Fic for garonne: Someone at the scent of orange blossom
Title: Someone at the scent of orange blossom
Recipient: garonne
Author: rachelindeed
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, past John Watson/Mary Morstan
Rating: PG
Word Count 3,500 words
Warnings: none
Summary: During the years of Holmes’s absence, Watson’s hands had changed.
Author’s note: Many thanks to thesmallhobbit for the thoughtful beta. Happy holidays, garonne! I enjoy and admire your stories so much, it was really a thrill to have the opportunity to write a gift for you. You are an amazing author. I hope you enjoy this.
“Will someone,
at the scent of orange blossom
think of me
when I too
am a person of long ago?”
(Fujiwara no Shunzei)
1894
The manner in which I chose to stage my reappearance was unconscionable. I cannot say what I was thinking.
I flung off the guise of the old bookseller without hesitation. Watson turned, stared, and simply stopped. Recognition filled his eyes and I held them with fierce elation.
Then his expression emptied. His eyes rolled and his knees buckled. I was separated from him by the length of half a room; I could not break his fall. I could only watch, and the acceleration of my mind so far exceeded that of gravity that I had time to envisage the crack of his head against the chair, the glass-plated cabinet, or the bookshelves. I observed the desk’s beveled corners and the paperweight of spotted marble sitting near its edge. Murder weapons, all, if his head struck them.
His movement decided itself both too slowly and too soon. I watched him longer than seemed possible, yet it felt sudden when he vanished behind the desk. I heard the heavy thud as his body hit the floor. I could not see him. I could not see the line of the fender by the baseboards.
Ten months before, I had stood on a steep white staircase in Khartoum and stared down at the dried, brown blood that marked the spot where Gordon fell. Five years before, I had drawn Watson from new-wedded bliss to help me unravel the death of Colonel Barclay, who, as it turned out, had seen a man he’d long thought dead and promptly collapsed in his sitting room, cracking his head open on his way down.
I stood paralyzed for one long moment, too afraid to think.
Then I sprang forward and stumbled to him. I checked his pulse and respiration - strong - and scanned for any bloodstains - none. I cradled his slack face, ran my hands around his skull.
He was fine. Physically undamaged. I turned away from him briefly to allow my limbs their necessary tremors. Once my reaction passed, I loosened his collar and shifted him up and over into a chair, then uncorked my flask and wetted his lips with brandy.
When he revived, I offered him apologies and explanations, though not precisely the same ones as have since appeared in print. I received in turn full measures of joy and forgiveness.
But it was neither his joy nor forgiveness that revealed my heart to me. Looking back, I clearly perceive that it was those few minutes of isolated, unobserved terror that first forged the seeds of my marriage and planted them deep.
During the years of my death, Watson’s hands had changed.
I remarked upon it soon after my return. He had been finding time to visit Baker Street each evening. I carried a glass of port to him as he stood examining the pleasingly macabre remains of my wax bust with its decimated forehead. I had propped it in his armchair during his workaday absence. As he reached out I noted the raised ridge of his forefinger and the indentations pricked across the pad of his thumb. That pattern of calluses was unmistakable, or so I thought. I congratulated him on the great success he had made of his surgery.
His answering look, baffled and pained, undid me. He recovered himself, however, as quickly as ever.
"I am sorry to say it,” he answered lightly, “as it reflects but little credit on either of us, but if my surgery is your measure of success, you must certainly raise your expectations.”
I did not relish finding myself wrong-footed with him and was particularly chagrined to have stumbled across a sore point of both money and pride. I offered what excuse I could. “Pray forgive me, Watson. It was only that I observed the calluses on your hands, which seemed to indicate a great deal of time spent with needle and thread. I inferred that you had faced a heavy load of stitching at your operating table.”
He had turned to place his glass on the mantle above the fireplace. His shoulders telegraphed a sharply indrawn breath, though I could not hear it over the crackling logs. “Ah. Yes. A perfectly logical deduction.”
“And yet, incorrect.”
“Indeed.” He made no move to face me, simply looked into the flames. Just as I cast about for a change of subject, he spoke over his shoulder. “I have taken up embroidery.”
