A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes

by Raynes, Katie

  “I regarded such a mass gathering as likely to provoke the police. Still, the party was the fashionable rage. Everyone talked about it. Everyone planned to attend. Services like mine were in demand, and dizzying fees were bid for us by gentlemen who wanted to appear with someone at their side more elegant than the scruffy boys from the streets or the brothels. Against my better judgment, I agreed to go.

  “At the party I was in a group with Eric and our two clients. As I looked around, my feeling of danger increased. The only routes onto or off of the barge were provided by two gangplanks drawn up at either end. It was clear that if policemen came down them, we would be trapped. Diving into the water would be useless for me since I could not swim and would only have to climb back onto the barge. Eric agreed. Our clients, however, reassured us that, since there had been no public announcement of the party, the police would never attack a group that included so many of the noble and the influential, whom they would then have to explain away.

  “As the evening went on, the behaviour of some guests grew unrestrained. My anxiety increased, for surely the police had smuggled informants among us. Eric and I confronted our clients. We told them we were leaving in any case, and they were free to come with us or stay behind. They chose to stay, ridiculing us for our timidity.

  “We hurried to one of the gangways. Before we were on it, we were already too late. Policemen appeared at its top. We tried to run back, but the crowd was thick. A constable captured Eric. I would not to leave him. In my desperation, I saw that the wooden crossbeams embedded in the dock side offered perhaps enough handholds and footholds to enable two agile young men to climb out. The policeman briefly left off his grip on Eric as he lunged to catch another victim. I bumped the policeman with my shoulder, knocking him over the side and into the water. Then I grabbed Eric’s hand.

  “We scrambled to the top of the dock wall and across the railroad tracks that ran parallel. Other partygoers saw us and emulated our example. Several fell, and those who reached the top were promptly chased by policemen. The only place Eric and I could go was into the warehouse. With the others after us, we retreated up the stairs to the second story and then up again and onto the roof. The building was huge and filled with crates and merchandise, so there were many places to hide. However, the police searched systematically, and from time to time we would hear shouts and a scuffle as they made one capture after another. It would only be a matter of time before they found Eric and me.

  “At the end of the warehouse lay a second one. From a distance, the space between them looked not too great to jump. We ran the length of the roof toward it, with Eric in the lead. His athletic ability, there and when we had climbed the wall, was thrilling. As we got closer, the jump seemed impossibly wide. I called to Eric not to try it. He ignored me, sped up, and leapt safely. He turned to watch me. I was not confident I could do the same, but I never found out. Before I got to the edge, I stepped through a rotten board at full speed. My ankle twisted viciously and, suppressing my scream, I fell flat on the roof surface.

  “I signalled urgently to Eric to go ahead without me and save himself. He did move off a distance. But then he turned back toward me, running fast. I knew what he was about to do. At worst he would fall between the buildings to the ground. At best he would be stranded on this side with me, awaiting the police. I called, ‘No, Eric!’

  “Again he jumped successfully. He sat down at my side and cradled my head in his lap.

  “Grief overcame me. The penalty from the law would be bad enough. But more, I was touched that Eric, who I’d thought only wanted casual friendship, had sacrificed himself for me. Now we would be torn from each other.

  “I said, ‘Eric, I know it’s late to tell you this. I never sensed you wanted to hear it. But I love you so deeply. I would happily spend my life with you.’

  “He smiled down at me. ‘You silly goose. I’ve been waiting, keeping my distance, and patiently longing for you to come out of hiding to say exactly that. I’ve loved you hopelessly from the first time I saw you, Tanny, from the first time I heard your voice. There could never be anyone else.’

  “We could hear that the police had spread their search to the second floor and would need only one more stage to reach us.

  “It was impossible that Eric and I could be having this conversation there, of all places. My ankle was in extreme pain. We were dirty, out of breath, in torn clothes, helpless on the broken roof of a warehouse by the river.

  “I said, ‘How could someone as beautiful as you love me?’

  “He said softly, ‘Again, Tanny, you’re confused. It’s you who are beautiful – inside and out.’

  “I laughed. ‘I disagree, but perhaps this is an argument we could fruitfully have on another occasion – when we’re not in imminent danger.’

  “’We do need to do something – and immediately.’

  “But it was hard to see a solution.

  “Do you know the sounds a railroad train makes as it starts in motion? The engine pushes back into the other cars and causes a clank as each pair successively collides, thereby ensuring their connection. Then it reverses and pulls them away with a second series of clanks as the couplings extend. There is a slow, metal grinding noise as wheels first turn along the track. We heard that series of sounds begin on the long side of the warehouse, between it and the river.

  “Eric warned, ‘Tanny, that’s it! Hurry!’

  “He helped me stand. With my arm across his shoulders, we hobbled to the edge of the roof, where its border slanted down. He had us sit, several feet apart, our legs over the side. The train crept along below us, very slowly still. He told me to push myself off after him and he would catch me. But I must do it just at the right moment, after he was settled but before the train carried him away. He waited for a tall freight car and then he slipped off onto it and I followed. There was again a pain in my ankle, and I had to swallow my cry. Eric grabbed for me and steadied my position on the car roof.

