My Dear Watson (24 page)

He did however put forth some effort, in May of 1895, to make some inquiries on Wilde’s behalf; not only as a member of the club himself, but for the hideous precedence Wilde’s conviction would set for all of them. But there was nothing to be done. Of what they accused him, Wilde was guilty. Holmes certainly couldn’t risk himself and Watson coming under suspicion for a case so hopelessly lost already. He could only shake his head and sink lower into the hopeless mood he’d found himself in since coming back to life.

But that is why they were in Oxford in May of 1895—Holmes had an idea he might start with Wilde’s university days and systematically cast doubt on all the accusations against him, but Wilde seemed dead set to be his own worst enemy, and no one could or would speak for him anyway. The climate was too vicious for even kindness to be bestowed on Wilde. Only the bravest of his closest friends ever dared to help him, and their efforts were always thankless.

Publishing this story to the masses in 1904, Watson was secure enough to say only this: “It was in the year ’95 that a combination of events, into which I need not enter, caused Mr. Sherlock Holmes and myself to spend some weeks in one of our great university towns, and it was during this time that the small but instructive adventure which I am about to relate befell us.” It was rather a danger to say even this; I have figured it out, and so others might as well, but it was the least he could do to acknowledge it. It was not nothing, after all, and he was not uninvolved.

After their true mission turned out to be such a sad failure, they endeavored to cover the trip with some legitimate purpose, should they themselves be brought up about the intent of the questions Holmes had asked several of the old professors and staff—those questions would be put down to idle gossip, unrelated to their business in the area, if only they could come up with another story. Such was their fear of persecution, the lengths which had to be gone to, only to exist as they were made and love how they chose.

They secured temporary rooms and Holmes went to bury himself in the nearest library. He set himself to work on a project of some importance, Watson reports, having to do with early English charters. Watson said that Holmes was “uncomfortable” away from Baker Street and all his belongings, that he was in bad temper. This is a bit of an understatement; Holmes was coming to a personal crisis that would put them both through agony. His impressive will was about to be thoroughly broken.

But first this case would be sorted through. It was a bit of a logical treat, something he would have enjoyed much more in earlier years. In fact, it reminded him a bit of the first few unofficial problems he ever solved, back in school when people would come to him with their little “perplexions,” a word he invented to describe the puzzled faces his classmates would make when they were out of their depths. He could always discover, just from talking with those boys, where they had lost their possessions or if their mates had borrowed their clothes, their girlfriends, even their answers on a test.

In 1885 a professor’s office has been broken into and an exam had been…examined. It must have been one of the three students who were getting ready to take it, and Holmes got to figure out which one. “Quite a little parlor game—sort of three-card trick, is it not?” he asked Watson. It was a nice way to display his talents, but recalling to him his younger days was not exactly healthy for Holmes, I don’t think—they were not his best times.

He got to turn out a few nice deductions while he was at it; he knew the order the papers were found in, marked the direction of a scratch, and tied an odd substance to one student: the guilty party. Holmes was even well enough at one moment to joke with Watson when he realized that he himself had made them miss dinner: “What with your eternal tobacco, Watson, and your irregularity at meals, I expect that you will get notice to quit, and that I shall share your downfall.” They smiled at each other secretly; they were just as married as I am, really. They were not so different at all.

The decision had been threatening Sherlock Holmes for months, but something about this case, the terrible priorities of society and law that had brought him out to the university, finished his resolve. I believe it might have been nostalgia—for those heady days when he was at school, the hope he had once known, the ambition that had once driven him. Seeing young Gilchrist confess his crime, and what a tiny thing it seemed! To sneak on an exam, but resolve to be a better man thereafter… Holmes sprung from the room with forgiveness in his heart, for the boy himself, for the servant who had covered for him since he’d known him as a child, and for the professor as well. They just didn’t know the horrors of the world, they were so darling and innocent. Holmes had once been that way himself, silly and young. He missed it. He was only forty-one years old, and yet he missed his youth terribly. Life was both too long and too short to spend it as fearfully sad as he had recently been.

