A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes

by Raynes, Katie

  I do not at all make the silly assertion that only an invert can become a great detective. In Holmes’s case, though, that seemed the more natural hypothesis – especially when combined with another idea that came to me now in a single realization. I had always felt that Holmes was an emotionally cold man, and I’ve depicted him that way – as an exception to the laws of the heart other men must follow. I, like the Scotland Yard detectives Holmes had been sarcastic about, had defended my hypothesis manfully when it didn’t fit the facts – for Holmes could have an intense warmth in imagining solutions and a boundless energy in action. Rather than think of his feelings as severely crippled, off again and on again, was it not more plausible to see him as a warm man who was disciplined in the execution of his work and who had a private life he rigorously must hide?

  Earlier in my meditation, I’d questioned how anyone could find what Holmes chose to conceal. Now, I was supposing I’d found something. The answer must be that he had been letting me. If so, why did it take thirteen years for him to tell his secret? Would he fear I might betray him? That seems not possible. But suppose he’d simply blurted it out some evening when we were in our armchairs by the fire. Could he have expected me, in that way, to understand? Tanny and Jack now offered him opportunities to illustrate himself to his friend. In acts of kindness and trust, he was leaving clues.

  5. The Chase

  Holmes hadn’t returned by morning.

  I received a visit from Jack Wright, along with breakfast. He reminded me that Holmes promised I’d teach him to write stories. I reminded him that, come Michaelmas Half, he’d be at school and he should prepare by following the work assigned by the tutors we’d hired. They’d found that, although Jack knew more than boys his age in some subjects, he knew less in others.

  I asked, “Could you show me a story?”

  “No.”

  “You want me to criticize stories I haven’t read?”

  He laughed at that. “No, but I’m ashamed of them.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “They always start out well, but they get out of control. Every chapter, I try to make it more exciting. The hero gets more and more in danger, so the reader wonders how I’ll get him out of it. But eventually,” Jack sighed, “he’s in so much trouble I can’t get him out. And then the ending is stupid.”

  “Decide on the ending first, before the beginning. Then dream up events that would lead there.”

  Jack looked thoughtful. “That might work.”

  “What sort of stories have you been thinking of?”

  “I thought Tanny might be Arturo Tannero y Vasconcelos, the son of the Spanish governor of the island of Tortuga. He is captured by bloodthirsty pirates, but his father is too avaricious to pay the ransom of gold and precious jewels the pirates demand. So they make Tanny – I mean Arturo – live on their ship and become a pirate with them. His fine nature revolts at committing such grisly atrocities, so he escapes, then goes back with his father’s fleet and exterminates the pirates.”

  “Why is it necessary to keep adding to the hero’s danger?”

  “That’s what readers want.”

  “Is it more important to satisfy them or to satisfy you as the writer?”

  “Them, of course. Otherwise, they won’t read me.”

  “Are you sure you know what they want? When you’re a reader yourself, what do you want? Mr Holmes told me you like it when I put physical descriptions in my stories – but they don’t add to the hero’s danger.”

  “They’re important.”

  “Can you satisfy a reader with something you wouldn’t read? Just by telling him he’s supposed to like it, even when you don’t?”

  “That would never work.”

  “The only way a writer can make a reader believe something is to believe it himself and let it show. You go astray because your audience is impersonal, so you think they want things they may not. Make the audience individual. Pretend you’ve written your story and shown it to me, your friend, Dr Watson. I question a passage, and you explain, ‘All I meant to say there is…’ Whatever you in your imagination tell me you meant, that exact thing is what you should have written. So, then, write it.”

  Holmes came back after dinner for us to keep our appointment in Tanny’s room, where we would make our plan to rescue Eric.

  Holmes and I were silent in the cab. I stared at him, wanting to speak, but undecided. I’d spent the day wrestling with my ideas from yesterday. The best notion was that Holmes was an invert and wanted to tell me something about it. Well and good, but what? Was it possible that Holmes was saying he’d refused Tanny because there was someone else he cared for? Holmes had few friends, and so that putative someone might be me. Was Holmes trying to say so? No, I thought not. At least not that it was me.

  Another, less intelligent question was this. If Holmes, of all people, could be an invert, then anyone could secretly be an invert. I myself could be an invert. I certainly felt a powerful emotional bond with Holmes. But, no. I had too much evidence that my romantic sympathies were oppositely directed. Sanity must prevail.

  A related, supremely stupid thought passed through my mind. Even though I would not return any attraction Holmes had for me, I was hurt and rejected to think he felt none.

  This last worry led to one not so far-fetched. I might not be an invert, and Holmes might not be interested in me that way; but what, after all, was my place in Holmes’s life? Why did he allow me to tag along? He insisted I was important, but it was hard to see that. I was of a certain physical strength. I was not afraid of a fight and could handle a gun. Was that the extent of my duties?

  Could he need my brains? No.

  What rubbish!

  Tanny seated Holmes and me comfortably on the two stuffed chairs in his room. He perched on the edge of his bed. I say “perched,” for he sat rigidly with his ankles crossed and his heels on the floor and he had an almost fixed stare, fearing the outcome of Holmes’s researches.

