A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes (24 page)

It is perhaps a moment of foreshadowing that I should have noticed him first. Had I had a greater presence of mind, I would have observed Watson and thereby had a more confident clue to my final mystery, but I did not.

Upon the arm of this proud gentleman was a most striking woman. She was about the same age as he and glowed with the same cupidian light but she seemed somehow more worldly, more sophisticated and more remarkable than any other person in the room, even Virginia. This newcomer was tall and slender, and she wore a form-fitting gown of ivory and pearls, its folds gathered up high around her breasts and neck. Her chestnut hair was swept up from her face revealing red lips and long lashes. In another time, another place, this might have been a lady just after her wedding, veil stripped away at last, Venus become Juno.

Virginia might have breathed the name of her lost love but if so, the faint exhalation was lost beneath the scrape of my chair as I leapt to my feet and gestured the pair to join us. Watson scrambled up a half-second later, eyes goggling, jaw slack.

Seeing the movement, the pair at the doors simultaneously turned toward us, simultaneously smiled with matching pairs of pearly white teeth, and simultaneously blanched to the same colour.

All chins in the room snapped in our direction, sensing the denouement to some drama. Wilting under the gaze of so many and buffeted by the waves of recognition exchanged between our little table and themselves, the glamorous duo visibly considered flight. It was then that Virginia unlaced her fingers from Watson’s, extended her hand and beckoned them over.

The new arrivals slouched into the vacant seats looking shamefaced and stricken.

I made introductions as the room’s attention drifted away. The young man repeated my name; I am not ashamed to say, with some sense of awe. “I was given to understand you were dead.”

“We have two such mortal misunderstandings at this table then. Don’t we Mister –?”

“Colin Parker.”

“You’re the man who took our wedding portrait.” There was something steely in Virginia’s voice as she spoke and I wondered if, like Watson, this American might have a pistol secreted somewhere on her person.

Our handsome guest mumbled something in the affirmative.

Virginia continued coolly. “And will you introduce us to your companion, Mister Parker?”

“Virginia, it’s me.” The voice of Mr Parker’s companion was a palimpsest of gender, with the rich and soft tones of a woman layered over the biological resonance of masculinity.

In all our adventures, I had never seen such an expression of shock and surprise as splashed itself over Watson’s face in that moment.

“George Stamford!”

For indeed, beneath the strenuous application of wig and make-up, beneath the bridal trousseau, the mysterious woman was the missing groom.

Virginia turned to face me, “Though you prepared me quite thoroughly, Mr Holmes, I have to admit that faced with the truth of the thing, I am quite at a loss.”

“Nonsense,” I replied in what I hoped was a note of encouragement, “you have already outdone most.”

She and I each took a deep drink and Watson drew upon his cigar. The newcomers, having nothing, shuffled uneasily in their chairs. Thus fortified, Virginia turned back to her husband and his lover.

“I can’t very well keep calling you George Stamford. How does the lady prefer to be addressed?”

Under pressure, Virginia’s husband acquired a noticeable stammer. “I-I-I, Geo-Geo, call me Georgina.”

I slid the remainder of my drink across the table where it was at once consumed. Georgina, for thus he-become-she preferred to be called, continued, “Do you despise me very much?”

Virginia propped her elbows on the table before her, folded her hands and regarded her husband a long time before she spoke. “I don’t entirely know how things are here in England, and what little I have seen here does not encourage understanding of our current situation. But in America, I spent a fair amount of time on ranches and farms and learned more about the facts of life than might be assumed for a woman. I have seen the creatures of the field take to one another in the fashion of Sodom and Gomorrah, and I’ve learned that once a bull takes such a thing into its nature, it is unlikely to spend much time among the cows. Do you follow me?”

We all did, and silently nodded to indicate this.

“My metaphor is, I think, quite apt. I have found myself bartered like a farm animal in order to cement alliances between American money and European titles. I have also found that I have no taste for this arrangement. Apparently, this distaste is something we share.”

She pressed her lips together firmly in thought. I pressed mine to steepled fingers while the other three left theirs gaped open in wordless wonder. Above and around us, the painted cherubs gambolled quite happily.

“You were quite right, Mr Holmes, in refusing my earlier request for advice and supplying only facts, for now I find myself enabled to make my own choices. That is, Georgie, if you will acquiesce to my decision?”

“I will.”

“Your family fortunes have been replenished with Barnes money and my father’s companies are anointed with noble title. Having a wife, you find your social obligations quite fulfilled. I, having a husband, am relieved of needing to find one. That is, if I have a husband. Do I?”

Mr Parker half leapt from his chair and pounded his fist on the table. “I will die for love rather than give up!”

“And here in Britain,” I said calmly, “you most likely would. It is my suggestion that the three of you purchase a residence in France, where you may live more freely in the Cambacérès tradition.”

Earnestly, Watson agreed, “Holmes knows what he’s talking about, he has just returned from time in Montpellier and …oh …I see.”

Then the great solution was fully known. I, who had devoted my life to unravelling mysteries, was revealed to have been creating one about myself all along.

The sensible nature of my suggestion was at once seen by the odd trio at our table. Virginia would be free to travel or pursue such interest as appealed to her. Colin and the newly feminine Stamford would be safe from Reading Gaol. Agreements were reached. Arrangements were made. Thus began the great migration from the shores of Albion to those of France. Had more of us taken the journey this early, the disaster after Oscar and the marquess’s son might have been, if not averted, somewhat lessened.

It is rare that I am as silent as I was in those moments but my allies – logic, deduction, all my mental powers – were swept away in an internal storm of panic and fear. I nodded mutely. He turned away from me and knelt to light a fire in the grate as he continued.

