letters
I had not expected Holmes back so early. I had given him another day, perhaps two, and yet when I returned to our flat he was there, brooding in his seat. I believed him lost in thought as he plucked at his violin as he did not even recognise my greeting, yet he suddenly threw the instrument down quickly, caught up in an excitement.
“Why did you not write to me, Watson? I was expecting--”
“Wait, hold on,” I said, holding my hand up as though that might stop his onslaught. He continued speaking in a rapid-fire way, leading me to believe that he might have taken something I would frown upon before my arrival. I could hardly understand him.
“You were to write me and you did not and I can tell by your clothing that you have not been overly busy nor have you had many patients and I--”
“Stop it, Holmes,” I said, sinking into the free seat as he watched me, eyes trailing my every movement. I reached for the nearest paper, found it to be a month old, hesitated, then decided it would be better than nothing and began to look it over, feeling his eyes burning a hole through the sheets.
I was not lost long in my reading as his bow tore through the paper, knocking it to the ground. “It was your idea in the very first, Watson, and I’ll have you know that sort of thing does not come…easily to me.”
“As I had noticed,” I sniffed, holding portions of the paper that had torn free from his attack. I sighed and lowered my arms, meeting his gaze. “But I tell you, Holmes, that I did write to you. And besides, I can’t see why you’re so agitated about it. You only wrote me the one time, and--”
Holmes frowned, up in his seat at that as he had slouched back into his natural lazy position when without a case. “I wrote you three different times, Watson. Three. Surely you miscounted.”
I was irked. “One, two, three. I know basic maths, Holmes. There was only the one and--it is on me, here, actually. Wait a moment,” I said, and I rummaged in my breast pocket, pulling out the neat little square.
Holmes instantly plucked it away from me, much to my protestation and he quickly unfolded it, eyes scanning the paper quickly as though he might be able to read it. He was satisfied, and made to crumple it up before I rescued it from him, annoyed and smoothing it out before folding it back as it was and replacing it to its safe hold.
He quirked a smile at this. “You carry it around, do you? Carry all of them? How absurd.”
“Of course I carry it around, Holmes; that is what people do with these sorts of things, though I admit I don’t carry all of them on my person at all times. It is a common practice.”
“Though I hardly think most of the letters doting women carry around are half as filty as that,” he said pointedly with a careless gesture, sniffing at the thought while I flushed.
“Yes, well, you might be surprised--ahem. As to the letters…what do you think happened to them?”
“Hopefully? Lost in the post. If not…well…we might have to look at someone intercepting them,” he said, steepling his fingers together as I fought down a point of nervousness welling within my stomach.
“We should be fine…right?” I asked hesitantly. He slid me a glance.
“I don’t think we should worry, unless someone can crack my code,” he said with a vain little grin, yet I couldn’t help mirroring back his expression.
Of course he was right.
Unless the fellow (or, I suppose, woman) who had stumbled upon our letter had a great deal of patience and time to devote upon his find, our secret was to remain rather safe.
-----
“I got the letters, Professor!”
He was triumphant as he returned to the hotel room--my hotel room--fistful of envelopes soon deposited on my desk. I hadn’t thought it would be difficult. It was well-known (to me, at least), that Mr. Holmes often used unsavoury characters, dock-workers and children of the street and the like, to produce and collect information.
Two could certainly play that game, and once I had found some half-starved children who were either not already in his employ or willing to be bought out, well, the rest was easy.
“Thank-you, Sebastian,” I said, waving the man away. He lingered anyway, as I knew he would. His curiosity stopped him from immediately obeying me, which I tolerated in him alone.
I slid the sharp edge of my opener along the envelope, carefully slicing it open to retrieve the letter inside.
“It’s a buncha gobbledygook,” he said, dismayed. I smiled.
I knew he would say that.
“Not quite.”
“Is it code, then?”
He was a quick one.
“I believe so, yes. Once I have the code, however, I should hopefully be able to read all of them. I doubt very sincerely that Mr. Holmes will have made separate codes for each batch of letters. I wouldn’t think he would contemplate his messages ever being intercepted in the first.”
“Ah. Well. I’ll leave you to it, then,” Sebastian said, quickly excusing himself from the whole mess as he plopped down in the long sofa a short distance away, picking up a paper I debated telling him was old before deciding against it.
