That night I passed into sleep in my own flat in London.
Now, be honest. Could Watson himself have moved the story along faster than that?
Well, perhaps he could. But there was ever only one Dr. John H. Watson.
The following afternoon, I put my London flat in order, checked on Conan Doyle’s comfort at my safe house, and enjoyed lunch at
Simpsons in the Strand, where I not only formulated an initial plan for my investigation but also played chess with Henry Atkins, the recent British champion (it would be immodest and ungentlemanly to reveal who won). Next, I screwed my courage to the sticking point and made my way to the comfortable, Belgrave Square townhouse of Dr. Watson’s widow, on whom I had not called since the day of my friend’s funeral. Three long years. The source of my trepidation was not merely shame at my neglect of the good woman; it was also that I had spoken to very few personal acquaintances as myself, Sherlock Holmes (being more often concealed in one or another of my academic personae), since I’d last visited the Watson townhouse. I know that stopping to make a social call at the inception of an investigation may seem an inexcusable dalliance. After all, I could assign to it no urgent analytical value. But three years is a long time for a man to be largely absent from the world, even longer for him to be absent from himself. And, frankly, that had been my circumstance. I am not the stock Holmes who struts and frets the boards of London theaters, flawless. So, before I embarked on the new investigation, I wanted to confirm that I could still be the Sherlock Holmes I had once been. The consulting detective. And the best way to do that was to return to the place where I had lost him.
John’s widow and I had been acquainted for decades.
She may be familiar to you by her previous name, Mrs. Hudson, our long-suffering landlady at the Baker Street flat. This may take you aback, since, in films and theatricals, she is often mistakenly portrayed as being far older than Watson and me; John himself laid the ground for this misconception by offering no physical descriptions of her in any of his accounts, a literary oversight likely intended to assuage the chronic, unreasonable jealousy of his first wife, Mary. The truth is that Mrs. Hudson was quite young when she lost her first husband in the Anglo-Zulu War, and was still in her late twenties when I took rooms in her house. Nonetheless, in the years Watson and I lived there together, I never perceived an attraction between the two. Surely, I’d have noticed. Or perhaps not. Romance is, after all, one area of human experience for which I possess less than extraordinary acumen. In any case, John suffered ill luck in his first two marriages, both of which ended in divorce, before finally commencing a late-in-life courtship with Mrs. Hudson. Now, it was almost six years since they had married. On that nuptial day, each was a septuagenarian; she looked lovely with flowers in her grey hair, and he looked dashing in his old regimental uniform, even if it had been let out more than once since he’d first worn it almost a half century before. I believed their union promised a reasonable degree of happiness. The two spoke enthusiastically of exotic travel to Asian lands and sunny, carefree French Riviera retreats, which royalties from John’s writings placed well within their means. However, in the first year of the marriage, he was diagnosed with a virulent cancer.
They never made it abroad.
While still a newlywed, Mrs. Watson proved her mettle by the selfless care she administered to her husband through his fatal illness. Of course, I already knew she was a patient woman. I had tested that patience myself by exposing her to the eccentricity, irregularity, and general atmosphere of violence and danger that hovered about my years at 221B Baker Street. Still, none of the forbearance that my lifestyle demanded of her as a landlady compared with the challenges of John’s final, two-year-long illness.
Dying is a hard business.
Having seen so much of it in my work, I thought I knew.
But the experience of John’s death proved an education for me.
Enough said about that for now.
I had bought a colorful bouquet of snapdragons at Covent Garden, which I enthusiastically extended when the door of the Watsons’ townhouse opened before me. But it was not Mrs. Watson who opened it; rather, it was her housemaid. I should have expected as much, but the Watsons’ wealth still came as something of a surprise. Of course, I’d been pleased for John. Just as I was pleased that the former Mrs. Hudson, who’d worked so hard and for so long, could now employ such help. Being somewhat uncomfortable with social calls, I awkwardly withdrew the bouquet from the poor housemaid even as she reached for it, as if I did not want her to touch it.
“For Mrs. Watson, I presume?” she said.
Was she referring to the flowers or to my visit? “Yes, the flowers are for Mrs. Watson,” I said.
“I can take them and put them in water,” she answered, her composure exemplary. “She’ll be so pleased.”
I handed them over. “And I too would like to call upon her,” I said, perhaps unnecessarily.
“Of course,” she answered, smiling. “Have you a calling card I may present?”
When I said nothing, she looked at me more closely.
Her smile disappeared and her eyes widened. She’d recognized me. I’d left my flat that morning with only a felt fedora pulled low over my face as a disguise. I have found these past years that I usually can pass through crowds without being recognized merely by not wearing a deerstalker cap, which has become so widely, if inaccurately, associated with me that I am now thankful for the freedom of movement its absence allows when I go out sans disguise. However, my face remains well enough known, from the pen-and-ink portraits that accompanied newspaper articles about the crimes I solved, that when I am viewed up close I am still recognized (or, quite perversely, mistaken for William Gillette, the American actor and playwright who has made his career portraying me on the stage and in the cinema).
“You’re Sherlock Holmes!” the young housemaid said, barely containing her excitement.
