that didn’t matter.

Nothing matters to the dead.

© Peter Rogerson 30.09.17