by Cavan Scott
I could hear shouts, voices that seemed both near and far at the same time. There was the shuffling of feet, disturbingly close to my throbbing head although I had neither the inclination nor the ability to roll out of their way. A boot in the face was almost something to be welcomed, anything to knock me senseless and release me from the confusion of pain and disorientation my life had suddenly become.
The sounds of a desperate struggle played out above my head: crashes and grunts, curses and bellows. And then it was over, with a cry cut off too abruptly to be healthy, and the thud of something hitting the ground heavily nearby.
“Holmes?” I wheezed, as thundering footsteps receded into the distance, giving way to an awful silence.
I couldn’t move. I could barely think. It felt as though I had been lying there in the dirt my entire life, before there came the scrape of a boot, and a gentle touch on my shoulder.
Someone was speaking, repeating a name, over and over. It took me a moment to realise that the name was my own.
“Dr Watson. Dr Watson, can you hear me?”
“Inspector?” I slurred weakly.
“Thank God. Just lie there. I’ll get help. It’s going to be all right.”
All right? Why wouldn’t it be? The man was obviously a fool. I might have giggled, but I had no idea why. There was nothing to laugh about. I couldn’t even open my eyes, but Tovey had already gone, leaving me where I lay.
For a moment, I found it impossible to remember how I had got there, or where indeed there was. I think I must have drifted off, because it seemed only seconds before the inspector was calling my name again, more urgently this time.
“Dr Watson. Wake up. We need to get you out of here.”
“Wha—?”
“Can you stand? Here, I’ll help you.”
“No. I… I just need to rest.”
“Not here you don’t. Dr Watson, please.”
I wanted to tell the man to shut up, that I would get up when I was good and ready, but the words refused to form.
There were more footsteps now, all around me. I had no idea how many. I tried to open my eyes, and after what seemed an eternity they finally obeyed my command, flickering like broken blinds. Not that it helped. The world was a mess of unrecognisable shapes and blurs. There was something in front of me, but I was unable to tell what it was.
A face? Yes, that could be it, inches from my own. Familiar too, but somehow not quite right. What was wrong with it? What could it be?
I felt like laughing again, a hysterical cackle welling up from deep within my chest.
It was too ridiculous to comprehend, you see, the dreadful realisation that dawned second by second.
I was staring into the face of Sherlock Holmes, my oldest and dearest friend, and yet he had undergone a ridiculous transformation. His skin was blanched, and covered in blood that ran in rivulets from a ragged gash in his forehead. His lips were slack, his teeth stained crimson – but it was the eyes that were wrong. They should have been piercing and effervescent, windows into a vibrant soul, bursting with an intelligence that defied categorisation. Yet now they were staring straight at me, with no indication that my friend recognised me at all, that he even knew I was here.
“No,” I groaned, struggling to push myself up, only to be thwarted by a tidal wave of pain that radiated out from my shoulder. I didn’t care. This couldn’t be happening.
My friend. My friend who had cheated death so many times, was lying prone in front of me, a lifeless husk. Surely it was not to end here, on the cold hard floor of a forgotten ruin.
This could not be the place where Sherlock Holmes died.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE COLD ROOM
For a man who has spent the best part of his life in medical facilities, one might think that I would have been comfortable in the hallowed halls of Charing Cross’s famous hospital. The doctors insisted that I was suffering from concussion, and they were probably correct, but I knew the real reason for my distress as I paced up and down the long echoing corridor.
On the other side of the thin brick wall, in a private room secured by Tovey, lay Sherlock Holmes. He flitted in and out of consciousness, and on the rare occasions when he was awake, his ramblings and moans were those of a madman.
They had wanted to admit me as well, of course, but I would not hear of it. How could I lie in bed, knowing that my friend was in a critical condition? Yes, my head hurt abominably, and my shoulder ached from where it had become dislocated, but the throb behind my eyes would ease and the sling the nurses had insisted I wear would rest my arm. The sickness in my stomach? That would pass only when I knew Holmes had recovered.