He began to hum quietly to himself, flicking through the pages while allowing me to pore over the work.
It shouldn’t be too long, surely.
-----
It was longer than I had expected.
Nearly two hours had passed and I’d fallen into a short doze, stretched out comfortably in the seat. Now that I’d gotten used to what the professor could afford, I didn’t know if I could ever go back to what I had been managing before I met him. I could have gladly used the sofa for a bed, even; it felt like heaven in comparison to the digs I had been accustomed to before him.
I yawned, stretching slightly as I rustled the paper before dropping it lazily--messily--to the floor. “You still in here?” I asked, not bothering to glance over to check. When he didn’t answer me I did look over, frowning at his appearance.
His brow was drawn down in deep concentration, and I could see a look of unmasked fury upon his face. It was the sort of look I got when something important slipped through my fingers and I could only watch it go. Didn’t happen often, but when it did…
“Professor? You still at that puzzle?”
He gave me a look of quick, unbridled rage. I sat up.
His collar was undone, he had a glass of what looked like whiskey close at hand…
A few cigarettes, stubbed out angrily into an ash tray. He looked altogether…tense.
“You need a walk, Professor? We could do that.”
“I do not need a walk, Sebastian,” he said, every syllable pronounced slowly, evenly. It was a dangerous sign, but I wasn’t so worried. “I need to figure out this code.”
“Could clear your head,” I said helpfully. “Make you see things differently.”
“No.”
“All right then,” I said amiably. “We gonna sit here all night, then? Like this?”
“I do not care what you do,” he said dismissively, already immersed in the letters once more. “I only needed you to collect the letters, which you have done. Everything after that point is unnecessary.”
I was slightly stung at his dismissal but chalked it up to his frustration at being unable to penetrate the code. “How far is it you’ve gotten?”
I knew better than to wander over to the man at this stage. To get within reach of him. In some, frustration turns very easily into violence.
The professor was one of these men.
He rubbed at his brow in agitation, removing the spectacles he used sometimes to help him better read, shutting his eyes for a moment as he exhaled. “For a brief point I thought myself quite far until it all fell apart. I am largely at the beginning, Sebastian, and your questions are only hindering me.”
I decided it would be best to leave before he threw me out, perhaps physically.
“Riiight…well. I’ll be off, then…unless you need anything…?”
“If I need you, I will let you know,” he said curtly, giving me a brief wave of his hand to note that he was done with me until further notice. I scuttled out of the room.
It was raining outside; a cold, hard rain that pierced through me. I blinked back the water, staring up at the sky for a moment and contemplating going back to retrieve my umbrella before nixing the idea. I’d leave the professor alone--it would do him some good.
Besides, a little rain hardly hurt anyone.
I turned up my collar and dug my hands into my pockets, hunkering in on myself as I wandered aimlessly, traversing the streets and perusing the wares of various vendors.
With nothing to do I found myself a little bored, as I always was when there was a lull in activity, and I remedied it in the same fashion every time. I roamed free, sometimes walking for hours with no set purpose other than to blend into the crowd and lose myself in order to pass time.
Often I played this game wherein I mentally assassinated a chosen target, using a variety of weapons upon them. If that didn’t work, I chose to follow someone at random and see where it took me. I had never had someone discover me stealthily tracking their every move a few paces behind them, and it served for a welcome distraction from what little was offered to me at the moment.
So it was that I found myself tailing after a young fellow, almost automatically, and when he turned the corner up ahead I turned only a few paces behind him, whistling quietly to myself with my hands in my pockets.
-----
And then I had it cracked.
Something within me just clicked and it all made sense so that I was furiously scrambling to copy it all down, lest I forget what it was that I had realised in the first. Soon I had mirrored the two men’s writing with my own, thinking only of the letters and not of the messages within until I had them before me.
A moment of doubt. I had simply assumed that these would be what I was looking for, but what if Holmes had chosen to write of something else? I had no need for details of a case!
Quickly, I perused the papers before me. My eye caught the doctor’s example first and I skimmed through it hastily.
Long to have you here before me…Good, yes, but not good enough. Would take more than that. Come on! Your eyes alight, skin covered in a light sheen of sweat…Better!
Splayed before me, fists grasping the sheets as you softly said my name. It is like a choir to me, a hymn…
The doctor went on.
