My Dear Watson (22 page)

Holmes was happy to have his captive’s esteem. “Ah, Colonel! ‘Journeys end in lovers’ meetings,’ as the old play says.” Holmes tweaked the Colonel a bit even as he put his own collar back in place from where this man had recently tried to throttle him to death. “Colonel Sebastian Moran, once of Her Majesty’s Indian Army, and the best heavy-game shot that our Eastern Empire has ever produced. I believe I am correct, Colonel, in saying that your bag of tigers still remains unrivalled?”

The Colonel could say nothing, and Watson described his as being in almost a trance, and so smoldering with restrained power that he looked like a tiger himself. Holmes certainly thought so.

“You are my tiger,” Holmes said to him, and pointing around at Watson and Lestrade he added, “and these are my reserve guns.” He taunted Moran by telling him that, with the exception of him using the same house that Holmes had thought to use, everything had gone according to plan. Moran had acted just as Holmes knew he would. Like knows like.

Moran could hardly tolerate it. He all but begged Lestrade to take him away to jail. He may have been caught in the act of trying to pull off a murder, but he shouldn’t have to listen to this unbearable gloating!

He was not however charged with trying to murder Sherlock Holmes, but instead with the murder of the Honorable Ronald Adair. His unique gun would prove his guilt, and Holmes handed Lestrade the prize prisoner with no strings attached to him, congratulating the Inspector on his singular capture. For once it really was the game he was after, and not the credit. It was so good just to be back at it, and free for a time from assassins, that he didn’t care a whit who knew how impressive he had been.

Walking into the Baker Street rooms after three years was incredible for Watson. The dust and clutter showed that no one had truly lived in these rooms for a while, but that was thankfully about to change. Here were Holmes’s chemical glasses, his violin, his mess of papers, his jackknife stuck in the mantle just like it ever was. Mrs. Hudson was perfectly safe and had even found the bullet that was meant for Holmes. She gave it to him and departed.

Holmes held out the flattened bullet to show Watson.

“A soft revolver bullet, as you perceive, Watson. There’s genius in that, for who would expect to find such a thing fired from an air-gun?” Holmes would hold onto that small piece of genius all his life, a rather morbid bit of memorabilia. Watson took the bullet and shook his head. Imagine something so small obliterating such a fine man as stood before him? Liquefying his brilliant thoughts with the simple force of its momentum? What a horrifying little thing it was.

“Plum in the middle of the back of the head and smack through the brain,” Holmes said, holding up the bust of himself with its forehead blown out, and yet talking just as pleasantly as if he was having tea. He spoke of Colonel Moran’s crack shot with pride, even pulling down his entry in the catalogue to read Watson the man’s impressive biography. He explained his logic behind capturing Moran, and then concluded that the man was no longer a threat to them.

“Once again Mr. Sherlock Holmes is free to devote his life to examining those interesting little problems which the complex life of London so plentifully presents,” Holmes said, lighting a cigarette with relish and pleasure at the very thought of it. He and Watson sat in silence for a bit, but they couldn’t take their eyes off one another. Holmes was smiling and swinging his crossed leg happily, like a schoolboy. Watson had to blink forcefully every few seconds so that he would not spoil their reunion with a bunch of weeping. There was a strange ache in his heart, the opposite of when it had been broken, but painful all the same—it was the ache of healing.

Holmes finished his cigarette, crushed it out in the eye of his bust like he was adding the last smudge of paint onto a masterpiece, and then simply let the thing roll from his hands onto the floor. With his foot Holmes tucked the shattered thing under his chair and away. He sighed and then beckoned Watson over to him. Watson rose to obey.

“You look just as I left you, Watson,” Holmes said, taking his hand and looking up at him. “A little sadder, perhaps. I hear it’s been a hard time for you.”

Watson said nothing. These were not questions.

“You’ll stay with me tonight,” Holmes said. This too was not a question, but Watson nodded anyway. They removed themselves to Holmes’s bedchamber, and that’s about all I care to know about that night.

