A Study in Satin

by Tigger
© 2000, all rights reserved

 

Part I: Semper Cogitus

Chapter 20: Adrift on a Sea of Memories

 

Sherla stood upon the open weather deck of the small sailing ferry that was making its way through the English Channel. She was grateful for the small favor of clear if chilly weather for she had not purchased a first class ticket that would have granted her access to the interior compartments of the small vessel. That would have been inconsistent with her role as an impoverished, traveling gentlewoman, and she preferred to deviate from that guise as little as possible until she could lose herself in the French interior.

As fortune would have it, this small but fast ship was actually the best imaginable solution to Sherla's current problems. The graceful little sloop permitted her to follow her original plan of staying in character until she'd arrived in France without sacrificing the speed she urgently required.

Sherla had already been forced to take some liberties with her carefully thought out strategy after arriving in Dover the previous night. She'd hoped to be able to sail for France immediately upon her arrival in the city, but none of the sailing schedules were compatible with her drug administration schedule. That had necessitated taking a private (and rather costly) room at the White Cliff Inn.

Her planned course of action to maintain as low a profile as possible during the English leg of her voyage had been, at least temporarily, abandoned. The unrelenting demand of her body for Moriarty's drug and the equally vital need for privacy when she dealt with the potion's aftereffects had ultimately taken precedence. If bespeaking the room had called her to the attention of some Moriarty underling, then so be it. She would deal with that when the consequences arose as best she could.

Staying the night in that room had, however, cost Sherla twelve critical hours she did not have to spare. That morning over breakfast, she had decided it was time to abandon her disguise completely and to make a decisive move. Sherla had looked into chartering a boat, but as it turned out, none of the available vessels would have gotten her to France any sooner than this ferry.

Alone in her thoughts, Sherla made her way around towards the bow of the ferry. Most of the other second and third class customers were crowded in behind the deckhouse, trying to stay out of the wind and thus stay as warm as possible. Miss Holmes decided that she required privacy more than comfort at that moment.

Happily, she found a small bench set behind the forecastle which blunted the wind well enough for her purposes. Carefully, she set down the her small reticule in which she carried the second set of papers Jenny had provided for her. These identified her as a Miss Daphne Barnstable of Sussex and had been procured against the fear that some easily bribed customs official might find the name "Miss S. Holmes" just a mite too memorable. Additionally, she laid down a small, brown paper-wrapped parcel that contained a letter of introduction from Mr. Sherlock Holmes as well as certain memorabilia that Sherla fervently hoped would help establish her true identity with the indomitable Irene Adler.

From her portmanteau, Sherla removed her journal and, after checking for prying eyes, Mr. Sherlock Holmes' prized reservoir fountain pen. She had, of necessity, left the violin in Jenny's keeping, but the pen had seemed too important to leave behind. It had been a birthday gift from Watson. With a soft sigh for that memory, Sherla opened the journal and began to write.

Entry in the Journal of Miss Sherla Joan Holmes

Date: February 16, 1911 aboard the English Channel Ferry-Sloop, Dover Princess.

Time: Approximately 11:00 A.M.

My Dear Doctor Watson,

Since it would be out of character to carry a watch in my current disguise, an approximate time is the best I am able to do in this entry. Most annoying because I reach for the thing more times than I care to admit, John. That is unfortunate, because I have discovered by recent experience that women who often pat themselves beneath their bosoms tend to draw undue and unwanted attention to themselves. Thus far, the only person who has asked me about this was the innkeeper's wife last evening who was concerned that her very unremarkable beef pudding might have caused me gastronomic distress. I allowed her to think what she would, but retired to my room immediately thereafter.

By the same token, I cannot give you any valid measurements since I have not had access to scales or measure tapes since I left Baker Street yesterday. However, my new corset is not impeding my breathing, and I assure you that most certainly *did* restrict my inhalations yesterday when Jenny laced me into this whale-boned version of the Iron Lady. My skirts would be dragging if not for the higher heeled shoes I put on this morning at the White Cliff. So I must assume that the drug is working as it has to date.

On a related note, my experimental reduction in the volume of the drug I take each time has been unsuccessful. I had hoped that this strategy might have the benefit of extending my very limited stores of Moriarty's drug, but thus far, the ten percent reduction in volume administered has resulted in a nearly equivalent reduction in the time between withdrawal symptom onset. So I am not gaining anything in so far as my time until drug exhaustion occurs, and have lost the very convenient schedule I was following prior to my attempt at adjusting the dose.

