The Last Sherlock Holmes Story (18 page)

‘Perhaps you may be able to find some use for these, Doctor,’ he declared. ‘For my part, I no longer need them. The supply of work has been quite adequate thus far, but if it fails I shall resort to certain respiratory techniques which I mastered during my stay in the East. The effect is quite as satisfactory, and there are no secondary complications.’

I took the instruments of evil from his hand with unfeigned satisfaction. This was indeed something! If he had come to understand the danger cocaine represented to his welfare, and was determined to renounce it, then surely he was well on his way to a complete recovery.

Before leaving these months when Sherlock Holmes was, all unwittingly, on probation, I must record one incident which caused me much concern at the time and was to have a profound effect on later events. One Wednesday morning in mid-July a woman named Alice McKenzie was found in an alley off Whitechapel High
Street, her throat cut and her abdomen ripped open. I read about the crime in that day’s
Telegraph
, which commented that the murder was certainly one of the series which had startled London the previous winter. Later editions were even more positive. All were agreed that the atrocity was the work of Jack the Ripper.

I felt as though I had been hit by a shell. All the comforting certainties with which I had been busily surrounding myself hung in tattered shreds. Then hope returned, as I recalled that Holmes had not been alone on the night in question. On the contrary, he had been at home in the company of myself and two of Europe’s most distinguished criminal investigators – Monsieur Dubuque and Herr von Waldbaum. The occasion had been a dinner to mark the successful conclusion of the case I have mentioned arising from a duel fought at Windsor. This affair, which involved members of three royal families in situations of an extremely compromising nature, had best remain undisclosed even now. I will refer to it as the case of the second slain. Those who are familiar with the events in question will instantly apprehend my meaning.
‡
The investigation, involving as it did the interests of so many highly placed persons, had been conducted jointly by Holmes and the two foreign agents I have named. These gentlemen had taken a markedly different view of the case from Holmes’s, but a mutual respect prevailed
throughout and when Holmes proved to have been correct his first wish was to discuss his methods and findings with his rivals. Thus it was that the great symposium was convened. I was privileged to be present, and still retain an almost verbatim account of the proceedings.

Never will I forget that evening! Much of what was said passed my understanding at the time, but one could sense the air fairly crackling under the communicated energies of those three finely attuned minds. For each it was a unique opportunity to exchange the ideas that were the very breath of their lives with men fully capable of comprehending them. For once, Holmes found himself free of the need to make allowances for his audience, and the result was a discussion of such ferocious brilliance as I never expect to hear again.

On the face of it, one could hardly wish for a better alibi. But was it an alibi? I myself had been obliged to leave the gathering shortly before eleven o’clock. By then the case of the second slain had been thoroughly talked out, but the conversation had gravitated towards the more general aspects of investigative work and was still going strong when I left. Since McKenzie had been murdered some time between midnight and one o’clock, the point I had urgently to clarify was how long the two Continental detectives had remained with Holmes.

Monsieur Dubuque had already returned to Paris, but I was fortunate enough to catch Herr von Waldbaum at his hotel. I invented some clumsy story about wishing to know if my brother had called in search of me at about midnight. The German replied that he was unable to enlighten me, having himself left Holmes’s rooms before that hour. Dubuque, however, had remained and might be able to assist me – although a simpler course,
natürlich
, would be to ask Herr Holmes himself. Alas, I muttered, that was not possible. A question of family honour was involved. Von Waldbaum nodded gravely.

I left the hotel in an agony of suspense. For a moment I thought of cabling Dubuque, but I soon realised that the matter was too delicate to be adequately conveyed in telegraphic jargon. Above all, I had to drop some hint, as I had with the German, that would prevent Dubuque telling Holmes about my inquisitiveness. There is only one way to be sure that a hint has been taken – especially across a language barrier – and that is by reading your man’s eyes. I therefore hurried home, packed a few necessities, told my wife an untruth, and caught the night express to Paris. The following morning I had a brief interview with Monsieur Dubuque at the Sûreté. With the Frenchman I thought it best to amend my tale. After a lengthy exchange of compliments I asked him, in a suitably halting fashion, whether Holmes had received an unexpected visit from a lady between twelve and one on the night in question. Dubuque was highly taken with the idea of the great English detective and celebrated misogynist being entangled in such an affair, but was able to assure me that he and Holmes had continued to
bavarder
until after one o’clock, and that no such clandestine rendezvous had been attempted during that time. But then a man of sense and discretion such as Monsieur Holmes would without doubt have arranged some signal to his
belle inconnue
. I agreed that this might well be the case, but my relief on learning that Holmes had not done the murder and that all was still well was so evidently unfeigned that Dubuque immediately assumed that some rivalry existed between Holmes and myself for the attentions of the lady in question! I entreated him to say nothing of this to Holmes; he seemed offended that I felt it necessary to ask. He quoted La Rochefoucauld; I resisted the temptation to embrace him in the Latin manner, took my leave, rushed into the first café I saw and consumed a pint of champagne.

