Doctor Watson's Casebook

by Patrick Mercer

  "No, Doctor, nowt's fractured, but that looks bleedin’ sore." I'd noticed how Bowler slipped into the old barrack vernacular when he was with me, not that Alyisha seemed to mind. "But you've got a nasty bastard of a weal there. The bruising will go with that swollen cheek that that Lincoln feller gave you. You've been in the wars, ain't ya? What manner of rogue done this to you?"

  "Oh, ask him no question, my love; leave the Doctor. Brandy, huzoor?" asked the delightful woman.

  "Aye, ma'am, thank you, that would be most welcome." I'd no sooner said it than a silver beaker was pushed into my hand and I was suddenly aware of how damn low I felt. "It was Colonel Moriarty, you remember, that officer from outside Kandahar who left the three of us to die?"

  "That owl-shit on big horse – the one who gave us no water? That feringhee officer?" Alyisha was no fool, the way she'd picked up English showed that.

  "What, that gobshite who threatened to horsewhip you, despite you being as weak as a baby? That bastard? How's he turned up in our lives again?" asked Bowler.

  Now, my memory was rather different from the impression that the stalwart Bowler had given. I remember being incensed by Moriarty but in such an abject state of self pity and dirty wounds that my words were simply that - words. Bowler made me sound positively gallant - which would have been just fine by me had it not been for the blanket of misery that was unfurling itself over me. I had to concentrate.

  "I'd better explain."

  "Before you do, sir, don't pull any punches. I've told Alyisha here all about our current case (our current case? I loved Bowler's use of the possessive) and you won't shock her, me neither," - and he gave one of his all-knowing winks. "If your manner of investigations with Mrs Shaw is germane…" how Bowler loved his cod legal talk, "to our understanding."

  So, despite my creeping despair, I told the pair of them all about recent developments, about Kitty Vavasour, Moriarty and the puzzle of the relationship between Amelia and Gutteridge. I have to admit, it was good to talk it through because, whilst Bowler was what he was - a half-educated ex-soldier turned cabby - and Alyisha a creature from a totally different culture, both were highly intelligent - well, shrewd really - and a most welcome change from the glacial patrimony of the man with whom I shared my quarters.

  "So, there we have it, Bowler. Moriarty not only has the motive, he has a track record of very recent lethal violence and, as my shoulder bears witness, the temper to use such violence even when he's away from the legitimate setting of a battlefield. It looks like he's our man, not Gutteridge, what d'you think?" I asked.

  "Dunno, sir. Why kill Shaw, why not just give him some of what he gave you? He must have known who Shaw was and that his death would cause a right hue and cry and it's not as if it was done in hot blood. Shaw was stabbed from behind by someone who planned it and who knew what he was about with a knife."

  "Yes, but Moriarty knows how to use a sword - you can take my word for that."

  "Yes, sir, a sword, a gentleman's weapon, not a blinking assassin's blade," Bowler countered.

  "And, Doctor," Alyisha cut in, "the man with knife, he is someone who is passionate," she said the word so prettily, "either about Mr Shaw or about Mrs Kitty. Passionate in love, passionate in hate or maybe both. Moriarty sahib don't know about Shaw and he tell you he doesn't care nothing for Mrs Kitty - she just mounting toy for him. Now, Gutteridge sahib, he loves Mrs Amelia. He violent man, too,"

  And she was right. I'd told them what Amelia had said about Gutteridge and the sailor in Liverpool.

  "But, as I told you, the Colonel said to me, '…I don't care to share my table, others have found that out to their cost…' what's that if it's not an admission of guilt?" I was aware that all the lustre had gone from my voice.

  "Others, sir? Talibs, Ghazis by the score and dozens of bleedin' Zulus if the papers is to be believed. You won't remember, sir, but when all the honours was being dished out after Afghan and me and the 66th was back in the Isle of Wight, I took special notice of that begger Moriarty getting a CB, I did. I remember that he'd been in some sort of incident in South Africa where he did all sorts of mischief to the tribesmen, even before he turned up on the desert with us, sir. Brother of some famous professor he is. He may gave got the taste for blood, Doctor, but he ain't a fool - a fool wouldn't be so wary of the press, would they? Don't go putting your hatred onto an innocent man, sir and making him guilty."

