Re: Quicklog, PD London: Sherlock H & John W and the Adventure of the Vauxhall Vampire
[The doctor's little retirement was nothing so sordid. He attended his practice during the day, and night when necessary, but otherwise, he spent much of his leisure time rather alone, put up in his apartments with a book or in front of his typewriter, Arcadia's Mixture ember and smoke in his pipe. The dark social party held by scorned women and the (not-imagined) unnatural women were a recent and quite brief, if surreal, divergence from his self-imposed solitude. For all of the fancies of the man on his knees by the corpse, Dr. Watson was not a man of rich tastes, nor variegate vices. He was a simple fellow, really. Too was he lonely, as evidenced by the conversation he sought with the coroner, though the man's back to him was all but announcing his ungracious nature.
Loneliness, in truth, might be blamed for a great many of the doctor's more recent behaviors. Not only was he without his closest and dearest friend, he had lost his wife as well, leaving him unmoored and leaving him alone to whittle and while away his time. He was not yet accustomed to such, and the vigor the brief traipse through the park offered him spoke to that as much as his keenness to engage the fellow before him.—Perhaps it was uncouth of him to not be bothered by his forthrightness, but, alas, bothered he was not.
Watson allowed his fingers to fall from the felt brim of his hat and stood himself up on his toes to peer at the corpse as the coroner, a Londoner by birth, as told by his accent, told him to shove off in so many words.
He failed to heed the man's ...advice, however, and took to watching the fellow empty the dead man's pockets. Gloves, a stethoscope—a physician? Now, that did give one a chill, didn't it?—A walking stick, as well.
The doctor was pondering these items as the coroner wheezed, then, seemingly finished and uninterested in the curious items retrieved and what they might say about their victim, began to poke around the man's shoes.—Watson was unable to restrain himself. His own curiosity overtook him, and, using his own walking stick, the end of which was chalked up well with powder colored a soft and gentle pink from the gravel of the walk, he disturbed the abandoned stethoscope.
He rather wished he might get down on the ground with the coroner, but he daren't risk it, even if such was the only way to get a good look at the gloves, to find their make—and thus, a clue!] Our man was coming from a housecall, do you fancy? Though then I might wonder where his bag of accoutrements are. [Watson shifted on his feet. He did not carry a stethoscope by its lonesome. He could not recall any other doctors who might. It was an odd thing. Aloud, he wondered:] Yet why would he have this paltry collection otherwise?