However, these gripes vanished from my mind as soon as they were followed with: “I have never looked upon a face which gave a clearer promise of a refined and sensitive nature.”
Later this week, to celebrate this success - sales have so far outstripped his last publication, A Study in Scarlet -James and Dr. Conan Doyle shall attend a dinner with Stoddart. I had to decline, for the sake of attending to little Mary (I have not even left her in the sole charge of the nursemaid yet, which both that good woman and James regard as very strange). Wondering about how much credit Conan Doyle shall get out of all this - as I feared earlier, it is his name alone that appears on the front page - I wondered if Holmes would be attending, as he was the main character in these events.
“No, that would not suit Holmes at all,” James insisted. “In fact, he has not spoken to me about its publication at all. He is in truth quite angry about it in many ways. I shall explain the whole story to you later.”
I read in the first chapter, Holmes telling of a French detective, Francois le Villard, translating some of Holmes’s monographs - ‘Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos’, for example - into French. Before James departed, I teased him that perhaps Holmes was just jealous that James’s writing has been more widely read.
17 Feburary -Yet more good news with The Sign of Four. Dr. Doyle believes it might be published in book form by the end of the year. I feel I owe the man an apology. In these pages I have been rather sceptical of and hard on him, believing him at first to have taken some attention away from James’s accomplishments. The way he venerates historical fiction at the expense of detective stories is a little irksome, and I know James feels demeaned by it. However, in practice he has been unfailingly generous to us both, and seeing the acclaim that James is beginning to receive - deservedly so - I am glad to count him as our friend.
13 April -With The Sign of Four gaining more and more readers, I am now receiving letter after letter from old friends and acquaintances. I am in truth vaguely overwhelmed and even embarrassed by the attention. It was obviously necessary for the sake of the narrative that James include the interlude when I discovered the treasure to be lost and he professed his love for me. But reading it, and knowing that this large audience of strangers also will have read it, puts a far different complexion on it.
Coming to realize this, I admitted to James that he was correct not to put his name on the front of the publication. “I can only imagine how inundated Conan Doyle is after all this.”
“You and Holmes have slightly more in common than I thought. With this, his name is becoming even more popular. In fact, only the other day, shortly before we were called in to investigate the unpleasant affair of Jephro Rucastle [9], he quite berated me for my prose style. ‘You have degraded what should have been a course of lectures into a series of tales.’”
27 April -Idly reading the Morning Chronicle over my breakfast, I came across the most curious advertisement. Something called the ‘Red-Headed League’ is looking for a vacancy, and the members are entitled solely from the colour of their hair, to a salary of four pounds a week for what are called ‘purely nominal services’.
I considered showing this advertisement to James - to think that he must slave away in his practice when others can be so amply compensated for one’s hair colour!
28 June - It does not seem that I have been out of circulation so very long. And yet, this past week having some time to myself with little Mary in the nursemaid’s care, it feels as if many years have passed rather than simply a few months. Where do I begin to summarize these momentous changes?
I shall start with the least painful subject. Indeed, it is a matter whose details are downright comic. Holmes and Watson have at last found another stimulating case - although its particulars were particularly eccentric. They were visited by a man with the singular name of Jabez Wilson - who seems a sweet person even though James cannot keep from mocking the simple soul rather harshly (he wrote that he “bore every mark of being an average commonplace British tradesman - obese, pompous, and slow”). Mr. Wilson responded to that advertisement in the Morning Chronicle I regarded with such amusement two months ago. It is a timely reminder that everything curious and inexplicable in London will find its way to the 221B Baker Street.
It was as well that they have had such stimulation, as James has grown frustrated with his practice. “It is so un-absorbing these days,” he laments. I suspect, therefore, that there was an element of truancy in his traipsing about London with Holmes, visiting Wilson’s pawnbroking shop before attending a recital of Pablo de Sarasate at St. James’s Hall. All this meandering has proved vital, and tonight James has told me not to wait up for him, as he shall be conducting a vigil at Coburg Square. Any thought that the matter was still trivial firmly evaporated when I saw that he had taken his revolver.
In my own, more mundane circles, I received some very upsetting news from Kate last week. Isa’s recovery from opium was short-lived, and he had died just two weeks ago.
“Now that the sad business is done, I can look upon it as a mercy,” she said between her tears.
“Did he return to his vice?” I asked.
“Not once. But, after that glorious night when Dr. Watson retrieved him from East London and he returned to me, his eyes full of their former spark, I thought sincerely he could be as he once was. Not that long passed, though, before his condition deteriorated even further. Oh, Mary, if you had seen him in his last days! He was a haunted shadow of his former self, his mind shot to ribbons and his body a hulking ruin. He spoke little, and physically wasted away for months.”
“Kate, I feel dreadful. James should have paid him more attention. I remember well feeling very pained at his abandonment of Isa - and, I admit, of us with Isa - to pursue some case with Sherlock Holmes.”
“Oh, but Dr. Watson did continue to see him for several months. There was nothing he could do, though. The damage had so withered Isa. He was a good friend to me, and to him, as were you, of course.”
“I now feel guilty that I have had such a carefree and delightful few months.”
