Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets (18 page)

“She’d always wanted children, but had accepted that, with me, she could never have them. We talked about it. Did I want a termination? I did. God help me, of course I did. The idea of the baby being his. But I thought that maybe, the child... it could be something that would bring us all together. It would paper over the cracks. She’d have what she’d always wanted. He would have won his little battle, and I... well, I would still have Mary. Of course,that’s not quite how it worked out.”

“She died.”

“And the baby died with her. Eclampsia.”

He looked over towards his wailing wall, casting his eyes over the memories.

“He killed her. With his child. No more. No more Sherlock bloody Holmes.”

“The jellyfish sting?”

He looked confused.

“The newspaper article on the wall,” I explained,“about you turning on the lights at Blackpool. Next to it there’s an article about someone dying from a jellyfish sting. Anaphylactic shock. I assumed it gave you the idea?”

“It must have done,” he nodded.“I’d never realised. The things we soak up when we’re moving through the world. When bees are threatened, they release what is known as an alarm pheromone, the scent of which drives the rest of the swarm to attack. To protect the hive. Like almost anything in life—with the notable exception of true happiness—it can be synthesised. Smells like bananas. I poured it on him and watched them go wild. I had to run,didn’t want to be caught in my own trap, but I heard him scream with every step. Not so funny now. Except to me. He made me laugh.”

I felt sick. What was I supposed to do? How did he expect me to react to this? I could hardly not tell the police, could I? Hero or not, the man was a murderer. Perhaps I could sympathise, understand what had driven him to it, but that was neither here nor there. He had killed his partner of thirty-six years. That was not something you could just shrug off. My stomach churned violently, just thinking about it.

“Some people die after a single sting,” he continued.“Those with severe allergic reactions. But most people, those that have not built up a natural immunity at least, will die if they’re stung enough. Renal failure or rhabdomyolysis. Do you know what that is?”

I shook my head. I felt too nauseous to even speak.

“It’s a common condition in trauma victims. The skeletal tissue breaks down, releasing proteins into the bloodstream. Some of those proteins can damage other organs. All very complicated. Don’t really know the ins and outs myself. Point is, it can kill.

“In Holmes’ case, it wasn’t even necessary. He was severely allergic. How wonderful was that? He finally found the one thing he wasn’t brilliant at. Keeping insects. Brilliant. Now that’s a punchline.”

“What—” I pressed my fingers to my mouth, trying to compose myself, I felt sure I was going to be sick.“You can’t just tell...” I bit back the nausea again.“What do you expect me to do about this?” I asked.

“Not much,” he said.“I poured a whole bottle of this into your coffee.”

He held up one of the bottles of e-cigarette liquid. The coffee flavoured one.
Devil’s Foot Vaping Supplies
, it said on the bottle, above a cartoon image of Satan, huffing on an e-cigarette.

“From what I gather,it’s not an ideal murder weapon. The standard shop brands aren’t quite strong enough. I import mine. Ten percent nicotine. Always was a martyr to my habit. I poured it into your cup before I brought it in, then added the coffee.

“When I went out there I meant to put poison in both our cups. Or the cafetiere, perhaps. French press. Not like I have much to live for. For some reason I didn’t. Stupid. Can’t have you telling people about Mary, though. Won’t tarnish her memory. Say what they like about me. But not her.
I
have to remember her how she was in hospital. Soiled. Broken. Nobody else.”

He held up the picture.

“They can remember her like this.”

I couldn’t hold it back any longer. I fell from my chair, vomiting, my muscles cramping.

Absurdly, I thought of the newspaper headline I’d seen when I’d first arrived here. The husband with nicotine. My woman who had murdered her murderer was always open to influence, it seemed. “The things we soak up when we’re moving through the world...”

I’d never really thought about my own death. The circumstances of it. If I had, this would not have been something I could ever have predicted. Ceasing to be, in a study in Scarborough.

“I’d better get rid of this,” I heard him say, reaching for my dictaphone.“Can’t have anyone finding that can we?”

