I Need To Know

 

“Do you often make it a point to break into houses when your investigations have reached a dead end?” I asked Holmes when we were in the hansom cab on the way to Jekyll’s.

“On the contrary, my friend, the investigation is not at a dead end. This is merely an interlude to get to the next step.”

“I see you have expertly dodged answering my question.”

“You, of all folks, are wary of trespassing to gain advancement in a case?” At my silence, Holmes gave a grin. “Why risk incriminating oneself?”

Minutes later, the hansom cab stopped down the street from Jekyll’s house. Holmes paid the driver, but before we got out, I stopped him. “Holmes, look.”

Henry Jekyll was running out of his house, away from where we were sitting, shrugging on a black overcoat at the same time.

“This is a marvelous bit of good fortune,” I said, wondering if this truly was a coincidence.

“Yes,” Holmes murmured, his tone giving away that he speculated the same thing.

We waited to exit the cab until Jekyll was well out of sight. Then, I led Holmes to the boarded-up window at the back of the house.

“Good, the bushes have been cut back. I can remove the wood easily enough, but it’s so rotted through, it will never go back in place in one piece.”

“I’m not worried about that. We’ll do what we can to replace it. I simply want to get into the laboratory.”

Nodding, I knelt to the ground and carefully picked up and moved the wood. As I expected, it crumbled apart between my fingers, littering the grass on its way to where I deposited the partially intact larger piece.

“No glass in the window. Good,” Holmes said. He lowered himself so he was sitting on the edge of the window frame. “Your assistance, please?”

I took his arms and he moved forward so that my hands were the only things keeping him from falling to the floor below.

“My feet can just touch the ground, Erik. Release me, then drop me my cane,” he requested.

I grunted my agreement, let his hands go one at a time, and handed his cane down a moment later.

“Holmes, would you like me to come down as well?”

“No, I need you to remain alert for anyone who may come by.” I heard papers rustling and then, “I believe I know what I’m searching for, anyway.”

Minutes, that seemed like hours, later, Holmes said, “Yes, indeed! I’ve found what I’m looking for.”

He appeared below me, tossed his cane up to me, and pocketed something too quickly for me to see. “Pull me back up,” he appealed.

Once we were both back outside the house, he checked his pocket. “Good. Still safe.”

“What did you take, Holmes?”

He shook his head, indicating we should leave the premises. When we were back in a hansom cab on our way back to Baker Street, Holmes said, “Henry muttered yesterday about something called HJ-7. I found a dozen vials, only eight of them labeled and filled with any amount of liquid, from HJ-1 to HJ-8. I’ve procured number seven.”

“What will that do Holmes?”

“Perhaps nothing, possibly everything. This could be what he is administering to his patient. There was a needle nearby, so I assume he injects it directly into the bloodstream. Ah, we’re back home.”

The cab stopped in front of 221B and we paid the driver and left the cab. Once we were back in Holmes’s rooms, he set himself up at his chemistry table.

“Erik, I know you would undoubtedly like to assist me, but I find right now, more than anything, I need music. Would you mind?”

“Of course not.” I took Holmes’s violin from its case and tuned it, then brought the bow over the strings. I lost myself minutes later in music I had learned over years of study. I played pieces of my own composition. When I could think of no other pieces, my fingers worked their way to new combinations of notes I hoped I could recall later.

As I let my fingers have free reign to create music, I found my mind began to wander. As unfortunate a creature as Jekyll seemed to be, I found I could relate to him. We both had someone we were desperate to save. However, whereas he looked inward to save another, I had looked to another to save myself.

I came slightly out of my reverie at that thought, recalling something Holmes had once hinted at. He’d warned me to halt my pursuit of Christine because to do otherwise would mean the complete destruction of my heart. He’d only ever hinted at the story behind this, but he’d said he understood loving a woman so profoundly. In fact, it had cost him his own heart. It was the real reason he was so calculating, so analytical. Because when he wasn’t being that man, the Sherlock Holmes the world knew, he was a broken soul, defeated by the most illogical of all emotions: love.

I found I was envious of Holmes. Of the methodical, yet casual way he went about his work, no one ever guessing that a broken heart lay beneath the surface. Of course, I was just as good at the façade, but I doubted that would still be the case if I had to be around people day in and day out.

Holmes’s voice broke into my thoughts. “Ah-ha!”

The bow made a loud screech as my playing came to a sudden standstill. “What have you found?”

“This is indeed a serum meant to go directly into the patient’s bloodstream. To ingest it would be fatal. Jekyll has used some very rare, very potent chemicals in this mix. Interesting that through the blood, it’s tolerable, yet over the tongue, deadly.”

“What might it do to a person? Is there any way to find out its rate of tolerability through injection?”

“Through these experiments, doubtful.”

