The Secret Diary of Dr Watson

by Anita Janda

  Holmes is such a bachelor. “Mrs Watson is away? Then there will be no difficulty about joining me.”

  No difficulty indeed. Holmes seems to think that all you have to do is present a woman with a fait accompli and you will be spared the debate. On the contrary, my dear Holmes! Nothing inspires a woman to greater heights of eloquence than a situation that cannot be remedied.

  For my part, I confess I am relieved that Mary is visiting her cousin, although not for the sake of avoiding any objections she would have voiced about our expedition, which objections are in any event not so much forestalled by her absence as they will be magnified and enhanced by my own. At the moment, it is her safety which concerns me most.

  It has forcibly occurred to me, writing this by the very inadequate light of the single lamp Holmes was willing to risk, that if any of Moriarty’s henchmen saw Holmes arrive and yet missed his precipitate exit out of our kitchen door, then they undoubtedly believe that he is spending the night here, with me. It is a moot point whether it is better to throw open the shutters as a sign of good faith or to try to think of them as a species of protection, however slight. I shall get no sleep tonight in any event. From what Holmes tells me, Moriarty is perfectly capable of bringing the house down around my ears in order to unearth his quarry. Now that Holmes has made his escape, air-guns are the least of my worries. Not even a blind man could mistake me for Sherlock Holmes, and I doubt that Moriarty uses blind men as his marksmen.

  Moriarty. I could wish that Holmes had some facility for (or at least a passing interest in) describing the ordinary details of human existence, for I find that I have no least idea of how old this James Moriarty is, where he comes from, what he looks like—who his people are. Holmes passed over these petty points completely.

  His name is Moriarty and once upon a time he held a chair in mathematics at one of our more obscure universities, and I do not even know which one. Today he makes his home in London, where he is ostensibly employed as an Army coach. He published a paper as a young man on the binomial theorem, of all things. That is what Holmes had to say of him. I have no sense of the man’s voice or walk, accent or demeanour. He could come to my surgery door right now and unless he introduced himself as Professor Moriarty or condescended to start a conversation about the intricacies of the binomial theorem, I should have no way of recognizing him.

  Moriarty has much the same sort of mind as my friend Holmes, thus earning his complete respect, and a veritable army of minions where Holmes has only his four ragged street urchins, myself, and (where no physical exertion is required) his brother Mycroft. Small wonder that Paris beckons to Holmes. Faced with the Napoleon of crime, you do well to select a battlefield where you will not be outflanked.

  The Continent it is.

  * * *

  I have sent my things on to Victoria Station, unmarked as per Holmes’s instructions. My revolver is at my side, Mary has been told as little as was husbandly possible, and I have raided the housekeeping money against the necessities of travel. Once again I see before me the curious incident of the dog in the night-time—Moriarty has made no move against me and I might have spared myself a sleepless night.

  I will say, however, that it’s been a productive one. If I can persuade Fitsch to publish ‘The Naval Treaty’ in two instalments, as two of the twelve monthly adventures I am contracted to provide (as seems only fair—it is twice the length of the others and the first part ends on a very suspenseful note), then I will be eleven adventures to the good and need write only one more to complete my obligation for this year. I will also have set the stage very nicely for next year, when I should like to do ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ as a serial with perhaps half a dozen instalments. I’ve been over my notes again and again—I know I can do it.

  Let’s see. There’s ‘The Musgrave Ritual’ coming out in next month’s issue, ‘The Reigate Puzzle’ for June, ‘The Crooked Man’ for July, ‘The Resident Patient’ for August, ‘The Greek Interpreter’ for September (I do like this one!), and then for October and (I hope) November, ‘The Naval Treaty.’ Perhaps the Moriarty case will provide the final problem. If not, there’s always ‘The Cardboard Box.’ Fitsch doesn’t care for it and neither do I (Susan Cushing is a poor substitute for Hermia Marie Cathcart), but it will do in a pinch.

