To say that I received a few stares as we walked through the lobby of the Stilton building would be a gross understatement. It seemed that the men working for the private detective agency had all read of my exploits with Scotland Yard. Marching straight for the stairs, wishing to avoid a fuss, we were stopped cold by a young lad with short cropped reddish hair and an eager grin.
“Mr. Sherlock Holmes.” he said as he extended a hand for me to shake. It was a statement, not a question. He obviously knew precisely who I was. “It is an honor sir, a real honor to meet you.”
I reached out a gloved hand, accepted his greeting. “Thank you young man.” I said, then considered that he was likely less than five or six years my junior, though his youthful energy seamed in stark contrast to the heaviness that weighed upon my nearly thirty two years.
“The lads and I here at Stilton have read up on every case you ever assisted with Mr. Holmes. I must say that you are nothing short of a living legend sir.”
Behind him, at the row of desks near the front windows, I began to notice heads lifting from their work, eying the interchange.
“A quick escape would be best lest we find ourselves overrun with the compliments and questions of youthful investigators.” I thought to myself, then aloud to the red haired young man, “I’m sorry Mr...?”
“Roth sir, Graham Roth.” he blurted, still shaking my hand exuberantly. I looked down at it, withdrew it and placed it atop my walking stick.
“Well Detective Roth it was a pleasure to meet you but I’m afraid that our business is urgent and therefore we must take our leave.”
“Oh,” he said disappointedly, “of course sir.” The fellow stammered excitedly as he took two steps backward, then stepped forward once again. “Sorry Mr. Holmes it’s just that you’re sort of a celebrity around here and no matter how much we pester poor Mr. Lestrade he seems reluctant to tell us about...”
A loud clearing of the throat from the aforementioned senior detective caught the young man’s attention and he quickly stepped back again. He smiled and waved us on. Moments later, making our way up the stairs between the second and third floors of the building, I broke the silence.
“An eager young chap would you not say Watson?”
“Ah yes. The hallmark of inexperience to be sure, but I’m certain that in time it’ll be tempered into focused energy under your expert tutelage Detective.”
Lestrade scoffed. “Hardly. The boy’s not even an inspector. He’s the nephew of my brother’s wife. He runs errands for the agency, does a little snooping for us from time to time, nothing more.”
“Should I presume that his employment here then is owed to a good reference from you Lestrade?” I asked him.
“No. Quite the opposite I must admit. It was Graham who introduced me to Mr. Stilton.”
“Very interesting. I hope you don’t mind if I ask, did you come to the agency straightaway after the yard?”
He paused on one of the stairs, turned to look down at Watson and myself in the dim light of the sparsely placed gas lamps. “If you must know I left the yard only three months after the last case we worked together. I spent a couple of years unemployed actually.”
“That explains much.”
“Oh, does it Holmes?”
“Yes actually. Save for our singular meeting following that case, when I know for a fact that you were still working for the yard, I chanced to see you about town a few times over the next couple of years. Both times your appearance belied the fact that your fortunes had turned for the worse. That is why I was delighted to see today that you were in fact doing rather well for yourself.”
“Ever the observant detective eh Holmes? I’m surprised that you didn’t take it upon yourself to look into the matter deeper and investigate the details of my private life.”
“Let us say that I became...preoccupied.” I smiled.
His face hardened, “I’ll have you know that I spent much of that time in and out of sanitariums.” he then looked directly at Watson, “You can imagine the toll such a...revelation...can have on the normal human psyche.”
“How very brave of you Lestrade. Lesser men would not admit to such weakness even in familiar company, let alone in the presence of a virtual stranger.”
The detective let out a mocking laugh. “Seeing the fact that Watson here is a doctor and also a...” he hesitated to use the term, “a monster, or whatever you want to call it, himself, I hardly see where subterfuge is necessary.”
I bowed my head in understanding. Though I chose not to speak of it I had seen my own share of difficult times after our encounter with the Bugbear.
Then from behind me, “Besides Holmes, I’m fairly certain that comment was an opportunity for a subtle jab at you yourself.”
I spun to face him, eyebrow raised questioningly. “How so Watson?”
He cleared his throat. “I believe the detective was insinuating...”
“Insinuating that Holmes here is bestowed with nothing resembling a normal human psyche.”
I considered myself a master of words and their subtle meanings. How had I not noticed the dagger hidden within the melancholy cloth of Lestrade’s bellyaching? Regardless, the stab was real, tangible. There are those who would hypothesize that the great Sherlock Holmes has no feelings to be wounded but the truth is that like with any other man they do exist. I simply maintain a tighter reign over them than most. Had I though, in dealing with the Bugbear, lost control over them so totally, so terrifyingly, that my actions and emotional outbursts scarred Lestrade more deeply than the beast itself had?
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“My office is this way.” he barked as he continued up the stairs.
Unlike the lobby, which appeared to be in immaculate condition, this floor was in a state of partial construction. Elements of the old design were still present, overlaid with fixtures and plaster work that more closely matched that of the lower floors. Lestrade’s door in particular displayed a clear juxtaposition of old and new. Its frame had recently been redesigned, plaster as I’d seen on his shoe, but the door itself, the knob, and the sign affixed to it were still of the type that could be seen further down the hall, in the area where construction had not yet begun.
Opening that door revealed an office far more dark and stuffy than I had expected. It reminded me more of the records room of a library than of any gentleman’s place of business. A large portion of its space was taken up by an enormous desk so covered in piles of papers that its surface could hardly be made out. Lestrade lit one of the lamps and bathed the space in a soft warm glow that contrasted the coldness of the room and the dreary blue light that came in through the singular window.
