We married in New York, and spent many happy years in the theatre there. It was only the opportunity to follow a touring company back to England that made me feel, now that I was happily married, and indeed we were preparing to start a family, that I should lay to rest once and for all the ghosts of the past. We toured the regions of England for a year, which gave me more than enough time to prepare for my return to London, to see my father and properly discuss with him the emotions that had run so deep.
14 Between the years 1904 and 1907, students at the female colleges in Oxford and Cambridge were granted ad eundem degrees (degrees of the same rank conferred by a different university) from Trinity College, Dublin. They were so called because they took steamboats to Dublin for this purpose.
1926
At this period in my life the good Watson had passed almost beyond my ken. An occasional week-end visit was the most I ever saw of him … My house is lonely. I, my old housekeeper, and my bees have the estate all to ourselves.
-‘The Lion’s Mane’ (1926)
Watson closed the book slowly, and took a deep breath. A single tear rolled down his cheek, and he sniffed in self-conscious embarrassment. Several hours had passed in his reading, and not once had either of them spoken. However, both knew that they needed to stay there until this was finished.
Mary’s visit to Queen Anne Street was her first encounter with him since she had left for Canada, and she filled him in on the intervening years. He did his best to conceal the hurt at not being present for Mary’s wedding - that Watson stoicism was as present as ever.
“The theatre, eh? And that’s how you met this, er, Roger?”
“Right.”
“Well, I can observe from that fact, that you haven’t quite given up on your dream of being a detective. I never quite got him to admit it, but I always thought from his love of disguise and frequent Shakespearean quotations that Holmes had toured as an actor. Hm.” He smiled without mirth. “So many years later … and still so much I don’t know about him. So much I may never know.”
“I may as well be candid with you, Father.”
“Please, Mary-”
“No, it is very important. I suspect I have thought of you for far more of my life than you have thought of me. Whether that thought was the early love, the hero worship of yourself and Holmes, or the gradual disappointment I came to have in you before I left for Canada. When I began that new life, I was so very happy with Roger that I truthfully thought very little about my life here, and about my past. I had finally carved out a life for myself - Roger was obviously part of that, but the greater part was, through my career, finding my own voice as a person.”
Dr. Watson cleared his throat, with just enough precision to show Mary he was holding back some emotion. “I tried to make amends, as you know.”
“I do know, and I appreciated it, although it was too late by that point. Mrs. Forrester was wrong about you, I can see that from reading Mother’s words.”
“Mrs. Forrester never liked me, from the minute I barged into their Camberwell house covered in oil, having nearly been murdered with a poison dart.”
Mary chuckled. Her father had not lost his off-hand descriptions of the most perilous occasions.
“Exactly. And Mother did love you so much. Sometimes, you must admit, you took advantage of that love. You made her feel forgotten. Her life was not as happy as it could have been.”
Dr. Watson’s fist slammed down on the desk. “Do you think I don’t know that?” he roared. Mary was used to such outbursts, working in theatrical circles, and did not react. He took a long and deep breath, and regained his composure. “When I married - er, when I married for the second time, I felt a weight lift from my heart. In some ways those eight years after Mary … after I was widowed, had seen me erase and deny the emotions that had run so deep. And so far, I have been married for twenty-four years, to a woman whom I love dearly. It felt like Fate had given me a second chance, a chance to take the responsibilities seriously. I grasped that chance wholeheartedly.”
“People’s lives don’t merely stop and start again. You can’t count happiness with one person as atoning for giving others grief.”
“I know that, but truthfully … there is no one I could love in quite the same way as Mary, as your dear mother. In part, I kept away from you because you reminded me so strongly of her. The emotions that brought up in me … they were hard to deal with, so I withdrew from them, first by returning to the world of crime with Holmes, and secondly in the years of my marriage. And what I was going to say was that never for one second did I forget Mary, nor feel that anything that happened to her was anything other than my fault. That conversation I had with her - about what her life might have been like had she married Thaddeus Sholto. That concept still haunts me. If Mary were alive and with another person, no matter how wretched that would have made me in my loneliness, I would consider the happier than her being dead now. And the only way I can express these deep sorrows is through words that sound like false pieties spoken out loud. But please believe me that I so fervently wish it were so!”
