By the time we reached Goulding's office, it was late afternoon. I did not realize until we were seated in his consulting room that I had not eaten since we left Baker Street that morning. I was not hungry. I wondered, as Holmes began to explain, whether this was how Holmes felt during those long periods when he would go without regular meals or sleep. Was it perhaps not so much the thrill of the chase that spurred him on, but the sort of queasy, numbing dread that was currently draining my appetite and blunting my senses? Was he driven to put aside all else but the problem on which he was engaged, not because he enjoyed his work more than he enjoyed a well-done fowl, but because an unsolved mystery simply destroyed his ability to enjoy anything else? I did not know; but I had to admit that if Holmes felt, while pursuing a difficult case, as badly as I had felt since we left Mrs. Armitage's bedchamber that morning, I ought to respond to his fits of hyperactivity with compassion rather than resentment.

"Ah, you mean Miss Stoner," Goulding finally said. "The younger lady of Stoke Moran. Oh, certainly I remember her. Christison must have told me she had married but I'm afraid I had forgotten. My mind is only of middling size, you understand, Mr. Holmes," he said, with wry good humour. "I have just enough brain to make a good general practitioner. But when something happens that is out of the ordinary, I pass the poor patient on right away to a more distinguished colleague who might actually be of some assistance; and once a patient starts seeing another doctor, I fear I begin to lose interest. Mercenary of me, of course. But let me find you her case file, if indeed I still have it..."

He began opening drawers and boxes. Holmes continued to question him. "Doctor Christison said she came to you because you had helped her sister?"

"Ah yes, Mrs. Whitworth," said Goulding, turning his back on us as he dove into a strong box that was bursting with clinical records. "It was kind of her to remember me at all. I was not the lady's regular physician, of course; but I suppose she might remember me fondly, as by lucky chance I happened to be the bearer of good tidings."

Fortunately, Goulding's back was still turned, and he did not see the look of vexed astonishment on Holmes's face, or the look of horrified comprehension on mine.

"Say nothing," I mouthed silently to Holmes. "Let me ask the questions."

He nodded. I am sure it was only because he could not imagine what was happening to the universe. Julia Stoner had begun the day as an engaged woman, then become single, and now gotten married all in one day--and all this while being several years dead. It was certainly puzzling--to anyone who had not been to medical school, or had never had the opportunity to spend some time after dinner in a drawing room with more than one doctor and a good bottle of port.

"It was you who told her the happy news, then," I said.

Goulding turned around with his hands still empty. He had not found the case file, and it was bothering him, so that he answered more unguardedly than he might have. "Well, she confessed during our consultation that she had had her suspicions; but she had been too busy to consult her own physician right away, and then while accompanying her sister to town she had suddenly taken ill. They were both relieved to hear the fortunate diagnosis, and to know that she was simply suffering the usual intermittent weakness and nausea."

I asked, "So Miss Helen was with her?"

"Oh yes, they had come to town that day to have some dresses made, and as they were passing along the street Mrs. Whitworth had a fainting spell. My secretary happened to see them through his window, and so of course we went to their aid."

"Of course," I murmured. And, as he was about to rifle another desk drawer, I added, "Please, Doctor Goulding, if you cannot find the case file then you cannot find it, that is all. Please do not give yourself any further trouble over it. But if it should turn up, would you mind sending us a note at our Baker street address?"

"Not at all," said Goulding. "I am sorry I could not be more helpful."

"On the contrary," I said. "You have been immensely helpful. Thank you very much for your time, and good afternoon."

Holmes followed me out. He waited until we were on the street and out of earshot. He waited for me to begin. I waited for him to ask.

He broke first.

"Immensely helpful, Watson?" Holmes demanded.

"Immensely."

Holmes stopped walking. I turned and waited. It was a struggle, but he was finally forced to submit to his own desperate need to know.

"What is it that you learned in there that I did not?" he cried, infuriated with himself and more than a little irritated with me. "I mean, aside from the obvious fact that the Misses Stoner--if indeed either or both was still a miss--staged that fainting fit in order to give them the opportunity to consult an unknown and not overbright London physician without making an appointment? Which, I presume, they could not do without corresponding, and taking the risk that such correspondence would fall into Roylott's hands. From this we can deduce that they had very strong reasons for preventing Roylott from discovering not only why Miss Julia wished to see a doctor, but the fact that she was seeing one at all."

Even at sea, Holmes could still find his bearings. I was sure I would not have been able to arrive at those conclusions, had I not had the professional experience that had for once allowed me to get the upper hand.

"However," Holmes went on, as he saw that I was softening. "More is evidently clear to you than is clear to me, and I humbly beg you to vouchsafe me a few crumbs of the knowledge upon which you now feast."