When Watson awoke the next morning he kept his eyes shut. He had of late taken to imagining himself back at Baker Street in those malleable moments after sleep, when the world was not yet real again, and a man had to remember it all. If Watson exerted himself he could almost hear the movement of Mrs. Hudson below, he could sense the dimensions of Holmes’s room (for he always imagined himself there, and not in his own bed), and if he concentrated very hard he could even smell the ghost of Holmes’s pipe smoke. This was the only time in his long dreary days that he felt happy, and hopeful, and safe. Each morning it crushed him to open his eyes and see his small, basic room in Kensington and remember that he was alone.

Watson prepared himself for the blow, for he knew beneath his thoughts that he had to be dreaming. He forced his eyes full open, withstanding the pain from the light, but his fantasy persisted. And then it rushed back to him; Holmes returned, Moran imprisoned, the night spent in each other’s arms. Holmes was sitting in his robe beside Watson, the smoke from his pipe partially clouding his frowning face from view, one knee up and a small mountain of paper scraps that he was slowly turning over.

“Good morning, Watson,” he said without looking over. On another day Watson might have asked how Holmes knew he had opened his eyes, but not on this one. At last Watson couldn’t hold it in anymore, and tears began sliding rapidly down his face.

This Holmes took a bit longer to notice. When he didn’t get a verbal response, he turned to his friend and found him crying with his hand over his eyes, trying to hide his weakness.

“What’s the matter, man? You’re not injured, are you?”

“No,” Watson said, almost laughing, and trying to stop that at least, lest he become fully hysterical.

“Well, what is it then? Everything’s set back to right now, there’s no need to get upset.”

“You don’t understand, Holmes!” Watson groaned. “I’ve had so many dreams where you came back alive, that somehow I had missed your tracks or you’d been fished out of the Falls, or any number of impossible things that seemed so convincing in the dream…but then I’d wake up. And for a moment I would feel it as true as anything, and then remember that you were gone all over again.”

Holmes was watching Watson curiously, but said nothing. He looked as if he was thinking of calling another doctor in, one who still had his sense.

“And now it’s swapped round!” Watson said insistently. How to make Holmes understand what it was doing to him? “I keep thinking this isn’t real, that you aren’t real,” he said, grasping Holmes’s arm since the corporeal feel of it the previous night and brought him such reassurance. It helped, but only a little. This had all been waiting to come out for longer than either man could know.

Holmes at last seemed to realize Watson’s trouble and tucked his pipe in the side of his mouth so that he could take both of Watson’s hands and bring them to his heart. Watson likes pretty gestures like that.

“I don’t want you to ever think so little of my powers again, Watson,” Holmes lectured with amusement, one hand holding Watson’s hands together and the other punctuating his words with little stabs of his pipe. “I promised you I would never die, and I mean to keep that promise. I shall be offended if you ever assume I’ve perished again. Have I made myself clear?”

Watson nodded and took back his hands to dry his face. “I love you, Holmes. It’s positively indecent how much I love you.”

“Of course it is. Do us a favor and just move breakfast in here after Mrs. Hudson brings it up, I don’t want to upset these papers.”

“Anything you like, my friend,” Watson told him. And then Sherlock Holmes came the closest to blushing that I believe he ever got, and he stuffed his pipe back in his mouth to hide a very foolish smile.

1894: The Golden Pince-Nez

By November Watson had moved back to Baker Street. In truth, after that first night with Holmes, he never slept in Kensington again. Watson sold his practice for a healthy amount of money, and only later discovered that Holmes had financed every cent of it through a filter of people to make sure Watson would be able to come home and stay. He had his tragic flaws, but Holmes was not about to make the exact same mistake twice; Watson was finally available, and Holmes did not hesitate in securing him again. Even I must admit that it was a sweet thing to do. He may not have ever bothered to say it, but it was quite clear that he loved Watson too.

They had an easy time of it for that first year, and there is only one case on record in 1894 after
The Empty House
precisely because Watson was so happy once more. When he is content he tends to close around the feeling protectively, like an oyster with a pearl. Even I know very little of this period outside of what I have gleaned from this one case; Watson is quite secretive about it.