  What time is it? A quarter past eight! I have just time enough to shave before I begin rejecting hansom cabs, barreling through the Lowther Arcade, hurling myself into the brougham Holmes will have waiting for me, and then, on to Victoria Station and our reserved carriage on the Continental express.

  I have rather a lot of questions for Mr Holmes this morning.

  Chapter 26

  It is no use—the more I learn about Moriarty from Holmes, the more he seems to have sprung fully formed from the brow of Athena. At least, I think it is Athena. Holmes, of course, would know immediately who it was. For all his twaddle about being above the niceties of a general education, he is quite likely to know more about whatever it is that you are trying to say than you do. I learned to appreciate it years ago as one of his more restful qualities.

  I arrived at the end of Lowther’s Arcade at very nearly exactly the hour specified by Holmes, and took my seat in his brougham with no more to complain of than a shin barked on its top step and the momentary queasiness that is entailed by a driver who is something of a madman. At one point, I remember, I entertained the unworthy thought that my driver might be Holmes in disguise, but dismissed it from my mind. Holmes may be many things but he is not obese, and the shift and play of the brougham testified to the impressive weight of this man, who was every bit as massive as he looked. I spent the short journey to Victoria rubbing my shin to restore the circulation and congratulating myself both for having remembered to instruct the cabman not to throw away the piece of paper with the Lowther Arcade address on it, and for having the wisdom to tip him handsomely enough to indulge me in this way.

  These were Holmes’s instructions and therefore not to be trifled with, but I wonder now why I could not simply have asked him for the paper back again. I must ask Holmes.

  Once arrived at the station, I had of course to locate our carriage and wait for Holmes. There was no great difficulty in locating the carriage, which happened to be the only one reserved on that train, but waiting for Holmes tried me to the utmost. I was naturally preoccupied with thoughts for his safety, trying to take what comfort I could from the fact that the brougham had been there as expected. If, however, he had made those arrangements before seeing me last night, as seemed only too likely, then there was no knowing what might not have befallen him since he scrambled over my back wall. The curious incident of the dog in the night-time began to take on an ominous significance. My heart kept chiding me that I should have insisted that he spend the night with me, while my head kept reminding me that in all the years I’ve known him, I have never once succeeded in persuading him to do anything at all that he had not already decided to do.

  All the while I was engaged in this mental debate, counting the minutes until I should have to decide whether to remain on board should Holmes fail to appear, I was simultaneously occupied in fending off a barrage of highly intrusive gesticulation directed at me, as the sole occupant of the carriage, by a wizened prune of an Italian priest who simply could not be made to understand that this carriage was reserved, dammit, reserved. I was still trying to make him understand the situation when the train gave a jolt and began to move. I had one hand on my hat and the other on the door preparatory to a hasty descent, when I was hauled practically off my feet by my octogenarian Italian friend.

  “Holmes!”

  I cannot conceive what pleasure there is for Holmes in these encounters.

  “Glad you were able to join me, Watson, but you should have more faith in me. Look, there’s Moriarty on the platform—ah, he’s missed the train!”

  And I had missed my chance for a good look at the Professor, who was simply an angry man above medium height receding int
o the distance by the time I reached the window. In fact, if I am to be precise, he was not even that, but rather one of two angry men above medium height receding into the distance. Either he was in company or there were two men both very angry indeed at having missed the train, but for different reasons. I decided to chance it.

  “Who is that with him, Holmes?”

  “Why, was there anyone with him? I did not observe it,” was his reply.

  Holmes was entirely himself again, rolling up his clerical garb and tossing it into his hand-bag in one easy motion. It did not surprise me to learn that it was to be my fault that Moriarty had tracked us to Victoria Station. It was inevitable. Holmes accepted my assurances that I had carried out his instructions to the letter, somehow managing to prove from that, to his own satisfaction if not my own, that they had been keeping a watch on my movements and that I had led them here. How plausible that is in view of his having arrived on my doorstep undisguised and unmolested last night, I hope someday to be able to leave it to my readers to decide.