All those who have themselves laughed freely only to realize halfway through that their companion was in deadly earnest will sympathize with my unenviable position.
“Have…have you?” I managed at last. “I never get your limits, Watson. I congratulate you on a most artistic hobby. Might I ask what prompted you to take it up?”
His hands spread wider on the mantle. His head lowered slightly. The line of his back spoke of distress all the more intense for its careful containment. “Mary did,” he said. “Mary’s illness did.”
“Ah.” I could not see how his wife’s suffering connected to embroidery, but it was obviously impossible to pursue so painful and intimate a topic any further.
“There is more to be said,” he answered my thought. “But not yet, I think.”
He turned, took two swift strides and lifted my hand in his. I felt wholly at sea. “You might ask me again, if you like. In time.” He shook his head, firming his grip, and bent to brush his lips across my knuckles. His obeisance was as elegant and formal as that of a knight to his prince or a priest to his bishop. I could not suppress a soft sound of astonishment.
He looked up. “I saw your face when I woke from my faint. One day I will find the words to write about it. For now, we shall do as you please, whatever you please.” He straightened, still holding my hand. “Tell me.”
My homecoming had so far unfolded in a series of emotional shocks that rivalled any I had experienced in my years away. Hand in hand with him, I could not tell whether his kiss was meant in fealty or in courtship. Asked to name my desires, only one rose to mind with certainty.
“Live with me. Come back here and live with me, will you not, Watson?”
He kept his hold on my hand a moment more, easy and warm. “Yes, of course.”
He put the surgery on the market as soon as he had completed a few minor repairs. He warned me that it might be weeks or months before an eligible offer presented itself, and decided that in the interim he had best not leave the place vacant.
I accordingly settled in to wait. It was no hardship, in truth. He continued to pay frequent visits, my presence in the land of the living having not yet lost its novelty. After my dramatic reintroduction to Scotland Yard during Moran’s arrest, a reasonably steady flow of cases resumed as the professionals seized on any chance of clearing their backlogs.
Gradually, Watson transferred boxes and bags, clothing and papers - endless streams of household clutter and unpublished notes. I was unreasonably touched the day he returned my cherrywood pipe, the only personal memento he had selected for himself from my belongings. “You always chose this one at your worst,” he told me. “I wished to keep my memories truthful.” I could see the light marks of his own teeth along the stem. He had cherished the ugly thing.
In the back of my mind, there grew a thought.
This thought was irrational, unnecessary, impolitic and, needless to say, passionate.
Apart from the last month, I had not taken paying work for three years. I had not been rich even before my exile. Were I to buy Watson’s surgery myself, it would require fully half of my personal estate.
I bought Watson’s surgery myself. I foisted it on an obliging cousin and saw to it that Watson knew nothing of the matter.
“What in God’s name are you doing, Holmes?” I asked my morning glass.
Late one night, the date marked by no peculiar significance, I awoke with an answer.
I faintly heard Watson shifting in the room above me, his bedstead creaking as he rolled. I lay still and contemplated and, after some hours, came to a conclusion.
Next morning, after breakfast, I walked to the bookshop across the street. Watson had been one of their prized patrons for years, often commemorating our more interesting cases with the purchase of some apposite tome of philosophy or literature. After the Adler incident, he gift-wrapped the correspondence of Gustave Flaubert and George Sands for my benefit. The widowed bookseller, having apparently had the same collection returned three times by outraged readers, felt the need to advise him, firstly, that George was a woman working under the guise of a man; secondly, that she had frank and unashamed love affairs; and thirdly, that none of those affairs had been conducted with her erstwhile correspondent, whose affection rested instead on artistic admiration and intellectual respect. Ever afterwards, Watson drew the matron into his deliberations and never failed to come home with an incisive book for any and every occasion.
My morning’s purchase was of a less sensational genre.
That night, after Watson had retired to bed, I quietly donned my favorite suit. I removed my wash basin from the dresser and propped my new purchase up in its place: The Book of Common Prayer. Facing the rogues’ gallery of witnesses whose photographs lined my walls, I bound myself by oath.
