by David Ruffle
While he was busy arranging his escape to the Sussex downs there were still a few cases which came our way although he was becoming more and more selective in his selection of which problems to look into. And of course, I was busy with arrangements of my own with an impending marriage to look forward to and the proposed acquisition of a practice in Queen Anne Street.
It seemed that the end of our dwelling and sleuthing together would dovetail nicely, but that wasn’t the case. It was directly after the ‘Three Garridebs’ case that Beatrice and I were married. This took place in Lyme Regis on an early summer’s day where the fates had conspired to grant us the most beautiful of days on which to be wed. Holmes travelled down with me and was the most attentive of wedding attendants with barely any muttering under his breath regarding the futility of romance. It was during the ‘Three Garridebs’ investigation that I truly saw Holmes’s heart. I recorded it such:
In an instant he had whisked out a revolver from his breast and had fired two shots. I felt a sudden hot sear as if a red-hot iron had been pressed to my thigh. There was a crash as Holmes’s pistol came down on the man’s head. I had a vision of him sprawling upon the floor with blood running down his face while Holmes rummaged him for weapons. Then my friend’s wiry arms were round me, and he was leading me to a chair. “You’re not hurt, Watson? For God’s sake, say that you are not hurt!” It was worth a wound - it was worth many wounds - to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation. “It’s nothing, Holmes. It’s a mere scratch.” He had ripped up my trousers with his pocketknife. “You are right,” he cried with an immense sigh of relief. “It is quite superficial.” His face set like flint as he glared at our prisoner, who was sitting up with a dazed face. “By the Lord, it is as well for you. If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive.”
I questioned Holmes as to this statement of intent, doubting that in the cold light of day and reason that he would follow it through or even be capable of following it through. He assured me that it was exactly what would have happened I had not survived, ‘he had forfeited his life, Watson and I would have had no compunction regarding taking it.’
Prior to my nuptials, I felt duty bound to send yet another invitation to Lily. I realised of course that the journey from Carlisle to the Dorset coast would be out of the question for her, but nevertheless I felt compelled from a familial necessity. It was now fifteen years since I had last seen her and the children. The children were no longer children now, Charlotte being nineteen and James seventeen. There had been fitful correspondence between us and as each volume of stories was published I made sure to send my niece and nephew handsomely bound copies for which I received due acknowledgement. In the intervening years, Lily had forsaken teaching for nursing, the shift patterns being better for bringing the children up. Whether she had entered into another romance I did not know. Being a beautiful woman, I am sure there would have been no lack of suitors, particularly as Charlotte and James became more independent.
Both had finished their schooling, Charlotte electing to follow her mother into nursing and James favouring a career in the army. Shades of their uncle! Being my only kith and kin, I should have made the time to travel north to visit them. I prevaricated and stalled; the reality was that I had not formulated a way to approach Lily again after our last parting. Weakness on my part I know, but there it was.
God, how to explain it? Without seeing her, I could still, just about anyway, think of her as my Maid Marian of old and the young woman who bade me farewell as I took myself off to Australia. If I saw her, the remembrance of my last visit would cloud my vision of her, no longer Maid Marian, but my brother’s killer. Even so, I resolved to take the trip to Carlisle to see her and introduce Beatrice as were planning a trip to Scotland. Perhaps that way, I could lay that particular demon to rest.
1903 began for Holmes with a commission from the Sultan of Turkey, with consequences of the direst kind for the whole of Europe if he should fail. He did not confide in me and supply the details or the ramifications of the case, but after two months work he declared the matter over and the result was exactly the one that the Sultan had sought. I was almost entirely caught up with my Marylebone [37]practice in which Beatrice was the perfect helpmate. I had not thought to experience such domestic bliss again in my lifetime, once Mary had passed I was convinced I would never love again. The fact I could and did was a constant source of amazement to me. I was fortunate enough to know the love of two good women and my life was immeasurably enriched by the experience. I can heartily recommend it!
By the end of the year, Holmes had finally put his affairs in order and decamped to the Sussex downs. Once Mrs. Hudson had completed the sale of dear old 221b and put her own affairs in order, she followed. After Holmes had viewed many properties, he settled on a villa just inland with glorious views over the channel.[38] Prior to his departure we spent a long evening together in that sitting-room which had seen the start of so many adventures. We reminisced, we laughed, we re-visited both solved cases and unsolved cases; we spoke of sadness we had both suffered, of ambition, of life and everything under the sun. It was quite like old times. Twenty-two years on, our partnership was finally dissolved. Or so I thought.
32 A relative of Holmes purchased the practice, the money to do so evidently coming from Holmes.
33 An unchronicled case involving the sudden death of Cardinal Tosca.
34 Watson’s papers came to light and the account was published in 2009 as ‘Sherlock Holmes and the Lyme Regis Horror’.
35 From Watson’s papers it can be learned that this adversary was Stapleton of Hound of the Baskerville fame and this new affair ended in Stapleton’s death (finally!) on Dartmoor.
