My Dear Watson (4 page)

For most of his twenties it was a string of men, none of them long-lasting, but always a rather even mix of professional men and rough trade. He didn’t much care for anyone who didn’t somehow work for a living, but what they did was of little consequence to Holmes, so long as it was honest. With respect to age, he was likewise seemingly indifferent, though most who are older than Holmes resent his advanced knowledge.

What I mean to explain is that Holmes could be capricious about his partners, and it seems perfectly unwise for him to have pursued Watson, knowing that he could not be thrown over like all the others because they now shared an address.

So it was not only Watson who was caught up in something he had never experienced before; Sherlock Holmes too was out of his depth. There was something about Watson that was singularly and subtly irresistible. Living so close, they were both able to appreciate each other in a way that was wholly unique. Holmes gave in to temptation, and started something that he had no control over.

1883: The Speckled Band

They were sweethearts for a while. Clear into August of 1882 they were still courting in a way, still tiptoeing to hide their own bad habits, still tolerant of one another’s. Holmes especially still had unplumbed depths; black secrets, dangerous habits, and a disturbing resemblance to the now-infamous Professor Moriarty that would not reveal itself to Watson for years.

When you know the whole story, there is an interesting shadow at the introduction of
The Adventure of the Cardboard Box
(which will be largely passed over for my purposes), in Watson’s line describing Holmes like a spider at the center of London’s criminal web: “He loved to lie in the very centre of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumour or suspicion of unsolved crime.” How like the description that Holmes will later give of the Professor: “He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them.”

The problem with someone as smart as Holmes is that he will always be underutilized if he is put to an average man’s work. Holmes recognized this himself and invented his own trade, but in all due fairness: so did Moriarty. It is hard to function so extraordinarily and function within the law, because the laws were made for ordinary people. Though Holmes made his choice early on to obey society’s rules, and to help prop them up, even he cannot abide them all the time. They hinder his full reach, and Holmes has batted a few laws to the side himself in his pursuit of the greater good. Moriarty was a Nietzschean man as well, above the law just like Holmes, though not necessarily immune to it.

But this case was a long time before those dark days of Moriarty, and Holmes was being a bit of a darling, curled up on the couch in the summer heat, reading Watson’s thoughts on his face. It was a careful way of letting Watson know that he was being studied just as thoroughly, that Watson was not the only one taking notes. Watson was amazed: “Do you mean to say that you read my stream of thoughts from my features?”

Holmes smiled at him and said, “Your features, and especially your eyes.” That sort of acute attention from Holmes was valuable because it was so rare; most days you had to murder someone just to get him to look up.

I should say here again that I don’t know everything, and I’m not sure at all about what more happened during the honeymoon year of 1882. I think Watson has kept his most tender memories to himself; most of what he’s told me were of the hard times, the years when Holmes became erratic, the periods Watson had to leave him in the interest of taking care of himself. But I do know that after 1882 they were a solid unit, true domestic partners. They went about together as a matter of course.

They were certainly on rather easy personal terms in 1883 during
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
; you can see it plainly enough in Watson’s report of the case. It begins with Holmes bursting into his room to knock him up early, which indicates a level of comfort and access that Watson didn’t think to hide from the public. And then if you watch closely, the way Watson tells it, Holmes lingers in the room while Watson dresses, and they go down together to greet the distressed Helen Stoner. Holmes introduces Watson as “my intimate friend and associate” in his smirking, insufferable way. She was in no state to appreciate his loaded hint, but I am. He thought he was so inscrutable.

Holmes was in a cheerful mood that morning with such a subtle case to explore, and it only got better and better. When Miss Stoner’s unhinged father-in-law showed up in Baker Street to bluster about and bend the fire poker, Holmes knew he was up against a worthy opponent, an intelligent man with a nasty streak of murderous creativity. It only hurt that Dr. Grimesby Roylott accused him of being affiliated with Scotland Yard—a matter of pride, in other words. He considered himself far superior to the mere police, and they wouldn’t like to be put in league with him either. This is one of the most distasteful cases revealed to the public, but still Holmes could hardly curtail his admiration for a truly skilled adversary.