I did not swear to have or to hold, as I was yet uncertain as to Watson’s preferences in that regard. I did swear to love and to cherish, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health. As death would not, in my case, dissolve these bonds, I omitted it from reference. Having already paid my dowry, I pledged my worldly goods with confidence.
After serious deliberation, I promised as well that “with my body, I thee worship.” For worship could take many forms, and if the carnal were unwanted, then my celibacy could be as meaningfully devoted to him.
The ritual, as adapted for my needs, being complete, I gathered my courage and walked upstairs to wake him.
Two months later, I happened to find myself in need of one of the books in the attic. I carried up an oil lamp, as the unguarded flame of a candle amid those haphazard piles of paper would have invited accident. My portion of the clutter had been pushed back into the room’s far corners by newer ranks of chests and boxes which had accompanied Watson back to Baker Street. In shoving my way through them, I knocked over a small linen bag. Its corner was caught under a box and its contents promptly spilled. Their burst of color arrested my attention.
It was a collection of pillowcases, richly embroidered. Fantastical gardens of flower and fruit twined across their canvases, with branches of leaves, orange blossom, and grape vine delicately filigreed along each edge. The botanical specimens were carefully rendered, with exotic flora from India nestled comfortably alongside the most common English primroses.
Although the work of detection had not demanded as complete a mastery of sewing techniques as it had of handwriting, I nonetheless easily differentiated the work of two artists. The smaller, surer hand had been Mrs. Watson’s, and her work evinced a variety of stitches which produced strikingly different textures and accents within the lines of fluted stems and layered foliage. Though any governess would be expected to attain at least the rudiments of the art, it did not surprise me to see that her imagination and skill had far exceeded the bare requirements of her profession. I cleared a space on the floor and laid the pillowcases side by side, tracing in them the development of her final illness. The earliest linens were entirely her own creations. Gradually, Watson’s rudimentary but attentive stitching crept in along the corners, and all too soon his daffodils and water lotuses expanded around the diminishing, but no less astonishing, orchids and orange trees of his wife’s design.
They had known the nature of her illness. They had forgone the parks and conservatories of her last seasons to spare her the risk of chill and damp. She had taught him to plant this undying garden instead, and they had passed the monotonous hours of her confinement in shared, beautiful labour. When she had lost the strength and concentration necessary to contribute, he had kept sewing. Though I had no illusions that her bed had been any less of a prison in the end, for all its embellishments, Watson had filled it with what comfort he could. And in the year since, he had kept up his practice in her memory.
To follow in the path of such a union was my honor and my privilege. I touched the swirling thread and ventured to hope that, if she had stood witness for us, unseen, our love had not disturbed her peace.
As I pulled the last linen out of the bag, a crumpled envelope fell out alongside it. It seemed odd for a single letter to be stowed amid a collection of such personal importance, and the thought crossed my mind that it might be a final adieu from Mrs. Watson. Whatever its nature, it was clearly sacrosanct and I bent to replace it in the bag without any intention of examining it closely.
I could not help but notice, once I picked it up, that the envelope was empty. I lifted the flap just to be sure, for if some enclosure had fallen out unattended I would have to search for it.
There, written in pencil, were three letters. K.K.K.
Surprise and horror temporarily derailed me. I believe I allowed myself a flood of sinister and wild speculation before taking the rudimentary step of flipping over the envelope to its front and observing the postmark and address. Mr. John Openshaw. Sussex, near Horsham. Postmarked from east London, 1887.
I thanked God that Watson and his wife had not been threatened, in her last days, by the shadowy and violent hatreds of the Klan. This was simply a relic from perhaps the most tragic case of our shared history. But why had Watson searched it out and placed it amid the folds of what amounted to his wife’s burial shroud?
I looked again at the vibrant orchards that had spread across their marriage bed; her deathbed. Orange trees and orange blossom did not predominate, but they certainly recurred, carrying with them the symbolism of marriage and unending love. After her funeral, had he come home and stripped them off, unable to sleep until they were out of his sight? Had he carried them up to his own attic, crowded with loose case notes, and stumbled as I had across a tragic memory?
More likely he had deliberately sought out the dried orange pips to mark the reality of death and loss - a bitter final symbol for their garden.
