Acquiring Minnie
- With Emeline gone and "neatly disposed of" (2.12.1), Holmes focuses on his multiple business ventures.
- He owns a company that duplicates documents, sells mail-order ointments, and collects rent from his properties. Oh, and he murders people.
- Holmes prepares to receive his first world's fair guests.
- Letters from parents of missing daughters arrive and private detectives also begin showing up at his door. However, not a single person believes Holmes has anything to do with these disappearances.
- In March 1893, Holmes decides he needs a new secretary.
- Enter: Minnie R. Williams.
- Holmes had met Minnie years prior in Boston under the alias Henry Gordon. The two have kept in touch since.
- Minnie announces she's moving to Chicago, and smug Holmes thinks it's because of him.
- Holmes suggests she come work for him. He also pops the question, and Minnie's sister Anna says, basically, wait a minute. This is moving too fast.
- Holmes has an agenda. He persuades Minnie to transfer the deed of her dead uncle's Texas property to a man named Alexander Bond, an alias for Holmes himself.
- Minnie also doesn't know that Holmes is legally married to two other women, Clara Lovering and Myrta Belknap. And he has two children.
- Holmes and Minnie wed secretly, but there's no record of their marriage in the registry of Cook County, Illinois.
- Here we go again.