A
Study In Satin
by Tigger
The cold London fog rolled in across the Thames, making the city's street lights halo eerily. Had there been anyone out and about that damp, chilly midnight hour, they would have seen only a single lighted window overlooking Baker Street. That solitary light issued from the second floor study of the flat at 221B Baker Street - the rooms of the fabled Mr. Sherlock Holmes. For a single moment, a shadowy figure peered out into the night through the parted drapery - a figure bent by age and other . . . less-natural enfeebling agencies. The years had not been kind to the great detective. His longtime friend and principal biographer, Dr. John Watson had been dead for nigh onto two years. Mycroft Holmes, the brilliant if eccentric older brother who had used his contacts as a senior official of His Majesty's Government to send Holmes so many challenging cases, had also passed away. Both losses had been devastating to the man in the gloomy rooms for their passings had left that powerful and restless intellect truly and completely alone save for memories - and vices. Sherlock's brother had been, of late, the last influential person in all of England who had still believed in the great detective's powers and abilities. With Mycroft's death, Holmes no longer had any contacts who could or would advise other such men of consequence to bring their most baffling and sensitive problems to the rooms at 221B Baker Street. Those whose hands now controlled the reins of power within the British Empire could see no point in consulting with a relic of a bygone age - a man who, in their so-very-knowing estimation, could not possibly understand the wonders and problems of their modern world. Their casual dismissal had left Holmes to struggle against the fiendish power he could not defeat - the utter and debilitating ennui that gnawed at his very soul when his powerful brain went unchallenged. All of which made the loss of Watson even more serious. Watson had been the stone upon which the great detective had sharpened his thoughts, tested his hypotheses and tightened his arguments. In short, Dr. John H. Watson had provided Holmes the intelligent and appreciative audience his investigative method and his ego required. More importantly, a living John Watson would have at least attempted to dissuade Holmes from resuming his use of the seven percent solution of cocaine as a salve for his boredom. Holmes had believed that he'd defeated the need for the drug during his years abroad after the incident at the Reichenbach Falls with Professor Moriarty, but over the past two years, he had discovered that he'd been wrong. Since Watson's death, and without challenges suited to his curiosity and intellect, Holmes' use of the drug had steadily increased. Whether that was due to the unrelenting ennui or to a real and growing addiction, Holmes did not know. Nor, at this point in his life, did he very much care. Every game, in Holmes' opinion, eventually came to a cusp, a critical moment in which a player's options became distinctly limited. After a great deal of contemplation and reflection, Holmes had concluded that his life had arrived at just such a crossroads. Holmes had always assumed that when such an important milestone in his amazing life finally occurred, it would come heralded by major events and great happenings. A case worthy of his powers such as the one that had led to the confrontation with Professor Moriarty at the Falls or an investigation such as the one he'd conducted on the behest of the King of Bohemia when he had first met Irene Adler, THE woman. Such a major event in the life of the greatest detective of his era, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, should have been presaged by something equally momentous. Only it had not. Rather, the event had been marked only by a series of relatively unimportant, disconnected events in the past sennight. It had all begun not more than a week earlier, when a particularly maudlin mood had driven Holmes to take out his case file. After Watson's death, Holmes had assumed the responsibility of documenting his investigations, not because he was vain nor because he harbored any interest in personal fame, but because the world stood to benefit from accurately rendered accounts of his method in action. Holmes had been dismayed to realize that it had been more than a year since the aging detective had been called in to undertake a case worthy of his still prodigious powers. It had been mere coincidence that the date of the final entry in the file, the date that Holmes had declared that case closed, had been one year ago to the day he had decided to look over that file. Mere coincidence. Later during the same week, Holmes had needed to renew his supply of cocaine. The meager supply that Watson had kept in his small surgery had been quickly consumed once Holmes had resumed using the drug. This had forced Holmes to find another supplier, which had not been difficult - until this attempt. This time when Holmes had gone to his chemist, he'd been told that from then on he would need a prescription signed by a licensed doctor in order to obtain the drug. That problem had been solved by means of a judicious bit of forgery, but Holmes knew from personal experience that forgery was a crime with a very short life. Eventually, the doctor and the chemist would reconcile their records and Holmes' forgeries would be uncovered. Holmes might be able to delay that unfortunate occasion by frequenting a number of other doctors and chemists, but it was only a matter of time before that avenue of relief, however reprehensible Watson had found his use of it, would be closed to Holmes as well. Holmes had therefore renewed his efforts to secure work from the various government agencies that had once clamored for his attentions. Those efforts, however, had been met only with ridicule and derision. In fact, one officious little dandy had actually had the unmitigated gall to order the office guards to "escort" Holmes from the building. Holmes had been profoundly humiliated by that cavalier dismissal and treatment. The humiliation had quickly given way to a rage the likes of which the ordinarily cold and unemotional detective rarely experienced. Briefly, he had gone so far as to actually consider turning his talents against those pompous, strutting fools - to following his greatest foe onto the path of crime, or even conquest. Then let those smug idiots at Whitehall try ignoring him. . . let them DARE to ignore King Sherlock the First. The images such confrontations conjured up had been momentarily entertaining for Holmes, but in the end, he had discarded both notions. Not because he doubted the feasibility of either option. Holmes firmly believed that he would have succeeded at either venture, but his decision to forgo those paths had come from what was to him, an unexpected source. Holmes was neither a religious nor a superstitious man, but the thought of how Watson would have reacted to Holmes turning his skills and will against the Crown had, in the end, dissuaded him. Odd that after all the years of amused yet mildly condescending tolerance toward his longtime companion, Holmes should find that he needed to feel worthy of Watson's good opinion. *The follies of age,* he thought not for the first time, *are at least as numerous of those of youth, and the worst folly of all must be conscience.