“Whatever’s the matter, lad?” she whispered
And at that point, little Tommy Dawkins began to scream.
18
DOYLE SET SAIL FOR SOUTH AFRICA on the Oriental surrounded by flowers. Jean Leckie, who did not wish to see him off at the Port of Tilbury, had filled his cabin with roses, hibiscus, and lilies, so that Doyle and his valet, sitting on their bunks and besieged by that riot of color, undertook the voyage like a couple of lovebirds in a floating greenhouse. If Doyle had been given the choice, he would have preferred to see Jean in person, but she had made it very clear she did not wish to be part of the joyous crowd that would see off the ship, as if the man who every year on the fifteenth of March sent her an edelweiss, that flower whose whiteness rivaled that of snow, were going on a picnic and not to a war from which he might return in a box after receiving a Boer bullet in his stomach. Fortunately, Doyle would return six months later on his own two feet, if enveloped in quite a different odor than on the outward journey. The long weeks he had spent as a doctor in his friend’s hospital, sewing up the guts of dying soldiers and amputating their limbs, including those of Jim Dawkins, who would never ride his bicycle again, had impregnated him with the indelible perfume of death—a death devoid of heroism or glamour, foul and dirty, covered in flies and noxious odors, a death that belonged more to the Middle Ages than to the new century dawning.
But as he climbed the stairs at Undershaw, all of that seemed like a dream. He had scarcely been home a week, and already the peaceful idyll had begun to make him doubt he had ever been in the war in Africa—that was, until he visited the bathroom, for his guts had still not recovered from the bouts of dysentery he had suffered. He paused in front of the door to the room with the best views in the house. Stanley Ball, the architect with whom he had once practiced telepathy, had built it on the three and a half acres of land Doyle had purchased in Hindhead, which was referred to as Little Switzerland because of its clean air and spectacular hills. However, Ball hadn’t needed to rack his brains to get some idea of what he wanted, as Doyle had made a sketch for him on a piece of paper. He had a very clear idea of how he wanted Undershaw to be: an imposing mansion worthy of an author of his stature, but also a cozy family home, practical for an invalid.
After considering whether to knock or not, Doyle decided to open the door without a sound. Lately, his wife would have a snooze when she went upstairs to read, and that morning was no exception: Louise, whom Doyle had affectionately nicknamed Touie back in the far-off days when they first knew each other in Portsmouth, was reclining in an armchair, her head tilted to one side, her eyes closed. She had been proving Sir Richard Douglas Powell, one of the country’s leading TB specialists, wrong for many years now, so it was no wonder she felt exhausted. From their trip to Switzerland, Doyle had brought back the idea of how to finish off Holmes, whereas Touie had brought back in her lungs Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The doctors had given her no more than three months to live, and yet eight years had passed since that unfavorable prognosis and Touie was still alive, thanks undoubtedly to the ministrations of Doyle, who no sooner did he receive the news than he whisked her away on a therapeutic pilgrimage to Davos, Caux, and Cairo, and finally he built the house in Hindhead with all the comforts an invalid such as she could possibly need. However, although his ministrations appeared to have kept the gentle Touie’s condition stable, everyone knew that it was only a matter of time before Death, which Doyle had so long kept at bay, finally took his wife, without his being able to prevent it.
However, as if Touie’s tragic lot were not enough, in a flourish of inventiveness, fate had arranged matters so that Doyle would wish for her demise to come as soon as possible. And to that end, three years after the doctors had declared his wife terminally ill, it had placed in his path Jean Leckie, whom Doyle would not hesitate to describe as the woman of his life from their very first conversation, and whom you, dear readers, had the pleasure of meeting during the excursion to Dartmoor. Thus Doyle had been forced to live on the horns of a painful dilemma: on the one hand he longed for Touie to die so that he could express his love for Jean; on the other he strove more than ever to take care of his wife lest his feelings of guilt lead him to view any slackness in his ministrations as a desire to hasten her death. In the meantime, the love professed by Doyle and Jean, who were incapable of any shameful act that might stain Touie’s honor, had earned them the respect of their closest friends and even their respective families. The couple maintained a friendship as platonic as it was tragic, repressing their burning passion for each other, and behaving as discreetly as possible so as not to threaten Touie’s blissful ignorance. They had no choice but to wait, with a mixture of yearning and sorrow, for the sick woman to lose her life so that her husband could recover his.