Whether it was the wine or the good news, I
unfortunately 
omitted to remove the labels from my luggage on my return to London that evening. Mary was at first reluctant to accept my explanation for the presence of a tab reading ‘Paris via Dover’ on a bag which had supposedly accompanied me to Midhurst in Sussex, where I had supposedly been assisting Holmes to solve the mystery of the corpse on the beach. She protested, among other things, that there was no beach at Midhurst. That, I replied darkly, was the mystery. So ended the episode of the first return of Jack the Ripper, which began with high drama, seemed set to turn to tragedy, and ended perilously close to farce. I came out of it more than ever convinced – with that irrational complacency which is the natural result of a false alarm – that Holmes could now be trusted to his own devices.

My Paddington practice, meanwhile, was doomed. The rot caused by my constant attendance on Holmes was too far gone to be eradicated, and the resulting air of gloom and failure which hung over my consulting-room proved to be an effective deterrent to new patients. After some deliberation I therefore decided to sell out and move to another district, where I might start afresh. It seemed an auspicious moment for such a change. The new decade promised a fresh start for me too. I had fulfilled my duty to society. The Whitechapel murders had evidently come to an end, and Holmes was no longer a danger to the public. The time had come to consider myself for a change. At the end of January 1890 I found a suitable practice in Kensington. Now at last I could begin my married life in earnest, unencumbered by responsibilities left over from my bachelorhood. A new era seemed to beckon me, and a new life as a family man and a
successful
physician with a flourishing practice in a fashionable area suitably distant from Baker Street. No longer could I be at Holmes’s beck and call. From now onwards my patients and my household must claim prior importance.

The financial strain imposed by the move was considerable. My Paddington practice I disposed of for rather more than it was perhaps worth, but my wife was nevertheless compelled to sell another of the fabulous pearls she had received as conscience money from Mr Thaddeus Sholto. Indeed, the Sholto case helped us in more than one way, for it formed the basis of A.C.D.’s second story based on Holmes’s work, which was written at this time. I was a little surprised to find him reverting to a form with which he had seemingly finished for ever, but apparently ‘A Study in Scarlet’ had enjoyed a success in America, and an American magazine had now commissioned him to provide a sequel. The arrangement A.C.D. sought was as before. I was to provide the raw material from my notes and personal reminiscences, while he would give the thing form and style. I was obliged to consult Holmes of course, and remembering his outburst on reading A.C.D.’s treatment of the Jefferson Hope case, I did so with some trepidation. But to my great surprise, Holmes gave his consent at once. He seemed mildly amused that the Americans had so relished ‘A Study in Scarlet’. But which case was my friend preparing to trivialise now? I suggested that perhaps the Sholto affair might prove suitable for fictional treatment.

‘Ah yes!’ Holmes smiled fondly. ‘Mr Thaddeus and Brother Bartholomew! Jonathan Small and Tonga!’

‘And Mary Morstan.’

‘Quite. Yes, I have no doubt it has all the ingredients of a successful novelette. Needless to say, I do not expect your colleague to capture anything but the crude outlines of my method. But I trust the affair already possesses enough romance and pathos to satisfy his readership, thus sparing him the necessity of interpolating frontier melodramas of his own invention.’

