The Rather Extensive Consequences of a Failed Experiment, Chapter 4

 1932-1940s, Albert Holmes and Sherlock Holmes (I)

Albert Holmes had never known his father, although it was obvious that Phineas had been much loved and was much missed. His mother Anita did her best, but often left Albert in the care of Grandfather. Anita was unable to cope that such a rational man, such an intelligent and bright man as Phineas Holmes had been cut down in less than a second. There was, however, a haunted resignation in Grandfather’s eyes which made it easier for him to look after Albert than it was for her. Grandfather still believed in rationality, still believed in facts and deductions, and helped Albert learn the same habits where he could.

His mother died of a heart condition in 1932, when he was seventeen.  Grandfather, who was nearing eighty, had clucked his tongue and murmured that it was just heartbreak. The man was nearly blind by that time, a condition which he hated fiercely, and spent most of his days in their flat. Albert took care of him and sat with him at the window, telling him every detail of every passing stranger—marveling at how Grandfather was able to identify the color of a woman’s hat by the cut of her dress and height of her hair. The old man didn’t speak to him of days gone by, preferring to badger Albert with questions and queries. Albert didn’t mind, knowing that Grandfather had few of his old friends and acquaintances left alive. He’d had a brother who had passed away some years ago, as well as an old colleague who had died when Albert was nine. Doctor Watson’s son was the man who looked after Albert when Grandfather was feeling too tired or poorly to attend to him.

“You are a good grandson, Albert, I am glad I have gotten to know you,” Grandfather whispered one day in 1938, almost dozing as he sat by the window and tried to deduce the world outside from just the sounds he heard. Albert wished that the old man wouldn’t do such things, because the world outside was a grim and dark one.

“Grandfather…”

“Albert, I averted a world-war once and I lived through another in my middle old age. There will be another yet before I pass, do not fret that I am lamenting the world we live in,” came the reply from the old man, “I am celebrating the fact that despite my son’s death, there is still a bright, smart light in a world that I am too old to explore and protect.”

They sat in quiet silence for most of the rest of the afternoon. Albert went to get a paper to read aloud—Grandfather’s voice bordered between jovial and bored as he stated the answers to every scandal and mystery therein—and Grandfather dozed off and on. The twenty three year old believed he was getting better at omitting headlines—the old man was completely blind now—because he hadn’t been caught at it even once today.

“You should work on getting married sooner than later, Albert. If today’s headlines have any truth to them there will be war within a year I wager—and you know how terribly good I am at that—and all the young women will be getting married to men they’ll never see again. After that all of the good ones will be gone.” Needless to say, Albert was happily married in less than a year. He never asked his grandfather what he’d meant by “good ones,” but old Mrs. Watson had informed him that that probably meant ‘eccentric or devious,’ to ‘Sherlock.’ Albert couldn’t imagine calling the old man Sherlock, as Grandfather was too emotionally closed off in recent years to ever warm to allowing Albert to call him by his first name.

When war broke out, Albert volunteered for the intelligence service—he had no desire to break Grandfather’s heart by getting shot up within months of enlisting, as his father Phineas had, and he had no desire to come back to his wife Sylvia a nervous wreck. The last time Grandfather claimed to have been able to see him was in July of 1935, but the last time Albert saw his grandfather Sherlock Holmes was in 1940. Sherlock died of a heart attack—a murmur which had been present in his heart for fifty years—when Albert was away, called to try to decode messages intercepted from the Germans. Sylvia, who had greatly liked Albert’s grandfather, wanted to name their first child after the man but Albert had refused. At the time he had been under a great amount of stress and unable to cope with the loss of the old, cranky and brilliant detective. They’d named their son Aaron, after Sylvia’s grandfather, and with two daughters later on there was no opportunity to rectify the matter.