  Holmes started, “Tanny, my news for you is partly reassuring.”

  “Yes?”

  “First, I can report that Eric is alive and well.”

  Tanny sighed with relief. He slumped back, resting awkwardly against arms stretched and propped on the bed. “Thank you for that, Mr Holmes.”

  “Eric was not completely truthful with you in telling his past. Would that bother you?”

  Tanny scowled and sat up again. “No. Why would you think that? Who in my business tells the truth about his past? All I hope for is that Eric told me the truth in each present moment and intended to go on doing so.”

  Holmes continued, “In my role as a detective, I do not verify intangibles like love. But I have no sense that Eric was ever false in his declarations to you.”

  “How could that be? He left me.”

  “The man who led Eric away is Linton Soames, a major in the Wessex Guards. The officer you saw three weeks earlier was an unrelated man in the same regiment. His uniform told Eric that the person he feared most had returned to England.”

  “Who is this Linton Soames?”

  “He is Eric’s brother, and he kidnapped him. Eric did not leave you voluntarily.”

  “Why would anyone abduct his own brother? Who would he ask for the ransom?”

  Holmes gave a sarcastic little laugh. “I see you are not acquainted with some darker customs of the gentle classes. When such people find themselves with an unsightly dependent – a mentally unbalanced daughter or a son whose conduct on the battlefield is unsatisfactory – then, for the sake of what they call ‘decency,’ they lock them secretly in their own room for life. Perhaps decades later, when he or she dies of natural causes, the body is walled up. Eric has been confined to his bedroom for ten months and is intended to stay there forever. I have seen the bars on the windows.”

  “His family would do that?”

  “The major intended to kill him and only relented after their mother begged imprisonment as a mercy. I heard the story from
their young brother, Andrew. Though Andrew is not an invert, he and Eric grew up friends in their common defence against Linton. Andrew knew where Eric had disappeared to, and he knew about you. Linton extracted the secret from him on the false pretence that the family must, without harming Eric, restore him and protect him from the police. Andrew loves Eric and repents his folly in telling Linton. He will help us.”

  “How can we get Eric out of there?”

  “We must also guard him against future recapture.”

  “Yes.”

  “Inspector Hopkins views Eric’s kidnapping gravely, and unless provoked otherwise he will confine his attention to that crime and not enquire into Eric’s previous activities, or yours. Hopkins has agreed to regard you as an agent of the Metropolitan Police in this matter. Otherwise, your part would be illegal.”

  “I am to be a policeman?”

  “Only in a manner of speaking. Tanny, I am about to ask you to do things that are very dangerous.”

  “I would accept death to free Eric.”

  The sincerity in Tanny’s voice and eyes showed the truth of this.

  “We need to ask Dr Watson to be your accomplice, under similar, dangerous conditions.”

  I agreed readily.

  Holmes continued, “The officers of the Queen’s Wessex do their drinking at the Ram’s Head tavern. Major Soames goes there often, but not every night. You, Tanny, must watch for an occasion to talk with him and then lure him away to a private meeting – on the following night – at the very warehouse where you and Eric had your adventure. So, you will go to the tavern each night and drink with Dr Watson, who will pose discreetly as your client but will have his gun with him.”

  Tanny laughed. “What, Dr Watson as a punter? It’s too ridiculous.”

  “Watson would not fool an invert, but he only needs to fool Linton. Tanny, you should imply to Linton you think he was Eric’s client and you are resentful: Linton could have a better time with you than he ever had with Eric. Linton will remember you and think you are foolishly deluded. He will think your memories are too active and a risk to his family’s honour, and he will be sorry he did not kill you months before when he was still sure of your address. He will expect you to be vapid, to be lascivious, to be greedy for money. Do not wake him from his prejudices; do not let him think you could be intelligent or dangerous. On the other hand, do not play your part so perfectly that you make him suspicious.”

  “I understand.”

  “What you must on no account do is to let him get you alone in a quiet corner of the Ram’s Head or outside. Do not let him close enough to lay hold of you and force you to go with him. Beware that he doubtless moves quickly, unexpectedly. Your safety is in his unwillingness to create scandal in front of his brother officers. Otherwise, he will kill you and will require no weapon to do it. If he asks you to go with him, then point to Dr Watson, who is already your customer. Offer to meet Linton the next night outside the warehouse and make him believe you want to show him you’re better than Eric, for a price. He will see that that’s his safest chance. Once you’ve spoken with him, you and Watson must go outside and get into a cab.”

  I asked, “And what will you be doing?”

  “I will be occupied.”

  On the way home, my thoughts fell back into their rut. Holmes needed me to protect Tanny with my strong arm and my gun. Did he need me for anything else?

  Without preliminary, Holmes addressed my silent thoughts.

  He said, “I do need you for other reasons.”

  “What?”

  “For example, I just told Tanny about Linton Soames and what he did to Eric. My explanation to him was not the way I said it to you. Tanny’s background differs from yours. And his mind works differently. Anyway, he thinks I’m a magician, so he accepts my word as fact.”

