Chapter 18

Soon they were laughing and groping each other like fecund feral cats. The woman emitted a series of unrelenting groans as Jonathan explored her, right there on the street. Then they stepped into a rowhouse and shut the door behind them.

It is difficult to describe the feelings I experienced in that moment. I had no deep affection for Jonathan. We were not in a significant relationship. Yet I felt a sense of betrayal. He was my brother’s dear friend. I’d agreed to be with him in a social setting and I had hoped that perhaps a new relationship would help me push away any romantic feelings I still nurtured for Sherlock. Whether I acquiesced to Jonathan’s pursuit was immaterial. It would have meant I was reasserting my emotional independence, that I was willing to discard Sherlock from my life entirely.

I closed my eyes for a moment, willing my surroundings to disappear, willing the clattering of horses and hansoms that heaped this reality upon me to vanish into the fog. My mind went to the Broads, to the river where some beautiful creature is always going about its business. I was sitting on the grass, watching birds float above, flailing their wings... teal and wigeon, reed and sedge warblers. I watched a marsh harrier careen at full tilt, clapping its wings, stalling above a rock and then banking off across the river. And then the butterflies floated by, mute, graceful, leading a short life of pure innocence. Swallowtails or a rare Norfolk hawker dragonfly, turning at this angle and that on the wind, shadowing the sunlight, nesting on a fen orchid or a crested buckler fern, then taking flight once more and waving goodbye as it disappears into a chink.

Come, a voice said to me. Come home and be greeted by your friends back home. Walk along the river, navigate the patchwork of waterways, watch for the harvest mice and water shrews and listen, listen to the swans gliding along the water.

But no. Reality is fixed, demanding. I could feel the roar of it, rough and grating inside my head like the rumble of a mile-high wave seething and heaving and crashing against the rocks. Even if you leave momentarily, it always follows, it always calls you back.

“Poppy,” Sherlock said and I turned to look at him. “You see who it is.”

The color draining from my face, I nodded. I felt water drip on the back of my neck as snow heaved off the muzzle of fog and broke through.

Go back to the Broads, my mind told me. Skip along the water’s edge. Let it roll down and slide along the top of your foot. Dip your toes in and cast a long glance back to London and laugh at her. You are not supposed to be there, you are supposed to be here with us, the creatures called.

“Poppy, I spoke with Womack yesterday. I inquired as to Jonathan. He is the one who told me of his almost nightly visits to avail himself of... of this. A friend of Jonathan’s who works at London Hospital has introduced him to many of these... women. I spoke to Womack about the house where Dr. Younger meets his... his-”

I spit out, “Stop!” and Wiggins walked a few paces away as if to hide from this unusual spat between two people he admired. I longed for Sherlock’s face to slip away as well, out of the glare of the light. I longed for darkness to surround me, soft and restful, for the light to desert me for as long as I willed it.

I tried to think of something clever. Instead I blurted, “You are cruel, Sherlock. You... you do not want me yourself but you don’t want anyone else to want me either.”

“It would be a pity if you truly believed that, Poppy. You may not like the message but I am simply the messenger,” he said softly. “Sometimes the very thing you wish least to hear is that which you need most to hear. And, in this case, to see, because I do not think you would have listened to me if you did not see it for yourself.”

In the deepest levels of my soul, I knew he was right. Still, I was angry. And there awakened in me an anguish that would later emigrate to resolve and become forever inseparable from it. That resolve would be indissolubly united with all the pain that loving Sherlock had caused me. I determined that I would never give into my emotions so completely again.

“I should like to leave now, Sherlock.”

“We have things to discuss. I have a lead on the killer. And possibly a connection to the person who is destroying the swans.”

“I do not care.” I walked away briskly and Wiggins raced up to me.

“But, Miss, yer was wantin’ me t’ talk about the grave diggin’.”

I saw a hansom coming toward me, stepped into the roadway and waved to it. It stopped. “Not now. I will talk to you... another time.”

“But, Poppy,” Sherlock said.

As I stepped up into the cab, Sherlock took my wrist and borrowed a little fragment from the truth. “Forgive me,” he said. “I was trying to be helpful.”

I knew he wanted to show me he was right about Jonathan after all. In fact, he probably wanted to show me how senseless and illogical it was to be in a romantic relationship. But he may also have been sorry to hurt me.

“And you have been. Very helpful indeed.”

I had chosen. My fate was settled. I would fend off lofty romantic notions that might pull at my soul; I would allow them no longer to get in my way. In separating from Sherlock, I needed to be like him. Cold, disentangled from love and emotion, oblivious to the incessant stream of images from our night together.

As the cab pulled away, I heard him call out my name. I did not look back.