The Forgotten Niece of Sherlock Holmes

Chapter 1

Hi guys, if you could comment/ direct message me about what you think of the new edited chapters that would be fantastic, I appreciate your time and effort into writing these responses - thank you!! :D

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Sherlock Holmes was the man who never really loved the idea of fame. He was a “consulting” detective, the only one in the world; he made up the job title, and freely gave himself to the aid of the Police when they needed help, and to him it was obvious that the Police force could not function without him. He prided himself in knowing everything about a person with just one glance. To him the smallest details were by far the most important.

Sherlock came from a privileged background, a loving family, he only had one sibling as far as his family was concerned, Mycroft. But what his family had tried so hard to hide was the one thing Sherlock never let go, the run-away sister, Adriana. She was in love with a boy, a stable hand from one of the larger manor houses in the area that they lived.  But soon she fell pregnant with me, Eliza. When the family found out, she was exiled and disowned from the family, the scandalous affair and her bastard child being covered up by the most unfortunate accident of my mother’s death, according to my grandparents. 

Yet Sherlock knew of her hiding place, an old and decrepit gardener’s cottage six towns over and once learning of her plans to leave the county once I was born to a new one; Devon, to where she would set up a new life, her fictitious husband having died of TB, left with only her child to care for. 

He refused to let her leave, she agreed that she would stay, but at 17 and expecting a baby, she stole away the following night. She wondered the streets of London, travelling to various inns and staying as long as her money would afford her, getting more where working as a barmaid got her more, but of course the money ran out. Within three months before my birth my mother was seeking the shelter of shop doorways and the covers of old potato sacks.

Of course she could not keep carrying her child forever and so on an unusually stormy night in September her waters broke. She stumbled through the unforgiving London streets when a light burst through the rain, a hand beckoning her in. Matilda, a midwife now too old to work delivered me, cared and clothed for me and my mother, who told Matilda of the apparent death of my father and her husband. I knew that this deceit bruised my mother, but was too fearful that Matilda’s kindness would be overruled and my mother would be thrown out onto the street once more, especially when this might have been seen as being advantageous of Matilda’s circumstances, who, shortly before my mother blundered through her street, lost her husband Alfred. 

 Growing up my mother told me wonderful tales of Sherlock her brother, and her hopes in finding him someday, but was fearful that her betrayal of her promise to him, of staying, would be forgiven, as of her mistake as well, but she constantly assured me that she had no regrets in having me.

She would always tell me that she was glad that she ran away, if she didn’t, both she and I would have been shunned by the whole family. If my mother had agreed to be locked away in her room for nine months and have given me to the Foundling Hospital in London, to where she would never see me again and to which I would become a housemaid to work my way up the ranks in serving households which could have been cruel and only charitable through the fear of God banishing them from heaven, yes, I would have been well cared for, fed and clothed and paid, but I would forever be an orphan. 

From what my mother told me of Sherlock, I believed him to be a good, a sometimes terribly honest, precocious, and somewhat pretentious man whose talents only faltered once; his believing in Adriana’s staying. My mother seemed sad when she told me that it was because of this, his bruised pride and continual constancy of calm appearance could now meant that he trusted no-one perhaps of a select few that he trusted entirely. I hoped that my mother would find him one day, some days she was so sad, lonely, despite Matilda and I, and her few friends from the mill that she had managed to get a job in. I think that she only seemed to live and be happy for me, and the hope of finding her brother once again.

But when I was 15 years old her dreams of finding him collapsed; a wildfire of an influenza broke out in the mill, the whole workforce taken ill, with rumours that the cotton was contaminated, the whole mill shut down and became a wreck, the owner lost so much money he hung himself from one of the rafters above the cotton looms.  She was sick for weeks, and although my mother was a fighter, and outlived many of those who suffered from this dreadful flu, she wasn’t strong enough to hold on. I rarely saw my mother, and if I did I could never touch her, I had to have a cloth over my face, Matilda ensured it for fear that I would get infected myself.

But in my mother’s last dying days I held her hand, I couldn’t feel her once soft skin, now worn by her work at the mill, against mine, but through a glove and cloth, she coughed and spluttered as I mopped her brow, and usually within minutes, one of us would be weeping by the loss that we knew we had to inevitably suffer. Each time I left her I had to burn the glove and cloth kept between us, and so there was not much that I could keep that didn’t need to be burnt; a single dress and a simple wooden box that played a tune once you opened it.

The short time that we had together passed quickly and soon my mother was dead; the fever had taken the person I loved most in this world, I sobbed for what felt like years, and could not leave my bed as the torture that kept me grieving over my mother would not let me rest. With fears that I had become ill myself, Matilda sent for a doctor, who could only tell her that I was exhausted and emotionally unstable.

He injected me, I felt nothing as my sorrow kept me in the clutches of numbness and slowly, then all at once I felt the world slip away. I awoke a day later feeling hungry, groggy, and crying out for my mother.  

For weeks, that soon turned into months, I could no open the music box, I couldn’t run my fingers across the material of my mother’s Sunday best dress; a light cotton lilac dress with simple sleeves and collar and hem.

But with time I grew affectionate of the dress, caressed it, held it tight to me at night and whispered all my secrets, all the things that  I never did have the chance to tell my mother. I traced my fingertips over the wooden carvings on the music box, across the length and width of it, down to the brass latch, with a flick the latch lifted and with the smallest of pushes the box lid fell open. 

Inside contained pearl earrings, a lock of my baby hair, a blue ribbon, a photograph of a woman I did not know with my mother, another photograph of my mother with a man – her brother, my Uncle Sherlock maybe? These were all the possessions my mother owned in the world, at least the ones that she took from her family home. I laid these items out carefully, studying them and the box again. 

There was something unusual about the box, a slight piece of what looked like paper, peeking out at me from the back corner of the box, probably being folded with one of the photographs. I opened it. 

I held the paper in my hands, I knew that my mother could read and write and she taught me from an early age. Open on the paper read a few lines, a name, and an address. What I read on the page caused a lurch in my stomach, a fluttering in my heart and a sting in my eyes.

Find him. Find your Uncle. Find Sherlock Holmes.

221B Baker Street

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Hi there everyone, this is an edited chapter, I've been feeling a little rough on and off lately but I feel good about re-reading and editing Forgotten Niece and what I would really appreciate is if you could let me know either through comments or a direct message to me what you think of this edited chapter?

It would be awesome if you could, I want to tie up some loose ends and really give you something good without changing the storyline too much, thanks for your patience! (also I might turn this chapter 1 into a prologue later on but we'll see.)

Thank you so much, your encouraging and heart-warming comments, reads and votes are more than I deserve, thank you so much! :')