Chapter 11
Chapter 11
Then - Eight Years Earlier: March 1878
Despite having met mere weeks ago, Sherlock Holmes already knew Molly Hooper to have a remarkable set of skills including a vast knowledge of chemistry and amazing insights into the scientific method of discovery. Nevertheless, as the window sash in his Montague Street sitting room crashed shut in a spectacular failure of Molly’s stealth, it was clear that petty burglary wasn’t one of them.
Sherlock reached beside his bed in the midnight gloom, lit the gas-lamp and headed into the sitting room, pulling his dressing gown tightly around himself as he walked.
He found Molly stood in the center of the room, garbed no longer in the gown from earlier in the evening, but instead dressed in her alter-ego’s pageboy’s uniform. Sherlock didn’t like how much the memory of her dress still affected him, her current appearance notwithstanding.
“Hooper,” Sherlock greeted.
“Holmes,” she re-joined.
From the stairs came the unsteady footsteps of Sherlock’s landlady, clearly unhappy to be awoken.
“What is going on, Mr Holmes?” Mrs Turner called from the hallway.
Molly’s eyes grew wide, a reflex response for a young woman about to be caught in a compromising position such as she was – unaccompanied, late at night, in the flat of a known bachelor.
But Molly wasn’t a woman – or at least she wouldn’t appear to be as such to the untrained eye.
Sherlock greeted his landlady in the doorway.
“Mrs Turner, as you’re aware I sometimes work at odd hours, and Victor Trevor here is my new assistant.”
Silently, Sherlock urged Molly to accept the lie.
Mrs Turner’s head turned between Molly and Sherlock, gauging the situation for a moment before her eyes narrowed with a realisation.
“Whatever you’re doing, please keep the noise to a minimum. There are some of us who require sleep.”
Sherlock nodded and ushered his landlady back down the stairs.
“Do you think she suspects I’m a woman?” Molly whispered as fear caused the hairs on her arm to stand on end.
“Not at all,” Sherlock waved a hand dismissively. “I think she suspects you’re my male companion.”
There was an implication in his tone that Molly caught.
“Does she have reason to suspect as much?”
“Only insofar as I’ve never demonstrated any interest in the fairer sex.”
Molly steeled herself for a moment, pacing up and down the relatively small space of his living room.
After a moment or two, she couldn’t keep silent any longer.
“Have you any idea what you’ve done?” She asked with a fury far greater than her diminutive size would have led him to predict her to be capable of. But then, this was the woman who beat him over the head with a chair on one of the first occasions of their acquaintance.
For a moment he found himself without words. Molly continued, frustrated by the mute man before her. “You’ve single-handedly destroyed my life, my prospects, and yet you have nothing to say for yourself?”
Sherlock walked to the side-table, grabbing his pipe and lighting it. “I disagree.” He said between puffs. “I do not believe I have ruined your prospects. In fact, I believe I’ve vastly improved them.”
“What would you know?” She spat with contempt.
It was enough for Sherlock not to feel any need to hold back his deductions, rattling them off with rapid ease as he circled steps around her.
“You’re not in love with Thomas Jones. Your skin crawls at the sight of him, and you are repulsed by his touch. I’m not an expert in marriage, but disgust is hardly a helpful basis for a long-lasting union, wouldn’t you say? Certainly not if you’re to be expected to create an heir.”
He lingered on the word, causing Molly to bristle.
“You said it yourself. You’re not an expert in marriage,” she bit back.
Sherlock continued, undeterred. “Have you considered another path? I know that should you choose to do so, you would indeed not be the first woman to be admitted into the London School of Medicine. Nevertheless, you would indeed be a woman in a man’s world. And certainly a man with such political aspirations as your former fiancé wouldn’t allow you to continue your special interests.”
“No.” Sherlock knew that Molly was already aware of the fact, but saying it aloud made reality dawn on her all the more.