Quietly, I refolded the pillowcases and replaced them in their bag. The envelope I slipped on top and then I tied the cords securely. I retrieved the book which I had originally set out to find, and returned downstairs firmly resolved against ever inquiring further into Watson’s grief.
My false deduction stood for ten years before I discovered the extent to which I had underestimated him.
1905
We had begun to plan seriously for retirement. Watson examined the property listings in Sussex while I researched the set costs and established methods of bee-keeping, which even at a preliminary glance stood in need of empirical revision. I still took cases, though in recent weeks I seemed to be trapped in the listless cycle of armchair reasoning that my brother had indolently pioneered.
It was in early October that a large wooden crate arrived on our doorstep. At Mrs. Hudson’s request, Watson went downstairs to help retrieve it, for it was too bulky for Billy to lift alone. He seemed to be taking his time about it, and eventually I emerged from my thoughts long enough to stroll downstairs, thinking to provide either heckling or assistance as necessary.
Watson had pried off the lid right there on the door step, and a scattering of straw littered the pavement. In his hands he held two blood oranges, ripe and of robust size. The crate appeared to be filled with similar samples.
At the sound of my footsteps, he looked up, and the tender exultation on his face was so unguarded that I pulled him inside and closed the door, alarmed. We could not afford such raptures in the street, or even in the hallway. Nodding to dismiss Billy, I seized Watson’s elbow and conducted him upstairs, his hands still occupied with citrus.
With the sitting room door closed and locked, I released him. “My dear man,” I said, “explain yourself.” I reached to trace a thumb over one of the bright rinds. He pressed the fruit into one of my palms and pressed kisses into the other, moving on to my mouth and mumbling phrases of which I distinguished only the word “alive.” He broke away then and retreated to the settee.
Bemused and somewhat breathless, I settled beside him. He smiled, but he was clearly caught up in some surfeit of memory.
“We have never…” he began, “we have never discussed it. But when Mary was ailing, she taught me to sew.” He glanced at my face and saw that I knew. “Ah. Yes. Of course, you…yes. We embroidered plants together, made a garden of our bedsheets. When she died, and it came time to store them all away, I found I could not simply…” He paused, held a breath, and proceeded calmly. “I felt the need to make a gesture. I searched through my old files and found the orange pips from that terrible matter of young Oakenshaw’s murder. I sent them, and some handfuls more freshly collected, to Sir Henry Baskerville.”
My expression must have been all astonishment, for he laughed and chided me. “You never did keep in touch with any clients, more’s the pity. But Sir Henry traveled a good deal to help recover his nerves, you may recall. He returned to Canada for a time, then traveled south to California for the climate. He still keeps a small farm there, when he is not at Baskerville. I asked him to plant the pips. In my mind, they were damnable and deadly, but I thought if we could pull fresh life from them, we might make them stand in tribute for the dead.”
“I sent Sir Henry the seeds for Mary’s sake, and for Sir Charles. I hope you will not disapprove, but I sent pips as well to Mr. Trevor in India, to plant for you and for his father. He wrote to me, you see, when I published The Final Problem, and so it was easy enough to arrange.”
I regarded him, momentarily lost for words.
“In any case, even in ideal climates it takes orange trees at least a decade to bear fruit. It came as something of a shock to find Sir Henry’s delivery downstairs. But a pleasant one, to be sure. And we may hear from Mr. Trevor as well before long. He wrote to me again when I sent him news of your return, and amidst all the congratulations he found time to report that the sapling was growing beautifully.”
He stood and placed the two oranges he had carried upstairs with him on the sideboard. He moved to unlock the door and see to the crate that still sat outside, but added, with his hand on the lock, “Perhaps we might add an orangery to our plans for a cottage in Sussex.”
I thought for a moment of southern sun lighting colonnaded windows, trees rustling in their pots, and intricate water pipes spreading steady heat up through the floorboards. We could sit there with tea on cold mornings. I could cultivate poisons from South America. In the summers, we could wheel the potted trees into the garden. Our honey would taste of orange blossom, its delicate scent a reminder of those now gone.
