The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - By John Joseph Adams Page 0,139

of another woman.

As has been noted by a previous biographer, Mrs Hudson was the most long-suffering of landladies. In the years when Sherlock Holmes lived beneath her Baker Street roof, she faced with equanimity his irregular hours, his ill temper, his malodorous and occasionally dangerous chemical experiments, his (again) occasionally malodorous and even dangerous visitors, and all the other demands made on her dwelling and her person. And yet, far from rejoicing when Holmes quit London for the sea-blown expanses of the Sussex Downs, in less than three months she had turned her house over to an estate agent and followed him, to run his household as she had formerly run her own. When once I dared to ask her why, late on a celebratory evening when she had rather more drink taken than was her wont, she answered that the devil himself needed someone to look after him, and it made her fingers itch to know that Mr Holmes was not getting the care to which he was accustomed. Besides, she added under her breath, the new tenants had not been in place for a week before she knew she would go mad with boredom.

Thus, thanks to the willingness of this good woman to continue suffering in the service of genius, Holmes' life went on much as before.

Not that he was grateful, or indeed even aware of her sacrifice. He went on, as I said, much as before, feeling vexed when her tidying had removed some vital item or when her regular market-day absence meant that he had to brew his own coffee. Deep in his misogynistic soul, he was not really convinced that women had minds, rights, or lives of their own.

This may be unfair; he was certainly always more than ready to dismiss members of his own sex. However, there is no doubt that a woman, be she lady or governess, triggered in him an automatic response of polite disinterest coupled with vague impatience: it took a high degree of determination on the part of a prospective client who happened to be female to drag him into a case.

Mrs Hudson, though, was nothing if not determined. On this day in October of 1918 she had pursued him through the house and up the stairs, finally bearding him in his laboratory, where she continued to press upon him the details of her odd experience. However, her bristling Scots implacability made little headway against the carapace of English phlegm that he was turning against her. I stood in the doorway, witness to the meeting of irresistible force and immovable object.

"No, Mrs Hudson, absolutely not. I am busy." To prove it (although when I had arrived at his house twenty minutes earlier I had found him moping over the newspapers) he turned to his acid-stained workbench and reached for some beakers and a couple of long glass tubes.

"All I'm asking you to do is to rig a wee trap," she said, her accent growing with her perturbation.

Holmes snorted. "A bear trap in the kitchen, perhaps? Oh, a capital idea, Mrs Hudson."

"You're not listening to me, Mister 'Olmes. I told you, I wanted you to fix up a simple camera, so I can see who it is that's been coming in of rights and helping himself to my bits and pieces."

"Mice, Mrs Hudson. The country is full of them." He dropped a pipette into a jar and transferred a quantity of liquid into a clean beaker.

"Mice!" She was shocked. "In my kitchen? Mr Holmes, really.''

Holmes had gone too far, and knew it. "I do apologize, Mrs Hudson. Perhaps it was the cat?"

"And what call would a cat have for a needle and thread?" she demanded, unplacated. "Even if the beastie could work the latch on my sewing case."

"Perhaps Russell . . . ?"

"You know full well that Mary's been away at University these four weeks."

"Oh, very well. Ask Will to change the locks on the doors." He turned his back with an optimistic attempt at finality.

"I don't want the locks changed, I want to know who it is. Things have gone missing from all the neighbours, little things mostly, but it's not nice."

I had been watching Holmes' movements at first idly, then more closely, and now I took a step into the room and caught at Mrs Hudson's sleeve. "Mrs Hudson, I'll help you with it. I'm sure I can figure out how to booby trap a camera with a flash. Come, let's go downstairs and decide where to put it."

"But