I turned my attention to Holmes’s, bewildered at first by it. Certainly the doctor’s would be useful in courtroom procedures, but the true treasure lie in the detective’s writing. What I had gathered--what I had suspected--was that the two of them were writing letters to one another. Hoped, even. Something I could use against the two of them.
Here it was before me.
I knew that lovers often did this. I had no use of it. I thought it…stupid. Insincere. No matter how you might feel for someone, I doubted highly that you thought of them like a-a spring flower or something of the like. It was a silly little courtship ritual, and men and women (or…men and men, I suppose in this instance) danced around with it.
Always poetry and little hidden meanings, or perhaps more explicitly (as with the doctor’s) but still somewhat tender in nature.
Holmes’s was…different. Probably, in all fairness, a good deal like what mine would be like should I attempt it. It was clinical in nature and stated precisely what he wanted, what it would be like, what Doctor Watson could expect to feel, physically (bother the mentality or emotional state that followed), and how that would be.
It was perfect. It was like a written confession. It was beautiful. Certainly he might claim that I could not prove he had done it, given that his original letters were in code, but one could always find documents of his and compare the likeness in penmanship.
I was cheered by my good luck and wished to exclaim over what I had found only to see that the room was empty. Right. Sebastian had gone…oh. Hours ago, now.
I was frustrated. The man seemed never to be here when I needed him, and always here when I did not want him.
I tapped my pen in annoyance against the desk before deciding to fetch myself a drink.
-----
I was waiting for him when he returned, shutting the door in an unobtrusive manner.
“You’re wet,” I said, and he jumped ever so slightly at my voice, dripping all across the floor as he moved toward the sofa. “Ah! You’re not going to get my seat wet. No.”
He had nearly sat down when I spoke my command and then awkwardly fidgeted before removing his coat and moving to the coat rack, placing it upon it before making his way back toward me.
“You sound in a better mood, professor. Got it solved, then?”
“I do,” I said, bored. My enthusiasm had worn off in his absence. The thrill of the puzzle was gone. I needed something else to do.
“What’s it say?” he asked, and I handed it to him, allowing him to read my copies. “Smut, is what it is! Smut. …Seen worse, though.”
I raised my brow at this.
“Or better.”
“Which is it?” I asked.
“Dunno. Not sure,” he said with a faint grin before handing it back to me. “So what’re you plannin’ on doin’ with all this?”
“Gaols seem eager with this sort of thing. It’ll net them a few years at least, and a lot of things can happen in prison,” I said, and he mirrored my wicked grin.
He had produced an apple that he had no doubt palmed from his jacket and as I tapped my fingers on the desk he bit into it, gesturing to the letters as I frowned in distaste at him.
“You gonna do that tomorrow, then?”
“You shouldn’t buy fruit from street vendors, Sebastian. You don’t know where it’s been.”
“That doesn’t answer my question. And it tastes fine. Wanna bite?”
I answered his question with a scowl. He shrugged and bit in instead. “Perhaps tomorrow. We’ll see.”
“I got something for you. While I was out.”
“Hm?” I was sceptical. One could never tell what it was with Sebastian. He was a great deal like a cat bringing back mutilated sparrow corpses--he thought it made for a great gift; I did not.
He set the apple on my desk, ignoring my look as he reached into his breast pocket, removing two tickets. To an opera show, no doubt.
“Tonight. They still had some left over, hm? Thought you might wanna go. I was gonna badger you out, away from this, but now that you got it done it’ll just be a night out instead.”
“The opera being…?”
“The Barber of Seville. I’ve never seen it, myself. Never had much time for, er, opera.”
I frowned. I had seen The Barber of Seville enough times to dislike it. It was like reading the same passage over and over again--familiarity breeds contempt.
The cat brings back a sparrow.
“The Barber of Seville. A man uses a wealth of disguises to make certain the woman he loves loves him for himself and not his money’s sake. I’m familiar with the opera, Sebastian.”
“Ah,” he said, and I read his face like a book. He was disappointed. He did not quite show it, but all the signs I’d accustomed myself to were there. His brow had furrowed just slightly before smoothing itself out once more, his lips had twitched downward ever-so-slightly, and his voice had lowered a degree. Only just notable.