“I believe,” I told him, “that the bees will approve.”
Recipient: garonne
Author: rachelindeed
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, past John Watson/Mary Morstan
Rating: PG
Word Count 3,500 words
Warnings: none
Summary: During the years of Holmes’s absence, Watson’s hands had changed.
Author’s note: Many thanks to thesmallhobbit for the thoughtful beta. Happy holidays, garonne! I enjoy and admire your stories so much, it was really a thrill to have the opportunity to write a gift for you. You are an amazing author. I hope you enjoy this.
“Will someone,
at the scent of orange blossom
think of me
when I too
am a person of long ago?”
(Fujiwara no Shunzei)
1894
The manner in which I chose to stage my reappearance was unconscionable. I cannot say what I was thinking.
I flung off the guise of the old bookseller without hesitation. Watson turned, stared, and simply stopped. Recognition filled his eyes and I held them with fierce elation.
Then his expression emptied. His eyes rolled and his knees buckled. I was separated from him by the length of half a room; I could not break his fall. I could only watch, and the acceleration of my mind so far exceeded that of gravity that I had time to envisage the crack of his head against the chair, the glass-plated cabinet, or the bookshelves. I observed the desk’s beveled corners and the paperweight of spotted marble sitting near its edge. Murder weapons, all, if his head struck them.
His movement decided itself both too slowly and too soon. I watched him longer than seemed possible, yet it felt sudden when he vanished behind the desk. I heard the heavy thud as his body hit the floor. I could not see him. I could not see the line of the fender by the baseboards.
Ten months before, I had stood on a steep white staircase in Khartoum and stared down at the dried, brown blood that marked the spot where Gordon fell. Five years before, I had drawn Watson from new-wedded bliss to help me unravel the death of Colonel Barclay, who, as it turned out, had seen a man he’d long thought dead and promptly collapsed in his sitting room, cracking his head open on his way down.
I stood paralyzed for one long moment, too afraid to think.
Then I sprang forward and stumbled to him. I checked his pulse and respiration - strong - and scanned for any bloodstains - none. I cradled his slack face, ran my hands around his skull.
He was fine. Physically undamaged. I turned away from him briefly to allow my limbs their necessary tremors. Once my reaction passed, I loosened his collar and shifted him up and over into a chair, then uncorked my flask and wetted his lips with brandy.
When he revived, I offered him apologies and explanations, though not precisely the same ones as have since appeared in print. I received in turn full measures of joy and forgiveness.
But it was neither his joy nor forgiveness that revealed my heart to me. Looking back, I clearly perceive that it was those few minutes of isolated, unobserved terror that first forged the seeds of my marriage and planted them deep.
During the years of my death, Watson’s hands had changed.
I remarked upon it soon after my return. He had been finding time to visit Baker Street each evening. I carried a glass of port to him as he stood examining the pleasingly macabre remains of my wax bust with its decimated forehead. I had propped it in his armchair during his workaday absence. As he reached out I noted the raised ridge of his forefinger and the indentations pricked across the pad of his thumb. That pattern of calluses was unmistakable, or so I thought. I congratulated him on the great success he had made of his surgery.
His answering look, baffled and pained, undid me. He recovered himself, however, as quickly as ever.
"I am sorry to say it,” he answered lightly, “as it reflects but little credit on either of us, but if my surgery is your measure of success, you must certainly raise your expectations.”
I did not relish finding myself wrong-footed with him and was particularly chagrined to have stumbled across a sore point of both money and pride. I offered what excuse I could. “Pray forgive me, Watson. It was only that I observed the calluses on your hands, which seemed to indicate a great deal of time spent with needle and thread. I inferred that you had faced a heavy load of stitching at your operating table.”
He had turned to place his glass on the mantle above the fireplace. His shoulders telegraphed a sharply indrawn breath, though I could not hear it over the crackling logs. “Ah. Yes. A perfectly logical deduction.”
“And yet, incorrect.”
“Indeed.” He made no move to face me, simply looked into the flames. Just as I cast about for a change of subject, he spoke over his shoulder. “I have taken up embroidery.”
