My fees varied based on the circumstances of the client. Those without means paid nothing; those with means paid moderately, dearly or princely, depending on their station, financially and morally. I admit to a penchant for extracting large sums of money from the aristocracy and the very wealthy. Part of my pleasure in doing so derives from the fact that the wealthy are often so intimately involved with crime, duplicity, greed and the rancid spoils of habitual poor judgment. They are, indeed, fair game.
My account books, complete and accurate, albeit encrypted so only I know the actual identity of the clients, show my average income over the forty-six years from 1874 to 1920 as being over twelve-thousand pounds per annum. The average number of cases per annum was one-hundred and thirty. Therefore, the average fee per case was a bit over ninety-two pounds. In point of fact: the nobility, aristocracy and gentry paid over two-hundred pounds a case; the middle and upper classes paid about fifty pounds; and the working class paid from naught to twenty-five pounds per case.
Average annual expenses, including living expenses, were one-thousand five-hundred pounds per annum, thus leaving ten-thousand five-hundred pounds for either investment or interest-bearing accounts. Over the course of my career, after all expanses, I earned nearly half a million pounds which, when invested at three percent, produced nearly a million pounds in toto. My initial deduction has been proven correct: crime pays.
9
I never married. I was never engaged to be married. I was never what is referred to as being ‘in love.’ Women were simply not essential to my life. Where others preferred to devote large portions of their intellectual energies to their relationships with women, I preferred to focus entirely on my personal interest: the study of crime in all of its forms. One can fill the lumber-room of the mind with many things, or one can be highly selective as to what constitutes a worthy object for storage. My practice of cerebral retention was one of asceticism; my mental processes were greatly similar to those of a yogi: dressed only in a spare cloth, standing on one leg, the mind fixed intently on other worlds, and physically content with a few drops of water and a few grains of rice upon which to live. Time and space and appetite did not exist for the complexities of women.
Irene Adler was a woman I respected. She was a worthy opponent. I admired her mind. Other women who were central in my cases may have caused a momentary admiration for their insight, or their loyalty, or their intelligence, even their compassion; but Irene Adler possessed a multiplicity of traits to be admired and respected. However, respect and admiration was as far as I was willing to go; to even consider an emotion such as ‘love’ demands far too much space in the mental lumber-room to ever be profitable. Important and essential things would have to have been removed in order to have found space for such temporary and ephemeral shades as love or affection.
Evolution has predisposed the human to pursuit. Humans pursue multiple things: sustenance or caloric heat, warmth, shelter, survival, reproduction, pleasure. These pursuits tend to be visceral. But there exist the rare individuals who pursue cerebral things: creativity, power, wealth, knowledge, logic, philosophy. It is the cerebral pursuits that engender passion and artistry; that all-consuming intellectual drive that fences out all distractions which might interfere with the exquisite purity of purpose.
For me, the passion was the purity of logical deduction. I chose to apply that passion to crime, but I could have easily applied it to mathematics or science or bee-keeping. But the singular passion is not inclusive of rival passions; room exists only for one, dominant passion. And when that one passion is recognized, pursued and mastered, what evolves, given a well-equipped, disciplined brain, is genius. And when one emerges a genius in one’s chosen pursuit, one has chosen to forego all other lesser passions. This conscious decision is not pathology: it is choice.
The zenith of my genius was not at Reichenbach Falls. Reduced to brute strength and luck, my ascendancy over Moriarty was, indeed, the nadir of my career. When he was gone, I had no parallel genius with whom to contend, and it had been accomplished not by genius but by physical force. That was a hollow victory and one that would be reconciled only by several years of exile and introspection. There was no triumph of genius, just the randomness of strength and balance. In his plunge to the waters below, Moriarty took with him my cerebral power, my passion, my genius. Who was the winner?
