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

with grief. As Lestrade watched, the desk clerk slid across a paper to the man and, with a shaking hand, he signed, keeping one arm wrapped around the shuddering woman.
    Lestrade called over to the next desk. “Oi. Who is that?”
    “Briers’s parents.”
    Lestrade stared at them, at the parents of the man who had so often visited his bed, at their raw pain. He realized with sudden bitterness that he hadn’t even been thinking of Briers as a person anymore, just a stain on his reputation, a plaything that he had dallied with while thinking of another. A riddle to solve. He stood up and reached for his hat.
    He didn’t look at the either of them as he walked out the door.
     
    Lestrade pulled out the magnifying glass at the scene of the crime. He’d seen Holmes use one before, when examining dirt or soot or the watermarks on paper. He wasn’t sure that he would find anything at the site, especially in the fading light, but he had to try. Time was running out.
    He bent over with the glass to his eye, scanning the cobblestones, the junction of wall and street. Most of the blood had washed away in the persistent London rain. What hope did any other evidence have? It wasn’t as if Briers had any clothes to examine, either.
    Lestrade thought of that. Where had his clothes gone? It wasn’t as if the man would have been wandering around nude in the early morning hours. He’d had them, anyway, while leaving Lestrade’s home. What the devil could have brought him to this? Was it some kind of purveyor of remedies as Watson had suggested? They’d questioned most of the high profile vendors in the area and come up with nothing.
    Lestrade hurled the glass in frustration and it skidded against the ground, skipping across the stones before crashing into the wall. Shaking his head, he went to pick it up. Of course a large crack split it, the two pieces chasing each other in the metal frame. He tucked it into his pocket.
    He recalled that Gerard lived nearby and walked to the man’s house. He was certain to have something to drink – some brandy or whisky, perhaps. A pipe, too. Maybe if he relaxed, Lestrade thought, he could come to some new insight.
    He arrived at last to Gerard’s door and knocked upon it. There was no answer. He knocked again. Nothing.
    He was turning to go when he found Gerard in front of him. in frofGerard. There you are, man. You almost gave me a fright. I was just in the neighbourhood and thought I would stop by, see if you were in the mood for a drink.”
    Gerard, who now seemed weary himself, nodded. “That sounds like a capital idea,” he said. “Please, come in.”
    They sat and drank, and talked and smoked. And Lestrade was glad to feel some of the weight of the last few days leave him. That was the great thing about Gerard – he always seemed to understand, though the truth be unspoken.
    “This is wonderful tobacco,” Lestrade said, puffing on the pipe in his mouth. “Where do you get it?”
    “It’s a special blend I have made for me.”
    “I’ll have to visit your tobacconist,” Lestrade said. He raised his glass. “One last drink?”
    Gerard nodded. “To remaining what we are,” he said, by way of a toast.
    “What do you mean?” Lestrade said.
    “What with people like Holmes in the world,” Gerard said. “People look to him to solve things, discounting us. But Holmes is little more than a machine. He’s inhuman. He doesn’t feel the passions of the common people. He can’t understand them.”
    Lestrade inclined his head. “I agree with you. But some find him, find that lack of emotion, to be a desirable thing. To not be saddled with such failings. Such weakness. To be somehow…pure.”
    “It’s the purity of a diamond,” Gerard said. “Cold, hard. Sometimes brilliant, and worth much to some. But a diamond cannot keep you warm. A diamond may symbolize love, but it is not love.”
    “Yet people lust after them, just the same.”
    Gerard raised his glass. “To misplaced