The Rather Extensive Consequences of a Failed Experiment, Chapter 3

1910-1914, Phineas Holmes, Sherlock Holmes (I)

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Phineas wondered sometimes if his father understood human relationships at all. Aunt Mary claimed that he did what he could, while Uncle Mycroft gave him a puzzled stare when he brought it up. Nana Hudson would sigh and shake her head. The latest difficulty was his father's inability to grasp the importance of getting married to Anita Caldwell—that she was not someone to be analyzed and picked apart and deduced. It also bothered him that his father gave him so little credit as to think that Phineas himself hadn't already analyzed and picked apart and deduced Anita.

True, his father Sherlock did understand Phineas' love for the woman to a certain extent—Uncle John said that Sherlock had loved Phineas' mother very much indeed, to have even engaged in the activity which had led to Phineas' birth. He couldn't fault his uncle's assessment, because in his twenty years he had never seen his father look twice at a woman—or even a man—the way that he would gaze at a certain unnamed photograph in his study. The woman was beautiful, and it was obvious she was his mother from the shape of her mouth and eyes, but Sherlock never once mentioned her name.

Phineas sometimes wished he knew her name, knew of how she had died so shortly after his birth—the only thing he had pried out of his father about her death was that she had not died of childbirth or sickness. That only left suicide or murder, and his father was wistful in recollecting her rather than forlorn which pointed to murder. Not even Uncle John would speak to him of it, although it was obvious that her death had not been a peaceful one from Uncle John's body language, and that she had not led a docile life if the great Sherlock Holmes had been captivated by her. Aunt Mary claimed to have never known The Woman, as Phineas referred to her in his mind. Nana Hudson petted at his hair and smoothed her old, wrinkled hands against his cheeks and said that his mother would be proud of his adventures, as The Woman had been an adventuress herself.

It was important, therefore, that he marry Anita Caldwell because Anita was perfectly boring. She was smart, had a great understanding of the world around her, but a nice unwillingness to learn of the machinations which made that world work. She might not be his ideal choice—a woman with enough fire in her to catch his full and complete attention would, of course, be as unsuitable to him as The Woman had been to his father—but she would at least survive. Boring people, unnoticed people, were never high on the hit-lists made by the enemies of smart, high profile people. At least, if they were they weren't murdered.

Phineas fully planned on living the boring domestic life which Uncle John had so taken to, with only a side of the adventures his father had introduced to him at a young age. He also hoped to live a long happy life with Anita, and to take care of his father in his advancing age—the man would be sixty in five years, and his long and brutally active life was catching up with him. Unfortunately, Phineas never got the opportunity.

Five years after their marriage, and only shortly after he and Anita found that they were to be parents, war had broken out on the continent. Before the next year was out, Phineas Holmes was dead—fodder for a machine gun—leaving Anita Holmes to raise his son Albert and to look after his aging father Sherlock.