36 The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot.
37 The site of Watson’s Queen Anne Street practice is now occupied by the Queen Anne Street Medical Centre.
38 In the village of Fulworth, East Sussex.
Cylinder 10
I saw little of Holmes from that time forward although I made sporadic visits to Sussex together with Beatrice. I fully expected him to return to his profession rather than stagnate amongst his bees and bucolic views which surely would pale before long. I was mistaken.
Sherlock Holmes was perfectly at home there on the downs as though it had always been his life. He rarely came to town and even though he had requests for help from Scotland Yard, their entreaties came to nothing. Even a direct call for assistance from the prime minister and the cabinet came to nothing. The man who had done so much sterling work in Scarborough just the year before, unmasking a spy at the heart of government was not the same man; his solitude was now sacrosanct to him. I was certainly not contemplating retirement, being as busy as I had ever been.
Without the diversions that life with Holmes meant, I was throwing myself into my medical career with new vigour. New advances in diagnosis and treatments were coming thick and fast and just keeping abreast of those was a full-time occupation in itself. I also had the great fortune to become an honorary grandfather when Nathaniel, Beatrice’s son, and his wife, Elizabeth became parents. Rose grew to be a fine young lady who had made her career on the stage and more recently in the cinema where she had certainly made a name for herself. I always attend her opening nights and for her part, she is always pleased to see me. She visits me often, the one remaining link with my life outside of these walls, outside of my memories.
Once again, I race on a little, I must keep ordered. Even in those early years of the century there were storm clouds gathering in Europe, the political alliances designed to keep the peace were constantly
being pulled and twisted one way or another. Diplomacy could only go so far in keeping warring factions at bay, but at the time no one really thought that a war would become a reality. Surely, no monarch or government would allow that to come about, after all most of the ruling heads of Europe were related to one another.
The Scottish trip that Beatrice and I had discussed if not actually planned eventually took place in 1906. It was to be a welcome break for us, after years of unrelenting hard work. I wrote a letter to Lily informing her that we would break our journey in Carlisle and pay her a visit. To my shame, I had not told Beatrice the full story of Lily and Henry other than the fact they were man and wife and Henry had met with an unfortunate accident. Once I had revealed the truth then she was most understanding as I knew she would be. Before I had a reply from Lily, not that I was really sure whether I would get one, my nephew turned up on our doorstep. This was the first time I had clapped eyes on him since he was two years old. Now he was a strapping young man of twenty-six, confident and outgoing and so much like his father that I involuntarily winced when he stood before me in my study. One of the reasons that he was here, the chief reason really was to know more about his father. What kind of man was he? What kind of father? What kind of husband?
I felt it my duty to protect him from the excesses of his father without being too sure of what Lily had told him. Oh, I knew of course that she would not have told James of the actual circumstances of his father’s death. She may have even presented a sanitised version of Henry’s life. He wasn’t exactly forthcoming, so I did what I could for him. I explained that his father and I had not always seen eye to eye, even from an early age. However, I took great care not to blacken Henry’s character too much, stressing that he had evidently loved Lily and his two children. I had no idea whether that was strictly true, but I have never been averse to bending the truth here and there, in spite of Holmes accusing me of not being able to dissemble. James seemed satisfied with my portrayal of his father and if I was expecting any awkward questions, I was relieved to have none to answer.
He was also eager to learn of my military adventures as he had seen action himself during the Second Boer War. He was inordinately proud of his actions during this conflict and was mentioned in dispatches for his bravery under fire at Pieter’s Hill[39] and also at Bridle Drift[40]. It was clear to me that the military was his life and he was taking every opportunity to further his career with promotion coming quickly through the ranks.
My own experience of over twenty-five years before could still give me the odd sleepless night. The nightmares, once so prominent, had dwindled, but still had the power to put me squarely back in the thick of the battle. Even now, the horror of that day can come back to haunt me. Charlotte, he told me, was now a staff sister in the Manchester Hospital for Skin Diseases, a brand-new hospital[41] in the Salford area of the city. She was determined to be the most efficient nurse there, evidently being as single-minded as her brother, not a trait they inherited from my brother in any shape or form. Both of them remained single although James spoke in glowing terms of a young lady named Constance who hailed from Penrith, but he would not be drawn further.
As unexpected visits go, not that they were common in my life, it was a great joy to be reunited with my nephew and we vowed to keep in touch. He gave me an address of the nurse’s quarters in Quay Street for Charlotte and I wrote to her and extended an open invitation to her to come and visit when she had a break from her duties. In fact, it was to be nine years before I saw Charlotte, well, before I met both of them again and in such terrible circumstances. Once more, I race on ahead. I obtained from James, a new address in Carlisle for Lily, a small cottage which adjoined the hospital where she worked as a matron. I therefore wrote another letter advising her of our impending trip to Scotland and our desire to call on her. I received in return a brief note saying that should she happen to be at home on the date I had suggested than we would be most welcome to call.
