Prelude to a Partnership

by Miss Roylott

  Holmes suggested that one of these nights we reverse things and share my bed instead of his. As he enjoyed variety so much, I asked him what had become of his handcuffs and described delicious things we might do with them. Just the mere thought excited him a great deal, and he praised Murray for teaching me to be so naughty.

  I could spend hour after hour, day after day, and week after week teaching Holmes to be naughty, if only we could go on without interruption. He is such a wicked, lovely creature.

  Rose came by today. I was both surprised and pleased to see her dressed in feminine costume, with a pretty wig upon her head. If Mrs. Hudson noticed her resemblance to the rude Mr. Cooper of two days ago, she possibly assumed they were siblings, or even twins.

  I shut the door and showed Rose to a seat, while Holmes finally turned around from his violin playing and gazed at her. He was disarmed, and realised that he could no longer address her in masculine terms.

  "Good day, madam." He took a seat beside me. "What brings you back here so soon?"

  She smiled mischievously. "It's a little experiment, I suppose. I was always afraid of dressing like this during daylight hours, thinking that I would not be convincing enough and would end up punished. But since I did risk being Rose for Jefferson's sake that day, and since you told me yourself that I had a talent for disguise, I decided to try it out and see if anyone would discover me. I went to my newspaper's offices today, prepared to tell them that I was disguised on an undercover investigation if I must, and bear their laughing at me, but they didn't know me." She giggled. "Why, one of the fellows said he did not know that Robert had a sister, and tried to flirt with me!"

  "And how did you respond?"

  She shrugged. "Oh I was shy and said he'd better talk to my brother when he got to feeling better. Then I dropped off my articles that were due to my boss and left. Jefferson is so special to me still, I cannot think of someone else."

  "Of course." I patted her gloved hand.

  "I am not sure just what I shall do, Doctor. Maybe I will even decide to stop being Robert at all. I should like to be Rose all the time, not just at night. Of course, I know I shall lose a lot of masculine freedom to go about wherever I wish, yet it seems so small a price to pay to have what I have always wanted."

  "Always? It did not begin just with Hope?" Holmes asked.

  "No." She shook her head and blushed. "I suppose I gave you the wrong impression with my story the other day. I did frequent the molly houses at night, but they never quite fulfilled me. I had some friends there, and men who would desire me, yet not be surprised when we were in bed, but I did not want to just play at being a girl. I have always felt like Rose, even when I was forced to act as Robert to make my living."

  I was intrigued and asked her to tell us about it.

  "Well," she explained, "since my childhood I have preferred to think of myself as my family's only daughter, instead of one of its sons. My family stringently discouraged my notion, however, and made me miserable in my own skin. They wanted me always to dress and behave like my brothers, and I resisted for years, but… " She paused and frowned. "I would suffer taunts and abuses from the boys at school, who seemed to prove my family right, that I must be able to defend myself from them."

  "My dear Rose!" I pressed her hand again, remembering the brutality of my schooldays[24], where we would chase any delicate boy around with wickets. I regretted this behaviour, and wondered if the pain in Rose's eyes spoke of far worse torments than that.

  She continued softly, "So I hid myself as Robert and remained as lonely as I was confused. Finally one day I decided to run away from home and live independently, where at least I might be free to dress up anyway I liked in private. So I got my job at the newspaper, and in the course of my work and my wanderings through town, I learned about the secret places where I might go at night and be accepted—at least, if there were no police attempting a raid." She shrugged. "Then my dear Jefferson found me, and now—now you see me."

  "Hope did change your mind, then?" Holmes ventured, trying to comprehend her.

  Rose nodded and said that, since Jefferson had shown her such love and acceptance, she would rather stay Rose all the time, than continue in her strained double life. She simply had to plan how she would make her living as a single woman instead of as a man.

  I asked if we could be of assistance.

  She replied that she intended to speak to some of her friends at the molly houses tonight and ask them if the stories were true, that some persons like her could pass as women for all their life and be happy. Their advice would help her formulate some plan.

  Then Rose smiled and pressed back upon my hand. "I will let you know what happens, Doctor, and I thank you both so much for your support. Your not turning me in to the police shall not have been in vain, I assure you."

  She kissed us both on the cheek as she rose to leave, which made Holmes a bit uncomfortable, but he said good day to her, and I wished her luck.