Being in such a fine mood, he insisted that Watson come with him out to the country (he told Watson to pack nothing but an Eley’s No. 2 revolver and a toothbrush, if you can believe it), and they spent a lovely though undocumented time at the Crown Inn before the tense conclusion of this sinister case. Holmes, of course knowing full well what sort of danger he would be putting them in, did something very sweet. He said to his partner, “Do you know, Watson, I have really some scruples as to taking you to-night. There is a distinct element of danger.” One thing I cannot say against Holmes is that he was ever careless with Watson’s life; he did have some scruples, as he said, and he may even have a few of them left since the war. I won’t lie—we all have fewer scruples nowadays.

Anyhow; I was not privy to whatever “cheerful” activities Holmes and Watson might have gotten up to before sneaking into the house of Dr. Roylott and Miss Stoner to reveal the speckled band. Watson is predictably shy when talking about the physical act of love, but I’m not newly born or simple, and I can imagine how these men would have chosen to make the time pass pleasantly. Holmes was especially…enthusiastic when there was a chance he might be killed.

It was good to do something that might alleviate the tension, for they spent that night sitting stiff and fearful in Dr. Roylott’s house, waiting for a deadly serpent to be unleashed on them, though Watson was in a deeper dark than Holmes, and had no idea what he might have to confront. Holmes liked to play his hand close to the vest, even closer than he kept Watson, but Holmes did not lack for bravery; he always stepped in to face every danger which threatened them. He could protect Watson from anyone, excepting himself.

Those early years, between when they met and about 1887, Watson refers to as their honeymoon years. They were before Holmes started to really self-medicate his depressions with drugs, before he became so famously good at catching criminals that he became a target, before the morality of the time shifted so forcefully against men like them. This was one of the happiest periods of Watson’s life, right up there with the halcyon memories of his childhood, and of course the honeymoon periods he had with each of his wives. Those were the days when Sherlock Holmes was perfect to him.

By the time we get to the next case he has publically chronicled, five years will have gone by and this happy time will be over. I can find almost no record of events or cases that might have occurred, and Watson is reluctant to speak on this subject. He likes to play it off like he is too old to remember, that his brain is full of holes, and this is one of them. His mind, of course, is as firm as it ever was. As I have said already, Watson keeps his fondest memories to himself.

1887: The Beryl Coronet

The atmosphere was frosty in February of 1887. When a robbed financier named Mr. Holder came hurrying up Baker Street, he rushed into a tense household. Watson had an intuition that something was wrong—he could feel it like a winter draft on the nape of his neck—but he didn’t know precisely what was causing it. Holmes was lazy on this day: caseless, purposeless, but not incapacitated as usual. It was almost as if something were mitigating his natural disposition. It was almost as if he were drugged.

They set out on the case together as a matter of habit, but the ride out to Mr. Holder’s home was unnaturally silent. Holmes did not blather on about music as was his usual wont during an up-swing, and Watson did not bother him for his initial impressions of the mystery at hand. According to what Watson told me of it years later, even Holder, in his agitated state, noticed the chill in the cab. Watson saw the man’s mouth guppy a few times, as if he wanted to utter something to break the ice, but he didn’t dare. The silence was miles above his head.

The situation only degenerated from there. Holmes did his whole routine at the scene of the theft, sniffing around the house, questioning the principle players. During the return trip they were alone, and Watson started to probe the situation. As he explained discreetly to the public: “Several times during our homeward journey I endeavored to sound him upon the point, but he always glided away to some other topic, until at last I gave it over in despair.” For as much as having the attention of Holmes is the sun and it is celestial and it is electrifying, having him ignore you is equally devastating. Suddenly it is night, and the stars have gone out, and the world is ending. Or so Watson has told me.