“Well. It was a suggestion. Sounds a bit silly, hm? We get enough of that disguising business chasing around after Mr. Holmes.”
I rolled my eyes at the very mention of Holmes. Indeed. I couldn’t agree more. Still…
I rose, moving around the desk to him and staying his hand as he made to put the tickets away. “Should we go to dinner before or after?”
“You want to go?” he asked sceptically. Suspiciously. Seems he could read me just as well as I could him.
I didn’t know whether I liked that or not.
“Of course. The Barber of Seville is one of my favourites,” I said, holding back a wince. No doubt I would live to regret saying this, but I couldn’t help smiling fractionally at the pleased expression that flickered across his face.
He had tried, at least. I suppose that was what mattered.
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yes. What an enigma I am,” I said, moving his apple to the trash with some distaste. “Now. Dinner before or after?”
“I’ve already eaten.”
“After it is, then,” I said, motioning him ahead of me. He moved like an eager dog and I glanced back at the letters on my desk, hesitating before I scooped them up and turned, throwing them into the fireplace and onto the guttering fire.
As flames ate at the letters they grew and Sebastian watched me quizzically in the doorway, head tilted slightly.
“Bit of a waste, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” I sighed.
“What made you do it?” he asked as I joined him, and he moved out into the hallway to allow me to lock the door. I stopped with my hand on the doorknob, thoughtfully thinking over his question before answering.
“You did.”
“I did? No,” he said quickly so that I looked at him as we walked down the hallway. He shook his head emphatically. “I wouldn’t tell you to toss those letters on the fire, not after all the trouble I went to to track those nasty little brats down. ‘S all you.”
I shrugged in response as he looked at me.
“You act a bit queer sometimes so I never know what it is you’re going to do next. Do you have any plans for--”
“For Mr. Holmes? I have a few ideas,” I said quickly as he smiled at me, a sharp, predatorial grin that spoke of blood.
“I gotta admit, Professor. I like it better this way,” he said as we stepped outside into the cool night air.
I turned to him, slightly amused. “Oh? Why is that?”
“Something more satisfying in doing it yourself. Letting them rot in prison is all well and good, but to have them in your hands…” he trailed off. I could see the merits, too.
As a carriage rolled past us as we walked, I wondered at what sort of letters a man like Sebastian Moran could produce and smiled to myself.
-----
“Why did you not write to me, Watson? I was expecting--”
“Wait, hold on,” I said, holding my hand up as though that might stop his onslaught. He continued speaking in a rapid-fire way, leading me to believe that he might have taken something I would frown upon before my arrival. I could hardly understand him.
“You were to write me and you did not and I can tell by your clothing that you have not been overly busy nor have you had many patients and I--”
“Stop it, Holmes,” I said, sinking into the free seat as he watched me, eyes trailing my every movement. I reached for the nearest paper, found it to be a month old, hesitated, then decided it would be better than nothing and began to look it over, feeling his eyes burning a hole through the sheets.
I was not lost long in my reading as his bow tore through the paper, knocking it to the ground. “It was your idea in the very first, Watson, and I’ll have you know that sort of thing does not come…easily to me.”
“As I had noticed,” I sniffed, holding portions of the paper that had torn free from his attack. I sighed and lowered my arms, meeting his gaze. “But I tell you, Holmes, that I did write to you. And besides, I can’t see why you’re so agitated about it. You only wrote me the one time, and--”
Holmes frowned, up in his seat at that as he had slouched back into his natural lazy position when without a case. “I wrote you three different times, Watson. Three. Surely you miscounted.”
I was irked. “One, two, three. I know basic maths, Holmes. There was only the one and--it is on me, here, actually. Wait a moment,” I said, and I rummaged in my breast pocket, pulling out the neat little square.
Holmes instantly plucked it away from me, much to my protestation and he quickly unfolded it, eyes scanning the paper quickly as though he might be able to read it. He was satisfied, and made to crumple it up before I rescued it from him, annoyed and smoothing it out before folding it back as it was and replacing it to its safe hold.
He quirked a smile at this. “You carry it around, do you? Carry all of them? How absurd.”
“Of course I carry it around, Holmes; that is what people do with these sorts of things, though I admit I don’t carry all of them on my person at all times. It is a common practice.”
