Holmes and Watson

by June Thomson

  It is important to examine his psychological state at this period of his life, for it was to have a significant effect, I believe, on his subsequent actions. There are signs within the canon that, over these three years, Holmes may have been going through a period of manic depression, triggered perhaps by the loss of Watson’s companionship, combined with a heavy case-load, and exacerbated by a more frequent use of cocaine. As we have seen, in ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, Watson writes of Holmes ‘alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition’, the drug intensifying those ‘high’ and ‘low’ states of mind from which he naturally suffered. In his accounts of this period Watson also refers several times to extreme forms of behaviour on the part of his old friend. On one occasion, in a state of ‘uncontrollable excitement’, Holmes raised his clenched fists and ‘raved in the air’. On another, he suffered a fit of ‘uncontrollable agitation’, following a mood in which he was ‘more depressed and shaken’ than Watson had ever seen him. The repetition of the word ‘uncontrollable’ is, I believe, significant.

  Although Holmes was still too young to be experiencing a midlife crisis, he may well have reached a point when he began to question the validity of his whole life and career. What was the point of it all? Where was it leading him? In such a frame of mind, even life itself had lost its zest. ‘My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplace of existence,’ he confesses to Watson in ‘The Red-Headed League’.

  He was also turning to other forms of mental and spiritual consolation, as if logic and reason no longer satisfied him. In ‘The Adventure of the Naval Treaty’, Watson describes him examining a rose, and this the action of a man whose knowledge of botany Watson had once marked as Nil.* ‘It was a new phase in his character to me,’ Watson remarks, ‘for I had never before seen him show any interest in natural objects.’ In his last letter to Watson, Holmes was to express this urge in even more specific terms. ‘Of late,’ he writes, ‘I have been tempted to look into the problems furnished by Nature rather than those more superficial ones for which our artificial state of society is responsible.’ This last remark is surely a reference to crime and its detection.

  Such a shift in mood is also seen in his changing attitude to the concepts of law and justice and to his own role in upholding them. In two investigations of this period, the Blue Carbuncle inquiry and the Boscombe Valley mystery, the first a case of theft, the second the much more serious charge of murder, Holmes was prepared to let the criminal escape prosecution, justice being better served, he felt, by leniency than by a strict enforcement of the law.

  This change in emphasis reaches its apotheosis in his attitude to Moriarty. The man is not simply a criminal; he is the embodiment of evil. Society must be cleansed of his presence and, in undertaking the task, Holmes is assuming an obligation which has all the qualities of a moral, not to say religious, crusade.

  By 24th April that crusade was almost completed. Through a ‘little slip’ on Moriarty’s part, of what nature Holmes does not specify, the net was rapidly closing round the Professor and his organisation. The ‘final steps’ were taken and their arrest was timed for the following Monday, in three days’ time. Again, Holmes does not state what these final steps involved but they may have been connected with the papers Holmes was keeping in his desk in a blue envelope labelled Moriarty, which he had filed in the ‘M’ pigeon-hole and which he was later to ask Watson to pass on to Inspector Patterson. These documents were vital for the conviction of Moriarty’s gang when they were brought to trial.

  As they contained such crucial evidence, it was surprisingly irresponsible of Holmes to leave them in his desk at his lodgings. He knew Moriarty’s associates were quite capable of breaking into premises and stealing documents at the Professor’s orders. In fact, an attempt was made that very night to burn down 221B Baker Street, although fortunately only minor damage was done. There seems to be no excuse for Holmes’ negligence unless he had good reason to believe the documents were safer in his possession than Inspector Patterson’s. Although Holmes makes no outright accusation, there are hints in the canon that Moriarty had inside knowledge of Holmes’ tactics in collecting evidence against him.

  ‘He saw every step I took to draw my toils round him,’ Holmes was later to tell Watson, while Moriarty himself informed Holmes that he knew ‘every move’ of his game, an admission which might hint he had an informer inside Scotland Yard.

