For All Our Sakes

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

Holmes

As I sat smoking with Watson, I gazed into the fire blazing in the grate, thinking of all that had occurred in the last three days. For that matter, the last day. Cauldwell had caused so much damage in so short a time, and it would have been so much worse, if it hadn't been for a small pocket knife and the grace of God.

This had to stop, and it had to stop now.

But what could I do? I had no idea where Cauldwell was, or what he wanted… No, I had some idea now. He had started to ask about my sister's "involvement" Her involvement in what? What had my sister been involved in that could have interested him? Of course! The Moriarty case. What else could it be? I had suspected for some time that my sister's untimely…death (how I still loathed using that word regarding her, even mentally!) was related to Cauldwell's association with Moriarty.

But what did Cauldwell think I could tell him? He had to know that she had kept the fact that she knew about Cauldwell's association with Moriarty from me, so what could it possibly be?

I felt like I had walked into a brick wall. I simply lacked information…I needed another approach.

What did I know about my sister that Cauldwell didn't? Well, that was hard to say, as she had courted him for nearly six months. Who knew what she confided in him and what she hadn't, especially if she was only trying to gain his trust in order to gain information from him?

A thought suddenly struck me.

If she had courted him in order to gain information, then where did that information go? Surely he had let something slip during those six months? Jane knew, as I did, the importance of seemingly inconsequential details, so I would have thought she would have given me any information she had. Of course, I would have wanted to find out where she had acquired this information…so that would have been why she had said nothing to Mycroft or to myself.

Where, then, had she gone with this information? Whom did she trust? No one came to mind. She was far more social than Mycroft and myself (meaning not a total recluse by nature), still she had had no very close friends, so far as I knew. What would she have done with information about the Moriarty group if she had not given it to a friend, Mycroft, or myself? If she had gone directly to the Yard with it, surely I would have been informed.

Think! I had known my sister better than anyone else, what would she have done?

I stood up to grab a handful of shag tobacco from my Persian slipper, and shoved as much of it as would fit it into the bowl. Returning to my seat, I lit it.

Likely she had hidden this information somewhere. Where would she have hidden it? I supposed that she could have entrusted it to someone, perhaps not telling them what it was, but the whole idea seemed incongruous with her natural distrust of others. That really only left one place: her old rooms.

But where in her rooms would she have hidden this information, or documents, or whatever it was? And why hadn't it been found? Maybe it had been found, and she'd written it in some sort of code Cauldwell thought I could understand, and he had these documents, or it was. In that case, I could do nothing until he managed to get to me—which I would not allow to happen—or Cauldwell was behind bars, and possibly not even then.

Another question arose in my mind.

What could Cauldwell possibly want with information incriminating the Moriarty gang? If they directly incriminated him, then why didn't he simply destroy them? What did he want?

Another wall. I had more questions than I did answers, and the fact irritated me not a little. As Watson had quoted me in one of his stories, "I cannot make bricks without clay," and I certainly had very little clay at the moment.

Perhaps I should simply go to her flat and see what I could find. I knew the building had been abandoned for quite some time, so little would have changed, and there wouldn't be any current occupants to get in my way.

I hadn't mentioned it to Watson, but the elderly gentleman who owned the building had been murdered as well as my sister, and the maid and the other occupants had wanted nothing to do with the place after the brutal double-murder, and apparently neither had any potential buyers of the building for nearly two years, until an elderly man bought the building and died two weeks later. The combination of these things caused a local legend that the building was haunted, and no interested buyers were forthcoming.

As for Cauldwell, if he was smart—and I knew he was—he would lie low for a while and wait until the search for him died down.

I did not normally behave in the hopes that sheer, dumb luck would aid me, but I wasn't in this case either. An instinct that I had come to consider a sixth sense—and to trust with my life on several occasions—told me that I was on the right track, and that her old rooms were an important link in the chain that I was on my way to uncovering.

Yes, I would go to her flat, and I would go tonight. Alone. As dangerous as that might be, there was no way on this earth I was going to allow Watson to put himself in more danger on my behalf than he already had, the dear chap. I had come far too close to losing him today, and I was not going to allow that to happen.

Watson

I glanced up from the book I had been halfheartedly pursuing as Holmes—not entirely to my surprise—stood up and began preparing to go out.

"Where are you going?" I asked innocently.

"Out," he informed me.

I refrained from a comment about it not requiring a brilliant detective to deduce that fact, and instead asked, "Where, in particular?"

"Nowhere, really," he said, very carefully not meeting my eyes—almost a sure sign that he was either lying or dodging a question that had been put to him. My friend might be a skilled actor and proficient liar, but he very rarely had the heart to truly to truly deceive me. It seemed to me that in this case especially, he really did want to be found out.

"Holmes, I'm not stupid," I said, standing up. "Please have the decency not to treat me as such. I know that this has something to do with the case, and that you are refusing to tell me where you are going to avoid putting me into danger. But it won't work, because if there is any danger, you are not going anywhere without me."

My friend stared at me in some surprise, his hat halfway to his head and his jaw hanging open for a moment before snapping it shut. Then, instead of growing angry as I thought he might, his expression softened. "Watson, this entire affair is my problem, and I could not possibly expect to you put yourself into any more danger for my sake in an affair that has nothing to do with you." He put on his hat.

"If it has something to do with you, then it has something to do with me," I countered, taking three steps towards him. "That was always enough for you, when the boot was on the other foot, so to speak, and I had something I couldn't handle on my own. And in addition to that, just because you don't expect me to put myself into danger for you, doesn't mean I'm not going to do it."

Holmes glared at me, but there was more pain than anger behind his glinting grey eyes. "Watson, this is my problem, and as much as I appreciate your intentions, I cannot allow you to come with me tonight, and that is final."

"It's nearly eight, far too late for you to be going anywhere, much less alone," I said, gesturing to the clock on the wall.

"You can hardly stop me, Watson."

"Really?" I challenged.

"Really," he responded firmly.

I folded my arms. "Well, you can't stop me from coming along."

Our juvenile exchange dragged on for a full five minutes before Holmes finally gave in.

"Fine!" he exclaimed exasperatedly, throwing his hands up into the air in a gesture of defeat. "Fine, you can come along! But don't expect me to be happy about it."

Whether I expected it or not, the quick smile he gave me as we settled into a cab prompted me to think that perhaps he appreciated my presence far more than he could or ever would admit.