And then I realised. The cloud. Everything John Watson had said was backed up to the cloud. For all the good it would do me.

Never meet your heroes. Very true. It’s funny the things people say. You ask a fan of a pop group what they’d do if they met their idol.“I’d just die!” they swoon. Yes. Exactly that.

INTERVIEWER
: We’re joined by Eddie Conan, close friend of Arthur Doyle and executive producer of tonight’s documentary.

EDDIE
: Hi, Alex.

INTERVIEWER
: It was you who exposed John Watson as the murderer of your friend.

EDDIE
: It was. I was sorting through his belongings and I found the recording he’d made of their interview. It was backed up on his computer. I don’t have to tell you how awful it was to hear it.

INTERVIEWER
: It must have been terrible.

EDDIE
: Heartbreaking. Arthur was such a good mate, you know? And to hear him die... And Watson, a man loved by so many. To think he could have done such a thing.

INTERVIEWER
: I believe the audio recording is to be played in full as part of tonight’s film?

EDDIE
: It is. We thought long and hard about it, but decided the public had a right to know. I think it’s what Arthur would have wanted.

INTERVIEWER
: Tomorrow also sees the release of the book you were co-writing with Arthur?

EDDIE
: Yes, obviously it’s not quite the book we planned, but I know he would have wanted me to finish it. It’s a testament to his memory.

HOLMES
: This is it, Watson, the final problem. With this case, my career will be over.

WATSON
: Never, Holmes! You’ll go on forever.

HOLMES
: I think not. Everything has it’s time, and mine is done.

WATSON
: Fair enough.

EFFECTS
: He lights his pipe.

WATSON
: (Cont.) After all, there’ll always be repeats.

FOOTNOTES

1
Not to be confused with the 1963 radio episode ‘The Adventure of the Crooked Man,’ where Holmes fights a murderous chiropractor who bends his victims into grotesque geometrical shapes.

2
“That great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the profession are irresistibly drained,” Langdale Pike, ‘Tittle Tattle,’
Daily Mirror
, 1962.

3
The most notorious of which was certainly
Elementary! My Favourite Holmes and Watson Moments
(Channel 4, 1989), when a drunken Oliver Reed had claimed to have starred in an episode that didn’t exist.

4
Or poisoning the caretaker’s cat; accounts vary.

5
Both played by Jack Train, the Chinstrap character would also feature in two episodes of
The Goon Show
.

6
As both performers used their given names in the roles that would make them famous, they frequently referred to them as ‘the detective’ and ‘the doctor’ when conducting interviews.

7
Hercule Poirot, the fussy Belgian detective, and his loyal friend Arthur Hastings were created by Agatha Christie.

8
Most memorably dismissed by the lauded film critic, Roger Ebert as ‘Some Like it Not.’

9
Taking advantage of a loophole in the censorship laws, it was agreed that nudity could not be classed as obscene if it was static. The Windmill Theatre immediately became famous for its popular presentations of immobile, naked women.

10
As is a good deal of the second, only ‘The Adventure of the Copper Britches’ existing in broadcast quality, with a handful of off-air recordings covering a further three episodes.

11
Two other popular radio comedies. The former would be the basis for two early movies from Hammer Films, the latter featured Kenneth Horne who would later go on to front
Beyond our Ken
and
Round the Horne
.

12
A comedy set in a Glaswegian cleaning firm and an early vehicle for Nicholas Lyndhurst.

13
Real name: Rene Adler, probably most famous for her single ‘Eat Me’ (Sony, 2013).

A hugely prolific comics writer, Ian has a clear fascination for English literature of a certain period, as a quick scan of his
2000 AD
credits (
Leviathan
,
Stickleback
,
Ampney Crucis
) demonstrates. He jumped at this anthology, I’m glad to say, and ‘The Small World of 221B’ is a wonderful, playful contribution that sits squarely in the sandpit of the postmodern. It begins the descent into weird almost immediately, with an invitation to a wedding at an oddly familiar address...

I
T IS STRANGE
how quickly things can change.

How the life as we imagine it can be turned upon its head in the blink of an eye. One moment, everything is as it should be. God is in his Heaven and all is right with the world.