  The critical piece of the argument, as I recall, was that someone had set fire to his rooms in Baker Street during the night, thus showing that…

  “Mrs Hudson?” I interrupted.

  “Your concern does you credit, Watson,” he said, as if the thought had never entered his head. “As it happens, no great damage was done to the interior or to the structure, and no one was injured. According to this morning’s Telegraph, the alarm was given in good time by a Mr Charles Hilton, who is almost certainly Cheese Stilton. I believe he had the watch last night.”

  I could appreciate his amusement. “Cheese” is the newest addition to the Baker Street Irregulars and cannot be much above ten years old. There was satisfaction in foiling Moriarty so neatly.

  The incident itself supposedly showed that they had completely lost sight of Holmes and were reduced to watching me. It seemed to me to be equally likely that this was a gesture of spite and contempt, done in full knowledge of Holmes’s absence, and I no longer regretted the sleepless night spent in defense of my home, although I knew better than to mention it to Holmes. It would only have confirmed him in his supposition that Moriarty had followed me here, to learn that I had had a lamp burning all night.

  “Your timetable, Watson.” The practical details are ever my responsibility. “We leave the train at Canterbury.”

  My immediate reaction was that we might have gone to Canterbury last night, with far less trouble and at far less expense than by reserving a first class carriage on the Continental express.

  “Moriarty, Watson! By now, he has hired a special—it is what I should do myself in his place.”

  I could not help reflecting that if Holmes could predict Moriarty’s actions by reference to his own inclinations, then Moriarty might be able to predict my friend’s actions in the same way. Holmes meanwhile was in a state of happy excitement I was hard-pressed to account for under the circumstances, which struck me as fairly grim, I must say.

  Those few people at Canterbury on a Saturday morning were all waiting for the Continental, and I eyed the barren platform with considerable misgiving. This was not the place that I would choose to meet a potentially murderous attack and yet I had small hope of persuading Holmes to leave until he had verified his hypothesis. Regardless of the risk, he would always rather be right than be safe. Someday this preference of his is going to get him killed. The only cover in sight was a small mountain of luggage, which reminded me…

  “Our luggage, Holmes!”

  I watched the train pull out of the station, bearing our bags off to Paris.

  “It can’t be helped, Watson,” he said cheerfully. “With any luck at all, they will be met by Moriarty.” Then, almost as an afterthought: “I trust the passenger list does not include any bona fide Italian prelates of advanced years.”

  With that, he tucked his black hand-bag firmly under his arm and ducked behind the baggage, leaving me as always to bring up the rear. I remember thinking with some bitterness that it probably contained his shaving tackle as well as his cassock and his Italian eyebrows. I found out later that he also had a missal in there, with a ribbon marking the Mass for the Dead. His sense of humour would do justice to Edgar Allan Poe.

  Moriarty came and Moriarty went, and I for one found his passage something of an anticlimax. I wish him joy of our luggage.

  Chapter 27

  We lunched in Newhaven. Fried plaice and a bottle of stout “to celebrate our escape in Canterbury.”

  Holmes talked about a variety of things over lunch: the mating habits of the common or lesser plaice, the new bottling techniques for alcoholic beverages, the advantages of Brussels as compared to Paris (here, I must admit, he lost me), some flowering shrub he looked forward to seeing in Switzerland with a peculiar name, and Flemish art. I cannot imagine where he got his information about the plaice, but it was fascinating and almost made up for the nonsense he was spouting about the Flemish school. It is absurd to think that Rembrandt and Vermeer will be remembered when our own Turner and Constable are forgotten. Holmes rarely requires my spoken agreement, however, so I smiled and nodded, biding my time. It came with the coffee.

  “So, Watson, what do you make of the Professor now that you have had a look at him?” he asked.