As is obvious, I have made it to the Channel, John, and will soon land in France. At that point, I shall, as I planned, cast off this pretense of poverty and hire the fastest available coach carriage. By my calculations, it is just over 160 miles from my point of debarkation to the village outside of Paris where I hope Irene still resides. Ordinarily, a fast coach can cover one hundred miles a day, but I intend to pay a premium price for non-stop service. With any luck, I shall arrive at Irene's front door within twenty four hours, or one dose, of making landfall in France.

Once I am certain I am on my way, I will administer a twenty four hour dose of the drug to ensure that I have no problems doing so later on the road. I will simply have to ensure that the coach is sufficiently comfortable for the inevitable sleep and has a tightly covered chamber pot.

That is a compromise, as I would prefer not to take the drug until absolutely necessary. There is so very little of the potion remaining, and therefore, so very little time left before I face that final withdrawal without any agent to relieve or blunt its effects. I think I have perhaps four days worth, but more likely three days supply with some dregs. However, that is not the only reason that I have made the decision to acquire such a conveyance and to press for non-stop service.

In truth, I am gambling a very great deal that I know Irene Adler's current address. She may have moved in recent times and in those final days before my attempt upon my own life, I would not have known of it. The implication of this is that I may have to search for her once I arrive at my destination which will quite obviously require some time - a commodity that only the most rapid and direct transport to her last known address might afford me.

I can only hope that such a change of tactics, along with the report of my and "Joan's" deaths will deflect any pursuit.

That was the primary motivation behind the admittedly complex precautions I took when staging my "death". Ordinarily, I have a marked preference for simpler stratagems as there are less opportunities to run afoul of some unexpected problem, but in this case, I felt the complexity was warranted. The justification for the dressing dummy that was already in the landau when it arrived at Baker's Street is an example of what I had in mind. I was concerned that some unusually observant person might have noted our arrival at the way station's outbuilding privy and also note the number of people inside the carriage.

Admittedly, such an individual is extremely rare in my experience, but if there was ever an opportunity for such an individual to completely disrupt the best laid plans, that was such a one. You know, John, that sounds like a rather profound statement of natural law - "Whatever might go wrong in all likelihood will go wrong at precisely the least opportune time." Perhaps if I do live and have the time, I shall investigate a logical proof of that statement. Holmes' Law. I think I rather like it.

Whatever.

As I started to discuss, had there been but three people aboard, and one of those the driver, Jenny's presence at an otherwise underpopulated inn might have drawn undue interest. So the dress dummy became the third person inside the landau. It was made of very old wood and cloth, John. Goodness, you could have used it for tinder. Thus, Jenny was able to change out of her male garb and safely appear as a distraught female passenger when the privy exploded while she ordered dinner from the innkeeper's wife. It is also why I elected to walk further south before hailing a passing coach to Dover.

Apparently that particular tactic succeeded for the newspapers gave no indication that the authorities are looking for a woman suspect in the murder. Given modern tastes for melodrama, I am certain that, had there was the most minimal possibility that a "member of the gentler, fairer sex" was suspected of doing in the famous Mr. Sherlock Holmes, that supposition would have made the front page of the Times, at the very least.

We are scheduled to make port sometime after two this afternoon. As I said earlier, I hope to be able to hire the carriage immediately and travel straight through. If not, I will do all that I can before. . . well, before the end.

We've been through this before, haven't we, John? I recall well our last walk along that mountain trail to Reichenbach Falls just before that confrontation with Moriarty that left both he and I dead to the world for so many years. And while we have been through such hours of finality before, old friend, I find it feels far different now than it did those many years ago.

I was at peace with myself and my life back then, John, but now, I feel rather melancholy. I was prepared to die to stop the great evil that was Professor Moriarty. I am prepared to do so now, but I know that I will very likely be denied that opportunity this time. I do not fear death, but I hate leaving such a malevolent force as James Moriarty loose upon an unsuspecting world - particularly during such a period of such international turmoil. A mind such as his might well determine that a world conflict - one that pits all the major powers of the world against one another in horrible, senseless bloodshed - could be quite to his liking and ultimate benefit.

And I will not be here to stop him.

For reasons beyond my power to change, I will be unable to face him and stop him personally. Well, I have accepted that because I must accept that. Intellectually, I know there is no shame in this failure for I will be denied the opportunity through no fault of my own. But it burns at me, John. God in heaven, how it burns.

It is quite apparent that he has won this final battle between the two of us, old friend. The three or four days of sanity I my remaining supply of his foul drug provide me are insufficient to ferret out where on this vast continent he has gone to ground.

