Read A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes Online
Authors: Katie Raynes,Joseph R.G. DeMarco,Lyn C.A. Gardner,William P. Coleman,Rajan Khanna,Michael G. Cornelius,Vincent Kovar,J.R. Campbell,Stephen Osborne,Elka Cloke
A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes (21 page)
At this, they were most gratified, and they thanked him.
The cab arrived at Tanny’s apartment, where he, Eric, and Andrew got out. Then it resumed, with Holmes, Hopkins, and myself.
I was most pleased with the outcome. I said, “Holmes, you’ve outdone yourself this time. You’ve made two deserving young men happy. No one could have done more for them.”
“Thank you, Watson.”
Holmes thought, then laughed and continued, “Actually, there was another reason for extra efforts, not counting Tanny and Eric’s own merits.”
t="0" w$What is that?”
“I knew making Arthur Tanner safely, permanently ensconced with his Eric would be a great help in restoring full peace of mind to Inspector Hopkins… And, that would be important.”
What? I didn’t see how Hopkins would come into it at all. Why was it his wish to make Tanny happy? He’d been businesslike throughout, and helpful. He’d been fair. But, if anything, I’d have thought that he disliked Tanny in some private way.
I looked at Holmes and at Hopkins, seated across from me in the darkness at opposite ends of the other seat of the four-wheeler. Both looked back at me. In the flashes of passing lamplight, both had the same amused, affectionate, nervous, but deeply contented smile.
All at once, I understood.
It seemed my answer should be brief.
“Aha,” I replied.
Editor’s Note
by Sir John Wright CH, CBE
It is I who have turned out to be the executor, referred to in the second paragraph of this tale, of the kind and decent man who helped bring me up and who taught me how to write fiction. I cannot add to the art with which Dr John H. Watson has told our story.
The youngest and now the last living of the five men named in that paragraph, I have obeyed Dr Watson’s direction to publish the manuscript word-for-word as he left it. After his death, I showed it to my friends Arthur Tanner and his companion, Eric Soames. They and I agreed heartily that the possible consequences to ourselves should not prevent its appearing as soon as an opportunity arose for it to do the most good. We felt that Sherlock Holmes and Stanley Hopkins, both dead then, would have wished that as well.
Reading this story gave us three an odd feeling of mixture, that we had lived our lives – as others do too – both in beauty and in darkness, but also constantly risking prison either for homosexuality or else in needless situations arising from attempts to suppress it. When I was thirteen and Inspector Hopkins arrested Mr Kent and Mrs Renfrew, a strict interpretation of the law would have had him gaol me, their victim, as well. Holmes and Watson saved me from those two, but I was – and am – still homosexual. If the authorities wish to charge a seventy-three-year old man for admitting this, then let them. Astonishingly, barbaric laws that we lived in fear of remain on the books today.
It is now 1954. The Wolfenden Committee has begun meeting, and the eventual release of their report could mean the end of that era of fear. I publish this story that Dr Watson wrote, hoping – as he did – to hasten that.
A missing bridegroom, whose clothes have been found in a river. A bride who is not unhappy at the prospect of being free of her marriage. These are the elements of this tale narrated by Holmes himself. Nothing is as it seems but no one pays enough attention to the facts. Lestrade and W atson fail to see what is before them and only Holmes correctly interprets the facts and the green carnation which they find.
by Vincent Kovar
Just as every criminal has the overwhelming tendency to return to the scene of his crimes, so too did my own nature pull me back to London in the spring of 1894. Unburdened of public expectation due to the affair at Reichenbach Falls, which was described by my earnest biographer as “The Final Problem,” I was, for perhaps the first time in my life, a free man. However much I enjoyed this Great Hiatus, I too was eventually drawn back to the familiar scenes of London, back to Baker Street and back to the world of mysteries. The world being what it is, no problem is ever quite final.
