My Dear Watson (28 page)

“Things had indeed been very slow with us,” Watson wrote, and he meant both the business of detection and their careful rebuilding now that Holmes was recovered. Watson was willing to put in the work, however, because he hoped this was the last of it. “For years I had gradually weaned him from that drug mania which had threatened once to check his remarkable career.” He knew that if Holmes could have it his way, he wouldn’t ever want the drug again; it was not like in the early days when he used the substance for fun—he would much rather feel the thrill of a challenge and the natural sparks of his own brain. “I knew that under ordinary conditions he no longer craved for this artificial stimulus,” Watson said, “but I was well aware that the fiend was not dead but sleeping, and I have known that the sleep was a light one and the waking near when in periods of idleness I have seen the drawn look upon Holmes’s face, and the brooding of his deep-set and inscrutable eyes.”

Watson blessed this man Overton and whatever tragedy had befallen him, for he would help lift Holmes out of his perilous doldrums, even it was only for an hour. Overton was missing a rugby player on the eve of an important game. Holmes laughed when the man asked him in astonishment where he had been living if he didn’t know about sports—who could not have heard of Godfrey Staunton, the young athlete that could not be found?

“You live in a different world to me, Mr. Overton,” Holmes told him. “A sweeter and healthier one.” Watson nodded to their client, trying to reassure him. He looked like he thought they might be making fun of him, but it was only the honest truth.

The case was good enough if there were no other prospects, and they found Staunton’s hotel room with very little in it besides his hysterically miserly uncle. That amused Holmes for a bit, as did having the opportunity to lie to the girl at the telegram office, though some people are so gullible that to Holmes it seems a waste to be creative towards them. And yet he kept on with the case as long as it was able to keep him out of his stifling rooms, his stifling thoughts.

Their next point of contact with the missing man was a Dr. Armstrong. They’d found a receipt from him in the hotel room, and it proved that Staunton had need of a medical man. Watson did not know Armstrong’s name. Since selling his practice essentially to Holmes, Watson had been living a life of relative leisure (his only obligation being to occasionally act as Holmes’s nursemaid and scratching post). However, Dr. Armstrong had heard of Holmes already, and told the detective right away that he did not approve of his profession.

Holmes found himself liking the man’s quick honesty, his deep eyes, his clear intelligence, despite the look of frowning disapproval on his face. Holmes went to tease him: “In that, Doctor, you will find yourself in agreement with every criminal in the country.”

Armstrong would not be toyed with. He thought Holmes was an agent of his friend’s penny-pinching uncle and had already made up his mind to let slip no secrets. He told Holmes, “Where your calling is more open to criticism is when you pry into the secrets of private individuals, and when you incidentally waste the time of men who are more busy than yourself.”

Holmes nearly smiled. What a fine thrust! How good of him to know at a glance that Holmes wished to be a busy man, a man of purpose, and that this area was where his pride might be wounded. He questioned Armstrong by tiny steps until at last he got a fiery reaction out of him. Armstrong threw them out of his house and would not hear them any further.

Holmes was chipper on the street outside, and Watson was very happy to see him like that until he understood the reason why. “Dr. Leslie Armstrong is certainly a man of energy and character,” Holmes said. “I have not seen a man who if he turns his talents that way, was more calculated to fill the gap left by the illustrious Moriarty.” Watson didn’t know if he should be more offended by the clear sparkle of attraction in Holmes’s eyes or by the admiration for Moriarty and criminal potential in his voice; both were disturbing to him, and not exactly what he would wish for Holmes to find pleasure in during this precarious time.

But even this mood, as much as Holmes was enjoying its archness, did not last the day. Holmes went off on his own and came back late, pale and tired and having made an enemy of Armstrong’s coachman as well by poking around and trying to shadow the doctor’s movements. He took out his frustration on Watson, as per his usual, disdaining every suggestion the man put forth. He was getting fixated on Armstrong—how long had it been since anyone had given him the slip?—and the preoccupation was mutual.

The next morning at breakfast Armstrong sent Holmes a pert little note saying that Holmes would never follow him anywhere. Holmes smiled wanly.