  “We lay flat, face down, our arms over each other, and the train sped up. It carried us unobserved between the policemen on the barge and those loading men into wagons on the street.

  “There were fixed protuberances above the car taller than we were lying down, so there was no danger of us hitting a bridge or tunnel entrance. The dangers rather lay in the fact that the train was carrying us west out of London, away from home and recovery, and in the fact that if we waited until the train stopped in a yard there would be railway police, every bit as threatening as the Metropolitan Police we had just escaped.

  “The train slowed at red signal lights that then turned green while it was still in motion, and it would resume again. We waited until one stopped it completely.

  “We climbed down and scrambled through the bushes to find ourselves on the streets of Chelsea. I could not move another step, even with Eric’s help. After some while a late hansom came by and Eric hailed it. He smiled innocently to the driver and excused our appearance and my stumbling by saying I had drunk too much. He gave the address of my room.

  “The ride home was long, dreary, and painful. Yet I glowed within at the thought of the constant loyalty Eric had shown me, and the words we had exchanged on the warehouse roof. I touched his hand and felt it press mine in return. I was too drained to pursue the subject with him at that moment, but I now had hope for the future.”

  4. The Logic

  Tanny was tired now from his long speech and his injuries.

  I told him, “That’s enough. You need sleep.”

  He looked panic stricken. “No, I must tell it all so Mr Holmes knows and can turn his mind to finding Eric.”

  I exchanged glances with Holmes, then answered, “All right. I will prepare a sleeping draught. In fifteen minutes you shall have finished your story and drunk it.”

  “I agree.”

  “Good. Speak rapidly.”

  “We slept into the afternoon. Then Eric went to find a doctor for my foot, which was badly sprained but not
broken. Eric also bought groceries and made dinner.

  “That night, he gave me this ring from his finger. It has his initials, ‘E.S.,’ engraved inside. I still wear it even though he left me. Somehow I must hope.”

  Tanny held up his hand to show a tasteful, expensive ring with a single sapphire.

  “I was upset that I had no ring to give him, and no way to leave the room and even buy him one.

  “He soothed me: ‘No need to be so literal, Tanny. This one ring – my ring on your finger – will have to symbolize both my faith to you and yours to me.’

  “And so we were happy.

  “For the first weeks, I was confined to bed or my chair, and it fell to him to keep up the room.

  “We made plans together. We knew that in a few years we would be too old for our work. I had more money than he, and mine was invested while his was just hidden away. I began to teach him about stocks and bonds. I had my room that was so nice, and I asked him to live there with me. Because of my ankle, I couldn’t help him move his things, but I accompanied him on the trip. When I saw the slum he’d been living in and paying outrageous rent for, I wanted to cry. Living together was economical for us, and we calculated that if we worked steadily for the next few years we could retire, at least from that life, with good security. Perhaps we could find some other way to earn our living then.

  “I’ve felt it ironic that our happiness lasted almost exactly one year. It began on the night of the party, and he went away on Monday, September 18th of last year.

  “His leaving was presaged, about three weeks earlier, by an event that has no logical connection but nonetheless seems sinister. We were dining in a restaurant, just ourselves. Behind Eric, I noticed an army officer. He was one of those whose uniform includes the ribbons at the back of the neck that make them seem silly – as if they imagine it is two centuries ago when they fought for the Duke of Marlborough and had oiled, powdered, cloth-covered pigtails to protect their necks from sword cuts. When Eric got up after dinner, he saw the officer too, and he turned white. He rushed us out, refusing to explain. After that, he became secretive and suspicious of everyone except me. He would only leave our room to find clients. I worried about him and begged him to tell me. But he would not.”

  To hurry Tanny along, I got up from the chair and prepared the sleeping draught as he talked.

  Tanny appealed, “Please, Dr Watson, just a few more sentences and then I can rest easy.”

  I nodded but continued to hold the glass.

  He continued, “Finally, on that fatal afternoon, I went out shopping. As I returned I saw a fancy carriage in front of our building. I was astonished to see Eric come out the door with his arm held by a handsome, imposingly tall, strong gentleman. The man was a civilian and not the same as the army officer who’d frightened Eric. At first I thought he was a client. But there was no reason for any client to be in our room. I became uneasy, and I rushed up to the carriage just as the door closed on them. I rapped on the window, and the man gave me a triumphant sneer. I ran alongside. Eric looked into my eyes with the most stricken expression. Then the carriage sped up and left me behind.”

  Tanny sighed. “I have many acquaintances. But, since that day, despite my appeals, no one has given me any news of Eric. It is as if he no longer exists.”

  Holmes smiled to him. “You’ve done well in your telling, Tanny, and been most gratifyingly exact about details and especially about dates. Thank you. But there is one piece of information you might supply me with. What colour were the ribbons at the back of the officer’s collar?”