Though I had been in contact with the Foreign Office during my sojourn, I rather grew to enjoy the measure of anonymity that such a literary death had afforded me. For this reason, and another which I will explain later, upon my return I forbade Watson any further publication of my adventures. The editors of
The Strand
put up a particularly strenuous hue and cry, as did many other periodicals but I held firm. Watson scribbles away furiously even still, waiting for a weakening in my resolve, but there are some tales for which the world is not yet prepared.
This moratorium is not to say that my reappearance went unnoticed, however.
On May the 15th, shortly after my return, Watson came up from the street to find Mrs Hudson on her hands and knees just outside the door to my rooms, picking the broken crockery out of the ruins of my tea tray.
“Was that the Marquess of – ?” he began.
“It was.” I snapped but then caught the worst of my foul mood by the tail. “Forgive me, Watson. It would seem that the empire’s most pugilistic aristocrat took my refusal to accept his case…poorly.”
“I should say. Here, let me help you, Mrs Hudson. And what did the marquess want?”
“He wants what cannot be had. Stolen letters can be recovered. Missing jewels located and kidnap victims returned but his lordship wishes to
not
know something, something which he already very well knows to be true. I refuse to indulge in such perverse mental acrobatics. The facts are the facts, Watson. Like the discoveries of Galileo, neither church nor state nor the timid sensibilities of society can change the truth.”
“And the tipped tray?” he asked as he helped Mrs Hudson to her feet.
“The marquess left so abruptly and in such a temper that he collided with the unsuspecting Mrs Hudson, who had just ascended the stairs with the tea. I won’t be needing another tray, Mrs Hudson. Unless you’d like something, Watson.”
“No,” he said weakly and then watched mournfully as she went away. The injuries he sustained during his Afghan campaign bothered him greatly, especially during the vernal rains, yet he refused to treat himself with the same potency of palliatives that he would any of his patients as he found my own indulgences so concerning. I gestured him toward the easy chair near the grate and watched with a surreptitious contentment as he nidificated amongst his favourite cushions and newspapers. I pushed across the case of cigars and box of lucifers then settled myself in the other armchair. No sooner had I focused on my own reading, a treatise on the recent discovery of the plague bacillus, than the vigilant Mrs Hudson returned with a fresh tray of tea and sandwiches. In her own way, she was an excellent judge of character as it related to the appetite. Upon the tray lay also a large envelope of fine paper, impressed with a stately crest.
“Here, at least, are items of interest to both of us.” I said, plucking the missive from its perch and leaving the sandwiches to my companion.
“Not another burr from the social thistle?” Watson teased gently, knowing my dislike of such things.
“No, conspicuously professional.” I said, turning the envelope over in my hands but not yet breaking its seal.
“Conspicuously?” he asked. “And how do you arrive at that conclusion. Have you returned from your sojourns a fakir who can pierce the paper with your mind’s eye?”
“Quite so. All the methods for my deduction are clearly laid out before you. It is a matter of the greatest discretion, regarding a noble but poor house, and a newly minted fortune.”
“As you say Holmes, as you say. Yet I cannot fathom how you have data for your suppositions beyond the monogram on the letter’s exterior from which you would extract the notion of a noble house.”
“You have been reading the papers, have you not?” I asked.
“You know I have, Holmes,” he said, pointing to his abandoned nest.
“Then you know that this letter,” I waved the envelope before him, “is a desperate plea from the family to save Lord Stamford’s marriage.”
“Preposterous even for you, my friend,” he sputtered. “Why, that letter could contain a thousand things.”
“Did you hear the post pass by just prior to Mrs Hudson bringing up the tea?” I asked.
“Why no, no I did not. But perhaps the letter came before I arrived.”
“In which case, it would have been presented on the previous tray, the one so unfortuitously upset by my previous visitor. Yet we can see it is unblemished by the tea which is now staining the rug outside the door. Nor is it marked by postage or calls for the district messenger service. Further, the address has been inscribed with an inexpensive steel-tipped dip-pen made in Birmingham.”
“Not a fountain pen?” he asked.
“No, Watson. This is iron gall ink, the use of which in a fountain pen would cause corrosion. Had this letter been from the earl’s new wife, we would probably see the distinct characteristics of either an Esterbrook nib or a writing implement of higher quality.”
