The Patient's Eyes: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes

by Pirie, David

  I staggered back, my hand went to my mouth. My heart was racing and I felt I was about to be sick. The attendant had moved away to deposit the sheet, but the noise made him turn to look at me. I forced myself to bend forward as if studying some detail of the corpse’s arm. In fact, though he could not see it from where he stood, my eyes were closed.

  Somehow I kept my head down and managed to stay still. When he had at last decided that I was after all closely absorbed in study, I heard him move away to another slab, which needed his attention. This gave me more time to steady my heart and take a breath. At last I was able to look again.

  Her eyes still stared at me. Their beauty had survived intact even while the ravages of water and death had contorted and defiled her other features. The dark hair hung in long tendrils, and on her face and shoulders were the abrasions that occur where tide and current has battered a body against rocks and other flotsam. The skin was stretched and emaciated. The mouth seemed shrunken, possibly because the lips were so pale as to be invisible. But the eyes still held you. And in 1882 I had stared at them for so many hours, while treating the condition, which led me inexorably into the whole Abbey Mill affair. The body on the slab was my former patient Heather Grace.

  Now my immediate physical shock had subsided and I was intensely aware of her form so near and yet further away than she had ever been. Tears sprang into my eyes, but I knew I could not possibly let them be seen. If there was the slightest suspicion I had come here for personal rather than scientific reasons, there would be serious questions and who knew where they would lead? I forced my tears back, and turned away to bend over the corpse’s side, for I felt I was strongest when I could not see her eyes. After a long time I compelled myself to look at the face again and I whispered a prayer, though to my shame, I suspect it was less for her than for me.

  I do not know how long I stayed in that mortuary. I was certainly not prolonging my visit out of choice for I had done all I needed to do, noting almost incidentally that there was nothing unusual about the body itself, given it had been in the sea so long. But at all costs I had to present the appearance of scientific investigation and try to regain some composure.

  Eventually the attendant shuffled out of the room. He was only away a few minutes but by his return I was seated at a bench on the other side from him, writing some words in my notebook. I have no idea what they were. Medical gibberish, I would think, combined with some half-remembered chemistry and bits of Latin. I was merely trying to present a decent appearance and gain time.

  At last I summoned up all my courage, got heavily to my feet and thanked him. He looked at me slightly curiously but I was sure he merely thought me eccentric. On the way out I met Murray and shook hands with him rather peremptorily. He probably saw me as stiff and ungracious. Like many others, it is a manner I have sometimes used to disguise emotion and I think it was a small price to pay in the circumstances.

  On the train home I tried not to think about the events of the day or what they signified. I did not even glance at the papers Murray had given me. Instead, I stared out at the fields and telegraph poles, recognising how insecure a grip we hold on the certainties of our lives.

  That evening I put aside all my work. Since then, I have spent much of my time trying to make sense of what has happened. The police notes on the case turned out to be a testament to my researcher’s skill for they contained little more than I knew already except for the question of her changed name. But with the help of an otherwise meagre obituary that Walker has sent, acknowledging that one error in his earlier letter, I have arrived at a fuller picture.

  The Christian name Alice was merely a middle name she had taken to using, though I had never known it. As to the other, it appeared that Heather Alice Grace had in the past few years undertaken occasional charitable work as a hospital visitor in and around London. This was not so unusual in a wealthy woman of means and, according to the obituary, her contribution was thoughtful and valued. During the course of these visits she had become friendly with an ailing hospital patient called Andrew Macmillan, a poor but evidently sweet-natured man who was bedridden and dying of a tumour at St Mark’s Hospital on City Road. With only a few months to live, this man had conceived a fixed notion that he must be married before he died. And he had a huge affection for his visitor, Miss Grace. Eventually he had found the courage to ask her if she would do him this honour and although there was no question of the marriage being consummated, or indeed her even staying beside him, she had agreed. Macmillan died a few months later, a happier man.

  I do not know what to make of this story, but I have had many more things to think about in the three days since that afternoon in Gravesend. Over and over again I revisit my memories from all those years ago. I think of how much I tried to protect her and how greatly I failed, never anticipating the horrors that surrounded her. And then I think of this sad end, which I still must believe to be accidental.

  But there have been other matters to consider, matters even more immediate in their implications for me. Perhaps, as I explore again the matter of Abbey Mill, I may find someone involved who could have sent this. That is hardly a pleasant thought but God knows I prefer it to the alternative. For there is another possibility. It has been haunting me and I have refused to go down that road, but I know the pattern well enough, I have known it ever since the beach in Scotland.

  I never dreamed that there could be another Room. This new one, wherever it leads, can only be the last. But the Doctor is older now and such news will weigh very heavily on him. So I have reached the decision on my own. I can no longer be sure of what will happen but because it may be very bad, I am bound to put aside my promise and leave some word of all that has led up to this.

  I shall outline what has been long suppressed, namely the full story of how the Doctor and I met. And then move to the boxes I can see from my desk now, placed so discreetly on a low shelf towards the back of the room: an evidently insignificant collection of disparate material with that one unopened box pushed behind. Already the Abbey Mill box, describing the events surrounding Heather Grace, sits at my elbow. And as I open it I see first a telegram and a music box.