When ‘The Sign of Four; or, The Problem of the Sholtos’ duly appeared in February, I had not seen Holmes for
over six weeks. So effective was my determination to change my ways, indeed, that throughout 1890 we met only four, or possibly five, times. Only twice did I accompany him on an investigation, as against a dozen such instances the previous year. In June we travelled to Herefordshire to look into the murder of Charles McCarthy, and in October I was at his side when he foiled the Saxe-Coburg Square bank raid.
§
No doubt I was at fault in washing my hands of Holmes in this cavalier fashion. No doubt I should have withdrawn more gradually, and returned more often to check that all was well. But in all honesty, I am afraid that if I had noticed any signs of mischief at
221B
Baker Street I would simply have looked the other way. Having braved such a monster, and seen it dead and buried, it is hard to admit that the ground above its grave is cracked and heaving.

However, the question did not arise. I was aware of no change in Holmes. Indeed, I had virtually ceased to be aware of Holmes at all. My life seemed sunny and serene as never before. Christmas came and went, and it was 1891. I was a respected physician with a growing practice and the contented master of a well-ordered household. Jack the Ripper seemed already a thing of the past, locked away between the pages of yellowing newspapers like all the dead who once strutted so boldly. But Jack was not dead. He was only resting, and his rest had almost reached its term.

Frances Coles, a Whitechapel prostitute of the lowest type, was murdered shortly after two o’clock in the morning of Friday the 13th February 1891. Her body was found by a patrolling policeman in an alley under one of the arches of the railway bridge between Chamber Street and Royal Mint Street. Her throat had been horridly cut. The evening papers carried several columns on the subject, and none professed the slightest doubt that the killing was the work of Jack the Ripper. The police were strongly censured for having relaxed their vigilance; the public warned to brace itself for a fresh onslaught of terror.

I read the reports with a wry smile and a pleasant sense of superiority. It was perfectly clear to me that the murder had no connection whatever with the earlier series. I knew who had been responsible for those atrocities, and after making myself ridiculous over the last Ripper scare, I had no intention of being drawn every time a Whitechapel whore had her throat cut and the press, knowing it was worth an extra hundred thousand copies, attributed the crime to Jack the Ripper. Within a few days a seaman was arrested for the murder, and although he was subsequently acquitted, I gathered that the authorities were convinced that he had in fact killed not only Coles but Alice McKenzie as well.

At about this time Holmes left for the Continent, having apparently been engaged by the French Government in a matter of supreme importance. I received two letters
from him. The first was a mere conventional note, remarkable only because Holmes was not in the habit of writing conventional notes. The second letter, in contrast, was of so singular a character that I had better reproduce it here exactly as I received it:

I was greatly alarmed by the disordered state of mind revealed by this letter. A ship named
Gloria Scott
had indeed figured in one of Holmes’s early cases, which he had related to me, but no such lady. As for Professor Nemo, not only had I never heard of him, I very much doubted whether any such person existed outside the pages of fiction. But what I found most disturbing was the disintegration of Holmes’s normally immaculate style from the relative coherence of the first lines to the halting
gibberish of the last. All in all, the letter reminded me horribly of the scribbles of a drug maniac.

About three weeks after I received this queer communication, I was sitting up late one evening in my consulting-room. My wife was staying with her aunt. I was poring over the latest issues of the medical press when suddenly the door swung open and on the threshold there appeared a gaunt apparition that I recognised, after a few moments, as Sherlock Holmes. I was still staring dumbly in shock when he dropped to his hands and knees and scuttled at great speed across the floor to the window. Reaching up, he pulled the shutters together and bolted them.

‘Holmes!’ I cried. ‘What has happened? You look terrible!’

In truth I had never before seen my old friend so pale and haggard. His features were drawn and lined, so that he appeared prematurely aged, while the trembling of his limbs spoke eloquently of his exhaustion. He edged around my desk, inspecting the room warily. At last he dropped into a chair, shading his eyes from my lamp.

‘What is it, Holmes? Are you afraid of something?’

‘Of someone.’

‘But of whom?’

He squinted blearily at me.

‘Did you not get my letter? Was it intercepted, then?’

I stared at him fixedly.

‘Your letter?’

‘From Nîmes.’

‘Certainly I got it. But I fear I have no recollection of any of the persons you named. Is it they who are pursuing you?’

Holmes sighed. He drew a cigarette from his case, studied it for a moment, and then glanced up at me.

