Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, Where Has Your Husband Gone?

Do come in, Watson, old boy.

Why, thank you, Holmes.

I see you've been reading Quass.com again, you sly dog.

But how --

Don't look so alarmed, Watson, it was really quite easy.

Really?

You see, your slightly parted lips betray a rather uncharacteristic upward curvature at the corners this morning, a sure sign that you had been laughing only minutes ago.

Yes, but the Internet, Holmes: I don't see how you could have figured out that I was surfing the 'Net this morning, considering that that particular electronic resource will not officially be in existence until the latter half of the 20th century. The current year is only 1894, after all!

Simplicity itself, Watson: I know you have a penchant for the anachronistic, and, as this story that we're involved in here is itself not scheduled for publication until the year 2007, it was a safe bet that you and its author (probably Brian Quass himself, considering the charming and urbane tone that he's already struck with this apparent light-hearted parody of our good friend Arthur Conan-Doyle) have engaged in a little poetic license, in the reasonable (but ultimately mistaken) belief that you could "put one over on me" with a little chronological hocus pocus.

Extraordinary, Holmes.

Nonsense, old man. Need I remind you that there's nothing more extraordinary than the ordinary?

So you keep telling me, but --

Besides, if you want my opinion, Watson, my real insight this morning was of a far more interesting (not to say intimate) nature.

You don't say so.

What, blushing already by way of silent confession? That's right, old boy, for to use the probable coarse phraseology of the second lustrum of the 21st century to which you rogues have seen fit to transport us this morning, you were outside that very door five minutes ago "necking" with my maid-servant Therese!

N-n-nonsense, Holmes, I'm a married man, after all!

Now, now, Watson: This is your old friend Sherlock Holmes you're talking to here. There's no use prevaricating. Besides, I've long since deduced (or more correctly "induced") that you and your wife (what's-her-face: Mary Morstan, I believe) have been on the outs for several years now and, indeed, are inevitably rowing with each other for hours on end on those increasingly rare occasions when you actually see one another.

But how --

What's more, I know what the rows are about.

You amaze me.

Yes, she's outraged that you spend so many days (and nights, indeed) here at my cozy Baker Street digs, leaving her to her own apparently inadequate devices back at what she can only consider her "comparative hovel."

Well, it is semi-detached.

That's not the point, Watson. She's angry with you, and your amorous frustration and sense of guilt have led you to seek sensual solace elsewhere -- namely in the hallway yonder behind the doorway to which I've just alluded.

Once again, you've hit the nail on the head, Holmes. Only this sordid business isn't entirely my fault, you know.

But surely Mary is a comely woman by the standards of the age -- of the late 1800s, I mean. She's broad of shoulder, long of leg --

And big of mouth, Holmes! Big of mouth!

Nay, you surprise me. I thought she disported herself quite admirably last year when she joined our little dinner party here at Baker Street to celebrate the successful resolution of that "Hounds of the Baskerville" case.

Admirably, Holmes? You do realize, don't you, that she was the one who secretly snuck that beagle into your residence during the height of the frivolities.

What?!

That's right: It was Mary who ushered in that poorly trained canine that ruined your Brussels carpet and nearly knocked over your largest bookcase, before you (rather callously, as I then thought) threw the creature out of your second-story window in one of your rare (but alas not entirely atypical) fits of "pique."

The introduction of such an animal into my flat, even had it been properly house-trained, would have smacked of bad taste, but to knowingly introduce that bladder-happy mongrel into my den -- In any case, I saw the creature subsequently race down the back alley into Marylebone Road, so the incontinent cur was obviously unhurt (more's the pity!)

What? The dispassionate Sherlock Holmes is actually angry?

Ahem. You are too right, old boy. Score one for Dr. Watson.

Ha ha! Well, then we really are ALL human, after all! I used to think quite seriously that we all were human except for you, Holmes!

Mea culpa, old boy. Mea culpa.





Still, I can't believe that the seemingly sensible Mary was behind that incident. I kid you not, Watson, I was quite impressed with her smarts on the night. And her bon mots were not only hilarious but inevitably spot on. Besides, she had such a big... set of ideas about solving crime. (That reminds me: I meant to send her an application form so that she could join The Baker Street Irregulars, but I rather uncharacteristically forgot about it. It's just as well, however, as I'm convinced that Wiggins and the boys would disband rather than allow a female into their ranks -- especially one whose age and general disposition must necessarily remind them of their own no-doubt overprotective and smothering mother figures at home. You know how emotionally enervating our Victorian-era mothers can be, Watson. In the words of the yet-to-be-produced hit by the equally yet-to-be-produced Tommy James: "Children behave, that's what they say.")

No, no, Holmes: Mary is not the cerebral saint that you imagined.

Confound it, Watson, I see it clearly now. How could I have missed the signs of her (as it were) latent flippancy?!

Well, honestly, Holmes, you might have guessed that she was at least a trifle sophomoric since, as even I now clearly recall, she showed up at 221B that evening wearing a 3-piece honey bee costume complete with striped spandex bodice, plastic wings, and a set of black-and-yellow-striped high heels.

Externals, my dear boy, externals. Some of us prefer to focus on a person's mind, and their big... set of ideas about crime-solving and the like.

Well, well, if you say so, Holmes.

But this is all beside the point: You say that Mary and you are REALLY on the outs? I was just joking above, you know, old man: just joking!

What makes you say that, poor boy?

But surely the signs are everywhere, Holmes, I'm surprised that you of all people haven't noticed them. Ah, but then no doubt you've been too busy admiring my wife's big... set of ideas.

Come, come, Watson. Such base insinuations are out of character for you. Besides, what sign could I possibly have missed in this regard?

Well, for instance... Do you remember the case of "The Man with the Twisted Lip"?

What, that sordid business with Neville St. Clair, the actor, who was passing himself off (all too credibly, alas) as a beggar and an opium addict in East London?

That's the one I mean.

Yes, what of it?

Well, you may recall that my wife actually referred to me as "James" rather than "John" in the early portion of that tale: can you believe it? "James"? Imagine a wife who can't even keep the name of her own husband firmly in mind. And if her mind is elsewhere in this way, it's a sure bet that her heart is elsewhere, too.

Ah, I see. Well, you have my consolations, old boy -- providing that your apparent ongoing affair with my maid-servant Therese was embarked upon AFTER the advent of your marital problems.

Upon my honor, Holmes, I never eyed your maid-servant with so much as one solitary leer (never, that is to say, did I mentally remove so much as one silk lace from the ruffled lavender yoke that danced, alas, all too coquettishly above that sheer cotton chemise of hers, all frilled in black as it was and strewn with floral embroidery, a classic example of what I'm told is the latest London style in such things, referred to in the trade, I believe, as a 'pigeon bodice') until long AFTER my wife had become an insupportable b--

Ah, but now it is YOU who has become angry, old man.



Come, let's sit down together in these dueling leather wing chairs beside my big oaken desk and get our minds off of things. I'll tell you what: We'll have a pipe together while you tell me (albeit for the umpteenth time, of course) how that young orderly of yours (what was his name again? Murray?) saved your then-rather-meager hide at the Battle of Maiwand.

What would I do without you, Holmes? What would I ever do without you?

I don't know, old fellow, but you may soon find out. It sounds like that wife of yours may soon be "on the open market," so to speak, in which case (may Irene Adler forgive me) I have half a mind to elope with her myself!

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