From Sherlock Holmes Esq to Dr J Watson:
Watson
I now feel able to furnish you with the remaining details of the ghastly experience I was unfortunate, or foolish enough – the Jury is Out on that point…to recently have undergone…the flashbacks are happening less frequently, and thankfully becoming less acute, gradually losing some of their vivid hyper-reality and hallucinatory properties (I have to confess I was quite taken with That aspect of the Post-Traumatic effects, always being partial to a bit of altered realities, as you know only too well…)
But I digress…As I said, I was fully prepared to finally meet my Maker (if such exists…), but it was not exactly the time or the place for an intellectual Debate on the Matter, as the actions of The Brothers called for most of my attention. In the circumstances, you can imagine that my first thoughts on seeing Master Douglas suddenly burst in on the proceedings, my pulverised senses took him to be but a figment of my imagination, conjured up in my hour of need to remove me from the Place of (probable) Execution…I admit I Was rather taken aback that my Avenging Angel should take the form of someone who, previous to this scenario, had hardly entered my consciousness, let alone held a special place in that rather sparsely-populated territory…
However, all I could see was the fact that perhaps Death now was Not such a foregone conclusion, and my spirits leapt and regained some of their fortitude; as his eyes met mine and locked on to my Fear and Loathing in “Ma’s Degas” (being the moniker of the Brothers’ Lodging-House – so called from Ma’s insistence that the worthy gentleman in question had once lodged there, and being somewhat strapped for cash at the time, had paid her in kind ….hence the somewhat blurry and indistinct portrait which hung in the Hall…though either M. Degas was somewhat the worse for wear at the time of execution, or it was his attempts at a flattering depiction of said landlady, whose looks unfortunately would never have been her ticket to the Miss Whitechapel Lovely Ladies Competition…or any such Fol-de-Rol based on a comely form – I believe your good lady to be a past Winner of some such nonsense, but I digress once again…Mrs Hudson believes it to be an after-effect of my recent trial, but then again she is ignorant of the consequences of substance abuse…
Anyway, Watson – to cut a long story short (“Thank C—-t!”, you will be muttering under your breath), Douglas demonstrated why men and women look up to him (well, maybe not the second…), and with nary a loss of breath, composure and hair out-of-place, put paid to the Scoundrels’ machinations; I was never more pleased to see a fellow in my life – well, next to you, perhaps…but there was just one thing I still cannot work out – he kept asking me whether I had seen a woman called “Alex”…
I still do not know what he was doing in that seedy Boarding-house…but I cannot deny my relief that he was, and having heard the suspicious noises emanating from the room, that he decided to investigate…Yes, Watson, there Are things in this world beyond our ken, and I for one are jolly glad for that!
I trust you will be round this evening to partake of Supper? Mrs Hudson has knocked up a batch of Strawberry Tartlets (her cousin-once-removed having a glut of said fruit at the moment), and also has received a supply of Gentleman’s Relish from that new place off The Strand – “Gervais and Merchant’s” – I believe their Pilkington’s Peril is to die for…
Till Supper, your friend, snatched from the Jaws of Death,
thewatsonletters.com 