My Dear Watson (11 page)

“Your consideration will have to sustain me, Watson,” Holmes said quietly.

Watson sat with Holmes and re-wrapped the wound. They glanced at each other all the while, quiet, but while blood roared in Watson’s ears. This small touch meant so much more than even a full body press—the erotic power was overwhelming, and from what? This is the same way he would bandage anyone, but it isn’t anyone who can surge through him like this, like a direct transfusion of spiked blood. It was as if Watson could feel whatever overwhelming chemical pumped through Holmes when he was triumphant. It was contact intoxication.

Watson patted Holmes on the hand when finished, but Holmes grasped Watson’s fingers to detain him. He squeezed firmly and spoke his heart as clearly as he could manage:

“There is always room for you here, you know. You can always come home.”

Watson watched the light flicker over Holmes’s cranial face and wondered what he would look like if Watson could see him with fresh eyes. He realized in that moment that he saw so much more than just the image of a man, he saw intelligence and diagnoses and salvation and doom. How much good did he attribute, and how much bad did he ignore? Did he even see Holmes at all, or only an idea of him?

“Why thank you, Holmes…and you are welcome out in Paddington with us,” Watson said carefully, trying not to get hurt again, trying to stick by his decision to leave, to create a little distance between himself and the overwhelming intensity of his friend. Too much of Holmes simply wasn’t good for him, Holmes was too elemental—too much fire will not warm, it will burn; too much water will not quench, it will drown. “I should really be getting back,” Watson said.

He stood up, and he could feel Holmes watching him like an animal might; inscrutably, but with constant assessment, like it hasn’t yet made up its mind whether you are friend or foe. Watson averted his gaze, pointed to Holmes’s hand and said, “I want you to look after that.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Holmes said, and drummed his bandaged fingers on the table. A calculated move, most likely. The sound of drumming always affects Watson, it reminds him of battle, and Holmes would have known this. Watson was anxious to leave and get himself sorted out. A nice, long walk home in the warm night air, that’s what he wanted. Holmes or Mary, Holmes or Mary, Holmes, Holmes, Holmes. He wanted to be on his own. When had he lost that option?

Watson gathered his belongings and paused at the door. “Goodnight, Holmes.”

Holmes smiled rather sadly, and Watson left him. Again.

1888: The Crooked Man

Watson’s invitation did not fall on deaf ears. Not another month had gone by before Sherlock Holmes took him up on the offer to visit. He was a never-say-die sort of fellow and he was not going to give up easily.

“You told me that you had bachelor quarters for one,” Holmes said upon arrival, “and I see that you have no gentleman visitor at present. Your hat-stand proclaims as much.”

Watson gave him a patient look. What gentleman would there be, and why must Holmes speak of such things in such an arch and pointed tone? But Holmes was in high spirits, making his little observations hand over fist, eager and awake as ever because he was after some mystery. In fact when he finally began to speak of the matter, Watson writes that “his eyes kindled and a slight flush sprang into his thin cheeks.” Holmes reacts to morbid news as if it were a flirtation, a rose from a secret admirer. Watson can see it all behind the mask:

“For an instant the veil had lifted upon his keen, intense nature, but for an instant only. When I glanced again his face had resumed that Red Indian composure which had made so many regard him as a machine rather than a man.” A few peeks beneath that façade were all it took.

A stimulated Holmes is a joy to be around. After a long day Watson was still feeling revitalized, and the next morning they were out fresh and early to interview a suspected murderer. Those glances beneath Holmes’s mask continued, and not a whisper of suspicion crossed Watson’s mind. He was only too pleased to be included, whatever the motivation: “In spite of his capacity for concealing his emotions I could easily see that Holmes was in a state of suppressed excitement, while I was myself tingling with that half-sporting, half-intellectual pleasure which I invariably experienced when I associated myself with him in his investigations.”

