Holmes was in danger, I thought, but not with threat of violence. The threat against him was one of desire, and it came from me.
Guilt consumed me, that I could think such a thought even as my wife cared for me, and when I went upstairs, I pulled Mary close and apologised for my distance.
'I understand,' she said, even though we both knew she didn't.
'Still,' I said, 'I'm sorry,' and I kissed her – but only briefly.
Keeping myself away from Holmes, tied up in my practice and in my household responsibilities, there was only one outlet available to me: I wrote in a frenzy, hoping that every detail of Holmes I wrote, every denouement he delivered from my pen, every black mood I assigned to him, would purge him from my veins.
I wrote about cases he'd taken on very early in our association; I wrote about cases he had taken on only months ago, before the Berkshire case, before I had polluted our friendship, as though I could cleanse myself of my unworthy thoughts if only I could recall how easily we had lived together. I reached back through my many journals, hoping to find an innocent man in our adventures, hoping to become him again.
The pages poured out of me, one after another, stories about insane wives and spymasters, missing brides and Apache raiders, warring neighbors and scattered oranges. I laughed occasionally, remembering Holmes' cleverness, his feats of wit and his penchant for teasing local inspectors before finally resolving their cases; I also sat somberly in remembrance of Holmes' reckless disregard for his own safety in the face of certain danger.
Would his recklessness extend even to me?
Yes, I thought, and I would protect him from me, even if I did so belatedly.
My isolation ended abruptly one evening some six weeks later, when there was a clatter at the door that resolved itself into the shape of Sherlock Holmes, standing in my parlour. I inhaled sharply; I had underestimated how much I'd missed him.
'Doctor Watson,' he proclaimed, 'I am in need of your help.'
Were I a stronger man, I would have made my excuses. But I was only myself, and Holmes fidgeted restlessly as he waited for my answer, as if he were nervous to hear it. 'A case?'
He nodded. 'And one that may require your revolver, if I am to settle it safely.'
I could hardly send him into peril alone! My heart beat fast and hot as I made my excuses to my wife rather than to him. I retrieved my revolver at once and joined Holmes in a cab, the night pressing in around us. Holmes recounted the facts of the case, seemingly at ease, but his occasional glances in my direction had a precarious, uncertain edge to them.
The guilt was overwhelming. To have made him unsure of our friendship through my distance – it was cruel. That he might have suffered for my own fear and doubts was alarming, and I was determined to make him as sure of my help as he had ever been.
'I had worried,' Holmes said, once we were safely back at Baker Street, the case solved, the kidnapper apprehended, and my revolver luckily unused, 'that I would have to go on this adventure alone.'
I had just finished packing our pipes, and I handed his to him, waiting for him to take a long draw, hoping the tobacco would settle any residual nerves for both of us. 'Regretfully, I have been very busy,' I excused. 'The doctor across the hall from me has taken a leave of absence for his health and I have had his patients as well as mine. But I am here now, old boy, and I am at your service should you require it.'
It was a bold thing, to lie to Sherlock Holmes, but Holmes very rarely suspected it of me and therefore I was perhaps one of the only men in London to have ever done it successfully. He hummed, sinking back into his chair a little more. 'I thought perhaps the Berkshire case did not agree with you,' he said finally.
I looked up, but he was watching the fire, not my expression, which must have been one of surprise. 'The country doesn't suit me,' I finally managed, attempting a smile. 'But I'll follow you anywhere you have need, Holmes. Even to bloody Berkshire.'
Chapter Ten
It wasn't very often that I found myself standing just inside the door to 221 Baker Street, daunted by the seventeen steps that led up to B, but it had been weeks since I'd climbed them and they might as well have been mountains. I lowered myself to sit on the bottom step, promising myself to get up again in a moment.
Before I could gather myself, the front door opened again, and Holmes came in. 'Watson!' he cried, his brow creasing. 'What are you doing out here?'
I whacked the banister with my cane, sullen and embarrassed at having been caught on the stairs like an invalid. 'I'm afraid I've gone quite stiff,' I confessed. 'Just needed a moment.'
'I'm not surprised, on a night this cold.' Holmes held out a hand. 'You need your chair, not these bare steps. Let me offer you my arm.'
I hesitated, but I could not deny the help – though I didn't manage to accept it gracefully. Holmes helped me carefully up the stairs, finally depositing me, churlish and ashamed in the face of his kindness, into my chair by the inviting fire.
'Thank you,' I said by way of apology, catching Holmes' wrist before he could step away.
He smiled fondly. 'It's nothing,' he assured me. 'Let me just find you a blanket.'
'So Mr Windibank gets away, and Miss Sutherland remains honour-bound to a man that doesn't exist,' I sighed, not half as satisfied with the conclusion of the case as Holmes seemed to be.
He laughed. 'Are there not many such married women in London?' he asked. 'Women who take up with men who purport to be one fine thing – well-established, sober, upstanding fellows – and yet, after the vows are said, turn out to be something else entirely? Miss Sutherland is fortunate in her timely loss.'
The whole thing left an unsavoury taste in my mouth. 'You couldn't inform Miss Sutherland of some unfortunate accident befalling Mr Angel, or some other method by which she might be relieved of her supposed obligation?' I prodded. 'She deserves a proper chance at happiness.'