The next...

Well, to say everything I have ever come to believe is a lie would be a monumental understatement. I write these words, to what end I cannot say. I know no living human soul will ever see them, but I have become so accustomed to documenting the fantastic fiction that has become my life, I know no other way of articulating the events of the past twenty-four hours.

In times of crisis we fall back onto the comfortable, the favoured and familiar, and thus I once again find myself sitting at the dining table of 221B Baker Street, pen in hand. The gas lamps are lit, the fire crackles in the grate. The soporific metronome of the mantle clock marks the passing time. My good friend and colleague Mr. Sherlock Holmes reclines in his chair. Fingers steepled, eyes closed in quiet contemplation of the day’s revelations. A sight I have witnessed countless times over the years, or—as it transpires—not at all.

I remember most precisely the first indication that all was not quite right with the world. It was a week ago today, May 22nd 18—, on the occasion of the marriage of Mr. Michael Stamford to one Mary Bennet of Longbourn, Hertfordshire. Stamford had written to me some months earlier asking if I would fulfil the role of best man at his wedding. His older brother was chief engineer on a dam construction somewhere in the Canadian wilds and unable to return home.

I initially declined. Stamford had been my dresser, working under me at Bart’s, but we were by no means good friends. At best we were former colleagues, now acquaintances. I therefore felt uncomfortable playing such an intimate role in his forthcoming nuptials. It was Holmes who pointed out that were it not for Stamford, we might never have met.

“If he had not tapped you on the shoulder that day in the Criterion Bar, and you had not mentioned that, due to your dwindling army pension, you were looking for comfortable rooms at a reasonable price... Our lives would have been that much poorer for lacking the company of the other.

“As ordinary and uninspiring as the Stamfords of this world may be, they are the subtle catalysts who, by a myriad of minor choices, inch history along in increments. They are less about the broad strokes and more of a mosaic.

“Who knows, if everyone who stepped out of their front door this morning turned right, instead of left, how different the world might be?”

“So, it was a coincidence?” I replied.

Holmes regarded me with a familiar weary indulgence.

“By no means. The Criterion is the preferred watering hole of the staff and students of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. It is therefore highly likely that you and he would be there. Given your prior history, he would of course introduce himself. Your search for affordable lodgings would arise in conversation, as would mine, since I had spoken to Stamford about finding someone to share rooms with that very morning in the chemical laboratory at the hospital.

“For better or worse, dear fellow. Our lives are inextricably intertwined with his.”

“Then you go and be his blessed best man!” I chimed.

Holmes did not reply. His look alone spoke volumes.

So it was that I wrote to Stamford, notifying him of my change of circumstances. Having chronicled the extraordinary exploits of Holmes and myself over the years, I can say with authority that writing my speech for Stamford’s wedding felt like one of the twelve labours of Hercules. Even back in the day, we knew each other only sparingly, although some of the stories I heard tell of his youthful scrapes would make even a docker blush.

I presumed he had mellowed with age, but even so, I was still hard put to find the right words. Find them I did, and never was there a greater work of fiction. However, upon reaching Longbourn, the speech was the least of my concerns.

Life in the countryside has always proceeded at a slower pace than that of the town. Lacking in the smoke and cynicism of the city, it presents a green idyll. That is its charm. Of course, these things are as much a fabrication as my wedding speech, but even so, the English countryside does have a unique allure. An Arcadian Eden we have abandoned in a mad dash for futurity, but not, apparently, in Longbourn.

Stepping off the train, the place seemed as if from an age gone by. Stamford met me and took me in a small dog-cart to a local inn where he and I were staying. He was as ebullient and overfamiliar as always. He’d certainly filled out. Younger than I by a good few years, his face was puffy and pale, with a florid bloom to his cheeks. The buttons on his waistcoat were certainly being put under strain, as was the collar of his shirt, which fought to restrain several chins. It is often thought that we in the medical profession, thanks to our knowledge of what may harm or ail the body, would treat our own with great respect. It is not always thus.