He placed a hand in hers, a gesture more intimate than any he’d previously shown her.
“You have a once in a generation mind, Molly. Why throw it away on an idiot like Mr Jones?”
It was a genuine question, a puzzle that he had yet to solve.
Molly closed her eyes, drawing the strength she needed to answer him. “Do you want to know why I wanted to marry him?” Her voice was quiet, almost a breath.
“Yes.” His voice matched hers.
“Come with me,” she said, heading to the door, “I think it’s time you met my father.”
Every time Sherlock had seen Molly in her pageboy’s garb prior to that night, she had been trying her best to avoid him. But as they walked through the gaslit streets of London that evening, it was the first time that Sherlock had been in comfortable companionship with Molly. The game of cat and mouse had ended, and now, for the first time, Sherlock was going to find what truly lay at the center of the maze.
Once they arrived at the Hooper home, Molly directed him around the back to the coal cellar, her usual way in and out at odd hours. Not only did it afford them access to the house at so late an hour, but it had the advantage of allowing Sherlock to avoid the perpetually unimpressed Mrs Fitz.
Once inside Molly toed off her shoes, and gestured for him to do likewise. Stealth in stockings, they padded up the stairs towards Molly’s father’s room. Molly opened the door but remained in the hallway – unable or unwilling to go in.
Curiosity drew Sherlock inside.
There, in the darkness of her father’s room, Sherlock discovered the reason Molly had become the woman she had.
On the bed wasn’t the ML Hooper he had heard of. Even if his most recent findings had been researched, written and submitted to peer-review entirely by his daughter, the man’s career was still the stuff of legend; he was a pioneer of chemistry, without peer or equal.
Yet, what Sherlock saw in the upper room that evening was something altogether different. There was no evidence of the great mind or the great man who belonged to it. Gone was the towering giant intellect of their age, replaced with a shell of a man, emaciated, with a mind overthrown – from what Sherlock could glean from the books strewn all over the floor and the shards of torn notepaper accompanying them.
Sherlock retreated, following Molly back to the coal cellar. Replacing their shoes, they walked back out into the London din.
“He’s in the final stages of consumption,” Molly explained, “although there is a cerebral complaint as well, one I will only be able to diagnose when-“
“When he dies,” Sherlock completed the words that Molly wouldn’t or couldn’t bring herself to say.
A fist clenched around Sherlock’s heart to picture Molly performing a post-mortem examination on her own father – but who better to do it?
“Thomas wanted to know where I’ve been for the last several weeks. I expect you do too. I’ve been here.” Molly gestured up at her father’s window.
Molly’s eyes glistened with tears she wasn’t ready to shed. “My mother died in childbirth. My brother died in the second Afghanistan war. Father is the only family I’ve ever known and soon, he’ll be gone, too.”
A lone tear betrayed her, running down her cheek. Sherlock longed to wipe it – and any others away, but propriety held him still, his hands unmoving at his side.
Molly continued, “When he first got ill, Father made me promise to make a good match, to secure my future.”
Sherlock understood why. As an unmarried woman without a living brother, all of the Hooper assets and estate would transfer to a cousin, uncle, or some such distant relative. Molly had no future other than destitution should she not marry well.
Sherlock nodded in understanding.
Molly’s eyes burrowed into his with a fury meant not for the detective but for the injustice of the situation she found herself in. “I’m no idiot, I know that Thomas Jones will only ever aspire to meager public service, but between that and his family’s income we will have more than enough.” Her breath caught when she realised the mistake in her tense. “We would have had enough,” she corrected before starting to finally cry.
Her tears broke something within Sherlock – unleashing a deluge of ideas that he’d never previously contemplated.
“What if –“ Sherlock stopped, amazed he hadn’t considered it before. “What if you didn’t want for anything? What if you had a benefactor – someone to provide your living expenses, and even a wage for Mrs Fitz.”
“In exchange for?” Molly’s eyes narrowed – such a proposition seemed almost indecent.
