The Watches of the Night. Darcy Lindbergh

did not get used to it.

      As pleasurable as I found Mary's company, it wasn't a substitute for the companionship of such a friend. I found myself opening more and more conversations, which Holmes responded to haltingly; I found myself making excuses to Mary, simply to end up at home, dithering over my dinner and waiting for Holmes to come back.

      Finally, about three months after Mary's case had been resolved, I found an opportunity. 'I say, Holmes,' I said one afternoon while we puttered around the flat together. 'My muscles have gone quite tight. What do you say we go and spend an evening at the bathhouse?'

      To my surprise, he agreed, and we were off together. He had a fondness for the Turkish bath; he was fastidious about his hygiene, of course, and I had often said before that, as a method of relaxation, the baths were far more conducive to his health than was his cocaine.

      We were quiet as we made our way and eventually found ourselves a pair of sofas in a secluded corner of the drying-room. We settled back, draped in our towels, and drifted.

      'You've been busy lately,' I remarked eventually. 'Anything good?'

      'No busier than you,' Holmes hummed, but there was no bite in it. 'I've had a client, actually, with an interesting problem regarding an inheritance.'

      'You solved it, I presume?'

      He had, and there was a little smile around his mouth as he recounted the facts to me, and for a while I could forget that there was anything amiss between us – that I had ever thought anything unsuitable toward my friend; that I had dinner reservations the next evening with Miss Morstan; that I had begun making the plans for a small, intimate wedding, a new home for a new couple, a livelihood in a medical practice.

      I could forget that I had begun to plan a life separated from him, as it eventually had to be.