Chapter 9
Now - Eight Years Later: December 1886
“So, are you going to tell me what on earth is going on?”
“It’s not what you think,” Holmes said to Watson as the door to their hansom cab swung shut.
They had arranged to go to Baker Street to warn Mrs Hudson of the need to prepare 221C, the lodgings Holmes had promised to the widow Mrs Molly Jones in an act so uncharacteristic of his friend that John Watson wasn’t sure he hadn't hit himself on the head as he awoke that morning. That, or that Watson was dreaming.
“I don’t know what I think,” Watson replied, noting not for the first time that morning that his friend refused to meet his gaze. Watson might not have been the deductive genius in the pair, but he knew well enough when someone was hiding something from him. And from the looks of things, Sherlock Holmes had a lot to hide.
“Do you care to explain it to me, Holmes?” He asked his friend after the silence hung in the air too long.
Then - Eight Years Earlier: March 1878
“Would you care to explain to me what on earth is going on?” repeated the irate voice of Thomas Jones.
Molly took a quick step back, placing the appropriate amount of distance between herself and Sherlock.
“Thomas,” Molly began, her voice still and calm, revealing nothing of the pounding heartbeat Sherlock could see rapidly drumming through her carotid artery. “This is Mr Sherlock Holmes. He is an ex- student of my father's.” Molly caught Sherlock’s eye briefly as if willing him wordlessly to go along with the lie.
Up until just a few minutes ago, it wasn’t too far from the truth. But now-
“Sherlock was just leaving, he had called in while in town to return a book.” Molly, still with the copy of Elementary Lessons on Logic in her hand, circled around the large ornate desk still strewn with papers and placed the book back on the shelf.
Thomas, more dim-witted than Sherlock had given him credit for, seemed placated by Molly’s small lie.
“Pleased to meet you Mr Holmes,” Thomas extended his hand slightly, forcing Sherlock to cross the room to accept it.
“And you also Mr-“
“Jones. Thomas Jones,” Thomas offered, shaking Sherlock’s hand with a weak, limp grasp. Sherlock had already decided he hated the man.
“And what do you do for yourself Mr Jones?” Sherlock asked.
“I’m assistant Q.C.,” He said with pride, although something in Molly’s reaction caused him to reconsider, “Well, assistant to the Q.C. – Martin Charles Nourse. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?”
“No.”
An awkward air hung in Sherlock’s dismissal of Thomas’ claim to importance.
“And what do you do Mr Holmes? You look to old to still be at your studies,” Thomas attempted a joke. It fell flat.
“Graduate Chemist. I had begun my doctoral studies but I had a difference of opinions with my supervisors. The fools were too closed-minded to accept new methods. And, of course, when I discovered that they were entirely ignorant of Dr Hooper’s ground-breaking work, I found I was better off without them.”
He turned his attention to Molly while speaking highly of her father, desperate to catch any micro-expression to betray her true emotions. But her face was a blank impassive mask.
Thomas’ eyes narrowed as if trying to read Sherlock. But Sherlock doubted the dolt could deduce a pear from an apple.
As if reacting to the rising tension in the room, Molly interrupted, walking between the two men as she spoke.
“Is the cab ready, Thomas? We do have a ball to attend.”
“Yes.”
“Where are you off to this evening?” Sherlock inquired with a tone of casual indifference, when he was anything but casual and definitely not indifferent.
“The Mayoral Ball, it’s the height of the season. I had to use all my contacts at the courts to gain entry.” Thomas was boasting.
Sherlock couldn’t help his own boasting, “Say hello to my brother, Mr. Mycroft Holmes. I believe he is giving the keynote address of the evening. You won’t miss him – he is enormously fat.”
At the side of her dress, Molly’s hands balled into tight fists. Sherlock could tell she was none too pleased with the competition forming between the two men.
“Miss Hooper!” came the out of breath voice of Mrs Fitz, “I’m so sorry miss, I was busy with-“
Remembering the presence of the two men, Mrs Fitz stopped herself short.
“I beg your apologies Mr Jones for not seeing you in,” she bowed slightly.
“It’s ok Mrs Fitz,” Molly said. Placing a hand on the rounded shoulder of her diminutive housemaid. “Thomas and I are off and Mr Holmes can see himself out,” Molly’s voice was stern and directed at Sherlock.
“Indeed I can,” Sherlock nodded and left before Molly and Thomas had even gathered their coats.
He should have gone straight back to Montague Street.
He should have asked Detective Lestrade for a new case.
He didn’t.
Instead, he walked the quarter mile to London Guild Hall.
Instead, he yet again approached the one man he had sworn never again to ask another favour of.
Instead, he was about to start a chain reaction that would change three lives forever.
None of which he knew when he spotted the rotund form of his brother, wobbling towards him and into a side room away from the music, dancing, and upper-class decadence of the ballroom.
Mycroft collapsed into an arm chair with a large sigh, matching his large girth.
“Are you going to explain to me why I’ve had the honour of another visit so soon, brother mine?” Mycroft was impatient, called as he had been out of the Mayoral Ball. Mycroft was never happy when he was too far from food, and even less agreeable when said distance had required walking.
“Tell me, brother, are you still in charge of personnel for Queen’s Council?”
“Yes I am, although I suspect you haven’t come here to ask about my job description,” Mycroft’s eyebrow rose, almost hidden by the layer of fat on his forehead.
“I need information about an assistant to Nourse Q.C. – Thomas Jones.” Sherlock told himself that it was only for Molly’s sake that he was asking and nothing else. He was lying.