  I moved the glass to Tanny’s lips.

  He said, “They were sky blue.”

  Tanny drank, and we closed the door and went to our chairs in the front room.

  I was upset by Tanny’s account. I said to Holmes. “I fear you have your work cut out for you. It may be that the kind of love Tanny seeks cannot be found among inverts.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, it is the popular wisdom. Nobody ever supposes that such an attraction can be more than physical. I have never heard the word ‘love’ applied to a pair of men. And look at the stories Tanny’s told us. He’s described by now many varieties of relationships between men, but none were the kind he hopes for.”

  “If two men achieved such love, Watson, would they allow anyone, even close friends, to guess?”

  “I suppose not. They break the law every time they express it, even with a kiss.”

  “There is the example of Tanny himself. He still wears that ring – in devotion to a man he believes, but cannot accept, deserted him ten months ago.”

  “He’s a romantic.”

  “He might have a romantic as partner. You and I need to talk about hypotheses as tools for detectives.”

  “Please do.”

  “The hypothesis you’ve proposed – that there’s no spiritual love among inverts – is useless to us, just on technical grounds. It’s too unwieldy to prove and too delicate. You would be disproved by any one counter example. We face only the restricted question whether a particular Eric loves a particular Arthur. Even more practically, we only need find the aforementioned Eric and then let him and Arthur work it out themselves.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Watson, in your stories you complain that I stay silent until I’m sure of my results. You go so far as to attribute this to my desire for a little showmanship and surprise. These aspersions are true, but only partly. Since you’ve become personally concerned with this case of Tanny’s, we might follow the contrary procedure and perhaps we’ll see why I dislike it.”

  “You’ll tell me what you’re thinking?”

  “This time, yes.”

  “Thank you.”

  “For any criminal case, Scotland Yard – excepting Stanley Hopkins – believes a single hypothesis is all they need. They prefer to have only one, because definiteness should show that you’re more right. They’re not discouraged when their hypothesis doesn’t fit the facts; it is theirs and they manfully defend it. I have tried to convince them that the cause of their failures is not the weakness of their hypotheses, but the policy of entertaining only one. If you have more, you can look closely at otherwise small facts that prove one and refute another. Conflict among hypotheses leads into new lines of investigation.

  “In our present case, the obvious hypothesis is the one Tanny fears – that Eric found a handsome, wealthy gentleman to keep him permanently and he’s gone to ground. This is certainly a reasonable guess, and I can’t contradict it. If it’s true then the consequences are easy. Eric is still with that gentleman or else he has moved on, and in either case he is unworthy of Tanny’s dreams. Under all the variations of this idea, the one constant is that I have no clues and would have difficulty locating Eric in such banal circumstances.

  “So, let’s set that thought aside for the moment – not for lack of merit, but in hope that some other hypothesis may suggest a more ready approach.

  “The opposite possibility is that Eric indeed loves as he claimed he did. In that case, the tall, strong man who led Eric away by holding his arm is not his employer but his kidnapper. The stricken look Eric gave Tanny is not that of a guilty betrayer but that given by one who sees before his eyes everything he dreamed of and can no longer have. Indeed, it is the look of one who cares about Tanny and escaped with him before and who knows how badly Tanny will now be hurt.”

  I interrupted: “Holmes, how can you think that? What evidence can you have?”

  “Watson, your outburst is the reason I do what you accuse me of – maintaining my own counsel and hiding my reasoning even from you. Because you insist on ‘thinking.’ I do not ‘believe’ what I just said. I do not ‘think’ it. I do not even ‘guess’ it. I merely wonder about it and try to ascertain its possible consequences and thereby evaluate its truth. That is what distinguishes me from Scotland Yard. I am entitled to wonder, without a shred of evidence, about anything at all – because I do not com
mit to it until I can say I ‘know.’ Imagination is the thing – and then logic to discover what it means.”

  “You have often said as much.”

  “Indeed… We now have two hypotheses – that Eric deserted Tanny, or that Eric loves Tanny but was abducted. We cannot prove either, but we can develop further hypotheses that may link with them.”

  “I don’t see that we’ve made progress, but please continue.”

  “Consider next this sinister officer who caused Eric to show such fear. He is not the same man with whom Eric left, so it is hard to see why Eric feared him. The officer might be someone Eric knew to be a confederate of the man who abducted him. Or alternatively, he might be a man Eric knew intended him some other harm that was in the event forestalled by Eric’s departure. Eric may even have departed in order to escape that officer. All these are possible. But they are complicated, in the sense that we have nothing yet with which to connect them. So, without disdaining them, I store them away and search for riper fruit.

  “Let us start afresh. Tanny has provided us with a hypothesis that’s so natural as to seem not even hypothetical: namely that Eric feared this officer. But there are other possibilities. Suppose Eric did not fear the man. Then what else might he have feared?”

  It came to me. “He might have feared the uniform.”

  “And why would Eric fear the uniform?”