“An outspoken, honest antagonist is the doctor. Well, well, he excites my curiosity, and I must really know before I leave him.”

Holmes left Watson the next day as well, and once again returned dismayed by his lack of success in trying to pursue Armstrong’s movements. Overton and Cambridge lost their rugby match without their star three-quarter, and the day after that, Watson got a shock of disappointment too. He woke up to see Holmes by the fire with his syringe in his hand. He let out a groan of sadness. His face must have looked tragic.

“No, no, my dear fellow, there is no cause for alarm,” Holmes said, setting the needle down like he had been caught with stolen property. “It is not upon this occasion the instrument of evil.”

Watson believed Holmes that it might have some legitimate use in the investigation, but it was disturbing nonetheless to see the expression that Holmes had on his face as he contemplated the syringe. It was a quiet, dark storm in his eyes of hatred and desire. Why would he even keep the thing? Why bring it with him? God, he must keep his morocco case on him all the time like some morbid talisman.

Holmes told Watson to eat while he himself did not, though he warned Watson they would not stop or sup until they found where Dr. Armstrong went each day in his carriage. The syringe was full of aniseed, and he meant to transfer the pungent substance to Armstrong’s vehicle so that a dog named Pompey might follow it. Almost any vessel might have served this purpose, but Holmes had out his syringe anyway. He could not help but nip after a dangerous game, after all; he was as much a hunting creature as the mongrel he held leashed in his hand.

Soon enough they were able to follow Dr. Armstrong, and they found poor Staunton weeping at the deathbed of his secret, consumptive young wife. All that Watson could see positive in the whole mess was that Armstrong finally saw that Holmes would not expose Staunton’s marriage to his uncle, and grasped his hand and called him a good man. And yet for all that, as they left “that house of grief” for the winter day outside, the look in Holmes’s eyes was almost as blank as the dead girl’s. Contentment in his heart was like water through a sieve.

1897: The Devil’s Foot

I am amused by how Watson’s narrative changes to fit Holmes’s preferences; though he claimed to never approve of the stories, the stories still bend to please him. Where in the beginning Holmes had been angry that he got no notoriety and all his talent went to the credit of the police, in later years his fame was portrayed as a grand burden to him, apparently one he bore in protest. It was true when Watson said that Holmes liked to sit and smirk at all the misplaced credit that was heaped on his Scotland Yard inspectors, but I doubt very much the purity of his motivations. He may have loved the work above all else, but he didn’t hate that his name preceded him wherever he went.

By 1910 when this story was compiled and published, Watson was away from Baker Street, and married to me. He got a note from Holmes (I don’t know what kind of game it was for him—those whimsical telegrams that could disturb Watson for up to a week obsessing about just what Holmes might be thinking); the note told him to write about “the Cornish horror” because the case was so strange. I am skeptical that was the reason behind it, knowing the story as I do now. Watson wondered what could have possibly brought the case back to his mind, but it is easily seen: he was missing his Watson, and he was remembering one of their most tender moments, and he wanted Watson to remember it too.

“It was, then, in the spring of the 1897 that Holmes’s iron constitution showed some symptoms of giving way in the face of constant hard work of a most exacting kind, aggravated, perhaps, by occasional indiscretions of his own.”

It had been hard for Holmes giving up his chemical comfort, not as hard as what drove him back to it, but he and Watson both knew that Holmes’s bad moods tended to compound with one another. He was doing tolerably well, but how to keep him getting better? A month after the Missing Three-Quarter, Watson and Holmes consulted with a practicing physician who advised Holmes to “surrender himself to complete rest” if he wanted to avoid absolute breakdown.

“I find a good breakdown refreshing every now and again,” Holmes told him flippantly.

Dr. Agar threatened to bar Holmes from practice all together, and Holmes snorted at the idea, as if anyone could hold such power over him. The doctor who shared his bed could hardly get him to stop killing himself, so a consulting physician had almost no chance at all.

“We could go out to the country, Holmes,” Watson said. “It worked out all right for you last year.” He was alluding to the recovery at Colonel Hayter’s estate. He shouldn’t have.