All those who have themselves laughed freely only to realize halfway through that their companion was in deadly earnest will sympathize with my unenviable position.
“Have…have you?” I managed at last. “I never get your limits, Watson. I congratulate you on a most artistic hobby. Might I ask what prompted you to take it up?”
His hands spread wider on the mantle. His head lowered slightly. The line of his back spoke of distress all the more intense for its careful containment. “Mary did,” he said. “Mary’s illness did.”
“Ah.” I could not see how his wife’s suffering connected to embroidery, but it was obviously impossible to pursue so painful and intimate a topic any further.
“There is more to be said,” he answered my thought. “But not yet, I think.”
He turned, took two swift strides and lifted my hand in his. I felt wholly at sea. “You might ask me again, if you like. In time.” He shook his head, firming his grip, and bent to brush his lips across my knuckles. His obeisance was as elegant and formal as that of a knight to his prince or a priest to his bishop. I could not suppress a soft sound of astonishment.
He looked up. “I saw your face when I woke from my faint. One day I will find the words to write about it. For now, we shall do as you please, whatever you please.” He straightened, still holding my hand. “Tell me.”
My homecoming had so far unfolded in a series of emotional shocks that rivalled any I had experienced in my years away. Hand in hand with him, I could not tell whether his kiss was meant in fealty or in courtship. Asked to name my desires, only one rose to mind with certainty.
“Live with me. Come back here and live with me, will you not, Watson?”
He kept his hold on my hand a moment more, easy and warm. “Yes, of course.”
He put the surgery on the market as soon as he had completed a few minor repairs. He warned me that it might be weeks or months before an eligible offer presented itself, and decided that in the interim he had best not leave the place vacant.
I accordingly settled in to wait. It was no hardship, in truth. He continued to pay frequent visits, my presence in the land of the living having not yet lost its novelty. After my dramatic reintroduction to Scotland Yard during Moran’s arrest, a reasonably steady flow of cases resumed as the professionals seized on any chance of clearing their backlogs.
Gradually, Watson transferred boxes and bags, clothing and papers - endless streams of household clutter and unpublished notes. I was unreasonably touched the day he returned my cherrywood pipe, the only personal memento he had selected for himself from my belongings. “You always chose this one at your worst,” he told me. “I wished to keep my memories truthful.” I could see the light marks of his own teeth along the stem. He had cherished the ugly thing.
In the back of my mind, there grew a thought.
This thought was irrational, unnecessary, impolitic and, needless to say, passionate.
Apart from the last month, I had not taken paying work for three years. I had not been rich even before my exile. Were I to buy Watson’s surgery myself, it would require fully half of my personal estate.
I bought Watson’s surgery myself. I foisted it on an obliging cousin and saw to it that Watson knew nothing of the matter.
“What in God’s name are you doing, Holmes?” I asked my morning glass.
Late one night, the date marked by no peculiar significance, I awoke with an answer.
I faintly heard Watson shifting in the room above me, his bedstead creaking as he rolled. I lay still and contemplated and, after some hours, came to a conclusion.
Next morning, after breakfast, I walked to the bookshop across the street. Watson had been one of their prized patrons for years, often commemorating our more interesting cases with the purchase of some apposite tome of philosophy or literature. After the Adler incident, he gift-wrapped the correspondence of Gustave Flaubert and George Sands for my benefit. The widowed bookseller, having apparently had the same collection returned three times by outraged readers, felt the need to advise him, firstly, that George was a woman working under the guise of a man; secondly, that she had frank and unashamed love affairs; and thirdly, that none of those affairs had been conducted with her erstwhile correspondent, whose affection rested instead on artistic admiration and intellectual respect. Ever afterwards, Watson drew the matron into his deliberations and never failed to come home with an incisive book for any and every occasion.
My morning’s purchase was of a less sensational genre.
That night, after Watson had retired to bed, I quietly donned my favorite suit. I removed my wash basin from the dresser and propped my new purchase up in its place: The Book of Common Prayer. Facing the rogues’ gallery of witnesses whose photographs lined my walls, I bound myself by oath.