“Though I hardly think most of the letters doting women carry around are half as filty as that,” he said pointedly with a careless gesture, sniffing at the thought while I flushed.
“Yes, well, you might be surprised--ahem. As to the letters…what do you think happened to them?”
“Hopefully? Lost in the post. If not…well…we might have to look at someone intercepting them,” he said, steepling his fingers together as I fought down a point of nervousness welling within my stomach.
“We should be fine…right?” I asked hesitantly. He slid me a glance.
“I don’t think we should worry, unless someone can crack my code,” he said with a vain little grin, yet I couldn’t help mirroring back his expression.
Of course he was right.
Unless the fellow (or, I suppose, woman) who had stumbled upon our letter had a great deal of patience and time to devote upon his find, our secret was to remain rather safe.
-----
“I got the letters, Professor!”
He was triumphant as he returned to the hotel room--my hotel room--fistful of envelopes soon deposited on my desk. I hadn’t thought it would be difficult. It was well-known (to me, at least), that Mr. Holmes often used unsavoury characters, dock-workers and children of the street and the like, to produce and collect information.
Two could certainly play that game, and once I had found some half-starved children who were either not already in his employ or willing to be bought out, well, the rest was easy.
“Thank-you, Sebastian,” I said, waving the man away. He lingered anyway, as I knew he would. His curiosity stopped him from immediately obeying me, which I tolerated in him alone.
I slid the sharp edge of my opener along the envelope, carefully slicing it open to retrieve the letter inside.
“It’s a buncha gobbledygook,” he said, dismayed. I smiled.
I knew he would say that.
“Not quite.”
“Is it code, then?”
He was a quick one.
“I believe so, yes. Once I have the code, however, I should hopefully be able to read all of them. I doubt very sincerely that Mr. Holmes will have made separate codes for each batch of letters. I wouldn’t think he would contemplate his messages ever being intercepted in the first.”
“Ah. Well. I’ll leave you to it, then,” Sebastian said, quickly excusing himself from the whole mess as he plopped down in the long sofa a short distance away, picking up a paper I debated telling him was old before deciding against it.
He began to hum quietly to himself, flicking through the pages while allowing me to pore over the work.
It shouldn’t be too long, surely.
-----
It was longer than I had expected.
Nearly two hours had passed and I’d fallen into a short doze, stretched out comfortably in the seat. Now that I’d gotten used to what the professor could afford, I didn’t know if I could ever go back to what I had been managing before I met him. I could have gladly used the sofa for a bed, even; it felt like heaven in comparison to the digs I had been accustomed to before him.
I yawned, stretching slightly as I rustled the paper before dropping it lazily--messily--to the floor. “You still in here?” I asked, not bothering to glance over to check. When he didn’t answer me I did look over, frowning at his appearance.
His brow was drawn down in deep concentration, and I could see a look of unmasked fury upon his face. It was the sort of look I got when something important slipped through my fingers and I could only watch it go. Didn’t happen often, but when it did…
“Professor? You still at that puzzle?”
He gave me a look of quick, unbridled rage. I sat up.
His collar was undone, he had a glass of what looked like whiskey close at hand…
A few cigarettes, stubbed out angrily into an ash tray. He looked altogether…tense.
“You need a walk, Professor? We could do that.”
“I do not need a walk, Sebastian,” he said, every syllable pronounced slowly, evenly. It was a dangerous sign, but I wasn’t so worried. “I need to figure out this code.”
“Could clear your head,” I said helpfully. “Make you see things differently.”
“No.”
“All right then,” I said amiably. “We gonna sit here all night, then? Like this?”
“I do not care what you do,” he said dismissively, already immersed in the letters once more. “I only needed you to collect the letters, which you have done. Everything after that point is unnecessary.”
I was slightly stung at his dismissal but chalked it up to his frustration at being unable to penetrate the code. “How far is it you’ve gotten?”
I knew better than to wander over to the man at this stage. To get within reach of him. In some, frustration turns very easily into violence.
The professor was one of these men.
He rubbed at his brow in agitation, removing the spectacles he used sometimes to help him better read, shutting his eyes for a moment as he exhaled. “For a brief point I thought myself quite far until it all fell apart. I am largely at the beginning, Sebastian, and your questions are only hindering me.”
I decided it would be best to leave before he threw me out, perhaps physically.