To the left of the desk, looking at it from the front, was a set of shelves built into the wall. They too were covered in papers and file folders but also small wooden boxes which, from what I could see, appeared to be filled with photographs, voice recording cylinders, journals and photographic plates.
“Please, have a seat gentlemen.” Lestrade gestured toward the two stuffed leather chairs that sat on the opposite side of the desk from the shelves, backed up against a wall decorated with a single item, a photograph of his wife. “You’ll have to forgive me for not being able to call for tea. I’m afraid the secretary is out sick today.”
“Think nothing of it Lestrade.” my words were genuine, as I did not wish the man to feel obligated to provide refreshments for Watson or myself. Still we’d had to skip out on breakfast and a bit of tea would certainly have been welcome. The detective, however, could not be faulted as he’d not have known that his message would interrupt our meal, seeing as how we’d taken it so late in the morning.
Lestrade hung his coat and then proceeded around to the backside of the desk where he pushed a pile of documents out of the way. He did this so that they did not obscure the line of sight between himself and his guests once he sat down. From the desk drawer he pulled a half empty bottle of brandy and three glasses. He filled them and handed one each to Watson and myself before taking his seat.
“As you have no doubt observed Holmes,” he began as he lowered himself into his chair. “in the intervening years since we last worked together I have stockpiled quite a wealth of information.” he motioned to the wall of books and boxes.
I leaned forward abruptly, nearly spilling my drink, “You don’t mean?” I left my question open-ended.
“That I’ve spent a good deal of this time looking into things that cannot be easily explained? Well I didn’t at first. There was shock, followed by an intense feeling of dread. No matter where I went or what case I was involved with I wondered if there was something sinister hiding around every corner. My performance as a detective inspector for Scotland Yard became so abysmal that the chief constable himself asked for me to resign lest he be forced to terminate my employment. He was trying to spare me at least a modicum of public humiliation.”
“Continue.” I encouraged. I tossed down the sip of brandy then reached for the cherry-wood pipe in my coat as I sat back into the chair to listen.
“The missus was understanding. I couldn’t very well hide the truth from her seeing as how I had to explain where these wounds came from.” he raked the fingers of his left hand across his face, mocking the claws of an animal. “All that I can say is that she had the heart of a saint. She believed me...believed everything. To be honest I’m not sure that I would have, had I been in her place. She stood by my side when the terrors got worse and I ended up in and out of the sanitariums.”
“Then you are truly blessed with the love of such a woman Mr. Lestrade.” Watson chimed in. He gave a light smile, his fingers lightly rapping at the brim of the bowler that he held in his lap.
“Assuredly.” I agreed.
“Well...was blessed Dr. Watson.” he looked up at the photograph on the wall behind where we sat. “She was taken by consumption nearly three years ago. May God rest her soul.”
“Oh, I’m so terribly sorry Detective.” Watson’s face showed legitimate distress.
“It’s quite alright Doctor. As Mr. Holmes here is so keen on pointing out I may have never been the world’s greatest detective, but I had the blessing of knowing the honest love of a good woman; not something that every man can say for himself. She hid the illness from me as long as she could, more concerned for my sanity than for her own health.” he paused for a short while, taking a few deep breaths before continuing. “Regardless gentlemen, that’s not why I summoned you here. You see after her death something came over me...I pulled myself together. I don’t think it was strength, something more like stubborn determination to not let her down. I cleaned up my act, got on here at Stilton’s, and spent every bit of free time I had when not involved in an investigation doing research. The fruits of which you now see upon those shelves.”
“Yes but to what end?” I asked, “Surely you’re not wiling away your nights pursuing the same creatures that I do. Were that the case we would have crossed paths by now, just as Doctor Watson and I did.”
“No, no.” he shook his head, “I’m not hunting anything, not in the literal sense anyway. You see during my time at the yard I recalled some cases where there seemed to be no logical explanation. Purely for my own edification I wished to find out if there existed other explanations for those incidents...non-logical ones.”
“Paranormal ones.” Watson added.
“Precisely.” Lestrade cleared his throat before going on, he looked right at me, “You see Holmes I knew that I wasn’t insane, that what had happened to you and I was real, but in the sanitarium one is told that such things are the result of psychosis and other abnormalities of the brain. Every time that I was able to draw a new conclusion about one of those old case files I proved that it was the doctors, and not myself, that were living in a deluded version of reality. Then, what began as a combination of curiosity, therapy, and busy-work turned into something more as I started connecting threads between some of the unsolved cases.”
“Just what are you getting at Lestrade?” I queried as I drew heavily from my tobacco.
He cleared away a pile of papers from the top of what had looked like merely a wooden box but upon doing so revealed it to be something altogether different. It was a magic lantern; a device used for projecting the image from a photographic slide onto a screen. I had seen one before and now felt the fool for not having realized that the square of white fabric that was attached to the wall, in an opening between the shelves to Lestrade’s right, was such a screen.
He pulled a box of matches from the first drawer of his large desk and spoke as he opened the top of the magic lantern so that he could light the candle or wick inside it.
“Let’s just say that, inadvertently, everything that I have learned and collected shall now be a library of the unusual that is at your disposal Mr. Holmes. For the plot that I feel I have uncovered will have grave ramifications not only for England but for the whole of Europe should we fail to prevent it from reaching its conclusion, and it will take both...no, all three of us to see this through to the end.”