My Dear Watson (17 page)

The recovery of Silver Blaze would not occur for four more days, on the occasion of the race. There was still the little problem of an apparent murder, but the problem was slumbering for the time, since Holmes was rather suspicious that the man had brought death upon himself. In the meantime Holmes and Watson took the train back to London. Sitting across from each other in a smoking cabin, Holmes leaned back and studied Watson minutely.

With the mystery of Silver Blaze solved, Watson was once again the most intriguing thing in the vicinity. He dared to discuss their predicament again, their impasse.

“Are you still under the impression that you love her?” Holmes asked, referring to Mary.

“Of course, Holmes. You never cease loving someone if the love is true. I am merely…learning to love who she really is, rather than the idea I had constructed of her. It was the same with you, actually.”

Holmes smiled a little, just the barest twitch at the corner of his mouth as he kept his penetrating eyes fixed on Watson. “And have you ever ceased loving me?” asked Holmes.

“No,” Watson said in all plainness and honesty.

Holmes drew his thin fingers over his even thinner lips and chose his words carefully.

“There are ways to…annul the marriage, you know. Legal ways of ignoring it, of practically dissolving the union without officially ending it. You wouldn’t have to damage her, Watson. It wouldn’t even embarrass her overmuch. But you would be free all the same.”

Watson nodded and answered cryptically, “That’s an idea.” He didn’t want to rock the boat; he was enjoying himself.

The conversation wouldn’t come to a head until the case did. Something about the expansiveness of the countryside opened Holmes up, though this time they were all the way back to Victoria Station before they were able to shake off their clients. Holmes decided they’d walk a ways before getting a cab if indeed they felt a need for one. He wanted to be in the air for a bit longer, even if it was only the London fog.

“So Watson, what shall it be, then? Do you think Mary would prefer to be free or kept? Last I really knew her she seemed an independent sort, but marriage does change a woman in ways entirely unpredictable to men.”

“Holmes…” Watson sighed, and then trailed off into watching his footsteps. He’d have to explain now, wouldn’t he? That he was not prepared to simply throw over Mary. It wasn’t so much a consideration for her as it was for himself. So Sherlock Holmes had been acting properly for several months, so what? How about all those years of irascibility, the cocaine bottles, bullet holes in the wall, disreputable men and boys tramping in at all hours on some obscure mission for him… It’s all well and good to associate with Sherlock Holmes when he is acting properly and one has an escape route, but what if he should become displeased and revert to his bad habits? Watson did not want to burn any of his bridges. Better to keep both wife and friend engaged, and move according to his own convenience.

“It isn’t kind to her, Watson,” Holmes said sharply, reading at least half of Watson’s thoughts. “To hang a woman on like this, it isn’t noble. I thought your morals were higher.”

“As if you’re such a great champion of women, Holmes,” Watson whined in meager defense. “Or conventional morals, for that matter. Don’t misrepresent yourself, it’s ridiculous.”

“Can you really pretend you aren’t being dishonest?” Holmes asked, picking up his pace and forcing Watson to catch up with him, an assertion of power.

“Perhaps I am,” Watson admitted, following at Holmes’s heel. “But it’s your side you’re on in the whole mess and not Mary’s, and I’d thank you not to pretend otherwise. My God we might as well be speaking gibberish to one another for all the truth we’re saying right now.”

Holmes led them back the rest of the way in silence and slammed his way into his own quarters, locking the door pointedly. Watson held his ear next to the keyhole, guessing at where the morocco case had got to in his long absence, trying to hear if Holmes was using the drug again. Turning to it in a time of frustration would be the first real sign of the addict. This was why he didn’t want to go all in with Holmes! This never-ending distrust.

After a while Watson asked himself just what cocaine injections were supposed to sound like, shook his head at himself for acting foolish, and stepped away from the door. He wondered if Holmes could tell that he stood outside the door for a time. Probably. It was not the first time Watson had found that sort of thing annoying, but this night it somehow felt more significant.