  Holmes wiped the rouge off my cheek with his handkerchief, and I kissed it off of his.

  I asked Holmes yet again about his scrapbooks and he finally answered that they were his index books, in which he compiled entries on crime, his cases, and various persons of importance. As an example, he took down the book marked "M" on the outside, opened it to a particular page, and then handed it to me.

  I was startled to find an entry on myself! It read:

  Morris, James, alias of unknown visitor to Camford university, March 1876. Sodomite afraid of exposure. Posed as a student, infiltrating a chemistry laboratory of the Medical School. Came with express purpose to seduce an undergraduate; successful. Medical type, may already have Bachelor's degree and be practising. Appeared to be early to mid 20s. Soft brown hair. Moustached. Auburn eyes. Excellent kisser. 5'7". Medium, athletic build; rugby perhaps. Hands of a surgeon. Most talented. Violent temper when cornered. Spontaneous. Passionate. Possibly inexperienced, or only clumsy in dark, cramped closet. Was unable to check visually for birthmarks, but he seemed free of scars. Would know his scent again.

  I expressed my shock and warned Holmes that he ought to destroy such evidence of our affair. He responded that I should rightly destroy all my journals, then. I was reluctant, so he assured me that it would be all right so long as we took care to keep our writings private from others' eyes. Anyway, this "Morris" entry, he said, only implicated himself as being seduced some five years ago, an offence that might be overlooked by policemen eager for his help as a detective.

  "But, still—!" I protested.

  Holmes told me to look up "Watson, John H." and handed me the "W" book now.

  I obeyed and found that the entry under my actual name made no reference to the "Morris" episode, and spoke of me only as a doctor who had become his room-mate and assistant upon his recent case. The entry also mentioned my planned writings with a little annoyance, but said grudgingly that it might be of use, as a practical demonstration of the theories he had published in his "Book of Life" article.

  Holmes then remarked with a smile that the hour was growing late, so he returned both his books to his shelf and asked me which room I preferred tonight. I told him to bring his handcuffs and meet me in my room.

  THE END

  [1] St. Bartholomew's hospital, affiliated with the University of London. This chapter occurs in 1876 during the period that Watson is working—working, not studying as an undergraduate—at Bart's with Stamford.

  [2] That is, the residences of the university students. Porters are staff who are responsible for controlling the entry into each college, along with other duties.

  [3] Watson's doctoral thesis. In the British system, once you earn a Bachelor of Medicine degree, you can legally practice medicine, and can be called by the courtesy title of "Doctor" even though technically you are only a Mister. Watson, however, did not stop there, for he stated at the beginning of A Study in Scarlet that he took a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1878 from the University of London. To earn it, he
would have needed to do additional work and write a thesis to be approved by other Doctors. This was an unusual move for Watson to make, since most people only pursue the doctorate if they are going into research. Klinger's New Annotated Sherlock Holmes discusses Watson's medical degree in note 5 of STUD.

  [4] An old variant spelling of "connection."

  [5] The plural "millions" is used in imitation of Watson's use of the plural in "The Cardboard Box" story: "He loved to lie in the very centre of five millions of people."

  [6] For the purposes of this novel, their bedrooms are on the same floor, off a corridor from the sitting room. Conventional wisdom says that Watson's room is upstairs, and that Holmes's room is adjacent to the sitting room, with no corridor. However, the stories are ambiguous about the layout. Once Holmes's room is described as upstairs, another time there is a "waiting room" of some sort, and once in "The Speckled Band" Holmes somehow manages to go directly from his room to Watson's while bypassing the sitting room where the client awaits. That is why I take my liberties here.

  [7] This case holds Holmes's hypodermic syringe. Holmes's cocaine use is not at all illegal, nor is it even medically frowned upon yet, but he does not want to reveal such private things.

  [8] Watson's devoted orderly, mentioned in the first chapter of A Study in Scarlet. Murray bravely rescues Watson when he is struck by the Jezail bullet. It is assumed that Watson and Murray grew close during the two years before the Battle of Maiwand.

  [9] Watson's alcoholic brother, mentioned in the first chapter of The Sign of Four, when Watson inherits his watch and Holmes makes deductions from it.

