Chapter Text
Day 15: Is Oft Interred With Their Bones
“Katherine, did you hear the latest news of your friend?”
Kathy turned at her colleague’s voice, and tilted her head. “Which friend?”
Horace Denby frowned. “Dear me, what’s his name? Andrew? Adam? Aiden?”
Kathy sighed. “Adrian?”
“That’s the chap! Have you heard how he —”
“Horace, I don’t want to know.”
“You said you’ve known him since childhood.”
“Yes, and that’s why I don’t want to know.”
Horace chuckled, and Kathy was grateful for his easygoing nature. Not all of the other Oxford dons were as friendly or, indeed, as kind. Men had so graciously allowed women to be professors decades ago here in the UK, but the culture had a long way to go.
“I see. One of those friends.” He winked.
She smiled back ruefully. “I’m afraid so.”
“Ah well. It’s quite amusing, but I suppose I can share it with the missus.”
Kathy nodded. “Oh, I’m sure it’s amusing, as long as you don’t know the man.”
“Quite right, quite right! Well, have a good evening, then!”
Kathy smiled more fully. “You, too.”
She walked into her office and closed the door behind her with another sigh. “Oh, Adrian.” She hadn’t lied: she really didn’t want to know what the man was up to now. It was still a mystery to her how both of Arthur’s sons could grow up to be so unlike their father. Thank God for Jean, the only living child with any sense. Jean wasn’t a good friend, but Kathy liked her, nonetheless.
No doubt this latest incident had something to do with the rights for the Sherlock Holmes stories. Kathy never knew how to feel about the matter, at once both wishing that she had some influence and also grateful that she had nothing to do with it. It was such a mess.
For the Baker Street Irregulars — the society based in New York City, not the gang of street boys in London — this was the heyday of playing “The Game” and toasting Dr. Watson as the true author of the Sherlock Holmes tales. Dennis and Adrian Conan Doyle took offense to that notion.
At one time, Kathy had thought they knew better. Now she wasn’t so sure.
To be fair, Arthur had written the American portions of the first and last novels. He’d helped John Watson retool his case records so that he could tell stories without exposing the clients and victims. And by a quirk of contracts, Arthur had ended up with the credit, and Dr. Watson had let him.
Kathy still missed Arthur. Sir Arthur, but she’d known him before he was knighted. She missed the man, larger in stature and larger than life, who loved cricket, enjoyed sport of all kinds, and told the most wonderful ghost stories.
Whatever was left of Arthur lived on in his daughter, not in his sons.
Kathy didn’t want to know. Adrian had caused enough trouble in the years since his mother’s death. Kathy hadn’t liked Jean Senior, Arthur’s second wife, nearly as much as she’d liked him — and she barely remembered Touie, Arthur’s first wife — but there was no denying that Jean Senior had kept her sons in line somewhat in line. After her untimely passing, there was no stopping her boys from making fools of themselves and their father’s literary estate.
“It’s not your problem,” Kathy told herself aloud. The Great Detective had gotten bigger than the original published stories within his own lifetime. All the exploits of the Doyle boys would end up being a footnote in the memory of Sherlock Holmes.
The thought made Kathy pity the boys for a moment. They were all children standing on the shoulders of giants, the shoulders of their fathers.
But none of them were children anymore, and they were all responsible for their own choices at this point. And though Kathy was confident that she could’ve done a better job of being a caretaker for the stories — the bar was pretty much in hell — she wouldn’t have wanted the job. It would have consumed her life. Papa had regretted the contract errors, but even he hadn’t regretted that the burden had bypassed his children.
“Help the lads if you can,” he’d told them, “and if you can’t… well, it’s their duty and not yours.”
She missed him. She saw Mama and David as often as she could, given all her responsibilities, academic and otherwise, but it wasn’t nearly as much as she would have liked. And she missed her dad.
“I wonder what you’d think of all this,” she said aloud to the empty room. Could you speak with the dead? Arthur and Jean Senior had thought so. Papa hadn’t had the heart to fight them on it — he’d never believed in mediums, but to the end of his life, he’d missed his first wife, Mary, and their son Arthur. Mama, Kathy, and David had never begrudged him that. John Watson distrusted mediums, but he fully understood the desire — the need, even — to communicate with the dead.
Kathy wished she could speak with him now. Doubtless, he’d chuckle at the idea of further shenanigans from the Doyle boys. “Never mind, lassie,” he’d say in that warm lilt that only came out in private. “Focus on your students. They need you more. It’s none of your business.”