“I became extremely familiar with poisons, herbs, and other potentially lethal things to ingest during my time in Persia. Whatever is in that vial could prove incredibly painful through injection. One poison I became aware of would be put on the tip of a dart, then blown into someone’s flesh. When the poison entered the bloodstream, it caused incredible hallucinations - ”

“Enough that the person was driven to their death,” Holmes interrupted. “I was once involved in a case where an Egyptian cult used poisoned darts with hallucinogenic properties.”

“Somehow I’m not surprised. But no, not driven to death. Recall that I was used by the khanum in torture devices. She didn’t want the victims killed. The poison I spoke of would make the person feel like their skin was on fire. Or that their inner organs were melting. Of course, Jekyll wouldn’t deliberately poison or torture a person, so we hope, but what if injecting this felt that way? It would…….”

“ - explain the screams,” Holmes finished for me. “Indeed, it could. As for what it does . . .” He held the vial up in front of his narrowed eyes. “I’m unsure. I have an idea or two to find out, but those must wait. Especially taking into account the possibilities you presented, I’ll have to run more tests before I attempt something that drastic.”

“Drastic?” I didn’t like the sound of that.

“Do not worry, Erik. There are many roads I can take before that one.”

“I hope you’ll explore all the others carefully, then,” was all I said.

“I shall.”

“Holmes?”

“Yes?”

“Would you permit me to inquire about your past a moment?”

He set the vial down in one of his holders and looked at me carefully. “That depends on what you wish to find.”

I smiled. “It seems to me I once said something similar to you the first time you came to my lair.”

“Yes, you did. Though I truly wasn’t searching for something specific. I deduce the same cannot be said for you.”

“You’re correct.”

“What do you wish to find?”

“Only the story behind why you have such an acute understanding of the destruction of the human heart.”

A pained, haunted look crossed Holmes’s face. “I’m sorry, Erik. Even this many years later, it is something I cannot speak of. It’s just . . .” he turned away, his hand going up to his face, his knuckles on the other turning white as they gripped the table. “It’s not something I can speak of,” he repeated.

“Holmes . . .” For the first time in years, I was struck speechless. That catch in his voice, the fact that he turned away from me, the hand at his face . . . was Sherlock Holmes crying?

Putting down the violin, I went to stand next to him and rested my arm around his shoulders. “You don’t have to say anything, Holmes. I’m sorry for bringing it up so abruptly. I apologize for asking at all.”

He took in a sharp breath and swiped his hand across his eyes. “No,” he said, turning back to his chemistry table, my arm falling back to my side, “I should face these emotions one day. But . . . after hiding from them or running from them for so long . . .”

“You don’t know where to start,” I completed.

“Yes. Exactly.” He sighed deeply. “How I envy you at times.”

“Envy me?” I asked in shock.

“Indeed. You believed me so quickly after the conclusion with Christine when I told you that your life was worth living. It took me months to even consider that perhaps I could keep breathing. It was only about a year before I met Watson that I came to the conclusion that perhaps my life carried some meaning. You, I hint at my own experiences and despite your own heartbreak over Christine, you were not broken. You put faith in me. You were willing to trust, to whatever miniscule degree, that my words held grains of truth. I could not have done the same so quickly after the events in my past.”

I had no words. All I could do was stand next to him a moment longer. Then, he went back to the vial and his microscopes and tests, and after a long moment, I moved back to pick up his violin and continue playing for him. Of course, I’d suspected this before, but this was the first time I was acutely aware of the duality within Sherlock Holmes. To the world, he was a methodical, calculating, logical genius. Alone in the dark, he was . . . God only knew. He admitted to being envious of me. That was a concept I couldn’t wrap my head around. Somehow I knew he meant on a deeper level, but I couldn’t get past the fact that he’d admitted to being envious of a masked musician who had kidnapped a singer and brought her down to his lair beneath the opera house in which she sang. Even on a deeper level, I was debatably insane, horribly tempered, prone to rash decisions . . .

I suppose it was all a matter of perception. All I knew about Holmes at that moment was that only one word could come close to the emotion I’d felt practically radiating off of him minutes ago: haunted.

Sherlock Holmes

 

I remember Erik asking me that question. Yes, haunted was a good choice of word. Haunted was exactly how I felt. Haunted by a ghost I hoped would never leave me, yet at the same time I wanted desperately to forget. Which was a cause of great distress for me, making me feel guilty and, in the end, as if I was being pulled in two different directions.

The destruction of my own heart . . . I must admit, I led Erik a bit astray. It wasn’t just a woman who contributed to that. There was another . . . However, it is a story for another time. The only reason these insinuations toward it are included is because that conversation contributed to my coming decisions and how I ultimately handled things. I can’t say things would have been different had my more negative emotions and memories not been closer to the surface. Indeed, they may very well have been worse, what with the more negative ones being repressed. I suppose I’ll never know. Truth be told, I don’t want to know.