by Anita Janda
It has been three years since we parted at the base of the path to the Reichenbach Fall.
I will write down what happened, everything that happened. If I write it down, then I will understand it. By writing it down, step by step, I will make it my own and come to an understanding of what has happened to me. Holmes is alive. Holmes is alive and Mary is dead. I was with her when she died. I closed her eyes. I kissed her cheek, grown cold in death. I threw the first clod of earth on her coffin. I buried her, I know that, in the grave that holds our son. But if I know that, why do I start at every little noise, expecting it to be my Mary, come to turn up the lamp or to ask me whether I would like another cup of tea?
The grave has opened and Holmes has come forth, and all I can think about is that I would give anything, anything for it to have been Mary instead of Holmes.
* * *
I fainted when I saw him. I actually fainted. I don’t know that I would recommend the experience exactly, but it had definite points of interest. One moment I was expostulating with Holmes in his guise as a superannuated bibliophile of the querulous type and the next moment the old man had collapsed into my friend Holmes, long since lost to me but now receding into the perfect blackness of the tunnel that had opened up behind him. The darkness was edged with a disturbance that was almost light, halfway between a tingle and a shimmer. My mouth was dry, the sound of the surf was pounding in my ears, and when I licked my lips, I lost my hearing altogether. The next thing I knew, I was horizontal and Holmes was forcing brandy between my teeth under the mistaken impression that this was the medically approved course of treatment—revival by intoxication.
Where do these myths come from? If people who know nothing about medicine would only stand back and do nothing in case of a medical emergency, the world would be an infinitely safer place. I smell like a distillery.
The walls insisted on tipping around Holmes as he apologized for his dramatic intrusion into my study, explained that he had not intended to reveal himself to me today, and assured me that he would not have done so at all but for the coincidence of finding me among the curious congregated outside the residence of the late Honourable Ronald Adair. The Honourable Ronald Adair? I did not recognize the name. There was a headache waiting for me in the distance like a squall on the horizon.
I remember thinking, quite clearly: Holmes has come back from the dead in order to talk to me about a stranger. Then I realized that he had come back from the dead in order to talk to me about a case, and I surrendered to the inevitable. Time enough to pay attention when we were talking about something that interested me. I concentrated on maintaining my sensory hold on our surroundings and was gratified to see the room assume a less lively demeanour. Meanwhile, Holmes had fixed on a new topic, ‘The Final Problem’, my account of his fatal confrontation with Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Fall.
“Do you know, Watson, I quite liked ‘The Final Problem’? That picture of me, locked in Moriarty’s arms, the two of us hurtling through space to the rocks below—it was most affecting. Your interpretation of events was sadly flawed, as you can see,”—and here he gestured at himself, obviously alive and well—“but the effect on the reader was everything I could have wished. I, myself, reading it in Aix-en-Provence, was most sincerely touched. It is a talent, you know, Watson, to be able to evoke an emotional response in your readers. I have rarely been so moved by a piece of prose. Mrs Hudson tells me that the story of my demise hasn’t hurt the business one bit, either. Of all the unexpected developments that have attended my life in recent years, that has been the most unexpected.”
“You have seen Mrs Hudson?”
“This afternoon. It has been quite a welcome home, taking it all in all,” he said, preening a little. “At least you fainted quietly, Watson! Mrs Hudson had hysterics all over the parlour, running from pillar to post and back again before collapsing in a damp heap in front of the piano, to weep on the keys. Upon my word, I don’t know whether she was pleased to see me or merely sorry to lose the extra money Mycroft has been paying her to leave my shingle up and handle my callers in my absence.”
“You are unfair,” I cried.
