by David Ruffle
“Until... well... you know.”
“Here, have a hug, you strange girl.”
“Thanks, Polly.”
“That’s what mates are for. Have fun tomorrow with your Welsh doctor!”
“Oh I will, don’t worry. You have fun at home alone!”
“I know something about Welshmen, Lucy... they have...”
“...oh go away, Polly”
“Bye, Lucy.”
“Bye, Polly.”
Chapter 11
“I fear I am having difficulties distinguishing between dreams and reality. It’s like I am sleepwalking with all my senses dulled.”
“Yes I know, my friend, I know only too well.”
“It appears lighter now.”
“Yes, the dawn is almost upon us.”
“What is time after all? What does it mean? Do any of us know? Forgive me, Holmes, the rambling of an old man. Do you wish to continue? I will understand it if you do not.”
“I will continue, for the event of which I will speak shaped my life more than anything else as will become obvious to you. Its effects have been profound and never stray far from my mind. Judge, jury and executioner I believe you called me earlier?”
“Yes, although I did not mean it literally of course.”
“Yet, it is the literal truth. I was young, Mycroft had only just gone up to Oxford and I was left in the house forming some kind of barrier between my father and mother. To my father, I was a failure and far too attached to my mother to be of any consequence or interest to him. Once Mycroft had left to take up the reins of his higher education then relations between my father and mother became more strained than ever. He took delight in taunting her with the fact she had only provided him with two sons and only one in his opinion that was worth considering as a son.”
“The strain he put you both under must have been intolerable.”
“It was, but he favoured us with occasional long absences when he was away doing God knows what?”
“Were you not away at school?”
“For the most part yes, this only caused me more pain because although I was free of his domineering ways, my mother was not. Nevertheless, we survived his cruelties. In time, he took to parading women that he was involved with in front of us; gave them free run of the house for as long as they were there or for as long as it was until he became bored with their presence and moved on to his next conquest.”
“That’s outrageous, Holmes. Why did your mother not flee with you?”
“The only sanctuary would have been the family Vernet in France, but my mother was adamant that my education would be in the best English tradition and every bit as good as that of Mycroft’s.”
“Could you not have achieved those aims elsewhere in the country, away from him?”
“I wish it had been so, I truly do. I... Excuse my emotions, Watson; they appear to be getting the better of me. I was home during the summer holidays of 1868 and the situation was as bad as it had ever been. There were long silences in the house punctuated by my father’s violent and now drunken outbursts. My mother took refuge more and more in her rooms save at mealtimes, whereas I would spend my time ambling over the estate partaking in rudimentary botanical observations. One particularly bright summer’s day in August my father asked me to go riding with him. It seemed an odd request from someone who shunned my company wherever humanly possible, but it was not so much a request as an order and an order I was not strong enough or courageous enough to countermand.”
“How extraordinary.”
“Indeed, but in a way I came to comprehend only too clearly later. We rode through the surrounding countryside until both we and our horses were exhausted. When we returned to the house my father instructed me to stable the horses, not normally a job he would entrust me with. The scene that met me when I entered the house was one that has stayed with me forever; my mother’s broken body lying at the foot of our imposing staircase. Dead; her limbs and neck broken.”
“My God, Holmes, how perfectly awful for you. Where was your father?”
“Kneeling over her body, seemingly prostrate with grief, but his face, Watson, his face... It bore the all the signs of gloating and triumph. At that point he repulsed me more than ever he had in the past.”
“But she had fallen presumably while the two of you were out riding?”
“So I thought. The strangeness of my father wanting me to go riding with him on this particular day nagged me; it was if he needed someone to be with him, to vouch for his whereabouts if awkward questions were to be asked. Yet, how could he know of this tragic event beforehand unless he was the architect of it?”
“Were the authorities called in?”
“A doctor was sent for as was a local constable who lived some miles distant. If my father was expecting awkward questions then he must have been pleased for none were forthcoming. At the coroner’s court the verdict that was returned was one of a tragic accident. After the verdict was returned my father disappeared, no doubt he had a floozy to meet; he could scarcely wait before my mother was cold in her grave before resuming his profligate ways. I returned home alone in a most abject state of mind. I was convinced my father was behind my mother’s death, but how? That was the question that taxed my young mind. Mycroft had not returned home for the inquest, but did so for the funeral of course. I felt unable to voice my suspicions to him.”
“Did you confide your fears to whatever authority there was; a local magistrate maybe?”
“I doubted my lone young voice would be heard and besides, there was a more telling reason.”
