Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [4]
Ignorance is always frustrating, never more so than when accompanied by the feeling that it obscures the need for action. Holmes and I wore our patience like a pair of horse-hair shirts, prickly and ill-fitting, and while we kept our eyes on the printed word, our ears were turned towards the stairs, eager for the slightest sleep-befuddled query.
It did not come. Mrs Hudson abandoned her scrubbing brush and retired to her quarters. The fire burnt low. Mid-night approached, with no movement from the guest room.
Finally, Holmes rattled his paper shut with an air of finality and fixed me with a gaze. “And the cares that infest the day,” he pronounced, “shall fold their tents like the Arabs, and as silently sleep away.”
We took ourselves to bed, but not to silent sleep; nor was the air filled with the music from the first part of his misquotation.
I had forgot how emphatically Ali snored.
Two of us in the house slept little.
Morning came, the aroma of coffee trickled its way up the stairs, and still the Hazr snores rattled the windows. Not until after eight o’clock did they abruptly cease. Holmes and I looked at each other. Mrs Hudson came in from the kitchen, drying her hands on her apron and cocking her head at the ceiling.
“Shall I make another breakfast, then?” she asked.
“Either that or send for the undertaker,” I answered, but then a rattle of movement came from the bedstead over our heads, followed by the thump of feet hitting the floorboards. They stopped there, either through dizziness or because Ali noticed that he was more or less naked. Holmes folded his newspaper (he’d worked his way up to the previous week) and rose.
“If you would like to make a pot of tea, Mrs Hudson, Russell will bring it up. I’ll find our guest a dressing gown. Give him a minute, Russell, to get his bearings.”
I was not certain whether Holmes was referring to the inevitable confusion following a head injury, or to the specific discomfort this man might feel after having tumbled into the arms of a woman he’d spent the better part of six weeks insulting, ignoring, and mistrusting. Our relationship had become considerably more jovial after I had come close to killing him a couple of times (accidents both, I hasten to say), but I might still not be the person Ali Hazr would have chosen to pick him up following a moment of vulnerability.
To be fair, I had to permit him to resume his mask of omni-competence. Whatever had driven him to the extremity of seeking aid, it would only further complicate matters to begin with inequality. So I allowed Holmes to trot off upstairs without me. I did not even snatch the tray from Mrs Hudson’s hands, but meekly waited for her to rearrange the biscuits into an aesthetic design before I took up the refreshment and carried it upstairs.
Holmes had built up the fire in the guest room and was seated on the low bench at the foot of the bed. The room’s armchair held Ali, clad in a warm dressing gown and a pair of Holmes’ pyjama trousers that extended past his toes. He looked up at my entrance and watched me set the tray down on the small table by his side. I poured him a cup. He added milk (rather to my surprise, as Arab tea is taken black) and two sugars, then drank thirstily. I refilled his cup and pulled the foot-stool up to the other side of the fireplace. A quick glance at the pillow confirmed that he’d bled, but not profusely, and none of the stains looked fresh.
The second cup followed the first down his throat, and he set it onto the saucer with the barest tap. Ali glanced at me briefly, and away.
“The English beverage,” he commented, which might have sounded like disparagement had he not drunk it so greedily. I decided