He was working hard to amuse me. With everything that he did not understand about me, about Mary, about that horrible time, he understood enough to know I was miserable. I could not laugh, but looking at his keen yet compassionate eyes I felt a surge of gratitude that I knew might turn into tears if I was not careful.

"First of all," I answered, trying to play the game, "you are no doubt wondering why she presented herself to Goulding as Mrs. Whitworth?"

"I would have said, in order that he should not be able to trace her--but if she wanted to give an alias, why did not Miss Helen do the same?"

"Indeed," I answered. "I do not think that can explain it. I believe, on the contrary, that her intention in presenting herself as Mrs. Whitworth was not so much to provide Goulding with a false name as to convince Goulding that she was married."

"Because?" Holmes demanded.

"Because the reason she wanted to see him," I said, trying to sound as patient-yet-with-a-hint-of-patronization as he always had, "was that she wanted to know for certain whether she was pregnant."

Holmes blinked.

"If you had ever worked in a teaching hospital, Holmes, this would not surprise to you in the least. No woman who consults a doctor for that purpose ever presents herself as a Miss. I have heard my colleagues make merry, many a time, over how transparent the pretense can become. Stamford was particularly amused by the attempt one patient had made at turning a sixpenny nickel ring into a gold wedding band. I always considered it the height of cruelty to laugh at the poor creatures...but in any case, Holmes, poor Miss Julia is not at all unusual, at least in that respect. She simply happens to have been a better liar than most."

"A trait which runs in the family, evidently," muttered Holmes darkly. "And the 'happy news,' I suppose, is that she was in fact expecting."

"Precisely, Holmes."

"Ah, I see, Watson," he said, as a smile tweaked one corner of his mouth. "Now that you have explained your reasoning to me...it is all so absurdly simple."

I laughed. It was a weak laugh, but it was real.

"Well, Watson!" Holmes went on. "Now that you have discovered this, there is only one thing for it."

"And that thing is?" I asked.

"The hour of the flannel is at hand," he intoned with mock solemnity. "We must catch the last train to Stoke Moran."

He slipped his arm through mine and began walking briskly up the street.

---

It was dark outside the window of our private compartment. The countryside rushed past us; but I could not distinguish more than vague, shifting shapes, all dark and all, to my mind, ominous. Holmes sat opposite me, his knees drawn up, absorbed in his own thoughts.

I had lapsed into silence early, as my own thoughts were not ones that merited communication. I was thinking of Mary, of those last painful days before heaven finally granted her peace. My hand still remembered the terrible pressure of the white fingers that had clutched it during those last gasping spasms. Long as the month of her illness had been, the disease at the end took her swiftly and terribly enough.

Through it all she never had a word of reproach for me. All she would say, during those long night hours when I watched at her bedside and wept in shame and grief over my failure as a physician--and my failures as a husband--was that she loved me, and she was glad that I was there. In the weeks after her death, before Holmes's startling return, those moments had haunted me persistently. Hearing her voice was more painful somehow because all it had for me were words of love. "Don't blame yourself, John," she had said, in one of her last lucid moments. "You have done all that love could do."

All that love could do. Looking at the darkness behind the windowpanes I could see nothing but a reflection of my own shame. It had come to me, on one of those dark fever-ridden nights, that I had probably spent more time with Mary during the month of her illness than I had in the first year of our marriage. I despised myself bitterly for the time I had wasted because I had foolishly thought that she would always be there. I even resented her for not having complained more, for allowing me to neglect her for Holmes and adventure without ever raising her voice or putting her foot down. I never felt, at any moment, that I had ever done for her all that love could do. And even as I felt grief for her tearing at my heart, I was not even sure on some of those long nights that I had even loved her. Because if I had loved her, why would I not have realized that she was a precious gift lent to me for a short time, that every day I spent without her would come back to reproach me after she was gone?

"Watson," said Holmes.

I tried to recall myself to the present time. "Yes, Holmes?"

"What are you thinking about?"

I tried to pass it off lightly. "Surely you must know, Holmes?"

"If I were asked to deduce it, of course," Holmes answered, his voice gentle and his eyes softened, "I would say that you were thinking about poor Mary. But I am sure of nothing these days."

I blinked, swallowed, and said, "You are right, Holmes."

"I know how this has upset you," said Holmes. "Of course it is a terrible thing to suddenly discover that you were deprived of her not by Providence, but by some human minion of the devil. I was wrong, perhaps, to say what I was thinking."

"No," I said, deciding not to explain that the idea of murder had not in fact been what I was brooding on. "Of course you were right to tell me, but I do not understand it at all, Holmes. Who could possibly want to harm poor Mary?"

Holmes shrugged. "That is the darkest part of a mystery that grows ever darker, Watson. My hope is that if we can shed some light on the events that transpired those years ago at Stoke Moran, they may illuminate the mystery surrounding Mary's death."

