A DOGGED MEMORY
by elfin

Part Four - Rivals


It was strange to have the two of them under the same roof now.  I
felt as if I was in the middle of something that only I knew of.

Henry Baskerville, with whom I had shared several nights of
unadulterated pleasure and no small number of very intimate secrets.
And Sherlock Holmes, the man I loved with all my heart, the man who
would never know me as Henry had, but who would always have my devotion.

Holmes broke the sad news to Mrs Barrymore, leaving out the details
about the hound, before Henry bade them take the night off.  We found
ourselves some bread and cheese and sat around the kitchen table
talking until the small hours.

Then, purporting to be exhausted after his nights out in the cold,
Holmes turned in with a smile for each of us, heading up to the second
guest room that the maid had prepared for him.

A few moments later, Henry and I also retired to bed.

We took our pleasure in each other slowly and, dare I say it,
lovingly.  My need for him was borne on the relief I'd felt, that
afternoon, at Holmes' exclamation that the shattered body belonged to
Seldon, and not our ward.

And yet afterwards I lay awake for a long time thinking of Holmes.
This place, so cut off from the rest of the world, had opened up
possibilities previously closed to me.  With Henry it was so easy,
because eventually I would walk away from here and pick up my life in
London.

Holmes was my life.  The most important person ever to know me.
Risking our friendship was unthinkable, no matter how much I might
desire him.

~~~

I performed an autopsy on the unfortunate Seldon the following morning
at the police mortuary in Grimpen.

It was one of the most vicious attacks I'd ever seen; his flesh torn
from the bone, the network of veins and muscles hanging from the
wounds.  I shivered to think that it might have been my dear Henry
lying on the slab, cold and dead under my knife.

It was there, as is already known, that Holmes revealed his theories
to me.  Stapleton was our man and it came as no surprise.  To discover
that the lovely Miss Stapleton was, in fact, Mrs did shock me
slightly.  I remembered her advances towards Henry and here I
mentioned them.

"Stapleton must have quickly realised that she would be of more use to
him if men looked upon her as a free woman."  Holmes chuckled to
himself, and turned from me.  "How irritated he must be right now."

I might have picked up on the quiet comment, but as usual in these
situations my mind was racing to pinpoint a motive.

"I can't say right now," Holmes told me when I at last asked him.
"There is something here, something eluding even me.  Something...
about the name."  He paused, lost in his own chaotic thoughts, then
pushed away from the edge of the slab, shaking his head.   "We must
return to Baskerville Hall."

They were his last words to me until we were far onto the moor.

~~~

fin part four