My Dear Watson (10 page)

Watson resumed his place at his desk with satisfaction while Mary lowered her needlework slowly. Glancing up at her, Watson became concerned.

“You aren’t ill, are you dear?” he asked. “Did…” and here was a bit of deductive reasoning, “Was it seeing Holmes that upset you?”

“He just brings about such…mixed emotions in me, darling,” she told him tactfully.

“Oh, I know it’s difficult to be reminded of your troubles, your unfortunate father, but if not for all that hardship, we would never have met,” Watson reminded her.

“Of course,” Mary said through a tight smile, and went back to her knitting with such trouble in her mind that she made several mistakes and at last had to set it aside.

It
had
been the sight of Holmes that disturbed her, the look on his face. Something about it said plainly that he did not like her, and if she were being perfectly honest, she had started to feel the same way about him.

It was not just that he distracted Watson, that he seemed to own her husband and was only lending him to her for a time. He had been peculiar from the start, when she came to him for help in the first place. He was entirely too pleased to hear that she was having “troubles” (as Watson phrased them) if it meant that he could have a case. And then there was something else that had bothered her for quite a while now, ever since she had seen Watson’s notes of the case: the way Holmes had treated his prisoner, Jonathan Small—the murderer who hated her father—as though he were an equal and a gentleman. That bothered her quite a bit. She rather judged Sherlock Holmes by the company he liked to keep.

I am speculating quite a bit on Mary Morstan, but I feel that I’m in a perfect position to do so—who else could better understand the trials and tribulations of being Watson’s wife? And knowing what I know about Mr. Holmes, I can imagine pretty well what she might have come to suspect, and what she surely put up with. There is a good chance she never came to know the full story, for it was not a time in Watson’s life where he could be honest about himself; that came with maturity, with the hardships of our nation, and with enough distance from Sherlock Holmes to see him for what he truly is.

1919: Dinner

There is a serious commotion when it comes time to introduce Kitty to Sherlock Holmes. She brings out the last bit of food for the table, and I present her to Holmes as “our girl Kitty.” He turns on the charm to annoy me.

Taking her hand and kissing the top of it, Holmes says, “What a fine pleasure to meet you, young miss.”

Kitty is nearly writhing with excitement, but manages to say, “Oh the pleasure is all mine, Mr. Holmes! We are all
so
impressed to have you here.”

I push her back into the kitchen as Holmes looks up at me with delight.

“I’m so sorry if my presence is distracting to your girl. She seems thoroughly turned around at my being here.”

“Oh,” I say to him. “No apology necessary! She gets just as flustered when the milk man arrives.”

Watson snorts as he seats himself at the table, and Holmes covers the twist in his face by offering to pull out my chair. I accept, cautiously, afraid he might yank it from beneath me like a schoolboy, but I am not to be so humiliated today. In fact, once everyone starts to eat, I think for a moment that dinner will be a silent affair. That is until I ask Watson to pass me the salt.

“I’ve noticed, Mrs. Watson, that you refer to your husband by his surname,” Holmes observes. “It is very strange.”

“You refer to my husband by his surname as well,” I return.

“Ah, yes, but I am not his wife.”

“Hmmm!” I hum brightly at him, and once again his face goes sour. I’m sure he heard every subtle facet of that noise, my implication that I know his nature, that I imagine he would be Watson’s wife if he could, my lording over him the fact that I have that official status in Watson’s life, that I have won. It is a hit against him, a palpable hit.

Alas, however: I am playing against a master, and I can admit when I’ve been clearly outdone.

“You are such a unique person,” Holmes says poisonously. “What a shame that history will most likely never remember your name.”

And just as he could hear all of my insults, I can hear all of his. We speak the same language.

He means to remind me that it is already clear that Sherlock Holmes is a name which will live forever, and not only can I never hope to catch up to him in personal achievement, his is the name that will be always associated with Watson’s as well. Only my grave will connect me with my husband. Who would ever care to remember the wife, the woman behind the man, especially if she is already the second woman?