"But surely that mystery is already illuminated," I said. "If Miss Helen simply fabricated all of the evidence--"

"Ah, but Watson," said Holmes, wearily. "It cannot possibly be as simple as that."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that although Miss Helen's story may be utterly false, some of the clues I examined must have been real. That bed was bolted to the floor. That ventilator had been installed, and installed in a place where it could serve no useful purpose. Destructive and completely useless repairs had been begun on Miss Helen's own room. Miss Helen could have strung up the bell-pull, put out the dish of milk, and tied the dog-leash; but unless she is involved in a secret compact with the local builders, she could not have done any of those other things herself."

I considered this for a moment. "So what does that mean, Holmes?" I finally asked.

"My hypothesis, at this moment--and of course it is liable to change," said Holmes, with a touch of bitterness, "is that Roylott is responsible for those clues that Miss Helen could not have arranged herself. Which means that he had that bed bolted, the ventilator installed, and the repairs begun. These things are all related, somehow, to Julia Stoner's eventual death from the same disease that now afflicts her sister. Our task is to try to understand how."

I nodded. The train continued to rattle through the darkness.

"You are the doctor, Watson," said Holmes. "Have you any idea why Mrs. Armitage survived, while Julia and Mary did not?"

I tried not to let him see the pain that his question caused me. He did, after all, mean well.

"It has crossed my mind," I answered, "that perhaps it was simply because Mrs. Armitage had better medical care."

I was surprised to see water come to Holmes's eyes. His hand reached across the compartment, as if it did not know quite what to do, and finally rested on my knee.

"Watson," he said. "If you say that because I have, over the years, occasionally made some remarks as to the quality of your intellect or the breadth of your professional knowledge, I am truly sorry for it."

I was so taken aback by this sudden flux of emotion that I hardly knew what to answer, except, "No, of course not. My dear Holmes, do not blame yourself."

Holmes evidently interpreted my slumping back morosely into my seat as further evidence that he had wounded my feelings.

"Watson," he went on. "I watched you talk to Christison. He may have a more lustrous nameplate and a larger office than you ever had, but even after treating Mrs. Armitage for years he has found no better way to treat her than you ever did--nor, indeed, did he know as much about the disease or its symptoms as you do. And the way you handled Goulding was nothing short of magnificent. You are as good a doctor as any of the specialists you called in to treat her. And if Mrs. Armitage could be saved and Mary could not, Watson, it must simply be because something about Mrs. Armitage's case is different."

The first thing I thought of to say was, "Holmes, how do you know I consulted specialists about Mary?"

I was afraid I was in for another twenty-step logical process. Instead, he said simply, "It was mentioned in her death notice in the Times."

He had read the death notice. Thousands of miles from London, hiding from certain death under an assumed name, he had read about Mary's death, and remembered the details still. He had never told me how he knew that Mary had died. I had never asked him, just as he had never asked me how it had happened or why.

"There are two possibilities," I said. "One is that Mrs. Armitage was not exposed to the causal agent as often or as intensely as Julia and Mary were. The other is that there is simply something different about Mrs. Armitage's organism which causes the disease to affect her differently."

Holmes brooded on this for a moment.

"I suppose..." he said, tentatively. "I suppose Mary could not have been pregnant, too?"

It was an effort to curb my anger, until I remembered that he could not know why that question was so intolerably insolent.

"No, Holmes," I answered. "That would have been impossible."

He nodded, about to take my word for it. But I was driven somehow to continue.

"Mary and I had not...been together...since her third miscarriage."

Holmes leaned forward, and dropped his voice with a furtive glance out the window at the hallway.

"Third miscarriage?" Holmes whispered.

I nodded.

"Watson," Holmes said, astounded. "You never told me there had been a first miscarriage."

"Well, you never asked!"

My voice was now raised. I did not know who could hear us, and I did not care.

"Watson, I--"

"You never asked because you never wondered. And why you never wondered I simply do not understand. You could deduce my financial decisions, my problems with the servants, my social activities and my train of thought but it never occurred to you even once that when a young, devoted, and otherwise healthy couple remain childless year after year, that means that something is wrong!"

I was ashamed to be shouting, but I could not help it, any more than I could help the tears that followed.

I heard Holmes getting to his feet, then felt him sliding onto the bench next to me. I felt his arms around my shoulders and heard his voice in my ear.

"Watson," he murmured. "I am sorry. I am so sorry."

I turned toward him and buried my head on his shoulder. I had not cried for any of them, at the time. I did not know why I could cry now. Unless it was that with him, I did not have to be the strong one. Not, at any rate, all the time.

I had not known that all the tears Mary wept for those three lost children had found their way into my heart. It was only one of the many things I was learning there in that rattling train car, with my head on his shoulder and his arms around me, and neither of us caring, for the moment, who saw us, or what they thought, or how Julia Stoner had died.

---