4 Published as ‘The Noble Bachelor’ in the Strand Magazine, April 1892.
5 This case was published as ‘The Crooked Man’ in the Strand Magazine, July 1893.
1889
In the summer of ’89 … I had returned to civil practice, and had finally abandoned Holmes in his Baker Street rooms, although I continually visited him, and occasionally even persuaded him to forego his Bohemian habits so far as to come and visit us.
-‘The Engineer’s Thumb’ (1892)
5 January - I have spent the last week feeling quite ill. No doubt it is merely the bad weather and an inevitable counterweight from my busy schedule over Christmas. I haven’t the strength to get out of bed today, so I will content myself with updating my journal.
Writing this down seems like carping, but I feel the worse for being alone. James left late last night, and forgot to leave a note for me. Our maid will also be away for the next two days, so I am quite alone in my illness.
I wonder whether it relates to a curious thing that James said the other day. From what I gathered, there is some particular anniversary in two days’ time. Last night - when I was feeling perfectly fine - James spent dinner looking forward in the calendar to see what patients he could expect in the coming week. He fixed on January 7 and remarked gloomily, “The seventh. A whole year since … since Holmes mentioned him.”
Who could this person be? Is there any significance to the date? I do know it is the day after Holmes’s birthday. It does explain his fondness for quoting Twelfth Night above all other Shakespeare plays. When I am feeling better, I shall surreptitiously consult James’s casebooks and get to the bottom of this.
It does rather irk me that James is so protective over his notes. As a governess I am naturally adept at editing and proofreading duties. One of the benefits of having no parents to rely on was that it compelled me, when I was younger, to take up clerical training. I am a competent typist. When I mooted the possibility, James firmly rejected it.
In fact, in the short time I have been married to him, I have seen James’s temper become perfectly terrible at times. It always concerns matters related to Holmes. My typing suggestion, for instance, was impractical because of the sensitivity of some of the cases. That is all very well, but there is no need for him to berate me so for making a perfectly simple suggestion. Especially when I do so out of a desire to protect his interests, something that Conan Doyle is singularly uninterested in.
No doubt my illness is compelling me to these ruminations. Only a few days ago, on Christmas Day, I had no cares in the world and was enjoying the full festivity of the season. In previous years, I would sometimes get carried away with my life’s problems around the Yuletide season. This year, for the first time, I felt the true spirit of this joyous season. With James at my side, there stirred deep in my breast an impression, a conviction even, that something wonderful was around the corner.
10 January - James returned today, and could not stop reproaching himself for his absence. From his examinations, it seems that I am with child.
Of course, I could not be more pleased! James also. It is so obvious to me that my extremities of emotion over the past couple of weeks were my intuition that this greatest of blessings had been bestowed upon me.
James could not stop chastising himself for his absence. “If anything had happened… any complication … I would have felt so completely responsible.” He became quite fraught with emotion, and I assured him that there was no need. My previous journal entry will attest that I did not quite feel this way the other day, but in this context, hopefully that was a forgivable lapse.
So full of remorse was James that he told me he has made arrangements with his neighbour-doctor, Jackson Anstruther, to take on some of his patients should any circumstances with me arise. As an older, solitary man, Doctor Anstruther was only too happy to oblige, and I am so glad that he has been so accommodating.
It is amusing how one’s change in circumstances can so radically alter one’s perception of unrelated events. Suddenly, every piece of news I hear seems to have some romantic dimension to it, no doubt a refraction or distortion of my approaching motherhood. I asked James to tell me of the case he was working on as a way of taking his mind away from endlessly chastising himself. It was, he told me, a political intrigue surrounding a woman with whom the King of Bohemia had an indelicate affair [6].
Not only had Holmes once again let the culprit - an adventuress from New Jersey named Irene Adler - evade justice, indeed it had seemed that she had outwitted him. Furthermore, though Holmes himself would never admit it, James was certain that he saw some stirrings of romance in Holmes’s icy misogynist heart.
