“It was no way to go,” he said,“unfair. Cramps, swelling, blurred vision. Headaches. Reading about that stupid woman in the papers, the American singer, whole thing presented as if it were a noble battle. Posh doctors running around. Her fans filling the Internet with insubstantial prayers. Whole thing played out like a soap opera. Rubbish. Nothing noble about it.”
He looked at me and the anger was still there, a cold, dangerous thing that I realised was not directed at me, but at the world in general.
“I only hope you never see someone you love go through that sort of pain,” he said.“That perfect, glittering presence, reduced to a thing of screaming, sweat and death.”
He picked up the picture of her on the desk and stared it.
“I try and remember her like this. Not the corpse he reduced her to. I got rid of most of her things. Didn’t want them cluttering the house. Reminding me. This is all I need.”
He put the picture down and got up.“More coffee. I need a break.”
Without waiting for my answer—and, in truth, I didn’t really know what to say—he picked up my mug and the cafetiere and walked out of the study. I was left on my own, staring at the posters on the wall and trying to make sense of what I’d just heard.
Mary Watson had died of a seizure. That’s all that I had known—my knowledge of John Watson and his life was embarrassingly encyclopaedic; it was all most people had known. From what Watson had just said, it sounded though the cause of that seizure had been pregnancy. The American singer he was referring to could only be Miko Clash13 who had recently, publicly, suffered from pre-eclampsia giving birth to twins. But if Mary had died during pregnancy, why had the fact been hidden? The obvious reason was because John Watson, sterile thanks to TB,couldn’t be the father.
I stared at the dictaphone on the desk and wondered what I had stumbled upon.
If Watson wasn’t the father, then who was? My mind kept returning to the news clipping on the wall. Holmes and Watson on Blackpool front, the seeds of murder just a column-inch away. Was that possible? When I had asked Watson when he had truly begun to hate Holmes, he had said 1984, avoiding my attempts to force a specific answer.“When he died?” I had asked. Watson had just smiled.
It was absurd. I was jumping to conclusions, reading too far between the lines. My obsession for crime fiction—fostered by the comedic work of the man I was interviewing—was colouring my judgement. There was no way my suspicions could be correct. Was there?
HOLMES: How many times must I tell you, Watson? It’s always a mistake to theorise before you’re in full possession of the facts.
WATSON: Like the time you burst into the Coco Club claiming Mimi DeVaux must be the Brixton Strangler? An assertion based only on the size of her biceps and the speed with which she could knock up a reef knot?
HOLMES: How was I suppose to guess at the services Madame Mimi offered her clients? Unbelievable. I’ll never see the like again. Like a Sunday roast being trussed up for the pot. The man must have been mad.
WATSON: Him and the rest of the cabinet.
THE DOOR OPENED and John Watson returned, carrying a tray of drinks.
I jumped up to help him, but he waved me away.
“More than capable,” he said.
He put the tray down on the desk and poured two cups of coffee. He passed me one and took the other. For a moment we just sat there, an awkward silence hanging between us. I took a sip of the coffee. It was far too strong, but I continued to work at it; better that than sit there doing nothing.
“I’ve probably said too much,” he said, after a couple of minutes.“Know I have. Stupid. Shouldn’t have let you come. Missed it. That’s the truth of it. Stupid profession, putting people in the spotlight, turning them into stars, making them need the attention. Adoration. Pathetic, really. Agent told me you were doing a book, and I felt the old thrill. To be important.”
“You’re very important to me,” I admitted, slightly embarrassed at the turn of the conversation.“I’ve been a fan since I was akid.” I considered for a moment, then reached down to my bag and pulled out the book, handing it over to him. “I bought that when I was eleven. Always loved crime stories, and I thought it was a serious book.”
He smiled, and for the first time there was a kindness to it. “Serious book? Arguably,it’s neither.”