He finally broke into tears. Had he written of such a thing happening in a Sherlock Holmes story, Mary would scarcely believe it was happening. Now that it took place in front of her, she crossed to the other side of the desk and took him in her arms.
“You are so … so very like her,” he declared through his choking tears. “She would have been proud of the decision you have made, and more importantly, the person you have become.”
“And as you know, I was always proud of the person you were. Even when it came to my own detriment.” She kissed Watson’s lined forehead, and he capitulated to the intimacy that initially surprised him. “And now that opportunity has brought us together again, and I can approach it on equal terms with you, I would like to seize it with all my heart.”
“I hope then, that my few remaining years can in some small way set right what I had foolishly allowed to go wrong then.”
It was some time later when Watson’s telephone rang. “Hello? Yes, it’s Ja - I mean, John. Yes of course, my dear. I shall be home directly. I just received a visit from Mary.”
It was now very late, and Mary was expected by Roger. She talked airily of her plans, and she knew that Roger would be thrilled to meet her father. Perhaps something would come of their efforts, perhaps nothing would. Perhaps they would become closer and perhaps they would become more distant. At that moment though, with the spirit of potential and optimism in the air, Mary felt satisfied, and she suspected her father did too.
As she left the office, there was only one last thing Mary had to mention to Dr. Watson.
“You know, I went up to Sussex to see Sherlock Holmes.”
“Why?” Watson did not know whether he was prying by asking this question. “I mean … when?” he added lamely.
“Last year some time, during the tour. Roger and I had gone through a bad patch. It was right before our wedding and everything just seemed to be … wrong between us all of a sudden. There was a little while last year when I didn’t think I could trust him.”
“Oh, I see. I am sorry to hear that.” Watson cast his eyes guiltily away.
“Anyway, I didn’t know who I could talk to about it. It was a time that made me really wished Mother had been around.” After a pause of some length, she added, “I did think of talking to you about it too Father. But … I knew it wouldn’t be the right circumstance.”
Though she could see Watson didn’t believe her, this was the truth. At that time, it would have felt to her like the gravest intrusion, bursting in on him and his new family - again, she felt like a relic. At that particular moment she did not want to feel that way.
“Anyway,” she continued, “not knowing where to turn, I suddenly remembered the vague talk of Holmes having retired to Sussex. So I went down there, went to that little village he lives in, Fulworth I believe it’s called. It was only when I arrived that I realized I hadn’t the first
idea about where he might live. I didn’t think it would be too much of a problem though.
“I didn’t count on the locals being as … loyal as they were. I suppose they do it for their own protection as much as for his. Remembering Baker Street that day in 1905, I can’t imagine how many tourists they get from all over, looking for Sherlock Holmes.
“Everyone I talked to said, ‘No, Sherlock Holmes doesn’t live here.’ I then got a little more specific, saying that I was your daughter and I had known him when I was a child. Still they said they didn’t know where he was. I suppose quite a few fans have tried that tack as well. I can’t imagine how many supposedly long-lost relatives pop out of the woodwork every week.”
Watson leaned forward through this, fascinated. Though he never said anything, Mary could tell from his attitude that he had never visited Holmes in his retirement. She could also tell that he dearly wished he could, but that the familiar distance of time had let that wish lapse and wither.
“Ultimately,” Mary continued, “I decided to cut my losses and try the pub. It was a short walk away from the Seven Sisters, I can’t remember the name. Rather shabby place, with a conspicuously surly landlord. I drank a pint and asked him a little about the area. I tried to ask with as little interest in my voice as possible. ‘Any famous people live around here?’
“ ‘Not really,’ he said tersely, then carried on washing a glass that looked as though it hadn’t seen soap for many years. ‘Some detective, they say. I never heard of him.’
“ ‘Oh really?’ I said, affecting my greatest disinterest, but probably coming off worse than even some of my least trained actors. ‘What’s his name? I may have heard of him.’