‘I see. No doubt I expected too much. Might I trouble you for a match? I must apologise for calling so late. A
few pence will see the pantry window mended, and then I should have it barred before one of the light-fingered gentry avails himself of the same facility. Is Mrs Watson in?’

‘My wife is away on a visit.’

‘Indeed? You are alone, then? Yes, of course – the hatstand. You must forgive my obtusity. I have not slept more than a few minutes these fourteen days. I cannot rest. He will gain the upper hand if I rest. But I grow slow, Watson, and that too may be fatal.’

‘Look, Holmes, I don’t know what you are talking about, but I know a case of utter exhaustion when I see one. You cannot continue to expend your strength without allowing the organism to recuperate. Your will may carry you further than other men, but you are still human. You must sleep here tonight. We shall be alone, and I will stay up to see that no harm befalls you.’

Holmes shook his head sadly.

‘Your offer is most generous, Watson, but I must refuse. If you knew the nature of the threat I represent, you would not be so free with your hospitality. I am cursed, Watson! The house in which I lay my head is visited by evil in the night. But if you would help me tomorrow – would you be willing to accompany me to the Continent for a few days?’

‘To the Continent? But where are you going?’ He waved vaguely.

‘Going? I am not going anywhere. I am fleeing, Watson – fleeing for my life! We must go where he will not find us. Ha! He will find us wherever we go!’

I strained forward.

‘But of whom are you speaking, Holmes?’

He started.

‘Eh? Why, Professor Moriarty, of course!’

‘What? But Moriarty is dead!’

‘Dead, is he?’ screamed Holmes in a fit of fury. ‘Oh,
very well! Whatever you like! Of course, it may prove necessary to redefine what you mean by dead, if the term is to be applied to people who can fire air-guns, wield knives, murder unfortunates, and drive the foremost criminal agent in Europe to the brink of nervous exhaustion!’

I was by now confused beyond measure.

‘But Holmes, you told me he was dead, did you not?’

‘I told you that I had been mistaken, that he had survived and was once more at large.’

‘You told me that? But when? Where?’

‘In my letter, man! In a cipher so elementary I thought even you might be able to fathom it. The
Gloria Scott
case, Watson! Every third word! Oh, no matter. The fact is that Moriarty has returned from the dead and is loose in the streets of London. It was he who killed that woman Coles, and he would have had more since then had I not prevented him. Again and again he strove to break away, but as often I headed him off. I tell you, my friend, that if a detailed account of these eight weeks past could be written, it would count as the most brilliant piece of thrust-and-parry work in the history of detection. It has left both of us desperate and exhausted men. There is no holding back now, no sense of fair play. There is only the instinct to destroy meeting its implacable opposite, and the first of us to give an inch is a dead man. It is him or me, Watson, by fair means or foul!’

For a long moment he was silent, his head resting wearily in his cupped hands. Then he roused himself once more, and looked up at me imploringly.

‘That is why I am here. God knows I have no wish to bring danger to your house, but I am left with no alternative. I need your help, Watson, and I need it desperately! Moriarty and I are so finely matched that it is an impasse between us. Your help, perhaps, will swing the matter in my favour. A week, Watson! No more than a week.
Will you come? It will be like old times. Say you will come!’

There were tears in my eyes, and in my breast an indescribable conflict of emotions, as I fervently replied:

‘Old fellow, can you doubt it?’

He smiled, and lay back in the chair. A few minutes later his eyes were closed, the cigarette had dropped cold from his fingers, and he was asleep. I went to my dispensary and made up a mildly soporific solution, which I injected into Holmes’s forearm. My first thought was to ensure that his rest was unbroken. With the assistance of my cook – a muscular Irishwoman – I moved the unconscious Holmes upstairs, and laid him down on a bed in the spare room. Having seen that he was comfortable, I locked the door on the outside and returned downstairs. I then poured myself a large whisky, and tried to think what the devil I was to do.

