My Dearest Holmes (20 page)

As we passed out through the doors, we encountered yet another golden lad, in a beautifully tailored light suit, with large, loosely-knotted tie and straw boater, carrying a gold-headed cane. He could not have been much over twenty-one, yet he carried himself with the assured and patronising air which bespeaks a privileged background. I turned back to look at him; he returned my gaze coolly, and looked away.

'Lord Alfred Douglas, I believe,' murmured Conan Doyle in my ear.

So that was he; I had heard the name. So much had happened in the last two years.

I should have warned them, I thought, as my hansom bore me swiftly back to Paddington; I should have warned them that they will not be allowed to be happy for long; that they will all suffer one day, as I have suffered; even the young ones, even the beautiful, even the rich. The Mycroft Holmeses of this world will make sure of that.

Apart from that one brief visit to the Domino Room, I made no attempt to resume my former haunts or my further companions. Only a handful of friends had bothered to enquire after me when I was ill; and at the age of forty, I crept thankfully into retirement, feeling too old and too exhausted to weather the storms that raged in the young. Also, I felt that I owed it to Holmes to live quietly; like a devoted widower, I pledged myself to celibacy.

Twice I walked along Baker Street and looked up at our old windows, picturing to myself the scene within, the empty, abandoned, grieving rooms. I could not bring myself to go in.

So absorbed was I in my own retirement, that I did not at first observe that Mary was looking ill. When at last it dawned on me, I was filled with alarm and anger.

'Why didn't you tell me that you were feeling unwell?' I asked, taking in for the first time the strained, transparent look to her face, the shadows and lines around her eyes, her thinness. She shrugged and gave an unconvincing laugh.

'It's not as bad as that, John. Just a few pains in the chest. Dr Anstruther says that rest is the best cure, and so I am resting. Haven't you noticed that I have become even lazier than usual?'

She leaned back languidly in her armchair, a bored expression on her face, trying to impersonate the manners of the idle rich. I gripped at the arm of my chair.

'Anstruther? You've been to see Anstruther behind my back? For heaven's sake, Mary, why didn't you come to me?'

My voice rose up the scale in alarm. Mary surveyed me through lowered lashes.

'My dear husband, it didn't seem quite decent. Rather incestuous, don't you think?'

'Of course not, what rubbish!' I snapped. She opened her eyes and smiled apologetically.

'Sorry, John. The truth was, I didn't want to bother you because you're still far from well yourself. How would you like to prescribe me a period of convalescence in Hastings? You could come down yourself, if you like.'

The thought of another spring in Hastings appealed to me, but something warned me that I should let her visit Mrs Forrester alone.

'You go,' I said. 'Go and rest. For God's sake, Mary,' I added peevishly, 'don't you dare die and leave me. If you do, I'll never forgive you!'

'What an extremely uncharitable attitude. I hope you don't say that to all your patients.' She patted my head as she glided out of the room.

When she died, a few weeks after her return from Hastings, I signed over all my rights to her effects and her money to Isobel Forrester. I did not care what the solicitors thought. It was the least, the very least I could do.

--
VIII
--

M
ARY DIED AT the end of June, and for three months I continued to take care of my house and my practice. At this time some of my friends did, after all, remember me, and came to visit me, offering sympathy and company, neither of which I wanted. Then one day I received another telegram from Mycroft Holmes:

'Have message for you. Will call upon you at five-thirty if convenient. Mycroft Holmes.'

My first thought was that I should send a wire by return stating in no uncertain terms that I forbade him to set foot over my threshold. It was over two years since our last meeting, and I could still remember every word, every look. His impudence 411 announcing his intention to call on me in such a way filled me with rage. And yet I could not help but be curious. What message could he possibly have for me, and from whom? There was only one thing that we had in common; and I could not deny myself the chance of knowing anything that might bear reference to the memory of my beloved.

In the end, I sent neither a positive nor a negative reply; I merely waited to see whether he would turn up at the appointed hour.

He did. As the girl announced him and he walked into my study, I felt my heart constrict in spite of myself; the dark hair, the keen grey eyes.

He looked exactly the same. I rose, and briefly touched the heavy flipper he extended to me. I motioned him to the armchair and resumed my seat.

'You have altered since I saw you last, Dr Watson,' he said impassively. I inclined my head slightly but said nothing. I knew that I had changed; there were streaks of white in my hair around the temples, I was thinner, my face was lined.

'I was sorry to hear of your wife's passing,' he said. His gaze took in my mourning. I had not worn mourning for Holmes. It would not have been expected.

He sat back in the chair, fingertips together, nodding resignedly at my silence. He pursed his mouth, and his eyes appeared to linger on my watch chain.

'You said you had a message for me,' I said shortly, when I could bear it no longer. Mycroft sighed deeply, and reached into the inner pocket of his frock-coat.

'That is so.' He extracted a small packet and toyed with it, passing it from hand to hand. 'I must warn you in advance, Dr Watson, that I can answer no questions concerning this article or how it passed into my hands. It is only under repeated pressure that I hand it over to you. I have resisted all such pressures in the past, and still believe that I was right to do so. But now, it seems, I have no choice. If you wish to follow it up, you are quite at liberty to do so. If you choose to ignore it, there will be no repercussions. I am passing it over to you as instructed, and I take no further responsibility.'

I leaned back in my chair, and glanced several times from his face to the small brown packet in his fingers. Something in his voice, something in his very reluctance to place the packet in my hands, set every nerve a-tingle. I was sure now that the message had something to do with Holmes. Some instructions he had left, something to do with me, which his brother out of viciousness or greed had hitherto ignored. I held out my hand, palm upwards. My croft sighed again, and placed the packet in my palm.