Could it be, that even that heartless thinking machine was capable of romantic feelings? Could one day a child of Holmes and Miss Adler be out in the yard playing with my future son or daughter?
Alas, the story ended with Miss Adler escaping the country, and Holmes had no way of keeping in contact with her. Since the case has resolved, he has not only ever referred to her as ‘the Woman’; but - and this detail, I confess, brought a tear to my eye - he kept a photograph of her as a reminder.
I have every confidence that James will be a wonderful father. The timing is less than ideal, given his heavy schedule of late. I know he has been in touch with Conan Doyle about publication of more Sherlock Holmes stories, but the man has been frustratingly vague about it. As I have read over a few instalments of what James calls ‘The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes’, I can say that he has made procedural details that work as exciting adventures. I think many readers, myself included, would most definitely welcome seeing this work in print. Though I may blush to see my own name mentioned, should he ever adapt ‘The Sign of the Four’. Perhaps I’ll be edited out.
2 February - I have not been out of the house recently. I think I am firmly adjusted to my pregnancy. With some sadness, I gave my notice to Mrs. Forrester.
“It scarcely seemed worthwhile to take me on again, since I am now leaving your service.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, my dear! I hope you remember that I shall be available for whatever assistance you need. Even though your dear Dr. Watson means well, if ever circumstances arise when you need someone and his attention is occupied…”
“Of course, Mrs. Forrester. I would always have considered you to rely on.” Having said that, I wonder how quickly it will be before I need to make good on this promise. James has yet more patients to see and more investigations to make. The inactivity that had forced the detective to shadow after his friend seems likely to have ended for the time being.
10 March - My last social engagement for what will probably be quite a while was, unfortunately, a far from pleasant one. The Whitneys invited us over for dinner. James has always detected a certain tension with Isa, but has been willing to tolerate it due to my affection for Kate.
From the moment we entered, the evening was fraught. Kate was her usual ebullient self, but there was a touch of mania in her pleasant manners. It was quite clear to us that there had been some dreadful altercation shortly before we had arrived. As soon as she left the drawing room to get us a drink, James said as much to me.
It became a ghoulish inversion of a stage farce. Whenever we began to talk amongst ourselves, one or other of them, or a servant, would enter the room. Isa did not come down for nearly an hour after we arrived.
He looked so appalling as to make the unhealthy Holmes I had seen back in October look a fine figure of a man. His lips were a gash of scarlet, and similar red circles were etched around his eyes, which stared out with the haunted emptiness of a man possessed. His hair clung to his scalp, slick with dried sweat.
James embodied politesse as he made small talk with Isa. Even when the man is at his most concentrated and affable, James found little to talk to him about. Right now, though, he was distracted and restive, constantly looking to the corners of the room and shifting in his seat.
When Kate entered with our drinks, Isa fixe
d her with an expression simultaneously lewd and poisonous. “There is my dear muse,” he said, though the compliment had no warmth. “What would I do without you my dear, my dear?”
Kate remained silent, and tried to change the subject to my child. Isa remained silent, but then let out a most inopportune ejaculation. “I know what Kate is thinking. I was never so fortunate as to father a child.”
“I did not think that,” Kate insisted. Her voice had a low, brow-beaten agitation to it.
“Why not be honest? Why can no one ever be honest? All the manners in the world, and nothing we say can ever describe how … how unfailingly wretched everything is.”
“Kate, is everything all right?” I whispered.
“And all that secrecy too!” he thundered. “Whispering secrets. Of course, I can’t expect any different from you women. How would you know what anything was like? Eh? You haven’t seen outside your parlours!”
James rose to his feet. “I think that you should moderate your tone.”
“Jack and I know what it’s like, see,” he sneered. He stood toe to toe with James, and then slumped forward so that he was half-standing, half-leaning against him. James was positively boiling with rage as he continued his thoughts. “D’you know what civilization is? It’s men in pits of vice, willing to gouge each other’s eyes out for another dose. You should know, after all, I thought you’d gone to Afghanistan. It’s bad enough here with all the Chinamen in Soho, I can’t imagine what that lot of savages are like.”
