Seated moodily in front of the fire in dressing gown and slippers, with one of his commonplace books in his lap and his armchair surrounded by the debris of the morning’s clipped and discarded newspapers, Holmes glanced up with a wan, faintly mocking smile of greeting as Watson entered. Wordlessly, he motioned him to the teapot sitting still warm on the dining table.
Watson helped himself to a cup and looked around him. Few changes had been made to the rooms they had shared for so long prior to Watson’s marriage some years earlier.110 All seemed much the same. The old furnishings, the old familiar objects, all appeared to be in their accustomed places. The sitting room was as snug and as warm and as cluttered as it ever was, its homey Bohemian atmosphere permeated with the signal aroma of strong tobacco and pungent chemicals, an ineradicable condition by now, one would think, the not wholly unpleasant odor having long since impregnated the draperies and upholstery and probably even the very plaster of the walls themselves.
There was a permanence to the place and an air of serenity which Watson found both comforting and reassuring. Entering it was like donning a favorite old tweed jacket which, though sagging and worn and hopelessly out of fashion, one would never consider discarding or even altering. It had, after all, taken so long to get it that way.
He sighed. Time, from all outward appearances, seemed to have stood still within these rooms. They had become a fixed point in an otherwise changing world. The twentieth century would soon be upon them, but here, at 221B Baker Street, one was beset by the idea, the irrational conviction, that somehow it would always remain the 1880s.
Holmes waved Watson to his old chair in his usual manner — that air of casual disinterest he adopted when it suited him — but the delighted glimmer in his eye was unmistakable and his spirits perked up markedly at the sight of his friend. “Somehow I knew I would be suffering the pleasure of your company before the day was out,” he drawled, simultaneously subjecting Watson to a brief but intensive scrutiny. “And I see that I must congratulate you on your burgeoning medical practice. Business has picked up prettily since last I saw you, I perceive.”
Watson shot Holmes a startled, quizzical look, causing him to chuckle.
“Tut, tut. It is obvious,” he said, holding up his hand to forestall the question he knew was to follow. “What else am I to think when I spot an almost depleted pad of prescription blanks peering out of your pocket and the day not half gone? — and peering out of the pocket of a handsome new frock coat, I might add. From Shingleton’s in New Bond Street, isn’t it? Ah, yes, I thought so. Quite becoming.”
The expression of pained awareness that came over Watson’s face brought another chuckle from Holmes. “Yes, I know, I know,” he intoned. “‘It is so deucedly simple once explained.’” He gazed upon his friend in a rare display of open affection. “Dear old Watson, you never disappoint me.”
Within no time at all the two of them, eminently comfortable in each other’s company, were deep in conversation — that familiar, easy communion of old that only intimate friends of long standing can ever know — and once having attended to the mundane essentials of their workaday lives, exchanging mutual assurances as to each other’s health and general well-being, their talk inevitably turned to the major news item of the day, and, of course, to those related matters that had so occupied their energies seven years earlier, thoughts of which had unconsciously, though inexorably, drawn Watson back to Baker Street.
It had been some little while since the topic had last come under discussion between them, as if there had been a tacit understanding that it was best left alone, best not even thought about. Watson could not help but recall that the previous occasion had been under remarkably similar circumstances, the death of another highly prominent figure. How vividly he remembered that day, one of those rare days in every lifetime that are so unforgettable: How he drifted awake to the sound of church bells mournfully tolling and the urgent cries of newsboys in the street. The jolt of sudden awareness, the sharp stab of sudden, unknowing fear.
It, too, was a day in January, almost exactly three years before. Even now he could clearly visualize the black-bordered front page of The Times, rushed upstairs to him on that cold blustery morning, bearing the news: The death, from pneumonia brought on by influenza, of His Royal Highness, Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward of Wales, Duke of Clarence and Avondale and Heir Presumptive to the throne of England. Prince Eddy was dead. It was indeed a day forever fixed in Watson’s memory.111
All of Britain had been plunged into mourning, for the slender, doe-eyed young prince, who had celebrated his twenty-eighth birthday less than a week earlier and whose engagement to be married had only recently been announced, was a highly popular figure.112 People in the streets were genuinely grieved by his untimely death. Was he not, after all, the very embodiment of what a royal heir should be? — dignified, wholesome, regal, and dashing in his hussar’s uniform, in every way an ornament to the British nation: A fitting symbol to rally round in times of crisis, a wellspring of pride and majesty in times of tranquility. What a welcome change from the wearisome image of his royal grandmother in her perennial widow’s weeds, and his overstuffed, self-indulgent father with his prodigious appetites and unseemly aging-playboy ways. How shocked the nation was by his passing, how deeply, truly saddened.
Watson shook his head at the memory of it. For him, the death of Prince Eddy held a different meaning, of course. Never would he be able to hear the name spoken, never would he be able to visualize that insipid face, those languid, vacant eyes, without experiencing a chill of perfect, unreasoning horror.