The door to Holmes’s private room opened, and Tovey walked out, followed by the doctor who had been ministering to my friend, a handsome young fellow with the already careworn face so common on medical men.
I took a step forward, feeling a sudden wave of dizziness, and leant heavily on the wooden cane the hospital had provided. Tovey sprung forward, ready to catch me as if I were a lady falling into a swoon.
“Dr Watson?”
“I am fine, thank you, Inspector,” I said, a little too brusquely, “please do not fuss.”
He took a respectful step back as I regained my balance and turned to face the young doctor.
“Dr Gibbs, how is my friend?”
Gibbs gave me the same sympathetic smile I had offered hundreds of patients during my career.
“There has been no change, I’m afraid, Dr Watson. Mr Holmes has suffered a serious head injury resulting in oedema, and he is having some trouble breathing due to at least three broken ribs. For a man of his age—”
“Holmes is as strong as an ox,” I interjected, incensed at the very suggestion.
That smile returned, mirrored by professional sympathy in the doctor’s eyes. “I’m sure he is, but you know what can happen when anyone suffers a trauma such as this.”
“You yourself should be recuperating, Doctor,” added Tovey. I chose to ignore the comment.
“May I see him?”
Gibbs glanced at the nurse in the stiffly starched uniform who had followed them from the room, before returning his gaze to me.
“Of course, but please, try not to excite Mr Holmes. He needs his rest.”
“He is awake then?” I asked.
“Barely,” the nurse replied. “Dr Watson, Mr Holmes is very ill indeed.”
“Then he needs his friends around him,” I insisted, shifting uncomfortably on my cane. I wasn’t used to being on this side of such a conversation, and was all too aware that I was being difficult. I took a deep breath, forcing my expression to soften. “Dr Gibbs, you can trust me. Holmes is your patient and I respect that. I realise that he is in the best possible hands, but as I am sure you can understand, this is difficult for me. That man in there has been under my care for over thirty-five years, not only as a patient, but more importantly—”
“As a friend,” the young doctor interrupted. “I do understand. My father adored your stories, Dr Watson, and following his death, I have become quite a devotee myself. It’s an honour to meet you both, albeit under difficult circumstances. Be assured I will do everything I can for Mr Holmes.”
He reached out and gave my good shoulder what was obviously supposed to be a comforting squeeze. I am sorry to say that I stiffened, fighting the urge to pull away.
Noticing my discomfort, Inspector Tovey rode to my rescue. “I’ll stay with Dr Watson,” said he. “We realise that you have other patients to attend to.”
Gibbs nodded and stepped aside to let us enter Holmes’s room, Tovey noticeably limping from his own altercation with that brute in the deserted hospital.
“Five minutes, please,” said the nurse, pulling the door closed behind her. “And no more.”
“Of course, nurse,” said Tovey. “Thank you.”
I uttered not a word. Instead I simply stood and stared at the gaunt figure lying in the bed. His face was as pale as the cris
p white sheets beneath him, the sharp angles of his cheeks never more pronounced. Nearly three decades ago, Holmes had used self-starvation and the liberal application of Vaseline, belladonna, rouge and beeswax to convince all that he was at death’s door. His charade had fooled even me, and all to expose a terrible blackguard for the rogue he was. How I wished that Holmes would throw back the covers now and laugh, mercilessly teasing me for falling for another of his japes, but this was no trickery. The man before me was a shadow of his former self. I had never seen my friend look so old, so fragile.
All at once, a moan escaped from Holmes’s mouth, barely audible, but there all the same. I sprang towards the bed, a wave of vertigo threatening to overwhelm me, but I steadied myself on the bedside cabinet.
“Holmes?”
Beneath thin lids, my friend’s eyes rolled in their sockets. Was he about to wake once again?
Another moan, louder this time. My name? Was he trying to say “Watson”?
“Yes, Holmes. I’m here. I’m right beside you.”