  Nothing is known about Inspector Patterson. There is no other reference to him in the canon and this suggests that, unlike Lestrade and other Scotland Yard detectives, he was never associated with Holmes on any investigations either before or after the Moriarty inquiry. As a police officer, Patterson was incompetent. He not only allowed Moriarty to escape but also Colonel Moran, the Professor’s Chief of Staff, as well as two other members of the gang. He also sent incorrect information to Holmes.

  All of this could suggest that Patterson or one of his colleagues was in Moriarty’s pay and Holmes suspected as much. Corrupt policemen are unfortunately not unknown and such a theory would explain why Moriarty knew Holmes’ every move and how he, along with other gang members, managed to elude arrest. It might also account for Holmes’ otherwise inexplicable behaviour in keeping such important documents in his desk. In instructing Watson to hand over the envelope to Patterson, Holmes had, of course, no choice. Whatever private suspicions he may have had against Patterson or one of his colleagues, the inspector was nevertheless officially in charge of the case and, with no proof against him or any other officer, Holmes was obliged to make any evidence available to Scotland Yard.

  Whether or not Moriarty was kept informed by a contact inside the Metropolitan police force, he was sufficiently alarmed by the turn events were taking to drop all pretence of respectability and to approach Holmes in person on the morning of 24th April. His arrival at Baker Street came without warning and took Holmes completely by surprise, although he had the presence of mind to slip the gun that he kept as a precaution in his desk drawer into his dressing-gown pocket as Moriarty entered the room. In fact, this meeting was probably the first face to face encounter between the two protagonists and shows the desperate measures which the Professor was prepared to take in order to protect himself and his organisation.

  His motive in coming was simple. It was to warn Holmes that, unless he dropped his enquiries, he would personally order Holmes’ death. It was no idle threat, as Holmes was soon to discover. He also knew that it was useless to ask for police protection. Moriarty’s agents were too numerous. The fatal blow could fall anywhere and at any time.

  As Moriarty must have anticipated, Holmes refused to drop his enquiries. The Professor was a highly intelligent man and, in the same way that Holmes had been compiling a dossier on him, Moriarty must have been gathering information about his adversary.

  Holmes’ movements after Moriarty had left can be established in some detail. At midday, he set off for Oxford Street to transact some business, of what nature he does not specify. While in the area, two attempts were made on his life, the first occurring at the comer of Bentinck Street and Welbeck Street when he was nearly run down by a two-horse van driven at speed. A second attempt was made shortly afterwards in Vere Street where a brick came hurtling down from the roof of a house, missing him by inches. Moriarty had wasted no time in putting his death threat into operation.

  On this second occasion, Holmes called the police but could not prove the attack was intentional. Bricks and slates were found piled up on the roof in preparation for repairs to be carried out and one might have been blown off accidentally by the wind.

  After this last incident, Holmes visited his brother Mycroft in his Pall Mall lodgings, prudently going there by cab. Although he does not state the purpose of this visit, it was probably to make arrangements with his brother for the disposal of his property in the event of his death, a possibility which, in the light of the day’s happenings, seemed more and more likely.

  Having spent the
afternoon with Mycroft, Holmes then decided to call on Watson in Kensington. Although Holmes may have already made up his mind to go abroad while the police rounded up Moriarty and his gang, his decision to invite Watson to accompany him was probably only made during that visit to his brother. In fact, Mycroft may have suggested it. He must have been deeply concerned about Sherlock’s safety and the thought of his travelling with a companion, who was, moreover, a doctor and used to acting calmly in a crisis, would have seemed eminently sensible.

