Free The House at Baker Street by Michelle Birkby

scrap of grey paper. I saw my name – Hudson – and a message about game and
fly-paper.
    ‘Is this meant for me?’ I asked.
    ‘Not unless you sailed on the
Gloria Scott
,’ Mr Holmes said dryly. ‘It’s a souvenir. That is where it all began, really. My first case.’ He was silent for a
moment.
    ‘Wiggins will recover?’ he asked, abruptly changing the subject, as he was prone to do.
    ‘He will. I will look after him.’
    ‘As he, apparently, looks after you, I hear,’ Mr Holmes said. I glanced up at the vent. Sound could drift through it both ways . . .
    ‘Good night, Mrs Hudson. Thank you for the sandwiches,’ Mr Holmes said politely.
    ‘Good night, Mr Holmes,’ I replied, closing the door softly as I left.
    Perhaps that would have been the moment to tell him about Laura Shirley, and all that had happened since then. He would have taken the case. I could have so easily lifted the
burden from my shoulders and placed it on his, already so weighed down. But I could not. I remembered his bleak eyes, and I would not add one single grain to his problems. As he had his
responsibilities, his promises, our faith to live up to, I also had. Mary and I had started this. Mary and I had taken on this burden. We would carry it until, one morning at 3 a.m., we finished
it.

Seven months ago almost to the day, John had come down to my kitchen, sat down at the table, and told me he loved Mary Morstan but could never marry her. He sat right there, at
the end by the stove where it was warmest, and drank tea and ate scones – or rather, sipped aimlessly at the tea, and crumbled the scones between his fingers. He talked of the fabulous Agra
treasure, and a tale of mystery and betrayal in India and the Sign of Four and he talked most of all of brave, beautiful Mary Morstan at the centre of it all.
    ‘She’s clever,’ John said, his eyes shining as he stared out of the window and thought of her. ‘Even Holmes admires her intelligence. And she’s kind; kind to
everyone and so calm. Even in the most dangerous moments, faced by murderers and villains and death, she didn’t shrink, though she must have been frightened. She just threw her shoulders
back, as if she were a soldier like her father. And when she smiles . . .’ He looked down at the tea cup in front of him.
    ‘Your heart feels as if it has missed a beat,’ I finished for him. He looked at me, suddenly seeing I understood. ‘I remember mine used to feel like that when Hector – Mr
Hudson – smiled at me. He didn’t smile often, except when he was with me, and, each time, I felt something inside me give a queer little flutter. That was when I knew I loved
him.’
    John smiled, and blushed slightly. It was so touching, that blush, as if something of the schoolboy remained in the battered old soldier.
    ‘I do,’ he admitted. ‘I do love her. I must love her, how can I not? If you knew her . . . ’
    ‘I will know her,’ I said, picking up the cups, ‘when she becomes Mrs John Watson.’
    He didn’t answer, and I turned to look at him. The blush had gone from his face and he stared ahead of him, bleakly.
    ‘You are going to ask her to marry you?’ I asked.
    ‘She will be rich, when we solve the case,’ John told me, and his eyes were so, so sad. ‘She will finally have the fabulous Agra treasure that her father left her, and wealth
beyond her dreams, and I am so poor. I barely scrape by on my army pension.’
    ‘How do you know what her dreams are?’ I said angrily. On the other hand, how did I know what her dreams were? Given the choice between treasure and the love of a man like John,
I’d have chosen John, but what did I know of her? But still, I defended her. If he loved her, she must be worth his loving. ‘Besides,’ I told him, ‘if it were the other way
round, you rich and her poor, it would not matter.’
    ‘A man is supposed to take care of a woman,’ he said gently. ‘He should support her, not the other way round. A