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Walls don’t normally speak. We’re a reticent sort. We may, on occasion, crumble or fall, but for the most part, we stand.

I stand.

I withstand.

I am the wall of 221B Baker Street, residence of one Mister Sherlock Holmes since 1881.

Much has changed at 221B. The paper and the paint. The furniture, too. The heat and the light have kept up with the times, of course, but…

But many things are still the same.

Day-break on a spring morn can still cast a lovely glow on the room as it filters through the windows, that is, when no one remembers to draw the curtains. Which is often. Then and now. Even with housekeepers and landladies, confirmed bachelors are as they’ve ever been.

And Mister Henry Ward Beecher still stares at me from across the room.

And I stand. And withstand. Not just the passage of years, but attacks, from within and without. The chronic scourge of tobacco smoke has, thankfully, become a thing of the past, as has the yellow fog, ostensibly a plague of my exterior brethren in days long ago, but one that often and perniciously oozed into my domain. So, yes, some things are gone.

But explosions, noxious fumes, and shooting flames, are here to stay.

And the villains!

Why only last week a swordfight left a nasty jab in me!

Still hurts.

But the worst of the lot is the direct assault.

Mister Sherlock Holmes and his revolver, pistol, model and make don’t really matter when it’s you the bullets are hitting.

Victoria Regina, indeed.

Smiling faces. Not mine!

Oh, were that I could fall, could crumble of my own accord in those moments! I would do so, just to show Mister Sherlock Holmes that his particular brand of diversion is not appreciated.

Not then, not now.

Tempers flare at 221B. Always have.

But just when I’ve reached the end of my limit, when my very plaster is shaking with outrage—and not just from homemade incendiary devices, oh yes, we have those, too!—there will come the most beautiful strains from a violin.

And then there is laughter and celebrations and the cleverest puzzle solving that anyone, or anything, has ever seen.

And so I stand.

And withstand.

Tests.

And tests of time.