  I know some of what follows will seem shocking to many. There can be no time for refinement and I am breaking the Doctor’s trust, exposing material that could perhaps disturb and corrupt. We live in an age where such things are not often discussed. But in view of what I believe is coming, I can no longer let them rest.

  And so I take up my pen and return to a dark Edinburgh evening long ago and a walk along a corridor. The way into the past and all of these adventures certainly leads down that corridor …

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The most remarkable experiences in a man’s life, in which he feels most, are precisely the ones upon which he is least disposed to talk.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  This story makes no pretence to be based on some manuscript found in a tin trunk in Poulsons Bank in the Strand, or retrieved from the attic of a legal consultancy in Baker Street. Nor is it attributable to John Watson MD. But it can claim to be based in part on historical fact.

  The arguments about Arthur Conan Doyle’s early life continue to rage but two things are certain. Doyle’s model for Sherlock Holmes, Joseph Bell, did investigate criminal cases. And Doyle suppressed so many facts and incidents of his personal history that his true relationship with the Doctor remains shrouded in mystery. Indeed, with Doyle’s papers and letters still locked away from the world, the creator of Holmes remains, for all his great fame, among the most mysterious of Victorians.

  More facts, however, are emerging every day, some of them startling. This story draws on them as well, of course, as Doyle’s own writing. And in one respect at least the ‘Murder Rooms’ cycle can indeed claim to be inspired by a mysterious manuscript. If it ever saw the light of day ‘Joseph Bell’s Criminal Cases’ by Arthur Doyle, a book rumoured to have been seen early in this century, would certainly mark the uncoverin
g of one of world’s greatest mysteries.

  For we would finally have laid our hands on something once thought to be utterly impossible: The True Stories of Sherlock Holmes …

  THE RED CORRIDOR

  Its dark crimson, an unnerving colour, was matched by a brown carpet, which led to an oak door on the second floor of our home in George Square in Edinburgh.

  The year was 1878 and, as I have said, I was in the second year of my medical studies. It was, I remember, a damp, foul night with gusts of that typically squally Edinburgh wind which sometimes blows before it patches of rain and sometimes just cold air and mist. But it was not the wind that summoned me. I was brought up to that corridor by a scream.

  I stood at the far end, staring along it at the door. I do not think I am a coward, but I can tell you it took every ounce of courage I possessed to walk on. Even now, the sound that came from that room, a great howl of pent-up rage and terror, echoes down the years after me. Could there ever, I wonder, be anything so utterly destructive of a home and of the familial relationships within it than such a sound? No matter how often I heard it, I never grew used to it. But on this night in particular the scream was so horrible that it prompted a crucial decision.

  Looking back, I feel as if I stood there for hours, watching and fearful. There was no other sound. But in the end I walked slowly down the corridor. I intended to face the occupant of that room. Before I had reached the door with its scratched woodwork around the handle, my mother appeared. Whether she too had heard the scream and was intending to enter I do not know. But, once she saw me, her small figure interposed itself between me and the door. I was determined to go on, but she would not let me.

  Later we talked in hushed voices downstairs, for my sisters were already asleep and we did our best to keep them and Innes, then hardly more than a baby, clear of this. I have said my mother was small, but when you looked into her face you forgot that at once. It was a strong, fine-boned face, as formidable in its way as the Doctor’s, though its strength depended on a deep emotion. And it was awful to see how distracted that face was now. I barely remember what was said that night. I know we went and prayed down by the fireplace, and that we both knew what we were praying for, only with no idea what form our deliverance could take. I composed myself as best I could to the prayers, but I was impatient with all of it and she knew that.

  ‘Arthur, you must keep finding strength,’ she said quietly at last as she returned to the jacket she was carefully mending. I barely replied. Rage and despair were so close to the surface, I knew they could erupt. But in my mind I had decided something. My studies were proving quite barren and it seemed suddenly mad for me to stay at the university. In view of all we faced at home, I must at all costs give up my degree and find some kind of employment. My mother would fight against it, but she could not force me to continue.

  Later I went out, sensing that the streets were a better place to work off these feelings. I turned out of George Square down the wynd and soon I was in one of the coarsest thoroughfares of the old town, a place that often worked on my spirit as a relief at that time.

  I passed two brightly dressed women in a doorway; one of them came out and did a curious little mock-curtsey that made me smile. I knew, of course, how she earned her money but she was not remotely destitute. Her face was impishly pretty and she wore a bright-green scarf. She asked where I was going and, when I said I was out for a walk, she roared with laughter. ‘You liar, sir, you are for Madame Rose’s.’

  She pointed along the street but I had never heard of the place and said so. She stared at me. Then, seeing I was telling the truth, her smile became deliciously mischievous. She put her face close to me, and I could feel her soft breath on my cheek.

  ‘Why, then you had better come up with me. Here is a reward for being so sweet.’ And she kissed me. After a moment I pulled away awkwardly, feeling a confusion of flushed embarrassment and desire.

