My Dear Watson (19 page)

“Well, Watson, we are, I fancy, nearing the end of our quest.” But they were much nearer than he knew. They apprehended the pathetic culprit there in the street and took him back by force of personality to Baker Street. The poor fool tried to give Holmes a fake name, but he was not allowed.

“No, no; the real name,” said Holmes sweetly. “It is always awkward doing business with an alias.”

Watson snorted as they piled into a four-wheeler, and it was a silent ride back with Holmes and Watson largely ignoring their nervous friend, and instead considering each other with a sort of wry surrender, an amusement at the way they never seemed to learn from their own mistakes, and only returned for more of the same.

Back at Baker Street however, all eyes were on James Ryder, the head attendant at the Hotel Cosmopolitan, from whence the jewel went missing. Holmes told the man that his goose had come to this very place, and that it had laid the “bonniest, brightest blue egg” they had ever seen. Holmes held up the radiant stone, and Ryder nearly fainted into the fire for fear of being caught.

Holmes was not impressed with this man. He was an amateur and a rat, recklessly losing his stolen treasure, but being wise enough to make sure there was another man to pin its theft on in the first place. He had the nerve to ask for mercy, and Sherlock Holmes had the nerve to grant it to him. Ordering the man from his sight in disgust, he sat down with Watson and was required to explain himself. Holmes, though forgiving, was still in the mood to jab at someone. I doubt he ever feels truly content enough to keep his
bons mots
to himself.

“After all, Watson, I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies,” Holmes shrugged. “Besides, it is the season of forgiveness.”

Holmes invited his friend to stay for dinner. Watson rolled his eyes and accepted and they shared a quiet meal together. But Holmes was not altogether done retaliating. He couldn’t really help himself.

1891: The Final Problem

The pain evident in this next story makes me absolutely despise Holmes—his hollow vows, his hollow heart. Less than six months after he had promised Watson to never deceive him with something so serious as death again, it became “necessary” to do so, and not just for an evening, but for three excruciating years.

Watson was shredded as he sat down two years after the events and wrote: “It may be remembered that after my marriage, and my subsequent start in private practice, the very intimate relations which had existed between Holmes and myself became to some extent modified.” He wanted to do all that he could in his friend’s memory to be honest about what they were to one another, as well as what they had ceased to be. Watson was saddened by the distance that had kept them apart for most of 1890—apparently to him the last year they would ever have—but in a way he was thankful for that space as well; if Holmes had been destined to leave this world, then thank God he had never given up Mary! Thank God he was not completely alone.

On April twenty-fourth of 1891, the problem began to unfold. Holmes showed up at Watson’s house looking ragged and pale, guarding himself from the windows, and telling Watson that he would have to leave soon over the back fence.

“Are you afraid of something?” Watson asked innocently.

“Well, I am,” Holmes told him. “Of air-guns.”

This at least was true; unlike the last incident of The Dying Detective, this time Holmes believed that he was dying too, and the trick that would soon be played on Watson, well…it was not his intention, certainly not at first. Holmes was being dogged to the fraying ends of his nerves, and in his beleaguered state, he turned to his kind and solid friend Watson. He had a haunted look on his face, pale, strained, but he smiled as he showed Watson his bloody knuckles, putting on a brave face.

“It is not an airy nothing, you see. On the contrary, it is solid enough for a man to break his hand over. Is Mrs. Watson in?”

She was not, and Holmes’s smile got bigger, his eyes a little less tense. “It makes it the easier for me to propose that you should come away with me for a week to the Continent,” Holmes said in explanation for his perk up. If his life was in danger, he would want to spend his last days with Watson. His dear Watson.

“Where?” Watson asked.

“Oh,” Holmes said softly. “Anywhere.”

This was highly out-of-character for Holmes, and he soon sat back to explain to Watson what was so different about this case.

“You have probably never heard of Professor Moriarty?” he quizzed.

“Never,” Watson answered quickly, so eager to please. I trap him up like this all the time.

