//------------------------------//
// 11.  A real crime 
// Story: The Case of the Starry Night 
// by Bad Horse 
//------------------------------//

We scarcely spoke on the journey back to Canterlot. We stopped only at the station telegraph office, where Holmes sent a cable informing Mr. F. that the case held no further interest for him and he was returning his retainer.  When we arrived at our little flat on Baker Street, Holmes set the fire going in the sitting room stove and put on a pot of water, and then went straight for his violin.  I sat in my usual chair and contemplated the events of our journey, while Holmes pranced about the sitting room drawing a cheerful tune from his violin, one more flowery than his usual baroque selections.  I believe it was Mozart's Rondo in D major, which Holmes was adapting to the violin as he played.  If I had not recognized it, I would have sworn it was composed for that instrument.

The notes he drew forth were bright and brilliant, and his eyes shone with the elemental happiness of a child, which is how I knew it was a lie. Whether the lie was for me or for himself, I could not then say.

"It isn't like you to give up on such an important case so easily," I told him.

Holmes lowered his bow for a moment.  "I fail to see the importance of a painting not being stolen."

"You know perfectly well that is not what I am talking about," I said.

"Ah," he said with a chiding whinny, "you are ever the romantic, Watson.  But I am not. It is enough for me that there is such a creature in the world."  He smiled falsely, and resumed playing.

If Holmes has one chief vice, it is his obsession with justice.  Not the justice of the courts, but he must balance the scales within his own mind.  Those less-gifted ponies who drift through life in confusion and fall into crime by default, he regards as children, and shows an almost careless mercy.  But to those whom he judges should know better, he is far less forgiving. His demands of them are in direct proportion to their intellect.

Holmes would make no rationalizing allowances for the showmare's behavior.  I myself would not have called her blameless.  I feared Holmes had already judged and condemned her, by standards no pony other than he himself could meet.

"Damn it, Holmes," I said, standing up, "there is no crime standing between you.  Swallow your self-righteous pride for once and go to her.  For Celestia's sake, go to her!"

But Holmes kept pretending to be absorbed in his fiddling. I studied his face for some trace of emotion, but what showed there bore witness more to the flickering of the gaslight than to anything underneath.

"It was the tea party for three," I said. "She set you a puzzle that you didn't solve."

That made him glance at me, which I took as a confession.

"You're ashamed to face her," I said, my voice rising with conviction. "Your damnable pride can't bear to admit that for once in your life, somepony overestimated you!"

I thought that would crack the varnish on his smile. But he only smiled more broadly. Then, to my amazement, he laughed—a short, barking laugh ending almost in a whine, which I would normally associate with bronchitis or an excess of phlegm. I sat back down and snorted in disgust.

I began going through the stack of mail that had piled up during our absence.  I came across an envelope which had no return address, nor even our address, but merely said "To Mr. Fetlock Holmes".  I recognized the large, ornate writing.  It had not, I think, arrived via the hooves of the Canterlot Postal Service.

I sat staring at it long enough that Holmes noticed. He set down his violin, and came and sniffed at the letter.

"Ah," he said.  "Lavender again."

He did not pick up the letter.  Instead, he settled back onto one end of the divan, still holding his violin.  He looked up at me and smiled.  "Tell me, Watson, what do you think is in that letter?"

"I, I think—something private, I should imagine!" I stammered.

"Certainly.  Were it not so, you would hardly be tapping your left rear hoof like a drum major beating out a tempo in your eagerness to find out."

I only then became aware of the sound, and that I was making it.  I pressed that hoof firmly to the floor and bit my lip.  Holmes raised an eyebrow, and I realized that of course he had seen that, too.

"Dammit, Holmes," I said, "Sometimes I wonder why I even bother speaking my thoughts out loud to you."

"Sometimes," he agreed amiably.  "But tell me now:  What do you deduce this letter contains?  An invective?  An apology?  An invitation?"

"Well, she was quite angry last we saw her… but the letter is scented… addressed most decorously… Not an invective, then."  I studied Holmes' face to see how I was doing.  He frowned disapprovingly.  "The envelope is sized for writing paper, not an invitation… but I should hardly expect Trixie to apologize."  The frown deepened.

"I don't know!" I burst out.  "It's none of my business!"

His face brightened at last.  "Precisely!"

"Ah," I said.  Holmes just sat there, still smiling at me.  He flicked his gaze to the letter.

"Ah!  Of course," I said, and backed out of the room, into mine, shutting the door behind me.  It occurred to me as I did so that Holmes might equally as well have taken the letter into his room, had he wanted privacy.

"Done!" I heard Holmes call out a moment later.  He could barely have had time to open the envelope.  I threw my door open and rushed back into the sitting room, full of a sudden certainty that Holmes had outsmarted me again.

I perceived, first, that the letter was nowhere to be seen, and second, that Holmes, seated on the divan with his violin resting on his lap, was watching the fire behind the stove's smoky glass, which had flared up with a white light.

"Holmes!"

"You would have tried to stop me," he said, without looking away from the glass.

"Are you mad?" I cried.  "Now you'll never know what it said!"

He paused and regarded me coolly.  "If I inquire into the great, everlasting mysteries—the spark of life, the objectivity of good and evil—you accuse me of an unwise and ungovernable curiousity.  But if one letter, whose import is limited to the brief lives of two ponies, promises a dash of sentiment, you cannot resist.  You would reach into the fire and pull it out, even though it should burn us both."

He looked back to the stove.  Its bright but fading light made his shadow dance against the wall.  "I will not.  I know when something is better left alone."

I walked over to the stove and stood there, looking into the flames with him.

"Holmes," I said finally.  "Sod all that.  You're a rare bird, you know.  You've been singing your own song two score years now.  For once somepony else has called back.  This mare may be your last chance at love."

"Do you think I don't know that?!" he cried.

The mask fell away from his face, and for the first and only time I saw his mouth twitch and his eyes bright with despair.  He looked at me with such an intent focus and lack of pretense, that I felt that it was the first time I had ever had his full attention—indeed, the first time I had been eye-to-eye with any real stallion in complete openness.  It seemed indecent.

"To dilute her remarkable genes with those of an unmagical, tired old Earth pony, and rob the world of her magical lineage—now that would be a crime, Watson."

Then the mask slid back into place, and he raised his violin and resumed playing that music which he had no right to play so well.  I slumped in my cushioned chair and stared into the fire, until the incessantly cheerful sound drove me out into the night to seek the refuge of the nearest pub.