“But I loved it. Read it over and over again until I could recite the comics by heart. Then I found the radio series on cassette. Then the TV show when they finally released it on video. Holmes and Watson were my heroes. Friends, almost. Well, Watson at least, you; Holmes was too cold, too remote. He was funny, but you didn’t like him. Not in the same way. The doctor felt like someone you wanted to know, the warm, faithful, kind man who would be the best friend you could have. I think I loved him a little.”
Now it was me that had said too much. He didn’t look concerned, though; in fact, he was in agreement.
“So many did.” He stroked the cover of the book.“All the letters. The autographs. It never affected Sherlock. Probably because he’d always believed he was special. Me? I could never refuse it. The social events, the women. So many women. Sherlock could resist those as well, of course. All except one. Mine.”
He looked at me and the anger had gone, to be replaced with a gentle, almost fatalistic, look of comfort.
“That’s what I always assumed. That Sherlock wanted Mary because she was mine. Because finally I had someone else I needed in my life. Someone I needed more than him.”
“Second fiddle,” I said.
“Exactly that. So he charmed her. And he could be charming, when he really tried. Mary and I were having a rough couple of weeks. My fault. I’d been unfaithful and careless about it. Holmes saw his opportunity and struck. Talk about careless. He got her pregnant.
“She’d always wanted children, but had accepted that, with me, she could never have them. We talked about it. Did I want a termination? I did. God help me, of course I did. The idea of the baby being his. But I thought that maybe, the child... it could be something that would bring us all together. It would paper over the cracks. She’d have what she’d always wanted. He would have won his little battle, and I... well, I would still have Mary. Of course,that’s not quite how it worked out.”
“She died.”
“And the baby died with her. Eclampsia.”
He looked over towards his wailing wall, casting his eyes over the memories.
“He killed her. With his child. No more. No more Sherlock bloody Holmes.”
“The jellyfish sting?”
He looked confused.
“The newspaper article on the wall,” I explained,“about you turning on the lights at Blackpool. Next to it there’s an article about someone dying from a jellyfish sting. Anaphylactic shock. I assumed it gave you the idea?”
“It must have done,” he nodded.“I’d never realised. The things we soak up when we’re moving through the world. When bees are threatened, they release what is known as an alarm pheromone, the scent of which drives the rest of the swarm to attack. To protect the hive. Like almost anything in life—with the notable exception of true happiness—it can be synthesised. Smells like bananas. I poured it on him and watched them go wild. I had to run,didn’t want to be caught in my own trap, but I heard him scream with every step. Not so funny now. Except to me. He made me laugh.”
I felt sick. What was I supposed to do? How did he expect me to react to this? I could hardly not tell the police, could I? Hero or not, the man was a murderer. Perhaps I could sympathise, understand what had driven him to it, but that was neither here nor there. He had killed his partner of thirty-six years. That was not something you could just shrug off. My stomach churned violently, just thinking about it.
“Some people die after a single sting,” he continued.“Those with severe allergic reactions. But most people, those that have not built up a natural immunity at least, will die if they’re stung enough. Renal failure or rhabdomyolysis. Do you know w
hat that is?”
I shook my head. I felt too nauseous to even speak.
“It’s a common condition in trauma victims. The skeletal tissue breaks down, releasing proteins into the bloodstream. Some of those proteins can damage other organs. All very complicated. Don’t really know the ins and outs myself. Point is, it can kill.
“In Holmes’ case, it wasn’t even necessary. He was severely allergic. How wonderful was that? He finally found the one thing he wasn’t brilliant at. Keeping insects. Brilliant. Now that’s a punchline.”
“What—” I pressed my fingers to my mouth, trying to compose myself, I felt sure I was going to be sick.“You can’t just tell...” I bit back the nausea again.“What do you expect me to do about this?” I asked.
“Not much,” he said.“I poured a whole bottle of this into your coffee.”
He held up one of the bottles of e-cigarette liquid. The coffee flavoured one. Devil’s Foot Vaping Supplies, it said on the bottle, above a cartoon image of Satan, huffing on an e-cigarette.