The Imitation of Christ, the book Touie read over and over again, lay propped open on the floor, like a miniature sloping roof. Doyle placed it on the table next to the armchair and contemplated his wife as she slept. With her curls falling over the pillow and her slow breathing, Touie resembled a trusting child in repose. She knew her husband was watching over her, that there was no other place in the world where she would be as safe as at the center of that comfortable life he had built around her. And once more Doyle lamented his inability to love his wife. For if only he had been able, everything would have been so much easier for all concerned in that immutable situation in which he found himself. But that emotion had only blossomed in his heart when he met Jean. Doyle had only ever felt a cordial affection toward Touie, which had never developed into love, as he had assumed it would, given time. When he learned of her terminal illness, his inadequate affection changed into a sense of infinite pity. But above all, what Doyle felt each time he contemplated his wife was his terrible impotence at not having been able to protect her. Standing over his sick wife, he recalled the stories his mother would tell him of knights rescuing kidnapped princesses, replete with challenges, duels, and tournaments, where the noise of swords clashing on armor rang out like pealing bells and honor was always saved. It was thanks to those tales that the most appealing ideals of chivalry (a knight errant must always protect the weak, defy the strong, and be gallant with ladies) had imprinted themselves on Doyle’s young heart, and although in his own era chivalry had been reduced to mere sportsmanship, throughout his life Doyle had tried to put those ideals into practice whenever he could: firstly with his own mother, then at school, where he always protected the weaker boys, and finally with Touie, who one fine day had appeared, only to become his damsel—every knight’s most prized possession. And as he pronounced the words “I will’ in that Yorkshire church, so that everyone there knew he loved her, privately he was making a far more sacred pledge: to protect her from villainous black knights who would try to abduct her, or from their modern equivalent, whatever they might be: drunken scoundrels, crooks, fortune hunters . . . And for many years Doyle had with remarkable success dutifully fulfilled his pledge, until the appearance of that invisible foe whose steps were silent, who had no flesh for his sword to smite, who had come gliding through the air, evil and intangible, only to make his nest in his damsel’s lungs, destroying her from the inside.
Doyle gave a rueful sigh and walked over to the window, gazing with satisfaction over the narrow valley where the woods converged, like a monarch appreciating the peace that enveloped his domain. Then he heard Touie stretch behind him.
“I love the view from this window, Arthur,” she said, as if in his zeal to surround her with comfort and beauty her husband had also been responsible for ordering Nature (which had unquestioningly obeyed his booming voice) to rearrange her valleys and mountains to create that idyllic landscape. “And nothing makes me happier than the thought that I will continue enjoying it in the Hereafter, for as you once told me, there everything will be exactly as it is here.”
“That’s right, my dear,” Doyle assured her. “Everything will be exactly the same.”
He said this without tu
rning, so that she couldn’t see the corners of his mouth turn down in despair as he realized that the word “everything” comprised much more than that landscape. If after death everything stayed the same, then Touie, Jean, and he would remain trapped in an eternal triangle. There was no doubt that one day Touie would die in this world, after which Jean and he would be free to love each other openly, but that love would be no more than a leafy glade in the forest of life, a brief respite whose duration would be determined by how valiant their hearts were, for as soon as they entered the Hereafter the broken triangle would be reestablished. And then, perhaps, Doyle would be accountable to Touie, who through some peephole in that other world might have caught sight of him loving another woman the way he had never been able to love her.
