The Patient's Eyes: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes

by Pirie, David

  Later, back on the road as we prepared to leave the place, Bell had a final talk with Baynes and myself. Knowing the signs of old, I could see he was extremely excited by the day’s developments. ‘It is’, he said, ‘as suggestive a case as I have ever seen. Tomorrow, Doyle, we must of course call on the young lady’s guardians.’

  Baynes was evidently itching to be given something to do. ‘Should I not keep watch on the road, sir. I would love to have a chance to prove my theory.’

  ‘Very well,’ Bell agreed. ‘I would be very grateful if you did, Baynes. But be careful. You know what happened to Doyle here. On no account whatever – and I mean that – on no account go into the wood.’

  THE COLLECTION OF MR CHARLES BLYTHE

  The Doctor was anxious to set out on our visit early next morning and with some regret I had to explain to him over breakfast that, unless he went alone, this was quite impossible. My list was growing, I had a number of postponed patients and I could not possibly be ready before lunch. He was not pleased, but he had to make the best of it and retreated to his room with some words about keeping my appointments as short as possible.

  The phrase seemed to work as an evil charm for I have rarely known such long and arduous consultations. A local publican with a stomach complaint insisted on taking me through two week’s worth of meals in order to prove he was allergic to eggs. A mother, who quite erroneously feared pleurisy, wished me to make a study of her family tree. And finally, with only one patient left, a neighbour rushed in begging for help with her infant son who had a coughing fit. None of these cases was remotely serious, but all needed attention. I was glad when finally I shook hands with my last patient, a querulous builder’s wife called Mrs Caine, who wished to use the cloakroom and insisted I need not trouble myself as her maid was waiting and would see her out.

  I had returned to my consulting room to put my notes in order when I was interrupted by a piercing scream and it was only then I remembered that Bell was liable to use the downstairs cloakroom for his own purposes. Sure enough, a few minutes later I was apologising to a shaken Mrs Caine who had evidently peered behind a bath screen, only to see the Doctor, standing in the bath under a maze of test tubes wishing her ‘Good Morning’.

  I shut the front door with relief and after a moment Bell appeared, grinning. ‘A trying patient, Doyle. And she constantly quarrels with her husband, who is a wealthy builder.’

  ‘Do you know the Caines?’ I asked in surprise.

  ‘Of course not, but her wedding ring shows a married woman of means and the specks of fresh cement and carpented wood on her insole told me she has recently visited a building site, while the name Caine is on various sites in the town. She also stamped her foot twice in a rage in my presence. No surprise that the toe of her right shoe was worn.’

  I was amused, of course it was all true. ‘I hope you will not scare away all my patients, Doctor.’

  ‘In her case you might thank me, but I fear she is the kind who always comes back,’ he said. ‘Now, a cab is waiting for us outside and at last we can make our visit.’

  And so, once again, we drove up that long and desolate road on to the hills, where a fierce wind was blowing the trees about. Bell leant back in the cab, his eyes half closed in that odd way he had when he gave me his view of a case, prompted on this occasion by the previous day’s interview with Heather Grace.

  ‘All my instincts warn me’, he began, ‘that your patient is at serious risk and this risk is in some way connected to the imminence of her inheritance on her twenty-fifth birthday. Her uncle is very keen on the match to Greenwell, the teacher we met, partly because it seems she had been engaged before to a naval captain called Horler who jilted her and went abroad. But I know you will be interested to hear I have made my own enquiries about Mr Greenwell. It seems he is not such a wealthy man; indeed, there was some land speculation in which he lost money. It could therefore be said he has a motive for frightening Miss Grace into marriage.’

  This interested me considerably but there was more. For Bell had pressed Miss Grace on the matter of the cyclist and learned something new and somewhat disturbing.