“From what I gather,it’s not an ideal murder weapon. The standard shop brands aren’t quite strong enough. I import mine. Ten percent nicotine. Always was a martyr to my habit. I poured it into your cup before I brought it in, then added the coffee.
“When I went out there I meant to put poison in both our cups. Or the cafetiere, perhaps. French press. Not like I have much to live for. For some reason I didn’t. Stupid. Can’t have you telling people about Mary, though. Won’t tarnish her memory. Say what they like about me. But not her. I have to remember her how she was in hospital. Soiled. Broken. Nobody else.”
He held up the picture.
“They can remember her like this.”
I couldn’t hold it back any longer. I fell from my chair, vomiting, my muscles cramping.
Absurdly, I thought of the newspaper headline I’d seen when I’d first arrived here. The husband with nicotine. My woman who had murdered her murderer was always open to influence, it seemed. “The things we soak up when we’re moving through the world...”
I’d never really thought about my own death. The circumstances of it. If I had, this would not have been something I could ever have predicted. Ceasing to be, in a study in Scarborough.
“I’d better get rid of this,” I heard him say, reaching for my dictaphone.“Can’t have anyone finding that can we?”
And then I realised. The cloud. Everything John Watson had said was backed up to the cloud. For all the good it would do me.
Never meet your heroes. Very true. It’s funny the things people say. You ask a fan of a pop group what they’d do if they met their idol.“I’d just die!” they swoon. Yes. Exactly that.
INTERVIEWER: We’re joined by Eddie Conan, close friend of Arthur Doyle and executive producer of tonight’s documentary.
EDDIE: Hi, Alex.
INTERVIEWER: It was you who exposed John Watson as the murderer of your friend.
EDDIE: It was. I was sorting through his belongings and I found the recording he’d made of their interview. It was backed up on his computer. I don’t have to tell you how awful it was to hear it.
INTERVIEWER: It must have been terrible.
EDDIE: Heartbreaking. Arthur was such a good mate, you know? And to hear him die... And Watson, a man loved by so many. To think he could have done such a thing.
INTERVIEWER: I believe the audio recording is to be played in full as part of tonight’s film?
EDDIE: It is. We thought long and hard about it, but decided the public had a right to know. I think it’s what Arthur would have wanted.
INTERVIEWER: Tomorrow also sees the release of the book you were co-writing with Arthur?
EDDIE: Yes, obviously it’s not quite the book we planned, but I know he would have wanted me to finish it. It’s a testament to his memory.
HOLMES: This is it, Watson, the final problem. With this case, my career will be over.
WATSON: Never, Holmes! You’ll go on forever.
HOLMES: I think not. Everything has it’s time, and mine is done.
WATSON: Fair enough.
EFFECTS: He lights his pipe.
WATSON: (Cont.) After all, there’ll always be repeats.
FOOTNOTES
1 Not to be confused with the 1963 radio episode ‘The Adventure of the Crooked Man,’ where Holmes fights a murderous chiropractor who bends his victims into grotesque geometrical shapes.
2 “That great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the profession are irresistibly drained,” Langdale Pike, ‘Tittle Tattle,’ Daily Mirror, 1962.
3 The most notorious of which was certainly Elementary! My Favourite Holmes and Watson Moments (Channel 4, 1989), when a drunken Oliver Reed had claimed to have starred in an episode that didn’t exist.
4 Or poisoning the caretaker’s cat; accounts vary.
5 Both played by Jack Train, the Chinstrap character would also feature in two episodes of The Goon Show.
6 As both performers used their given names in the roles that would make them famous, they frequently referred to them as ‘the detective’ and ‘the doctor’ when conducting interviews.
7 Hercule Poirot, the fussy Belgian detective, and his loyal friend Arthur Hastings were created by Agatha Christie.
8 Most memorably dismissed by the lauded film critic, Roger Ebert as ‘Some Like it Not.’
9 Taking advantage of a loophole in the censorship laws, it was agreed that nudity could not be classed as obscene if it was static. The Windmill Theatre immediately became famous for its popular presentations of immobile, naked women.