Doyle made a supreme effort to replace that look of despair with the cheerfully optimistic one he always wore in the face of Touie’s illness, so that she would forget the sword of Damocles hanging over her, and he turned toward his wife.
“Keep resting,” he told her. “You need to get your strength back. I’ll go down and do some work before lunch.”
She nodded, smiling meekly, and Doyle was able to flee downstairs, pondering the Hereafter whose existence he never tired of predicting but that might be his damnation, unless Touie forgave him in death for what he dared not confess to her in life.
Seated at the desk in the comfortable study he had installed on the ground floor, Doyle lit his pipe and tried to relax. As he puffed away distractedly, he glanced around at the furniture and the shelves where his favorite books jostled for space with his numerous sporting trophies. Instead of the persistent sound of cannon and rifle fire accompanied by the rumble of mortars that he was used to hearing in South Africa, the laughter of his children, Kingsley and Mary Louise, filtered in through the window, together with the clatter of the miniature railway he had built shortly after the house was finished, so that his children could enjoy an exhilarating ride around the piece of land their father had managed to wrest from the world. Any other man would have let himself rock contentedly amid that benign calm, but Doyle was a man of action, and he knew that it was only a matter of time before he became more exhausted by all that peacefulness than by the chaos of the war. Although there were many things he could do—on the homeward journey he had considered standing for the Edinburgh elections, starting a gun club in order to make better marksmen of the English, and even writing an essay about the war he had just survived—he was sure he would soon be longing for some adventure that would provide him with another opportunity to prove his manliness. He had no doubt that war was mankind’s most foolish mistake, and yet he believed that for any decent man it could also be an exciting journey capable of stirring his noblest virtues, which might otherwise have gone with him to the grave. Doyle had sent all his friends telegrams announcing his return, so that they knew they could once more depend on him, although he very much doubted any of them (for the most part other authors, agents, and publishers) would write back proposing he join them on some death-defying adventure. But at that stage, after less than a week of idleness, his demands were not quite so high: a simple luncheon invitation would suffice.
He banished these thoughts with a resigned shake of his head and told himself it was time to go back to his old routine after six months away. He decided to start with one of the most thankless of all the tasks he had to deal with whenever he returned from a trip: answering the backlog of correspondence. He stood up and called Wood, his secretary, who seconds later came into the study bearing a bag of letters. Alfred Wood was a primary-school teacher whom Doyle had employed whilst living in Portsmouth, not so much for his discretion, efficiency, and trustworthiness as for his cricketing skills. To begin with, Doyle had employed him as a simple secretary, but as time went on, almost unawares, he had started allotting him other tasks, such as that of messenger, driver, and typist. Occasionally, after Wood had beaten him at billiards or golf, Doyle had even sent him on some patently absurd errand simply out of revenge. Since his assistant had carried these tasks out without demur, pretending not to notice the odd nature of the request—or, worse, giving to understand from his gallant acceptance that he expected nothing less from his employer—this game of preposterous requests had become for both of them a diversion that enriched their relationship, or so Doyle liked to imagine, as they had never discussed the matter.
When Wood diligently emptied the bag of letters onto the desk, Doyle gazed at the large pile despondently.
“This is almost worse than war,” he groaned. “Much more tedious, in any case. War may be bad in many ways, Woodie, but it is never boring, that’s for sure.”
“You should know, sir, having been in more than one yourself . . .”
Both men gave a loud sigh and began the laborious task of sifting through Doyle’s correspondence. Much of it was addressed to Doyle from people convinced that anyone who could invent such complicated fictional crimes must obviously possess the necessary skills to solve real ones, and they therefore asked for his help in solving all kinds of cases. But much of it was also addressed to Sherlock Holmes himself at his nonexistent address of 221B Baker Street, which the sub–post office in London, with its habitual cooperativeness, had sent on to Undershaw. Before drowning in the Reichenbach Falls, the sleuth would receive all kinds of eccentric challenges from places as far afield as San Francisco and Moscow: complicated family mysteries, elaborate puzzles, and mathematical equations. But following Holmes’s tragic disappearance, only a handful of scatterbrains insisted on testing his intelligence. Nowadays, the vast majority of letters were from women wanting to clean Holmes’s rooms, and adventurers offering to organize expeditions to search for his remains; generally speaking, rather than demonstrate their affection for his creation, Doyle’s readers seemed to betray their own lack of reason. After reading the letters, the two men divided them into piles: those that deserved a reply and those that, on account of being deranged, preposterous, or downright unanswerable, deserved only to be used to light a fire.
