The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes (3 page)

Coombes was certainly an easy enough man to live with. He rose early but never made a sound. He waited until I was away hiking the hills before conducting his book experiments in the kitchen. These experiments involved heating pages of books, then putting them into a bath of chemicals. But he made it a point to clean up the mess before I arrived back for lunch. His books were numerous but never in the way. He kept them carefully stacked in and around the bookcase at one side of the sitting room, and he carried them off to his bedroom in piles of five or six. Often when I arrived back in the evening I found him sitting in front of a roaring fire and reading three books simultaneously, going from one to the other as he apparently compared them. He seemed like a man in mad pursuit of something or other, but of
what
remained a mystery to me. In the titles he collected I could see no pattern. He had biographies of the Beatles, Tony Blair, Bill Gates, Bertrand Russell and many others. He had histories of World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Falklands War, the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus histories of England, France, the United States, China, and various other countries – but none of these histories covered any period earlier than the twentieth century. Most numerous were books on modern science and technology, including quantum theory, global warming, alternative energy sources, acupuncture, mental illness and computers. Many books on computers. Also books on the biological sciences, especially genetic engineering of all sorts, including recombinant DNA cloning and reproductive cloning. In one corner was a pile of books on hypnotism, hallucinatory drugs, spiritualism and meditation. In another corner I noticed books on Marilyn Monroe, the history of sport in the twentieth century, the history of aviation, and a textbook on organic chemistry.

What was he aiming at? Surely he had to have some specific goal, I thought. No man buys and borrows books by the barrowful without a definite purpose. But what that purpose might be I could not make out. There was a certain reserve in our relationship that prevented me from asking him outright. We roomed together, often ate together, but we carefully respected each other's privacy – perhaps as a way of keeping our own secrets. We were, after all, two men of more than sixty who were perhaps reluctant to press each other about our
goals in life
at a period when, as everyone knows, goals often tend to fizzle and life to become a mere habit. Maybe he was just pottering, piddling and fiddling away his time with unusual intensity.

Yet somehow I doubted it.

As he had warned me, he periodically fell from a frenzied state of mind into a mood of lassitude, and for several days on end he would lie on the couch and stare into space, scarcely seeming to be aware of me when I entered the room. On one such day I had walked in, apparently unnoticed, and was sitting by the fire engrossed in the sports pages of the
Guardian
when his voice startled me:

‘What do you think of the opinion piece on page thirty, the one titled “The Missing Illogical Leap”?'

‘I haven't read it,' said I, ‘but I will.'

I turned to the article and read it briskly.

‘What is your opinion of it?' asked Coombes, anxiously.

‘So far as I can tell,' I said, ‘it is an argument that relies more on sophistry than good sense, and tries to prove a point that is almost true but not quite.'

‘Really?'

‘The writer appears to believe that computers can never compete with the human mind, and why? Because, he argues, they cannot make the illogical leaps of imagination necessary in order to solve life's big mysteries. That sounds like philosophical twaddle. Surely life's mysteries never required illogical leaps in order to be solved.'

‘Perhaps the article wasn't written as clearly as it might be,' said Coombes, frowning.

‘The writer sounds like someone of the old school who refuses to accept reality, which is that computers have overtaken human intelligence, and will continue to sprint ahead of our plodding brains. We all once believed that no computer could beat a Grand Master at chess – but computers now do this every day. We all used to think that abstruse problems could only be solved by a philosopher, but recently many mathematical problems that have defeated mathematical philosophers for centuries have been solved by computers.'

‘Small problems may have been solved,' objected Coombes. ‘But for the greatest mysteries of life, computers are useless.'

‘I am willing to be convinced,' I said, smiling. I had never seen Coombes so excited. He was almost frothing.

‘Computers are mere compilers and crunchers of facts. Yet facts alone, Watson . . .'

‘Wilson . . .'

‘. . . can never, however speedily compiled or crunched, solve anything of consequence.'