1890: The Copper Beeches

The next day became cold again, a last mean-spirited whip-crack from winter, but the atmosphere was colder by far inside the rooms of
221B
Baker Street. Watson did not even know the full extent of the chill he had caused; one night sleeping alone was enough to put him in a forgiving mood, but Holmes was a much more stubborn being.

Watson may not have realized at the time, but what he had confessed to Holmes the night before was crushing. His marriage, though still very new and untested, was a more permanent relationship to Watson than his nearly ten years of friendship with Holmes. The added impetus from the law and society made this woman, about whom Watson knew relatively little and was still striving to understand, equal if not greater than Holmes in his consideration. How absolutely vile and unfair, but what could ever be done about it? Their union was bedrock while Holmes and Watson were merely…bedfellows. They were nothing in comparison.

Holmes was stung by this realization, angry with both himself and Watson. How could he have missed what an unalterable situation this was at the very start of it? Why didn’t he stop Watson before the ceremony? And how could Watson, apparently knowing full well what his wedding meant, have ever gone through with it? To truly leave! How could he? It was a painful thing to finally come to terms with, and even though Watson sat directly across from him, Holmes at last felt the full agony of what he had lost.

But he wouldn’t say any of that aloud. Nor would he allow his behavior to reflect the brimming sadness he felt. Instead Holmes snipped at Watson until they were both miserable.

“To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.” Thus began a condescending lecture on how Watson failed to accurately characterize the only important aspect of each case in his writings: Holmes’s “severe reasoning” and the remarkable talents he has developed in himself.

Watson took up the same argumentative tone of the night before, telling Holmes, “It seems to me that I have done you full justice in the matter,” and indeed he had been more than fair in his writings, positively gilding Holmes with praise and admiration, downplaying every flaw. But that wasn’t really what Holmes was upset about that day anyway. He might have argued with Watson just as vehemently over the weather for all it mattered to him.

In his recounting, Watson laments “the egotism which I had more than once observed to be a strong factor in my friend’s singular character,” not realizing somehow that Holmes’s swollen ego had nothing to do with it. This was about his shriveled, desiccated heart.

They were distracted from what might have boiled into a real fight by the arrival of a client, a freckled, down-to-earth young woman seeking advice about a curious job offer. The details of the case were so incomplete that Holmes could only get a vague idea of potential danger before sending the woman off to the Copper Beeches estate and warning her to be on her guard.

It was two rather uncomfortable weeks before they would hear from her again, both men putting themselves to distraction over her situation so as to avoid thinking about their own. Holmes kept concluding that no sister of his should ever take such a position, and nevermind that he didn’t have a sister, as Watson kept mumbling after him.

When at last they got an emergency communication from Miss Hunter, Holmes threw it at Watson and said, “Just look up the trains in Bradshaw.”

Watson read the panicked note, but made no move to see about the trains. Holmes looked up at him from his chemistry experiment.

He sighed profoundly and asked, “Will you come with me?”

“I should wish to,” Watson said tightly.

“Just look it up, then.”

It was a brisk day when they made off, and Watson could not help but default to a cheerful disposition, beaming around at the charming country houses. He was happy to be out of London, but Holmes would have preferred the city. He said to Watson, “The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a child, or the thud of a drunkard’s blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock.” Essentially, London forces one to check one’s impulses if for nothing more than the urge to avoid judgment; the open air of the country can be rather too freeing.

On that tiresome note, Watson disembarked from the train to listen to Miss Hunter’s continued story. Her employer was an absolute monster, imprisoning his own daughter so as to have use of her money, terrorizing the whole household with a large mastiff hound that he kept half-starved for viciousness. In the end the beast turned on its owner, and Watson had to fire upon the creature, killing it instantly. The case was explained thoroughly by the maid, and Holmes immediately ceased to care. And yet it continued to bother Watson, and I have yet to hear a satisfactory answer as to why.