“It would never have occurred to me that life could contain so many mysteries,” Doyle sighed after reading a letter containing the map of a supposed treasure buried on the South African coast by the crew of a shipwrecked vessel.
“Is that why you decided to invent a few more?” Wood inquired, plucking another letter from the pile. He opened it with the swiftness and elegance of someone with years of practice. “Ah, a Mrs. Emily Payne, recently widowed, offers to clean Holmes’s rooms. Well, that’s nothing new. But there’s an interesting difference: she also proposes to alleviate Watson’s grief, should Holmes’s devoted companion be in need.”
“On the fire pile,” grunted Doyle.
Woodie obeyed, even though it was the first letter they had received expressing concern for poor Watson. A few moments’ silence followed, broken only by the sound of envelopes being torn open.
“Well, listen to this,” said Doyle after a cursory glance, “a William Sharp claims he is the real Sherlock Holmes and declares that he will soon astonish the world with his exploits.”
Wood raised his eyebrows in a gesture of dutiful surprise as he perused another missive.
“And in this letter a Polish family insists you go to their country to solve the disappearance of a valuable necklace.”
Just then Cleeve the butler, who had also returned from South Africa without any Boer bullet embedded in his body, opened the study door to inform Doyle he had a visitor.
“Forgive me for disturbing you, sir, but the author H. G. Wells is waiting for you in the library.”
“Thank you, Cleeve.” Doyle stood up from his desk without trying to conceal his relief at this timely interruption. “Sorry, Woodie, I’m sure you can manage the rest on your own. And when you’ve finished classifying them, start replying to them yourself. After all, your writing is far more beautiful and legible than mine.”
“I appreciate the compliment, sir,” Wood replied, lamenting all the hours he had
spent as a child perfecting his penmanship. “But where do I put the Polish letter? They’re willing to pay all your travel expenses, and you can name your reward. You must admit it’s a very tempting offer.”
Doyle grunted. “On the fire pile, Woodie, unless you want to go in my place.”
“And risk having you drown in correspondence during my absence, sir?” Doyle heard him retort. “Why, I should never forgive myself.”
Doyle strode off toward the library, at which point Cleeve gave up trying to follow him. He had spent enough time running after his master in South Africa, and so he strayed in the direction of the kitchen on the pretext of giving orders to the cook. Doyle hadn’t clapped eyes on Wells for six months, not since Montgomery Gilmore’s automobile drove into that gorge on the moor. He had regretted abandoning him in mid-tragedy but was loath to give up the medical posting he had fought so hard to obtain, nor was he close enough to the couple even to entertain the idea. Entering the study, he found Wells sitting on one of his custom-made, hand-carved Viking chairs, with the same forlorn air as a fly caught in the jaws of a carnivorous plant. As soon as Wells saw him, he leapt to his feet, and the two friends came together in one of those masculine embraces that are a perfect balance of affection and virility.
“My dear Arthur, I’m so glad you came back in one piece!” exclaimed Wells.
“Likewise, George. And I assure you it was no easy feat,” Doyle said with a grin that suggested all manner of death-defying adventures.
With a commanding gesture that was doubtless a carryover from his days in the army, Doyle signaled to Wells to sit down again while he went over to the drinks table to serve them a couple of glasses of port. He did so with such agility that Wells had the impression he had received the drink even before it was poured. In any event, he promptly found himself clutching a glass, with Doyle sitting opposite him on an identical chair.
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