  Holmes himself was clearly not averse to the idea even though he was aware of the danger to Watson should he agree with the proposal. But both Mycroft and Sherlock must have been convinced that, provided a plan of action was carefully devised and carried out, the risk was minimised. As well as the arrangements regarding Holmes’ property, this plan must also have been discussed in some detail by the two brothers that afternoon. Their strategy was this: if Watson agreed to accompany Holmes to the Continent for a week, he would send his luggage unaddressed to Victoria station that same evening by a messenger. Early the following morning, the same man would call a hansom, taking care not to choose the first or second one in the rank, in case Moriarty had deliberately placed them there. Watson would then drive to the Strand end of the Lowther Arcade, hurrying through it on foot and arriving at the far end at exactly quarter to nine. Here he would find a brougham waiting for him. Unknown to Watson, its driver would be Mycroft. This is another example of Holmes’ innate secretiveness. There is no reason why Watson should not have known this at the start.

  The carriage would then take him to Victoria in time to catch the Continental express, where Holmes would be waiting for him in a reserved first-class carriage, the second from the front.

  The plan seemed foolproof. There was small chance that Moriarty would learn of it and send one of his agents to track them down. It cannot have occurred to either of them that Moriarty would take it upon himself to pursue them and personally attempt to carry out his threatened revenge.

  Holmes was soon reminded, however, of the continuing danger to his life while he remained in London. Even on his way to Kensington to lay the plan before Watson, he was attacked by one of Moriarty’s gang, who must have been tailing him that afternoon. With his skill at boxing, Holmes was soon able to knock him down before handing him over to the police. However, there still remained the threat posed by Colonel Moran, Moriarty’s Chief of Staff, an excellent shot, whom Holmes already knew was in possession of an air rifle, specially made by Von Herder, the blind German mechanic, on Moriarty’s orders. Holmes’ first action on arriving at Watson’s house was to close the shutters as a precaution against being shot at by an air gun. It was a perfect assassin’s weapon, powerful and silent, which Moran was to put to deadly use three years later.

  Watson was alone on that evening of 24th April when Holmes walked into his consulting-room. Mrs Watson was away on a visit and he had settled down to spend the evening reading. He had not seen Holmes for several months, probably not since the Dying Detective case in November 1890, and may have assumed he was still in France, engaged on the important inquiry for the French government. Holmes’ arrival was therefore totally unexpected. So, too, was his suggestion that Watson accompany him on a week’s visit to the Continent, although, as soon as Holmes explained the reason behind this request, the threat to his life posed by Professor Moriarty, Watson agreed without any hesitation. His practice was quiet and he knew Anstruther, his ‘accommodating neighbour’, would be willing to act as locum in his absence.

  ‘You have probably never heard of Professor Moriarty?’ Holmes enquires ingenuously. To which Watson replies, ‘Never.’

  This professed ignorance of Moriarty’s existence, about which some critics have commented derisively, becomes perfectly explicable when the publication dates of the two accounts, The Valley of Fear and ‘The Final Problem’, are examined. ‘The Final Problem’ was first published in The Strand and McClure’s magazines in December 1893, two years and nine months after the events, whereas The Valley of Fear was not printed until much later in The Strand, in serial form between September 1914 and May 1915. Therefore at the time ‘The Final Problem’ was published, Watson’s readers knew nothing of either Moriarty or Holmes’ encounter with him in 1888 during the Valley of Fear inquiry.

  Watson’s apparent ignorance of Moriarty when Holmes calls on him on that evening of 24th April 1891 is therefore nothing more than a literary device used deliberately by him to convey to his readers necessary information about both the Professor and his criminal activities. As a device, it is admittedly a little clumsy but, given the circumstances, there was not much else Watson as author could do to get round the problem. The only other alternative was for Watson to admit his knowledge of Moriarty but allow Holmes to give his account of the Professor and his career anyway, which would have been even more artificial. Watson has done his best in a difficult literary situation. Certain parts of Holmes’ account printed in ‘The Final Problem’ therefore belong almost certainly to a much earlier conversation between the two of them which took place during the 1888 Valley of Fear case and which Watson has transferred to the Final Problem inquiry of 1891.