“ ‘Barker,’ he replied, looking up to see if that would get any reaction. I shrugged and shook my head. Someone, though, must have told him I was in town, and he had clearly delighted in toying with me. I moved away from the stool and over to the window.
“I sat facing the window, and I drank in silence for what seemed like quite a long time. I didn’t want to leave straight away, as I’d had a long journey that was now for naught. I was still feeling quite emotional, and had only had gruff villagers to talk to all day. Still, there didn’t seem much point in staying.
“Just as I was about to leave, I saw a familiar outline walking along the chalk cliffs. He walked speedily and with an intensity of purpose; this man was no everyday rambler. Even had I not seen the pipe and the outline of a pork-pie hat, I would have known who it was from that nervous, energetic gait.
“I ran outside, but the man was too far away from me. I saw him retreat towards a villa far away, which I could see no path toward. I wondered what had brought him down near the pub. Had he heard I was there? Was he curious who was asking after him this time? Had his brain further advanced over the years to having psychic powers?! If only he had come a little closer, seen it was someone who was actually known to him, I thought! I became quite mad with him for his carelessness.”
Watson leaned further forward at her pause, and now that she had stopped talking scrambled for the most important question. “What was he - how did he - what did you see of him?”
“Nothing,” Mary sighed. “Just that distant figure in the distance. The outline could have been a dozen men, and as I lost sight of him I thought I had let my imagination carry me away. Then, for a second, I thought I saw a second person - I couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman - beckoning to him from a villa. But when I looked again, there was just him. He turned and looked down at the Sussex Downs. I waved like an idiot, struggling to get his attention. But it didn’t matter. He just turned away and walked inside.
“But it wasn’t the end of the world. Ten minutes later I was leaving Sussex, and by the end of the day I had managed to patch things up with Roger. We haven’t had a serious argument since; it was quite miraculous.
“A few weeks later I received a letter, postmarked from Sussex, though there was no return address on it. It wasn’t signed. The unnamed writer said that he had heard I visited Fulworth and was sorry for the rudeness of the locals. If I sent word to the pub that I was arriving, he would be there to meet me and would be happy to talk to me.”
“Well?” Watson asked impatiently. “Did you?”
“No, I didn’t go back. For some reason I decided I’d rather leave Sherlock Holmes as I had seen him that day. It didn’t seem important to talk to him anymore, and even if I did, I’m not sure he’d have been any different than the person I saw off in the distance.”
“How’s that?” Dr. Watson asked.
Mary replied, simply: “Above us. And apart from us. And, ultimately, alone.”
Bibliography
Adkins, Roy & Leslie. Jane Austen’s England. London: Viking, 2013.
Barnes, Alan. Sherlock Holmes On Screen: The Complete Film and TV History. London: Titan Books, 2008.
Barzun, Jacques. “Introduction.” In Doyle Adventures : vii-xix.
Campbell, Mark. Sherlock Holmes. Harpenden: Pocket Essentials, 2007.
Davies, David Stuart. Holmes of the Movies: The Screen Career of Sherlock Holmes. London: New English Library, 1976.
---. Starring Sherlock Holmes. London: Titan Books, 2007.
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. The Complete Sherlock Holmes. New York: Barnes & Noble Inc., 1992.
---. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1985.
Field, Amanda J. England’s Secret Weapon: The Wartime Films of Sherlock Holmes. London: Middlesex University Press, 2009.
Flanders, Judith. The Victorian House. London: Harper Perennial, 2004.
Green, Jonathon. Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang. London: Weldenfeld & Nicolson, 1998.
Haining, Peter (ed.). A Sherlock Holmes Compendium. London: Warner Books, 1994.
Herbert, Rosemary (ed.). The Oxford Companion to Crime & Mystery Writing. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
James, P.D. Talking About Detective Fiction. New York: Vintage Books, 2009.
Klinger, Leslie S. (ed.). The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2005-2006. 3 vols.
Knox, Ronald. “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes.” In Haining 62-83.
Morley, Christopher. “In Memoriam Sherlock Holmes.” In Doyle Complete : 5-8.
Also Available
Best and Wisest Man Page 18