A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes Read Online Free PDF Page A

least, had faith.
     
    Lestrade returned to Scotland Yard where word had spread of Briers’s death. He went straight to his desk then stopped suddenly, his pulse quick. Dr John Watson, broad-chested and straight-backed, stood in front of it. “Are you here with Holmes?” Lestrade blurted out.
    “Inspector,” Watson said. “No, I am here alone.”
    Lestrade relaxed, his breath coming in a more measured fashion. “What can I do for you, Doctor?” he said.
    “I am here concerning Constable Briers,” he said.
    “Oh?”
    “He was a patient of mine.”
    Lestrade sat on the edge of the desk. “Really? Why? How?”
    Watson shrugged. “We met during one of our cases. He knew I was a doctor and starting my own practice, so I think he felt comfortable coming to me with his ailment.”
    And I’m sure he found you as irresistible as the ladies often do, Lestrade thought to himself. “Ailment?”
    “Congenital heart condition. He was worried that it might affect his performance on the job. I was monitoring it for him.”
    “I see. Well, I don’t see how that comes into things. He was murdered. Shot several times.”
    “There’s something else,” Watson said. “Though there was little I could do for the fellow, he’d mentioned on several occasions that he’d heard of several remedies for his condition – tonics and whatnot. I told him that I couldn’t prescribe or even condone their use without proper evidence of their properties, but I fear I couldn’t persuade him. I mention this because such a pursuit may have something to do with this. Such concoctions are notoriously unreliable. One may have made him prone to violence. Or perhaps he became cross with the purveyor of such wares? I thought perhaps it might bear looking into.”
    “Thank you, Dr Watson,” Lestrade said, flashing a thin smile. “I’ll make enquiries.”
    Watson stood up and donned his bowler hat. “One last thing. Do you think that you could use Holmes’s help in this case?”
    “No,” Lestrade said. Then, softer, “No, thank you, but Briers was a police officer and I think it would be best if we handled this.”
    “Quite right,” Watson said. “Quite right. I only mentioned it because Holmes is in one of his moods, locked up tight in Baker Street, swimming in cocaine. I do hate to see him so. Never mind. Good luck in your investigation. Good day.”
    Lestrade watched the doctor go and thought of the Detective, alone in his rooms on Baker Street, slumped upon the divan, in a cocaine haze. Lestrade despised the man’s addiction, yet understood it keenly. That mind, when not brought to bear on a case, could only seek sanctuary in the drug’s embrace. Lestrade knew that he could rescue the Detective from that, sing the siren’s call that would bring the Detective to him.
    But he could not. He did not want that intense gaze, that gaze that did things to him, brought to bear on the current case. He could not.
     
    Lestrade spent the morning questioning tonic and elixir salesmen, finding nothing to connect them to Constable Briers. On his return to Scotland Yard, Lestrade trailed behind a group of officers pushing someone inside the station. The restrained man in the centre was huddled over, shuddering with crying sobs. Lestrade caught the broad form of Gerard who was moving with them. “What’s happening?” he said.
    “We brought in Henry Samuels. We kept an eye on him as you suggested and he was in the pub, drunk, talking about our friend, Briers. Thought it would be prudent to bring him in.”
    “You taking him to the interview room?” Lestrade said.
    Gerard nodded.
    “Leave me alone with him,” Lestrade said.
    “If you like,” Gerard said.
    Lestrade waited until Samuels had been secured in the interview room, then entered and closed the door.
    Samuels’s wet, red face sat atop a smartly dressed form. It was an incongruous joining. Something about the blubbering man made Lestrade want to hit him. His weakness. His abject