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holmes_minorTitle: Washed Up
Author: gardnerhill
Fandom: ACD
Pairing: None
Word Count: 500
Rating: G
Warning: None
Summary: What happened afterward?
Author's Notes: Written for the May 2024 Holmes Minor monthly prompt “Wash.”
***
Story on Dreamwidth
Story on AO3
Perhaps that revelation was inevitable. I don't know how long I could have maintained the façade of Hugh Boone the beggar, if I'd been formally charged with (my own) murder. I suppose I hoped to find a policeman to bribe into silence who would release me to the streets, where I would disappear until I returned to my wife a few days later with a picaresque tale of my kidnapping by unsavoury Londoners.
Instead, I had to quite literally come clean – and before Mr. Sherlock Holmes of all people. Before those hawk-eyes that had seen through my ruse, his fist still gripping the wet bath-sponge that had stripped off my disguise, there was nothing for it but to confess all. I swore a solemn promise to destroy the vestiges of my beggar alter ego, in exchange for keeping the matter out of the courts.
That was the pleasant side of that business.
Then I had to go home and tell Kate not only where I had been but what I'd been doing since before she even knew me, let alone before she'd wed me and had our children. Thus did she learn that her marriage had been built upon a lie, and after all the past years I'd presented myself to her as a moneyed gentleman of leisure, she knew what profession had actually paid for our fine house, the servants, the horses, the very toys our children owned. Worse than that prison cell was seeing the light of trust flicker and die out in my wife's eyes. She never raised her voice to me about the matter; she simply closed up like a castle gate and responded to every entreaty like an automaton.
I also had to find honest employment – and discovered within a week that a journalist's salary would not let us remain at The Cedars. Within six months I was forced to sell the villa and dismiss half the servants (I would not deprive Kate of the governess or other domestics), for we needed to live on my savings until I acquired a far more modest dwelling in a less fashionable area of Kent and established myself in my regained profession. Little Reggie wept for some weeks, wanting to "go home," but baby Jane was too young to understand why we'd moved; it was one of the few blessings of the situation.
This is how things stand. I once had a gentleman's stipend gained by the penny and half-penny via my talent at makeup and acting. Now I take a train to toil at my mediocre newspaper for an eighth of the income I'd earned as an eccentric mendicant, and return to a home that would have fit in The Cedars' carriage-house. And where I once saw love in the eyes of my Kate, now there is only cold silence between us, and no earthly way to mend the rift.
Mr. Sherlock Holmes didn't just wash my face with that damned sponge; he washed away my life.
Author: gardnerhill
Fandom: ACD
Pairing: None
Word Count: 500
Rating: G
Warning: None
Summary: What happened afterward?
Author's Notes: Written for the May 2024 Holmes Minor monthly prompt “Wash.”
***
Story on Dreamwidth
Story on AO3
Perhaps that revelation was inevitable. I don't know how long I could have maintained the façade of Hugh Boone the beggar, if I'd been formally charged with (my own) murder. I suppose I hoped to find a policeman to bribe into silence who would release me to the streets, where I would disappear until I returned to my wife a few days later with a picaresque tale of my kidnapping by unsavoury Londoners.
Instead, I had to quite literally come clean – and before Mr. Sherlock Holmes of all people. Before those hawk-eyes that had seen through my ruse, his fist still gripping the wet bath-sponge that had stripped off my disguise, there was nothing for it but to confess all. I swore a solemn promise to destroy the vestiges of my beggar alter ego, in exchange for keeping the matter out of the courts.
That was the pleasant side of that business.
Then I had to go home and tell Kate not only where I had been but what I'd been doing since before she even knew me, let alone before she'd wed me and had our children. Thus did she learn that her marriage had been built upon a lie, and after all the past years I'd presented myself to her as a moneyed gentleman of leisure, she knew what profession had actually paid for our fine house, the servants, the horses, the very toys our children owned. Worse than that prison cell was seeing the light of trust flicker and die out in my wife's eyes. She never raised her voice to me about the matter; she simply closed up like a castle gate and responded to every entreaty like an automaton.
I also had to find honest employment – and discovered within a week that a journalist's salary would not let us remain at The Cedars. Within six months I was forced to sell the villa and dismiss half the servants (I would not deprive Kate of the governess or other domestics), for we needed to live on my savings until I acquired a far more modest dwelling in a less fashionable area of Kent and established myself in my regained profession. Little Reggie wept for some weeks, wanting to "go home," but baby Jane was too young to understand why we'd moved; it was one of the few blessings of the situation.
This is how things stand. I once had a gentleman's stipend gained by the penny and half-penny via my talent at makeup and acting. Now I take a train to toil at my mediocre newspaper for an eighth of the income I'd earned as an eccentric mendicant, and return to a home that would have fit in The Cedars' carriage-house. And where I once saw love in the eyes of my Kate, now there is only cold silence between us, and no earthly way to mend the rift.
Mr. Sherlock Holmes didn't just wash my face with that damned sponge; he washed away my life.
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