‘I wonder what you mean, Coombes, by
of consequence
. Perhaps we are not really in disagreement.'

‘I mean any of the great mysteries of life. The mystery of gravity, for instance. Or the mystery of why a man murders his wife. Many years ago I too believed such problems could be solved merely by observing closely and analyzing logically. I believed that a problem was like a great river one must cross. You stood on the shore and by stepping from one logical stepping stone to the next, you eventually reached the far side.'

‘But that
is
how it is done, isn't it?' I said.

‘Not at all. In every mystery I ever solved – and I have solved a number of minor mysteries – I proceeded in a completely different manner. I lived a whole lifetime before realizing this. That is why I wrote the article.'

‘
You
wrote it!' I cried, opening the paper again. ‘I guess I am not very observant. I was in such a hurry to read the piece that . . .'

‘Oh, most people are too much in a hurry to observe properly. It's a human trait,' laughed Coombes. ‘Anyway, long ago I imagined that I solved mysteries first by observing, then by analyzing facts I had accumulated by observing. But that is not how it is at all. I realize now that I always made an imaginative leap that landed me somewhere strange, and then I tried to prove by logic that my leap had landed me in the right spot. If not, I made another leap, till eventually I landed where logic could prove I was spot on.'

‘I'm afraid I must differ with you, Coombes,' I said. ‘I think it has long been established that sharp observation and careful analysis provide more solutions than leaps of fancy. I leave fancy to the poets. It is science which has built our world. Men like Newton, and Henry Ford, and Bill Gates.'

‘But Newton was a poet.'

‘Come now, Coombes!'

‘But just think of how he worked! He saw surprising and hidden likenesses, just as poets do. For instance, he saw a round red apple and a round white moon, and he saw the apple falling from the sky while the moon did not fall but only circled. Those were his facts. Had he only analyzed those facts he would have learnt nothing. But he made an imaginative leap and guessed what he later proved – that the apple fell towards the earth for the same reason that the moon fell around the earth. Gravity was the link that neither he nor anyone could have proved until first he had guessed it. His guess was his imaginative leap.'

‘If you are referring only to cosmic questions, perhaps you are right. But Newton is an unusual case,' I said.

‘Not at all,' said Coombes. ‘I have concluded that the plague of this new age is a mindless trust in artificial intelligence. Men ought to trust instead to their own brains and instincts. I don't speak only of cosmic questions, the meaning of life or the origin of the universe. I speak of small things, daily life – the solving of a crime or the solving of a personal problem with a . . . a
lover
, I suppose you now would call it. A man with powers of observation, analysis and imagination should – to take a trivial example – be able to deduce a great deal about a person from some small object that the person owned – say his watch or his car keys. But feeding data about that object into a computer would lead to nothing at all.'

‘That is surely an interesting theory,' I admitted. ‘But I'll wager that you could not conclude anything significant about a person merely by examining an object the individual owns.'

‘You would lose your wager,' said Coombes.

‘Then let me put you to the test,' I said.

‘Certainly,' said Coombes. ‘I have had a boring day and need some stimulation.'

‘Here is a pocket knife owned by my brother Charles,' I said, pulling it out of a drawer. ‘He was working in Europe – he is an archaeologist – and he stopped by to visit me on his way back to Chicago where he teaches at a university. He has travelled with this old knife since college days and he did not want to lose it by checking it through with his luggage, which airline regulations would force him to do. The airline has lost two of his bags in the last two years. So he asked me to send the knife to him when he arrived home. I was going to post it tomorrow.'

‘Ah,' said Coombes. ‘If you will be good enough to give it to me, I shall try to demonstrate that my theory is practical.'

