I followed his gaze over my face and exposed chest and felt my cheeks flush with embarrassment even though I understood little of what he had actually said or how he had known I was a soldier.
“The first thing we must discuss,” said Holmes, placing his arm gently around Mr Carter’s shoulders, “is that you will be in the hands of the Lillies if you do not tell us the truth.”
His face paled despite the warmth of the room. Abruptly, he attempted to rise up off the couch only to find that Holmes had him quickly in one of his more elaborate Baritsu holds. The young man struggled but soon saw that any movement in that hold was agony.
“I…I can pay you! I will have your money,” he stammered.
“Money is not what we are after. We know that you have been staying with friends recently and that you were in the possession of a ring. We need to know how you picked up the ring, and I will warn you that I already know enough to know how to tell when you are lying. I know already that you took it from the hand of a dead man.”
He sighed and Holmes relaxed his hold slightly.
“I was supposed to come down to meet him at midnight, after the others had gone to sleep. He knew of my debts and was going to offer me a loan to redeem my reputation. He was already dead when I entered the room. I saw my chance and took the ring, but I swear to you that if I had known it wasn’t that valuable…”
Holmes turned slightly at the waist and the unfortunate man winced in pain.
“Was he alone?”
“Yes, there was no one there.”
“Was there anyone else in the house?”
“His brother and Croft.”
“No visitors?”
He shook his head.
“You heard no one else?”
“I…I did hear footsteps in the hall.”
“At what time did you hear footsteps?”
“About an hour after I returned to my room. I assumed someone was simply going down for something to drink. I thought he would be discovered then for certain, but I had several miserable hours until the alarm was raised.”
“Was the medicine bottle on the table at the time you went down?”
“Yes, where it always was, and his tea next to it. He always took it with tea. I wish to God I had taken it with me as well, it would have helped my nerves.”
“There was medicine in it?” Holmes asked.
“Yes, it was nearly full.”
Holmes released Carter, who fell on his side cradling his arm as if he had never expected to get it back again. “Mr Carter, I would advise you to think carefully about the friends whose good will you choose to abuse in the future. I cannot guarantee that they will all have agents as understanding as ourselves.”
With that parting remark he rose and we made our way to the changing rooms. With pressed clothes and shined shoes we re-entered society, but I felt less clarity of mind than was usual for coming from that establishment.
“Was it really necessary to frighten that young man so thoroughly?” I asked him.
“Fright is the worst of his injuries,” he replied, “It is the drama of the act and not the actual discomfort which makes the technique impressive. To confront your adversary with surprise is sometimes the only way to ensure an honest answer, since it allows no time for the rehearsal of a false one.”
“But if the bottle was full when Mr Clay was already dead, how could he have taken so much as to die of it?”
“How indeed, Watson! And what became of the bottle between midnight and dawn? We shall have some questions for the owner of those footsteps when we discover him!”
It had turned into a grey day, low with clouds and seeming like rain but my friend declared his preference for walking home by the same route. On our way he stopped into the jewellers we had seen Mr Carter enter and to my surprise emerged with a small box which he presented to me.
“It’s too large for me, Watson, but I dare say it will suit you well enough.”
I was certainly not expecting any gifts, and the greater was my surprise when I opened the box and found the very ring our recent guest had described against the velvet lining of the box. There was the same cut and size of opal, exactly the match of its twin and the words “A Vila Mon Coeur” around the thick silver band.
“Hold on to it for me, will you?” A small sardonic smile graced the corner of his mouth.
“If you wish –” I placed the box in my vest pocket – “but if we have the ring is the mystery we were hired to solve not complete? We should call Mr Croft and inform him immediately.”
“Watson, as usual, you have missed the greater part of the clues that have been given to you. You have seen all the facts but lost their import entirely. Why should a man who was relatively healthy and in love, well to do, with the greater part of his life before him, take his own life out of guilt for a proclivity which he had possessed since birth? And why, of all things, would he make a will, tell his companion about it and then not leave a letter informing him of where it was kept? No, my dear Watson, something is amiss. I shall not speak prematurely, but hopefully by the time Mr Croft returns tomorrow evening we shall have all of the answers.”
He lapsed then into a silence and I began to wonder both at his words and at his admonishment, so often given, that I was not arriving at some conclusion which was before my eyes if only I had his mind to interpret matters or could put his methods of deduction to work for myself.
Holmes stopped on our way home to send a telegram to Frederick Croft telling him to meet us back at Baker Street the following evening. We took supper in our rooms and hoped the rain would clear by the morning so that the weather might be favourable for our journey. After supper we sat by the fire, Holmes took up his violin and I my glass of sherry. He seemed in a pensive mood although not consumed by the mystery that was before us. The events of the day were on my mind, and I let my thoughts wander as the rain on the roof blended with his violin like a whispering second voice.
