A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes (29 page)

When I decided that my career would be as the greatest murderer of the new century, I set certain standards, considerably higher than his. I kill only men, and only the type of men most often described with admiration as
manly
, the sort of prey who have to be outwitted – though, regrettably, most of them are so stupid a clod of dirt could outwit them.

Was it Euripides who said something to the effect that “whom God wishes to destroy he first makes mad?” I don’t believe in God so he therefore cannot destroy me. Nor am I mad. A killer, yes. A very, very good one who will erase the name of Jack the Ripper from the memory of man. But not mad.

Nor am I a coward. At a time of my choosing I will reveal my identity and not, like dear Jack, hide for eternity behind a nickname, like a slinking rat in the darkness. When I am hanged, they will know who it is they are hanging. It is pointless to be everyone’s superior if no one knows of it!

I must apologize to future readers for my less than stellar hand. I have turned down the wick of my lamp to preserve the fuel, making it a bit difficult for me to write in my journal, or read what I have previously written. A bit of moonlight slides its way through the windows, which are empty of glass except for the few thickly grimed shards that remain in the frames and look like the razor sharp teeth of panthers. Otherwise, it is dark with night.

Greystone in its salad days was an expensive school for the sons of the upper stratum of the professional class: lawyers, doctors, surgeons, military officers and the like. My father, at present a Colonel with the 11th Hussars in India, was a seldom seen presence in my life, usually being in some other country serving the old Queen. The few times he did set eyes on me, he expressed displeasure that I looked like a girl and was not growing up to be “manly.”

I should mention that my mother died giving me birth. I was raised by Nanny Julia. More correctly, I was raised by myself, for Nanny Julia spent more time cradling a bottle of Irish comfort than she did cradling me. My father felt I needed to be toughened, being too stupid to realize that Nanny Julia and her bottle toughened me beyond anything he imagined.

When I was fifteen, my father took a delayed interest in my education and decreed that I should go to Greystone. I would have preferred to continue as I had always done, educating myself from the enormous library at the house. So to school I went. I hated it. I attracted bullies the way a magnet attracts iron.

It was during my second fortnight there that I first saw Michael’s blond beauty. We were the same age, but he looked at least two years older, handsome and strong, a living Adonis, a good student, good at sports. Everything I was not. He had attended Greystone several years, and was one of the most popular boys there. The moment I saw him I stopped resenting my enforced education.

In my dreams he was my brother, my friend; I had never had either one. I would have been happy just to have him say my name, but he did not know I existed.

One morning, while I was, as usual, being tormented in the dark beneath the stairs, I broke down in sobs that would do justice to a girl. That made them taunt more, laugh more, and shove me about faster and rougher. All of a sudden a voice demanded, “Leave off! What do you lot think you’re up to?” They stopped so quickly I stumbled and fell to the floor, ringed about by trouser legs and shoes.

I looked up, expecting to see one of the masters or the Head Prefect. Instead I saw my Adonis, who was glowering at my tormentors. “Play fair,” he said. “The little chap is half your size. Have a go at me, if you like.” When we were alone, he helped me to my feet, brushed me off and asked me my name. As I gave him my name, I gave him my heart. Not long afterward I worked up the courage to speak to him and was devastated to discover that he didn’t remember my name. He might as well have rescued a stray dog.

David Neesom arrived at Greystone a few months afterward. He was a dark-haired version of Michael, and he, too, was everything I was not. He at once became Michael’s best mate and the object of my hatred. Without proof, I convinced myself that they were soon shagging in the quiet, dark corners of the school. I knew what went on in those corners of the library and in the bogs when everyone was supposed to be asleep. I knew because I spied. Though I saw many others, I never actually saw Michael and David
in flagrante delicto
. No matter. I knew what I knew; I didn’t need proof.

My years at Greystone were not a complete loss since I was likely the brightest student who ever walked their halls. I won academic medals in every subject. I was even honoured for my beautiful handwriting. I was also, according to the fey music master, gifted with the voice of an angel; my girlish face and red curls added to the effect. But the only award that would have meant something to me was a smile of genuine affection from Michael Browne, and that award remained out of my reach. Meanwhile, he and David Neesom could not keep their eyes from one another. In secret I tormented myself by imagining them doing all the disgusting things I had seen others do. David Neesom had stolen my only friend. Soon I hated them equally. I could have borne it if Michael had treated me badly. But he ignored me as if I were of no consequence. His indifference ignited a fire in me that can only be quenched by his death.

