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221A Baker Street is much like its upstairs cousin in some ways. There is odd flocked Victorian wallpaper in odder colors and the windows are framed in comically fancy draperies. Full bookshelves cover the walls, their contents (Surviving a Stalker and Married to the Iceman cheek by jowl with Starting Your Own Business and How to Select and Grow Gesneriads) hinting that the occupant is rather more interesting that your average citizen.
Then again, this flat is nothing like 221B. The furniture is old-fashioned and amply cushioned, with the aubergine rug on the back of the sofa topping off the impression of a cozy pensioner’s cottage. The kitchen is immaculate and well-stocked. The walls are intact. A laptop sits on the well-used desk, but the surface of the table is clearly visible.
And then there are the plants. The windowsills of 221A are covered with spathiphyllum, ivy, aloe, begonia, basil, mint, and violets.
Mrs. Hudson tuts at a drooping pothos as she circles the room with her watering can. Thank goodness the vapors from that latest experiment of Sherlock’s—the one that smelled like eggs rotting in vinegar and old socks—have been kept out of this room. All her plants would have died immediately, otherwise.
She hums an old lullaby as she moves from plant to plant, feeling the soil, adding water, removing dead leaves. Plants like humming, she’s decided. If they like talking, why not? And she’s convinced they’ve done better since she started.
She’s reached the violets when a crash from upstairs jerks her upright (these instincts, she thinks, only fade so much when you’ve had a hit man for a husband). John is shouting—Sherlock must have left something indecent in the fridge again.
As John bangs out the front door (she winces, these domestics), she resumes her song and turns to the little plants. Violets are so lovely, but they are delicate: the moisture has to be just so, and even a little splash on the leaves can cause rot. But it’s worth it, to have this swath of purple and pink and white plants in the middle of London. And being a retired botanist has its advantages, she thinks, surveying the young cuttings rooting in their neat row of glass bottles.
Perhaps she could teach Sherlock a thing or two about straightening that kitchen table, with its explosion of beakers and Erlenmeyer flasks. Wouldn’t that surprise him? John would certainly appreciate it, she thinks with a chuckle.
She turns to the last of the violets, where she has an experiment of her own: two young plants, one flowering pink and the other deep purple, growing in the same pot. She ran out of pots the day she transplanted them, and put them together, just for a day or so. But then the bomb went off across the street, and all the glass in the house was out, and she had enough on her hands keeping the plants from freezing.
And of course, a week later, Mr. Mycroft Holmes appeared at her door, telling her that John and Sherlock were in hospital, and lucky to be alive, and that the mad bomber had not been so lucky. She said nothing—it wouldn’t do for such a nice little lady to be quite so pleased at news of a fatal explosion—but she rather thought he knew anyway, just like he probably knew all about her husband, rot him, and the research career she’d left behind in the States.
At any rate, by the time she could focus on her plants again, the two violets had grown together, and she despaired of ever being able to separate their roots. They looked healthy, if slightly odd, pink and purple blooming together like that, so she left them. A week later, she thought she saw some odd flecks of darkness in the petals of the pink plant, and something seemed to whisper in her ear, wait and see.
So she waited. And now she can see what she’s been waiting for.
A constellation of purple flares up and flecks the flowers on the pink plant. A scattering of pink has also begun to decorate the deep blue-violet petals of its neighbor. She’s seen these color combinations before, but Martha Hudson, MSc, has never seen Saintpaulia Ionantha do anything like this, and moreover she has no idea how it happened. Cross-pollination affecting the original plants seems unlikely. Something in the tangled roots?
She carries the pot to the light, enjoying the shimmer of the flowers, the delicate contrast of the colored flecks shining like stars. She thinks about the new pots in the cabinet and wonders if she can separate the plants, and if the effect will last once they’re apart. It would be a shame if it didn’t, but she’d like to know. She rearranges, sets her twin violets down in pride of place before the sunny window, and carefully adds water.
The door of the house flies open and from her place by the window she sees Sherlock—Sherlock—emerge with two large bags of rubbish, just as John comes up the street, head down, hands in his pockets. He catches sight of Sherlock headed down the alley to the skip and stops dead, his lips moving, and she knows he’s saying Did I really just see--? He’s still standing there when Sherlock comes back around and greets him with that odd little half smile, and all the tension leaves John’s stance, and they enter the house.
As their footsteps fade up the stairs, Mrs. Hudson sets down her watering can. She looks again at the two speckled plants in the afternoon sun, and decides perhaps she won’t separate them after all.