Holmes goes vigorously back to his food after delivering this blow. Not exactly Queensberry rules he’s fighting with, are they? But he has less to be proud of than he would lead one to believe. He never did fight fair.

1888: The Naval Treaty

A noble man would have let his friend’s marriage stand, but once Holmes had roused himself to fetch Watson once, they fell back into old habits immediately. Not a month after the incident with the Stockbroker’s Clerk, Watson receives an excuse to drop by Baker Street, a letter from an old school friend pleading for help. He couldn’t get to Holmes fast enough, but once he arrived he was content to merely sit in the man’s presence while Holmes finished an experiment.

It was only a “commonplace murder” that Holmes was solving, and he dashed off a note to that effect before giving Watson his full and unfettered attention. He read the letter from Percy Phelps and they took the first train out to Woking, Holmes tweaking Watson affectionately all the way.

“So this is an old friend of yours, Watson? A close friend?”

“Oh, yes, at one time we were extremely close,” said Watson, not realizing he was being teased.

“As close as I am with my friends?” Holmes asked rakishly.

“Why Holmes, I was under the impression that you have very few friends! Oh, wait,” he said, finally noting Holmes’s face. “I see your meaning now. No Holmes, we were not friends of that sort.”

“Really? He seems very warm towards you in his letter.”

“Well, he is a desperate man.”

Holmes burst out in hearty laughter, and even Watson could not help but let a smile escape. It was a delightful day.

Arriving at the Phelps home and hearing of his friend’s troubles however, Watson let his mood dampen in sympathy. He just cannot remain cheerful when confronted with someone else’s suffering. Holmes, as ever, kept his emotions out of the case, out of the world where the rest of us bleed on one another. The mystery of the stolen treaty resided in one area of his mind while in another, he noticed roses growing outside of the window.

Holmes unlatched the window and plucked one of the flowers, and this is a fascinating thing to me, because I think I understand what he was trying to do. His discourse on flowers being proof of some benevolent and artistic creator ring rather false from his mouth; I’ve never heard of anyone so married to reason as Sherlock Holmes, and every reasonable man doubts the existence of God profoundly. I’ve never yet met one who was a regular at worship services, though they had all picked through the Bible and could at a second’s notice detail the parts with which they disagree.

“Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers,” he said, supposedly deducing that religion is correct because flowers are beautiful. No, Holmes was not having a moment of spiritual conversion. He was putting on a bit of a show for Watson, trying to prove his sensitive side at a most insensitive moment. Watson was left rather more annoyed, much like his friend Phelps and the man’s fiancé, that Holmes seemed so uninvolved in the matter at hand. Watson was used to it, but he was a little embarrassed before his old friend. Phelps’s face seemed to plead towards him—didn’t Watson put his own reputation behind Holmes with the stories he wrote? Was this scatter-brained oddity who stood at their window really the unmatched detective that Watson promised?

Holmes and Watson left after hearing the story of the missing treaty, since nothing more could be done there. On the train home, Holmes once again attempted to show Watson what a well-rounded, sympathetic person he was, and again he seemed to do it with two left feet. Holmes commented on how nice it was to travel this way, high above London, and to see the surrounding houses. Watson was perplexed since, on looking out the window, all that could be seen was a sordid mass of city and the boarding schools erupting from the sea of roof slates, but that is what Holmes claimed to enjoy: “Lighthouses, my boy! Beacons of the future! Capsules, with hundreds of bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future.”

In the same breath Holmes’s mind returned to the case, and apparently he is a bit like talking to a madman in the rapid way his thoughts revolve, but I don’t begrudge him the sentiment this time. I was a teacher before the war, and I plan to be again. I value the potential of bright young children as much as anyone.

Holmes was obviously trying hard to prove himself, and I’ll rest my case on how badly he was bruised when he imagined Watson was going to return home without him.

“Today must be a day of inquiries,” Holmes said happily, looking forward to it all.

“My practice…” Watson began.

“Oh if you find your own cases more interesting than mine—” Holmes snapped at him, but Watson put a hand on his knee.