* In truth, Holmes did not need to work - at least not in a financial sense. Mycroft's estate along with Holmes' own investments provided him a more than comfortable income that would last far beyond his expected lifetime. No, work was something Holmes needed, or perhaps more accurately, something Holmes craved to fill his mind, not his purse. *So, those appear to be my only viable and personally acceptable options,* Holmes mused,*I could continue to live as I am living at that precise moment. Physically comfortable and either bored to a state of utter insensibility, or assuming I am somehow able to continue to obtain the cocaine, drugged into a similar state, but not caring.* He could continue to be a forgotten creature in this modern world, or worse yet, a pitied one. "*Neither* course of action is the least bit acceptable," Holmes snarled in the barest whisper. "There is yet a third choice. This abominable maze that has become my life's game still has a third path open to me, and I choose to follow it!" Shoving the drapery closed, Holmes strode across his study to his scientific laboratory. The weak, blue flame of a carefully adjusted bunsen burner flickered, throwing eerie shadows about the otherwise darkened room. The scientist in Holmes watched dispassionately as the heat of the dancing flame caused a clear liquid in a small glass beaker to boil gently, sending its vapors billowing up into a distilling unit. The beaker had been full earlier this evening but now the fluid filled less than a tenth of its original volume. Holmes picked up the modestly sized amber-colored apothecary bottle and looked at the label. Before Holmes had upended the bottle's contents into his distilling apparatus, it had originally held a spare two ounces. An entire thirty-day's supply of the solution - at least that is what the prescription he'd been forced to present had indicated. "A prescription," he snorted into the darkness. "They will be regulating alcohol next. Or trying to, the consummate fools." Skillfully, Holmes used a pair of metal tongs to snatch the beaker off the flame and then poured its contents onto a small metal bottomed dish. He then set the dish upon an ice bath to cool the concentrated liquid. With practiced efficiency, Holmes filled his steel hypodermic from the dish, and then stalked off to his rooms. Briefly, he worried that the contents of the needle might not be sufficient to the task. Originally, Holmes had intended to concentrate the entire bottle of cocaine, but his calculations indicated that the resulting concentrate might be too thick to pass through his hypodermic needle. Still, what the needle's reservoir currently contained was nearly three weeks' dose and that should be more than adequate to Holmes' needs. As he had always done when embarked on a project worthy of his mettle, Holmes had planned and prepared thoroughly for this evening's agenda. Mrs. Hudson's daughter was scheduled to come in for her twice weekly cleaning day after tomorrow. With luck, she'd think he'd passed away of natural causes, although the police would see things for what they were, but Holmes had no desire to traumatize Miss Hudson either. Quickly, Holmes went about the nightly rituals a man developed over a lifetime. A quick wash, a soothing pipeful of his tobacconist's most excellent rough-cut blend while his Edison Phonograph played Johann Sebastian Bach's Concerto for Two Violins, and fifteen minutes reading the classics (Sophocles' Antigone in the original Greek) before reaching for his bedside gas lamp. Except tonight, rather than reaching for the gas lamp, Holmes reached for the hypodermic needle. From his meticulous researches, Holmes had determined that the now-highly concentrated cocaine solution would immediately shock and then stop his heart in a not-easily-recognizable simulation of natural cardiac arrest. If he could just turn the lamp off and throw the needle out of his immediate vicinity before he succumbed, it was entirely possible that not even the police would uncover the truth. That was the only negative aspect of his plan - at least to Holmes' way of thinking - the possibility of having his name tarred forever with the stigma of insanity for having taken his own life. Being pitied for the supposed loss of his keen mind would be a bad enough legacy, but it would immeasurably worse to have those buffoons in the government feel vindicated in their arrogant assessment of the "mad" Sherlock Holmes. "Then you had best complete the job properly, hadn't you?" Holmes chided himself rhetorically. *Reduced to talking to myself,* he thought resignedly, *perhaps I am losing my mind, after all.* With a sigh, he plunged the needle home, steadily injecting the cool fluid into his arm. With a speed and strength born of ego, the Great Detective flung the needle out the conveniently open window and managed to dowse the lamp. The soothing, euphoric haze of the drug came over him much more quickly than Holmes was used to, but that was only to be expected, he surmised. At last, the boredom receded as Holmes gave himself up to the contemplation of what was, for him, the only mystery he had been unable to investigate properly. At least, not if he'd wanted to live to tell the tale. Well, he wasn't going to live, he smiled gently to himself, so now he was free to investigate what awaited men on the other side of death's veil. The thought brought a semblance of a happy grin to his lips and then his eyes drifted closed one last time.
