Fic for autumnatmidnite: "Howl"
Title: Howl
Recipient: autumnatmidnite
Author: Sherlockholmes
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Lestrade, Sebastian Moran, John Watson.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Some graphic violence. Werewolves
Summary: A retelling of The Empty House. With Werewolves. Special thanks to D. Martin Dakin for noticing the inaccuracies in Sherlock’s “grand hiatus” story, as well as C. Alan Bradley & William A. S. Sarjeant for their insight. musamihi for being my ever-faithful cheerleader and beta-reader and buckybear for her enthusiasm -- and for giving my practice, writing for Watson.
-------
My life had changed significantly since that fated day in the shadow of a Swiss waterfall, and though my practice on Kensington Street continued to flourish, the loss of my dear friend Sherlock Holmes was always deeply felt. I am not entirely sure if I say with pride or with fear that the impact he had on my life and, indeed, the influence he held over it ceased on that day he vanished beneath the rising mists. It seemed that even without the direct encouragement of the world’s greatest detective, I found myself drawn to reports of crime in the papers. I’d mull over the stories and statements, pondering what questions Holmes might ask and attempting to theorise -- or at least, to decide whether or not enough data had been provided on which to theorise, which was always more often the case.
While I lacked my friend’s astute ability to observe, I was not without my own talent to notice -- and the gruesome tragedy of Ronald Adair, when it first appeared in the papers, was the most horrible and horrendous murder I’d ever seen in print, and I say this as a man who has penned accounts of a few alarmingly unsettling crimes himself.
Adair, the second son of the Earl of Maynooth, had returned from the Australian colonies where his father was governor. His mother, I read, was to receive a cataract operation and the two were living together on Park street, awaiting the procedure. By all accounts, Adair moved with the best of society, he had no known enemies and no debts that he could not pay. It was a shock to everyone when on the morning of the 21st of March 1894, the papers ran a story about his ungodly, brutal demise the night before.
So grotesque were the details of how the body was found that I was positive the poor journalists writing the story did so with delicacy to preserve the breakfast of the reader. But even I, after all the atrocities I’d seen in Afghanistan and the surgeries I preformed, had to push away my eggs at the thought of poor Ronald’s earthly remains.
He was found in the alley beside his Park street address, his limbs appeared not severed but torn from his body; his neck wrenched so far around that while he lay on his back, his face was on the ground. His purse and impressive gold timepiece were both found intact on the body and so it was clear the motive was not murder. By the time I finished reading, I was positive that the entirety of Scotland Yard was at a loss when it came to identifying not only a suspect -- but any man capable at all of the strength and brutality required to tear a man limb from limb as was done behind a quiet London street. Not for the first time did I lament the fact that the genius and abilities of my dear friend Sherlock Holmes were lost to us. There was simply no doubt in my mind that were he here to absorb the facts of this curious case he would come to some solution.
I cannot say with any honesty that my distress surrounding Sherlock’s death was unselfish. I lost the truest friend that I had ever known and that prayed upon my heart. At inopportune moments, perhaps a certain tobacco scent while I dined at my club, or the otherworldly sound of a distant, well-caressed violin, and I would feel my chest tighten. The world lost a great man, of course, and I was sure it was felt most during troubles such as these, but I always missed him most because of what he meant to me.
***
“Hello, Doctor.”
When the knock came at the door, shaking me from my memories, I had first thought I’d only imagined it. It was far too late for any appointment to come and I hadn’t expected any guests at all. That meant, of course, the possibility of an emergency and so when the knock came again, I hurried to my feet and rushed to the front door. I opened it quickly and was surprised to see the very familiar face of a man I hadn’t seen in nearly three years -- not since the funeral that we’d held in Holmes’ honour.
Inspector Lestrade looked as surprised to be on my doorstep as I was to see him there. He lifted his hat from his head, but made no move to step past the threshold. Instead, he followed his quick greeting with an immediate statement of his purpose. “I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the Adair business entirely, and I have to say, I can’t remember the last time the Yard was quite as puzzled as she is tonight.”
Listening to Lestrade, I felt the familiar pressure in my chest and that sense that something important was missing. I couldn’t imagine that the Inspector had come for any reason beyond the fact he’d nowhere else to to go. Baker Street used to be that place and Lestrade had always been welcome and I wish I had more to offer him now than a confounded expression and an eagerness to listen.