  "Mister Bowler's right, Doctor. But let a woman tell you that Shaw sahib's murder is all about someone's love for Mrs Amelia. Shaw's love is tired, dead. Gutteridge’s love is still hot - like his temper. Mrs Amelia holds answer, not Mrs Kitty." I had to admit, there was sense in what both were saying although my stamina was failing,

  "No, Doctor, you may be feeling a bit sore just at the moment, but you'll just have to steel yourself for another visit to Aldebert Terrace - all in the name of work, mind." There was that wink again. "There's some reason why Mrs Shaw is covering up for Gutteridge - you'll just have to delve a bit deeper - ha!"

  Chapter Six, Realisation.

  That cut across the shoulder sent my mind reeling back, reeling back to when the same shoulder had last been swollen and aching. By the time I got back to 221b, my neck and collar bone were sore as hell and my face a blotchy bruise, but otherwise I was sound. Well, sound in body, but my mind was absolutely elsewhere. As Bowler rattled me back to my lodgings the wheels were cushioned by the horse dung on the road for most of the time, but whenever an iron tyre ground on grit or tarmacadam, I jumped off my seat, sick with pain. I got out and thanked him, but in as abject a state of nervousness as I could remember, whilst every detail of that monstrousness in the desert pricked my mind. Why, even as I put my foot on the metal rung and prepared to step down, a hundred screaming fanatics seemed to bear down upon me, hoots and yells filling the air. I expected more pain, blood and destruction at the hands of bhang-crazy Ghazis, only to find myself in the midst of a crocodile of ten year olds from Saint Botolph's all chanting their catechism whilst on the way to the swimming baths. Damn me, I was in a state, so I scuttled past Mrs Hudson, slammed my door shut, ripped off most of my clothes and dragged the top sheet and pillow over my head. I was exhausted. Exhausted by the pain, exhausted by the humiliation, exhausted by having to cudgel my brain with Bowler and Alyisha - but mercifully this didn't stop me from sleeping.

  Even then though, my sleep held demons. Every time I moved I dreamt that another bullet had thumped into my shoulder blade and this set me off twitching and dodging in my dream world so that I got little, proper rest. Finally, Ayoob Khan's guns were hammering so hard in my ears that I woke, twisting as I jerked upright, letting out a little cry of pain as the bombardment turned out to be only a salvo of knocks on the door.

  "Sir, Doctor Watson, sir, can you hear me? Are you alright?" I wrapped the coverlet around me and stumbled across to the room to let Mrs Hudson in. Now, I'd like to say that there was the light of concern in her eyes and, in her own chilly way, `I suppose there was, but she was so used to seeing me like this, she was so used to visits from the blackest of black dogs, that she'd become inured. "Oh, you've taken-one-on have you sir?" she recognised the symptoms and knew the cure. "Right, I'll just close your curtains and let you get some rest. I'll tell Mister Holmes not to disturb you and unless you call, I'll only be back when I've got your breakfast tray." She walked over to the window, closed out the night and in the darkness I could just see her running a stern eye over me, rather as she might a scullery maid with her monthlies.

  Breakfasts, lunches, teas and dinners came and I picked at them. I obeyed nature's command in my chamber pot, but other than that hardly stirred as the yowls, bangs and curses echoed and swirled round my mind, set about by Bowler's, Alyisha's, Nakshbad's, Galbraith's and Lynch's faces. I was pursued at one stage by a pack of hell-hounds, one with Moriarty's features, another with Holmes's who was snarling yet somehow smoking a pipe and, to my amazement, another that looked uncommonly like Pygmy Jones from my school da
ys. But, as the hours of healing sleep increased, so this wave of nastiness lapped less strongly - it was the usual pattern provided that I didn't seek to dose it with whiskey. By the third morning, I was well enough to eat the toast and eggs that had been prepared for me, though not yet strong enough to reveal my most recent hurts to Mrs Hudson. As she settled my tray, she looked at my bruised face, cocked an eyebrow and tapped a lilac envelope that lay beside my saucer.

  "The postman may have delivered something of a tonic, Doctor," she said before she withdrew.