“But knowing you as I do, I am certain that you have exhausted all avenues of doubt and find yourself unchangeable in this matter.”

“I do,” I replied.

“I meant to ask you earlier today, before our latest adventure, would you be opposed to my returning to residence here on Baker Street? As I am again a bachelor, I don’t need the house that Mary and I shared and, if I am to resume participation in your investigations, it might be sensible to live close at hand.”

“In your absence I adapted your former bedroom into a laboratory for myself. I will clean it out immediately.”

The fire lit, Watson rose and settled himself into the chair nearest the hearth and, in his familiar fashion, took up the day’s paper. He replied from behind its pages, his voice so soft I nearly didn’t hear.

“No need,” he said, “no need.”

You might expect, dear reader, that what follows in these pages will be a description of intimate confessions or passionate avowals of fidelity. You must remember however, that we are English. Were this a French novel there would perhaps be some lurid description of clothing removed with trembling hands. An American tale might include an epilogue of suicide, incarceration in a sanatorium or other ghastliness.

It was many years before Watson started publishing accounts of our adventures again but, as a devotee of the truth, I must warn you that these later tales are so heavily edited as to be estranged from the truth. Names have been changed, dates altered and even the fundamental facts of the cases have been so thoroughly run through the mill of imagination that they barely resemble actual events.

If you look closely however, the astute eye might find hints and clues. The perceptive mind might be able to glean subtle whispers of what the French writers shout. Like the true story of the young Lord Stamford, my own chronicle exists in its full truth only for the participants. Everything else must be left to the fictions of your own minds. Lestrade,
The Strand
, the Earl and Lady Stamford and even you, dear reader, are to be left knowing only that, in most ways, Watson and I continued along in a pleasant fashion very similar to that in which we had always lived.

We are, after all, Englishmen.

Blackmail is one crime that Holmes detests almost as much as murder. For him, it is a kind of murder in its own way, stealing everything a person has worked for and leaving them with a shell of their former life. Holmes, as intricate and interesting as ever, readily takes on the case and shows a compassionate side to his otherwise cold and single-minded personality. Gardner brings us an intricate tale of blackmail and betrayal that has some surprising twists and turns. As with so many Holmes adventures, things are not always what they seem, people have motivations and desires which show their depths all the more clearly.

by Lyn C.A. Gardner

I’m placing this sealed manuscript with my solicitors on instructions that it be published at least seventy years after my demise, when all the principals are long dead and any rumour has passed into family legend. I trust that one day this tale will be welcomed among the rest.

If I return often in these annals to the days before my marriage to Mary Morstan, it is only because Sherlock Holmes and I spent so much time in company then. In 1887, Holmes was thirty-three and I thirty-five, and we seemed at the height of our powers. No problem was too obscure for me to attend along with him. In many ways, despite the strains on health and sanity, I look upon those days as the golden age: long nights prowling outside an abbey, waiting for a murderer to emerge in nun’s habit; grey afternoons watching the world stream past outside our train while we chewed over the case or enjoyed the companionable silence only two intimates can share. Whether we brooded over separate projects in the parlour or ran through fields in fear of someone’s life; whether Holmes filled the air with violin music or I, the minds of distant readers with the magic of his work, there seemed one great song between us.

Without a practice of my own, I’d rise in my dressing gown when Mrs Hudson brought our breakfast, and share the morning papers with Holmes. Even without a case, there were times when he hardly slept. I’d wish him good night and leave him brooding over the fire, then walk out yawning in the morning to find him staring into the street, waiting only my waking to play the violin. I’d trained myself to sleep through the stench of all but the most explosive chemical experiments.

“Anything on the fire this morning, Holmes?”

He didn’t turn from his contemplation of Baker Street. The medley of voices, the rattling percussion of hooves and carriage wheels, and the cymbal-like crashes of coal chutes all registered in a higher key as the threat of rain induced a more hurried tempo. I took the chair opposite his dirty dishes and tucked into my kedgeree. The haddock was tender and well-seasoned. Atop a stack of books, a telegram waited for me.

“Situation grave at Leidstone Manor near Reigate, Surrey. Your presence great personal favour. Forrester.”

“Forrester,” I mused. “The inspector we met in the affair of the Reigate squires?” Five months before, in April, I had convinced Holmes to leave the poisoned city air for some needed rest in the country. To his delight, theft and murder had broken into his vacation. The young officer in charge had been duly appreciative of Holmes’s talents.

Holmes held up a slim volume that had been concealed between his body and the window. His finger still marked a page, but I could read the impress of gold upon the cover:
Songs of Earth and Heaven
by Catherine Syms-Caton.

“Now I remember. Sir Hugh’s niece writes poems; her brother writes adventures. What is his name –”

Holmes gestured to the table, watching me with the faintest smile. He said, “I took the liberty of running out to the bookstore on the corner while you slept.”

I hefted one of the books stacked beneath the telegram.
The Squire of All or Nothing
by Aubrey Syms-Caton. “Seems to promise a good sword fight to while away a fall afternoon. So, what’ll it be, Holmes? A duel upon the downs?”

“Hardly that, Watson,” he replied, and slipped into his coat. He tipped the brim of his hat toward me. “But a doctor’s services might be in order.”

My army training and Holmes’s austere habits made packing the work of a moment. I grabbed my valise and doctor’s bag. Holmes scooped up the books as we hastened out the door.

On the train, we passed the books back and forth. “Not bad, Watson,” Holmes commented as he handed me the slimmer volume. I’d got a fair way into one of the novels – murder, unjust imprisonment, and a case of mistaken identity – but I set it aside to see what had impressed my critical friend. The poems’ raw power clawed through the smooth veneer of form and sentiment. “Whoever inspired these is a lucky man.”