“When I was hit with a Jezail bullet,” James said, “my life was saved by an Afghan. If that is how a savage behaves, I cannot imagine what one would call this disgrace. Your brother-”
“Not my brother!” he wailed. “Not him again! How often do I have to be compared to him, to all the other blasted Whitneys… the apple has fallen far from the tree, how I tire of hearing it said. No one ever asked me if I wanted to be an apple on that tree in the first place, as I recall.”
“You shame his memory, speaking of him like that, you … you sot!”
James was quite literally fuming with anger by the time he roared these words. It seemed to awaken some dim pride in Isa. With little grace, he lashed out at James, but his energy dissipated as quickly as it reared itself. He was as limp as a rag when James and the servant carried him to bed.
“I am sorry about all this,” Kate said, visibly holding back tears. “Perhaps we can do it again some time, when Isa … when Isa is feeling better. I can’t think of an explanation. I suppose it must be overwork.”
“Would you like to tell us about it?” I asked again.
“Goodnight, Mary. Goodnight, Doctor Watson.”
“Kate,” James insisted. “I will not leave this house unless I am certain that you will not be harmed by this person.”
“No, Isa, has never harmed me,” she said. “Not physically, anyway. It is only cruelty and bullying of the mind he inflicts on me.”
Realizing neither of us could do any more, we made to depart. James insisted on giving Isa a hypnotic to help him sleep - and preserve Kate from any molestation.
16 March -Kate called on me today, even more distressed than she was the previous weekend. “I was so dreadfully embarrassed by Isa’s conduct, I simply had to speak with you about him.”
I insisted on pouring her a glass of wine, so fragile she seemed. “It is opium,” she ultimately told me.
“My God, Kate. I am so sorry.”
James had his theories on the subject. Isa’s specific comment about ‘Chinamen in Soho’ indicated something of this nature.
“He had first seized on the poison in his college days, long before I had met him. His scholarship had taken him to the writings of Thomas De Quincey, I think the fellow’s name was. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater was a tome he consulted very freely. From there, he was seized by a … freak about the subject. He began by putting laudanum into his tobacco.”
“When did you learn of this?”
“He wrote down his dreams in this state, just as De Quincey had. He showed it to me to try to make me understand why he so compulsively continued his horrible self-mutilation. That was a few years ago, and he had tried to swear it off. Then, he cared for me enough to put my needs above his cravings. It seemed for a while that he was successful, but lately he has been drawn right back into its wretched pull.”
“And what happens when he is in the throes of his opium?”
“The fits that seize him are truly terrifying. He will vanish without trace, and return late at night, a changed man.” She sipped her wine and shuddered. “Drastically changed.”
“Has this vile behaviour caused him to harm you? Mark my words, Kate, James could-”
“No!” she cried in some horror. “Don’t say that James would hurt him. He is already hurt enough by this crippling vice.”
“I was going to say that James could help him overcome it. He would be happy to, if he were certain it would vouchsafe your well-being. And as long as no harm has come to you.”
“You saw him the other night. It has reduced him to such a feeble condition that he could not inflict any harm on me if he wanted to.” She paused, and took a long sip of her wine. “No physical harm, anyway. It manifests itself mainly in cruelty, rages. I have tried so hard to make him happy, but he has a wildness to him. And of course, we cannot seem to have children. Sometimes I think I may have driven him to it, that there was something about me…” She broke into weeping at this stage, and I took my old school friend in my arms.
“Kate, you must not blame yourself for this. I am aware that you love Isa, but he walked down this road himself. I know you too well to think that anything you could have done could bring him to this state.”
We spoke late into the night. When we left, though I know Kate was still racked with worry over her husband, she was calmer. I promised I would tell James and we would help her overcome this.