However, I *refuse* to surrender to him, John! If I cannot be the direct agent of his final demise, then by all I hold holy, I will engineer his destruction indirectly. That is why I have invested all the time that appears to remain to me to find someone to carry on the fight that I will soon be incapable of prosecuting myself. Even there, I must admit to some significant misgivings. Am I correct to entrust this undertaking to Irene Adler instead of that little Belgian fellow in Brussels? That she has the intellectual powers needed by this quest is not in doubt, but she is still a *woman*, John.

I can practically hear you telling me that I am a woman now, and that Irene is more than simply "a" woman, that she is "the" woman. True enough. And she has bested me, or rather, she has bested Mr. Sherlock Holmes twice that I am aware of, and no one else, not even Moriarty can truthfully make such a claim.

Besides, the die is cast, John. I am close enough to Paris to have sufficient time to find her if she has moved, if just barely. The other fellow is too often undercover or god-knows-where on special assignment. I have a much better chance of passing on my task to Irene.

And of course, I can always tell her about Atlas. . or whatever the little Belgian's name is when I see her and entrust Moriarty to her. That is, if I can convince the lady that I am. . .I WAS Mr. Sherlock Holmes. I must admit, John, that I am not entirely certain that my little package will accomplish that bit of persuasion. If a big, strapping young lad calling himself Ira Adler had ever shown up at Baker Street, I would have been more than a trifle difficult to convince that he was the lovely Irene changed into a man. The entire premise is simply so cursed preposterous and yet, I now know from my own experience that it is possible. I suppose that I will have to ad lib as the scene plays itself out. Ought to be quite a performance, especially if I somehow manage to succeed.

Once again, I find myself wishing you were here, old friend. I never told you during out time together how grateful I was, and am, for your friendship and companionship. How much I missed you during those years after the Reichenbach Falls or during the years of your marriage to your Mary. How much I have missed you since your untimely death. I can state in perfect honesty, John, that I never envied you her love in the old days, John, but now, I think I do. Would that I might have lived my own life differently.

I have learned, in the past few, very intensely lived days, that there is a difference between being alone and being lonely that I never truly appreciated before. Or perhaps more correctly, never permitted myself to appreciate. I certainly never understood the distinction until now. Thanks to the impact of Jenny and Maisie on my life, I now understand the difference VERY clearly.

I am lonely, old friend.

And I miss you terribly.

The air here on the sea is very sweet and clean, John. I think I shall put this tome aside for a time and enjoy the simple act of breathing. There is little else I can do before we arrive at the French Port, not that I don't wish it otherwise.

I don't know if or when I will be able to write in this journal again, John. Once I reach the mainland and begin my headlong dash toward Irene, I doubt even the most expensive, finely sprung carriage will permit my hand to be sufficiently steady to write at all legibly in this book.

God's blessings, old friend.

I remain,

Most sincerely yours,

Sherla (nee Sherlock) Holmes

End Journal Entry

~--------------~

Excerpt from the Experimental Journal of Professor Moriarty

February 16, 1911

With the apparent elimination of Mr. Holmes, some of the pressure to arrive at a solution to the weapons problem has been relieved. I have, therefore, directed Dr. Haber to concentrate his efforts on the addiction/gender changing effects of the preparation.

I was again forced to give the good doctor a modicum of encouragement as he was, in my estimation, sleeping entirely too many hours of the day. Three days ago, I administered the current preparation in concentrated form to one of two chimpanzees I had acquired as test subjects. Dr. Haber was quite horrified when I showed him the reports I had received on Mr. Holmes from my agent before I disappeared and the newspaper clippings about his unfortunate death. He was even more horrified when I forced the now female animal into withdrawal by withholding the drug.

Seeing the subject's former companion forced to kill the now-female animal in self defense was rather illustrative, I think, of what he might expect if I should, for some as yet unspecified reason, be forced to administer a similar injection to him during one of his entirely too frequent sleep periods.

Some interesting developments have since occurred. Haber has managed to eliminate the addiction from one preparation, but at the cost of the rejuvenative effect. Essentially, the subject still becomes female, but no younger. It may have a future use. Another formulation caused no rejuvenation or gender change, but was highly addictive. The possibilities of this preparation as a revenue source are being considered. Several other attempts were not addictive, but no longer had either the rejuvenative or gender changing effects.

Thus far, our research indicates that the rejuvenation effect is very tightly linked with the two unacceptable side effects. Most unfortunately so, since at my age I have very little time to find solutions to these problems. Thus, I have directed my underlings to begin the search for another chemistry genius. Two heads are supposedly better than one, and I am beginning to fear that Dr. Haber's weapon's oriented mind, while brilliant and *very* highly motivated, is not suited to the more immediate, less martial demands of this aspect of the project.

End Journal Entry.

 

End Part 1 of 3 of A Study in Satin

 

 

 

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© 2000 by Tigger. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.