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moving in upstairs as soon as possible,” Mrs. Jones said approvingly.
    Once again my guardian had made a hairpin turn. I could scarcely mask my surprise. Everyone else in the room, at least those who were conscious, seemed equally surprised.
    “Really?” Mrs. Dawes said, looking at us. “The two of you?”
    “ Oh heavens, no, I travel far too much to be considered an occupant of any one home,” Mrs. Jones answered haughtily, dipping her biscuit in her tea. “I will of course drop in from time to time to check on my charge, but I would like to enlist your help in ensuring her safety and care, madam.”
    Mrs. Dawes sat up straighter at this responsibility and agreed to be of whatever help she could. They arranged a short-term plan wherein I would eat some of my meals with the Dawes as I became accustomed to a new city, but my guardian made it clear that attendance was not mandatory, and was entirely up to me.
    There was nothing left to do but to show me to my rooms. I followed Mrs. Dawes up the stairs to a second landing, where she opened the door to a medium-sized sitting room with a lovely brick fireplace. The wallpaper was thankfully muted, a pale gold background with brown fleur-de-lis accents, and the comfortable furniture also seemed to match the mood of the room, in various shades of brown. The wooden floors looked polished and well maintained, and the tiny kitchen was of a reasonable size for a single person. Everything seemed to be in a decent state, though a little old-fashioned and decidedly male when compared to my mother’s sitting room back in Toronto. No doilies or throw pillows, no small pieces of cross-stitch over the backs of chairs. But it was very clean, even the fireplace showing minimal soot, making me wonder if the chimney had been sealed up and the bricks were now a façade rather than a working fireplace.
    I will admit to feeling not a little hurt and cross at the seeming ease with which my guardian had passed me off. This was an odd reaction since I enjoyed being in charge of my own life, which living by myself would grant me. But I forgot all about that when I saw the bookshelves in the sitting room. There were five of these massive dark wooden bookshelves, filled with volumes and reaching from floor to ceiling, their dominance of the north wall interrupted only by the curtains of the two windows.
    A glutton for the printed word, I gasped at the treasure before me, barely hearing Mrs. Dawes as she led Mrs. Jones to the bedroom and directed Brian to deliver my meager belongings up here.
    I don’t know how long I stood there. At some point Brian said from over my shoulder, “I thought it best to bring these back out of storage. You should be the one to decide where they go.”
    “I should?” I answered, my eyes still locked on the precious tomes, though I could feel how close Brian was, and my stomach fluttered at it.
    “ Why, yes,” he said. “They passed to you the same as this house. And not a few of them were in fact written by your grandfather himself.”
    I finally tore my gaze from the spines of the books. “My grandfather? These are his books?”
    Nodding, he selected a brown journal from the bookshelf and handed it to me. “See?”
    I read the cover page — The Adventures of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, June-August 1852 — and my eyes traveled down to the author’s signature: “As faithfully recorded by Dr. John H. Watson.”
    “ Dr. John Watson,” I murmured, connecting the dots with a certainty that at once elated and shocked me.
    “ Your grandfather,” corrected Brian with another friendly smile, and he wandered away to speak to his mother.
    My mind was humming now, grasping at any story I could remember about the world-famous detective and his trusty sidekick Dr. Watson — my own grandfather! How could this be? How could I have never known this? I pressed a hand to my forehead, thinking back to the few times my grandmother had been coaxed into speaking of her life here in