The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Veiled Detective

Epilogue

Watson did return to London, carrying with him the fiction that Sherlock Holmes had perished along with Professor James Moriarty at the base of the Reichenbach Falls. He was reunited with his beloved wife, Mary, and soon resumed his medical career. Although he slipped back into the domestic scene with comparative ease after his dark experiences, there was always an empty corner in his heart now that Holmes and detective work were no longer part of his life. He relived his adventures in the stories he published in the Strand Magazine, but it wasn’t the same as the real thing.

Watson had hoped to hear from Holmes after a while, but there was no news from his friend. Mrs Hudson had disappeared, but Mycroft kept on his brother’s rooms as a second bolthole for himself. Mycroft was secure in the knowledge that of all Moriarty’s gang, he alone had escaped. No one, not even his detective brother, had known or even suspected his involvement with the Napoleon of Crime.

Watson’s life darkened even further the following winter, when Mary succumbed to about of pneumonia and passed away two days after Christmas. Watson viewed this blow as a kind of divine punishment for his past deceptions and failings.

And then, one day, three years after the Reichenbach incident, an old bookseller walked into his consulting-room — an old bookseller who, removing his disguise, revealed himself as a familiar figure to Doctor John H. Watson.

Sherlock Holmes had returned.