  I must admit, my mood improved just at the sight of it. Now, penny novels and other such film-flam suggest that notes from warm blooded ladies must always be scented, but I've never known such a thing. I've seen them in all manner of delicate shades, some with sealing wax, most not, but all securely pasted down (a shop-girl in Portsmouth once sent me a creation tied about with a satin bow - imagine!). This one was addressed to me quite correctly in a bold, typically female hand, the rounded letters suggesting, I fancied, the authoress's own curves and inside there was just one sheet of the same coloured paper with the words, 'How's yourself, Doctor?' snaking over the middle.

  This, of course, had the desired effect for it not only gingered me up, it also recalled me to my duty. Amelia Shaw wanted to see me and I needed to see her. She'd bidden me go see Moriarty when we last met, though warning me of the possible consequences. Now, she would certainly be worried by my silence and might have attributed it to some misfortune with the Colonel or, perhaps, Kitty. Equally well, she must be concerned that she'd heard nothing from me whilst she was still trying to convince me of Gutteridge's innocence. No, I had to find out who really killed her husband and - as I knew fine well - she held the answer. I would have to go and see her though, staring at my unshaven, flaccid face in the looking glass, I wondered if I was man enough.

  ***

  "What's that creature done to you?" I'd left my bed in Baker Street without even talking to Holmes and caught an omnibus, arriving at Aldebert Terrace a little after eight o'clock on a drizzly, winter's evening. I was worried that Amelia wouldn't be in, but she was. "I told you Albert Gutteridge was suspicious of us. I knew something had happened when you went all silent for a couple of days. Where'd he catch you?"

  "No, it wasn't Gutteridge, it was Moriarty who did this." When she'd seen the state I was in, she'd immediately stripped me down to the buff, not hot with lust for once, but with that natural, nursing instinct that I've noticed so often in the Irish. We were standing in her parlour, she'd turned me into the light of her gas lamp to get a proper look and I could see the surprise on her face.

  "He took a stick or strap to you from the look of it," she said, gently touching the weal.

  "He did, the rogue." I told her all about it, "but I'll pay him out. I told him I'd thrash him when we were in Afghanistan and I bloody well will, see if I don't."

  "Hush, darling, just sit down on the settee here. I’ll tell you this now," a note of hardness had entered her voice, "I'll have no man doing such a thing to you. If any rogue touches you, they'll have Amelia Shaw, Amelia Comisky of Ballintay as was, to reckon with," and, you know, looking at those blazing eyes, those bunched little fists, I could see the spitfire inside her. Looking back, I shouldn't have been surprised at how things turned out.

  "But there's something else, isn’t there? You're not right, it's more than just these stripes," she remarked, staring straight into my eyes.

  I duly broke down there and then. I'm not proud of it, but it was just that affection, that kindness that did it. I'm the last one to prose on about strain and fatigue and all the mumbo-jumbo that some of my medical colleagues have become so keen on, but I really hadn't been right in my mind since Kandahar. It had been a lot better over the last six months or so, but it only took something out of the ordinary to set me off. Horses whinnying, the clash of metal on metal, or even pain such as my recent encounter. Anyway, whatever it was, I told Amelia, blubbing like a child. I wondered at the time if I was getting soft on her as she stripped me naked, bustled me upstairs and into bed before she shed all her own clothes, pinched the light and nestled in next to me.

  "Now just forget it, so. There's no nasty fellers with turbans, devils in curly slippers, Albert Gutteridge or even a Moriarty to chase you now. There's no-one else here, just me, me who loves you with all my heart."

  ***

  The next few days were some of the loveliest and softest of my life; it was a damn shame that it all ended the way it did.

  None of Amelia's hardness showed, she let go all of the brassy patina that she normally wore, emerging as the dearest, kindest nurse I could have hoped for. I loafed about in her bedroom (she'd started calling it 'our' room), occasionally going down to the kitchen next to the parlour when she was out running her errands and generally treating the place like home. I got her to take notes, a simple one to Baker Street and a more thorough one to Bowler explaining that I was delayed but not to worry and was pleased to let the days drift by as I shook myself out of both my physical and mental ills. The truth was, it suited me. I was in no condition to take any exercise, the food and company was more than congenial and, if it hadn't been for her warning, I'd have been entirely at my ease. I even let my investigation lapse as I sampled a wholly different way of highly self indulgent living for I'd never had the opportunity to spend more than fleeting periods of time with a woman before as my life hadn't been like that. I hate to confess it, but I was starting to enjoy it.