  Once, at night, on that road she was returning from an errand to the farm when she became sure she heard the cyclist very close behind her, closer, that is, than ever before. Then, as so often, this reminded her of her dream and the memory made things far worse, for in the nightmare she frequently stumbled and fell. In her terror she had swerved and lost her balance, and tumbled from the bicycle. She was not hurt but she lay there in desperate fear, her eyes tightly closed, not daring to open them. In that awful moment she was sure the figure was on her, and she could feel his hand touching her and even whispering. She did not dare open her eyes for fear but at last, when all was quiet, she made herself look and there was no sign of him. Finally she had decided his closeness must have been imaginary. It was all in her mind, which was why she had not told me before.

  It so happened that as the Doctor was recalling this, we were passing that stretch of road and as I stared out at those dank trees I hardly wished to contemplate the terror she must have felt. But my companion was far more worried by the implication. ‘I am not at all sure’, he said, frowning, ‘it was in her mind. That is what concerns me.’

  At last we reached the ivy-clad rectory. It was, as I have said, a pleasant enough building, comparatively sheltered from the elements by its position and surrounded by a well-kept garden and parkland.

  Bell had sent word through Miss Grace that we were coming and we were admitted by a maid as a small elderly woman appeared, with neat grey hair and a somewhat worried expression, and we made our introductions.

  ‘I am Heather’s Aunt Agnes, gentlemen. Her poor late mother’s sister,’ Mrs Blythe said as she led us deeper into the house, which was far more spacious than I had realised from its exterior, with large, well-furnished rooms. ‘It is my hope our niece marries Guy Greenwell as soon as possible and all this stupidity will end.’

  ‘Stupidity?’ asked Dr Bell.

  Mrs Blythe stopped to reply and I noticed she had a nervous habit of wringing her hands. ‘Why, the poor girl has such fancies! My husband has little patience with them. She was engaged before, you know. To Captain Horler, who treated her shamefully.’

  We continued down a short corridor to a green baize door, which she opened somewhat timidly, I thought. ‘If you will wait in here, my husband will be with you shortly.’

  At first I found it difficult to take in very much, as the door shut behind us, for the room was not very well lit. Then I began to realise we were standing in the middle of some kind of collection. All around us were large glass tanks, reaching well above our heads. The one closest to me was full of fish, but it was untypical for soon I came to beetles and then snakes, and at last I was staring at a nest of what looked like scorpions.

  ‘Interesting companions,’ commented Dr Bell.

  ‘For some,’ I said, because ‘interesting’ was not the adjective that came most readily to my lips.

  The Doctor had, however, moved on to a display case full of spiders and was studying it avidly. ‘Latrodectus hesperus … A long time since I have seen you, my friend.’

  Quite suddenly a figure appeared behind the case, standing bolt upright. I still have no idea, as I think back to that room, whether he had been in there the whole time or had entered while we were staring at the cases. My suspicion, partly arising from later events, is he would lurk in the shadows of the place, musing over its contents.

  Blythe was a big, bull-necked man, bursting with energy. ‘Which one of you’, he asked with evident hostility, ‘is Doyle?’

  ‘I am,’ I answered with more casualness than I felt.

  He turned to me. ‘My niece, Heather, is not here. But I am glad you have called as she said because I wanted to talk to you. I believe, sir, you have designs upon her. You must stop all dealings with her at once.’

  ‘I am sure she can make up her own mind. And you seem unaware
that I am her doctor.’

  He glared at me. ‘Which makes the impropriety all the grosser.’

  Dr Bell had been watching alertly and stepped forward now to intercede. ‘I can vouch for my young colleague here, Mr Blythe. We are visiting you on a matter I believe to be of importance. It seems to me your niece is in danger.’

  Blythe stared rudely at Bell. ‘There at least we can agree. Who are you, sir?’

  ‘I am Dr Joseph Bell of Edinburgh University.’

  ‘The Dr Bell, head of operative surgery, who wrote the monograph on the adaptation of the eye to distance?’ His tone was excited.

  ‘The same,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘Why did you not say so, Dr Bell?’ Blythe smiled warmly. ‘I studied botany and zoology in London until I withdrew to supervise my own collection here, which I may say I have plans to expand. Have you noted it?’

