A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes

by Raynes, Katie

  Holmes was unaffected by this outburst of vitriol. “I do not need to search your residence,” he replied, “the evidence is already in my possession.” He opened the book, revealing within a slim envelope of high quality paper. He held it up disclosing handwriting on the front with the words “Last Will and Testament.”

  “This is your brother’s will. Is that not what you have been searching for?”

  “How did you find it? I say you planted it there. You are bluffing me, sir.”

  “It was simple to locate. I knew that Mr Elliot Clay would not merely have put it in a drawer. He would have kept it someplace that was easily recalled to his memory and would also be memorable to Mr Frederick Croft. I observed that several of the books on that shelf had been moved recently as there was less dust on the wood immediately next to them. Of those books only one could have had special meaning to both Elliot Clay and Frederick Croft. You are aware, no doubt, of the meaning of the French inscription on your brother’s ring. ‘Here is my heart.’ Clearly the book of Medieval French poetry was where he would place it if he wanted to remember its location.”

  “Give me that envelope, Mr Holmes,” he demanded.

  “I will do no such thing. I intend to bring the document to Mr Frederick Croft.” He had not moved, yet his eyes were flashing with excitement and I knew victory was near. “What happens to the will shall hardly have any effect on your fate, Mr Clay,” he continued, “You see, I know that the bottle went missing in the night.”

  Mr Clay gave us a doubtful and arrogant look.

  “Mr Frederick Croft has told us that there was no bottle on that table in the morning when he came upon your brother. That bottle was present, and almost full, when Mr Russell Carter went to bed that night. We have learned that there was someone who came down in the night during that time and only he could have disposed of the bottle. There were only three people in the house that night, someone entering would surely have been heard, and therefore the footsteps in the night which came down must have been yours.

  “You may be interested to know that I stopped by the chemists on my way here and he can confirm that several days ago you put in an order for laudanum. Laudanum is very like paregoric in appearance and taste, both being composed of tincture of opium and the varying composition of the aromatic agents in paregoric making accurate identification problematic. It came to me then that laudanum could be substituted for paregoric and, if the same herbs were added, the drinker would be none the wiser. You simply substituted the one for the other and removed the bottle so that it would be thought he had taken all of it.” He turned to me. “Doctor, perhaps you can enlighten us as to the difference in concentration between paregoric and laudanum?”

  “The concentration of opium in laudanum is twenty-five times that of paregoric,” I replied. “If he had taken a standard dose of two drams that would be one hundred and twenty drops of laudanum, and he likely took more than that from the custom of long usage. It would have caused death by respiratory failure within minutes of ingestion.”

  An expression of fierce rage came over Clay’s face, distorting his features. He withdrew his hand from his pocket and swung it towards me. In the moment I realized that he had a small revolver, and that I would move too late to avoid it.

  Suddenly Holmes had jumped up from the chair and with a single swift motion grabbed the hand with the gun and swept his foot around Clay’s outer leg. He fell backwards as the gun went off and the bullet went by me with a sharp buzzing sound. As he fell his head hit the corner of the stone mantel with a wet thud and he lay at an odd angle with a pool of blood slowly spreading out from his head like a dark halo.

  I fell to my knees beside him and ascertained instantly that the wound was fatal. Holmes went down on one knee beside me and ran his hands over me carefully. I confess that even under such extreme circumstances it took me a moment to recollect that he must simply be confirming that I had not been injured. I briefly felt a thrill at his touch and quieted myself only with effort. Holmes seemed, if any change at all could be discerned in his manner of examining me, even colder than he previously had been. When he had been reassured that the bullet had completely missed its mark, he went to the door and told the servant who was running down the stairs to fetch the local police at once and to have them send a telegram to Inspector Lestrade as well.

  Many hours of questioning later, we accompanied Lestrade back to London in a trap and arrived to find a guest of our own waiting by the fire. Holmes apologized to Mr Elliot Clay for our long delay. “I had thought to be home at quite an earlier hour, my dear sir, and I am much obliged to you for waiting for me. However you will not have been kept waiting entirely in vain…”

  Mr Croft looked up hopefully as my friend continued.