“You think so? Well, perhaps. But you can have no idea how tiresome she was, Watson! She wanted to know whether you were aware that I had survived my meeting with Professor Moriarty and when I told her that I had yet to see you, my entire morning having been given over to Inspector Lestrade, she threw her apron over her face and began rocking and keening. ‘Dr Watson will be so pleased, Dr Watson will be so pleased,’ I thought she said. ‘Dr Watson will be so pleased?’ I asked, a jigger of brandy at the ready. She dropped her apron, dabbed at her eyes and said fiercely, ‘Dr Watson will be so grieved.’ But you aren’t grieved, are you, Watson? Of course not. Really, she was completely irrational—wouldn’t touch the brandy. I did my best, but I’m not at all sure she understood my instructions about this evening and her role is critical.
“The practice itself is in fine shape, I’m happy to say. Mrs Hudson tells me that she thinks there has actually been an increase in traffic while I was away. The effect of your adventures, no doubt, Watson. Credit where credit is due! There was a slight dip at the end of the year when ‘The Final Problem’ first came out, but within a couple of months they were knocking at my door once more, many of them wearing a black armband in my memory.
“On Mycroft’s advice, she has been telling all and sundry that Mr Holmes has been called away for the foreseeable future and would they care to leave a message? The strange thing is, many of them do. She said they seem to find it soothing to contribute to her book of messages for Sherlock Holmes. Can you imagine the kinds of minds they must have, Watson? They have heard about my death and therefore they are coming to consult me about their problems. When we die, Mycroft and I, all pretense to logical thought will die with us. What a world it is, eh, Watson?”
An inch of brandy, a splash of soda. It would be best not to drink it, I realized, and offered it to Holmes, who accepted it with a nod.
“You’re not having any?” he asked.
“Not just yet,” I said, silently promising myself a double when he had gone. “Tell me about Moriarty.”
I don’t know why I bothered. Certainly, I was not interested in the mechanics of his escape—his knowledge of baritsu, Moriarty’s unwarranted confidence in his own physical prowess, the way he deceived me over the footmarks on the path. I knew by then that it was to be my fault entirely. He had to do what he did, I gave him no choice. He never intended to deceive me, but I am so easily deceived! (A shake of the head, expressive of wonder.) Many times he wanted to contact me, to explain, but always Something held him back. If I have a fault as a friend (and the reader of these words will readily perceive that I do), that fault is the perfect transparency of my good nature. Anyone can see right through me, just by looking. How could he trust me with his secret when I have never concealed anything from him? Trust has to be earned and by trusting him, I had earned his contempt.
It was interesting to see how closely his telling of the story matched my emotional reconstruction. It has been an education for me, writing these adventures of his. I wonder if he realizes how illogical it all is.
Think about it—he can trust only those people who are able to deceive him. Isn’t that another way of saying that there is no one he can bring himself to trust? But I am forgetting about his brother Mycroft. Mycroft has known the truth from the beginning, “about this and about other things,” he said vaguely, suggesting that additional revelations await me this evening. And so we go adventuring. “Until nine-thirty, then, Watson. Do you still have your old service revolver? Good, we may need it.” And he was gone.
It’s not that Mycroft is more trustworthy than I am—it is that Mycroft is his brother, another member of the Holmes clan. He should have married, should my friend Holmes. It is not good for man to be alone. Holmes has been too much alone. It has changed him.
The one thing he kept repeating was t
hat his farewell note was completely genuine—he’d never lied to me. It wasn’t lying to refer to the enemy by his code name; that was routine practice with espionage cases. The Swiss messenger now, he was surprised I hadn’t taken more notice of the Swiss messenger.
“A member of Moriarty’s gang?” I ventured.
“A reasonable hypothesis when you thought me dead, Watson, but you forget: I survived the battle of the Reichenbach Fall. No, young Hans was all that he appeared to be—young, Swiss, and very obliging. He is, in fact, the reason I am not wanted by the Swiss police today. When you tell this story, Watson, and you will (we can’t leave all London under the impression that I am dead!), you must be sure to emphasize the part he played. I don’t want your readers imagining that I deliberately dispatched some inoffensive soul on my Continental holiday. It was a piece of advice I’d had from Mycroft, Watson: whenever possible, stage your bit of byplay before the eyes of a witness drawn from the local population. That way, your witness will have instant credibility with the local police, who are thereby spared the awful responsibility of having to trust in the word of a foreigner. Mycroft may not have much personal experience of foreign travel, but he is eminently practical.