I nodded and bowed to her, attempting to compensate for the ill-mannered fashion with which I’d yanked the flowers away from her. “I am at your service, Miss.”
She ushered me into the entry and closed the door behind us. Taking my cloak and fedora, along with the flowers, she disappeared through the small library, muttering, “I’ll let the Missus know that you’re here, Mr. Holmes.”
“Thank you,” I called after her.
A moment later, Mrs. Hudson emerged, her arms open wide. “Sherlock!”
I did my best with her affectionate hug.
“Come, come!” she urged, leading me into the sitting room. Once there, she turned and looked at me. “It’s good to see you, Sherlock.”
“And you, Mrs. Hudson . . .” I answered, catching myself just after the inaccuracy slipped from my lips. “That is, Mrs. Watson,” I corrected.
Some habits die hard.
“I’m only a few years your senior, Sherlock,” she said. “You’re no longer my tenant. I married your best friend. So when will you call me by my first name?”
This is the sort of talk I find difficult (except when I am disguised and in character). So I said nothing.
“Please sit,” she said. “Some tea?”
“That would be pleasant.”
She rang a small bell, summoning the housemaid, and requested the refreshment.
“You look quite well,” I said to her after the housemaid departed the room. “A bit older, but still hardy.”
She did not respond to my apparently fumbled attempt at a compliment. “Sherlock, where have you been all this time?”
“The funeral . . .” I muttered.
She leaned toward me. “John’s funeral? What about it?”
The funeral had caught me unawares. I am not one for religious mumbo-jumbo, ceremonial platitudes, or any of the myriad sentimental customs associated with the disposal of the dead. Nonetheless, when it came my turn to drop a handful of dirt into the murky hole and onto John’s casket I found myself . . . well, not myself. So I endured the post-
funeral social function at the Watsons’ townhouse by assuming an identity akin to Sherlock Holmes but not Sherlock Holmes, like the actors who portray me in provincial theatricals. Why? Because if I remained myself I’d have run the risk of revealing too much. The other mourners seemed not to notice the difference. Mrs. Watson, understandably, was distracted by her own grief. I left as soon as it was socially plausible, resolved not to return until I might do so as the true Sherlock Holmes. Who knew it would take so long or how many times I thought it would never happen? But I explained none of this to Mrs. Watson, afraid that it could too easily be misconstrued as an excuse. One thing is certain; I seek no excuses for my life.
“I’m sorry to have been out of touch,” I said to her.
“There’s no need to apologize Sherlock,” she answered. “I’ve just been worried about you.”
“Worried? Why?”
“I knew that business about your retiring to Sussex was a ruse you’d cooked up with John.”
“Yes.”
“So you just seemed to have disappeared.” Indeed, that’s how it would have seemed. “So where have you been?” she asked again. “Cambridge and Oxford,” I answered. “Working on cases?”
I shook my head. “Lecturing at university. In numerous fields.”
She was unable to conceal her surprise. Likely, she struggled to reconcile my answer with my well-known lack of patience for underlings (including students of merely above average intelligence) and my general intolerance for the domesticity often associated with academic life.
“How is it that Sherlock Holmes has been lecturing in England and I never read news of it in the papers?” she asked.
“I lectured under assumed identities.”
“Oh. Yes, you were always good at disguise.”
“A necessary requirement of a consulting detective.”
“But you weren’t working as a detective.” She held her teacup to her lips without drinking. “You were disguised to protect your privacy?”
“Of course,” I answered. “And . . .” I stopped.
“And?” She said nothing more but held my gaze with unblinking eyes. “I suppose I’d grown tired of being Sherlock Holmes,” I said, surprising myself with my candor.
“Tired? But you are Holmes.”
I nodded in acknowledgement. “Surely one can grow tired of one’s self.”
“And when did this particular weariness descend upon you?”
I answered without thinking. “About three years ago.”
“Oh.”
I’d said more than I’d intended.
About then the housemaid knocked, opened the door, crossed the room, and set the tea before us.
“Thank you, Charlotte. I’ll pour,” Mrs. Watson said. “That’ll be all.” The housemaid departed.
Alone again, we were silent for a moment as she prepared our tea.
“Just as you like it,” she said, handing over my cup and saucer.
“Thank you, Mrs. Watson.”
“John passed on three years ago,” she observed.
“Yes, but he put up a good fight.”
“He would. That was his nature. But it’s not my point.”
I put down the tea cup. “Please, I came to visit you, my dear Mrs. Watson, not Dr. Freud.”
She ignored my dismissal. “It’s not so remarkable that John’s dying would have an effect on you.”
I’d lost control of the encounter. “Forgive my self-indulgence, Mrs. Watson. I didn’t come here to talk about myself. I came to inquire how you’ve been.”
She ignored my assertion. “Maybe it’s that for all those years and through all those ‘adventures,’ John was your witness,” she said. “And absent him . . .”
I waited, but she said nothing more.
Her habit of leaving sentences unfinished to serve as questions proved quite disconcerting. I gave her an unfinished sentence of my own. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but . . .”
She put her hand on mine. She smiled. “But now you’ve taken a case,” she said, knowingly. “Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me about it?” she asked.