  “It has indeed been an eventful day,” Holmes announced, “but if you will give me leave to defer explanations until tomorrow I assure you I will answer all of your questions in good time. Watson, if you will be so kind as to return to Mr Croft his ring?”

  I produced the box and handed it to him. He opened it at once and then, turning away for a moment as his eyes filled with tears, placed it in his own pocket. “I do not know how to thank you, Mr Holmes. I shall look forward to hearing how you discovered it. I confess I have little means to pay you for your efforts but name your price and I shall do my best to meet it.”

  “As to your means, Mr Croft, I believe this document will be of interest to you.” He handed him the envelope with the will.

  Croft turned it over slowly, his eyes widening as he observed the handwriting on the envelope.

  “You and I can discuss fees at some other time. For now I believe I should like to be left to the company of Dr Watson, who will be best able to care for me in my current state of nervous exhaustion.”

  If by any chance this should be published before its time, no doubt there will be some controversy. To those who would presume to judge Mr Sherlock Holmes guilty of any crime I must protest that to class him with those he brought before the law is to do him great injustice indeed, and for my part, I would rather share the dimmest and most dismal cell with him than walk freely in the false society of his detractors. Can you imagine that I knew adventure before I met him? Certainly I knew violence and had near escapes from death, but that is not adventure. It is war. I look back on my life prior to meeting Mr Sherlock Holmes as a nightmare from which I did not even know escape was possible, and the life I woke to afterwards as being one of great privilege which I would not trade for any other in the world. The cases upon which I accompanied him were the most worthwhile and interesting moments in my life. Even when we were doing nearly nothing, his thoughts, his questions, and opinions made those hours among the happiest in my life. Is it any wonder that I followed him at a moment’s notice, anywhere in the world? I always have done so, I do so now, and I always will.

  Contributors

  Stephen Osborne is the author of the novel Pale As a Ghost and a collection of ghost stories and legends called South Bend Ghosts, as well as numerous short stories. He lives in rural Illinois with Jadzia the Wonder Dog.

  Rajan Khanna is a fiction writer, blogger, narrator, and graduate of the 2008 Clarion West Writers Workshop. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Shimmer, Abyss & Apex, Podcastle, and The Way of the Wizard, among others. His articles have appeared at Tor.com and his podcast narrations can be heard at Podcastle, Starship Sofa and Lightspeed Magazine. Rajan lives in Brooklyn where he’s a member of the NYC-based Altered Fluid writing group. His personal website is http://www.rajankhanna.com and he tweets @rajanyk.

  Katie Raynes lives in New Hampshire with her wife and their two cats. She has an MA in English Literature and derives great pleasure from such diverse things as Anglo-Saxon history, Philip Marlowe, Lord of the Rings, anime, and – of course – Victorians. Authors like Arthur Conan Doyle and Wilkie Collins kick-started her love of the Victorian detective story, but since then she’s developed a fondness for detectives from every era. She
divides her free time between reading, drawing, writing, and feeding her wife’s yarn addiction. This is her first publication.

  J. R. Campbell’s short fiction has appeared in the several anthologies including Fantastical Visions IV and Rigor Amortis, as well as having written for radio’s Imagination Theatre. He’s also enjoyed a long association with Sherlock Holmes, having written scripts for radio’s The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and co-edited, with his steadfast friend Charles Prepolec, the Gaslight anthologies: Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes, Gaslight Grotesque: Nightmare Tales of Sherlock Holmes and Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes.