“I was going to say that my practice could get on very well for a day or two. Without me, Holmes,” he clarified. That last bit is a line you will not find in the official record. I think it’s perfectly obvious why not.

“Excellent!” Holmes said. “Then we’ll look into this matter together.”

Holmes released Watson to his wife that night only to collect him back again the next morning. As they returned to Woking on the train, Holmes began moving the key players in the mystery like they were large chess pieces. For his ends he needed to send Watson and poor ill Phelps back to London to stay the night at Baker Street. He did it with an impish grin.

Watson went where he was bidden. Besides, he genuinely wished to catch up with his old chum Phelps, but the poor man could talk of nothing but the case. And Holmes. Questions about Holmes and his methods, Holmes and his tactics; what has he said, what does he know, what does he think?

“You know him well, Watson. He is such an inscrutable fellow, that I never know what to make of him.”

No answer would satisfy Phelps, and eventually he murdered Watson’s good mood with his incessant though understandable worry. Watson only once got him off the track of his own problems by saying, “You’re not the first to wonder all this about Holmes you know! He’s a mystery to all of us.”

Phelps had taken in the breath for his next frantic question, but let it out noiselessly. He studied Watson for a moment before asking, “You weren’t like this at school, were you?”

“Like what?” Watson asked moodily. He thought Phelps would scold him for being impatient, and so what if he was a little short now? Was he not a full grown man? Had he not been shot enough times to make his own small demands on the world?

But that was not Phelps’s meaning.

“This way you are with Holmes,” he said.

Watson clammed shut, and shifted uncomfortably. “How do you mean?” he murmured.

“Most men grow out of it, not into it, don’t they?”

“I have a wife,” Watson pointed out to him.

“And well you should, friend Watson. Well you should.”

Phelps couldn’t keep his mind off his own troubles any further than these few comments, and Watson eventually insisted they go to bed to get away from the incessant worrying of his friend. Watson wrote that he tossed all night, ostensibly over the case, but he was rather more concerned about Holmes, always Holmes.

Watson was so conflicted that night. Privately, he missed Holmes but still remembered what drove him away. None of it was changed, Watson knew that intellectually. Phelps had noticed that Holmes was inscrutable? He had no earthly idea. What logic lies beneath letting Watson marry and
then
starting to work so desperately to bring him back? Why not treat him properly all the while, or reform before it was too late?

And then there were the social troubles relative to Holmes. Not just in the lonely way he lives, or how being his only friend tends to isolate one from the world, but these suspicions of even his oldest friends, how were those to be avoided? Was he not careful enough? Did he give himself away so obviously that even a woman, a wife, was not enough to assure the public of his vigor?

Watson was just as anxious as Phelps for the return of Holmes the next day. He felt that laying eyes on him again would bring some clarity, and it did. Holmes was injured, roughed up and with a bandage around one hand. His instant sympathy for Holmes, his concern for the man’s well-being, that told Watson just how deep his involvement went; consequences be what they may, Watson was entwined tightly here.

Holmes was not at all concerned by the damage his body received, he never could be bothered, whether the injury came from assault or addiction. He was high on a case well-reasoned, and he revealed Phelps’s treaty with significant theatrics, concealing it under a dish cover and nearly giving the unfortunate man a heart attack.

“There there!” said Holmes. “It was too bad to spring it on you like this; but Watson here will tell you that I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.” He winked at Watson over Phelps’s head, but was distracted when Phelps seized his hand and kissed it. Holmes burst out laughing, told Phelps how he had battled the man’s future brother-in-law for the document, and sent him home.

“Nicely played, Holmes,” Watson told him. “Now let me see your hand.”

Holmes smiled and handed it over. Watson unwrapped the bandage and winced at the cut across Holmes’s knuckles.

“You’ve got to be more careful, Holmes!” he scolded. “If this cut had been deeper you might have lost the use of your fingers. How would you like to hold a pipette then, hmm? Or play the violin? You should have more consideration for yourself.”