I raised my eyes to the gallows and winced when he said, “Lord, have mercy upon me.”
His last words were, “I helped those children. I helped them.”
Marwood stepped to the side and pulled the lever. I dragged my gaze from the gallows and closed my eyes, but I heard Horton plummet down some eight feet into the brick-lined pit below. The whole process took less than two minutes, but his body would be left to hang for an hour before being taken down. When we exited the prison, we saw that a black flag had been hoisted on the flag pole above the main gate.
Sherlock dragged me through the crowd in silence, keeping me close. It reminded me of when we’d gone looking for Oscar in an opium den near Limehouse Beach. He had said, “Do not leave my side. Do not speak to anyone. Keep hold of my hand.”
And I had answered, “Yes. I will.” That was perhaps the first time - and one of the few - that I had obeyed him without question.
When we reached Heathfield Road, Sherlock finally said, “His body will be buried in an unmarked grave in one of the exercise yards.”
I did not respond.
“I heard the Governor say that Marwood was compensated in the sum of twelve pounds. That’s more than any fee I pocket.”
“Perhaps you should change your career path then. Become an executioner.”
He did not reply.
“Sherlock, what if an innocent person is condemned to death? What if you and the police are wrong and execute a-”
“I never guess, Poppy,” he interrupted. “It flies in the face of logic to do so. Horton was guilty. You are succumbing to an emotional response. And you know that I believe emotions are antagonistic to clear thinking.”
I wrapped my arms around myself and leaned against the building, feeling my heart sink further into the darkness. “I want to go to Victoria Park to feed the swans,” I blurted.
His mouth pulled down, he grimaced. “Why?”
“Because they are beautiful and I need something beautiful to erase the images in my mind.”
He thought for a moment, as did I. Sherlock had mentioned something about accompanying him to St. Bart’s to discuss another murder case, so I used that as leverage. “I shall not go with you to the hospital if you do not take me to Victoria Park first.”
I touched his hand, feeling the fire lick my skin as it always did when I touched him. “Will you do this for me, please?”
He did not answer immediately, so I stared into his eyes, longing to see desire, longing for him to show the affection that I knew he felt for me. Longing to let the words spill out of my mouth, the ones I continued to hold back as I had for years, and desperate for him to remember what he had said to me once before:
“Poppy, my nerves are like fireflies. I cannot think because my feelings for you get in the way. It suddenly seems more logical to allow them to flourish and keep you close so that I can teach them to live side by side with logic and deduction.”
In the short time since we had rekindled our still tenuous relationship, there had been a few occasions that, for one breathless moment, he seemed to teeter on the edge of something more. Sometimes I felt we were but a fraction of a second from fanning the dying embers. We would dance like two swans in a courting ritual. I attributed the demise of our prior romantic interlude during the summer of 1874 to Sherlock’s terrible guilt over betraying Victor Trevor, Sherlock’s only friend and the man who wanted to marry me, and to Sherlock’s need to immolate any emotional attachments in favour of his passion for objectivity and logic. Nevertheless, I kept the fires of hope burning. I was willing to be patient. I tried to comfort myself with an illusion; after all, the swans’ courtship ritual is relatively long and drawn out because the displays they make to each other are so significant in forging the special bond that exists between them, the kind I had once imagined Sherlock and I would have.
But Sherlock was no swan. He dedicated every waking hour to being the detective who looks - and finds - that one thing that nobody else has found, and his froideur had grown exponentially. It was terrifying at times. Logic and deduction always seemed to trump fondness and love and physical intimacy.
“Will you take me to Victoria Park or not?” I asked.
Finally, Sherlock sighed and muttered, “Fair enough,” and hailed a hansom.
2
As we travelled to the park, I listened to the clip-clop of the carriage horses and watched Sherlock closely. I was still shaking and I tried desperately to banish the sights and sounds of Horton’s final moments from my mind. But Sherlock was calm, completely unruffled. No trace of regret or doubt or horror such that I was feeling was apparent on his countenance.
And then I pondered how such a man could still have such a hold on me. I had managed to get along without him for several years while I finished medical school and opened my practice near the British Museum. I’d even travelled a bit. But, then when he abruptly came back into my life, once again it seemed so natural to walk with him or dine with him or talk about everything under the sun with him. When he’d sent the page to my office inviting me to join him at Horton’s private execution, I simply could not refuse him.
“Sherlock, tell me more about the man