  It was an affecting little meeting and it stays with me for good reason. Less than a year later I saw the same woman lying in a hideously over-furnished room. There was a fire that had spilled out of the grate, burning an old newspaper, there was a bed and some splashed wine and shadows. She was bleeding from shallow cuts that had only just missed her vein and there was a figure crouched over her …

  But no, I will not come to that yet. I want to be sure the reader understands my world, before its darkest and most miserable corners are revealed. It will be hard enough to expose all of them even then.

  On the night I describe I returned home, knowing it was fruitless to tell my mother of my decision to quit the university. First I must make it official and so the following morning, with the frost still thick on Meadow Walk, I made my way to the university to say my farewell to the students, who had become friends. There were not more than two or three of those and, as for the staff, they cared little who came or went. But I knew my mother’s determination and, before telling her, I must make it official. Then there could be no going back.

  I came through the arch into the small square of irregular ramshackle buildings known as Surgeon’s Square, where a crowd of medical men were gathered outside one of the lecture halls. A few of the women stood to one side, looking a little apprehensive but for once nobody was troubling them. Colin Stark, a cheerful student from Dundee, waved at me. They were waiting to enter a clinical surgery class.

  It was then, and only then, that I remembered. I had stumped up an advance of two guineas to attend that class just the previous week. I had not formally enrolled, for a friend handed over my money, but it made no difference. The rules on such matters were typically mean: once fees had been paid, they were never in any circumstances returned. I knew it was hopeless but in view of our straitened circumstances at home I felt I must at least try to get the money back. And so it was that I walked over to the rear of the hall in search of the enrolment office of clinical surgery.

  With its dark stone corridors and vault-like rooms, much of the building was quite a labyrinth, and I was totally unfamiliar with the warren of doors and passageways behind this lecture hall. I wandered somewhat aimlessly, my footsteps echoing on the grey flagstones. There was nobody to ask and at last I came to a large room with an open door, which I assumed was the office of clinical surgery.

  The mistake was obvious as soon as I entered. Indeed, as my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, it was like no other room I had seen in the university. The door opened on to a kind of tunnel between huge shelves of various compounds and chemicals. The tunnel ended at an enormous tank, which ran halfway to the ceiling. In its watery depths a very grisly exhibit was on display. A blood-splattered shirt and vest covered a human torso that appeared to have been severed from the rest of the body. Much later I learned some bloodstained clothes had been draped around a wax impression to give the bulk of a body. But to me then it looked fearful.

  Staring around, all I saw were chemical and anatomical and surgical instruments, many of a highly unfamiliar kind. A huge shelf of books towered to my left and, though the room extended well beyond that, the volumes blocked my view. Ahead of me was a door and I walked to it quickly, not wishing to be accused of loitering in this place. Here I assumed was the office at last and I turned the handle eagerly. It did not open.

  ‘That door is always locked.’

  The voice seemed to come from nowhere. It was distinctive, firm but also a little languid.

  To find its owner I peered round the bookcase obscuring my view. A tall, wiry man with silver hair, in a filthy lab coat, stood in a shadowy corner of the room. He had a raised stick in his hand and was consulting a watch.

  This was obviously one of the many lab assistants, who prowled around the medical buildings. Quite often, they were of an eccentric nature and a few had given up better jobs to follow their whims.

  ‘I’m sorry. I was looking for Dr Bell’s office to enrol …’ But my words tailed away as he brought the stick down hard on something before him with a great crack.


  He hit it again. And again. Though advanced in years, his movement was lithe and the force he used was considerable. You would almost have thought the man was fighting some deadly creature. I moved closer to see what exactly it was he was hitting so violently. And started in shock and disgust. For below him was the grey and pathetic cadaver of a middle-aged man.

  ‘In heaven’s name, what are you doing?’ I said and he did not even turn.

  Was I dealing with a madman? But as he moved eagerly to inspect the corpse, I realised there must be some method in this madness.

  ‘He is dead?’

  The man looked up quite jovially. His face was sharp-featured and intelligent. ‘Oh, yes, he died about fourteen hours ago. Of a burst blood vessel. He was a soldier, I believe. But see how little trace is made. Not a bruise, not the slightest mark.’

  ‘But why in the world would it matter to a soul? This man is past curing anyway.’

  The lab man gave me a quick look as he moved past me. ‘In one sense,’ he replied. ‘Now, I would ask you to step to one side.’ And he pointed something at the corpse.

  There was a sharp report, which made me jump as, to my astonishment, a bullet from a revolver slammed into the sternum. I sprang back, bewildered. ‘My God, you take a risk! The bullet could easily ricochet.’ I was starting to wonder if I would have to report this man before there was a serious injury.

  ‘Oh, I am a great believer in risk,’ he said calmly, his eyes gleaming with anticipation as he moved forward to study the result of his shot. ‘Especially if care is taken over the angle of entry.’

  I had been aghast. Now, as I marked the loving care with which he observed the result of his actions, I became slightly amused. There was no real danger. He was merely the most eccentric lab man I had yet encountered. But he might prove useful.