The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets Read Online Free PDF

the house to find her mistress. I stood looking around me. Each parlour window had been raised exactly two inches. Fortunately, in this part of London, the spring air stank only of smoke and street muck, odours mostly offset by the fragrance of the flowers I carried. In London, I had come to realise, those with any spare income at all considered flowers not a luxury, but a necessity for their homes and persons, in order to make living bearable to the sense of smell.
    From the back of the house I heard a soft voice ask, “Who is it, Rose?” and then, without waiting for an answer, with my card still in her hand, Mrs. Watson entered the parlour, her face very pale yet composed. With quiet but warm concern she asked, “Have you come to see the doctor? I’m afraid he’s not in. Is there anything I can do for you?”
    I stood astonished, for I could see how red and swollen her eyes were. No longer could I doubt in the slightest that Dr. Watson indeed had disappeared, for Mrs. Watson’s distress was genuine and evident. Yet she expected to render service, not to receive sympathy.
    This amazing woman shamed me so much that, handing her the simple bouquet I had brought with me, I could barely speak coherently. “I read about it in the news,” I babbled, “and I cannot imagine why, for he’s so very kind, your husband I mean, I do hope he is all right, I beg your pardon for intruding at such a difficult time, but I thought perhaps some flowers—”
    Other bouquets had arrived, I saw, but not so many as to crowd the small parlour.
    “How very thoughtful of you. Thank you.” Mrs. Watson’s lip trembled as she accepted the snowdrops and jasmine from me, but her gentle gaze upon my face remained inquiring.
    “I have been a patient of your husband’s,” I added hastily in reply to her unspoken request that I should please explain myself, as I should have done in the beginning.
    She nodded, humbly accepting the presence of a very young, rather bird-brained, and quite attractive (I hoped) stranger in her parlour. “You’ll forgive me, I’m sure. I do not know all of his patients.”
    “You can hardly be expected to! And when I saw, in the paper, you know—well, I just had to do something, for he not only remedied my difficulty, but showed the greatest tact and sympathy in doing so.” This was true, in a way. When lying, I always make every possible use of the truth; I can carry it off better that way, and remember more easily what I have said.
    “But how thoughtful of you—what a lovely gesture—your being here.”
    Feeling painfully like a fraud, I mentally reminded myself quite sternly that I was here to help her.
    “What lovely flowers,” she continued, cradling them in one arm as if holding a baby. “Miss Everseau, I’d be most obliged—I mean, if it is no inconvenience—would you care to stay awhile and have some tea?”

    It was as I had thought it might be: No matter what her natural reserve, at this time of trouble Mrs. Watson needed someone, any safe and sympathetic listener, to talk to. As soon as we were seated, with only the slightest encouragement from me she began to tell me how her husband had left the house in excellent humour this past Wednesday morning, planning to make some house calls then perhaps stop at his club—but in the evening he had not returned.
    “I kept his supper warm till it turned to cinder,” she said in a sort of bewilderment, “and still I could not bring myself to throw it into the dustbin, because to do so would have been to acknowledge that he was terribly overdue, and I could not yet admit that anything—something—had happened. I kept telling myself he would be home any minute. He had to be.”
    She had waited all night for him, and in the morning she had sent for the police and, of course, for Sherlock Holmes. (She assumed, correctly, that I understood her husband’s association with the famous detective.) The police had arrived first but refused to take action