“Pea soup. The entire city is like pea soup. Brown and greenish and smoky and so dark that vehicles over in Piccadilly keep running into each other,” he mumbled, as he walked over to the counter and settled behind his microscope.
“I must ask you about Wiggins, Sherlock. You mentioned grave-robbing. Please do not tell me that he has become involved in some grave-robbing scheme.”
He arched an eyebrow. “I am not his keeper, Poppy. Nor are you.”
I heaved a sigh and wandered over to a corner of the room where I saw a box full of things I did not recognize. “What is all this, Sherlock? More bee paraphernalia?”
“Yes, more bee equipment. I must keep the swarm safe.” He fixed his eyes on the slide beneath the microscope.
I bent over the container and perused its contents. There was a collection of everything from hive stands to Honey Supers, bee brushes to pry bars to separate boxes from frames, and veil and gloves.
“Do be careful,” he warned, not looking up. “The equipment is quite dear for a man on my fluctuating income, and I had a devil of a time finding the proper bottom board to ventilate the new hive.”
I turned to look at him. He was now almost twenty-six; his birthday was just days away, on 6 January.
He was just twenty, two years my senior, when we met in the spring of 1874. He had not changed much, externally or internally. Even then, he was a lone wolf, determined to seek his own path; headstrong and unconventional in his thinking. Determined to harness the powers of science and logic and deduction and his own incredible intellect, he made it his life’s mission to peel back the truth, to dispel myths and to solve mysteries. He approached each new case as if it were his first - or his last, with the enthusiasm of an inventor about to reveal his latest innovation. I worried about his zeal, his lack of discretion, his lack of appreciation for the dangers he often faced in our crime-ridden city. Sometimes in pursuit of a criminal, he was like a young boy swimming in the sea, unaware of the downward spiral, the violent churning of a tidal sinkhole and the swells that could drag him into the depths of the ocean. Where danger was concerned, he could engage in uncustomary impetuousness. Whether he admitted it or not, Sherlock sought the immortality of fame.
His hair was dark, his eyes were grey and piercing beneath heavy, tufted brows. He was very tall and gaunt, quick and supple. His face was eager with a long beak-like nose. His fingers were long and thin; I loved to watch them plucking away at his violin, the sounds from which often reminded me of his strident voice. As was generally the case, today he wore a tweed suit. But I liked to envision him wandering around his room at Oxford in his purple dressing gown; he seemed so much more human and so much less a calculating machine when dressed thus. I remember he’d had a litter of pipes on his mantel there, but he most often smoked an oily, clay pipe when he was lost in thought, or his Cherrywood pipe on the occasions that he was inclined toward dispute and argument. I noticed his briarwood pipe near the microscope today. I had not yet determined its consanguinity to Sherlock’s temperament. As strange and indifferent to human nature as he often seemed to be, to me Sherlock was, as the poet Yeats described someone he greatly admired, “the most human person alive,” but the hardest to understand.
“I must take great care with the bees in this abominable weather,” he muttered. “They must be wrapped. Dr. Haviland tells me that roofing paper does the trick.” He looked up, his eyes vacant. “Oh, and that reminds me. I need to take a sample of propolis to examine it.”
“Propolis?”
“Bee glue. It is a resinous mixture that honey bees collect from tree buds, sap flows, and other botanical sources.” He returned his gaze to the slide and said, “There’s something for you in the container, Poppy.”
“For me? Something to do with bees?”
“No, nothing to do with bees. Have a look. I bought it from Morse Hudson at his art shop on Kennington Road. His mother wrapped it for me.”
“Mrs. Hudson? Victor’s former housekeeper?”
“Yes, Mrs. Hudson. Who else would be Morse’s mother?”
I bent over the container again, carefully shifted some of the contents and found a small box. It was gaily wrapped in coloured paper that was marbled. My mother often used this technique for wrapping gifts, but she preferred to present gifts in keepsake boxes crafted from paper maché, decorated with paints and trinkets. My Aunt Susan usually crafted cloth gift bags in which small gifts could be hung from trees.
Sherlock’s gesture surprised me... not just that Sherlock was actually presenting me with a Christmas gift but that it was not wrapped in something practical like brown paper or a newspaper with an article he wished me to read.
“What is it?”
“Well, you shall know when you open it.”
I quickly unwrapped the gift. Inside was a small velvet box which contained a locket. “Sherlock, it’s... it’s beautiful.”
“I thought you might place a photograph in it. You like that sort of thing, don’t you?”
“I do! You know I do! You bought this at an art shop?”
“Morse says it is an antique.”
“Sherlock, thank you ever so much,” I said, rushing over to him. I touched his cheek and brushed my lips against his. He leaned