This case was narrative-heavy, not a lot of running around, but still fascinating in its human complexity. A bitter rivalry over a woman’s affection prompted one man to commit a hideous betrayal. Colonel Barclay decided to rid himself of this other suitor by running the man into an ambush; the other man was captured by the enemy, the woman was captured by Colonel Barclay, and all remained concealed until the wronged man unexpectedly returned. Malformed from years of torture, it took only the sight of him to shock Colonel Barclay into an apoplexy that ended his life. Though it was the occasion for the case, Colonel Barclay’s death turned out to be no great loss, since he had so badly abused his military authority and manipulated a wife who had once been very devoted to him.

The story was so unpleasant that it followed Watson as they left Aldershot. Holmes was already far and away in his own mind and had started jabbering about music, but by the time they arrived at the train, Holmes had run himself out. Watson brought up the case again.

“How could Barclay have done such a thing?” Watson wondered. “To betray his friend and his position like that in one fell swoop. It’s just terrible.”

“Love makes people do idiotic things, cruel things.” Holmes looked sideways at Watson as they waited on the platform. “It’s the nature of man.”

“But he made himself unworthy of the lady’s love in his effort to gain it. It’s like a Greek play.”

“There you go turning it into literature, Watson. A tragedy! You give everything such poignancy, such significance. This sort of casual viciousness is more commonplace even than the criminal records will show. Families are rife with it, regardless of social class; it seems that people can’t help themselves.”

Watson sighed as they found a private compartment. “I’m glad at least that I’ve met you, and Mary. I can’t imagine either one of you doing anything so drastic.”

“Certainly not over you, you mean?”

Watson smiled. “You’re getting along all right without me, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely,” Holmes said. “But I wouldn’t put anything past myself, you know.”

I know.

1888: A Case of Identity

Hardly two months have gone by before another vile example of mankind presents himself in Baker Street. A woman is missing her fiancé, who turns out to be her stepfather in disguise, trying to dupe the unfortunate woman into never marrying her money away from the family. Holmes was quite disgusted with the man, and with his own powerlessness to do anything to stop him. In his attempt to spare the woman the embarrassment and shame of finding out she had been wooed by her step-father, Holmes gave her enough hope to hang herself with.

But all that was secondary to what was finally cresting between Holmes and Watson that fall. Holmes was getting quite humorous in his efforts to be romantic: “If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events…”

Mary was losing ground. A housewife just didn’t stand a chance against Holmes back then. She could give Watson hand-knit sweaters and Holmes could give him exhilarating adventure, fame, and an ever-shifting interpersonal dynamic to keep his attention. Indeed, whereas most cases until this period had begun with Holmes lamenting the drudgery of life, and Watson consistently making arguments for its splendor, now it was Holmes advocating for the world, and Watson who needed convincing.

Smirking over a stack of morning papers, they reversed roles, with Watson wagering that a case of divorce in the paper was due to drinking and abuse and all the dull, standard fare of unhappiness. Marriage was all that Holmes had warned him it would be, commonplace and disappointing, and it was starting to make him bitter. Holmes knew the case in question personally, of course, and told Watson the divorce was due to the husband’s habit of chucking his teeth across the table after dinner each night.

Well, everyone has their eccentricities. Holmes, for all his supposed asceticism, is quick to show off a jeweled snuff box to Watson. He has always been too much of a connoisseur in his favorite topics, too much of an aesthete. He’s the Des Esseintes of crime detection; strange in habits and décor, rich in miniscule knowledge, peculiar in personality. And he’s just as anti-human, though it’s strange how quickly Watson forgot about all that and started idealizing Holmes once again.

But there is something hard in Sherlock Holmes, something worrisome to overlook that comes to the top of him very occasionally. He is, by all accounts including his own, capable of anything. Most people would except themselves from being able to commit horrible violence, or to steal from the needy, or to murder, but it is only our choices that keep us from such deeds, not our ability. Holmes has seen enough “decent” people doing wretched things to know that no one is immune, and he was acutely aware of the same potential in himself. He was proud of it too; proud of his honesty in looking himself boldly in the mirror, and proud of his ability to master his nature. In fact, I imagine a large portion of the fascination he has with criminals, at least the clever ones, is the morbid pleasure of seeing in them a version of himself, were he reckless enough to throw away all responsibility and conscience. Someday he would find himself much more susceptible to such urges, through his dalliance with cocaine, but it was a long way off yet. Not that it would come as any surprise to him; Holmes suspected himself all along.