  Knowing he had probably been followed to Kensington, Holmes refused to stay the night as it might be dangerous for Watson and, when he left, he took the precaution of scrambling over the back garden wall into Mortimer Street,* where he hailed a hansom. It is not known where he went, perhaps to some small hotel or more probably to one of the five small refuges he had set up in different parts of London where he kept some of his disguises. The following morning, when Watson met him in their first-class carriage of the Continental express, he was disguised as an elderly Italian priest. He certainly did not return to Baker Street, where a fire broke out that night in his lodgings, although fortunately not a serious one. Mrs Hudson’s reaction to this arson attack on her home is not recorded.

  In the meantime Watson must have been busy packing for the trip abroad and sending his luggage in advance to Victoria station, as Holmes had instructed. He also had to make arrangements with Anstruther to look after his practice before setting off the following morning after breakfast for Victoria, carrying out Holmes’ instructions about the journey to the letter, as he is careful to point out.

  Despite these precautions, Moriarty discovered their destination, probably through their luggage, the one weak spot in the plan. If one of Moriarty’s agents was watching Watson’s house, it would have been easy enough for him to follow the messenger to Victoria station and then alert Moriarty who, by bribing the porter who loaded their luggage on the train, learnt that it was booked through to Paris. There is no other explanation for Moriarty’s sudden arrival just as the Continental express was drawing out of the station. He was too late to catch the train but not too late to follow them, as Holmes quickly realised. Moriarty, Holmes deduced, would do exactly what he would have done under the circumstances: that is, to engage a special train* and set off in pursuit.

  Watson’s suggestion, that they should arrange for Moriarty’s arrest, was out of the question. This would alert the rest of Moriarty’s gang who would then escape. Despite the threat he posed, Moriarty must be allowed to remain free. But if they were to elude him, Holmes had to make some last minute changes to his plans. His original destination was Paris. He had probably intended to travel to Dover, where he and Watson would have caught the cross-channel packet to Calais, going on from there by train to the French capital.

  Instead, he decided to go via the Newhaven–Ostend route to Brussels. And so, when the train stopped at Canterbury,* he and Watson alighted, abandoning their luggage, an inconvenience, although Watson, who liked to think of himself as a seasoned traveller after his Afghan experiences, refused to be too annoyed at this loss. As Holmes pointed out, they could easily acquire a couple of carpet-bags and buy whatever they needed during the tour. He was also sanguine about what action Moriarty would take once he discovered he had been given the slip; over-s
anguine as events were to prove. He assumed that Moriarty would travel on to Paris, track down their luggage and wait at the depot for two days for them to arrive to collect it. In fact, as we shall see, Moriarty did no such thing.

  Having alighted at Canterbury and watched from behind a pile of luggage as Moriarty’s special train rattled through the station, Holmes and Watson then made their way cross-country to Newhaven, arriving in Brussels that same night, that is 25th April.

  Their itinerary from then on can be established in some detail. They spent the following two days, 26th and 27th of April, in Brussels at a hotel, moving on Tuesday morning, 28th April, to Strasburg from where Holmes sent a telegram to Scotland Yard. Although the contents are unknown, he presumably asked for information about the arrest of Moriarty and his gang members which was due to have taken place the previous day, by which time Holmes must have assumed that Moriarty, having drawn a blank in Paris, would have returned to London. That same evening Holmes received an answer from Scotland Yard, informing him that Moriarty had escaped arrest but the rest of his gang had been rounded up. This latter piece of information was, however, incorrect and is an indication of Inspector Patterson’s incompetence. In fact, three of Moriarty’s gang had escaped, among them Colonel Moran.

  Holmes was naturally bitterly angry at this failure on the part of the police and keenly aware of the danger to himself and Watson now that Moriarty was still at large. He tried in vain to persuade Watson to return immediately to England, but although they argued the matter over for half an hour in the hotel dining-room, Watson remained adamant. He refused to leave. Loyalty to Holmes and the promise of excitement proved too strong. That same night, 28th April, they left Strasburg for Geneva, from where they set off on foot along the Rhône valley, branching off at Leuk and crossing the Alps by the still snow-bound Gemmi Pass to Interlaken before finally moving on to Meiringen, accompanied by a guide for at least part of their journey.