He shivered slightly, and then sighed. Numerous pages had turned since that grim, cold day spent in the East End following the murder of Mary Jane Kelly, and much had happened in the intervening six years. He and Holmes had shared so many adventures and had such a multitude of memories to look back upon that he found it daunting just thinking about it.
Watson stole a glance at his friend, sprawled listlessly across from him in his armchair, his dressing gown draped loosely about him, his gray eyes bleak, his manner once again distant and withdrawn.
Of the countless cases in which he and Holmes had been involved over the years they had known each other, many had been difficult and demanding, many profoundly complex, but none — none — had ever been so challenging, so bewildering, so frustrating, and so frightening as the Whitechapel affair. And none had ever been so upsetting to Holmes personally.
Holmes chanced to look up at that instant and smiled softly as their eyes met. “I must confess to you that it was the most unpleasant, most burdensome business I have ever been involved in,” he said as if reading Watson’s very thoughts. He nodded to himself. “Burdensome and painful. Most terribly painful, as you surely realize.”
Watson nodded also.
Holmes’s thin lips compressed. “It must never get out, you know. Any of it. Even a simple mention of my involvement in any aspect of the case would be unwise. So far my name has been kept out of it, and it is best that it remain so. Should I, or you, for that matter, be in some way connected to the business — even at this late date — it might cause some inquisitive journalist to start sniffing about, digging up bones best left undisturbed. Aside from the national scandal it could precipitate, we have our own reputations — indeed, our own tender necks — to worry about, remember.”
Watson, frowning, nodded again. “Of course I realize that. Yet...”
Holmes raised a finger and smiled knowingly. “Yet you cannot help but wish the story could somehow be told.”
“That’s it, of course. It is terribly frustrating to find oneself sitting atop of what is surely the most compelling mystery of the age and not be able to tell it. I know that’s out of the question completely, given the harm disclosure would cause. Still, it is only natural that I regret being unable to reveal the facts of the matter. It would go down as your most famous case if it ever saw the light of day.”
Holmes’s jaw tight
ened and his eyes became hard. “It would go down as my most infamous debacle, you mean! And, apart from everything else, would hold me up to personal ridicule, though that hardly matters.”
Watson raised his eyebrows. “Ridicule? You? Nonsense.”
Startling Watson, Holmes sprang to his feet and began to pace the room, highly agitated. “It would be nothing less than I deserve, after all. The whole affair was shameful — absolutely shameful! Not least of all my participation in it!”
Watson looked at him in surprise. “Shameful to Scotland Yard without doubt — and to the Home Office, too, for that matter — but why to you? Surely you have nothing to condemn yourself for.”
Holmes’s eyes flashed. “For God’s sake, Watson! I assisted in a conspiracy to secretly and unlawfully confine an heir to the throne of the realm! I concealed evidence in a murder! I committed several violations of the Criminal Acts, any one of which would see me in the dock at the Old Bailey and earn me a prolonged holiday at Her Majesty’s expense. And you don’t even know the worst of it!” He threw up his hands. “Good Lord, you don’t even know the half of it! Which is probably just as well, for whilst it is a weight I would willingly unload from my conscience, it is not knowledge I should wish anyone else to be burdened with. Certainly not you!”
He took another swift turn around the room, the skirts of his dressing gown billowing about his legs as he paced, chin on chest, hands clasped tightly behind him. Watson looked on in confusion and concern.
“The whole matter was mishandled from the start!” Holmes cried, pivoting around. “And I am to blame! I never should have permitted myself to become involved in the filthy business to begin with! Never! Mycroft and his infernal palace intrigues! And — and — I should have caught that fiend,” he said, banging fist into palm. “I should have gotten him!”
Watson’s expression turned to one of astonishment. “Holmes, whatever are you talking about? You did catch him!” He lowered his voice to what amounted to a conspiratorial whisper: “It was the prince!”
Holmes shot him a scornful look. “The prince? You think so?”
Watson was rendered almost speechless. “But... whatever do you mean? What is it you are saying?”
Holmes, a man who rarely revealed his emotions, had become so distraught he could respond only with a savage gesture and a noise of exasperation. Furiously, he made another circuit of the room while Watson sat there in bewilderment. Bewilderment and considerable trepidation, for in all the years he had known Holmes, he had never seen him in such a state.
It took several minutes before the detective was able to calm himself sufficiently to return to his chair, and another moment or two for him to put his thoughts in order. He then undertook to explain:
“The prince had nothing to do with the murders, Watson — nothing whatsoever. The business involving Prince Eddy was altogether separate and apart from the murders. Something else entirely. He had to be attended to because he could no longer be trusted on his own. He was no longer a responsible individual. The weakness of intellect which he was born with, coupled with the syphilis that was attacking his brain, his increasingly bizarre behavior, embarrassing to say the least, his unnatural sexual proclivities, and the danger of it all being publicly revealed: These were the reasons why he had to be, er... sequestered, as he was. Clearly, in time, had no measures been taken, his true character would have become common knowledge. He would have been revealed for what he was and a scandal of catastrophic proportions would have ensued. All of this was made abundantly obvious when he was caught up in that notorious police raid on the male brothel in Cleveland Street.”113
Watson’s eyes went wide. “He was involved in that?”