And so, I was forced to become even more rigidly disciplined to my passion if it was to survive. When I later returned to London, my apprenticeship through Moriarty over, I began the reconstruction of my genius with an increasing scientific and nationalist service preference. The discipline excluded more of what others considered ‘normal’ interests. I still enjoyed music, a good dinner, the occasional ramble, even the theatre now and then, but the potential distractions to a life of pure reasoning and deduction were kept at bay.
Even if I had chosen to include women in my life, I would have been a poor stick of a companion. My social skills are virtually non-existent; I have no desire to associate in society; I am essentially humourless; and I am quite unable to compromise, even to preserve harmony. The woman who would have had me would have had to have been equally as hopeless as I in prospects.
There it is. One can only conclude that I was a creation of myself, and it was only as myself that I could have existed.
10
Whilst privy to so much of my life, Watson was, during our entire association, unaware of my other passion and shadow career. Even Mycroft had no knowledge of my diversionary endeavours in the years from 1900 to 1920.
Stimulation is central to my intellect. Without stimulation I am a machine without power; my mind races, producing no worthy utility. Only stimulation creates the necessary electrical reactions required of my particular and singular genius.
My stimulants are of a variety that circle the corresponding centres of the brain. Tobacco enhances my concentration; music enables my capacity for synthesis; sitting on a pillow for hours in za Zen concentrates and empties my mind in order to fix upon the one inevitable truth of each case. Each stimulant involves my sensory apparatus, thus freeing my brain to work and process data at exceptional speed and insight.
Under Watson’s admonishment, in 1899, I stopped the intermittent use of tropane alkaloid as a stimulant to heighten my sensorial perceptions. The replacement I chose was extreme olfactory stimulation taken to its highest level. With an intensity of study and mastery surprising even to me, I immersed myself into the art and science of perfumery. I became a ‘nose,’ one of the rare ‘acutes’ with the capacity to follow their circuitous olfactory pathways into the deep, hidden byways of the brain where, propelled by aroma alone and using the olfactory nerve access to the core brain, other universes are revealed and a epiphanic, pure form of truth and crystalline elucidation occurs. Simply stated: to discern is to know.
The fall and winter of 1899 found me often in Jermyn Street, Mayfair, at the perfumery of William Penhaligon, holder of the Royal Warrant for perfume and soaps to Queen Victoria and one of London’s distinguished masters of perfumery. In the great laboratory, with its banks of rare botanical elements, essences, solutions, tinctures and distillates, I would spend up to sixteen hours a day developing my abilities to structure aromas. The workbench, known as “The Organ,” was a large curved rack with ten levels that surrounded the perfumer, like a massive church organ with its banks of stops. Each level held one-hundred small glass bottles with stoppers, one-thousand botanicals and chemical formulations in varying dilutions gathered from all over the world. The Organ was the heart and soul of the perfumer’s art and, like its musical namesake, it was where the perfumes were composed and performed. Even the language of perfumery uses musical terms, such as ‘notes’ and ‘harmonies’ and ‘themes.’
With some modesty, I must admit to a natural ability for perfumery. Where most ‘noses’ require ten, twenty or more years to reach mastery, William Penhaligon himself admitted I had absorbed all he could teach me in those
six months of obsessive study in 1899. With his words, “Mr Holmes, you were born to be a nose and to ‘see’ truth through your art,” he signified my ranking with those who have mastered the perfumer’s traditions.
One of my most accomplished formulas was the basis for Mr Penhaligon’s final, minor adjustment in 1901 and, I am pleased to recall, was launched in 1902 as “Blenheim Bouquet,” one of the firm’s immortal fragrances and one that was considered as an entirely new direction in scents. During its formulation I tried over one-thousand variations while working at The Organ for over two-hundred hours to finally arrive, simultaneously, at the celebrated finished scent and the total deductive insight that led to the completion of the most difficult case in my entire career, that of the cannibal Jainists of Covent Garden, an obscene perversion of mankind that can never be revealed to the public. My solution was due to absolute perceptive clarity stemming from my use, in the final formula, of four drops of a six-percent solution of ylang-ylang for the top note. This triumph of aromatic blending triggered a further triumph of pure deduction and logic; all other debris was swept from my mind, and what remained was the truth and final solution. I had synthesized the perfumer’s art and the criminologist’s art and had passed into a new state of enlightenment through stimulation.
