Free A Study in Sable by Mercedes Lackey

beginning,even if she attempted to hide a growing infatuation by eliminating him from later missives.”
    Mary was frowning even more deeply. “Sherlock,” she said sharply. “Even assuming that this girl was the dullest, shyest creature on the planet, there is nothing in here that shows me she was in love enough with a stranger to elope with him. A woman in love does tend to wax poetic and rapturous about even the smallest of trifles, if it can be related at all to the beloved. I would have
expected
poems of praise to any little thing that recalled him to her mind.”
    â€œWouldn’t she have been trying to conceal that?” Holmes asked, looking for all the world like a hound on the scent. “These are letters to her parents, after all. One might assume that the fiancé would see them, and she would not have wished him to learn of a rival.”
    â€œTrust me, Sherlock, a young girl is absolutely incapable of completely hiding an infatuation from the knowing eye,” Mary replied. “It is a great deal like the analogy of ‘seeing’ a hole in a dark cave by lighting its edges. You might not be able to see the hole itself, but you can certainly intuit where it is. She
does not
avoid the existence of her fiancé; she refers to him several times in each letter, in the most commonplace way, and he would be the last thing in the world she would want to touch on, if she were in love with another. And there is a complete absence of anyone else, at all, other than her sister Magdalena. If I were to say anything about these letters, I would say for a certainty that they were not written by anyone madly enough in love with someone to fly with him.”
    â€œAh!” Holmes settled back in his chair with contentment. “That was precisely what I thought, but I wanted to see if you ladies would come to the same conclusions I did. I tend to find the ways of the feminine sex . . . obtuse. But never let it be said I ever hesitated to consult with someone more expert than I, when my knowledge is lacking.”
    â€œI can’t say I’ve ever been in love, but I tend to agree with Mary,” Sarah told Holmes, handing over her share of the letters. “These are the letters of a dulled soul, not an enlivened one. A girl in love seesthe stars everywhere. Whoever wrote
these
letters was staring fixedly at the ground, and never looked up.”
    Nan passed hers over with a shrug.
    â€œThen there is the matter of the unheartbroken fiancé,” Holmes continued. “And the now-unconcerned parents. You will recall I got heart-rending missives from the parents as well as the fiancé from Germany. I also interviewed them as soon as they arrived; the fiancé came the day after the Von Dietersdorfs. They were quite upset, not to say distraught. Then, today, they all returned
en masse
to tell me there was no further need for me to investigate. They told me, calmly, serenely even, that the matter was settled and I was no longer to concern myself about it. That Johanna had indeed run off with a young man from Canada, and that she would be fine. Now . . . I could imagine the parents having been convinced that this was the case—but the fiancé? Unless he was covering his injured pride and emotions with feigned indifference . . . no.” Holmes’ eyes glittered. “I generally am not prey to emotions myself, but I am by no means blind to their effects in others, and the young man—Helmut Reicholt—was as calm as if the girl
now
meant nothing more to him than the waitress at a café, and this was a young man who had been pleading desperately with me, in tones of woe, to find her and persuade her to return not half a week ago.”
    â€œI take it you are
not
giving up the case, then, Holmes?” Watson said sardonically.
    â€œI can afford to indulge myself in an occasional case that is purely of my own interest,”