“Yes, you have Watson, from me,” he said, smiling truly. “But most of the citizenry and even the police have no notion of him. That’s what puts him on a pinnacle in the records of crime. I tell you, Watson, in all seriousness, that if I could beat that man, if I could free society of him, I should feel that my own career had reached its summit. I would be prepared to turn to some more placid line in life, perhaps a house on the shore,” he said, and added wistfully, “where I can study alchemy.”

Watson grinned at him, and the conversation returned to the topic of Moriarty. Watson left out this small touch of gentleness from Holmes in his account. It was at once too private and too profoundly sad for him to write it down at the time.

Holmes, though afraid for his life, could not help but gush copiously over James Moriarty. Gifted at mathematics, educated, from a good family, but infected with “hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind” which undermined his golden potential. For all their opposition, Holmes could see himself in Moriarty, could understand how the “criminal strain which ran in his blood was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers.” What of Holmes’s “scarlet thread of murder” which makes this dull world a breathtaking mystery for him? How hard did Holmes struggle every day against his own restless nature, his own commanding brain? Did he not drug himself to keep his hands clean from that fascinating underworld in which Moriarty reigned?

“For years I have endeavored to break through the veil which shrouded it, and at last the time came when I seized my thread and followed it, until it led me, after a thousand cunning windings, to ex-Professor Moriarty of mathematical celebrity.”

Watson listened to Holmes admire this evil man, a feverish light breaking out in his eyes. “He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. I had at last met an antagonist who was my intellectual equal. My horror at his crimes was lost in my admiration at his skill. Never have I risen to such a height.”

Watson was disturbed to hear all this; it had always upset him to see how Holmes lusted for his prey, how he thrilled in their hideous deeds. And then Holmes told him the most startling news at all: Professor Moriarty had paid Holmes a visit.

Holmes had a cold shock when he looked up and saw the mathematician standing in his doorway, his heart leapt but his hand stayed steady, and he looked over his opponent for the very first time, his eyes feasting almost without his consent, roving lasciviously.

Moriarty’s slow, reptilian gaze was taking in Holmes as well. They found each other irresistibly fascinating.

“It is a dangerous habit to finger loaded firearms in the pocket of one’s dressing-gown,” Moriarty said archly. Holmes didn’t see the point of standing on ceremony, and brought the weapon out, laying it cocked upon the table at which he sat. Moriarty, his own hands clasped behind his back, began to rock back and forth on his feet, and explain himself.

Moriarty had done Sherlock Holmes the compliment of coming to see him in person, to warn him away from this chase. It was almost pointless to say anything, but he could not stay away any more than Holmes: the detective should steer wide of Moriarty, but he knew that already; Holmes would make a great asset to Moriarty, but he would never switch sides; Holmes would kill himself in this pursuit, but so be it. Everyone’s death is inevitable.

“All that I have to say has already crossed your mind,” Moriarty said with a sort of sigh in his voice.

“Then possibly my answer has crossed yours,” Holmes replied somberly.

They were synchronized, in utter harmony. Moriarty had tolerated being hunted as long as he cared to, but it was fast becoming clear that this persecution would have to cease. Moriarty, though he knew the request was futile, asked Holmes to end his pursuit. He did not want to see it all end badly.

“It has been an intellectual treat to me to see the way in which you have grappled with this affair, and I say, unaffectedly, that it would be a grief to me to be forced to take any extreme measure.”

Holmes smiled at the flattery, but Moriarty assured Holmes that he was being genuine. Holmes was unafraid of danger, but it was not just danger that Moriarty saw before them, “it is inevitable destruction. If you are clever enough to bring destruction upon me, rest assured that I shall do as much to you.”

“You have paid me several compliments,” Holmes told Moriarty. “Let me pay you one in return when I say that if I were assured of the former eventuality I would, in the interests of the public, cheerfully accept the latter.”

It was the highest praise either of them could give, the admission that their lives, and their minds, were equal.

