The Progress of Sherlock Holmes

The Case of Mary Morstan

Not terribly difficult to be mistaken for a student. Muss hair artfully (with a touch of product), slouch. Carry a book bag. Dress down; old jeans and a thin t-shirt (John’s), a pseudo-hip retro cardigan from a secondhand shop. Trainers. Pair of glasses; horn-rimmed plastic browlines, false lenses. (Been ages since I’ve required a disguise.) Look shy, awkward. Twist feet in slightly. Standing by the main entrance at the LSE library, staring down at my phone, scrolling through texts (just like the seven students scattered around me) paper cup of coffee in my left hand. Mary walks right past me. Doesn’t recognise me. Perfect.

Mary is also in a disguise (of sorts).

Wearing perfume (expensive, new: unusual), blue pumps on her feet, tights on her legs (bought from a shop down the street from her flat in Clapton). Wearing a dress with a low cut neckline. Lipstick. Her hair not in her usual ponytail or clipped up on the sides; hanging loose instead. Blow-dried, curled. (Her hair is a cross between blonde and mouse brown; she started off her life as a blonde and still thinks of herself that way: blonde in secondary school, always the short blonde girl in awkward photos. She spent some time in India as a young adult; her blonde hair would have made her stand out. Made her more attractive, unusual, alluring. Made her more obviously different. Gave her an unusual amount of male attention. She would have loved it and hated it. She does not dye her hair. She let it turn steadily darker as she aged. An interesting battle with the traditional markers of female beauty, with the markers of her own. An acceptance (perhaps a welcoming?) of the signs that she changes over time. That she can change.) She is dressed up, as if today is an important day. Dressed as someone not quite but almost entirely unlike the person she actually is.

She is meeting someone. The book club: an obvious ruse. She is meeting him tonight (whoever he is), but also, if I’m very lucky, for lunch. Difficult to prove, but I suspect I can. The homeless network has received its orders: a fifty pound note and a page with Mary’s photo printed on it, her particulars. Where/when/with whom? Answers will be forthcoming. Mary may imagine that my nights with John will keep me from tracking her, that she is safe not only from his notice and suspicion but also from mine. She is wrong.

Hacking into her work calendar was not difficult. (She and John have the oddest things in common; the kinds of passwords they choose being one of them. Not the same passwords, obviously, but the same pattern of passwords: objects of emotional value, childhood pets, and oddly, the online pseudonyms they each used to engage in arguments on the internet while at uni. John and Mary both: the appeal of the alternate identity, the secret self.) She has the lunch hour and then some blocked off and labelled merely as Lunch Meeting. No name attached. Only meeting without one. Most interesting event of the day.

The calendar pinned up behind the enquiry desk lists the librarians scheduled to work each shift; I managed a glance. According to John, Mary worked two night shifts last week (unusual): Tuesday night (when John left Clapton and joined me at a crime scene, fell asleep after two in the morning face down on the sofa) and Thursday night (he insisted on bringing over a DVD to watch, and spent the evening with his right leg entwined with mine, his hand resting casually on my knee). The schedule: Thursday: yes, Mary’s name listed there (MM rather than her full name in order to prevent others doing precisely what I am doing); Tuesday: someone else’s initials. Mary was not here Tuesday night. Won’t be here next Tuesday night either. A lie.

Mary’s blue shoes clap against the brick, and I follow her, still staring at my phone. Her curly hair bounces with each step. No one notices me. No one thinks my behaviour is odd. Even as I speed up a bit as she turns a corner and crosses the street. I glance at my watch (indicate that I fear I am late for something). Stuff phone into pocket, where it immediately buzzes. Pull it back out. John.

Where do I meet you tonight? Baker St? Angelo’s? Or is there a crime scene that needs your attention?

Stab of warmth. John. Too early in the day to make these plans; normally John’s texts asking these sorts of questions come around four o’clock, as his shift nears its end, not before noon. Sitting in his office at the clinic, between patients. Typically he makes himself a cup of tea, picks up a biscuit. Instead he’s thinking of me.