“Riiight…well. I’ll be off, then…unless you need anything…?”
“If I need you, I will let you know,” he said curtly, giving me a brief wave of his hand to note that he was done with me until further notice. I scuttled out of the room.
It was raining outside; a cold, hard rain that pierced through me. I blinked back the water, staring up at the sky for a moment and contemplating going back to retrieve my umbrella before nixing the idea. I’d leave the professor alone--it would do him some good.
Besides, a little rain hardly hurt anyone.
I turned up my collar and dug my hands into my pockets, hunkering in on myself as I wandered aimlessly, traversing the streets and perusing the wares of various vendors.
With nothing to do I found myself a little bored, as I always was when there was a lull in activity, and I remedied it in the same fashion every time. I roamed free, sometimes walking for hours with no set purpose other than to blend into the crowd and lose myself in order to pass time.
Often I played this game wherein I mentally assassinated a chosen target, using a variety of weapons upon them. If that didn’t work, I chose to follow someone at random and see where it took me. I had never had someone discover me stealthily tracking their every move a few paces behind them, and it served for a welcome distraction from what little was offered to me at the moment.
So it was that I found myself tailing after a young fellow, almost automatically, and when he turned the corner up ahead I turned only a few paces behind him, whistling quietly to myself with my hands in my pockets.
-----
And then I had it cracked.
Something within me just clicked and it all made sense so that I was furiously scrambling to copy it all down, lest I forget what it was that I had realised in the first. Soon I had mirrored the two men’s writing with my own, thinking only of the letters and not of the messages within until I had them before me.
A moment of doubt. I had simply assumed that these would be what I was looking for, but what if Holmes had chosen to write of something else? I had no need for details of a case!
Quickly, I perused the papers before me. My eye caught the doctor’s example first and I skimmed through it hastily.
Long to have you here before me…Good, yes, but not good enough. Would take more than that. Come on! Your eyes alight, skin covered in a light sheen of sweat…Better!
Splayed before me, fists grasping the sheets as you softly said my name. It is like a choir to me, a hymn…
The doctor went on.
I turned my attention to Holmes’s, bewildered at first by it. Certainly the doctor’s would be useful in courtroom procedures, but the true treasure lie in the detective’s writing. What I had gathered--what I had suspected--was that the two of them were writing letters to one another. Hoped, even. Something I could use against the two of them.
Here it was before me.
I knew that lovers often did this. I had no use of it. I thought it…stupid. Insincere. No matter how you might feel for someone, I doubted highly that you thought of them like a-a spring flower or something of the like. It was a silly little courtship ritual, and men and women (or…men and men, I suppose in this instance) danced around with it.
Always poetry and little hidden meanings, or perhaps more explicitly (as with the doctor’s) but still somewhat tender in nature.
Holmes’s was…different. Probably, in all fairness, a good deal like what mine would be like should I attempt it. It was clinical in nature and stated precisely what he wanted, what it would be like, what Doctor Watson could expect to feel, physically (bother the mentality or emotional state that followed), and how that would be.
It was perfect. It was like a written confession. It was beautiful. Certainly he might claim that I could not prove he had done it, given that his original letters were in code, but one could always find documents of his and compare the likeness in penmanship.
I was cheered by my good luck and wished to exclaim over what I had found only to see that the room was empty. Right. Sebastian had gone…oh. Hours ago, now.
I was frustrated. The man seemed never to be here when I needed him, and always here when I did not want him.
I tapped my pen in annoyance against the desk before deciding to fetch myself a drink.
-----
I was waiting for him when he returned, shutting the door in an unobtrusive manner.
“You’re wet,” I said, and he jumped ever so slightly at my voice, dripping all across the floor as he moved toward the sofa. “Ah! You’re not going to get my seat wet. No.”
He had nearly sat down when I spoke my command and then awkwardly fidgeted before removing his coat and moving to the coat rack, placing it upon it before making his way back toward me.
“You sound in a better mood, professor. Got it solved, then?”
“I do,” I said, bored. My enthusiasm had worn off in his absence. The thrill of the puzzle was gone. I needed something else to do.
“What’s it say?” he asked, and I handed it to him, allowing him to read my copies. “Smut, is what it is! Smut. …Seen worse, though.”
I raised my brow at this.
“Or better.”
“Which is it?” I asked.