“An education,” Sherlock clarified.
“When I said you had a once in a generation mind, Miss Hooper, I meant it. I have learned so much from you already that has been of untold assistance in my work. Imagine what would happen if we were to work together.”
“Working together doing what exactly?” she asked.
“Experiments, research, solving crimes.”
Molly paused for a moment, considering.
“I would be reliant on you. Mrs Fitz would be reliant on you. My Father would be reliant on you – that is until he passes. Is this something you’re willing to burden?”
“Yes.”
Molly was close to taking it, he could tell – until something stopped her.
“This is, to be, strictly a business arrangement,” Molly said sternly.
“Of course. What else would it be?” Sherlock agreed with his words, while his traitorous mind supplied images of her dress from the ball and his all-too perfect recall reminded him of the soft touch of her hand in his and the way she felt pressed against him while they danced.
And he definitely didn’t want to consider why it was that he failed to inform Molly that her relationship with Thomas Jones need not have ended, particularly if Mycroft’s insistence had anything to do with it. No, that little fact was something Sherlock decided to keep entirely to himself.
“Mr Holmes,” Molly smiled, “you’ve got yourself a deal.”
Now: Eight Years Later
“This is all strictly business, right, Holmes?” John Watson asked his friend who refused to respond.
Holmes was lost in his work. Boxes after boxes of legal documents, accounts and various papers from Thomas Jones’ home study, work office and accountant’s firm had been delivered mere hours ago. Ever since, Sherlock had poured over the papers without so much as a glance to anyone else in the room. That was, anyone other than Mrs Jones – Molly – John had to remind himself to call her. Sherlock would drop everything the moment she entered the room.
John was concerned. He had seen the way Sherlock acted around Molly. Here was a man who was famous for wanting to work alone, so much so that even John could be replaced with a shopfront mannequin and he would be none the wiser.
But with Molly, there was a collegiality that John had never seen the detective to display before – certainly not with a woman.
If John had thought it was odd, it was nothing compared to the way the detective treated Molly’s son.
Archie had come upstairs, asking his mother for assistance in his reading. John had assumed the young man was still in junior Bible-reading primers as all young men his age were encouraged to read. Instead, the young man was in the midst of reading a novel by Stevenson.
“Archie, perhaps you should head back downstairs, I’ll be with you in a moment,” Molly looked at Sherlock apologetically.
“Nonsense, the young man can stay. What are you reading, Archie?” Sherlock asked with more genuine concern than John had ever seen his friend manage.
“It’s a story about pirates.”
Sherlock smiled. “Did you know that when I was your age, I wanted to become a pirate once I had grown up?”
A look transpired between the detective and the widow – and yet again John was in the dark about the silent communication that occurred between the two.
“Perhaps you could read some to Archie before bed one night?” Molly asked.
John steeled himself, ready for the disappointment that was about to be unleashed on the woman and her child.
“I would be honoured, Molly.”
Before John could dwell on the meaning of his friend’s surprising words, Archie flung himself into Sherlock’s arms in a tight embrace.
“Thank you Mr Holmes,” the young man said into the detective’s chest.
Sherlock looked down at Archie’s curls. His hands stilled, like he was afraid if he were to return the hug the child would disappear.
“Come on Archie, it’s time to take our leave. These men have important work to do,” Molly said. and if John didn’t know any better he would have sworn there were tears forming in the corners of her eyes, as well as matching ones in the detective’s eyes as well.
“Is everything ok, Holmes?” John asked his friend as soon as Molly and Archie were safely out of earshot. “She will be asked to leave once this business is sorted?”
Sherlock would have retreated to his mind palace, but one word that John had said drew Sherlock’s attention.
“Business – yes! You’re right, John.”
Sherlock took off running down the stairs. As John caught up to him, he was able to overhear one question that the detective was asking his new lodging-mate.
“Molly – what happened to Mrs Fitz?”