My Dear Watson (25 page)

1895: Black Peter

“I have never known my friend to be in better form, both mental and physical, than in the year ’95,” Watson wrote. It was July, and Holmes had gotten into a comfortable habit with his drug again, and he was for a time very happy. Watson was none the wiser: “Holmes, like all great artists, lived for his art’s sake.” Was that not Oscar Wilde’s own philosophy? Art for art’s sake? Sherlock Holmes had taken up his torch, and it was burning brightly once again.

At the beginning of July Holmes was out of Baker Street all of the time, energized, active again. Watson thought it was only wonderful, that it proved Holmes was at last engaged in a case which challenged him. It was, in reality, the drug that made it seem so. Holmes made himself ridiculously busy, dressing up in disguise, inhabiting all manner of strange places throughout the city, and telling Watson nothing of it. Watson allowed him his secrets, thinking they were harmless, and really rather charming. Holmes came home one morning with a sinister spear under his arm and a flush in his face, like a schoolboy just returned from playing cricket. When at last Holmes was prepared to speak of his new puzzle, he was all a dither over it.

“If you could have looked into the butcher’s back shop you would have seen a dead pig swung from a hook in the ceiling,” Holmes said, leaning roguishly across the table at Watson. “And a gentleman in his shirt-sleeves furiously stabbing at it with this weapon. I was that energetic person.”

Some man had been harpooned at home, and Inspector Hopkins had wired to Holmes for help on the case just the night before. Where Sherlock Holmes borrowed a harpoon from in so short a time is beyond me. He knows enough sailors I suppose, or maybe he just happened to have the thing lying around in his room, a remnant of some man he had known in earlier years. He went to make sure that only a great show of strength could propel a harpoon through flesh in an enclosed area. I’d wager that he might have known that without going to the butcher’s himself, but when else would he have a sane excuse to toss a harpoon around at hanging pigs? He took up the job with vigor, and was fresh from his activity when Hopkins arrived at Baker Street full of dejection. Holmes chastised Hopkins for not bringing him into the matter sooner, but was delighted to be invited now. They went to the scene immediately.

They realized that someone had tried to break into the cabin where Black Peter died, but ultimately failed to do so. Holmes would set up an ambush for whoever that was, but it would be several hours before the burglar was likely to return, and so Holmes, in his charming mood, suggested that he and Watson go for a walk. “Let us walk in these beautiful woods, Watson, and give a few hours to the birds and the flowers,” he said suggestively.

Holmes linked their arms together and told Hopkins they would see him later in the night. Watson smiled as Holmes led him through the trees. This would be unlike their walks together in London, but not altogether different—on this too Holmes would snatch Watson into dark places to show him some hot affection. They had plenty of time before they would stake out their man, and Holmes was in a sparkling mood over it. He kissed Watson against at least half a dozen trees, he took him by the hand and told him massive amounts of dull information regarding the types of trees, what kinds of debris they drop on the ground, and how the knowledge of seeds and leaves could aid in the detection of crime.

“You pick things up wherever you go, Watson. Much like you leave things behind,” Holmes said, his grand profile against the forest backdrop. He cut his eyes sideways at Watson as he spoke.

It seems to me that we pick up people as we go along as well, and if we’re lucky, we don’t lose them at all.

The man they found breaking into the crime scene that night was not their killer, or at least Holmes did not think he was. He was on the right track from the beginning, looking for an expert harpooner, and a man of considerable strength. He lured that man to him by placing an advertisement for a sea job in the newspaper, sent word for Hopkins to come and be taught a lesson, and then found himself bored right away once it was all finally apparent. Well there’s the killer, and no need to even chase him around; so what? How dull it all became.

After neatly cuffing Patrick Cairns, Hopkins admitted his mistake, and told Holmes that he forgot who was the master, and who the student.

“We all learn by experience,” Holmes told him. “Your lesson this time is that you should never lose sight of the alternative.” Holmes of course was speaking from experience. One should never forget that there are alternatives.