“What was that?”
“My father was the local magistrate and Justice of the Peace. No, if I wanted justice for my mother, it would fall upon me to provide it. My only problem was how to go about it. I applied myself to a diligent search of the staircase. I crawled on all fours, starting at the bottom, examining each step for any clues as to how my mother had come to fall. It was a long and arduous process, but not one I was about to give up on.”
“Did you find anything?”
“At the top of the stairs I found hammered into the left-hand upright two inches above the step, a nail, a new nail at that. The lustre had not been entirely removed by the hammering. On the opposite upright there was no nail, but a tiny hole was evident.”
“A trip wire of some kind had been laid then?”
“Yes and now my father’s actions of that day became clear to me. While I stabled the horses he went to the house to inspect his handiwork. He knew my mother would come down to the kitchen to gather her luncheon together and was confident therefore of finding her where he expected to find her.”
“It was entirely possible she would survive the fall though.”
“I am sure he had a contingency plan if that had been the case. Once he had established life was extinct he intended to extract the nails and remove the twine or whatever it was he used. The one nail I observed no doubt remained obstinate so he instead hammered it in further which was the only option available to him.”
“Was this not evidence that you could have acted on in some way?”
“I acted on it certainly, but not in the way you mean, Watson.”
“I think I know where you are going with this.”
“I have no doubt you do. This monster, my father had taken away my loving, gentle mother. I decided then and there that he would not get away with it. I was cool, composed and single-minded, even allowing for my youth. Before many more weeks had passed my father came home one evening in the blackest of moods, a veritable rage. He demanded I keep him in drink for the evening and I spent the next four hours in keeping him supplied with bottles. If my progress was not deemed to be quick enough then I received a beating for my trouble.”
“Given the state he was in, why did you
not just retire to your room and leave him to drink himself into a stupor?”
“Because, Watson, a plan was forming in my head whereby his drunkenness would be beneficial to me. At the opportune time I suggested he go to his bed with the last of the bottles. I assisted him up the stairs and saw him into his room. I waited for what seemed a very long hour and checked on his condition. He was sound asleep although comatose would have been a more apt description. I had left nothing to chance, I had a hammer, nails and twine ready. My mind was made up and nothing on earth would have deterred me. I acted as quietly as I could yet was still suitably fearful my hammer blows would rouse my father from his unconscious state. Five minutes was all it took to secure the twine in place, brown twine virtually invisible against the brown stain of the wood. Satisfied with my handiwork, I retired.”
“And the outcome was as you expected?”
“Yes it was. I arose around eight o’ clock. All was still and quiet. My father was evidently still asleep. I dressed and went out, being careful not to disturb the twine of course. There was no one else who could be harmed by my actions. The gardener was due at nine, but would not enter the house unless invited. There was a woman from the village who assisted with the cleaning, but she was not due to work until the following day. I spent the next few hours in an almost dreamlike state as though I was somehow disassociated from my actions; that is not to say I
was not aware of my crime and the end result, for I was, but my thoughts that day were for my mother. When I eventually returned, it was to find my father sprawled out at the bottom of the staircase, his arms and legs akimbo and quite, quite dead.”
“Were not suspicions raised when this death followed on so closely from the other?”
“I was not aware of any to be honest. I testified to the coroner’s court as to how much drink my father had taken the night before and the verdict duly returned was the only one open to them. Mycroft returned from Oxford once more and no doubt on this occasion had his own suspicions, but he never once brought the subject up. His own education was virtually over and he stayed in the family home to oversee my own. So you see, Watson, you could also say that you have never really known what kind of a man you shared rooms with.”
“I know only too well, Holmes. I have no complaints, no regrets.”
“I echo those sentiments, my friend.”
“Is that the sun’s rays I see?”
“Yes, dawn has arrived.”
“Lord, what a heavenly light.”
“Indeed, Watson.”
“What a life we had...”
“Yes we did... Watson?”
“Can you hear me, Doctor Watson?”
“Watson?”
“Doctor Watson?... MATRON!”
“Farewell, my friend”
1929. A small hospital somewhere in Dorset. An ante-room off a dimly lit corridor. It is no longer night, the first light of dawn and the sun’s rays are slowly penetrating the room. In the room itself the growing light enables us to see a figure in a bed. The pipes, tubes and all the trappings we associate with keeping someone alive have been removed. The man, for it is a man, lies prone and still. Still and silent as the grave.
End Piece
Now that I have been disowned by the Holmesian world, let me try and explain myself...