  “Whereas I enjoy fighting you?”

  “You do fight, but fairly. That’s part of what I mean. You help me by being you. It changes my thinking to know it’s you that I’ll explain myself to.”

  “Hmm. I was saying something of the kind to Jack Wright yesterday. He could make his stories better by imagining he was telling them to a specific friend, rather than satisfying the mindless demands of an anonymous public.”

  “Exactly. Jack’s story will depend on who his fancied interlocutor is. If the boy wishes to write well, then he needs be careful in making friends among whom he can choose partners for his imaginary conversations. I am fortunate to have you for the explanations I concoct.”

  I laughed. “A good attempt, Holmes! My sincere thanks for caring to make me feel useful. But you’re not believable.”

  “I know I risk angering you, but do you realize that it is precisely most at those times when you are frustrated with my leaden, intransigent silence that I crave your help and I create a second, spectral copy of you in my mind and tell him what I won’t tell you? …It must be a copy of you and of no one else, because I would say different things were I with another. Logically, I am thus compelled to feel that you are somehow in part the author of what I tell you.”

  I protested, “Of the wording, perhaps, and of the style of delivery – but not of the logic.”

  “No, the logic – once formed – is immutable. But, of the hypotheses my imagination is able to conceive and from which the chains of logic proceed. Of the intelligence that guides my mind in choosing which facts those chains must link.”

  This was ridiculous. “The words come out of your mouth, not out of mine.”

  “Words? And what importance are they? Do you remember when we recovered the Beryl Coronet? I followed tracks in the snow – of a wooden-legged green-grocer and the maid he talked to – and of Alexander Holder’s son struggling with the thief to prevent him carrying away the prize. Those simple indentations in the snow were enough to indicate some bare facts of the crime, but they are in no way adequate to the scene that played that night. I know a little about the grocer, but I could not pick him uniquely from a crowd of similar men. Having seen the maid, I might make various guesses about the nature of the grocer’s hopes, but I cannot feel what he felt. I do not know at what points in their conversation they might have seen the moon break through the clouds. Now, suppose that, to explain what happened, I drive some thin metal stakes into the ground at the turning points of the action. I could attach ribbons with writing on them: ‘George Burnwell waited here under the window,’ and so on. The words inscribed on those ribbons would tell a meagre, selective distillation of one meaning of the footprints, enough for the single purpose of solving the crime, but far from exhausting the richness of life that left the footprints. Words are merely markers, boundaries. Useful for that, but no more.

  “Let me change my metaphor. Suppose you and I walk together up a mountainside. We would keep each other on the path by pointing with our fingers, by nods with our heads, by glances into each other’s eyes, by gentle nudges and touches. The words we spoke aloud would form just an intermittent, occasional residue of how we worked together.

  “So, yes, I am the rapporteur, announcing the minutes of our deliberations, later to be codified by you to report your readers, but I am not the sole member of the committee. I may even be its chairman, but I could not do it alone.

  “You are essential to my work – as I am to your stories.”

  When I was able to master myself, I said, “Thank you.” Grudgingly, I understood and finally admitted the reasons for Holmes’s belief that he needed me as much as liked me.

  Tanny and I spent two evenings at the Ram’s Head before Major Soames, in uniform, came in on the third. Tanny recognized him at once, and the major was almost as quick to see Tanny in return.

  Linton Soames took his place among his companions, and Tanny glanced flirtatiously at him – once or twice only – visibly joking with me about it. I was amazed at the intensity of Linton’s awareness of Tanny and at the sternness with which he disguised it from his fellows.

  Tanny offered to get our next round and went
to the bar rather than waiting for the barmaid. The major drifted over to him. Tanny manoeuvred deftly among the customers to avoid ever standing next to him. They talked. Tanny was inviting, but not enough so to embarrass Linton. Once Tanny pointed at me.

  Finally Tanny left the major and returned with our beers, which he set on the table. I started to get up. Tanny laughingly pushed me back while hinting that for Linton’s benefit I should act out the part of saying I was eager for him, wanted to go, and didn’t mind leaving the drinks. I did, and Tanny allowed me to get up. His smile promised me the best evening of my life.

  We went out of the Ram’s Head, passed the beggar outside, and took a cab back to Tanny’s room. Shortly, Holmes appeared. We reported, and he complimented us on our success. He added, “Major Soames did not try to follow your cab.”

  I enquired how Holmes could know that.

  “The beggar in front of the tavern watched you drive away.”

  Tanny and I arrived at the docks an hour before his appointment with the major, and we dismissed our cab.

  At night, at the docks, away from the traffic of the city, it was silent. Or, rather, the warehouse itself seemed moored within a yet wider river of quiet and shadows, between the distant banks formed by the city’s noise and light. The ships at the quays were somnolent, tied close to each other, unmoving except their gentle rocking in place. Only a few boats motored now on the water, slowly, interrupting the opaque glow of the moon’s reflection and adding their small pools of yellow lamplight to the vast silver incandescence of the river surface.