“Dunno. Not sure,” he said with a faint grin before handing it back to me. “So what’re you plannin’ on doin’ with all this?”
“Gaols seem eager with this sort of thing. It’ll net them a few years at least, and a lot of things can happen in prison,” I said, and he mirrored my wicked grin.
He had produced an apple that he had no doubt palmed from his jacket and as I tapped my fingers on the desk he bit into it, gesturing to the letters as I frowned in distaste at him.
“You gonna do that tomorrow, then?”
“You shouldn’t buy fruit from street vendors, Sebastian. You don’t know where it’s been.”
“That doesn’t answer my question. And it tastes fine. Wanna bite?”
I answered his question with a scowl. He shrugged and bit in instead. “Perhaps tomorrow. We’ll see.”
“I got something for you. While I was out.”
“Hm?” I was sceptical. One could never tell what it was with Sebastian. He was a great deal like a cat bringing back mutilated sparrow corpses--he thought it made for a great gift; I did not.
He set the apple on my desk, ignoring my look as he reached into his breast pocket, removing two tickets. To an opera show, no doubt.
“Tonight. They still had some left over, hm? Thought you might wanna go. I was gonna badger you out, away from this, but now that you got it done it’ll just be a night out instead.”
“The opera being…?”
“The Barber of Seville. I’ve never seen it, myself. Never had much time for, er, opera.”
I frowned. I had seen The Barber of Seville enough times to dislike it. It was like reading the same passage over and over again--familiarity breeds contempt.
The cat brings back a sparrow.
“The Barber of Seville. A man uses a wealth of disguises to make certain the woman he loves loves him for himself and not his money’s sake. I’m familiar with the opera, Sebastian.”
“Ah,” he said, and I read his face like a book. He was disappointed. He did not quite show it, but all the signs I’d accustomed myself to were there. His brow had furrowed just slightly before smoothing itself out once more, his lips had twitched downward ever-so-slightly, and his voice had lowered a degree. Only just notable.
“Well. It was a suggestion. Sounds a bit silly, hm? We get enough of that disguising business chasing around after Mr. Holmes.”
I rolled my eyes at the very mention of Holmes. Indeed. I couldn’t agree more. Still…
I rose, moving around the desk to him and staying his hand as he made to put the tickets away. “Should we go to dinner before or after?”
“You want to go?” he asked sceptically. Suspiciously. Seems he could read me just as well as I could him.
I didn’t know whether I liked that or not.
“Of course. The Barber of Seville is one of my favourites,” I said, holding back a wince. No doubt I would live to regret saying this, but I couldn’t help smiling fractionally at the pleased expression that flickered across his face.
He had tried, at least. I suppose that was what mattered.
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yes. What an enigma I am,” I said, moving his apple to the trash with some distaste. “Now. Dinner before or after?”
“I’ve already eaten.”
“After it is, then,” I said, motioning him ahead of me. He moved like an eager dog and I glanced back at the letters on my desk, hesitating before I scooped them up and turned, throwing them into the fireplace and onto the guttering fire.
As flames ate at the letters they grew and Sebastian watched me quizzically in the doorway, head tilted slightly.
“Bit of a waste, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” I sighed.
“What made you do it?” he asked as I joined him, and he moved out into the hallway to allow me to lock the door. I stopped with my hand on the doorknob, thoughtfully thinking over his question before answering.
“You did.”
“I did? No,” he said quickly so that I looked at him as we walked down the hallway. He shook his head emphatically. “I wouldn’t tell you to toss those letters on the fire, not after all the trouble I went to to track those nasty little brats down. ‘S all you.”
I shrugged in response as he looked at me.
“You act a bit queer sometimes so I never know what it is you’re going to do next. Do you have any plans for--”
“For Mr. Holmes? I have a few ideas,” I said quickly as he smiled at me, a sharp, predatorial grin that spoke of blood.
“I gotta admit, Professor. I like it better this way,” he said as we stepped outside into the cool night air.
I turned to him, slightly amused. “Oh? Why is that?”
“Something more satisfying in doing it yourself. Letting them rot in prison is all well and good, but to have them in your hands…” he trailed off. I could see the merits, too.
As a carriage rolled past us as we walked, I wondered at what sort of letters a man like Sebastian Moran could produce and smiled to myself.
-----