“We know you’re not --” Lestrade took a breath and lowered his eyes to the doorframe between us for a moment, as if to reconsider what he was about to say. “Well, Dr. Watson, it’s just that as I said, we’ve never seen anything like this and we were wondering if perhaps -- well, we’d like you to have a look at Adair’s body, see if you -- if there is anything.”
I could not refuse. It took but a moment for me to collect a medical bag and my coat before I followed Lestrade down the front walk of my home and climbed, with him, into a cab.
“Is there anything else I should know, Inspector? I did read the papers, but if there was something withheld-- No theories, just -- if there is any information.”
Lestrade dragged his hand down his face, squeezing his jaw and giving it a rough rub as he considered what it was he needed to say to me. “ Ronald Adair was fond of cards-playing continually, but never for such stakes as would hurt him so much, and because there was no robbery, we weren’t thinking he owed someone something he wasn’t willing to pay, but he was a member of the Baldwin, the Cavendish, and the Bagatelle card clubs. I sent the boys around, and they came back to me with this: last night he was in Bagatelle playing with Albert Murray, Sir John Hardy and Colonel Sebastian Moran. We’ve since spoken to Murray and Hardy, but Moran hasn’t turned up at the address the club gave us.”
“Is he a suspect?”
“He will be if he stays disappeared,” Lestrade said with a sneer. I imagined, as the Inspector did, that it was near impossible to imagine one man capable of such a crime but if he remained hidden, it was almost as good as an admission of guilt.
***
The remains of Ronald Adair were being kept in the basement mortuary in Southwark, and while I could think of nothing I wanted less than seeing the man whose murder had been so chillingly described, I felt it was my duty to help in any way that I was able. I didn’t think that I would manage any great insight that the other doctors had missed, but I was determined to try my best.
Lestrade led the way to the examination table and pulled back the stained sheet before I had time to either protest or gather my nerves. The grimace on Lestrade’s face said he felt much as I did, now looking down at Adair’s mangled and destroyed body. I swallowed down what I was sure was bile rising from my stomach and leaned in to investigate the shoulder socket that was now devoid of an arm.
Staring into the ravaged sinew and flesh, to my horror I realised that this was an injury quite like one that I had seen before. There had been, while I was in Afghanistan, trouble with a tiger that had taken to stalking our camps at night, seeking out scraps of food left behind, and on one occasion a soldier who was not quite fast enough to avoid her claws. We managed to take the beast down and save his life, but not his arm.
Still, there were no tigers in London and suggesting as much to Lestrade seemed as ridiculous a notion as ever there was one. Much to the disappointment of us both, I could say nothing more than the fact Adair had been alive when his limbs were torn away and that he’d died from his injuries.
And died horribly.
***
I returned to Kensington street more confounded than I’d left it, and as angry as I was at myself for not being able to assist Lestrade -- for not being more like the man that the Inspector had hoped I’d be -- I was just as equally exhausted. I wasn’t even able to finish the Scotch I’d poured for myself before drifting away before the fireplace, and I slept almost soundly until a rock went through my front window.
The crash of the glass had me stumble groggily to my feet. “What -- who is it, who is there?”
I nearly tripped over my slippers as I threw myself towards my bureau to collect my trusted sidearm just as I witnessed the dark figure throw up the window frame and climb across the shards to enter my home. My pistol, I quickly realised, was not loaded. I had removed the bullets a few days prior and had not returned them. I only noticed then because I could hear them rolling around in my bloody bureau drawer. I prayed that the intruder didn’t recognise that sound for what it was.
“I tell you, stop now. I’m armed!”
“And not particularly dangerous, I should hope, my old friend.”
“I say, What--who--” I stammered. There was something both so familiar and at once impossible about that voice that I could feel a shiver run itself out across my back as though someone had thrown water upon my spine. I knew at once who it had to, and simply could not be.
The intruder took a laboured step forward, a practical limp, as he moved into the circle of light cast by the dying fire. I could make out the shine of open wounds at once -- my work in the army had taught me enough to recognise blood in any light. Then my eyes travelled to his face, white as ivory and growing paler. It was Holmes. It could be no one else.
“It can’t be.” I gasped, pointing at him as dozens of questions and confused thoughts crammed against each other in my mind. “You’re dead! You’re--”
“No, not just yet, I’m afraid.” He winced with another step forward. “But very likely I will be, unless you give me assistance, Watson.”
