11
For the next several days the affairs of ordinary life resumed their accustomed course, though Holmes himself could scarcely be said to form any part of it.
One afternoon I returned to Baker Street after a long walk through Regent's Park. The autumn air had been fresh enough to clear one's thoughts, and I entered our sitting room in the hope of finding Holmes in a more communicative mood than had lately been his custom.
Instead I found him surrounded by books.
They occupied not only the table before him but the chairs on either side, while several more lay open upon the hearthrug where he had evidently been consulting them in rapid succession.
Their bindings varied from stout modern reference works to venerable volumes whose leather had become cracked with age.
I glanced idly at the titles nearest me.
One concerned the domestic life of medieval England. Another treated of feudal customs. A third examined the language of the Middle Ages, while still others dealt with medieval cookery, religious observances, architecture, heraldry, and the everyday habits of our ancestors.
The collection seemed as comprehensive as it was unexpected.
Holmes sat in the midst of it with his pipe between his lips, one elbow resting upon the arm of his chair as he read with an intensity that excluded every other consideration.
From time to time he would reach silently for another volume, compare a passage, make a brief note upon a loose sheet of paper, and then resume his reading.
His expression alone was enough to warn me against interruption.
There are occasions when Holmes's mind becomes so wholly absorbed by a particular line of inquiry that even the most innocent question is received with little more than absent-minded impatience. I recognized the signs immediately and quietly occupied myself with my own correspondence.
The afternoon passed almost without a word between us.
Only when Mrs. Hudson came upstairs and announced that dinner was about to be served did Holmes reluctantly close the volume before him.
He joined me at the table, but his body alone appeared present.
His thoughts remained amongst the piles of medieval scholarship upstairs.
Throughout the meal he scarcely spoke half a dozen sentences. More than once I caught his eyes fixed upon nothing in particular while the food upon his plate remained all but untouched. He ate little, drank only a single glass of claret, and seemed almost unconscious of what he was doing.
At last he laid down his knife and fork.
"You will excuse me, Watson."
Before I could reply he had already risen, and then settled himself back in the armchair by the fire.
Mrs. Hudson gathered the plates with the practised efficiency born of long acquaintance with Holmes's habits. As she reached for his scarcely touched dinner, she glanced towards him, where he already sat with the book open upon his knee, his pipe forgotten in one hand.
"Another case, Doctor?" she muttered.
"I am afraid so."
She sighed almost imperceptibly.
"I thought as much."
There was neither complaint nor surprise in her voice. Like myself, she had long since learned that, when Holmes entered one of these periods of profound concentration, any attempt to distract him was not merely futile but positively unwelcome.
Without another word she carried the dishes from the room, leaving me alone with the dying fire and the certainty that Holmes was once again pursuing the true meaning of Professor Stratton's final, bewildering warning.
Beware the coffin.