“First, tell me how you’re doing.”
“You mean without John?”
“In general,” I asserted.
“That means ‘without John,’” she rejoined.
“Yes, I understand.”
After Mrs. Watson’s account of her adjustments to John’s absence, which, in consideration of her privacy, I will not detail here, I acceded to her request and told her about the new case. One question led to another and, finally, just before her housemaid returned to remove the tea and accoutrements, I suggested, quite on a whim, that Mrs. Watson join me in the investigation, specifically the next evening at a séance. We could disguise ourselves as a married couple still bereaved by the loss of our only grandson a decade before in the Great War.
“A séance? How exciting,” she answered. “It’s quite an honor to be included in your investigation, Sherlock.”
“This morning, I contacted Madam Du Lac, the medium whose encounter with the alternate, crippled version of our prime minister initiated the events that put a bullet into Conan Doyle,” I said. “Under an alias, I secured all eight seats at her mystic table; while she does not ordinarily operate on such short notice, my offer of three hundred pounds sterling doubtless served to move the spirit.”
“Moved the spirit. Very good, Sherlock,” she said.
I shrugged, having intended no such pun. “Posing as a couple will make my infiltrating the séance room easier,” I said.
“May I play the part with a Cockney accent?” she asked. “I can do one quite well.”
I shook my head. “You’ll want to change yourself as little as possible, in order to remain credible.”
“But you’ll have to disguise yourself, Sherlock,” she observed. “After all, you’re famous.”
“Yes.” We still needed to fill in the details of our assault upon Madam Du Lac, and to make contingency plans in the event of the unexpected. “Shall we get down to business then?”
“Can you stay this evening for dinner?” she asked.
Rather a non sequitur, I thought. “Well,” I said, hesitating. I had planned on attending a West End Magic Show to observe the latest in legerdemain (in preparation for whatever tricks the spiritualist might have up her sleeve). But, sitting in the Watsons’ comfortable parlor, I realized I likely already knew all the tricks. “Dinner’s actually quite a good idea,” I answered. “It will help us to develop the appearance of marital affinity, Watson.”
Our subsequent preparations for the séance proved satisfactory.
The only awkward moment occurred during the dessert course, long after I’d laid out the case’s precipitating events and a few of my, as yet, untested theories, when Mrs. Watson asked, “Do you think there is any chance we might contact our dear John on the other side?”
Had she heard nothing of my view of Spiritualism, expressed rather strongly during the main course?
Or had she heard but disregarded it?
Or is blind hope an irresistible force?
In any case, I answered empathetically. Perhaps not as gently as some; gentleness is not a well-developed facility of my communication skills. Nonetheless, I acknowledged how much she missed John. I missed him too. Maybe I missed him as much as she did, if in a different way. Or, perhaps, not so different. In any case, I assured her that Spiritualism was a confidence game that preyed on the vulnerability of the bereaved. I explained to her how mediums often used clandestine research to produce what seemed authentically personal manifestations or messages. Of course, as we’d be attending Madam Du Lac’s next séance under assumed identities, any manifestation created for us would be as fictitious as our noms de guerre.
“So we won’t even see a counterfeit spirit of our John?” she asked.
I shook my head, but said nothing more.
Our John.
&nb
sp; The next morning, I made my way alone to the London offices of the Society for Psychic Research, which had rejected Conan Doyle’s recent journal submission and then had promptly cast him from its board, just days before he was shot. The society’s offices were located in a house rather than a commercial building. Like its neighbors, the house was painted as white as the paper upon which I am scribbling these words. Eldon Road in Kensington, just south of Hyde Park, a distinguished neighborhood for such offices.
I arrived in the guise of an East Indian medium. (Earlier that morning, I had applied skin cream and blended compounds of my own invention to my face and hands, ordinary theatrical make-up being ineffective for close-up, personal interactions; I attached with spirit gum a false grey beard as tangled as a timberland thicket and attired myself in a turban, an extravagantly embroidered sherwani coat, which indicated both wealth and caste, and, for final effect, a colorful dupatta scarf, suggestive of the flamboyant character of my carefully crafted, new identity.)
“I am Siddhartha Singh,” I said to an attractive young woman sitting at the reception desk of the stately journal office. The name too I had chosen for its flamboyant euphony and self-evident falseness, as mediums created their personas as broadly as politicians or cinema stars. My undertaking required that I appear as anything but an ordinary immigrant. “I am here to see Sir Charles.” My Rajasthani accent was, if I may be allowed to place truth above humility, perfect.
Sir Charles Pendleton was president of the society.
“Have you an appointment?” the young woman asked. Her accent revealed her to be unexpectedly well-bred, likely the daughter or niece of a viscount, or perhaps an earl; in either case, her background was of higher standing even than that of her employer, Sir Charles. Thus, she was here for one of three reasons: first, out of a true passion for Spiritualism (allowing her to undertake a situation so far beneath her breeding); second, as a result of the increasing incidence of noble families coming upon financial ruin (some even losing their estates); or, third, and most intriguingly, as an operative (of what or whom?) in the guise of a mere office girl.
Holmes Entangled Page 5