Holmes was hounded all day before coming to see Watson, not just by physical assaults, but by the memory of the “soft, precise speech” of the professor, as insinuating as a snake’s hiss. But as Holmes explained the attacks he had suffered, Watson forgot all about the allure that Moriarty held for Holmes:

“I had often admired my friend’s courage, but never more than now, as he sat quietly checking off a series of incidents which must have combined to make up a day of horror.” Watson felt a surge of love for Holmes as he watched the steely way Holmes withstood the pressure. I cannot say that he was not impressive.

“You will spend the night here?” Watson asked Holmes. Obviously he wanted him to stay. Obviously he was overcome with love once again.

Staying would have been too dangerous for Watson, so Holmes told him carefully where to meet him the next day. He needed to disappear for just the next few days, just until the web he’d woven around Moriarty and his gang could be closed by the police. Watson, filled with an unreasonable sense of safety around Holmes that still afflicts him to this day, entreated Holmes to stay with him. Holmes, to his credit, would not risk his friend.

With the help of Mycroft and some well-timed vehicles, they make it onto the train alive, Holmes dressed like an old Italian priest with very little grasp of the language. Moriarty chased them to the station but managed to miss them. Watson wondered aloud what Moriarty would have done if he had overtaken them.

“There cannot be the least doubt that he would have made a murderous attack on me,” Holmes told him brightly. And a few days later, when it turned out that Moriarty had not been caught up along with his gang, Holmes was all the more sure that he was a marked man. He told Watson to leave him and go home.

“You will find me a dangerous companion now,” Holmes said. Moriarty had nothing to do except exact revenge; he could not go back to England, and all his business prospects were shot full of holes. Holmes realized he would have to face Moriarty now, or else look over his shoulder for the rest of his life. He urged Watson to leave, but it is not in Watson’s nature to cut and run. Holmes was required to trick him, yet again, using the man’s kindness against him.

And yet…he lingered with Watson for at least a week. He knew that soon he would face a death match, and that he would have to remove Watson for his own safety eventually, but they honeymooned again among quaint Alpine villages, ignoring the strain of fear that followed them everywhere, just enjoying each other’s company as if they were on the deck of a slowly sinking ship. Inevitably finished, yes, but still not quite done yet.

I believe that Holmes handled the anxiety well, even smiling after a large stone nearly fell on him as they moved through a mountain pass, always knowing what was coming, that it was getting closer all the time.

He stayed in high spirits as best as he could, not least to keep Watson at ease, but also as he described, because “the air of London was sweeter for his presence.” If he had to run himself through on a case and a criminal, then let it be this one, for it was worthy of his sacrifice.

At last, on the fourth of May, it was time. It was Moriarty who finally lured Watson away, since Holmes was having a difficult time doing it himself. A ruse arrived in the form of a letter that summoned Watson back to the hotel from Reichenbach Falls. Watson went away, totally convinced that a patient was waiting for him, and Holmes stayed behind to meet his fate. It was a noble move at the time to knowingly stay behind, but it is still rather marred for me by how he lied to Watson afterward. However: the image of Holmes, tall and thin and resolute, standing beside the roaring, crashing, hellish falls is a powerful one.

Watson glanced back at him once, and saw another figure hurrying towards him on the dead end outlook path towards Holmes. Watson thought nothing of it until he arrived at the hotel and realized that he had been tricked. His heart sank, and he rushed back, but he was wildly too late. All that remained were Holmes’s walking stick, a shuffle of footprints, and a cigarette case weighing down a note, addressed to Watson.

Watson took up the note and his eyes started to fill with tears, blurring the handwriting that was as neat as ever, even though it must have been written under great duress. Holmes would have known that he was about to kill, be killed, or both. He wrote to Watson saying that he was ready for the end of this case, however it might manifest, “though I fear that it is a cost which will give pain to my friends, and especially, my dear Watson, to you.” It warmed Watson to know that Holmes counted himself as having friends, because so often during his depressions he claimed he had none. And in the end, Holmes even conceded to Mrs. Watson, like a gentleman.