“When you set off for Meiringen that last day, Watson, I knew that the crisis was near at hand. The letter was an obvious forgery. Moriarty was on his way to meet me and there was murder in his heart. Now that it had come to the point, I was not nearly so pleased by the prospect of trading my life for his as I had been in London, with all of his followers bent on following me, nipping at my heels. Most of them had been arrested while we were in Brussels, after all, and while I knew I had other enemies, still, we had had a very pleasant holiday together, you and I, and life was sweet once more. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the world lay waiting at my feet. There is something about standing on a height, Watson—I felt that it behooved me to take thought for the future.
“For the first time, I considered the possibility that I might survive my encounter with Professor Moriarty. What if our struggle were to conclude with his death at my hands? How could I hope to prove it wasn’t murder? Moriarty had been the instigator of the violence from the beginning, but where were the witnesses to that? Not even you, Watson, could have testified to that. All you knew, of your own knowledge, was that I had evinced a certain amount of uneasiness on the subject of a certain Professor Moriarty and that our fitful progress across the Continent appeared to be a reflection of that uneasiness. ‘Might it not have been the case, Dr Watson, that your friend Holmes was pretending to flee this man, all the while he was luring him to Switzerland?’ You see, Watson? How could you have argued the point?
“I knew from my study of the terrain between Rosenlaui and Meiringen that the Fall could also be viewed from above the path, at two different elevations. Hans Schmidt was young and active. He made nothing of circling round and climbing up to the first lookout. He’d often done it; it would take him about a quarter of an hour. My instructions were simple: I told him to stay hidden, to expect to see violence on the path below, and to observe everything as best he could from his hiding place without compromising his own safety. If I survived the encounter and he was satisfied that I had acted in self-defense, within the confines of the law, then there was the further request that he delay sharing his testimony with the police for the space of a week while I did what I could to ensure my personal safety: my attacker had his friends.
“You could not have done this for me, Watson. Setting aside the handicap of your nationality, you could not, with your leg, have managed the climb. Besides, the good Professor was expecting to see you hurrying down the path to Meiringen. I had to use young Schmidt. I had to let you go.”
* * *
Holmes fails to confide in me and then he blames me for being uninformed. He isolates me, wanting to control the view his biographer takes of him, and then he resents the fact that I have not come to share his conclusions for my own independent reasons.
What he said was true—my information, such as it was, had all come from my friend Holmes. Had he been charged with Moriarty’s murder, I should have had no way of proving his innocence. I know as well as he does that I am no substitute for him as a detective. Deprived at the last of so much as a good look at Professor Moriarty, hustled off to Meiringen as a child is hustled off to bed, I should have had nothing to offer him but my faith in his innocence. The question still remains: was this worth nothing to him?
Had I discovered Holmes still prostrate at the edge of the Fall, accused of voluntary manslaughter, I should have worked tirelessly for him (as in fact I did in his absence), interpreting footmarks, wiring Mycroft and the Yard, defending him with all the words at my command. It was painful for me, writing ‘The Final Problem’, but I did it. I did it because I could not allow Colonel James Moriarty to impugn my friend’s reputation, even if it was out of misguided loyalty to his own dead brother.
It was typical of Holmes, imagining that I might be jealous of Hans Schmidt, the young Swiss messenger. How could I possibly object to his inclusion? I’m glad Holmes thought of it. I know my limitations and I know that no part of me has ever wanted to see Holmes suffer on their account. But what does the inclusion of young Schmidt as a witness on that occasion have to do with my exclusion as his friend and confidant for three long years?