My theories are that either he was hoping Holmes would find some sort of romantic affection towards this lady, which would have been idealistic in the extreme, since he knew Holmes’s nature better than anyone, and could readily attest to how indelible it was. More likely he was just exasperated that Holmes couldn’t seem to care about anything: “As to Miss Violet Hunter, my friend Holmes, rather to my disappointment, manifested no further interest in her when once she had ceased to be the centre of one of his problems.” No care at all for this noble woman’s fate, no care at all (it seemed) for his lifetime friend, and that had always been the problem with Holmes. His tin heart.

When they returned home from their adventure, Watson was done. “I shall sleep at home tonight, I think,” he said. “With the missus.”

“Do whatever you must, Watson. I have no claim on you, do I?”

“No, Holmes,” Watson said soberly. “Not really.”

Watson thought that would be the worst of it, but as Holmes turned to go to bed and Watson turned towards the door, something came flying across the room and crashed just above his head. He looked around to see Holmes disappear into his room, and then bent to pick up the shattered chemical tube that had been thrown at him.

Watson dropped the shard with a sigh and put on his hat. Things were over once again.

1890: The Dying Detective

A long memory has Sherlock Holmes. Almost the whole year goes by before he wounds Watson back, a touch for a touch. They had seen each other a few times since the spring, exclusively when Watson would stop by here and there to keep their acquaintance up. It was not a mutual maintenance. Holmes still felt rather bruised I imagine, and wouldn’t have pulled this stunt if he was not in pain himself. This was not a purely malicious plot anyway, per se; Mrs. Hudson was caught up in the ruse too, and he
was
trying to catch a very clever man, a poisoner, and a patient one. He was a puckish sort of enemy, though not as smart as Holmes usually likes them, and rather too full of himself. A man should not have to talk up his achievements so much; his art should speak for itself.

This man Culverton Smith sent Holmes a little trinket box, spring loaded with a deadly powder. Holmes took the opportunity to fake sick and worry the only two people who could stand him if it meant finally solving a case. He pretended to resist all medical treatment until Mrs. Hudson insisted, and then he acquiesced to having Watson over. I find this story a rather painful one to read, for what I know it put Watson’s emotions through.

Watson ran to him, of course, in an absolute state. Rushing through his head was the horrible thought that Holmes would die and that their last times spent together would have been those stiff, horrible visits, and that Watson would have to live the rest of his life wishing he had stayed with Holmes just a little while longer, wishing he had known in advance how little time there really was.

He rushed towards the supposed sickbed upon entering Holmes’s bedroom, but Holmes held him back.

“If you approach me, Watson, I shall order you out of the house.”

“But why?” Watson whimpered.

“Because it is my desire. Is that not enough?”

Watson nodded. He marked that Holmes was as masterful as ever, even when physically weak. And though he was not really dying, I imagine the day he does actually perish he will be just the same, ordering people about as if his authority could live on forever. Watson was certainly of that opinion. He wrote: “To the last gasp he would always be the master.”

“I only wished to help,” Watson said. He felt absolutely crushed. He thought the greatest man he had ever known was dying before his eyes.

Holmes told him that it was his desire to lay unattended. He looked the part of a dying man, all his wasted theatrical talent at work in makeup and acting. Watson acquiesced. He’d do anything for Holmes, even if it meant doing nothing.

“You are not angry?” Holmes asked him.

Poor devil,
Watson thought.
How could I be angry when I saw him lying in such a plight before me?

Holmes spewed some nonsense about it being a Sumatran disease, communicable only by touch, so Watson must stay away. Watson, the quiet hero, again resolved that he would treat Holmes even if it killed him. Holmes was far from a mere stranger to him, after all. Watson would lay down his life for him.

Holmes refused, again and again, and it pierced Watson every time, until at last Holmes finally got his revenge for being abandoned, and took pity. Of a sort, that is.