For a long time I had wondered that Holmes never took any interest in women. It seemed more that he felt himself poorly suited to marriage than that he had any antagonism for the institution. There were many women whom he liked, although he never sought company from them, and at least one whom he admired as a worthy adversary. Certainly he had a way with women and had rarely failed to get them to confide in him when that was his object. I wondered now if he were truly so unsociable or if was a deeper interest in his own sex which caused him to appear disinterested in the opposite sex.
If so, he certainly had not had any lovers of import in the time that I had known him. No other person had ever occupied our rooms but ourselves. If he had any friends other than myself and those he cultivated for the information they might pass on to him I had never met them. I attempted to imagine him acquiescing to the offer that had been made at the Turkish Baths, but had to stop for laughing. It would never do for him to give himself up to passion so easily, having trained himself to be, as much as was humanly possible, a being of pure reason.
Yet I knew that beneath that training there must be passion. He often displayed passion in the pursuit of a solution to some conundrum which had captivated him. When immersed in a case he was capable of giving himself up completely to it even to the point of risking his own life. Would he perhaps be less inclined to his interludes of isolated introspection or to the use of stimulants to relieve boredom if he were capable of showing this passion in other ways?
This experience at the bathhouse had piqued my curiosity and I determined to take Holmes’s advice and use surprise as a tool to get an unrehearsed answer from a man whose career as a detective robbed the stage of a monumental talent. It was a gamble, to be sure, but if I was right this might lead me to a greater understanding of his character. It was even possible that he would be the happier for it. I was willing to take the risk for such a gain.
He had put the violin on the chair and got up to refill his pipe but stopped partway to the slipper, which was still on the mantel, an
d halted by the window as the rain ran down the pane. I rose and went to the window where he stood looking out. He caught my reflection in the glass and turned and I took his face in both my hands and kissed him full on the mouth. At first it was like kissing a brick wall, he was so frozen but he did not pull away. He did not even draw breath for a long moment, and then I felt his hands upon my own face touching me so gently it was barely palpable. He began to shudder, as if he were cold and I could almost feel his teeth chattering. I pulled him closer, embracing him as if to warm him and his fingers ran through my hair until he had the whole back of my head cupped in his hands and suddenly he was kissing me back. He was still shuddering but his lips on mine were hot and he tasted pleasantly of tobacco and sherry.
Here, then, was my answer. I admit I felt quite gratified to have been correct about him and not a little bit proud of myself for having actually taken him by surprise. Many have been the times when he has seemed to anticipate my every action. Well, this was one where he certainly had not. I had been the catalyst of his passion and to have become as a result of it the absolute focus of his attentions was nothing short of intoxicating.
As the kiss continued I expected it to build but it did nothing of the sort. It was as if time itself had stopped. He leaned into my embrace as if for balance and I could feel the sinews tightening beneath his scapulae. He had a grip on the hair at the nape of my neck that was so tight it was painful. He would neither let me go, nor would he move and so we stayed locked together like a statue of two lovers kissing. My heart was beating nearly out of my chest. My breath was louder than cannon fire to my own ears in the stillness of that room, the soft rustling of the fire was the only other sound, and still I could not hear him breathe.
A sea change swept over me then, a slow and gentle warmth that spread through my body and made me feel almost drugged by pleasure. Forgetting my original intentions, I wanted nothing more than to hold him as tightly as possible. It was inconceivable that our bodies were still apart. The force of my desire for him was like a sudden gale that blows in over the ocean and turns a placid summer afternoon into a downpour. It grew suddenly and swiftly out of mysterious depths in my own soul and I was no more able to resist it than I would have been to hold back that storm. I dropped my hands slowly down to his hips and began to pull him inexorably toward me until we were nearly touching. The closer we came the stronger he shook until he seemed to fairly oscillate against my lips and I would have feared he would come apart if he were not made of flesh.
Finally he did inhale, abruptly. It was a ragged, deep sound accompanied by his pulling away until my hands were once again on his shoulders and I could feel the space between our bodies as if it were a new thing that had not been there before. He looked directly into my eyes then, the full weight of his intellect scanning my soul through his gaze as if he could read the answers to everything on my retinas. He looked for a long time without blinking or lessening the intensity of his scrutiny. I endeavoured to make my soul, nay, my heart itself as open to him as my thoughts had ever been and let him draw his own conclusions.
At length it appeared that he had, but what they were I was not to be told. He retrieved his coat without a word, went to the door and was down the stairs and into the street before I knew what to say or had recovered enough to say it.
I passed the rest of the night in an agony of self-recrimination. I had entered into that kiss in the same spirit of scientific study of human nature as I had when I first became friends with Mr Sherlock Holmes. I had left it an utterly changed man. No longer could I simply watch him without wanting to touch him, or touch him without wanting to be closer to him. The worst of it was that I could never do so; I was afraid that I had already risked the trust which I had so carefully built over the years for one solitary moment of intimacy, and lost what was most valuable in my life. For the first time since entering those lodgings I dreaded going down to breakfast. I well knew that he would not be there and feared how long it would be before I saw him again and what would be the tone of that meeting when it did happen. Going out to find him would have yielded little result. He well knew how and where I would look and could take on whatever guise he wished to meet or avoid me as he saw fit. Eventually, however, that was exactly what I determined to do if only because in staying I would suffer the same fate by day as by night and perhaps if he saw me searching he would know my thoughts and forgive me.