Its weight suggested to me that it was some article of jewellery. It was tied and knotted with thin, waxed string. I picked at the knot, then reached for my paper-knife. Resting the packet on the table, I sawed through the string and opened the layers of creased, brown paper. I saw the gleam of a chain.

I smoothed out the wrapping paper deliberately, and looked at the watch that lay face downward upon a piece of folded notepaper. My hand was shaking now, as I picked it up and gently turned it over so that it rested face upwards in my hand. It was neat and plain, as was always his taste in jewellery. The case was unmarked. The small, neat Roman numerals, the delicate hands, stared up at me from the white face, so utterly familiar. The chain was slim, the clasp unobtrusive; but there, yes, hanging from the chain, neatly pierced, was the gold sovereign which Irene Adler had given him when he, disguised as a groom, had acted as witness to her marriage. He had laughed about it at the time, saying that he would have it pierced for his watch-chain as a keepsake. It had surprised me that he, with his usual dislike of ornaments, had actually done so. It had become rather a joke between us.

I held the watch and gazed at it until I felt the tears start in my eyes.

'Where did you get this?' I whispered.

Mycroft Holmes, watching me keenly, did not reply.

I lifted it to my ear and heard the light, regular tick. It was working, then. But how had it survived--he had been wearing it when we left Meiringen. I knew that he had been wearing it. He had taken it out to check the time just before I turned back down that fateful path, to check that I would be able to join him for dinner at Rosenlaui. I could see him standing with the Falls behind him, looking at his watch, looking up at me, his grey eyes bleak and anxious; suddenly smiling as he put his watch away, smiling and clasping my hand, trying to reassure himself.

'In Rosenlaui, then!'

But he had never reached Rosenlaui. And the watch had plunged with him into the foaming cauldron of the waters.

I laid it back on the table. I looked at the silent Mycroft. His eyes revealed nothing; not the merest flicker.

Slowly, hesitantly, I reached for the folded square of thin white notepaper which still lay at the centre of the wrapping. I fumbled with it, aware that my shaking hands, the tear which glided slowly down my cheek, betrayed me utterly.

There was no message; only an address: 'Hotel des Deux Mondes, Paris.' The handwriting was his.

It seemed an age before I could speak, or move, or think. The shock dried my tears, and I sat frozen in my chair, holding the note in my numb fingers. Mycroft said nothing.

At length I looked up at him. He was watching me distantly, curiously, as though observing the behaviour of some exotic animal.

'Where did you get this?' I demanded again. My voice had shrivelled to a croak.

I told you in advance, Doctor, that I cannot answer that question. My instructions were simply to give you the package. That I have done. And now, if you please, I must bid you good day.'

He rose as he spoke, and took his hat from the table. He made no further attempt to shake hands.

'But instructions from whom?' I pleaded. Mycroft shook his head.

'Good day, Dr Watson,' he said, and left the room, closing the door behind him. I heard his heavy tread descending the stair. I ran to the door, opened it, and looked over the bannister; I watched him as he let himself out of the front door.

I turned back into the room, to the note and the watch upon the table. I poured over them for an hour or so, studying them, holding them, raising them to my lips, my cheek. At last I made an effort to pull myself together, pouring myself a generous measure of brandy and lighting a cigarette.

Who had sent Mycroft Holmes the watch? Who had instructed him--had pressed him, he had admitted that he had brought it to me under pressure--to deliver it into my hands with this note? The obvious answer was impossible; it could not be, it was someone else, someone who wished to communicate with me. But how--? They must have found the body, then. After all this time. Why had I not been told?

Mycroft. They had told Mycroft, and he had withheld the information from me. But the note? It was recent, it was dry; it was written in soluble ink. I studied it again, every curve, every stroke. It was, it was his hand. It was impossible that anyone else had written it. It was impossible that it had been found, after all that time, in his clothing. It could have been found at Baker Street, of course; but by whom? And the watch . .?

A second brandy cleared my head. I sat down quietly as dusk crept into the room.

'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'

It was his favourite maxim.

But my mind could scarcely credit it.

--
IX
--

I
LEFT FOR Paris the following morning, on the same Continental express which Holmes and I had taken two and a half years ago from Victoria Station.

My journey was smooth and relatively swift, although in my agony of impatience every minute seemed unbearably long. I had no idea of who awaited me at the Hotel des Deux Mondes, or how long my stay would be. I had packed and arranged for a fortnight; that seemed a reasonable length of time. Mycroft would no doubt hear of my departure without surprise; would he send news of my expected arrival to Paris? I did not know.

My trepidation, my confusion, may well be imagined. Again and again, I told myself that there was no way that he could have possibly survived that plunge into the roaring waters; that it could not possibly be he who awaited me. Better to think that it was some message, some clue, some mutual friend.

And there was another reason for pushing the thought from my mind. He could not--it was unthinkable that he would still be alive and not have contacted me. That he had left me all this time to think him dead; that he had sent me no word, no message, when he knew what I must be suffering.

I gazed blankly out of the window at the rolling Kentish countryside; at the receding white cliffs and the pitching green waters of the Channel; at the wide, flat fields of the French landscape, some green, some brown, denuded, their harvests gathered. Tall poplars leaned darkly against a pale sky, fruit trees glittered in the late sun. It was late in the evening when I arrived at the Gare du Nord. A small, ragged boy, seeing my air of hesitation and sensing no doubt that my knowledge of French and of French currency was likely to be minimal, took charge of my portmanteau in a most capable manner and led me through the throng to the cab stand.