The year I was seventeen, three Greystone students lost their lives. One of them drowned in the river behind the school. With a bit of assistance. The second fell from a window. Also with a bit of assistance. A fortnight after the second death, the dormitory mysteriously caught fire in the middle of the night and burned to the ground. It was called a “miracle” that only one boy was killed in the fire. Miracle? It was blind luck. My plan to roast them all was foiled by the insomniac housemaster who raised the alarm and got everyone else out. The dormitory was not rebuilt and the school closed soon afterward. I disappeared; as far as I know no one ever looked for me.

I wandered England and Europe, killing whenever I saw a man whose death would improve the world. When I saw how good I was at it, I realized I had found my calling.

That’s the secret to success. Choose your career, whether it be doctor, lawyer, merchant chief, or murderer. Then study accordingly. I intended to murder men, so it behooved me to learn how a man is put together below the surface – veins, arteries, organs, and so forth. I delved into medical journals and books when I could find them. I apprenticed to a butcher for a while and made the amazing discovery that swine and human beings are very similar in their physical arrangement. I apprenticed in another place to an apothecary. I haunted courthouses whenever there was a murder trial, to learn what kinds of mistakes got a murderer caught. Preparation, all is preparation!

I studied texts of sensational trials when I could get my hands on them. No longer a boy forced to read boring, dead old classics written by boring, dead old men, I began to devour detective novels. I spent every available shilling on them. After I discovered Sherlock, I read nothing else. I admit that, like thousands of my countrymen, in the beginning I believed the great detective was real.

While under that delusion, I read “A Study in Scarlet,” and “Sign of the Four,” and the serialized stories in old copies of the
Strand
until the pages were stained and creased from handling. I kept copious notes. As time passed, my notes, which had begun in the spirit of admiration, gradually shifted to those things that displeased me or seemed inconsistent. I often said to myself, “That was foolish of so-and-so. To avoid detection all he had to do was…” This was good for me. The books caused me to analyse and re-analyse the reasons Sherlock found the villain out.

Within a few years I knew I could commit whatever crime I wished and get away with it. That was when I decided to commit the same kinds of crime as Jack, to prove myself more clever, better, and with a worthier prey. Unlike Jack, that gormless coward, my victims would not be weak, helpless women who had harmed no one. My prey would deserve to die.

As well as building my knowledge during those years of invisibility, I also built my health and strength. At twenty-five I am much stronger than I look. Four dead men in the past four months could attest to that were they able to attest to anything.

A year ago, there was an unexpected and amazing turn. Sherlock was fictional; that I had finally learned, though by then it no longer mattered. No flesh-and-blood detective was as clever as the imaginary one. Once I learned he was a figment of his creator’s imagination, I longed for a way to delve into that imagination. As luck would have it, the old walrus-moustachioed author advertised in the newspaper for a secretary, stipulating that it must be someone with a very fine hand.

When Doyle saw my beautiful penmanship he hired me on the spot. He was a physically impressive man, tall and broad, the kind who exudes vigour and strength. I suspect in hiring me he may have been partly motivated by the pity brawny men often feel for one like myself, slight and delicately built. He did not know that though I was no more than shoulder-high to him, I could kill him in a matter of moments if the notion seized me. My palms almost itched to find out how much effort it would take to push a blade through the skin, muscles, tendons, and finally through the fragile, pulsing arterial wall of such a thick, bull-like neck.

He was a man who liked to talk. I think he liked to talk more than he liked to write. He was also a man of varied interests, some of them a little peculiar. He was a doctor for several years, but not a successful one. Eventually he laid down his stethoscope and picked up a pen and gave Sherlock to the world. When the war in Africa began he had volunteered money, his person, and his training to go there and briefly be a doctor again. Somewhere along the way, he became keenly interested in spiritualism and wrote endlessly on the subject. While I worked for him, I heard him grumble constantly that he wanted to kill Sherlock and let him stay dead but the public wouldn’t let him.