Amid her wretched gloom, I was surprised to see this comment elicit a token smile from Kate. “My dear Mary - you always see yourself as such a martyr, as though you should never be allowed any pleasure in life. I cannot think of anyone more deserving of this newfound happiness than yourself, who has contended with her own share of dire hardships. I am particularly pleased you have had a child, as … well, it was another thing denied to Isa and myself.”
“Kate, if my marriage to James has taught me anything, it is that it is never too late. Who would have thought that a mere year after my twenty-sixth birthday, content with a few modest positives in my life and all its vast negatives, that I could happen upon a husband, a child, and a whole new life so very soon after?”
One can never know exactly how such encouragement is heard. From the lips of a person blessed with good fortune, they can sound smug and thoughtless. Kate and I, however, have been friends for so long that she knows I meant such sentiments from the bottom of my heart. After our encounter, she came over and met little Mary.
“Of course, the name must have been Dr. Watson’s idea,” she remarked.
“It was.” The words he had said when he explained why-”She reminds me, in her absolute perfection, of the other person I know who bears that name” - struck me as far too sentimental to share with Kate at this moment.
It did send me on a bleak train of thought, though: at the time I was pregnant I thought I was getting too old to bear a child, but now it occurs to me that I am the only woman in my small circle of friends to have one. It makes me appreciate my dear Mary all the more.
17 July - I still talk occasionally with James about Kate’s bereavement. Though he was no fan of the man, he has expressed similar sadness. This made the interview we received from Mrs. Hudson all the worse-timed.
I had not seen the Baker Street landlady since October of ’88
, and she made little attempt to smooth over her earlier, brusque behaviour. In this case, it was for the very simple reason that she was gripped with fear.
“He’s dying, Dr. Watson [10],” she wailed as soon as she had sat down in our sitting room. There was no question about whom she was referring. “For three days he has been sinking, and I doubt if he will last the day. He will not let me get a doctor. This morning when I saw his bones sticking out of his face and his great bright eyes looking at me, I could stand no more of it. ‘With your leave or without it, Mr. Holmes, I am going for a doctor this very hour,’ said I. ‘Let it be Watson, then,’ said he. I wouldn’t waste an hour in coming to him, sir, or you may not see him alive.”
James told me he had heard nothing of this illness, and it had not even seemed particularly long since he had last seen Holmes without report. At that very instant, he ran to the door and departed for Baker Street with Mrs. Hudson.
I have put Mary to bed, and am trying to get some sleep myself. But if this be the last I hear of Holmes, I shall be so dreadfully sad.
18 July -I anticipated two reactions when James returned home: either he would be inconsolably sad, or filled with delight. It was quite a surprise, therefore, to see him enter with a frown of rage across his features.
“All a trick! Everything he does seems to be some sort of elaborate deception! And I am as much a pawn - no, more a pawn - than any other player! At least his enemies, he treats with respect.”
“James, whatever do you mean?”
“I arrived at Baker Street to find Holmes exactly as Mrs. Hudson described him, possibly worse. However, worse even than his physical condition was his temper. He demeaned me as a doctor and demanded that I consult Mr. Culverton Smith. It was his expertise concerning Eastern diseases that made his counsel superior to mine.
“Well, notwithstanding the hurt to my pride and my profession, I did as he asked. Smith appeared to be a courteous and sympathetic man, though I doubt my manner with him was particularly gracious.”
“I am not surprised.”
“Well, quite. Around he came to Baker Street - and it turned out that he had sent Holmes a very specimen of the Asiatic disease that Holmes was looking for him to cure. Smith meant to murder Holmes!”
I gasped at this turn of events.
“Of course,” James grumbled, “Holmes anticipated this all along, and was intending to lure Smith into a full confession of his part in Holmes’s attempted murder, and the successful murder of Mr. Victor Savage.”
He slumped onto his favourite chair and gave Mary an affectionate tickle. Seeing her always brought some cheer into his eyes. “What a silly thought,” he said with surprising bitterness.
“What is that, James?” I asked.
“When we got engaged, I suggested that I should no longer assist him. How silly, therefore, to think that I had any choice in the matter. He will tire of me before I tire of him, and throw me on the heap the moment the whim takes him.”
“Now, James, you must not talk like that. Think of how much he depends upon you, think of how much he has given up for you. He would rather you were living with him than with me, and yet he makes the compromise. He would rather numb himself into insensibility with cocaine, and yet for your sake he does not. You must not compare him to a normal person. You must not compare him to yourself.” I drew closer and embraced him. “You are far luckier than he is.”
“Believe me, I know it.”
17 December - The lack of activity my husband and Holmes have been under has now taken on the appearance of the calm before a mighty storm.
With James once again arguing with Holmes (I joked to him how fortunate he is that of his two marriages, ours is the more harmonious; James was not in the mood for such a comment), we have concentrated on little Mary. Her first birthday passed pleasantly, and we are looking into a good school to send her to. I have every reason to believe she will have all the advantages denied in life to me - particularly parents who are close by her. James has made the same vow, and declared that now that he is a family man, it is the right time to lessen his commitment to Holmes.