  I choked on a mouthful of coffee, grateful I had done with the fish. “Hardly that, Holmes. I have been within hailing distance of him twice but so far I have not laid eyes on him except at a distance of fifty yards and growing. He may have a first-class brain, I will take your word for that, but I would feel better if he also had a face.”

  “If he also had a face! Watson, you are good for me! Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to get my first glimpse of that face? I was weeks upon his trail before I was able to effect an approach and in my role as a blind beggar, I could not allow myself to stare. I have had but one good look at him myself and that was in my rooms in Baker Street yesterday, when my attention was, understandably I think, divided between our conversation and the gun in the top drawer of my desk. He is—an academic. A slight stoop, a hunching of the shoulders, a forward thrust to the head, which tends to wobble slightly from side to side in times of stress. A low, hissing voice that a roomful of boys would have to strain to hear. A tall man who would be taller if he carried himself better.”

  The impulse was uncontrollable. I straightened my spine, squared my shoulders, raised my chin. I shot a look at Holmes, but his thoughts were elsewhere and no wonder. It was a curiously repulsive picture I sought to assemble.

  “He sounds almost reptilian,” I ventured finally.

  “Yes, Watson, ‘reptilian’ is the very word. Puckered eyes, hooded eyes, a malignant mind. He is… reptilian.” His knuckles showed white where he gripped the table.

  It was all vivid enough for me to be able to quote verbatim should this adventure ever come before the public, but it did not actually go very far toward giving me the picture I wanted. What did I know about Moriarty the man? Only that he had a scholar’s posture, a soft voice, some slight trouble with his sibilants, and a guarded expression. My own expression is particularly transparent, I am afraid. At least, Holmes finds it so.

  “Tell me, Watson, did you happen to recognize the driver of your brougham this morning?”

  His own voice had a rather reptilian quality today, I thought, as I bent my mind to the problem. As far as I knew, not even Holmes could be in two places at the same time, but there had been some little delay between my leaving the brougham and meeting Holmes the Italian cleric. How much delay, I really couldn’t say. Once again I had seen but had not observed. (Observation always seems to involve more arithmetic than I am likely to have bothered doing.) I had got to the point of wondering whether a hundredweight of potatoes under the coachman’s seat, properly manipulated with his boots, would give the same effect as the equivalent weight on the coachman, and had virtually impaled myself on the horns of this bizarre dilemma, when Holmes rescued me with a word.

 
; “Mycroft,” he said solemnly.

  “Mycroft?”

  “Mycroft.”

  So much for my notion that our safety was compromised by my ignorance of Moriarty’s physical appearance. It is several years now since Holmes surprised me by having an older brother, Mycroft. To have failed to recognize both Holmes brothers in the space of perhaps twenty minutes, the one my coachman, the other my only fellow passenger in a railway carriage reserved for two, hardly strengthened my position. I thanked heaven I had not told him my suspicion that it was Sherlock Holmes, suitably padded, who drove the brougham while manipulating a sack of potatoes with his feet. Things were awkward enough without that.

  “It is not your fault, Watson,” he remarked kindly as we made our way from the chop house to the quay. Since I had never supposed it was, I was able to maintain a dignified silence.

  I should confess at once that I am unable to be precise about the conversational details attached to the crossing. Our little celebration in Newhaven sealed my fate while we were still in the harbour, leaving Holmes to hope that Moriarty was only half as poor a sailor as his old friend Watson.

  Holmes himself is as comfortable at sea as he is at home, and equally knowledgeable in either setting. As I saw when he set out to entertain me with an impromptu lecture on the art of navigation in the sixteenth century, with particular application to the voyages of Vasco da Gama. He was bent on explaining the differences between the early sextant and the astrolabe when I begged him to stop. I suppose I am as interested in the topic as the next man, but there is a time and a place for everything, and that was not it. He took my objections in good part, I remember, and presumably repaired to drier quarters at about that time, although I could not swear to it. I remained glued to the railing for the duration and we did not meet again until we docked, at which point I was for obvious reasons better able to support the company of a man with Holmes’s taste in tobacco.