I have to get ready. Holmes will be here shortly and he will expect me to be well-versed in the facts of the case as they have been reported in the press. How odd that our paths should have crossed outside the residence of London’s latest murder victim. I assume Ronald Adair was murdered—I can’t see Holmes interesting himself in a suicide. And he was extremely interested—he went on and on about how pleased he was to find that I had not lost my taste for criminal investigation. He did not scruple to say that he had timed his resurrection perfectly. The trap was baited, the blind prepared. It only remained for us to wait for it to spring and retrieve our prey.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t know anything about his precious case, but it’s true—a death in the family does tend to take one’s mind off the rubbish in the newspapers. I have never even heard of Ronald Adair, as far as I know. I was tramping through the streets as I have done every day since Mary died, hoping to win the grace of a good night’s sleep through the penance of physical exertion. (I have to do it. It’s what I have always told my patients to do when they have trouble sleeping.) I saw the crowd, I was grateful for the distraction (these days I am grateful for any distraction), and so I stopped and gazed at the upstairs windows with the rest of them. I didn’t have to know all of the details. It was enough for me to find myself emotionally in tune with someone again, if only for a few minutes. How could I know Holmes was watching me, measuring my grief with his eyes?
All he cares about is that I am a bachelor again, free to go adventuring with him. But I am not a bachelor, I am a widower, and all I can think about is Mary. The way I am now, I am like a question without an answer. I unnerve people. I unnerve myself. The only one I don’t unnerve is Holmes, and I find that unnerving.
Holmes wants me to bring my service revolver with me and I will, but I’ll be damned if I’ll take any ammunition. I still have to shave and eat a couple of sandwiches. Change my shirt, which smells of spirits.
One last thing. I don’t know whether he was trying to tell me something with this, or if he simply hasn’t looked at it since he thrust it into his notebook in Florence three years ago, but I have the scrap of paper he used to compose his wire to Mycroft after legging it over the rise at the Reichenbach Fall into Italy. He saved it for me, he said, in case I wanted to use it in my next adventure. The date is 5 May, 1891, and it is addressed to Mycroft Sigerson at Whitehall.
VENI, VIDI, VICI AND WATSON HAS HIS FINAL PROBLEM
AFTER ALL
RELYING ON YOU TO MAINTAIN STATUS QUO ANTE
PRESENT SITUATION SUITS ME
RIP SHERLOCK HOLMES
WILL RESOLVE LEGA
L TANGLE BEFORE LEAVING
SWITZERLAND
SEND FUNDS ROSENLAUI
YOUR LOVING BROTHER
ALTAMONT SIGERSON
“Sigerson” is an interesting choice. If “Siegfried” means victorious peace and “Sigismund” means victorious protector, then what do you suppose “Sigerson” means? And am I to suppose it is a coincidence that my name is Watson?
Nine o’clock, time to have done. I mustn’t keep Holmes waiting.
Chapter 34
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. I meant, Why didn’t you tell me this earlier—this afternoon, three years ago, any time during the past three years? but that’s not how he heard it. You can know someone for years and years, and then find out you don’t know them at all.
He spoke slowly, as if he were speaking to a child. “Because Lestrade may be with us this evening and I would not have you at a disadvantage, Watson.” Of course. He was ever considerate of my feelings. “Must we talk about this now, Watson?”
I waited then, letting the chill darkness of the empty house fill up my soul. There was a strong smell of cat in the air, emanating from the ground floor, manifesting itself in a sharp ammoniated pricking in the back of my throat. It was important that we keep the windows closed. Holmes peered down into the street: nothing yet.
“Lestrade was in on the joke?” I asked softly.
“There was no ‘joke,’ as you put it, Watson. You make it sound as though I’d planned to deceive you. How can I make you understand? There was no planning to this at all. One thing led to another and at each point, I made the decision that maximized my advantage. That’s all. You would have done the same in my position.” I wondered briefly whether he actually believed that, then dismissed the question as irrelevant.
“I thought you’d see through it yourself, Watson! Aren’t you the one who coined the name ‘Lestrade’? What could be more obvious than the name ‘Moriarty’? Less trade, more art—that’s what I wanted. I kept waiting for you to ask me about it.”