Mycroft nodded, his eyes closing briefly as if opening the pages of an almanac in his mind, a record of everyone he’d ever met. “Jones, yes. Appointed recently. From money but with a desire to prove himself – although with very little with which he will be able to prove. Moderate intelligence to be kind - will reach the level minor level cabinet undersecretary at best. Presently courting and soon to be engaged to Miss Margaret Hooper.”
Sherlock ignored the involuntary wince at the word engaged.
“Thank you, brother.” Sherlock said. He really should have left, but he didn’t.
Mycroft noticed his brother’s vacillation. “Is there anything else, brother mine?”
“Just one thing – could one of your assistants go and fetch me a tuxedo – I feel like dancing.”
In record time, one of Mycroft’s underlings had acquired a tuxedo fit for Sherlock’s entrance into the ball. Once inside, Sherlock stuck to the outskirts of the dancehall and watched. He had never been one to play the game of the ton. The ladies were either desperate for money or marriage – neither of which Sherlock was keen to share. The men were even more insufferable than Sherlock had found Thomas Jones to be. All eager to climb the social hierarchy, scoring points however possible.
The misanthrope in Sherlock would posit that for all our civilization, we really weren’t too far from the chimps.
Sherlock was stilled in his self-destructive musings when a familiar face caught his eye. Molly was dancing, she was smiling, she looked unlike he’d ever seen her – happy.
Sherlock found himself moving towards her before he’d even consciously considered what he was doing. When the song ended, Sherlock politely asked her partner, a short nondescript man with a mustache, if he could have the next dance.
Molly, bound by propriety had no choice but to say yes – even when everything in her eyes told him she was furious at the prospect.
Their dancing was civil, their moves perfunctory.
As their fingers drew near, Sherlock asked a question, “Miss Hooper, I can’t help notice that beautiful pendant you’re wearing this evening.”
Molly’s cheeks reddened, Sherlock presumed she was remembering the moment of contact they had shared mere hours earlier. “Thank you Mr Holmes.”
“M L H,” Sherlock recited the letters slowly, like an oath.
“Yes.” Molly wasn’t giving anything away.
As they encircled each other, performing an Allemande step, Sherlock probed the issue further. “Miss Hooper, may I ask, what is your middle name?”
“Louise,” she said, her lips pursed.
“Margaret Louise Hooper,” he said, each name in time with the Fleurets they performed.
“My friends call me Molly,” she added.
The dance ended. Sherlock whispered into her ear, “You’re ML Hooper.”
Molly closed her eyes, “Yes,” she said and he could sense her whole body relaxing. The tension of years of hiding her true identity fading away.
They danced again, wordlessly this time. Sherlock, amazed that his suspicions had been confirmed, stared at the remarkable woman in his arms. It made perfect sense that this same woman whom he had seen working in the lab, the same woman who dressed like a young man to gain access to crime scenes, was the woman whose insights into forensic pathology were far beyond all her supposedly more learned male peers. In his arms Sherlock held a woman whose mind had so shaped his own.
Looking back, if he ever allowed himself such a luxury, Sherlock could pinpoint this moment, dancing with Molly at the Mayoral Ball, ruminating on how remarkable it was that such a woman had the talent and tenacity to stand head and shoulders above all chemistry experts without any formal education experience, this was the moment when he fell in love with her.
But those memories would soon become locked behind a solid door in his mind palace.
Only to become unlocked eight years later.
Now - Eight Years Later: December 1886
Watson had waited a while Holmes sat in silence. He was used to his friend’s mental palace, but there was precious little time for such explorations – Baker Street was approaching.
“So, are you going to tell me what I’m missing?”
“Well, first you must know something about Mrs Jones, something that, for years, she has hidden from all those closest to her.” John drew ever closer, desperate to find something to explain the mysteries of the morning’s events.
“Her full birth-name is Margaret Louise Hooper.”
Watson was deflated. That explained nothing. “So what about her name, Holmes!” He said, exasperated.
Holmes was equally exasperated.
“ML Hooper,” he said, slowly and clearly.
“Yes?” Watson was still certain there was something he was missing.
“ML Hooper whose investigations into forensic pathology changed my life and my practice and the very process of crime-solving itself?” Sherlock rattled off.
“Are you saying ML Hooper is her father?” Watson asked.
“Yes. But as usual my dear Watson, you are ever seeing and not perceiving. I'm saying that Mrs Molly Jones is ML Hooper.”
“Wait. What?” John's mouth was agape not for the first time that morning.
“He is she,” Sherlock spelled out for his friend.
“Are you telling me I just met the most esteemed researcher in forensic pathology in all of England? The one whose papers are the groundwork for all crime solving today? And He’s a woman?”
“That is correct.”
Watson took a moment for his worldview to reconfigure itself around this new and unforeseen fact.
When he spoke again, it was to praise Holmes. “Well I am doubly astounded, my friend. Not only at the fact that Hooper is a woman, but that you were able to deduce such a thing so swiftly this morning.” John paused, taken aback by the look of guilt crossing Holmes’ face. “You did deduce it this morning, didn’t you?”
Sherlock looked to the floor of the hansom.
“You knew.”
Sherlock nodded. “I did.”
“So you also knew the answer to the most puzzling mystery of the British Academy of Sciences – you knew why Hooper hasn't been heard of in eight years. It was because she married and had a child.”
“Yes,” there was a look of remorse on his face.
“Is there anything else you’re not telling me?” Watson asked his friend.”
“Yes.” Sherlock wouldn’t elaborate. “But first, I have a case to solve,” he said, springing out of the cab and up the stairs to Baker Street, leaving a stunned John Watson in his wake.