Holmes banished the case from his mind after Hopkins left, whereupon he disappeared to his room for a secret injection, and came back out to spend the night at his chemical table. In the morning he had the sort of dazed serene look that Watson might have recognized from the early days of Holmes’s use of cocaine, except that he attributed it to a sleepless night, and ignored it unwisely. Holmes’s was the face of someone who was busy on the inside of himself, documenting the minute workings of his body, almost researching his own sensations. Any kind of drug-user might look like that, whether the drug is meant to sharpen or dull the world, whether it is meant to give one clarity or dreams. But Watson was no expert on all that, and he was never suspicious of his friend if he could help it.

No matter—the problem would soon become undeniable.

1895: The Norwood Builder

Cocaine was always second prize to Sherlock Holmes, it was only a bandage on his wound. It got him through the long, lightless days in a city full of dullards and idiots. Sick as it was, he still missed Moriarty; he met the fiendish man only twice, but he felt as if no one had ever known him better, not even Watson, the dear man. He was not stupid—Holmes could not abide people who were very simple, and even the working men he used to go about with had a clever spark about them, though they were not well read—but Watson was never as observant as Holmes deserved. Surely Watson tried, no one ever
tried
harder to know Sherlock Holmes, but it takes one to know one, as the saying goes, and Moriarty was a man after his own fashion. He knew Holmes without having to guess about him. He knew him like a brother.

“From the point of view of the criminal expert, London has become a singularly uninteresting city since the death of the late lamented Professor Moriarty.”

Watson thought Holmes was kidding, and joked back with him that the decent citizens of London would disagree. Holmes smiled painfully. Alexander the Great wept when there were no more lands to conquer, no more wars to fight; Sherlock Holmes went back to cocaine.

“Well,” he said to Watson. “I must not be selfish.” He got up from his breakfast, leaving it nearly untouched. He could hardly taste it anyway. He said London used to be the one place in the world where someone like himself found true purpose, but that was all gone now, and London was like any other city—dreary and teeming with useless hoards of people.

Watson was not aware of all that was being said to him. He was only curious because their “months of partnership had not been so uneventful as Holmes stated” and this was only a “whimsical protest.” He should have known better by then that Holmes’s whims were more powerful than an average man’s hard-thought decisions.

As Holmes opened the paper sadly, a panicked man burst mercifully through the door. He was afraid of being arrested for murder. The news nearly made Holmes happy at last.

Watson saw it. “My companion’s expressive face showed a sympathy which was not, I am afraid, entirely unmixed with satisfaction.”

Holmes had a pleasant time with this case, while it lasted. Certainly the cantankerous old Oldacre was more interesting than most, and it was an absolute treat to remind Inspector Lestrade that he had not yet surpassed his master either, and could stand a few more lessons. Throughout the whole investigation Lestrade had been boastful and proud, and it was quite gratifying for Holmes to smoke out Mr. Oldacre, and wipe the smug look of superiority off Lestrade’s face. He was not at all as conciliatory as Hopkins; he had been at it longer and thought himself better, and was proved wrong once again. Lestrade went home to his family at night; he didn’t live and breathe for his work like Holmes did, and therefore he would never overtake him at this game. Until Lestrade did nothing but live and die by the chase, he would never outrun Sherlock Holmes.

Well, this case pleased Holmes in the sense that it was better than sitting at home and contriving reasons to disappear into his room every half an hour for another injection. Lestrade was of the opinion that this case was the biggest thing Holmes had ever done, but it was not by half. He didn’t even care to put his name on it, the solution meant so little to him. What did it matter, indeed, that one old man had tried to revenge himself on a woman who had spurned him? What petty nonsense people filled their lives with, and yet still thought them full.

Instead of making his cases better, the drug was replacing them as the source of his excitement. Holmes kept studying Watson to see if he suspected, but unless Watson had become an expert at deception, he saw nothing, and was perfectly happy. He was pleased that Holmes no longer exhausted himself on cases, not realizing that this was the only way Holmes had learned to keep his hands clean, and his pursuits honest. The cocaine only kept him afloat; it could not bring him to shore.

