The Detective and the Woman by Amy Thomas

Tootie, her face wet with tears as she held her husband’s hand. Finally, Mina broke the silence. ‘Thank you so much, Mrs James. We’re fortunate to have heard that.’ I couldn’t help feeling pleased. She turned to her husband. ‘Now, Tom dear, I think it’s time!’
    The inventor smiled dramatically and arose, and everyone else followed. He took a lantern from atop a shelf and led us out into the now-black nighttime. The lantern illuminated a well-worn path from the house to a smaller building, a path lined with shrubs and bright flowers I did not recognise, no doubt part of the inventor’s collection. Edison opened a creaky door and with the flip of a switch immediately flooded the laboratory with electric light. Our eyes squinted in shock at the contrast between the brightness inside and the darkness of the grounds.
    The laboratory was large and rectangular, lined with wooden shelves and with tables covered in all manner of glassware in rows down its centre. I wondered whimsically if the organised pandemonium resembled the inventor’s mind.
    Edison went immediately to work setting up a large machine made of metal and wood, his wife by his side assisting him at every turn. Clearly, Mina Edison was well-versed in her husband’s endeavours. While we waited, Marion amused Tootie by listing for her the names of various chemicals that stood in unmarked bottles on the shelves around the walls. I listened with amazement as the girl explained that her father had all the names stored in his memory, as did his assistants, making labelling unnecessary. Holmes stood at one end of the room, the very picture of affable confusion, engaging Murphy in meaningless conversation about how grand it all was. Ambrose and Burroughs stood apart, watching silently.
    Finally, after several moments of congenial work by the Edisons and less successful attempts by their guests to entertain themselves in a room in which they could safely touch nothing, Mina motioned us all to her husband’s side, in front of the large brown contraption. ‘Stay here,’ she said quietly. ‘We’re going to switch off the lights, and you’ll be able to see it one-by-one. Stand in line just here.’ The men deemed it sporting to let the ladies go first, but the ladies in turn demurred, and so we ended up in a cluster rather than a line, with Burroughs finally nervously volunteering to begin. Mina brought him toward a box she and her husband had assembled at the front of the contraption, and then the room went black.
    I realised a moment later that Edison had turned off the electric bulbs, a characteristically dramatic move, leaving us in the darkness of the evening. Someone swore under his breath, Murphy, I thought, and Tootie let out a slight shriek before everyone fell silent. ‘That’s cracking good, Edison!’ was the next audible noise, spoken, of course, by Burroughs, who had apparently forgotten his host’s deafness. In a moment, I heard the almost imperceptible sound of one hand lightly striking another—Mina Edison translating the words into Morse Code for the benefit of her husband. Holmes had told me that they often communicated in that way.
    The lights were again blinding as Burroughs finished and came back to join the group, his face transformed by a wide, unselfconscious grin. He refused to breathe a word of the machine, and the next volunteer was Tootie, who took her place at the box while we all braced ourselves for the lights to disappear. This time, we took it better, a few of us even managing to chuckle; however, I nearly screamed when I felt a hand touch my arm and heard a low voice whisper, ‘I must have a word with you, Mrs James.’ I forced my brain to place the voice as that of Ambrose McGregor.
    ‘Later,’ I breathed, glad for Tootie’s frequent exclamations of delight at whatever the contraption did. I felt chilled to the bone, even in the warm weather. Of all the people present, I hadn’t expected Ambrose to be the