I did not swear to have or to hold, as I was yet uncertain as to Watson’s preferences in that regard. I did swear to love and to cherish, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health. As death would not, in my case, dissolve these bonds, I omitted it from reference. Having already paid my dowry, I pledged my worldly goods with confidence.
After serious deliberation, I promised as well that “with my body, I thee worship.” For worship could take many forms, and if the carnal were unwanted, then my celibacy could be as meaningfully devoted to him.
The ritual, as adapted for my needs, being complete, I gathered my courage and walked upstairs to wake him.
Two months later, I happened to find myself in need of one of the books in the attic. I carried up an oil lamp, as the unguarded flame of a candle amid those haphazard piles of paper would have invited accident. My portion of the clutter had been pushed back into the room’s far corners by newer ranks of chests and boxes which had accompanied Watson back to Baker Street. In shoving my way through them, I knocked over a small linen bag. Its corner was caught under a box and its contents promptly spilled. Their burst of color arrested my attention.
It was a collection of pillowcases, richly embroidered. Fantastical gardens of flower and fruit twined across their canvases, with branches of leaves, orange blossom, and grape vine delicately filigreed along each edge. The botanical specimens were carefully rendered, with exotic flora from India nestled comfortably alongside the most common English primroses.
Although the work of detection had not demanded as complete a mastery of sewing techniques as it had of handwriting, I nonetheless easily differentiated the work of two artists. The smaller, surer hand had been Mrs. Watson’s, and her work evinced a variety of stitches which produced strikingly different textures and accents within the lines of fluted stems and layered foliage. Though any governess would be expected to attain at least the rudiments of the art, it did not surprise me to see that her imagination and skill had far exceeded the bare requirements of her profession. I cleared a space on the floor and laid the pillowcases side by side, tracing in them the development of her final illness. The earliest linens were entirely her own creations. Gradually, Watson’s rudimentary but attentive stitching crept in along the corners, and all too soon his daffodils and water lotuses expanded around the diminishing, but no less astonishing, orchids and orange trees of his wife’s design.
They had known the nature of her illness. They had forgone the parks and conservatories of her last seasons to spare her the risk of chill and damp. She had taught him to plant this undying garden instead, and they had passed the monotonous hours of her confinement in shared, beautiful labour. When she had lost the strength and concentration necessary to contribute, he had kept sewing. Though I had no illusions that her bed had been any less of a prison in the end, for all its embellishments, Watson had filled it with what comfort he could. And in the year since, he had kept up his practice in her memory.
To follow in the path of such a union was my honor and my privilege. I touched the swirling thread and ventured to hope that, if she had stood witness for us, unseen, our love had not disturbed her peace.
As I pulled the last linen out of the bag, a crumpled envelope fell out alongside it. It seemed odd for a single letter to be stowed amid a collection of such personal importance, and the thought crossed my mind that it might be a final adieu from Mrs. Watson. Whatever its nature, it was clearly sacrosanct and I bent to replace it in the bag without any intention of examining it closely.
I could not help but notice, once I picked it up, that the envelope was empty. I lifted the flap just to be sure, for if some enclosure had fallen out unattended I would have to search for it.
There, written in pencil, were three letters. K.K.K.
Surprise and horror temporarily derailed me. I believe I allowed myself a flood of sinister and wild speculation before taking the rudimentary step of flipping over the envelope to its front and observing the postmark and address. Mr. John Openshaw. Sussex, near Horsham. Postmarked from east London, 1887.
I thanked God that Watson and his wife had not been threatened, in her last days, by the shadowy and violent hatreds of the Klan. This was simply a relic from perhaps the most tragic case of our shared history. But why had Watson searched it out and placed it amid the folds of what amounted to his wife’s burial shroud?
I looked again at the vibrant orchards that had spread across their marriage bed; her deathbed. Orange trees and orange blossom did not predominate, but they certainly recurred, carrying with them the symbolism of marriage and unending love. After her funeral, had he come home and stripped them off, unable to sleep until they were out of his sight? Had he carried them up to his own attic, crowded with loose case notes, and stumbled as I had across a tragic memory?
More likely he had deliberately sought out the dried orange pips to mark the reality of death and loss - a bitter final symbol for their garden.
