Unfortunately, I can only visit Justin on my days off. At least he looks better each time I see him. Today we were even able to walk out on the grounds a little. He leaned on my arm the whole time, but I’m not sure if it was really for support, not that I minded.
His first question was, of course, “Have you read them yet? What do you make of them?”
“I read a couple on the train out.”
“That will do.” He patted my arm with a bit of condescension. “Which ones?”
“The two you suggested, The Three Gables-”
“Garridebs,” he corrected me. “The Three Garridebs. The Three Gables is an altogether different story.”
“Oh, that explains it. I thought you’d said that was the one where Dr. Watson gets shot.”
“Aha! So you have been listening! Did you at least read The Devil’s Foot.”
“Yes, unless there’s another with almost the same name.”
He grinned. “Good! Quite the scene, eh?”
“You’d better not try anything like that.”
Justin sighed. “I would say you ought to have a little more faith in me, but I clearly have not learned from the mistakes of my predecessor or I would not be here.”
We circled around to a fountain—it really is an old manor house—and sat down on one of the benches beside it. Justin is doing better, but his addiction and withdrawal have both taken a definite toll on him.
“I know you don’t want to be my assistant,” he said when we were seated, “but it’s only fair for you to have the chance to see our ‘Moriarty’ case to its end, if you want to.”
“What are you suggesting?”
Apparently Justin had an agenda for my visit. “It’s time we resume our investigation. There are some inquiries I’d like to make, even if I can’t leave here yet. I don’t have phone privileges—with good reason—but with your supervision, we should be fine. What do you say, Solomon?”
“Who is it you want me to call?”
“Our informants first. It’s been too long since I’ve checked in with them.”
“Alright. I’ll have to listen in on the call.”
We sat shoulder to shoulder, our heads bowed close together as he dialled the number on my phone. I could hear his fast, nervous breathing in my ear, and he wasn’t the only one waiting with bated breath.
There was a single long beep and then a recording announced, “I’m sorry, the number you are trying to call is no longer in service.”
Justin dropped the phone back into my hand. “Damn. They must’ve decided it was more risk than it was worth. But it doesn’t matter, I’ve been thinking over all the other cases we’ve investigated that our Moriarty had his hand in, all the things I’ve overlooked. He must’ve made a mistake somewhere that could lead us back to him. We just need to find it.”
“That makes sense. Where do we start?”
“It’s time we spoke to Mr. Price—the groom. If the passage of time hasn’t made him more inclined to cooperate then perhaps I can impress upon him the severity of the situation now that we have more evidence.”
I handed my phone back to Justin.
He had to call twice before Mr. Price picked up, sounding less than pleased, “Hello?”
“Hello,” Justin pitched his voice a little lower and spoke more slowly with a bit of a northern accent, “I’m sorry to bother you. This is Mr. Oliver Price speaking?”
“We’re conducting an investigation into an alleged blackmailer and have some information suggesting that you might’ve had some contact with him and may be able to help us in our investigation.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I understand this is a very personal matter, but our investigation suggests that you were being blackmailed about an affair during your engagement with Ms. Madeline Fior.”
“I don’t have anything more to say! I told the police everything I knew then.”
“Sir, we just want to prevent anyone from being put in a similar position; blackmail is a serious crime.”
“And it’s not just blackmail,” Justin said, laying all of his cards on the table. “We have reason to suspect that this blackmailer is involved in even more serious crimes—the wedding dress found in the Serpentine is most suggestive. Anything you can tell us will help us catch them.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about with the wedding dress. I just threw it in the water in a fit of anger. I didn’t intend to cause all that fuss.”
“You did what? That doesn’t line up…” Justin quickly composed himself. “You found the dress where, exactly?”
“Where Madeline left it in the tent we had set up.”
“And it was your idea to throw it into the Serpentine, no one suggested it to you?”
“I just said, I was angry. I threw the dress in the water because my fiance had as good as left me on the altar and I knew why. I don’t see what this has to do with anything!”
“Thank you for your time, good day.”
Justin hung up the phone without waiting for a response.
“No… That doesn’t make any sense…” he muttered to himself, his hands shaking.
“Justin,” I said cautiously.
He shook his head sharply. “We can revisit Mr. Price’s testimony at another time, clearly he will tell us nothing more for now. There’s also the matter of Rohan’s source. If those break-ins have resumed, we may have another chance to catch the agent of our Moriarty who evaded us in the cellar.”
He dialled another number and an old man answered, “Hello?”
“Hello, I’m Mr. Miah’s friend who was looking into the break-ins at your flat, and I was wondering if those had resumed.”
“Oh, those? It turns out a new resident brought in a terror of a cat who was running rampant, got it all sorted. Sorry to trouble you, Mr. … what was it again?”
Justin just hung up and threw the phone back to me.
He leaned forward, a hand over his face. I tentatively put a hand on his shoulder, but he immediately flinched upright at the touch.
“Damn it! They can’t all be coincidences, can they?”
“I don’t know… I guess that must’ve been a cat we were hearing in the cellar, and you said there wasn’t anyone chasing us around Europe.”
He let out a harsh sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “How could I be so stupid? It never was real, was it? How long have you been laughing at me?”
I held up my hands in surrender. “I thought it was real too.”
“Well, that’s one point for me and my acting,” he sneered. “What am I going to do now? I can’t call myself a detective, I’m just an addict with nowhere to go but down.”
“I don’t believe that. How many years were you clean before?”
“That was only because I had to to be Sherlock Holmes, now I’ve got nothing left.”
“It was still you who kept yourself clean.”
“For all the good it did me.”
“So the Moriarty wasn’t real, you still helped people. You found that missing girl.”
Justin shook his head. “She would’ve come down from the attic eventually.”
“We caught those scammers.”
“You caught the scammers. I paid them to make up stories about a non-existent crime boss.” He shuddered with another silent sob. “I’m done for!”
I rubbed circles into his back.
“The most right I ever was is when I pretended he was chasing us around Europe. At least then I knew I was pretending. God, I can’t believe myself. You should leave now and wash your hands of it before I embarrass myself more.”
I sighed. “When you pointed out that if I was going to go back to Syria I would have left already, I felt like such a fraud. I had known it deep down for a while; that I couldn’t go back, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. It was all I had, all I’ve worked toward, and I failed.”
“It’s different. You’re still a doctor now, you still help your patients.”
“It’s not the same. People here don’t need me like they do there, but doing what little I can is better than beating myself up over doing nothing.”
“It’s not your fault you couldn’t stay in a warzone forever, most people can’t.”
“Well, no one is Sherlock Holmes.”
Justin grimaced. “It’s not the same,” he grumbled, but most of his resistance was gone, overcome by exhaustion.
I helped him up to his room and onto the bed. He lay flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling.
I sat down on the side of his bed, my hand on his arm. “Do you want me to stay overnight?”
“What about the hospital? At least you’re doing something real there.”
“This is my weekend, I have the day off, and this is important too.”
“Okay. That would be nice.”
I stayed with him, rubbing circles into the back of his hand with my thumb, until his breathing slowed and he fell asleep.
Then, I went and briefly told the doctor on duty what happened so that they could deal with the situation appropriately. She wasn’t thrilled with what I’d enabled to happen, but I can only hope that this will be better for him in the long run, even if it makes things harder now.
I stayed with him through dinner. He was quiet but I think he’s coping, I hope. I’ll see him again tomorrow morning, and then I’ll have to go back into London for my shift. If he can, it might be good for him to switch to an outpatient facility soon so that he can start moving forward rather than just ruminating in it.
