Morpheus’ embrace until needed. To escape the injustices of the world…
But such was not for Lestrade. Instead, he hailed a cab and headed home. He would have to live with the ghosts for a while longer.
Watson, newly reinstalled as a roommate on Baker Street, accompanies Holmes on a case of the disappearance of a young woman. A possible kidnapping or worse, this case finds Holmes at his deductive best and delivers an unexpected side to his ideas about crime and justice. Raynes subtly shows the depth of the connection between Holmes and Watson in this tale. Interesting revelations are not only to be found in the details of the case in this adventure
The Kidnapping of Alice Braddon
by Katie Raynes
The first thing I noticed upon entering our sitting room, some weeks after I had moved back into Baker Street, was that my arm-chair was on fire.
I immediately went for the carafe of water on our sideboard but before I reached it, Holmes, who had been sitting unnoticed on the floor in front of the chair, called out for me to stop.
“I am conducting a very delicate experiment, Watson,” he said. “Pray do nothing to compromise it.” I approached the chair, upon the seat of which was a patch of smouldering ashes surrounded by some slimy wet substance. The ashes smoked quite strongly, but the embers themselves were feeble.
“What on earth are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m testing a flame-retardant chemical compound I’ve been developing.”
“It doesn’t look particularly flame-retardant to me,” I said. Holmes fixed me with a long-suffering stare.
“You will observe that the upholstery has not yet caught.” He returned his attention to the miniature fire as if some question of dire importance rested upon it. I looked from his earnest, focused face to the small pile of ashes and back again.
“You really are terrifically bored, aren’t you?”
“You have a positive gift for understatement, my dear Watson.”
“But why my chair? I do use it sometimes, you know.”
“The compound is meant for furniture, where fires from pipe or cigar ash are most likely to start. As to why I chose yours…I suppose I have been without a roommate so long that it simply didn’t occur to me.” I could not tell whether the barb was intended or I only imagined the brittleness in his voice.
“I don’t recall that you were particularly observant of such boundaries when you did have one,” I said.
He shrugged.
“Anyway, I met a commissionaire on the front steps. There’s a telegram for you from Scotland Yard.”
Holmes perked up and held out his hand. “Why did you not say so immediately?”
“Coming home and discovering one’s furniture ablaze is a bit distracting.”
“I’d hardly say that, considering the efficacy of my compound. Give it here.”
I passed him the telegram and he ripped it open.
“I wonder what sort of trouble the official force has got itself into now. It’s from Lestrade,” he said, and handed the slip back to me. “He requests my assistance in the investigation of a kidnapping.”
“Will you go?” I asked.
“Can you imagine I would refuse, after seeing what my boredom has wrought?”
“No, I suppose not.”
Holmes reached behind him for the ash pan and swept the still-smoking cinders off my armchair’s seat. “There, all tidied up,” he said. “Mrs Hudson did suggest that I might strive to keep things a bit more manageable these days, and I suppose I owe her that much.” He stood up and dusted off his hands while I stared dismally at the still sticky and now ash-smudged seat of my chair. He was turned away from me, getting his coat from the stand, when he asked: “Are you busy this afternoon, Watson?”
The tone of his voice made me look up – there was a curious tentativeness in it, masked by the off-hand way in which he asked but discernible to me, who knew him so well. What on earth could I be busy with, having sold my practice? It