AN: This is my first Sherlock Holmes story. Please tell me if you like it or not and why.

Disclaimer: I cannot own Sherlock Holmes since I was born in 1985. But I own Sarah Ann Llewellyn.

Now Enjoy “Milady Vampire”.

Preface: Eternal Moon – Watson’s letter

In the Archives of the British Royal Dispatch service, there is an old metal box marked with the Name Abbreviation of Maj. J. H. W., M. D., Nt Fs, crammed with papers at least 60 years old and placed under the sharp eyes of the officer of the watch. On top of these papers lies a numbered key. Whoever solves its mystery will find this peculiar hand-written letter in the Royal Archives, along with several old journals, diaries and notes as well as a chronicle written on glass.

London, June 1939

To the one who finds these diaries and their copies written on glass, my congratulations.
As my friend would have said, it would need a considerable amount of skill in the art of deduction to find these very private accounts of my own and my friends’ lives in the depths of the Royal Archives.

But first things first… My name is John Hamish Watson, I was born in 1852 in a small village in Northumberland and I graduated 1878 as a Doctor of Medicine at the University of London. I served in the Afghan war campaign as army surgeon up to the rank of a Major of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers until I was wounded at my left shoulder and limb at the Battle of Maiwand which in the end stopped me from further being of use to the crown in battle, and was sent home.
1881 I met the very peculiar figure of Sherlock Holmes, Esq. in London. The account of this fateful meeting which first made us fellow-lodgers and later on friends can be read in my “Study in Scarlet” first published 1881 in the Strand Magazine, under the pen-name of Arthur Conan Doyle.

I have published several adventures of my friend throughout all my life in the very same magazine, leaving out several facts which I was unable to recount to the public. This was done to protect my friend’s and his family’s privacy, which held so many peculiar and bizarre facts that they should not be published forever.
It is my hope that they should never come to light but keeping them with me would eventually have leaded me to insanity. So I wrote them down nonetheless. If I had kept them in my mind and thus taken these secrets to the grave, they would have hung heavily upon my conscience and eventually be lost forever.

You, who has found the legacy of one who had to be named a “Boswell” however, should now know the truth from my very own hands which I trusted to these pages. No-one else who was not familiar with the complete facts of the matters of the families of Holmes, Watson and last but not least the esteemed House of Llewellyn of Anglesey indeed had read and known these pages before.
When you are holding this in your hands, however, be aware that I and many others in these diaries have already ended their earthly ways. Anyone else is beyond the reach of normal human beings and these accounts are now mere fleeting memories upon the vast history of the world.
Perhaps in that distant day, the mind of men will be ready to read of the truth I here describe. If it is not, may God have mercy on your soul, for you will read of things you believed to be fairy-tales and myth, but you may be rest assured that they are actual reality.

To you, my dear reader, I have but one wish, the last will of a writer who wished to keep these truths secret. Please do not publish these accounts unless you like to declare them as works of fiction. In any case, it is unlikely that anyone will believe it at all, for truth will always be stranger than fiction.
Use them for your own enjoyment and to find out the true story of Mr Sherlock Holmes, Esq., of Holmes Manor, Yorkshire; Lady Sarah Ann Llewellyn of Anglesey and myself.
Yours faithfully and very truly

John H. Watson, M. D.

P.S.: If you wish to find my friends, search the fiery islands whose name is that of a bird in Portuguese.

AN: The stories I publish for the Sherlock-Holmes-Universe are essentially Alternate Timeline, which I hope is now clearer to you, my dear readers. The following story, Milady Vampire, is set in the winter after “The Yellow Face”, 1884 and is the exposition for the Alternate Timeline.
The idea of making ACD Watson's pen-name I found in the wonderful story "The Discovery of Heart" by Psyche0610.

To you, Addy-kun, THANK YOU for your advice on Victorian English.