Under different circumstances, I’m sure I may have fainted dead away upon the reappearance of Holmes, but as he was in dire need of medical help, something in me overpowered the sturdiness of my legs. I reached out and put my hand on my friend’s arm, but he flinched and pulled away.
“Do be careful, Watson,” he murmured, putting his hand out to stop me from advancing before he slowly started to slide his shredded coat from his shoulders. His injuries were incredibly severe, far worse than I realised, but in the lack of sufficient light, the more of his shoulder that he revealed, the more it looked as though it was barely there at all. I watched, unsure what I ought to do to help, as he finally managed out of his Ulster. From one of the pockets a pistol dropped with a heavy thud and I stopped staring at the wreck of his arm to bend and retrieve it almost automatically. I examined it for a moment, perhaps because my subconscious craved respite. After all, seeing a man believed dead for three years bleed into the upholstery was a great deal for any mind to handle. Revolvers however, those I knew and those I understood but this one seemed unfamiliar somehow. It wasn’t how it looked, but the weight of it that seemed off, it felt lighter than it out to loaded, but not quite the way it should if it wasn’t. I pushed out the chamber and turned it into my hand. Two remaining bullets dropped into my hand. Silver?
A pained hiss from Holmes brought my back to my senses and I let the strange bullets tumble to a side table before taking my old friend’s arm to help ease him into my armchair. The light was better, close to the fireplace, but the damage remained indescribable. Reluctant as I was to leave his side, perhaps thinking that he might vanish once again if I were to turn my back, I had no choice but to collect a lamp and my medical bag.
Once I had acquired what I needed, I wasted no time before going to work. I cut away what remained of his shirt and cleaned away the blood from his shoulder to get a better look at what had happened to him. The more I cleaned away, the more I was reminded of the incident of the tiger. I pleaded that he let me dress the wound and take him to a hospital but he wasn’t about to entertain the thought. He explained haughtily that it was either I stitch up the mangled arm or he would bleed to death in my favourite armchair.
It took well over an hour to get Holmes sewn up. My back ached from being hunched over the vicious injury. I had given my friend a dose of morphine to keep him dosed as I stretched and stitched together his skin. As I worked, I kept asking Holmes questions in an effort to make sure he was at least somewhat responsive, and to sate my own curiosity as how he’d come through my window after three years of being believed by me to be dead.
When he was able to speak, he explained that he’d travelled for two years in Tibet, visited the Lhassa and spent a number of days with the head Lama. He passed through Persia, mentioned musings in Mecca and saw the Khalifa at Khartoum, there was talk of concerts in Paris and apiculture in Montpelier -- Of course not a bloody word of it made any sense. He looked to me, even in the warm light of the fireplace, to be far thinner and paler than when I’d last seen him, and being a man who knew first hand what the sun was like in Iran and Arabia I suspected that if his story were true, he’d be far more tanned and fit. Nor could Holmes have visited the Khalifa in Khartoum, seeing as he’d left there for Omdurman in 1885, but I dismissed his tales as the results of his injuries and resolved myself to question him once more in the morning. I left him to rest in my chair, changed out of of my ruined and blood-soaked clothing and made for myself a hot cup of coffee to wait over him until morning.
***
By ten o’clock the next morning, I’d switched my coffee for brandy and was quite satisfied to drift in and out of near sleep until a moan from Holmes brought me to my senses completely and I rose from my position on the sofa to attend his needs.
“Good God, Watson.” His voice cracked as he tried once to rise from the chair and gave up. He was far too weak and it pained me to see him in such a state, and I wanted more than anything to give him something to ease his suffering, but now that he was lucid I knew I had to take the opportunity to find out what had happened the night before. (And perhaps, in hindsight, my morning’s dose of liquor had made me a bit brasher than I otherwise would have been.)
“What’s happened to you, Holmes?”
He looked at me, his features growing sharper and even with my untrained eye I could see that he was debating whether or not to reveal anything.
“You went on already about the bloody Llama and bees in Montpelier last night and I knew better than to believe a word of it, so if you don’t mind -- I’d like the truth, or nothing at all.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said, after another heartbeat’s pause. “I meant, of course, to reunite with you under better circumstances. I had it all rather planned out, involving a disguise as a bookseller and --”
“Holmes, there is a dose of morphine at the end of this, if you’ll please just tell me what’s happened.”
“I’ve been in Wales.”
“What in the name of all that’s unholy--” I began, cut short as Holmes continued.