In 1901, I assembled an extensive Organ of my own and housed it in a small shop located in Great Russell Street only a few blocks from my rooms. The premises were a ‘half-shop,’ one divided into two from a single full-sized shop. The next-door tenant was Dorsett’s, the renowned bespoke umbrella-makers to European royalty only. Initially, I used the shop as a combination bolthole and secluded sanctuary for concentration. In 1905, however, a former Penhaligon apprentice named Silas Wheeler who, upon qualifying his nose, had gone to work for the elegant London perfumer, Creed, came to me when Creed moved his business to Paris. He suggested that he take over my now fully-furnished and unparalleled Organ to create a line of scents under our combined names to be called Wheelock’s. After consideration, we agreed to proceed under the trade name Sherler’s and soon had sufficient custom to pay expenses and provide Wheeler with an ample salary. By 1910, Sherler’s had become a favourite of the gentry and was honoured with a Royal Warrant from the Prince of Wales for eau de cologne. In 1920, I presented Wheeler with my Organ and full-ownership of the firm and he continues in business today, a solid and respected success.
Before Wheeler’s expansion into the umbrella maker’s half of the shop in 1920, Sherler’s had a small front service counter and customer reception. Located behind was the laboratory and The Organ. Two smaller rooms were behind the laboratory, one was a bedroom with en suite and the other was a storage room for shop supplies. Many evenings, I worked at The Organ and often retired to the bed chamber rather than return to Montague Street. Oddly, the clarity I gained during my hours at Sherler’s was extraordinary when compared to that gained in my rooms. It was, doubtless, the absence of tobacco. Tobacco smoke is the bane of perfumers and is never allowed in the laboratory or the shop. While a fog of shag concentrates my absorption of a problem, the crystalline atmosphere of the laboratory is where the discernment of truth occurs. And I must have both in order to function at the level of genius that I demand of myself. Mycroft, who has cerebral abilities that outpace even mine, has evolved his nose and palette in much the same manner, except he has done it through the mastery of obscure Highland whiskies.
11
Every case—and there were many—that I was concerned with over my long career was stimulating. I can recall all of my cases even now, and I can present the salient facts and deductions leading to their linear classification and storage. Another method of classification, however, presents far more interesting possibilities. I have, from time to time, sifted my cases into their degree of stimulation. Some were barely stimulating, others moderately so, and some were highly stimulating. But, a few were supremely—exquisitely—stimulating. One recalls these cases in much the same way as one recalls the three or four bottles of vintage Bordeaux that go beyond all other vintages and produce a sublime taste memory that endures forever.
At the summit of stimulation is the case Watson called The Hound of the Baskervilles. Next is The Speckled Band. Third is The Musgrave Ritual. Fourth is The Devil’s Foot. And fifth is The Dancing Men. Of course, Watson had his own preferences; these, however, are mine and, in the end, it is my mind that is stimulated or not. These five cases were more than just interesting puzzles and each offered differing degrees of the narcotics Danger and Death.
Many of my cases were concerned with deduction alone; some inferential and some mathematical. Often they simply involved the finding of a notable gemstone, or a government document, or an indiscreet photograph. Deduction, to be maximally stimulating to me, is best associated with Danger and Death. The three elements become symbiotic; each sets each of the other in motion; the three in motion together cause my brain exquisite pleasure. And that pleasure is the only exquisite pleasure I allow into my sphere of experience. In the opposite dark side of the mirror, it is the same pleasure that the murderer feels at the moment life leaves his victim. Triumph. Supremacy. Power over life. Blood lust. The ultimate consuming stimulation.