I was under no illusions as to the gravity of the situation. The cipher in Holmes’s letter might have got by me, but his conversational code I could now read with ease. I knew whom he meant in naming Moriarty, and I understood perfectly the nature of the struggle taking place between himself and the Professor. If Holmes was mad, it was, as one might have expected, a methodical madness. His great mind was in ruins, but in those ruins life went on. Did he know what he had done? In some remaining enclave of sanity, was he aware of what he had become? So it seemed, and finding the madness too powerful to master, he had grappled with it in the darkness of his soul and thrown it out, and called it Moriarty. Everything he did and said had to be not merely observed but interpreted, as one interprets a charade. His words, which seemed a wild nightmare if literally understood, made only too clear a sense once one grasped that everything of which he spoke was taking place within the confines of his own brain.

No doubt in my heart I had always known that this moment must arrive. How else could I have found myself so clear-headed, so unamazed – so relieved almost – now that the storm had finally broken? It had been a close and sultry interlude, full of wishful thinking and cowardly self-deception. I had known all the time what had to be done. All my doubts and my evasions were only attempts to deny that grim knowledge. I had known that such things as I had witnessed in Miller’s Court do not heal themselves with fresh air and exercise. They have to be destroyed. I had known that since the 9th of November 1888, but how I had hoped it might not prove necessary. How I had hoped I might be spared! And now another woman lay murdered, and her blood was on my head as surely as if I had struck her down myself. I found my conduct thus far utterly contemptible, and I turned from it in disgust. I could not mend it, but I could at least put an end to my vacillation and act the man for once.

I trust that the reader, having patiently followed me so far, will not now give me up for lost when I confess that even at this eleventh hour I could not wholly convince myself of Holmes’s guilt. If I were one of our psychological novelists I could perhaps hope to convey the subtle shadings of reservation and misgiving which mottled the almost solid certainty of my mind. As it is, I can only say that, for all I had, I needed yet one more piece of evidence; some final spark to ignite the mass of material I had laboriously gathered. For a time was coming when I must confront Holmes, look him in the eyes and tell him what I knew. Such was the man’s mastery over me of old, I was terribly afraid that at the last I might funk it. If I were to free myself for ever of his influence, I needed some final irrefutable proof of what he had become, so that I could go forth with furious dispassion and do what had to be done.

I fetched my coat and hat, looked in on Holmes, who remained in a deep sleep, and then left the house. In the
High Street I found a cab, which set me down some
fifteen
minutes later outside 221 Baker Street. I had removed Holmes’s keychain before leaving, and a minute later I was standing in the familiar front room. Nothing seemed to have changed, except that the disorder was even more marked than I remembered it. The floor was virtually impassable for mounds of newspaper. Drawers hung open and overflowing, and every horizontal surface supported an assortment of objects in fantastic juxtaposition. I stood for a full five minutes, gazing at this scene with a sinking heart, and then I took off my coat and set to work. It took me almost four hours to complete my search, but by then I had turned out and sifted through every article in those rooms, and I had found nothing one might not reasonably expect to find in the chambers of a gentleman of eccentric tastes. I certainly had not found that final damning proof I longed for – and dreaded. I collapsed despondently in Holmes’s
velvet-lined
chair and lit a cigarette. It was four o’clock in the morning. In a few hours Holmes would wake. Then what? Could I let him go, knowing what I did? Could I do otherwise, knowing no more? Unconsciously I had risen from my chair and started to pace the floor, as Holmes would when his mind was working on a problem. At length, tiring of picking a path through the piles of newsprint, I stopped in front of the tall windows and stared out at the bleak canyon of Baker Street, and up at the dark sky where all too soon the first shimmer of dawn would appear.

The truth struck me all at once. One moment I stood gazing aimlessly out of the window, the next I was rummaging furiously through the contents of Holmes’s desk. I soon found the small leather case I was looking for. With it concealed under my coat I quietly left the house, walked up to the corner, and turned into Blandford Street. I looked around to ensure that I was not observed before slipping into the mews. I passed the first house
and stopped by the wooden gate giving into the yard of the second. It was unlocked. I passed through. The windows of the property were dark and curtainless. The back door was locked. I got out the case, which contained Holmes’s house-breaking tools. I had studied my friend’s methods on several occasions when he had deemed it necessary to enter a building without the consent of the owner, and although the finer points of the art were lost on me I could force a door as well as any man. In a minute I was standing in a bare passage, whose peeling paper and damp odour told of a long period of disuse and neglect. I lit the dark lantern which was another feature of the burglary kit, and began my search.