We dined that night at Mrs. Whiteneck's inn. Holmes had the ham, and I enjoyed mutton with mint sauce, and we helped ourselves from bowls of tiny potatoes and glazed carrots and a variety of other delicacies from the good earth of the Sussex countryside. Mrs. Whiteneck herself served us with an unfussy competence and withdrew.
Some time passed before I sat back and sighed happily.
"Thank you, Holmes. That was fun."
"You find even such rustic and unadorned sleuthing satisfying?"
"I do. Did. I cannot see spending my life pursuing such activities, but as a romp through the countryside on a summer's day, it was most pleasurable. Don't you agree?"
"As an exercise, Russell, you conducted the investigation in a most professional manner."
"Why, thank you, Holmes." I was ridiculously pleased.
"By the way, where did you learn to throw like that?"
"My father thought all young ladies should be able to throw and to run. He was not amused by cultivated awkwardness. He was a great lover of sports, and was trying to introduce cricket into San Francisco the summer before — the accident. I was to be his bowler."
"Formidable," my companion murmured.
"So he thought. It is useful skill, you must admit.
One can always find chunks of débris to heave at wrongdoers."
"Quid erat demonstrandum. However, Russell — " He fixed me with a cold eye, and I braced myself for some devastating criticism, but what he said was, "Now, Russelclass="underline" concerning that haemoglobin experiment — "
BOOK TWO: INTERNSHIP
The Senator's Daughter
FIVE: The vagrantgipsy life
Seize her, imprison her, take her away.
The Monk's Tun case was, as I said, but a lark, the sort of noncase that even a dyed-in-the-wool romantic like Watson would have been hard put to whip into a thrilling narrative. The police would surely have caught Sylvester before long, and truly, thirty guineas and four hams, even in those days of chronic food shortages, were hardly the stuff of Times headlines.
Nonetheless, across all the tumultuous events of the intervening years that one case stands out in my mind, for the simple reason that it marked the first time Holmes had granted me free rein to make decisions and take action. Of course, even then I realised that, had the case been of any earthly significance whatsoever, I should have been kept firmly in my auxiliary role. Despite that, the glow of secret satisfaction it gave me lasted with a curious tenacity. A small thing, perhaps, but mine own.
Five weeks later, however, a case came upon us that put the Monk's Tun affair into its proper, childish perspective. The kidnapping of the American senator's daughter was no lark, but a matter of international import, dramatic, intense, a classic Holmes case such as I had not yet observed, much less been involved with, and certainly not as a central protagonist. The case brought into sharp focus the purpose surrounding my years of desultory training, brought forcibly home the entire raison d'être of the person Sherlock Holmes had created of himself, and moreover, brought me up against the dark side of the life Holmes led.
That single case bound us together in ways my apprenticeship never had, rather as the survivors of a natural disaster find themselves inextricably linked for the rest of their days. It made me both more certain of myself and, paradoxically, more cautious now that I had witnessed at first hand the potentially calamitous results of my uncon sidered acts. It changed Holmes, too, to see before him the living result of his years of half-frivolous, half-deliberate training. I believe it brought him up sharply, to be confronted with the fact that he had created a not inconsiderable force, that what had begun as a chance meeting had given birth to me. His reappraisal of what I had become, his judgment of my abilities under fire, as it were, profoundly influenced the decisions he was to make four months later when the heavens opened on our heads.
And yet, I very nearly missed the case altogether. Even today my spine crawls cold at the thought of December without the mutual knowledge of the preceding August, for the groundwork of trust laid down during our time in Wales made December's partnership possible. Had I missed the Simpson case, had Holmes simply disappeared into the thin summer air (as he had done with numerous other cases) and not allowed me to participate, God alone knows what we would have done when December's cold hit us, unprepared and unsupported.
Toward noon on a blistering hot day in the middle of August our haying crew reached the end of the last field and dispersed, in heavy-footed exhaustion, for our homes. This year the easy camaraderie and rude high spirits of the Land Girls had been cooled by the presence of a man amongst the crew, a silent, rigid, shell-shocked young man — a boy, really, but for the trenches — who did no great work himself and who started at every sudden noise, but who served to keep us at our work by his mere distressing presence.
Thanks to him we finished early, just before midday on the eighteenth. I trudged home, silently inhaled a vast meal in Patrick's kitchen, and, wanting only to collapse between my clean sheets for twenty hours, instead took myself to the bathroom and stripped off my filthy Land Girl's smock, sluiced off my skin's crust of dust and chaff cemented there by sweat, and, feeling physically tired but glowing with strength and well-being and marvelling in the sense of freedom following a hard job well done, I mounted my bicycle and, hair streaming damply behind me, rode off to see Holmes.
Cycling slowly up the lane to the cottage, my ears were caught by a remarkable sound, distorted by the stone walls on either side. Music, but no music I had before heard emanating from Holmes' house, a gay, dancing tune, instantly invigorating and utterly unexpected. I stood more firmly on the pedals, rode around the house to the kitchen door, and let myself in, and when I followed the sound through to the sitting room, for an instant I failed to recognise the dark-skinned, black-haired man with the violin tucked under a chin scruffy with two days of stubble. The briefest flash of apprehension passed across the familiar face, followed rapidly by a gleam of gold from his left incisor as this exotic ruffian gave me a rakish grin. I was not fooled. I had seen his original reaction to my unexpected appearance in his doorway, and my guard went instantly up.
"Holmes," I said. "Don't tell me, the rector needs a gipsy fiddler for the village fête."
"Hello, Russell," he said with studied casualness. "This is an unanticipated pleasure. I am so glad you happened to stop by, it saves me from having to write. I wanted to ask you to keep track of the plant experiment. Just for a few days, and there's nothing terribly — "
"Holmes, what is going on?" He was entirely too innocent.
"'Going on'? Nothing is 'going on'. I find I must be away for a few days, is all."
"You have a case."
"Oh, come now, Russell — "
"Why don't you want me to know about it? And don't give me some nonsense about governmental secrets."
"It is secret. I cannot tell you about it. Later, perhaps. But I truly do need you to — "