When they returned to Baker Street the following week, Holmes brought home with him a bottle of the seven percent solution. He could have gotten it at any pharmacy, at any time when he was out of Watson’s sight. I would wager he did it while Watson was asleep. He was disappointed in himself, but he was finally decided. It might not work like it used to, he kept reminding himself—this was an experiment, and nothing more. But he was smart enough to know when he was lying to himself.

He waited until they got back to Baker Street. He needed his morocco case anyway, and if this was to be an experiment, then he would treat it as such. He would sit as his chemical table after Watson had gone trustingly to bed, and he would know once and for all.

Arriving home they found that the newspapers had stacked up on the table. Holmes saw that Wilde had been convicted and sentenced to two years of hard labor, the worst he could have gotten, and yet the judge had said it was not enough. Even Mrs. Hudson gossiped to them about the case, saying, “Can you believe it? For someone as famous as that to stoop to such lowness?” Watson’s face had broken out in emotion, and Holmes had hurried him upstairs before she noticed, and he shooed Mrs. Hudson away to her own business. Holmes had had quite enough of the dreary world at that point, the dun-colored, commonplace world.

Watson was tired from their journey home. He had a cigarette and went to bed, but not before wondering aloud about Mrs. Hudson—to think of how much she loved them, he said, how much she loved Holmes especially; would she feel the same way if she knew? Would she gain sympathy for Wilde, or would she be revolted by them as well? Would she report them to the police and tell the next tenants: “Can you believe it? For someone as famous as Sherlock Holmes to stoop to such lowness?” Holmes didn’t want to talk about it. He waited for Watson to retire and threw the newspapers straight into the fire.

It was time for him to know. Wilde had been a man of passion, of flame. He had a whole philosophy around it. Did he regret anything at this moment? Would he regret it in the future, or on his death bed, or when he met his maker? Holmes had never gone in for their preening ways—the Decadents, as they fancied themselves, claiming the insult that critics threw at them as their regal title. A lazy crew, Holmes had always felt, but not without interest. There was something to the notion of creating oneself like a work of art. Had not Holmes crafted his mind in much the same way? Didn’t he choose to live recklessly, and with a hard, gem-like flame?

“To get back one’s youth, one has merely to repeat one’s follies.”

It was time now for Sherlock Holmes to rekindle himself, or to at least try and rescue his mind from stagnation. Watson might understand, or he might not, but this was no way to let a life go by, with one tedious day after another. Sherlock Holmes, for all his faults, did not take his life for granted. At least, not after he’d nearly lost it, or when he was in his right mind.

Holmes cleared a space on his chemical table. He laid out the syringe, the bottle, and he rolled up his sleeve. He loaded the solution in; how near this was to loading a bullet into a gun! It felt just as deadly I imagine, but it felt necessary as well. It was time to know, and even I can hardly blame him this time, because he did deserve a life he could enjoy. Each of us should only have to die once, after all.

He put the needle on his skin, slid it in just the slightest bit. That sensation had stopped hurting him years ago, it felt less like a pinch and more like a kiss. He held it for a long moment, knowing that he could stop, and yet still knowing that he would not. He hung his head for a moment, made a soft, strangled noise of both agony and expectation, and he pushed the plunger. He knew the results in an instant.

It had worked! But of course it had worked! It zinged through him just like it always did, it made his heart race at long last. Holmes was so relieved, so ecstatic! There was the ghost of an idea in his head about how really horrible this was, how unhealthy, but what did that matter now? He was only thankful that he had his solution once again, the solution to his greatest problem.

He gathered up the morocco case quickly and smuggled it to his room. He would lock it in his safe when not in use so that Watson would never suspect. Watson! He would go to him now to celebrate. Wasn’t the air clearer? The news of the day so fittingly ironic? Holmes went to Watson’s room that night and stayed with him until morning, though neither slept. Holmes finally felt alive again.