“It’s a tale harder to believe than any lie I tried to tell you last night, Watson,” he lamented, as though this excused his fabricated trek to Tibet. “But if it is the truth that you want, I beg you to listen. It would seem that Professor Moriarty’s study of astronomy was not limited completely to the scientific. In his notes that I uncovered before meeting with him at Switzerland, I uncovered a great deal about lunar cycles, and number of stories concerning Beast of Gévaudan. It seems that our dear friend the professor -- “
“Friend.”
“That our dear friend the professor was quite interested in lycanthropy.”
Werewolves. I laughed in spite of myself. Of course, I’d heard plenty of these types of legends or variations thereof, particularly in India where stories of man-tigers were quite common, but a glance at Holmes told me that my humour was ill-timed, and I sat down on the ledge in front of the fireplace quite somberly. “I’m sure you’re not serious.”
“I’m afraid I am. I did not believe it at first, how could I? But when I confronted him before his fatal tumble onto the rocks beneath Reichenbach falls, he told me about the cursed man that he’d become acquainted with -- the Colonel Sebastian Moran.”
“Moran!” At once I remembered everything that Lestrade had told me about the untimely death of Ronald Adair. I hadn’t realised it last night, so taken in by the moment, but my friend’s horrible wounds did quite resemble those of Adair’s. “Do you mean to tell me that Sebastian Moran is -- “
“Was,” Holmes said with a subtle glance towards the strange bullets that rested where I’d dropped them the night before. “Moran is dead, I saw to that myself, unfortunately I did not remain as unscathed as I’d hoped I would. I’ve been tracking him for these three years, through Scotland, the north and finally Wales. It was only three weeks ago that I learned he’d finally returned to London. I imagine to collect what remained of Moriarty’s fortune that he could. I’m quite sorry about what happened to poor Ronald Adair, but in a way -- in a way, perhaps he was lucky.”
“Lucky?” I scoffed, “to die such as he did?”
“To die.” Holmes turned his gaze past me, looking into the dying embers of the fireplace. “Lycanthropy is a disease, my friend, passed via the saliva of one infected into the bloodstream of another by way of a bite during the full moon.”
“The full moon? But that was...”
Holmes looked at me. “Yes. I know.”
***
Recipient: autumnatmidnite
Author: Sherlockholmes
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Lestrade, Sebastian Moran, John Watson.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Some graphic violence. Werewolves
Summary: A retelling of The Empty House. With Werewolves. Special thanks to D. Martin Dakin for noticing the inaccuracies in Sherlock’s “grand hiatus” story, as well as C. Alan Bradley & William A. S. Sarjeant for their insight. musamihi for being my ever-faithful cheerleader and beta-reader and buckybear for her enthusiasm -- and for giving my practice, writing for Watson.
-------
My life had changed significantly since that fated day in the shadow of a Swiss waterfall, and though my practice on Kensington Street continued to flourish, the loss of my dear friend Sherlock Holmes was always deeply felt. I am not entirely sure if I say with pride or with fear that the impact he had on my life and, indeed, the influence he held over it ceased on that day he vanished beneath the rising mists. It seemed that even without the direct encouragement of the world’s greatest detective, I found myself drawn to reports of crime in the papers. I’d mull over the stories and statements, pondering what questions Holmes might ask and attempting to theorise -- or at least, to decide whether or not enough data had been provided on which to theorise, which was always more often the case.
While I lacked my friend’s astute ability to observe, I was not without my own talent to notice -- and the gruesome tragedy of Ronald Adair, when it first appeared in the papers, was the most horrible and horrendous murder I’d ever seen in print, and I say this as a man who has penned accounts of a few alarmingly unsettling crimes himself.
Adair, the second son of the Earl of Maynooth, had returned from the Australian colonies where his father was governor. His mother, I read, was to receive a cataract operation and the two were living together on Park street, awaiting the procedure. By all accounts, Adair moved with the best of society, he had no known enemies and no debts that he could not pay. It was a shock to everyone when on the morning of the 21st of March 1894, the papers ran a story about his ungodly, brutal demise the night before.
So grotesque were the details of how the body was found that I was positive the poor journalists writing the story did so with delicacy to preserve the breakfast of the reader. But even I, after all the atrocities I’d seen in Afghanistan and the surgeries I preformed, had to push away my eggs at the thought of poor Ronald’s earthly remains.
