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The question caught me completely by surprise, and I barely managed to catch my fumbled pen. I had thought her still in the parlor catching up with Mary, but a glance toward the hall found Mrs. Hudson lingering in the doorway.
“What was that?”
“Why did you call me Mrs. Turner?” she repeated. Fingers twisted in her skirt to reveal the hesitance behind a question that must have been bothering her for months. I had no memory of ever calling her by the neighbor’s name.
Which she easily saw. A moment decided to remind me rather than brush her curiosity aside.
“The case you sent to Doctor Doyle before—last spring.” A frown apologized for causing the flinch I still could not fully hide. My fault. “A Scandal in Bohemia. Every other case you have published carries my own name. Why change it for that one?”
“I did not.” A moment’s digging through my desk drawer found my own copy of that manuscript, and I quickly found the only reference to Holmes’ “landlady.” She relaxed slightly on seeing “Mrs. Hudson” bringing a tray upstairs and chiding Holmes for missing luncheon. The next page found her relaying the rumor of a fire on Serpentine Avenue—only to scowl when she realized Holmes had been behind the incident.
“Why did you think I had?”
“The published version has a Mrs. Turner here,” one finger referenced the supper scene, “though she never speaks, and that second discussion never happens.”
“Doyle.” Irritation emerged in a grumble even as the tension lining her shoulders drained away. “I have told him many times to stop editing my manuscripts for details instead of simply flow and grammar. He must have decided to trim some length, and in the process replaced your name with the neighbors’. Or another client’s,” I added, remembering another case in that packet. “You know I do not read them after his edits.”
She nodded, uncertainty slowly fading even as she watched my reaction. She and Mary both had tried not to directly reference Holmes in recent months, for what reason I only partially understood, but Mary’s voice lifted from the kitchen before Mrs. Hudson could either address the topic or try to distract me. She disappeared down the hall as I refocused on this week’s prescriptions.
Or tried to, anyway. Memories rose up instead, accusing and reminding and longing all rolled into scenes my darkest nights had debated trying to forget, and when a glance at the clock found it much too close to supper time, I finally reopened that manuscript.
I would not let Mary catch me reliving the past—not after the panic she had revealed last time—but she would think nothing of my remembering Holmes through my own case notes. Pretending to read would let me slip back through time, just for a while.
My fault or not, I missed him too much to deny his memory.