  I was amazed. He wished to expand what was already so large, but it gave me a good idea of the man’s ambition. ‘Indeed,’ the Doctor was saying, ‘I admired it. Though I was surprised by the Latrodectus.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Blythe, with what seemed almost like paternal affection. ‘A deadly little man.’ He moved over, put his hand in and the spider crawled on to it.

  The Doctor looked alarmed but Blythe merely smiled. ‘Venomless,’ he explained. ‘I extract the venom. It is one of my hobbies. Oh, I am a dabbler, a mere picker up of shells on the shores of the ocean of science. You, of all people, would understand. Indeed, your orbital development is so pronounced that a cast of your skull would be an ornament to any museum such as this.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the Doctor. ‘I am not yet ready to donate it.’ He paused. ‘We are here because I fear your niece is at risk. There is a figure that follows her …’

  Blythe, who was putting the spider back now, looked a good deal less interested and interrupted the Doctor rather rudely: ‘My niece has two great defects, Dr Bell. She is grossly over-imaginative and may soon be very rich. The latter causes men to follow her and to fight over her, while the former conjures up even greater threats. You should think twice about any account she gives.’ Blythe had moved over to his desk and now indicated a pile of legal correspondence. ‘I am attempting, for her own sake, to retain supervision of her inheritance and advancing my legal claim to do so. She has a nervous affliction which makes her ill-suited for the money.’

  I sensed the magnitude of the Doctor’s interest though he barely moved a muscle. ‘And I imagine’, he said mildly, ‘the interest on it is of considerable help in servicing your collection?’

  The inference of the Doctor’s remark was so unmistakable I almost expected Blythe to move across the room and attack him. But, strangely, this fierce man became suddenly passive and very still. In fact, his voice dropped. ‘I shall not take that as an insult. My wife has means of her own. In any case as soon as my niece marries Mr Greenwell I will settle them both with the money for she would be out of harm’s way and in proper hands. So I fear your errand here is pointless.’ He moved forward to usher us out, indicating that the interview was at an end. I am sure he would have been happy to talk science with Bell all day but these other topics were not to his taste.

  As we reached the door, Bell stopped. ‘Mr Blythe,’ he said. ‘I see you have an elegant line in outdoor dress. The hood must be useful.’ Hanging on a peg were two black coats with hoods. I stared too, for they looked familiar.

  Blythe stopped and ran his fingers along one of the cloaks. ‘Oh, I collect specimens at all times and in all weathers, Dr Bell. You will excuse me now if I return to my studies but there is a fine nest of vipera berus in the wood below my house. I like to take the adders’ skins while they are alive and also sometimes I milk their venom. Perhaps one day you would care to join me?’

  We said our goodbyes and the door of that room shut behind us. ‘What a man!’ I exclaimed to the Doctor as we came out of the corridor and made our way back to the entrance hall. ‘You saw that cloak …’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Bell, ‘he has a motive for undermining his niece if he wants to keep his hands on her money. But in itself I fear the cloaks prove nothing. They are common enough garments.’ At the time, as we moved out of that house and back into the wind, I wondered if Bell was not being overcautious.

  On the road we stopped the cab to talk to Baynes, who was crouched behind the hedge and had as yet seen nothing on his watch. The Doctor urged him to give it up and Baynes agreed to take advantage of the lift into town. ‘But I will try again one last time in the morning, Dr Bell,’ he said with a grin as he settled in the cab. ‘Sometimes it takes a while to draw an ace but one comes in the end.’

  That night, perhaps prompted by my own fears, it was my turn to have bad dreams. I saw Heather Grace moving through a house infested with spiders and snakes and cruelty, and I tried desperately to take her from it. It is a dream that has often returned over the years.

  THE DARK WINDOW

  The following day I had an appointment with Miss Grace, in view of her uncle’s rude words to me, I wondered if she would be allowed to attend. I waited in my consultation room, making some adjustments to the apparatus for the study of her eye condition when, to my pleasure, I heard voices outside and Bell showed her in.