He was found in the alley beside his Park street address, his limbs appeared not severed but torn from his body; his neck wrenched so far around that while he lay on his back, his face was on the ground. His purse and impressive gold timepiece were both found intact on the body and so it was clear the motive was not murder. By the time I finished reading, I was positive that the entirety of Scotland Yard was at a loss when it came to identifying not only a suspect -- but any man capable at all of the strength and brutality required to tear a man limb from limb as was done behind a quiet London street. Not for the first time did I lament the fact that the genius and abilities of my dear friend Sherlock Holmes were lost to us. There was simply no doubt in my mind that were he here to absorb the facts of this curious case he would come to some solution.
I cannot say with any honesty that my distress surrounding Sherlock’s death was unselfish. I lost the truest friend that I had ever known and that prayed upon my heart. At inopportune moments, perhaps a certain tobacco scent while I dined at my club, or the otherworldly sound of a distant, well-caressed violin, and I would feel my chest tighten. The world lost a great man, of course, and I was sure it was felt most during troubles such as these, but I always missed him most because of what he meant to me.
***
“Hello, Doctor.”
When the knock came at the door, shaking me from my memories, I had first thought I’d only imagined it. It was far too late for any appointment to come and I hadn’t expected any guests at all. That meant, of course, the possibility of an emergency and so when the knock came again, I hurried to my feet and rushed to the front door. I opened it quickly and was surprised to see the very familiar face of a man I hadn’t seen in nearly three years -- not since the funeral that we’d held in Holmes’ honour.
Inspector Lestrade looked as surprised to be on my doorstep as I was to see him there. He lifted his hat from his head, but made no move to step past the threshold. Instead, he followed his quick greeting with an immediate statement of his purpose. “I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the Adair business entirely, and I have to say, I can’t remember the last time the Yard was quite as puzzled as she is tonight.”
Listening to Lestrade, I felt the familiar pressure in my chest and that sense that something important was missing. I couldn’t imagine that the Inspector had come for any reason beyond the fact he’d nowhere else to to go. Baker Street used to be that place and Lestrade had always been welcome and I wish I had more to offer him now than a confounded expression and an eagerness to listen.
“We know you’re not --” Lestrade took a breath and lowered his eyes to the doorframe between us for a moment, as if to reconsider what he was about to say. “Well, Dr. Watson, it’s just that as I said, we’ve never seen anything like this and we were wondering if perhaps -- well, we’d like you to have a look at Adair’s body, see if you -- if there is anything.”
I could not refuse. It took but a moment for me to collect a medical bag and my coat before I followed Lestrade down the front walk of my home and climbed, with him, into a cab.
“Is there anything else I should know, Inspector? I did read the papers, but if there was something withheld-- No theories, just -- if there is any information.”
Lestrade dragged his hand down his face, squeezing his jaw and giving it a rough rub as he considered what it was he needed to say to me. “ Ronald Adair was fond of cards-playing continually, but never for such stakes as would hurt him so much, and because there was no robbery, we weren’t thinking he owed someone something he wasn’t willing to pay, but he was a member of the Baldwin, the Cavendish, and the Bagatelle card clubs. I sent the boys around, and they came back to me with this: last night he was in Bagatelle playing with Albert Murray, Sir John Hardy and Colonel Sebastian Moran. We’ve since spoken to Murray and Hardy, but Moran hasn’t turned up at the address the club gave us.”
“Is he a suspect?”
“He will be if he stays disappeared,” Lestrade said with a sneer. I imagined, as the Inspector did, that it was near impossible to imagine one man capable of such a crime but if he remained hidden, it was almost as good as an admission of guilt.
***
The remains of Ronald Adair were being kept in the basement mortuary in Southwark, and while I could think of nothing I wanted less than seeing the man whose murder had been so chillingly described, I felt it was my duty to help in any way that I was able. I didn’t think that I would manage any great insight that the other doctors had missed, but I was determined to try my best.
Lestrade led the way to the examination table and pulled back the stained sheet before I had time to either protest or gather my nerves. The grimace on Lestrade’s face said he felt much as I did, now looking down at Adair’s mangled and destroyed body. I swallowed down what I was sure was bile rising from my stomach and leaned in to investigate the shoulder socket that was now devoid of an arm.