  The week or so that I spent there started with reading books and papers in the mornings then trotted into lunch, then fire lit afternoons followed by tea, dinner and, as my strength returned, amorous exercise. But not the frantic, hungry couplings of a few weeks ago; gentler, slower episodes that were, well, exquisite. I knew that I should not neglect my duty but it was as if all my miseries had taken flight and, apart from Amelia's cautions, things were idyllic. And we talked about her late husband a great deal. It was clear that his infidelity had driven her insane with jealousy but she'd continued to love him. This passion, I had to say, made me scratch my head, for she now claimed to have fallen under just the same spell with me and I had to wonder just how many others had shared a couch with her over the years and listened to the same endearments. Still, I would have been foolish to turn down such things as she told me how the good Colonel Moriarty would swing for what he had done not just to her Ezekail but now also to me. About this she was adamant - if the law didn't take its proper course, she'd go for him herself - and the way her eyes glittered, I could believe it.

  There was someone else, though, who would obviously have liked to be in my boots. Amelia had made it very clear that Gutteridge believed that the path was now clear for him to press his case with her and that she wanted to keep our liaison from his prying eyes and ears. That's why she warned me.

  "John, when I'm out, don't be going and showing yourself at the windows. He's always sniffing about - the gym's so close that I often find him circling here when he's out on a run, or when he's off to his own, wee place. He’s an awful jealous man and I don't want him finding out about us till Moriarty's out the way and we two can make it all official."

  I'd thought a great deal about those words (preferring to ignore her clear ambitions upon myself) and keeping my distance from her windows when she was out until one day she came back from one of her jaunts to the grocers, clutching an envelope.

  "Your man, that fellow, Bowler, came up to me in his cab and asked me to give you this." It was Bowler’s writing, for sure. I recognised the crabbed hand, the letters square and straight at the bottom where he rested his pen on a ruler: the note inside was very simple. It told me that the police had found what they believed to be the murder weapon dumped in some shallow standing water not far from the place of the attack. Although rusty, it was said to be an expensive weapon, heavier at the tip than the hilt - clearly a throwing knife. He finished with blunt wit '…hope you're bearing up (!) Doctor Watson, sir!!!'

 
I showed the note to Amelia and asked, as casually as I could, "so why would the good Colonel Moriarty use such a weapon, do you suppose. Would he have been wandering about with a specialised knife like this in his back pocket?" But she shot back,

  "Who's to say it's such a thing? Only you have drawn that conclusion. Why, it's probably some native blade, you know how these sahib wallahs love to keep their trophies about them. You'll just have to go to the Peelers when you've got a wee bit more strength and have a look at it, won't you? Only that'll satisfy you. And talking of satisfaction…" Amelia here took my mind right off my line of questioning by a most wanton piece of behaviour, leaving me heaving for breath on the chaise-longue just like it had been in our first throes of lust. No sooner was it over, though, than my Calypso immediately smoothed her skirts and ran off out to get something from the shops that she'd forgotten.

  ***

  I was superstitious about dates and the next day was the anniversary of my brother's death. The poor mite, Charles, had drowned when he was only twelve in an old brick pit in which he'd been playing up on the moors near where we lived. My mother had never, properly recovered and I kept a silent, personal memorial to it every year, the memory always casting a slight pall over things even though it was more that fifteen years since it had happened. I was aware of the date as soon as I woke, but I had no idea that this vigil would be so momentous.

  Amelia had left the house about ten thirty to do whatever women did at the shops and I was mooning about in the sitting room on the first floor still in my invalid's pyjamas when I heard a noise at the back door that led into the scullery. I sat and listened for a moment, trying not to rustle my paper and breathing lightly as a curious scratching noise ebbed and flowed from below me. I didn't know quite what it was, but it was certainly a human noise. All my hackles stood up on end as I inched over to the door and crept down the carpeted stairs, trying not to make a squeak. I stole into the scullery and at first could see nothing as I realised that the noise had stopped. But all was not right; someone was close by who should not be. Then, as I was still trying not to breath too heavily, the post-flap opened in the back door with a little squeal and in through the crack came a piece of copper wire with its end formed into a hook. It scraped and rasped for a while trying to get a purchase on the simple iron bolt that held the door tight shut before it disappeared only to re-emerge a few seconds later with the wire bent into a slightly different shape.