Nothing. No response at all. His eyes ceased their movement and the only sound was his rasping breath. I felt my whole body sag. Had I really believed that my mere presence would be enough to rouse him from his stupor? What a foolish old man I had become.
“Maybe he’s dreaming,” Tovey offered, and I realised that the inspector had moved to stand behind me, perhaps concerned that I was about to end up sprawled across the floor. “Pleasant ones, I hope.”
I doubted it, although I remained silent. I myself dreaded falling asleep. The hour was late, and heaven knows my body was in desperate need of slumber, but I knew that, as soon as I shut my eyes, I would see the hideous face of that monster looming out from the shadows.
The inspector spoke again, returning my thoughts to the cold, sterile room. “So, that young doctor’s diagnosis…”
I studied Holmes’s face as I replied. “They will keep him under observation. The cerebral oedema is a concern, although it may decrease in time.”
“The swelling of the brain, you mean?”
I nodded. “If not, they may resort to more drastic methods.”
Tovey’s next word turned my stomach. “Trepanning?”
The thought of anyone drilling a hole in Holmes’s skull was too much to bear, even if it might release some of the pressure on his remarkable brain. It seemed so barbaric, especially in our so-called modern age. I had read of cave paintings showing our savage ancestors wilfully cracking each other’s skulls to release bad spirits or whatever mumbo-jumbo those primitives believed in. Could we really be performing the same operations millennia later?
“I hope it won’t come to that,” I said.
We fell silent, and I stood fighting the tears that threatened to well up in my eyes. Holmes would have been appalled, but perhaps now, more than ever, I was aware of what a void would be left in my life when the two of us were eventually parted. It seemed ridiculous. We lived miles away from each other, in different counties, living different lives, seeing each other but a few times a year, but nevertheless I knew Holmes was there, tending his bees and writing his monographs. All I needed to do was pick up the telephone or start up the Swift, and I would see my old friend. If that ever changed, where would I be? While Holmes drew breath I was still somehow the same person who had found him bent over a Bunsen lamp in St Bart’s nearly four decades previously. If that connection was broken, then I feared that the anchor to my very existence would also be lost, I would be adrift, a man left only with stories scrawled in fading ink.
“Doctor?” It was Tovey, trying to summon me out of my self-imposed trance. I started, looking at the inspector.
“Yes. Yes, of course. Holmes must rest.”
“And so must you.”
I nodded, letting my gaze wander back to the bed. “I’ll call a cab.”
“No you won’t,” Tovey insisted. “I’ll have a car take you home. Mrs Watson will never forgive me otherwise.”
* * *
My wife all but ordered me to bed when Tovey’s policeman delivered me to my doorstep. She fussed around me, telling me that she knew something like this would happen – and yet as she clucked like a mother hen, I noticed the look of concern on her face when she asked after Holmes. After all, she had herself known him for many years now, no matter how infuriating she found him. He infuriated us all; that was simply his way, and none of us would have it otherwise.
Of course, all sympathy was lost when, taking my coat, she shrieked and dropped something to the floor as if it were a hot coal. The object of her disgust bounced across the hall carpet, coming to rest by the umbrella stand.
“What in the name of all that is holy is that?”
I bent to investigate, nearly pitching over with the effort.
“No, no, I’ll pick it up, if I have to,” said my wife.
Opening a drawer and pulling out a pair of gloves, Mrs Watson slipped her hand into one of them and tentatively plucked the item from the floor between thumb and forefinger.
“The bone,” I said, as she handed it to me, “from the operating theatre.”
“From Charing Cross Hospital?”
“No, from our investigation, before we were set upon by that animal.”
“Why in heaven’s name would you be carrying it around in your pocket?”
For the life of me I couldn’t remember. I had obviously thought it important when we had been disturbed by the arrival of the giant. “A lucky chance,” said I.
“Lucky? Carrying around old bits of bone doesn’t sound lucky to me, unless it’s a rabbit’s foot.” She looked uncomfortably at the relic. “Is it… human?”
