Sherlock Holmes and The Adventure of The Cold-Served Revenge

Epilogue

At the end of the case I did not suspect that for the next two and a half years Holmes and I would not see each other at all or even keep up a correspondence. He did not answer my letters and I was too busy and too proud to travel to his farmstead uninvited. At first I suspected that he was simply angry at me, but the truth was actually much more prosaic. Shortly after his return to Cuckmere Haven he was visited by the minister of foreign affairs and the prime minister himself, who embroiled him in the case of a German spy named von Bork. The work occupied Holmes for more than two years and took him all the way to the United States and Canada. It all finally ended - once again with my assistance - just a few days before the Great War.

Yes, that war, which Miss Moriarty helped bring about in revenge for the death of her father and from which she sought to establish her powerful, radical offshoot of suffragettes as the rulers of an industrial empire. Our efforts, however, had not been in vain. We had delayed the conflict by a whole three years and had given England precious time to prepare. Only in our worst nightmares could we imagine the evil which threatened to destroy the world thanks to the inventions and patents for the war machines that Lady Alice wanted to build for Tankosić and other wicked men. Although Sherlock Holmes had stopped her, the new chemicals and technologies of the Great War brought death to countless thousands.

Without Holmes everything would have unfolded differently and Britain may have been reduced to ashes.

And so by way of conclusion allow me to paraphrase what the detective said at one of our last meetings just after von Bork’s arrest in August 1914, when war was irreversibly at our doorstep.

“There’s an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it’s God’s own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.”[25]

I will never forget his words.

My friend was a wise man and it was always an honour for me to be by his side. Let his words, which I have attempted to reproduce in my literary work as faithfully as possible, continue to inspire each new generation.