His home, where I worked, was an admirable large brick house, three storeys tall, called Undershaw, in Hindhead, Surrey. It was surrounded by tall trees and grasses, with a lake nearby. It had more windows than I have ever seen in a house. When we became well acquainted as employer and secretary, he told me how he had designed it for his wife, a fragile consumptive with a warm heart. He had the grand staircase constructed with shallow stairs for her ease in walking. His initials are carved into the doors, and stained glass windows bear the family crest. There are at least thirty-six rooms, perhaps more, ten of them bedrooms. Doyle grandly insisted that I live there as their guest. It was all very flash, as the lower class says.

My primary work was copying over a manuscript he was working upon, called “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” which may prove to be of interest to readers. I modestly admit to giving him suggestions whenever the plot stuck. At times he would stop writing, lean back, and set off on an excursion of nostalgia and tell of his days as a military doctor. The worst he had to face, he said, was not hacking off shattered limbs from wounded men, but watching them die horribly from enteric fevers. His military experience lasted only about three months, but he still kept in touch with “the lads” who had served with him. He offered to let me read some of their letters. I politely refused because I wasn’t interested. That was a mistake. Reading them would have been much to my advantage.

His wife, Louise (he called her Touie), was a wisp of a lady who looked as if a strong breeze would blow her away, and whose head with its thick hair looked too heavy for her slender neck. It embarrasses me now to put the words down, but sometimes, in the dark of night, I lay awake and pretended she was my mother. Perhaps if my mother had lived, I might have been… It doesn’t matter, does it. What is, is.

At this time I hit upon the genius of my plan, a stroke of brilliance that would capitalize upon the very things over which I had been bullied and tormented. Louise Doyle was unwittingly the inspiration. I surreptitiously studied the way she used her hands when she cut flowers or touched her two horrid children, brats no one but a mother could love. I studied the way she demurely lowered her gaze or shyly cocked her head to one side; the way she walked; the way she spoke. At night, before my mirror, I practised what I had observed.

Days I spend my time as the humble amanuensis of Arthur Conan Doyle, who, I hear, is to be knighted by King Edward this year.

Nights I worked in front of my mirror perfecting my feminine character, whom I named Angelique. I also prowled the large house after everyone had retired. I learned how to enter and leave any room undetected, often exiting with a piece of Louise’s clothing or that of a maidservant, in which to practice moving. I discovered that women’s clothing is not made for either comfort or convenience! They walk differently than a man because they are hampered by long skirts. Insult added to injury, women’s shoes are the epitome of torture. But I persevered. If they could do it, I could do it.

As I had no expenses and went nowhere, I was able to save all my wages. Six months ago, when I had as much money as I expected to need, I gave Sir Arthur a fortnight’s notice. I told him a pitiful story of my sainted mother’s ill health; I was forced to resign my position and see to her welfare in Scotland.

He was aggrieved at losing the best secretary he had ever had. My last day, he gave me a large gold watch, an excessively vulgar thing; the man has no taste. On the back was engraved:

To S. MacKay

from

Arthur Conan Doyle.

His name was engraved in slightly larger letters than mine!

After leaving Undershaw, I went only forty miles away, to London, where I lived for nearly a month in a disgusting, tiny room with piles of dirt in the corners and vermin playing beneath and sometimes on my bed. I visited a seamstress my first day in London. I told her that my dear wife, Angelique, needed several garments made but was too ill for actual fittings. The seamstress was most sympathetic, took the dimensions I wrote for her, and made me a coat and several inexpensive frocks of plain, unremarkable material, as well as one charming gown which Angelique would need when she had recovered. The dressmaker expressed sincere wishes that my wife would come to visit when she was quite well so that the dressmaker could see the dresses on her. I told the same story to a milliner and then a shoemaker. The shoemaker choked, “I trust your dear lady will soon be strong enough for dancing, sir.” If he thought that my bride had rather large feet, he was too much of a gentleman to comment. Not one to argue with success, I repeated it to a wig maker, adding that her illness had robbed her of her beautiful hair. The ringleted auburn wig was near the colour of my own hair.