“What? What is it, Poppy?”
The paradox between the uncle I loved so much and the one I suspected was suddenly too much to bear alone. “The thing is... I have had suspicions about Uncle Ormond myself.”
He looked incredulous. “Mycroft’s suspicions - and whatever suspicions you may have - are unfounded. Quite impossible. We will investigate and offer another explanation. A plausible explanation.”
Sherlock put his arms around me, and at that moment, I longed to recapture the feelings we had shared that night at Holme-Next-The Sea four years ago. I clung to him for a long time, neither of us speaking. Finally, he guided me to a chair and poured me a glass of port. We sat down across from one another near the fireplace.
As my dark thoughts slipped from my lips, unravelling like fragile threads that hold together an old, fraying quilt, he listened.
27
Finished with my port and revealing to Sherlock my list of suspicions, I sat back and glanced at his face, waiting to hear what he had to say. He seemed to have faded away from me. He was closed off, not speaking, motionless. His head sunk forward and his eyes fixated on the cold fireplace as if he were seeing something there in the ashes and residue that no one else could absorb. Then he lit his pipe and leaned back, watching the pale grey smoke rings spiral up toward the ceiling.
I was about to leave the room, to leave him to his mental gymnastics, when he said, “Poppy, I fully understand your qualms. I even understand Mycroft’s display of mistrust of Dr. Sacker. In fact, I am already entertaining the notion that Dr. Sacker is bait of some kind. Nonetheless, there is hardly enough evidence to hang your uncle from the rope. You must trust me. I will catch the real murderer out. I do not want you to worry.”
“But what if - ?”
“Quite simply, your uncle is wrongfully accused. I feel it.”
“You feel it?”
“I meant that as one progresses in this profession, one gets a sense of what matters, an ability to intuit that which is not clear at first. Did I not deduce that Mrs. Hudson was forced by her husband into helping with the blackmail scheme he devised against Squire Trevor?”
“So you admit to knowing instinctively that she was not a wicked person, that - ?”
“Not at all. I claim no clairvoyance like that with which you and others invested in your friend Effie. There is no such thing as a sixth sense. However, through the actions and behaviour of a person, one can certainly infer certain things and predict future behaviour.” Fingertips pressed together, teepee fashion, his elbows on the arms of his chair, he leaned forward and said, “Your uncle could not be the killer.”
“Wait. You do not know my uncle that well. So you are admitting to intuition.”
He shook his head. “I admit to no such thing. Your uncle is logical. He is a clever man. Brilliant by all accounts. Dr. Sacker would not leave a trail of clues. He would never allow evidence to be traced back to himself. Now, I must encourage you not to dwell on this matter any further, and if you will not help me investigate, at the very least, wash it from your mind.”
“How can I do that? And why should I do that?”
His eyes were thick with thought, as if a dark syrup of data had seeped into his brain and he was stirring it about. Normally, I eschewed his incessant need for the most minute of details, but this time I hoped he could contain it and that he would not allow a single drop to slide through and away. I feared Uncle’s life depended on Sherlock’s ability to swiftly sort things out.
“Sherlock, Aunt Susan told me you were concerned about me. So, tell me, are you concerned about me, Sherlock?”
His eyes darted about and his lips turned to a frown. “Concerned? I am not concerned. Why would I be concerned? Should I be concerned?”
I had to smile a bit at the way he had prattled off the sentences, showing emotion whether he wished to or not, just as he had when he all but attacked his brother earlier in the library. He was trying so hard not to show it, but there was still something about me that moved him deeply. I felt that. And there was definitely an intense and perhaps neurotic attachment to his brother that gripped him, because his outburst had been as much a showing of disappointment in his brother’s behaviour as it had been a defence of my uncle.
Taking a deep breath, I said, “Let me ask you this, Sherlock. Do you think that someone could be trying to cast blame on Uncle to avoid suspicion himself?”
“That is quite probably the most intelligent thing that has been said in this room all evening. Poppy, you are a gifted woman. You must not allow circumstantial evidence to interfere with your sensible, clever mind. I fear you are suffering from sleep deprivation or something.”
“And so it’s true. As Aunt Susan said, you are concerned about me.”
“Your daily trips to the wharf, the way you are engrossed in the ritual of shrouding the corpses and trying to comfort the living... it borders on obsession. You are my assistant. I need you on other matters, and I need you to be rational and logical, able to judiciously sort the fact from the fiction.”
“Sherlock, the victims... their families. I cannot simply dismiss them as you do.”
He looked away and did not respond.
I took a deep breath and asked him to pour me another glass of port. He promptly complied.
“Sherlock, we have never talked about that night. That night at Holme-Next-The-Sea. Nor have we discussed the night of Victor’s father’s funeral.”
He poured port into his own glass as well. “Now? When your uncle has just been arrested, you wish to discuss the night of Squire Trevor’s funeral?”
“Did you not