First of all, theory wise, there is nothing in Holmes and Watson’s conversation that has not been mooted previously; I may however have taken one or two of these theories to extremes.
The fact of Watson being in Australia is undeniable, after all he says so himself when referring to the gold fields of Ballarat. Most commentators believe he was there in his youth before his studies, but I put his being there as somewhat later. It is my idea that after attaining his degree at the University of Edinburgh, he chose to take what we call now a ‘gap year’ before resuming his studies at the University of London and eventually obtaining a further degree.
Watson’s comment that he had ‘experience of women over three continents’ does not suggest to me a dalliance of extreme youth, but rather one reminiscing of an entanglement or entanglements of one a little more mature, placing Watson in Ballarat during late 1873 and early 1874 at the age of twenty-one seems to me to fulfil that criteria.
WG Grace the eminent cricketer of his day took his touring team to Ballarat to play a match which commenced on New Year’s day 1874. In deference to the gulf in class between the teams Ballarat fielded a team of twenty-two as opposed to the touring team’s eleven. All the same, it was a win for Dr Grace’s team, but on the Ballarat side was a Watson who acquitted himself well. This I believe was the cousin that Watson was visiting with the tragic results that we have seen. He may well have been fast approaching making a decision which would have altered the whole course of his life; to stay in Australia with Adaline and perhaps pursue his studies there. He was no doubt an impulsive man then and it was that characteristic of his that led him into trouble.
Of course Watson was right, once he had committed that rash act, there could be no going back to any kind of normality or what passed for it out there, A life with Adaline was no longer an option whichever way he looked at it. Flight was the only answer and fortunately Dr Grace was on hand to offer advice and also the means of escape. Perhaps an older Watson would have taken stock and offered himself up to the mercy of the authorities, but he was young and although horror-struck with his actions, decided that flight was the best course. The ramifications of his act would never leave him and it is typical of the Watson that we know that he would seek to make a small gesture later in life to the bereaved family.
Although both men paid lip-service to some kind of faith in the canon, I am confident that neither were believers in any kind of sense of the term. They would have certainly grown up with religion apparent in their everyday lives; at home and at school where it really would have been a way of life whatever type of schools theirs may have been. The spectre of the church would have walked the corridors and be in the very fabric of the buildings. Their parents would have been religious if not actually devout and certainly in the case of Holmes’s father, any display of faith would have been for show only, not uncommon among the gentry.
The battle within Holmes family would indeed have placed an intolerable strain upon him. His aversion to women and his inability to love has often been ascribed to some degree of desertion by his mother causing him to shrink from all female contact, excepting that in the line of his work. I look at it from another viewpoint, as a variation on the classic Oedipal scenario. Not that Holmes felt anything sexual for his mother, but the bond that tied them, that ‘art in the blood’ was an emotional tie that Holmes would never have broken, even if his mother had not died when she did at the hands of her husband. That one event would colour all Holmes’s life and career. And the event that it gave rise to was the most shocking of all... patricide.
To the young Holmes it was the only solution that appeared to be open to him after the discovery that his beloved mother had her life snatched away so callously by his own father, the one man who had sworn to love and cherish her. To Holmes there would been no question of mercy, he was as single-minded then as he would be throughout his personal and professional life. A life for a life was how he saw it and he promptly, cold-bloodedly and efficient put his plan into operation.
Mycroft may have suspected, but perhaps he could not bring himself to believe it of his fourteen year old brother. Of course he may have harboured suspicions regarding the death of his mother and in spite of his former closeness to his father he may have come to the conclusion that his younger brother despatched their father then perhaps it was for the best. We will never know. Relations between the brothers were certainly apt to cool throughout their lives. The visits to each other were infrequent as to be virtually non-existent unless it was in a professional capacity.
Sherlock Holmes and
Doctor John H Watson were to live with their respective acts of violence all their lives, no doubt being reminded of them time and time again. Their secrets were eventually revealed to each other when no one on earth could any longer judge them or their actions.
But, get this,
It is fiction...
Acknowledgements
As always, to Gill, on hand with advice and grammatical insights hurled at me like flaming arrows! As in ‘Sherlock Holmes and the Lyme Regis Horror’ and ‘Sherlock Holmes and the Lyme Regis Legacy’, some lines and paragraphs are hers alone.
To Steve at MX Publishing and Bob at Staunch.com. The book you now hold or have thrown into the dustbin is alive and looks the way it does because of them.
Thanks to various Holmes authors who are always supportive, especially those from the MX stable who are a great bunch of folk.
David Ruffle
March 2012
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