Quietly, I refolded the pillowcases and replaced them in their bag. The envelope I slipped on top and then I tied the cords securely. I retrieved the book which I had originally set out to find, and returned downstairs firmly resolved against ever inquiring further into Watson’s grief.
My false deduction stood for ten years before I discovered the extent to which I had underestimated him.
1905
We had begun to plan seriously for retirement. Watson examined the property listings in Sussex while I researched the set costs and established methods of bee-keeping, which even at a preliminary glance stood in need of empirical revision. I still took cases, though in recent weeks I seemed to be trapped in the listless cycle of armchair reasoning that my brother had indolently pioneered.
It was in early October that a large wooden crate arrived on our doorstep. At Mrs. Hudson’s request, Watson went downstairs to help retrieve it, for it was too bulky for Billy to lift alone. He seemed to be taking his time about it, and eventually I emerged from my thoughts long enough to stroll downstairs, thinking to provide either heckling or assistance as necessary.
Watson had pried off the lid right there on the door step, and a scattering of straw littered the pavement. In his hands he held two blood oranges, ripe and of robust size. The crate appeared to be filled with similar samples.
At the sound of my footsteps, he looked up, and the tender exultation on his face was so unguarded that I pulled him inside and closed the door, alarmed. We could not afford such raptures in the street, or even in the hallway. Nodding to dismiss Billy, I seized Watson’s elbow and conducted him upstairs, his hands still occupied with citrus.
With the sitting room door closed and locked, I released him. “My dear man,” I said, “explain yourself.” I reached to trace a thumb over one of the bright rinds. He pressed the fruit into one of my palms and pressed kisses into the other, moving on to my mouth and mumbling phrases of which I distinguished only the word “alive.” He broke away then and retreated to the settee.
Bemused and somewhat breathless, I settled beside him. He smiled, but he was clearly caught up in some surfeit of memory.
“We have never…” he began, “we have never discussed it. But when Mary was ailing, she taught me to sew.” He glanced at my face and saw that I knew. “Ah. Yes. Of course, you…yes. We embroidered plants together, made a garden of our bedsheets. When she died, and it came time to store them all away, I found I could not simply…” He paused, held a breath, and proceeded calmly. “I felt the need to make a gesture. I searched through my old files and found the orange pips from that terrible matter of young Oakenshaw’s murder. I sent them, and some handfuls more freshly collected, to Sir Henry Baskerville.”
My expression must have been all astonishment, for he laughed and chided me. “You never did keep in touch with any clients, more’s the pity. But Sir Henry traveled a good deal to help recover his nerves, you may recall. He returned to Canada for a time, then traveled south to California for the climate. He still keeps a small farm there, when he is not at Baskerville. I asked him to plant the pips. In my mind, they were damnable and deadly, but I thought if we could pull fresh life from them, we might make them stand in tribute for the dead.”
“I sent Sir Henry the seeds for Mary’s sake, and for Sir Charles. I hope you will not disapprove, but I sent pips as well to Mr. Trevor in India, to plant for you and for his father. He wrote to me, you see, when I published The Final Problem, and so it was easy enough to arrange.”
I regarded him, momentarily lost for words.
“In any case, even in ideal climates it takes orange trees at least a decade to bear fruit. It came as something of a shock to find Sir Henry’s delivery downstairs. But a pleasant one, to be sure. And we may hear from Mr. Trevor as well before long. He wrote to me again when I sent him news of your return, and amidst all the congratulations he found time to report that the sapling was growing beautifully.”
He stood and placed the two oranges he had carried upstairs with him on the sideboard. He moved to unlock the door and see to the crate that still sat outside, but added, with his hand on the lock, “Perhaps we might add an orangery to our plans for a cottage in Sussex.”
I thought for a moment of southern sun lighting colonnaded windows, trees rustling in their pots, and intricate water pipes spreading steady heat up through the floorboards. We could sit there with tea on cold mornings. I could cultivate poisons from South America. In the summers, we could wheel the potted trees into the garden. Our honey would taste of orange blossom, its delicate scent a reminder of those now gone.
“I believe,” I told him, “that the bees will approve.”