My hopeless chest, I thought.
I then turned to the smallest box, recalling Sherlock’s gift of a locket. Often the finest gifts come in the smallest packages. When I unwrapped it, I found a small wooden keepsake box, the lid of which was decorated in Berlin work, a counted thread design in brilliant shades. Aunt Susan had left another note inside. “To keep your secrets or your fine jewelry... as you wish. Now solve the puzzle to find your next gift.”
I glanced at the note below. She’d decided to make me play the new game called Doublets, created by Lewis Carroll and recently described in Vanity Fair. To play, one had to use several words to change one word into another, using only one letter from the previous word. All the words between the first and the last had to be actual words. As an example, Carroll charged the reader to change the word PIG into the word STY, with five words in between. Aunt Susan did not tell me the last word, though; she’d decided to make it even more difficult. Instead, to find my gift, I had to change the word Noel “into a component of a game, using only Christmas-related words.”
My aunt loved such games and she and Uncle were quite good at it, but I had failed miserably each time I tried. Brows furled, my nose in a pinch, I tried for several minutes to work it out. I heard Sherlock say, “What’s keeping you, Poppy? I am famished.”
I looked up and then held the note out to him. “It’s a game Aunt Susan is forcing me to play to find a gift. A riddle of sorts.”
He took the note. “Ah, yes. Doublets. I’ve heard of this.” He took a pen from his pocket and scribbled on the back of the note. A few moments later, he said, “Ah! I’ve got it.” He handed the note back to me. He’d written the following words: Noel, Angel, Carol, Song, Sing, King. So he’d taken the ‘e’ from Noel and used it in the word Angel; then he took the ‘a’ in Angel and used it in the word Carol. And so on.
“King?” I asked. “But I’m to use only Christmas words.”
“Isn’t Christ the King? As in King and Queen. Components of the game of chess. I believe you are receiving a chess set. Look there, in the large box on the left.”
I quickly opened the largest present. Inside was a beautiful chess set made of ebony and ivory with another note. “You do not do very well on the ebony and ivory in this room. Perhaps you shall excel at this pastime. I look forward to the challenge.”It was signed ‘Uncle Ormond.’
“Oh!” I cried. “Oh, my heavens. Sherlock, do you play?”
“I have a time or two.”
“Splendid. We shall have a game after dinner.”
“If you don’t hurry along, I shall be dead before your Uncle carves the goose.”
I told them about my patients during dinner. “My last patient reminded me of Fantine and Cosette,” I said.
“Who?” Sherlock asked.
“The mother and daughter in Les Miserables.”
He looked totally mystified.
“The novel by Victor Hugo about the French Revolution. Have you not heard of it? It was just published here in London. Fantine is forced into prostitution when she loses her job so that she can support her daughter Cosette. My patient has a little girl. She was as thin as a rail and came to me because of a cough and other symptoms. I am wondering if she has consumption like Fantine did. Maybe I misdiagnosed her. Consumption causes weight loss, fever, and a cough. But I blamed it on the fog.”
“Laënnec died from it,” Uncle said.
“Laënnec?” Sherlock asked. Suddenly he was interested in the conversation. “The man who invented the stethoscope?”
“Yes, and he used it to support his findings about pulmonary diseases before he died,” Uncle explained. “If this young woman is suffering from consumption rather than bronchitis, she needs to go to a sanitorium. One just opened in Falkenstein... it’s a place where patients can rest and get fresh air and their food intake can be monitored.”
“I don’t know anything about her, Uncle. She said her name is Penelope Potash but I don’t know where she lives. But she promised to return for more vibratory treatments for a female problem.”
“Hopefully she will return soon, then,” Uncle said. “If she suffers from this illness, time is of the essence.”
Then the conversation drifted, of course, to the fog, always the fog.
“I just heard today from my friend Dr. Mitchell.” Uncle said. “He’s compiling statistics to submit an article to the Journal of the Scottish Meteorological Society. The penny post is a marvelous thing, isn’t it? We can give each other updates almost daily on statistics regarding mortality rates as well as atmospheric measurements that Sherlock provides. Dr. Angus Smith has been measuring the noxious qualities in the air near Manchester as well. He has an uneasy feeling about the situation.”
“I have also,” Michael said. “Most expect it to linger for several more weeks. And if the fog does not abate-”
“Many more will die,” I croaked, tossing my napkin on my half-eaten dinner.
“I hope that this horrible weather does not adversely affect Her Majesty,” Michael said. “She is getting up in years.”
“She is but sixty,” Sherlock said.
“Which is not young,” Michael replied.
“I plan to live to be a hundred. Or forever!” Sherlock answered.
“At any rate, I hope