My surprise, therefore, was great to find him seated at the breakfast table already, having finished his toast and eggs and waiting patiently for my arrival. I could barely contain my thankfulness, my relief. He gave no indication of understanding what a bad night I had endured and, folding the paper in his lap, began quite normally with “Well, my dear Watson, I’m afraid I must rush you if we are to catch the morning train to Rye.”
“I shall then begin immediately,” I replied, my appetite having suddenly returned along with all my hopes for our continued friendship.
I confess I scarcely remember our journey in the train, so preoccupied was I with the events of the previous night, but my friend seemed in good spirits. He gazed out the window and commented on various subjects as if he sensed my need to hear him speak of anything else but my own actions. Upon our arrival in Rye we had a short walk from the station to the house which stood in a small cobblestone lane shoulder to shoulder with its neighbours on a high ridge overlooking wide fields and small wooded areas. The wall of the medieval town was the border of the ridge and to look out was to peer between and the through the embrasures. We had stopped in at several chemists along the way and after the last Holmes had emerged with a triumphant look which indicated that an important piece of the puzzle had fallen into place.
Now he stepped to the door and knocked. It was answered by a young girl who must have been the servant whose day off it had been when the tragedy took place. She showed us into a sitting room with a low ceiling crossed by beams, stained glass windows, and an enormous stone fireplace with a wide carved stone mantel in which a fire was softly glowing. It would have been difficult to imagine such a dismal event had ever coincided with the comfort of that little room except that it was now in a state of astonishing disarray. The drawers of the sideboard and every end table had been pulled from their places and lay on the floor with their contents strewn about. From the upper rooms we could hear furniture being moved about and the clattering sounds of further disruption.
My friend walked gingerly around the items on the floor and made an examination of every other part of the room, paying close attention to the books on the shelves and running his finger along the top of each. Finally he pulled down a large book from the topmost shelf. It was bound in green leather with gold embossed lettering and seemed to be an anthology of Medieval French poetry.
He contented himself then with sitting in the chair by the fire which had no doubt been occupied very recently by the body of Mr Elliot Clay and began leafing through the book. I stood by the fire to warm myself while awaiting our host.
He was a short man with dark hair parted in the middle and clinging to his head in two slick halves, of medium weight and with a slightly ruddy countenance at odds with two deepset eyes which seemed almost to twitch in his head as he beheld Holmes seated in the chair by the fire. He came forward into the room but made no motion to shake our hands or introduce himself and kept his hands in the pockets of his dressing gown.
“Gentlemen, I am in a poor position to accept strangers into my home.”
“I’m afraid the intrusion cannot be helped,” Holmes interrupted without standing. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Mr Sherlock Holmes and my companion is Dr John Watson.”
If he had seemed to distrust us before it was only enhanced by the knowledge of our identities. He forced himself to smile but the false nature of that smile under those eyes was quite odious to behold. His hands clenched spasmodically in his pockets.
“I must ask your business here, there has been no crime.”
�
��Indeed there has been a crime, Mr Clay. The crime is murder.”
That made him pause. He looked almost as if he might bolt for the door at any minute, but he soon recovered himself.
“There have been no police at my door, Mr Holmes, as I’m sure there would have been had any murder been committed.”
“Not yet, but there soon shall be.”
“May I ask the name of the victim?”
“I believe you knew the victim well. He was your brother.”
His eyes narrowed. “And who do you suspect, Mr Holmes?” he asked.
“I suspect you,” Holmes answered with a level voice, steepling his fingers together and turning the force of his regard towards Clay. “I know that your brother had recently written a will. If you could produce this will it would go a long way towards clearing you of guilt.”
Mr Clay turned a shade of green but kept his calm. I could see his eyes flickering from one to the other of us.
“I know nothing of my brother ever having made a will, but surely I would stand to gain no more now than I would have at any other time since I am his only living relative.”
“You may be his only living relative, Mr Clay, but you are not his only living family. Is it true that he was to leave his entire fortune to Mr Frederick Croft, and not to yourself?”
At that his face turned nearly purple. “I do not see how that man, or any of his so-called ‘Uranians’ have any bearing here. You will not sully the Clay name with this slander. My brother was a national hero, Mr Holmes. I’ve turned that lot out of the house, sir. I’ll not stand for their perversion. Their crime is the only one committed here, and it shall not happen again. My brother was not murdered. I cannot see how there is any such evidence, either of his murder or of my guilt. You are welcome to search the house, Mr Holmes,” he said, “and then you are welcome to show yourselves out.”
A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes Page 29