In this case it was quite a clever turn for the client’s stepfather to impersonate a suitor, and then disappear just before marrying her. And to think that he had the girl’s mother in on the scheme as well! What a powerfully wicked thing to pull off, and how impressive in its simplicity! As much as Holmes went out of his way to insist that the trick was cruel, heartless, selfish, petty…we cannot hear the tone he said it in! There is a guarded admiration in Holmes for such a vast concentration of egotism and greed. It puts an absolute pep in his step.

We can see it plainly before the stepfather leaves Baker Street; Holmes locks him in to inform him of his deeds and then is forced to let him go, for there is no law under which to hold him. However Holmes informs the man, “If the young lady has a brother or a friend, he ought to lay a whip across your shoulders. By Jove!” he continued, flushing up at the sight of the bitter sneer upon the man’s face, “it is not part of my duties to my client, but he’s a hunting crop handy, and I think I shall just treat myself to—”

The man flung himself out the door before Holmes could advance on him too far, and Holmes burst into laughing to see him tearing down the street in alarm. “There’s a cold-blooded scoundrel!” said Holmes with more than a little thrill. “That fellow will rise from crime to crime until he does something very bad, and ends on a gallows.”

Holmes sighed contentedly as he sat down again, probably imagining himself as the one to tie the rope about his neck, and he laced the whip through his fingers as he explained the smaller details of his deduction to Watson. A little horrified but a quite a bit more fascinated, Watson listened with rapt attention. He is rather infectious, Sherlock Holmes. A dark and glamorous thing.

1888: The Red-Headed League

When Watson next came by Baker Street less than a month later, Holmes was so anxious to have him in that he became grabby, literally pulling him into the room and shutting the door behind him. Sitting with Holmes was a frightfully red-headed man named Wilson who had rather few wits under his gingery pate, for he had been duped much in the manner of Mr. Hall Pycroft, The Stockbroker’s Clerk.

Holmes wanted Watson in the room, not just because he was gunning for Watson’s affection and knew to include him, but also because Wilson was dull and self-important and Holmes was rather bored by him. Holmes started to play around with Watson under Mr. Wilson’s nose.

“You will remember,” he said to Watson, “that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.”

“A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting,” Watson said with a smile in his voice.

“You did, Doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right.”

They were talking about Watson’s stories, but no they weren’t. Not with the arch tone that Holmes had in his voice. They made eyes at each other all while Wilson was talking, and when Watson tried to figure out what kind of man was before him, Holmes caught his glance and shook his head, saying there wasn’t much to see. He had a few conclusions which, in his usual fashion, he threw off like they were nothing. Wilson was amazed, but once Holmes explained his methods, this red-headed man also concluded they were nothing. Holmes grinned at Watson:

“I begin to think that I make a mistake in explaining. Omne ignotum pro magnifico.” Everything unknown is taken for magnificence.

They listened to this buffoon’s story, at the end of which he produced a sign that said the Red-Headed League was dissolved on October 9, 1890. You may have noticed that I have placed this story in 1888; there are several reasons for this. One, Watson’s ghastly handwriting, the worst of any physician I’ve ever seen, and they are a profession notorious for their hand scratch. Two, the internal relations of the dates are at a discrepancy between when Wilson saw the advertisement, when he took the job, and when the sign notice went up. Three, by Watson’s own account this story took place just after Mary Sutherland’s case of identity, which was clearly in 1888. And four, it’s apparent in the way he and Holmes are acting; you will see that by October in the year 1890 they are not so sweet on each other. A love like theirs must ebb and flow.