Holmes could read Watson like a child’s book; he knew of Watson’s suspicions, that Watson was monitoring him like a nanny, but it wasn’t his concern if Watson was left in the dark! Had he learned any of Holmes’s methods in the nearly six years they’d shared a roof, he would have known full well what Holmes was up to, what he was hiding. If he couldn’t figure it out himself, Holmes wasn’t about to tell him and receive a lot of criticism. I believe that Sherlock Holmes was ashamed, as much as he has the capacity for it. He was hiding his new habit from the beginning because he knew Watson would never approve.

Arriving home from Mr. Holder’s upset household, Holmes disappeared into his room and reemerged in full costume as a common loafer (not a real stretch for him to pull off, if you ask me—what is Holmes most days if not an
uncommon
loafer?). But if Watson was going to watch him critically rather than with the hero-worship that Holmes had come to feed off of, then Watson would not be invited further on the case. Holmes could not stand that sideways look of suspicion; he got it enough from the police in his professional life, he didn’t need it in his personal life as well.

“I only wish that you could come with me, Watson,” he said insincerely, tweaking his collar in the glass over the mantle. “But I fear that it won’t do.” It was a clear message, and Watson let Holmes leave without a word. There is no real stopping him, after all, and Holmes was back soon enough, just to twist the knife.

“I only looked in as I passed,” he said. “I am going right on.”

Watson made polite chit-chat with him, noticed that his true twinkling fire was kindled with the pursuit of the case, and Watson made up his mind that something was influencing Holmes unnaturally. The difference was too distinct. When Holmes left once again, this time without saying any goodbye other than the slamming of a door, Watson resolved to do some detecting of his own. And he found something.

It’s just below the surface of Watson’s narrative, but there’s an unevenness that I can explain. Watson said, “I waited until midnight, but there was no sign of his return, so I retired to my room. It was no uncommon thing for him to be away for days and nights on end when he was hot upon a scent, so that his lateness caused me no surprise.”

The poor thing waited up with the evidence he had unearthed, the morocco case and a bottle of seven percent cocaine solution. He wanted to confront Holmes, not so much about what he was doing or why (that was clear enough to Watson as a physician—
why
was not the question); Watson was foremost concerned about being deceived. If Holmes had not explicitly lied to him, he was not being honest either.

But Holmes never came back that night. Watson waited as long as he could, and then took a bruised heart to bed. He was remembering every other night he’d gone to sleep alone, without complaint, without dinner, feasting instead on his own worry, wondering what trouble Holmes might be in without him. He wasn’t worried on this night however, and it was the first night he could recall not giving a damn whether Holmes returned or not. Let him stay out for a week, let him freeze to death! See if Watson even cared.

He left Holmes’s secret works out on the table, passively hoping that Mrs. Hudson might discover them and be offended as well. But Holmes arrived first in early dawn and discovered them first. He did not find a better hiding place though; whatever niggle of embarrassment he might have felt when he first started using chemical supplements to make up for his inadequacies, he was proud in the face of accusation, defiant.

Watson awoke the next morning to find the items he had discovered moved, and Holmes taking breakfast as if nothing had been amiss. At first Watson thought Holmes might have concealed them somewhere much cleverer than his bureau, somewhere that Watson would never uncover them again. It was quite a long while later, after Mr. Holder had his beryls returned to him and went home, that Watson noticed the kit’s new home: on the mantle. Out in the middle of the room like a challenge, a dare for Watson to speak a word against it. And though Watson did not lack bravery on the battlefield, he was not about to go to war with someone like Holmes who could easily change his gifts into weapons and was clearly prepared to do so over this issue.

Watson demurred, and he kept his protests to himself for ages after this. He would not speak of it until the injury he felt about having secrets kept from him healed, and his concern for the injury Holmes was doing to himself built to an intolerable pitch. Several months it took, nearly half a year. It was hard for Watson to let his disillusionment sink in.