Viktualienmarkt Shoppers on Flickr.
The Munich Flight: part 3
Please note: there are references here to Sherlock material through and including “The Reichenbach Fall”. If you haven’t seen that, you should avoid this and part 2.
(Please see the foreword at the top of Part 1 if you’re wondering just what’s going on here.)
In the little time we’ve got before they’re going to call boarding for our flight, I use the smartphone’s browser to nip over to John’s blog and see where things stand. He’s just written up the Baskerville business. I run through that, then use one of the browser apps to pull down all his previous postings and glance through them, making sure I’m up to speed with what he’s said and what he hasn’t.
There’s just barely time for this before the voice comes over the local sound system announcing EI 356. Quickly we all get up and start sorting ourselves and our belongings out, and then comes the usual Nice To Meet You, Have A Good Trip stuff as all parties put their impersonalities back in place: hands shaken all around, warmly from John, businesslike-and-no-more from Sherlock, but what did I expect? (Though I note in passing that Peter, whose handshake has startled quite large men under some circumstances, is being gentle with those long violinist’s fingers.) And then the man’s off toward the gate, the hound bounding out of the slips, eager, that coat swirling around him. John waves, goes after.
“God, look how that thing drapes,” is all I can find to say. But Peter, well-practiced, catches the tone of voice. It’s not as light as it should be after a meeting like this. He can hear me thinking: I’ve missed something. But what? For hanging in the air is that feeling a writer gets when, having finished nailing a character transaction to the page, you look at it and know there’s something there that needs filling in to make it complete, something that has yet to fully unfold…