“And how well did a vacation serve me the first time we visited Colonel Hayter?” Watson had not forgotten about it, but he thought enough had changed in ten years for a vacation to produce different results. He wouldn’t take Holmes to see any of his old army companions this time; better to isolate him and find him some true rest. “You may actually enjoy a rest now, you know. You aren’t the same man you were back then, Holmes.”

“I’ve been the same man all my life,” he grumbled miserably, but at last he relented. He was too tired to really fight about it, and Watson was resolute.

They went out to the Cornish peninsula, a nice bleak, dreary part of the coast that even Watson couldn’t help thinking of as a death trap, for Mounts Bay was no place for ships, and the shores were barren and uninviting. An evil place he called it, where countless sailors had met a smashing death on the rocks. And that was just the sea! Surrounding them were deserted moors and the remnants of an ancient village that was nothing but stone slabs and burial mounds. Hideous.

It made Holmes smile, as Watson thought it might. He knew better than to take him anywhere pleasant, and at first Holmes responded well to the “sinister glamour” of the atmosphere. They had fond memories attached to moors after all, and Holmes had ordered some books thinking he’d compile a very dry thesis on the origin of the Cornish language. Watson was glad for a moment, imagining a peaceful retirement for them both someday, thinking wouldn’t it be nice if they could be like this always.

But the world would never leave them alone. They made some slim few acquaintances out there, the vicar and his lodger Mr. Tregennis. Watson was highly annoyed that their provincial little mysteries should come and burst his happy bubble, but there was no taking a case away from Holmes once he had it; easier to pry a fox’s throat from a hound’s jaw. He must be satisfied that he has rattled all the life out of it before you may take it from him.

Watson gave up any hope of a peaceful time; how could he expect Holmes to return to his studies when two men were laughing with mad terror at a card game with their dead sister? Their one surviving brother, Mr. Tregennis, thought it must be some demonic power that caused it. Watson shook his head as they walked to the house, thinking that he must have met more devils on the moors than any sane man in all of England. It was getting to be quite tiresome, really.

Watson sighed all through their tour of the house. The brothers had been carted off and the sister’s body was laid out, her face still looking horrified. Holmes looked all around, but was not struck by any lightning realizations of truth. At last he had mercy on Watson, took him by the arm, and led them back to their cottage where Watson could resume picking on him about his smoking habits.

They sat for a time in a cloud of Holmes’s thinking until he himself found it so stifling he suggested a walk. “To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces.” He liked that image of a machine working itself apart, he used it a lot. Watson knew it well enough to record it twice in his stories; moreover he himself had watched Holmes come undone on several occasions, and found the metaphor just as apt.

“The sea air, sunshine, and patience, Watson,” Holmes lectured to his companion. “All else will come.” They smiled at each other as they walked outside. Yes, it was always Watson surely who would not let them have any quietude; why couldn’t he learn to sit back and appreciate the surroundings?

Holmes bored Watson all day with his nattering on all the local history he has learned. His thoughts jumped back and forth from that project and his case, waiting for the facts to finally mature. It took the inclusion of Dr. Leon Sterndale and the death of Tregennis from the same strange horror that killed his sister to at last give Holmes a pattern to trace. He disappeared for long solitary walks and, without explaining any of his movements to Watson, who watched him come and go without question, only glad to see him busy.

Until of course he set up a little experiment with whatever poison he’d discovered at use on this family. He told Watson that he didn’t have to participate, but what kind of talk was that? Watson only waved away the suggestion without a word. If he was willing to live with Holmes, he would certainly die with him for one of his fool experiments. Where was there even a question?

“I thought I knew my Watson,” Holmes said with an endearingly satisfied glint in his eye. They would face each other across the table, poison between, door and window open in the hope that some ventilation would keep them from its full effects. Watson remembered one of the first things he ever learned about Sherlock Holmes, when their mutual acquaintance Stamford had said, “Holmes is a little too scientific for my tastes—it approaches to cold-bloodedness. I could imagine his giving a friend a little pinch of the latest vegetable alkaloid, not out of malevolence, you understand, but simply out of a spirit of inquiry in order to have an accurate idea of the effects. To do him justice, I think that he would take it himself with the same readiness.”