10 As is a good deal of the second, only ‘The Adventure of the Copper Britches’ existing in broadcast quality, with a handful of off-air recordings covering a further three episodes.
11 Two other popular radio comedies. The former would be the basis for two early movies from Hammer Films, the latter featured Kenneth Horne who would later go on to front Beyond our Ken and Round the Horne.
12 A comedy set in a Glaswegian cleaning firm and an early vehicle for Nicholas Lyndhurst.
13 Real name: Rene Adler, probably most famous for her single ‘Eat Me’ (Sony, 2013).
The Small World of 221B
Ian Edginton
A hugely prolific comics writer, Ian has a clear fascination for English literature of a certain period, as a quick scan of his 2000 AD credits (Leviathan, Stickleback, Ampney Crucis) demonstrates. He jumped at this anthology, I’m glad to say, and ‘The Small World of 221B’ is a wonderful, playful contribution that sits squarely in the sandpit of the postmodern. It begins the descent into weird almost immediately, with an invitation to a wedding at an oddly familiar address...
IT IS STRANGE how quickly things can change.
How the life as we imagine it can be turned upon its head in the blink of an eye. One moment, everything is as it should be. God is in his Heaven and all is right with the world.
The next...
Well, to say everything I have ever come to believe is a lie would be a monumental understatement. I write these words, to what end I cannot say. I know no living human soul will ever see them, but I have become so accustomed to documenting the fantastic fiction that has become my life, I know no other way of articulating the events of the past twenty-four hours.
In times of crisis we fall back onto the comfortable, the favoured and familiar, and thus I once again find myself sitting at the dining table of 221B Baker Street, pen in hand. The gas lamps are lit, the fire crackles in the grate. The soporific metronome of the mantle clock marks the passing time. My good friend and colleague Mr. Sherlock Holmes reclines in his chair. Fingers steepled, eyes closed in quiet contemplation of the day’s revelations. A sight I have witnessed countless times over the years, or—as it transpires—not at all.
I remember most precisely the first indication that all was not quite right with the world. It was a week ago today, May 22nd 18—, on the occasion of the marriage of Mr. Michael Stamford to one Mary Bennet of Longbou
rn, Hertfordshire. Stamford had written to me some months earlier asking if I would fulfil the role of best man at his wedding. His older brother was chief engineer on a dam construction somewhere in the Canadian wilds and unable to return home.
I initially declined. Stamford had been my dresser, working under me at Bart’s, but we were by no means good friends. At best we were former colleagues, now acquaintances. I therefore felt uncomfortable playing such an intimate role in his forthcoming nuptials. It was Holmes who pointed out that were it not for Stamford, we might never have met.
“If he had not tapped you on the shoulder that day in the Criterion Bar, and you had not mentioned that, due to your dwindling army pension, you were looking for comfortable rooms at a reasonable price... Our lives would have been that much poorer for lacking the company of the other.
“As ordinary and uninspiring as the Stamfords of this world may be, they are the subtle catalysts who, by a myriad of minor choices, inch history along in increments. They are less about the broad strokes and more of a mosaic.
“Who knows, if everyone who stepped out of their front door this morning turned right, instead of left, how different the world might be?”
“So, it was a coincidence?” I replied.
Holmes regarded me with a familiar weary indulgence.
“By no means. The Criterion is the preferred watering hole of the staff and students of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. It is therefore highly likely that you and he would be there. Given your prior history, he would of course introduce himself. Your search for affordable lodgings would arise in conversation, as would mine, since I had spoken to Stamford about finding someone to share rooms with that very morning in the chemical laboratory at the hospital.
“For better or worse, dear fellow. Our lives are inextricably intertwined with his.”
“Then you go and be his blessed best man!” I chimed.
Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets Page 14