August 11, 1863, on the occasion of your eleventh birthday, my dear, darling John—
With luck you are reading this on August 11, 1873, and you are now twenty-one years old and ten years past my death.
I pray that you will forgive me for all that I am about to tell you and will understand my delay in doing so.
You no doubt suspected, and I will confirm, that my death was at my own hand. Please be assured there was nothing you or anyone could have done to dissuade me. It was not despair. As I write this, I face a terrible and incurable cancer, which over the next six months will consume me and put not only myself, but all our family through needless torture. I decided to spare us all.
I have chosen to shed my earthly bonds, but I trust, dearest son, that I will rest in the hands of a forgiving God and am now looking down at you with love. At eleven you were not ready, but I believe that as a man of twenty-one you will understand.
The second fact you must know is this. You were not responsible for the death of your twin. I know that you and Rosie argued that day at our picnic on the river, and that you left her and walked home, thinking your brother had stayed to look after her.
But when you discovered Harry at home in the bath, you thought you had made a terrible error leaving Rosie alone at the river. You ran back, but the poor child was already dead, drowned in the rapids, and you blamed yourself.
I must set the record straight. Your brother admitted the following to me yesterday. Harry was in fact with Rose when you left, as you thought. But what you didn’t know was that he saw her slip in the river and hit her head on a rock. He leaped in to save her, but the currents took her out of reach. Harry then saw her dashed against the rocks downstream and knew she was dead.
It happened so fast, he panicked and ran home taking a shorter route, and beat you to the house, where he jumped into the bath so that no one would see him wet from the river. That is where you found him.
Of course, his story later was that you had left Rose alone and that is why she drowned.
While her death was not your fault, neither was it his, but he allowed you, John, to take the blame. Harry is fourteen now, at the time of this writing, and yet I already see his future. There is a flaw in his character, dearest son, like a vein of poison that runs in my family, but which has not touched you. Even at fourteen, Harry is troubled with drink. He thinks me blind to this.
I made a difficult decision. Knowing that you could shoulder the guilt better than your weaker brother, I delayed imparting this story to you until now, when you could, as an adult, make a choice – to confront your errant but fragile sibling or, knowing the truth, to spare him the confrontation and to move on.
And so I decided on this box, and this secrecy. I pray that Elspeth remembers to give it to you, and the hint about ‘your mother’s clock’. In this way, I knew no one but you could ever open it.
And the final thing, John, is my wish for you. You have nerve and courage, dearest son, and are destined for great things.
I glanced over at my sleeping friend. He had not read this and yet he intuited this assessment by a woman he had never met. I turned back to the letter.
I know you will grow to be a man of honour and accomplishment. I pray that you find a quest worthy of your gifts, my son, and that you take comfort and pride in lending your courage to that cause, that ideal, or that person. Then, looking down, I shall be happy for you.
You have it in you to be a force for good, John. The world needs you.
Your loving mother,
Mairead.
I held the pages in my hands as my vision blurred for a moment. Her words sadly presaged my brother Harry’s alcoholism and early demise. And I thought it more likely that she had overstated her hopes for me, as parents do. Did the world really need John Watson?
I folded up my mother’s letter and my heart swelled. Had she really seen such promise in my young character? Perhaps any good deed I had done was in compensation for my regrets over Rose’s death. Suffering needlessly, as it turned out. I looked over at my friend, pale with exhaustion and asleep on the settee. Was this not like Holmes, suffering over his inability to save Odelia Wyndham?
Only in the abstract. I did not fool myself. My friend was a tireless warrior for the wronged, possessing gifts in the realm of genius, and making contributions to justice far beyond anything I could imagine. His work was life changing, his intellect beyond compare.
The world was indeed a better place for the existence of Sherlock Holmes.
I smiled as I placed the letter in my breast pocket. A sense of peace, of purpose, washed over me. I knew exactly what I needed to do. I covered Holmes with the afghan and rang down for lunch. And then I picked up my pen to write.
My mother, I was sure, would be pleased.
For interesting facts and photos of people, places and things mentioned in this novel, see the online annotations here: https://macbird.com/the-three-locks/notes
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my wonderful editor David Brawn and agent Linda Langton, and, to quote Dorothy Parker, my severest friends and dearest critics Harley Jane Kozak, Luke Kuhns, Miguel Perez, Robert Mammana, Alex Bennett, Patricia Smiley, Jonathan Beggs, Linda Burrows, Bob Shayne, Craig Faustus Buck, Matt Witten, Andrew Rubin, and Jamie Diamond. Also my very grateful thanks to the incisive Dana Isaacson, Lynn Hightower, and Dennis Palumbo. Hugs to a young woman who inspires me and to whom this book is dedicated: Miranda Andrews, a nurse on the front lines of the pandemic, working ER at Mass General and FEMA. And to Kirstin Kay, a deep Sherlockian and courageous spirit. Thanks to Jonathan and Elaine McAfferty, accomplished Sherlockians and Cantabrigians, and to Sherlockian experts and good friends Les Klinger and Catherine Cooke. Thanks also to the expertise and kind consultation of E.J. Wagner and D.P. Lyle, forensics, Brian Morland, lock expert and curator of Master Locksmith’s Association museum, Dr Christopher Stray on classics and Cambridge, and Tom Larnach, River Manager of the Cam, and Dr Tony Hughes for confirmation of medical details. A very special thanks to Dan Stashower, Victorian magic expert and deep Sherlockian. Thanks to Shakespeare experts and theatre makers Rob and Sarah Myles whose ‘The Show Must Go Online’ gave me such a boost, and to Richard Crabtree for spirit-lifting violin lessons and laughs. To dear friends Rob Arbogast and Paul Denniston, the Holmes and Watson of the cover art. And to actors Luke Barton and Joseph Derrington for some ‘Holmes on Lockdown’ fun which lightened a dark moment and Jonathan Le Billon for earlier Holmes fun.
Biggest thanks of all goes to my husband Alan Kay, my port in this battering storm of 2020, giver of hugs, cooker of omelettes, and Voice of Reason, who bought an actual Ruhmkorff coil and installed it in our London flat, just because.
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About the Author
Bonnie MacBird, BSI (Art in the Blood) and ASH (The Professional Enthusiast), was born in San Francisco, educated at Stanford, and now lives in London and Los Angeles.
A fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle since age ten, she’s active in the Sherlockian community in both the UK and the US, and lectures regularly on Sherlock Holmes, writing, and creativity. A longtime veteran of Hollywood, MacBird has been a screenwriter (original script for TRON), an Emmy-winning producer, a playwright, studio exec (Universal) and actor.
MacBird attributes her enjoyment in capturing ‘voice’ to both her acting and screenwriting experience and her music training as well. She teaches a popular screenwriting class at UCLA Extension, which approaches writing for film using techniques of other art forms.
In her Sherlock Holmes novels, she aims to accurately portray the brilliant detective and his friend as closely as possible to Doyle, yet expanding the original shortform fiction to full-length novels. Art in the Blood features a child who has disappeared and a bloody art theft, and touches on the theme of the perils and blessings of the artistic temperament. Unquiet Spirits features a murdered girl, a threatened scientist and a haunted whisky estate, while considering the dangers of not dealing with the ghosts of one’s past. The Devil’s Due brings Holmes to the edge of evil in order to combat a devilish multiple murderer.
Visit her at www.macbird.com
Also by Bonnie MacBird
Art in the Blood
Unquiet Spirits
The Devil’s Due
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