Of late, he has become somewhat disturbed by Holmes’s behaviour anyway. As to my ‘calm before the storm’ comment, I refer to this master-criminal that they encountered in the Valley of Fear case, whom Watson believed had since died. Holmes did not share this belief, and James was fairly certain that this might prove to be Holmes’s undoing.
“He first became seized by it at the conclusion of that ‘Red-Headed League’ business. As you might expect, that foolish Jabez Wilson was being duped. While he was in the offices, being congratulated on his fine head of red hair and distracted in their offices copying out encyclopaedia entries - for which he thought no oddity at receiving four pounds a week! - at his nominal place of business, that pawn-broker’s in Saxe-Coburg Square, his assistant was tunnelling underground to gain access to the nearby City and Suburban Bank. Holmes knew that this assistant was in fact John Clay, whom he estimated to be the fourth-smartest man in London with a claim to the third.”
“With himself and you as the first and second, no doubt?” I teased. “So, you apprehended this Clay. I remember it. Surely that was an end to the matter?”
“Holmes was dissatisfied with the solution. He has turned the business over in his head again and again. Scotland Yard had to forbid him from going down there and interrogating Clay repeatedly, since his inquiries bore no fruit. Clay was a man of means, you see - he had noble blood. In fact, I marvelled at his blue-blooded effrontery when he berated old Athelney Jones. He said to the poor policeman, ‘I beg that that you will not touch me with your filthy hands. You may not be aware that I have royal blood in my veins. Have the goodness, also, when you address me always to say ‘sir’ and ‘please’.’ Before being led away in handcuffs, mind you!”
“I am no doubt being slow to see the significance of all this. In what way was Holmes dissatisfied?”
“Ah yes, forgive me. These cases have so many convolutions I sometimes struggle to put them in the right order. The Red-Headed League itself was so meticulously organized, Holmes believed it was beyond the means of even so formidable a mind as Clay’s. There were the offices in Fleet Street, the staff of men including Duncan Ross and William Morris, and the ability to procure all the necessary equipment to raid the bank. ‘There is the fact that such a talent in the underworld would not go unnoticed and remain freelance forever. And then there is the … signature upon it. It may not be his work, but it suggests it, as clearly as the brush-strokes of an Old Master.’ From there, he has become quite obsessed with what this apparent pattern indicates. And it comes back to his arch-enemy from Birlstone, that mathematics professor.
“You see, Mary, he believes the man’s criminal web has only grown. I was inclined to believe him, but he asks too much when he asks Inspector MacDonald to risk his reputation for the sake of these unsubstantiated theories. No one in the C.I.D. will even talk to Holmes about it any more.”
“James, you do so easily turn against your good friend. Your best friend, really.”
“Do I? How long is my friendship obliged to extend? Months ago, in the aftermath of that ‘Dying Detective’ case, you mentioned him overcoming his cocaine addiction for my sake. But has this not become a worse addiction? Has the profound reason which lies at the centre of his being not pivoted out of shape, warped itself into these ravings? The streets of London are full of such people. Perched in the speakers’ corner of Hyde Park, declaiming every rotten occurrence to be the works of Anarchists, Baltic revolutionaries, the Jews, the Irish. Any and every scapegoat, offered up to the masses, who convene kangaroo courts to pass judgement. Could there be nothing more than that to this … this ‘Napoleon of Crime’ whom Holmes hunts?”
“Did you ever meet him? The Napoleon of Crime, I mean.”
“We got close after the Birlstone case. Holmes claims he has been at his heels, and of course there was that fellow at the wedding. But I can see it al
l too clearly, the man MacDonald describes being an innocent and unsuspecting scholar persecuted by a fanatical detective. Where else would Holmes’s mind retreat, faced with so enormous a precept as the world’s fundamental lack of reason?
“Remember what he said at the end of the ‘Cardboard Box’ case, those words that inspired and compelled me to finally proceed with our wedding?”
“How could I forget?”
“The thought that our universe is ruled by chance was, to him, unthinkable. Could he not have been so repelled by the concept that this is where his thoughts have taken him?”
I could hear no more of this. I knew what was happening, and had to stop James before he carried it any further. “You have made an excellent diagnosis … but of yourself, not of him.”
“How dare you, Mary!” he cried. He tried to restrain himself in the presence of our daughter, but I had profoundly shaken him, even more than I intended.
“Please, James, I beg of you to listen to me before you judge. It is indeed possible that Holmes has gone down a rabbit’s hole in the pursuit of some reason behind all the purposeless crime that he has made it his business to lend reason to. But are you not, in doubting your best and truest friend, merely questioning your own loyalties? As I have said before, you need not choose between your family and your pre-existing life. Look at our sweet daughter, and remember that she would not be here were it not for the culmination of the unhappy accidents in my life up until July 1888.”
James sat silent for some time, and I barely noticed a single tear roll down his cheek. “You are indeed wise, my love,” he said simply. “But the decision I have made is final. I cannot be half a man leading two lives. You and Mary are the two most important people in my life now. I am doing you a disservice by my intransigence.”
“I know that is not an easy decision to make, and once again implore that you need not make it.”
Best and Wisest Man Page 10