  Joseph R.G. DeMarco hails from Philadelphia and is the author of Murder on Camac and A Body on Pine, the first two books in his Marco Fontana mystery series (Lethe Press). He is the Publisher/Editor of Mysterical-E (www.mystericale.com) and prior to that was editor of The Weekly Gayzette, NGL Magazine, and Il Don Gennaro. He has worked as a columnist for The Advocate, In Touch, and Gaysweek and has written for the Philadelphia Gay News (PGN), The New York Native, Gay Community News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and others. His article “Gay Racism,” which first appeared in PGN, won the Best Feature writing award from the Gay Press Association and is anthologized in We Are Everywhere, BlackMen WhiteMen, and Men’s Lives. His stories and essays have been published in the Arsenal Pulp Press “Quickies” series, Men Seeking Men, Charmed Lives, Gay Life, Hey Paisan!, Paws and Reflect, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, The International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family, The Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities, and others. His plays have been produced in Philadelphia, NY, and elsewhere. One of his loves is mystery but he also has an abiding interest in alternate history, vampires, werewolves, science fiction, the supernatural, mythology, and more. You can learn more at www.josephdemarco.com

  William P. Coleman is a writer and scientist based in Buffalo, NY, USA. He has completed a novel, Telémakhos, and is now working on a second. You can reach him by writing to wpc at wpcmath dot com.

  Vincent Kovar is a writer, playwright, journalist and professor living in Washington State. He currently teaches at Antioch University Seattle and Richard Hugo House. Vincent has appeared as an actor on stage and in independent films such as the gay-zombie spoof Creatures from the Pink Lagoon. He now devotes his time to writing. He is founding editor and curator of the Gay City anthology series, a writer for Journeys magazine and a columnist on the blog, Education 3.0. Recently, he was a collaborating playwright on Open Circle Theatre’s annual HP Lovecraft show, Pickman’s Model, in the Pulp Diction festival in Portland, OR, and on Gay City Health Project’s The Infection Monologues. His fiction has appeared in Hardcore Hardboiled, edited by Todd Robinson, and in Hot Gay Erotica, edited by Richard Labonté. Other pieces are coming out in Rockets, Swords & Rainbows, edited by Bill Tucker, and Touch of the Sea, edited by Steve Berman. Vincent is also hard at work on a novel. He can be contacted via his website: www.vincentkovar.com.

  Catalog librarian by day, Lyn C. A. Gardner coedits the journal Virginia Libraries. Gardner’s first book of SF/F poetry, Dreaming of Days in Astophel, is available beginning March 2011 from Sam’s Dot Publishing. Over 250 stories, poems, art, and articles have appeared in Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, Time Well Bent, Legends of the Pendragon, Sybil’s Garage, The Leading Edge, Mythic Delirium, MindFlights, and more. Two stories and a poem earned honorable mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, editors); six poems have been nominated for the Rhysling Award (SFPA). Gardner is an associate member of Mystery Writers of America and Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. Visit www.gardnercastle.com and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gardnercastle/.

  Ruth Sims has lived her entire life in small-town Midwest USA surrounded by fields of corn, wheat, soybeans, and conservatives. Her special love of drama comes out in her novel The Phoenix (Lethe Press, 2009), and her passion for Classical and Romantic music lives in her book Counterpoint: Dylan’s Story (Dreamspinner Press, 2010), one of the top 108 books for 2011/American Library Association LGBT Roundtable Rainbow Project. Several of her short stories are available as e-books from Untreed Reads. After thirty years of holding down a day job while writing and raising two kids and a husband, the chance finally came to write full-time. The characters in her head rejoiced! It was getting crowded in there. Her web presence includes: a website: www.ruthsims.com, her blog: http://ruth-sims.livejournal.com/. And her e-mail address is: ruth.sims@gmail.com

  Michael G. Cornelius is the author/editor of ten books, several plays that have been produced on stage, and numerous stories, poems, and essays. His books have been sold to Chelsea House, McFarland, the Vineyard Press, Variance Publishing, SynSine Press, and shorter works have been sold to or appeared in works from University of South Carolina Press, Lethe Press, Alyson Books, Dark Scribe Press, Jan van Eyck Press, and others, and have appeared in such journals and magazines as Americana, Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine, The Spillway Review, Velvet Mafia, Lachryma: Modern Songs of Lament, Clever Magazine, CreamDrops, From the Asylum, Scroll in Space, The Piker Press, White Crane Journal, and more.

  Elka Cloke is the author of Bitter Language. Her poetry has also been published at the front of the novels Clockwork Angel and City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare. She lives and practices medicine in Western Massachusetts. She is married and has one sphinx cat named after a demon.