Staring into the ravaged sinew and flesh, to my horror I realised that this was an injury quite like one that I had seen before. There had been, while I was in Afghanistan, trouble with a tiger that had taken to stalking our camps at night, seeking out scraps of food left behind, and on one occasion a soldier who was not quite fast enough to avoid her claws. We managed to take the beast down and save his life, but not his arm.
Still, there were no tigers in London and suggesting as much to Lestrade seemed as ridiculous a notion as ever there was one. Much to the disappointment of us both, I could say nothing more than the fact Adair had been alive when his limbs were torn away and that he’d died from his injuries.
And died horribly.
***
I returned to Kensington street more confounded than I’d left it, and as angry as I was at myself for not being able to assist Lestrade -- for not being more like the man that the Inspector had hoped I’d be -- I was just as equally exhausted. I wasn’t even able to finish the Scotch I’d poured for myself before drifting away before the fireplace, and I slept almost soundly until a rock went through my front window.
The crash of the glass had me stumble groggily to my feet. “What -- who is it, who is there?”
I nearly tripped over my slippers as I threw myself towards my bureau to collect my trusted sidearm just as I witnessed the dark figure throw up the window frame and climb across the shards to enter my home. My pistol, I quickly realised, was not loaded. I had removed the bullets a few days prior and had not returned them. I only noticed then because I could hear them rolling around in my bloody bureau drawer. I prayed that the intruder didn’t recognise that sound for what it was.
“I tell you, stop now. I’m armed!”
“And not particularly dangerous, I should hope, my old friend.”
“I say, What--who--” I stammered. There was something both so familiar and at once impossible about that voice that I could feel a shiver run itself out across my back as though someone had thrown water upon my spine. I knew at once who it had to, and simply could not be.
The intruder took a laboured step forward, a practical limp, as he moved into the circle of light cast by the dying fire. I could make out the shine of open wounds at once -- my work in the army had taught me enough to recognise blood in any light. Then my eyes travelled to his face, white as ivory and growing paler. It was Holmes. It could be no one else.
“It can’t be.” I gasped, pointing at him as dozens of questions and confused thoughts crammed against each other in my mind. “You’re dead! You’re--”
“No, not just yet, I’m afraid.” He winced with another step forward. “But very likely I will be, unless you give me assistance, Watson.”
Under different circumstances, I’m sure I may have fainted dead away upon the reappearance of Holmes, but as he was in dire need of medical help, something in me overpowered the sturdiness of my legs. I reached out and put my hand on my friend’s arm, but he flinched and pulled away.
“Do be careful, Watson,” he murmured, putting his hand out to stop me from advancing before he slowly started to slide his shredded coat from his shoulders. His injuries were incredibly severe, far worse than I realised, but in the lack of sufficient light, the more of his shoulder that he revealed, the more it looked as though it was barely there at all. I watched, unsure what I ought to do to help, as he finally managed out of his Ulster. From one of the pockets a pistol dropped with a heavy thud and I stopped staring at the wreck of his arm to bend and retrieve it almost automatically. I examined it for a moment, perhaps because my subconscious craved respite. After all, seeing a man believed dead for three years bleed into the upholstery was a great deal for any mind to handle. Revolvers however, those I knew and those I understood but this one seemed unfamiliar somehow. It wasn’t how it looked, but the weight of it that seemed off, it felt lighter than it out to loaded, but not quite the way it should if it wasn’t. I pushed out the chamber and turned it into my hand. Two remaining bullets dropped into my hand. Silver?
A pained hiss from Holmes brought my back to my senses and I let the strange bullets tumble to a side table before taking my old friend’s arm to help ease him into my armchair. The light was better, close to the fireplace, but the damage remained indescribable. Reluctant as I was to leave his side, perhaps thinking that he might vanish once again if I were to turn my back, I had no choice but to collect a lamp and my medical bag.
Once I had acquired what I needed, I wasted no time before going to work. I cut away what remained of his shirt and cleaned away the blood from his shoulder to get a better look at what had happened to him. The more I cleaned away, the more I was reminded of the incident of the tiger. I pleaded that he let me dress the wound and take him to a hospital but he wasn’t about to entertain the thought. He explained haughtily that it was either I stitch up the mangled arm or he would bleed to death in my favourite armchair.
It took well over an hour to get Holmes sewn up. My back ached from being hunched over the vicious injury. I had given my friend a dose of morphine to keep him dosed as I stretched and stitched together his skin. As I worked, I kept asking Holmes questions in an effort to make sure he was at least somewhat responsive, and to sate my own curiosity as how he’d come through my window after three years of being believed by me to be dead.