I handed him my brother's old Swiss Army knife and he eagerly carried it away to the front window where evening sunlight, falling through the panes, made a bright patch on the table. He laid the knife in the patch of sunlight, sat down at the table, and from somewhere he produced a large magnifying glass that looked like the sort of antique magnifier that Charles Darwin might have used while exploring the Galapagos, or that Linnaeus might have peered through while squatting over
Galeopsis ladanum
. The rim was tarnished brass and the handle was of wood so worn by handling that it shone. As I watched him peering into that magnifying glass – his hawk nose, his angular figure – I again had the feeling that I had seen this man somewhere before. But where I could not say.

Coombes studied the knife with painful care, turning its smooth red form over and over in his hands as if fondling it. At last he drew out the tiny tweezers from their tiny slot and examined them with his glass. Then he laid them aside on a Kleenex and withdrew the white toothpick from its compartment and examined it with equal attention. He opened each of the blades and accessories and examined each with excruciating care – the big blade, the small blade, the screwdriver-and-bottle-opener blade, then the can-opener-and-tiny-screwdriver blade, and finally the saw blade. With a toothpick he teased out wads of fuzzy material caught in the cavity where those blades had resided, and examined it under the glass. Next he turned the knife over and examined the final two blades – the awl and the corkscrew.

What a lot of show and fuss, I was thinking.

Then he began shaking his head, and it was obvious to me that his project was a failure. I couldn't pretend to myself that I was sorry. He had taken on the air of a pedant as he had lectured me on the nature of knowledge, as though I were a child. I don't like to see anyone humiliated, but I was glad he had been deflated a bit.

Coombes finally closed the knife and looked at me with a sigh. ‘I fear I've promised more than I can perform, Wilson.'

‘Ah, well,' said I.

‘The knife did not reveal as much as I had hoped.'

‘Think nothing of it, Coombes,' said I, magnanimously. ‘We all miscalculate occasionally.'

‘Still, my research has not been entirely barren,' he said.

‘By all means, then,' I said, ‘let me hear what the knife has revealed – if anything.'

Coombes solemnly handed the knife back to me and sat down in the easy chair by the fire. He placed both his bony elbows on the cushioned arms of the chair, then threw his head back, pressed his finger tips together, and stared at the ceiling with his mouth open slightly and the tip of his tongue between his teeth. In this dramatic pose he remained for an intolerable while. Again I grew impatient. Theatrics are fine, so long as one doesn't overdo them. Then I smiled and suddenly the whole scene struck me as amusing. Could it be that Coombes had been on the stage, perhaps as a magician or an old member of the RSC? Could that be where I had seen him before? How odd, I thought, that I had lived with the man for several weeks and still knew nothing whatever about his background!

‘All that I can say with any confidence,' said Coombes, ‘is that he is a man of about fifty with dark hair that has begun to grow grey, and a man who is very particular about his looks. He is impatient yet also careful. He is frugal, meticulous and sentimental. He likes wine and frequently buys a bottle to drink during his travels, but he seldom drinks beer. He sketches using a number 2B – or perhaps HB – drawing pencil.' Coombes looked at me wearily and drew a deep breath. ‘That is really all I can say, other than that your brother recently has been bathing on Kamari beach on Santorini, that he passed through Switzerland on his way to England, that he has a Persian cat at his house in Chicago, and that he is a member of the Masons.'

I suddenly felt almost sick. I felt invaded. ‘I am shocked, Coombes,' I said. ‘I like a good joke as well as any man, and I will take this whole episode as a joke – but when you begin reading someone else's mail . . . well, that is really inexcusable. Even for a joke. I am a lighthearted person, Coombes. I am not easily offended. Many people have told me I am an easy man to get along with. But we will not get along very well if we cannot trust each other.'

‘I did not read your mail,' he said, looking rather startled.

‘But my good fellow, it is obvious you must have.'

‘Absolutely not. How can you deduce such a thing?'

I began to feel confused about having accused him. ‘Well, come to think, in his letter my brother didn't mention his Persian cat . . . and also he didn't . . . but how in the world did you . . . because every word of your description is correct. You spoke as if you might know him personally, and be acquainted with his character and habits and all his affairs. Please enlighten me, Coombes.'