The essential act, however, is to keep the mirror intact. Should the mirror ever be allowed to crack, the opposites will be forced together and—in suspension like oil and water—will fight for dominance. To be a genius in one’s chosen world, one can never allow control to shatter or an internal fight for dominance to begin. The moment one allows the mirror to crack, genius departs and brutishness ascends. That is what happened that morning on the precipice of Reichenbach Falls. So much depends upon the strength of the glass.
12
I have reflected on the potential for the perfect crime of murder during my long career. Only one case involved a perfect murder by trickery, but Culverton Smith may have come as close as anyone in my experience to creating the perfect death by the use of poison. Of all the poisons available to the murderer, bacteria are a particularly virulent and ambiguous form of poison. If the delivery of deadly bacteria to the victim’s bloodstream is sufficiently ambiguous, proof of intent to murder is exceptionally difficult. As with Smith’s attempt on my life, it was not even necessary for him to be present.
Potentially lethal bacteria can be had for the taking quite easily. Septic dressings and the suppurations of necrosis can be had from any hospital bin. The infection of a needle, or a thorn or a splinter of glass is straightforward and, generally, not particularly unusual. Similarly, the use of bacteria from animal husbandry, resulting in unusual but not suspicious death, such as anthrax, does not immediately suggest murder; rather, it suggests only that the victim contracted a deadly disease from an animal or a farm. If the murderer is only reasonably intelligent and minimally clever, premeditated, bacteria-induced murder can be easily mimicked. With an acute mind behind the crime, perhaps only one out of twenty investigators will consider even the slight possibility of murder.
Other lethal toxins lend themselves superbly to the perfect murder, provided they have a direct and immediate route to the blood or the nervous system of the victim. Curare paralyses the nerves of respiration, causing almost immediate suffocation; the fumes of radix pedis diaboli produce near-instant insanity followed by death when the concentration is sufficient; the natural toxins of the swamp adder or the cyanea capillata, when their bite and sting appear accidental, can effectively shield the quiet murderer from exposure; and, of course, the oft-encountered charcoal poisoning and asphyxiation due to carbon monoxide have been used with great success by legions of subtle killers.
Of the fifty-odd murderers I encountered in my career, there was only one who staged a perfect murder, and one that I recognized only after the killer was long out of reach in Brazil. Young John Hector McFarlane was duped not by Jonas Oldacre, but by Oldacre’s actual murderer, Otho Cornelius, who had assumed the identity of Jonas Oldacre when I flushed him from his priest’s hole at Deep Dene Ho
use in Lower Norwood. Cornelius had murdered Oldacre and, in league with his wife, established himself and her as Jonas Oldacre and the house keeper, Mrs Lexington, in order to plunder Oldacre’s wealth and implicate the unsuspecting young McFarlane. The brilliance of Cornelius lain in the fact that the circumstances of his dramatic emergence created the expectation of acceptance of his identity as Oldacre by McFarlane, the spurious housekeeper and, by extension, the police. No one questioned whether Oldacre was, in fact the real Oldacre. After killing Oldacre, Cornelius had transferred all of Oldacre’s money into his bank account under his own name and, during the period immediately after the discovery when McFarlane was released from police custody and the matter was resolved, Cornelius and his wife, upon his release as Oldacre for want of evidence of conspiracy or attempted murder by Scotland Yard, quickly transferred their illgotten monies to Brazil and set sail for Rio de Janeiro under new names. Both the real Oldacre and his money had disappeared; his body was never found. Cornelius was never traced and the murder of Jonas Oldacre was perfected by a cunning murderer whose greatest accomplishment was in using my own ego as the instrument of his success. Lestrade’s praise, “… this is the brightest thing you have done yet …” was sufficient to close my eyes momentarily to the potential of an imposter.
The Autobiography of Sherlock Holmes Page 5