Watson was reassured that Holmes was fine, that the past few months had only been his peculiar nature at work, a customary low point in someone who could reach so high. Here he was back to normal, the same old full-blooded, energetic Holmes. It would be months before Watson noticed a disturbance, and even then the real cause would have to be pointed out to him by someone else. His trusting nature is at once the most attractive and unfortunate feature he has, and it has very rarely done him any favors.

1919: Dessert

“I would like to give my compliments to the chef,” Holmes says when I request he and Watson come back inside. I acquiesce, since at least he will not be able to charm Maurice with his lies after what we just witnessed. Let him swan around as if he did not kiss other people’s husbands! We are not fooled.

Watson sits down to his dessert as if nothing is amiss, tucking his napkin into his shirt and smiling like someone very feeble-minded indeed. I feel a powerful urge to smash my cake into his happy face. What is he smiling about, exactly? What makes him so bloody happy?

“You know,” I tell my husband, “if Maurice and I could see you through the windows, I feel quite sure that the neighbors could as well.”

Watson looks up at me, concerned. “You didn’t see us, did you darling?” He really wouldn’t want to hurt me by making me a witness. Holmes had done it to him too many times to count, flirted with others right in front of his face. Watson knows it feels awful. I have my own nosy self to thank for grabbing the binoculars. It’s not as if when I let Watson visit Holmes by the sea that I delude myself that they aren’t…up to their old business. But it’s different somehow when it’s so far removed from me, when he comes back exactly the same as when he left, and never brings anyone home with him.

“It won’t be long until he leaves,” Watson says, taking my hand kindly. “You know I’ll never move him to come here again. Even if I wanted him to, he refuses to be flexible. And then it will just be you and I.”

“Yes, of course,” I say. “Husband and wife.” Can’t I feel sure of that? Isn’t that something sturdy to lean on?

Holmes returns from the kitchen. Is he holding himself a little more stiffly I wonder? Has Maurice done that servant’s trick of implying all he knows while very carefully never speaking of it? It could just be my wishful thinking, until Holmes refuses his dessert over Watson’s insistence that he try some. Food, it now seems, is disagreeable to him. I wish him nothing but the most profound discomfort. I hope he’s off his food forever more.

I can see Holmes’s eyes darting all over the house, learning all manner of things he has no business knowing, about me and my family, my past and present. Knowing him from afar, thinking of him almost like a character that Watson had made up for his stories, I do find that I have some measure of sympathy for him, and more than enough understanding of his motives and thoughts. Perhaps it is my woman’s intuition, or perhaps we are somewhat alike in ways that have nothing to do with our professions in life, nor the contents of our heads. I was a harder woman than most of my peers, even before the war put a little toughness into us all, and Sherlock Holmes is an uncrackable soul indeed. We are kiln-fired kin, he and I.

He notices me staring at him and twitches half his mouth in a smile at me. He might have been sneering, I can’t be sure. Maybe he’s developed a facial tic in his old age, from all the cocaine that once buffeted his brain.

“Are you deducing anything, Mrs. Watson?” he asks me quietly. Watson looks up a bit, trying to catch up on what is passing between the two of us.

“I’m only thinking that we have quite a bit in common, Mr. Holmes. Probably too much to ever be very friendly.”

“Don’t be so sure!” Watson says optimistically, looking between Holmes and I with bright and hopeful eyes. “The two of you could really enjoy each other’s company if you chose to! You’re both very intellectual and very much concerned with the fate of the world. You might even make a better team with each other than I can make with either of you.”

“Yes,” said Holmes. “But neither of us would choose it, my friend. There is too much pride in the way, isn’t that your point, Mrs. Watson?”

“Quite so,” I tell him pleasantly. He does
understand
, this Sherlock Holmes. He doesn’t need things explained to him at least.

We both turn to see Watson throw up his hands and tell us, “So be it! What a strange person I must be for wanting everyone to get along. I suppose I brought it on myself by throwing in with you obstinate lot.” He goes grumpily back to his cake.

Holmes and I look at each other again, and at last I find him smiling with me, and not at me. How funny Watson is! And how rare that anyone else appreciates him as much as I do.