When he was able to speak, he explained that he’d travelled for two years in Tibet, visited the Lhassa and spent a number of days with the head Lama. He passed through Persia, mentioned musings in Mecca and saw the Khalifa at Khartoum, there was talk of concerts in Paris and apiculture in Montpelier -- Of course not a bloody word of it made any sense. He looked to me, even in the warm light of the fireplace, to be far thinner and paler than when I’d last seen him, and being a man who knew first hand what the sun was like in Iran and Arabia I suspected that if his story were true, he’d be far more tanned and fit. Nor could Holmes have visited the Khalifa in Khartoum, seeing as he’d left there for Omdurman in 1885, but I dismissed his tales as the results of his injuries and resolved myself to question him once more in the morning. I left him to rest in my chair, changed out of of my ruined and blood-soaked clothing and made for myself a hot cup of coffee to wait over him until morning.
***
By ten o’clock the next morning, I’d switched my coffee for brandy and was quite satisfied to drift in and out of near sleep until a moan from Holmes brought me to my senses completely and I rose from my position on the sofa to attend his needs.
“Good God, Watson.” His voice cracked as he tried once to rise from the chair and gave up. He was far too weak and it pained me to see him in such a state, and I wanted more than anything to give him something to ease his suffering, but now that he was lucid I knew I had to take the opportunity to find out what had happened the night before. (And perhaps, in hindsight, my morning’s dose of liquor had made me a bit brasher than I otherwise would have been.)
“What’s happened to you, Holmes?”
He looked at me, his features growing sharper and even with my untrained eye I could see that he was debating whether or not to reveal anything.
“You went on already about the bloody Llama and bees in Montpelier last night and I knew better than to believe a word of it, so if you don’t mind -- I’d like the truth, or nothing at all.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said, after another heartbeat’s pause. “I meant, of course, to reunite with you under better circumstances. I had it all rather planned out, involving a disguise as a bookseller and --”
“Holmes, there is a dose of morphine at the end of this, if you’ll please just tell me what’s happened.”
“I’ve been in Wales.”
“What in the name of all that’s unholy--” I began, cut short as Holmes continued.
“It’s a tale harder to believe than any lie I tried to tell you last night, Watson,” he lamented, as though this excused his fabricated trek to Tibet. “But if it is the truth that you want, I beg you to listen. It would seem that Professor Moriarty’s study of astronomy was not limited completely to the scientific. In his notes that I uncovered before meeting with him at Switzerland, I uncovered a great deal about lunar cycles, and number of stories concerning Beast of Gévaudan. It seems that our dear friend the professor -- “
“Friend.”
“That our dear friend the professor was quite interested in lycanthropy.”
Werewolves. I laughed in spite of myself. Of course, I’d heard plenty of these types of legends or variations thereof, particularly in India where stories of man-tigers were quite common, but a glance at Holmes told me that my humour was ill-timed, and I sat down on the ledge in front of the fireplace quite somberly. “I’m sure you’re not serious.”
“I’m afraid I am. I did not believe it at first, how could I? But when I confronted him before his fatal tumble onto the rocks beneath Reichenbach falls, he told me about the cursed man that he’d become acquainted with -- the Colonel Sebastian Moran.”
“Moran!” At once I remembered everything that Lestrade had told me about the untimely death of Ronald Adair. I hadn’t realised it last night, so taken in by the moment, but my friend’s horrible wounds did quite resemble those of Adair’s. “Do you mean to tell me that Sebastian Moran is -- “
“Was,” Holmes said with a subtle glance towards the strange bullets that rested where I’d dropped them the night before. “Moran is dead, I saw to that myself, unfortunately I did not remain as unscathed as I’d hoped I would. I’ve been tracking him for these three years, through Scotland, the north and finally Wales. It was only three weeks ago that I learned he’d finally returned to London. I imagine to collect what remained of Moriarty’s fortune that he could. I’m quite sorry about what happened to poor Ronald Adair, but in a way -- in a way, perhaps he was lucky.”
“Lucky?” I scoffed, “to die such as he did?”
“To die.” Holmes turned his gaze past me, looking into the dying embers of the fireplace. “Lycanthropy is a disease, my friend, passed via the saliva of one infected into the bloodstream of another by way of a bite during the full moon.”
“The full moon? But that was...”
Holmes looked at me. “Yes. I know.”
***