“Undoubtedly,” I replied. “And it’s not as if you haven’t seen human bones before.” A full medical skeleton hung in my study, although my wife tried hard not to look at it whenever she entered my inner sanctum. “But don’t you see, if I can find out what happened to this, what these growths on the bone are, then we might be one step further in understanding this damnable business. When Holmes recovers…”
My voice faltered, and suddenly I felt every inch my age, the late hour and the events of the day weighing heavily on me.
My wife gave me a kind smile. “When he recovers, he can listen to your findings and tell you exactly what you’ve got wrong before leading you off on another merry dance. But before that, you are going to sleep, John Watson. And no arguments, or, so help me, I’ll have that Inspector Tovey throw you in a cell. Do you understand?”
“Yes, doctor,” I replied, allowing her to take the bone from my hand.
“Good. Now, upstairs with you, while I lock this delightful object in your study.”
Thanking her, I started the long climb up to my chamber, trying not to think of Holmes lying alone in his hospital bed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
UNWANTED VISITORS
My fears of night terrors proved to be unfounded, and I slept like a proverbial babe, until the first rays of sunlight glimmered through the curtain. Mrs Watson was still fast asleep, but from the moment my eyes opened, my mind was buzzing with the thought of the strange bone in my study downstairs. So as not to wake my wife, I crept from our bedroom and dressed in the guest room. The sight of Holmes’s case standing still packed beside the wardrobe dampened my enthusiasm a little, but I was determined not to squander the day in morose contemplation. Holmes was relying on me to keep the investigation alive, so that once he had recuperated – and I was determined to focus on the when rather than the more worrying if – he would have the full facts at hand.
Leaving my sling neatly folded upstairs, I stepped out of the house, carefully closing the door behind me. The morning was thankfully free of rain, although the air was as heavy as the clouds that hung waiting to burst in the sky above. I considered taking the car, but, having enough sense to realise that driving after a blow to the head was never wise, hailed a cab.
With the bells of All Saints yet to strike seven o’clock, the streets of London were clear
as we drove to my practice on Queen Anne Street. Sitting in the back seat, I stared out at the empty pavements and turned over the events of the last few days in my head. From nightclub to nightmare in the space of forty-eight hours, yet, grey as it was, this was a new day. I vowed there and then that I would find the monster that had hospitalised Sherlock Holmes and hold him to account. Whoever the brute was, he had a connection to that bloodbath in the deserted hospital. Solve the riddle of what had happened in that sorry place and we would find the man. He had been looking for something or someone; maybe the mysterious couple who had set up home in those dismal rooms by the light of a makeshift generator. Indeed, a thought struck me as we turned the corner into Queen Anne Street. Maybe our devil in the dark had been the Arsène Lupin fan whose discarded book we had found beneath the bed?
I paid the cabbie, and hurried up the stairs to my practice. I had spent many happy years living here before my second marriage, at the heart of London’s medical community and a short walk from Baker Street. It had been a wrench, when my wife insisted we move out of town to Chelsea, but I had kept the practice going, renting out my old chambers to a surgeon from the nearby Welbeck Hospital. Recently, Mrs Watson had started a fresh campaign, attempting to persuade me to sell up once and for all and retire, but I was determined to put off that inevitability for as long as possible. I prized these book-lined walls as highly as my study back on Cheyne Walk. There, surrounded by the memorabilia of my second career, I was John Watson, biographer and author. Here, surrounded by medical texts and behind the same wooden table that had sat in both my Paddington and Kensington practices, I was John Watson, MD.
Leaving my coat on the hat stand, I turned on the brass desk lamp and placed the puzzling clavicle on my blotter. To the relentless beat of the clock on the mantel, I turned it over, examining the macabre item in detail. It was utterly unlike anything I had seen before. As I had first suggested in the derelict hospital, the unnatural growths seemed to be made of bone. It was thick, like muscle that had turned to stone, solid to the touch and smooth, free of any discernible impurities.