  He left us and I got to my feet and shook her hand, telling her the machine was ready. I had already decided to say nothing of our interview with her uncle but she looked a little distracted and her shoes were muddy. She told me she had been walking and thinking. Then she sat down in the chair I had placed in front of the light. The retinoscope is essentially a machine for reflecting a beam of light from a mirror into the eye in such a way that enables the physician to study areas of shadow as the mirror is rotated. Now I set about positioning the light so it would illuminate her eyes and soon I was looking deeply into them.

  I have written that I found it hard not to be distracted by my patient’s eyes when I first met her. Now that I was staring into them at such length this was doubly difficult. As I looked at those beautiful eyes and made my notes, I found myself thinking about my dream the previous night and also about her strange uncle and the figure who pursued her. She looked so vulnerable, but thank heaven I sensed a strength in her too.

  I told her I intended to make such examinations regularly and compare the results. ‘There are areas of shadow, which strike me as unusual,’ I said as I stared, ‘and pools of darker colour. But I believe they are slightly smaller than when I last observed them with the naked eye.’

  ‘And yours,’ she said with a smile — for, as I stared into hers, she was inevitably looking into mine – ‘I seem to see conscience and faith in them.’

  ‘Sometimes I feel little enough of either,’ I told her, taking my eyes away with difficulty and altering the angle of the mirror. ‘I was brought up a Catholic and I believe in something, but I cannot always find clarity in it.’

  ‘Yes, I want so much to be clear in myself too.’ The medical consultation was coming to an end, but if she wanted to talk then I saw no reason to stop her. ‘You see, when my parents died I was young and I often wondered if I would ever move beyond what happened. Find love. Then there was the one man I loved.’

  ‘Captain Horler?’

  She nodded. ‘And I must admit when it ended and he left me I thought nothing would ever make me whole. Never, ever. That I would not find someone again.’

  I told her that I knew this feeling, but wounds could heal.

  ‘I wish so much …’ She stopped. ‘But will you not tell me more of what happened to you?’

  It was not a subject I much wished to dwell on. ‘It was a long time ago,’ I said.

  ‘That makes no difference, as you said yourself.’

  I thought of the events of that awful year in Edinburgh, the year marked by my unopened box. I would not have been prepared to answer anyone else’s questions on the subject but I answered hers.

  ‘There is little to say.’ I spoke quietly. ‘She died. Dr Bell faile
d. It was a vicious crime. Even now we hope one day we will see justice.’

  ‘I understand. And you keep thinking over and over, is there something I should have done? Was I a coward?’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘I know it.’

  ‘I was sure we shared it.’ The light from the retinoscope was still casting odd shadows as she spoke and our faces were very close.

  ‘I feel’, she said, ‘I have always felt – and you must forgive me this – as if I could read your thoughts.’

  I do not know how long we looked at each other. It is indeed as strange for me to look back on that moment now as it was to live it then. She was, as I have said, the first person I had ever talked to about what happened to Elsbeth and I felt such a sense of release to know someone else could understand my feelings. I still feel the intensity of my exhilaration to this day.

  In any case we were interrupted by the ringing of my doorbell. It was the next patient. But that was my last appointment and Miss Grace readily agreed to wait so I could see her safely home.

  She had not come by bicycle, so a little later we were climbing out of a cab at the rectory gates and she was insisting I should come in and take tea. We had been talking merrily enough about our early lives and I confessed to her I had not wanted to be a doctor. Weaned on tales of a great-uncle who led the Scottish brigade at Waterloo, I would probably have become a soldier, but my mother overruled me.

  ‘I think your mother was right to guide you then,’ she said. ‘But it is not always so. Sometimes it can be stifling if decisions are made for you. I will be honest, Dr Doyle, there are times when the marriage my people propose feels to me like a prison.’

  ‘Then why proceed?’

  We had stopped quite close the house when our conversation suddenly became more serious again, her hand playing with the collar of her coat as she stared up at me. ‘Because’, she said, ‘at other times I think it may be right. You know what fears I have.’