“Enough with your lecture on pen nibs. Open the letter and let’s see if your uncanny powers of detection are as sharp as they were before –”
Watson stopped suddenly and a shadow passed over his face. In the triangle of rhetoric he is ever the emotional pathos to my clockwork logos. The years I enjoyed with Sigerson, after the events at the Falls, had perhaps been harder on Watson than either of us cared to, or even could, admit. Watson had returned to his practice of medicine for only the briefest time before his second wife, Mary, passed away. Now, the mental fencing that had been the lingua franca of our peculiar friendship tasted cruel on my lips.
I broke the wax and read the letter aloud.
My dear Mr Sherlock Holmes,
His Grace, the Duke of B— tells my wife and me that we may rely upon your discretion and candour. We desire to consult with you regarding a matter which weighs upon our family and promises the direst consequences should it not be resolved. We refer to an occurrence that followed shortly upon our son’s recent nuptials. The import of our quandary can hardly be exaggerated nor can the absolute necessity for the greatest degree of secrecy. We will call upon you at seven o’clock this evening. We implore you to receive us at this hour and reschedule your other engagements.
Cordially yours,
Stamford
Watson moved to the tantalus and gasogene and quickly mixed us a pair of drinks, his previous languor banished by the prospect of adventure.
“We will know the truth of it soon enough.” I glanced at the boulle mantel clock which I had brought back from France. “It is half-past five now, just enough time so that, with your assistance, we may survey the lay of the case.”
We forayed into the announcements section of the papers, I for once bowing to Watson’s greater familiarity with the populist literature of marriage. The first of these notices was located in the
Morning Post
.
His lordship George Stamford, Earl of Warrington, and Lady Beatrice are pleased to announce the engagement of their son the Honourable George Stamford III to Miss Virginia Barnes, the second daughter of Mr Allaster Barnes, of San Francisco, Cal., U.S.A.
“We’ve seen this before, Holmes.” Watson exhaled sharply, wreathing his head in cigar smoke. “It’s open season on noblemen. If the influx of title-seeking heiresses continues, London may find herself a colony of the colonies, vassal to a crownless republic and defeated not by force of arms but by injudicious marriages to foreigners.”
“You suspect the bride of some wrongdoing?” I asked.
“I do,” he replied gruffly. “Here in this very morning’s papers, the vital clue.” He then recited the item from around the diminishing stub of his cigar.
The wedding of Lord George Stamford, son of the Earl of Warrington, suffered a strange occurrence on the very steps of the church even as the ceremony took place inside. The gathering was a small one, having present only the parents of the bride, Mr and Mrs Allaster Barnes, and the Earl and Countess Warrington. It appears that some little trouble was caused by a man of violent temper who endeavoured to force his way into the church and disrupt the nuptials. Barred from doing so by the retainers of the two families, the malcontent continued to batter on the doors. It was not until the police arrived and the man fled, that peace was restored.
Here, finding cigar, tumbler, food and cup all at hand, Watson awkwardly attempted to manipulate them all at once. Mrs Hudson very nearly had a second disaster on her rug. Finally, with an expression of exquisite satisfaction, Watson solved the puzzle and drained his tea in a single draught, took an aggressive bite of sandwich, gulped a bit of the spirits and punctuated the entire by replacing the cigar between his lips.
“It’s clear that one of the bride’s former lovers, probably American, swept the bride away from her wifely duties. Most likely they are half-way back to New York by now.” With that, he returned to his chair, opened the
Post
with a snap and vanished behind its pages.
I intimated that my companion had something of the misogynist about him. Not lowering the paper, he replied. “I’ve been happily married twice, Holmes, to the finest women on God’s earth, but having seen your model of the confirmed bachelor, I think I quite prefer it.”
I have walked unarmed through the London docks at night, prowled opium dens and faced more than my fair share of murderers. On none of those instances did my heart leap and batter against my ribs as it did just then.