The next case would be the last we the public would hear about for a while. Sherlock Holmes would have his own personal problems to solve after that.

1895: The Bruce-Partington Plans

The weather did not help Holmes that November when a dense yellow fog settled over London and would not let up for days. He tried to set himself something useful, cross-indexing his books and studying music, and only going for the cocaine bottle when he felt himself descending to a place from which he could not return at will.

Watson did not see the strain until the fourth day, when Holmes’s will was crumbling under his want, when he was using the drug and letting it crawl through his veins unexpressed. Holmes was agitated to such a pitch that he could not stay seated; he paced and carried on and couldn’t have given a damn what Watson noticed. It was nearly making him mad. He could feel the force that must have driven Moriarty to horrendous and complicated crimes, the same impulse as an artist before a blank canvas who feels the need to fill it from his own over-brimming mind. Holmes called Watson to the window to try and make him see it.

“Look out of this window, Watson. See how the figures loom up, are dimly seen, and then blend once more into the cloud-bank. The thief or the murderer could roam London on such a day as the tiger does the jungle, unseen until he pounces, and then evident only to his victim.” It disgusted Sherlock Holmes that no one else could see the potential, and yet he was not a thief or a killer! Where were they all, the useless class of criminals he was supposed to hunt? Why would they pass up such a golden opportunity as this yellow, awful fog?

“There have been numerous petty thefts,” Watson told him, but Holmes only snorted in contempt. Nearly six months of daily use of cocaine had built up in him, and he was feeling the effects, though he was ill-equipped to know it. He thought he was only sinking again when he was actually plateauing. The difference was the way his body acted, the way he twitched and itched and moved without ceasing, rather than the corpse-like catatonia he knew in his natural state. He could have clawed his own skin with his restless mania. He could have clawed someone else’s.

“This great and somber stage is set for something more worthy than that,” Holmes said of the robberies. He sneered out the window at the roiling smog. “It is fortunate for this community that I am not a criminal.”

“It is indeed!” Watson told him heartily. What was all this talk? What was wrong with Holmes?

Holmes knew of several men who wanted him dead. He thought back to August, to Mr. Oldacre’s empty, impotent threat. “I have you to thank for a good deal,” he’d said. “Perhaps I’ll pay my debt someday.” How many pathetic creatures had sworn their revenge on him, and yet here he was! Standing in front of a perfect day for murder, and standing unmolested. Holmes wondered if he was his own assassin, how long would it take him to accomplish the deed? He scoffed that a day like this would never pass without a serious attempt.

This talk sounded almost as if Holmes
wanted
to kill himself, as if he wanted to put himself out of his misery.

It was all unnerving to Watson. The weather had dampened him too, but not so much as all that. He was at last feeling the rumblings of Holmes’s turmoil, and it was not that he was blind to it, more that he was not looking. For six months Holmes had been lying to him, and he was an expert liar. Anyone would be fooled if Sherlock Holmes meant to fool them, but Watson especially did not go searching for betrayals that should not be there in the first place.

The uncomfortable moment was relieved by a telegram from Mycroft, announcing that he would soon be coming by Baker Street. Holmes was stirred with a feeling like hope; Mycroft never moved out of his regular way. What treat might await him if it could disturb Mycroft in his recumbence? If anyone could save him, it would be his brother; after all, Mycroft had done as much for him once before, when their parents were lost, even though it was not in his lethargic nature. In fact it was not for either of them to go out of his way for the other. A family trait if there ever was one, along with their remarkable minds. Did Watson have the capacity to even grasp what it all meant? How would he like to know what Mycroft truly did for a living? He had alluded to Watson during The Greek Interpreter that Mycroft was a part of the British government, but by God it was much more than that.

“I did not know you quite so well in those days,” Holmes told Watson. “You would also be right in a sense if you said that occasionally he is the British government.” Holmes really was filled with a childishness around his bigger brother. To impress Mycroft, knowing that his mental capacity was more massive than his frame, was a reward rivaled by nothing else in the world. And to have Mycroft come to him at last! Why, it was like Mycroft knew his baby brother was in need.