  [10] Psychiatrists used to be called alienists, because mentally ill people were supposed to be "alienated" from their right minds.

  [11] Watson was wounded at Maiwand on July 27, 1880, fell ill for some months, then was shipped back to England on the Orontes in October. Arriving a month later, he lodged in a hotel for a while, then met Holmes sometime in early 1881.

  [12] Molly houses are clandestine places, including taverns and private homes, where sodomites gathered to socialize and hookup.

  [13] This is Holmes's highly romantic speech: "[Darwin] claims that the power of producing and appreciating [music] existed among the human race long before the power of speech. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood."

  [14] We have no proof that Watson ever owned a dog, but this is my way of cheating and having "bull pup" mean both Watson's temper and his dog.

  [15] It becomes evident later that Holmes must have gone to see the Baker Street Irregulars, to tell them to begin their search for Square-toes. Either that, or he saw them while getting the facsimile ring before dinner, but it makes more sense that Holmes saw the Irregulars after his failure to track Mrs. Sawyer.

  [16] This quotation from Nicholas Boileau-Despreaux's L'Art Poetique means, "A fool can always find a bigger fool to admire him."

  [17] A common antiseptic for wounds in olden days. It is a tincture of iodine and a sodium or potassium iodide. Holmes also mentions iodoform in "A Scandal in Bohemia," saying that Watson smells of it, and has surely returned to medical practice.

  [18] In the original text, Hope says that he himself saw the advertisement, but as I have implied earlier, this does not entirely make sense. He and his ally already know of 221B Baker Street, so why would Hope answer a summons to that same address? Moreover, why would Holmes believe that Hope would fall for this trap, since Holmes has just praised both Hope and his ally as clever men?

  [19] The Mormon part of A Study in Scarlet is derivative of other sensational tales about Mormons, such as Robert Louis Stevenson's "Story of the Destroying Angel." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle eventually did write a play version, called "Angels of Darkness." However, it messes up the entire chronology of STUD, making Watson the hero who marries Lucy Ferrier, despite the fact that the Mormon history was set twenty years ago, when Watson was just a boy, and despite the fact that Lucy being alive and happy would give Jefferson Hope no motive for revenge upon Drebber and Stangerson.

  [20] As I noted in Chapter 1, Watson should have been able to practice medicine as soon as he earned his Bachelor's, and it is unusual for someone to work for the higher Doctor's degree unless one's intention is to do pure research. Watson always seemed inclined to actively practice medicine, whether in the army or in civilian life, so the only reason I can think of for him to earn the extra degree would be his anxiety about having to go get a practice and get married, as his family expected of him.

  [21] A Study in Scarlet left the identity of the accomplice a mystery, but here I explore that loose end. This is not the only possible explanation of who Hope's friend might have been; it could have been a professional actor, a distant and younger relative, or whatever. I have created the Cooper character to fit in with the family mentioned in the Mormon section of STUD.

  [22] Because of Holmes's interruptions, Rose is forced to tell her story in a condensed way, creating a discrepancy. Jefferson Hope saw a doctor a week ago, as he confessed, but he did not immediately tell her the results of his consultation. Rose insisted on it, and they argued about whether she should help him kill Drebber and Stangerson. As she said, they slept together, then decided to delay implementing their trap, because Rose worried that Jefferson's heart might need time to recover from their strenuous activities. They continued to share the bed, but avoided intimacies, during that week.

  [23] Many European countries adopted laws based on the Code Napoleon in France in 1804. Like the earlier Code Penal of 1791, the Napoleonic Code decriminalized sex between men by not mentioning them. However, these laws didn't necessarily mean that homosexuality was truly accepted or tolerated. Men could still be prosecuted for public indecency, and the gay clubs would often be harassed by police raids. Of course, I don't mean Rose to be gay, but actually a straight woman born into the wrong body. It's just that Rose herself is confused about the issue at first, and she could easily get indiscriminately lumped with transvestites or with homosexuals of whatever country she's in.

  [24] In the "Naval Treaty" story, we learn that Watson used to go to school with Percy Phelps, who was a little nerd, and a nephew to a lord. Watson speaks of chasing Percy around and hitting him on the shins with a wicket. The corporal discipline from the school masters was probably severe, too, and "worse torments" could include sexual abuses that occurred with varying frequency, depending upon the particular school.

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