It was a sloshing night in November, and Holmes tried to pretend he was glad to have no case to run down, since the weather was so wretched. Of course when a client pulled up he was ready to dig out his foul weather gear with enthusiastic glee, the liar.

However they were not required out in the gale. Young Stanley Hopkins, a rising detective with the official force, came in plainly perplexed. He told the story of Willoughby Smith’s murder, and of how he had tried to apply Holmes’s methods in his investigation. But without a motive he was lost to even know where to start. Lucky for Holmes the motives of most people are obscure to him; that was the part he always needed explained to him in the end. Searching for a motive means guessing at people’s emotions, and it’s what often leads Scotland Yard to accuse and juries to convict the wrong man. It is another thing to know patterns of motivation—that is what Holmes studies the agony columns for—but the police begin by thinking that their suspect is either just like them in thought or else entirely monstrous and unknowable, and in both directions they tend to be wrong. For Holmes the facts must speak for themselves.

Of course, he must have all the facts first. Holmes was getting agitated with Hopkins by the lack of evidence until the young official handed him the pince-nez glasses that were found in the dead man’s hand, presumably ripped from the murderer.
That
Holmes was satisfied to have. He examined them as Watson and Hopkins sat watching, and then tossed off an impressive list of features for their owner that deeply impressed Hopkins. The next day found Holmes and Watson at the scene of the crime.

I think Watson set down this case alone of that year because it displayed some of Holmes’s prettiest tricks. The way a painter might sketch his sweetheart in a hurry if he’d seen her turn just the right way or be in exquisite light, Watson wanted an image of Holmes at this time. Finally, he thought, they had worked through all their personal failings. Surely after three years apart neither one would ever take the other for granted again. At last he had a Holmes who seemed mature and respectful and settled, and this story put him on record as such. It was good of Watson to preserve the moment, because of course it wouldn’t last very long. Watson had no inkling at the time. He thought that by writing this story he was marking a new beginning. He would look back on this time later and wonder at how brief it truly was.

Holmes deduced their woman murderer must still be hiding in the house, since her exit was blocked and only one room could be concealing her, the bedroom of Professor Coram. Holmes could find her out by sounding the walls, but he much preferred to save himself the work, and so had his criminal reveal herself by dropping ash all over the floor and then observing where it had been smudged. He did the same thing when he needed the location of the stolen Naval Treaty in 1888. He’ll go climbing around if he absolutely has to, but it’s so much more artful to coax his prey into the net. “I take a short cut when I can get it,” he told Watson. And don’t we all.

Watson and the Professor were both surprised to see Holmes tearing through cigarette after cigarette, oblivious to his plotting. Watson even spotted Holmes being friendly with the housekeeper, and thought how nice that he really could be charming to a woman if only he wanted to (or if only he needed something from her, like information on the Professor’s eating habits). It seemed that Holmes really had altered himself, and for the better: “We loitered the morning away in the garden… As to my friend, all his usual energy seemed to have deserted him. I had never known him handle a case in such a half-hearted fashion.” To Watson it seemed a kind of calming, a good omen for their future. He is a terminal optimist.

That sort of creeping mildness had gotten the better of Holmes once before, but even Holmes thought he had thrown it off for good this time. Wasn’t there such a thing as too much excitement? And didn’t he have all he could handle in fighting Moriarty? But here he was beginning to miss it already. And just like any drug it became less and less effective in regular doses.

When Holmes had seen the hiding place of their murderer in the ashes, he rose up with his cheeks aflame. Watson noted: “Only at a crisis have I seen those battle-signals flying.” Here was his moment, but it was so fleeting, it hardly propped him up for an hour. By the time they had been to the Russian embassy and dropped off the papers to secure a man’s release from prison, Holmes was utterly deflated. He tried to hide it from Watson, and had he not been so miserable he could have managed to easily. It was a question of energy, and Holmes just couldn’t make the effort.

“That was an interesting one, eh?” Watson asked him in their hansom ride home. “One for the public I should think, it was quite singular.”