“Naturally, it was all hushed up. But it was a close thing. It almost got out that he was implicated. One of the more scatological scandal sheets somehow got hold of it, and only a good deal of scurrying about and the personal intervention of Lord Salisbury prevented him from being named. The fine hand of Mycroft could also be detected there, of course. Had it been disclosed, given the climate of the times, the monarchy would have undoubtedly suffered a telling blow. It was clear now — to all concerned — that he was not fit to rule and that steps had to be taken to remove him from the succession.”
“Good Lord!”
“And of course there was the other factor, one that was of even more immediate concern: He could not be permitted to father a child, could not be permitted to breed.”
Watson’s eyes went even wider.
Holmes sighed deeply. Dredging up these memories was clearly painful to him. “The prince, you will recall, had just recently become engaged to be married, an engagement arranged by his mother, the Princess of Wales, with the concurrence and connivance of the Queen. Both of them felt marriage would do him good — a misconception all mothers have in common, it would seem. Neither of them was aware of his incurable disease or of his deviant behavior, of course, that being kept from them to spare their sensibilities.”
Holmes’s brows came together. He fiddled nervously with his pipe. “Well, it was quickly decided by... by the powers that be that this marriage had to be prevented at all cost. It was feared in certain quarters that any offspring he would sire would be born not only with his weakness of brain, but with the vile infection he now carried in his blood. Consider the ramifications, Watson! The English royal line is already plagued by hemophilia, as is well known, and there is the fear that through intermarriage that affliction could be spread to other reigning families of Europe, particularly those of Imperial Russia and Germany, which are both tied to our royal family by marriage. To permit a new indisposition to be introduced into the royal bloodline — and one as virulent as a venereal disease — well, it could mean an end to monarchies everywhere, including that of England, of course. Especially that of England.”
His tone became biting: “Prince Eddy was put away for these reasons and these reasons alone, because it was expedient to do so. Because the future of England’s throne depended upon it. Because our entire social structure was in jeopardy. Because if the monarchy was at risk, our ruling class was at risk, along with all of its titles and perquisites and pretensions and wealth. In other words — in other noble words — it was all for the good of England and the Empire.” Holmes’s eyes hardened. “So they tell me.”
Watson was clearly taken aback. “And all this time I thought...”
Holmes arched an eyebrow. “That an heir to the throne was guilty of... violent murder?”
Watson nodded mutely.
Holmes sniffed. “Surely it must have occurred to you that that poor, simple-minded creature was not up to the task.”
“Well, of course it had,” he said hurriedly. “Still...” His voice trailed off.
Holmes threw him a look of wry amusement.
Watson rubbed his jaw to cover his confusion. “But however was it managed? I mean, he was constantly in the public eye, attending official functions and cutting ribbons and so forth — almost right up to the time of his death!”
“Just so.”
“He was in custody all that time?”
“Most of it.”
“How could it be? This is quite impossible, Holmes.”
“Unlikely, yes, but not impossible.”
Watson was stunned. Clearly he found it all too difficult to absorb. “But he was seen in public. He was in the newspapers constantly!”
Holmes shrugged. “It was reported he was seen in public. That part of it was not all that difficult to arrange.”
“Not difficult!” Watson looked at him open-mouthed.
“Surprisingly simple, actually. At first, all that was required was to keep a close watch on him, round the clock — to promenade him about like a lapdog on a tether. A small coterie of hand-picked royal equerries saw to that. But as his condition deteriorated, as his mental state became more erratic and his appearance more sickly, he had to be confined. It then became a matter of informing the public that he was where he was
n’t. A schedule of activities was put out by the Palace every day as usual, and everything was made to look as normal as possible. In retrospect, it succeeded quite well, I must say.”
“Do you mean to tell me that it was all a tissue of lies?”
Holmes smiled humorlessly. “What I mean to tell you is that brother Mycroft has a rich and creative imagination when it comes to the finer points of dissembling.”
“Mycroft arranged it?”
“None other.”
“It was all his doing?”
“Waaal... not quite all.”
“But The Times, The Daily Mail, The Telegraph! They all carried accounts of the prince’s activities. Almost daily!”
“Just so.”
“Mycroft arranged that too?”
“Mycroft, among his other talents, is most adroit at conveying artful prevarications to the press when he finds it... convenient for his purposes. In the national interest, so to speak.”
Watson gaped at him.
“The papers can be quite gullible, you know,” Holmes continued. “They are well accustomed to printing what the Palace tells them, and without question. No journalist is ever permitted to get too close, after all, so it is either print what they are given, or nothing.”
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Whitechapel Horrors Page 38