Well, we broke our northward journey in Carlisle on the appointed day and made our way to Lily’s cottage. Our knocks met with no answer. We called at the hospital, expecting to find she had been called in to work, but we were informed that she had taken the day off, citing family business. We tried the cottage once more, a futile act I knew as I could see that she had decided against seeing us. To be honest, I was not sure what I would have to say to her after all this time so perhaps it was a blessing in disguise that she had made the plans she had. I scribbled a note and put through her door, expressing the disappointment that I should have felt at her absence. Our Grand Tour of Scotland came to an end six weeks later and once more we threw ourselves back into work.
My routine was thus: five days a week I spent in my consulting office, two evenings, if required, in home visits and two evenings a week filing and continuing to write up some of Holmes’s cases despite various injunctions he tried to place upon me. Holmes may have been physically in Sussex, but his presence in my life was constant. I received a stream of missives from the man which alternated between downright ordering me not to write of his career ever again to suggesting some adventures that he thought would suit my pen. Even now, I have the notes of over one hundred cases which, although entirely suitable for publication, will now never see the light of day. I do not have the strength left to see such projects through. It’s possible of course that in the future someone may take up the mantle of Holmes’s biographer and bring these tales to the public.
Equally so, it may be that both Holmes and I will be largely forgotten in the future. Time will tell, time that I have so little of. By 1910 I was entertaining thoughts of retirement myself, the practice was worth a pretty penny and I was fortunate enough to be the recipient of royalties on a regular basis. Beatrice was very supportive of this notion of mine and we started to work towards that goal. 1914 was the mooted year this would come about and the idea was to retire to Dorset and naturally to Lyme Regis.
Outside of our domesticity however there were dark clouds enveloping Europe. There was talk of war, but then there was always talk of war, but this time the voices were nagging and insistent. The European powers, despite the treaties which bound so many of them together, were making threatening noises and it was feared that none of these treaties would go very far in preventing war. No matter that most of the ruling heads were related, that appeared to make little difference as the tension mounted. Britain objected to the moves Germany was making to increase its army and found Germany’s attempt to colonise parts of Africa particularly objectionable. This of course in spite of the British Empire accounting for a quarter of the world.
Allied to this growing militarism was an intense nationalism in most of the Great powers. Weltpolitik or the desire for world power status was very popular in Germany. The French desire for revenge over Alsace and Lorraine was very strong. In Britain Imperialism and support for the Empire was very evident. The likelihood of war increased with every passing day. That fateful day in Sarajevo[42] was the trigger that realised everyone’s fears. War was upon us.
Shortly before war had been declared, I had accepted a handsome offer for the Queen Anne Street practice. This time, the money had not arrived after a circuitous route from Holmes! The plan, long spoken about, was as I may have mentioned, to retire to the Dorset coast, but the outbreak of hostilities altered those plans. I had no desire at all to once more enter the theatre of war, but I felt I had a duty to King and country to make myself available.
I must backtrack a little here for as some of you will know, 1914 was the year when I was once more involved in a case with Holmes if only in the sense I was in at the kill. Holmes, at that time had almost passed beyond my ken. I had scarcely seen the man for over two years. Out of the blue I received a wire asking me to meet him at Harwich[43] with a car. ‘A car, my dear?’ I exclaimed to Beatrice. ‘Where the deuce does he expect me to obtain a car? And how on earth do I ensure it reaches that port?’
> Beatrice smiled sweetly at me, ‘I rather think, John, that he is expecting you to drive it.’ Up to that point I had remained superbly uninterested in motor vehicles. I did not wish to drive one or own one. Not that I was a Luddite[44] on the quiet. I knew motor-cars had a future, indeed they were the future, but just not my future... or present. As ever, when bidden by Holmes, I applied myself to the task in hand.
I paid over the odds I feel for a Ford Model T which I was assured by the salesman, was the easiest car to drive. Holmes had informed me that any expenses involved would be reimbursed by a grateful government so at least my purse was safe even it my nerves were about to be shredded by my own somewhat erratic driving skills. I had only been to Harwich three times previously and it is fair to say that it had never figured on my list of the top one hundred English towns to visit. Not that I had ever formulated such a list.
It is equally fair to say that never had I felt such a warmth and affection for the town as I did that late afternoon when I was proud to say I had made it in one piece. Did the experience of travelling north on the A12 bring about a reconciliation between myself and the motor-car? No, after that episode I never went near another blessed car.
It was remarkable to see how little Holmes had changed since I had last seen him. Beatrice was convinced he lived on a diet of Royal jelly and fully expected him to live until he was one hundred and fifty! The only change I could see was Holmes’s face was now adorned with a small goatee which did nothing for him whatsoever. I gathered it was some manner of disguise which he confirmed for me as he related what manner of work he had been undertaking for the last two years at the express request of the government. A passing thought at the time was that surely a government department could have supplied a car and driver without me having to risk life and limb, but there was a pleasing symmetry that if this promised to be Holmes’s last case then it was an act of sentiment and friendship that had caused him to wire me.