18 March -I spoke with James about Kate and Isa, and he said he would help if he could. “It is somewhat outside my field,” he admitted sadly. “A great deal depends on the willpower of the addict. And - believe me when I say that I have a heavy heart at these words - I doubt Isa has that fortitude. Kate deserves far better.”
“I cannot help but agree. Is there anything you can do though? Any hint of experience from dealing with Holmes?”
“It all depends on the case. For Holmes, the dependency was a weakness, but one he was able to hold remarkably in check. That mind, Mary - that marvellous brain of his. Though it was the cause of the affliction, it at least prevented him from succumbing to the full, pathetic decline that Isa so fully embodies.”
As far as I knew, the other reason Holmes had given up his cocaine - the ‘weakness’ of sentiment that he spitefully told me about - remained unsaid to James, who attributed it entirely to his medical skill. For the sake of preserving his high opinion of his work, and also for respecting Holmes’s wish that his dear Watson not know his occasional humanity - I concealed this fact from him.
I know a wife should ideally conceal nothing from her husband, but given the unusual circumstances of his relationship with Holmes, I felt I was justified. It gave me pause though. If it was Holmes’s humanity and affection for others that had conquered his dark side, surely Isa would be capable of a similar change of heart?
“Damn the man,” I finally declared.
James was shocked at my tone. “Kate loves him very much,” he said.
“Exactly. So I damn him again. You know Kate now, James. Would you not say that she was a fine, intelligent young lady?”
“Certainly I would.”
“By what right, then, does this spineless, feckless Isa drive her to despair, for the sake of his own compulsion to self-harm?”
“Perhaps she considers it worthwhile, if she loves him.”
“Is that right, though, James? Should someone be so dependent on one so unworthy, that they would put that person’s feelings above her own happiness?”
“You allow me to spend time with Holmes. Some might argue that was a more reckless habit than opium addiction.”
James’s levity broke my introspection, and I tried to put it out of my mind. After all, there is nothing I can say or do to induce Kate to leave her husband’s side. It must be her decision alone.
4 June -Sometimes I feel rather guilty at the way that I can send James off packing. However, he has been rather worn down of late, and so when a telegram arrived during our breakfast this morning, I spied an opportunity to improve his spirits.
HAVE YOU A COUPLE OF DAYS TO SPARE? HAVE JUST BEEN WIRED FOR FROM THE WEST OF ENGLAND IN CONNECTION WITH THE BOSCOMBE VALLEY TRAGEDY. SHALL BE GLAD IF YOU WILL COME WITH ME. AIR AND SCENERY PERFECT. LEAVE PADDINGTON BY THE 11:15.
I could see poor James positively chomping at the bit with curiosity, yet he regarded the telegram with a frown. He looked up and down, back and forth at the object all through his breakfast.
Finally, I asked, “What do you say, dear? Will you go?”
He hummed and hawed, and finally admitted, “I really don’t know what to say. I have a fairly long list at the moment.”
I saw his heart was really in the prospect of this trip to the west. “Oh, Anstruther would do your work for you. You have been looking a little pale lately. I think that the change would do you good, and you are always so interested in Sherlock Holmes’s cases.”
“I should be ungrateful if I were not, seeing what I gained from one of them,” he answered, clasping my hand in his as he said so. Immediately, though, he withdrew it and rose to his feet, combining the action with a long swig of his tea in a sudden flurry of excited activity. “But if I am to go I must pack at once, for I have only half an hour.”
He came down a few minutes later, hat in hand, extolling the virtues of his days as a traveller in Afghanistan. “I’d like to see a chap who can pack a valise that quickly and precisely.”
“Happy travels,” I said as I kissed him farewell. It seems characteristically morbid to write such sentiments down, but there is a curious paradox in the fact that the worse the horrible event that draws Holmes and Watson into a case, the more invigorating both men find its stimulation. With that being the case, I have no doubt that a bit of Boscombe Valley tragedy is exactly the thing to restore the good doctor’s rude health [7].
Best and Wisest Man Page 7