'Watson, as ever, you are the romantic,' Holmes said, but he turned thoughtful. 'An accident would not do – she would only grieve. But perhaps the revelation of a wife? That wouldn't even be untrue, and it might serve as a good reminder of my whip for Mr Windibank.'
'That would suit the situation,' I agreed, relieved that Holmes would do something to help after all. 'And if you pass the news on quickly, she will have enough time to work through the injustice of it to attend the next gasfitter's ball.'
Over-warm and drowsy from the brandy Holmes had pressed into my hand, I lounged lazily on the sofa at Baker Street and could not be bothered with anything: not with going home, not with picking up a book nor any of my papers. Holmes was experimenting at his microscope, and I was content to do nothing but watch.
It was a bit like watching a ballet, watching Holmes' long, thin fingers dancing over a pipette, a slide. He had such elegance about him, such control over his body. It was entrancing.
He tweaked some dial with those long fingers and hummed. 'Have you anything to say, Watson?' he asked idly, not looking up.
I startled, caught out. Heat rose in my cheeks. 'Just lost in thought.'
'I hope you find your way back.' The very corner of his mouth curled up. 'You seem very intent on some problem. Is it a worthwhile one?'
It is a problem of you, I thought, and it was one I was becoming less practiced at avoiding and more tempted every day to solve. What the solution might be, I could not say.
'It is only a trifle,' I answered, a bit unsteadily. Holmes looked over, eyebrow raised, and I set about distracting him. 'Take my mind off it, Holmes. Tell me about your bacteria.'
'Watson, are you quite ready? I'll not miss the beginning of this symphony – if you are not ready in two minutes, I will leave without you!'
No doubt Holmes would be as good as his word, and I hurried out into the sitting room. 'Here!' I cried, but was stopped dead at the sight of him waiting for me.
He was a vision in formal full-dress: black jacket nipping in at his trim waist, emphasised by the
deep lapels drawing downward and the low cut of his waistcoat. He looked sharp, but soft to the touch, and somehow he seemed miles long; for a moment I was overcome by an urge to press Holmes' torso into the cup of my palms, to see how it might fit.
'The cab is here,' Holmes said, interrupting my thought. 'Don't forget your scarf. The night is cold.'
I seized upon the opportunity to disappear into my old room – still mine by Holmes' generosity – and gather myself. How would I get through the night, sitting next to him? So close, and yet unable to touch him? The prospect was torturous. His wrists, his shoulders! It was impossible to contemplate.
I shook myself, wrapped my scarf too firmly around my neck. If I could not control myself tonight, I would be the ruin of us both.
There had been another man once, long ago. A boy, really. When I was very young and very foolish, as most university boys are, there had been a tall, dark student with a flop of hair and a smile that lit up the night, and I had fancied myself in love.
'What do you think will happen to us?' I had dared to ask him once. My examinations had been nearly finished; his had been over for days. He would be leaving school at the end of the year, off to join some government office with his father; I didn't imagine I would ever see him again. It wasn't the sort of friendship a man retained – it was the sort of friendship a man pretended he had never had.
'Mm. Someday we'll grow out of it,' he said, understanding my true question. 'We'll each go off and marry some pretty young thing and forget about all this. Act offended when it gets brought up in some club or another. That's the way of things, Watson.'
I hummed. I knew that was the future I would someday embrace, for society and survival if nothing else. I only hoped I would find happiness in it as easily as he expected.
I was not as sure of it as I wished I could be.
Holmes was in good spirits by the time we returned to Baker Street, having ensnared a would-be murderer working in the guise of an occultist. The suspect had secured his invitation to an exclusive party by advertising an expertise in palmistry, intending to kill his prey during a reading; Holmes had stopped him just as the knife was drawn.
'Palmistry,' Holmes scoffed, throwing off his coat. 'Of all the foolish things.'
'You don't believe in any of the occultist practices then, Holmes?' I asked innocently, but at Holmes' severe look I dissolved into laughter. 'Come now – you yourself can tell a great many things about a person by the look of their hands.'
'But not their futures. Here – ' Holmes darted forward and grasped my hand in his own, turning it over. His touch was warm and sure. 'There are implications in your calluses, of course, and in your fingernails, in your steadiness of hand, but they only gain meaning if I see you as a whole. These lines' – he drew a fingertip slowly up my palm – 'are only a minuscule detail in the entire portrait of you.'
He looked up. I had never seen his eyes so closely before; they were wide and surprised, and I could see now that their piercing grey was feathered with a light, unexpected blue.
Holmes was asleep at his desk when I next stopped in at Baker Street, having kept myself away for nearly a month. I sighed, the usual exhaustion I felt after an evening at my club coming second to the affection and the warmth and the calm I so often felt in those rooms.
Quietly, I banked the fire, eased the pen from Holmes' grasp, and draped a shawl over his shoulders. If I thought I could chivvy him to bed, I would have, but Holmes was a notoriously light sleeper when he was fixated on a problem, and nothing was a better indicator of such a fixation than working himself to collapse. If I attempted to move him now, he would only wake and insist on resuming his work.
There was a smudge of ink on Holmes' face, near his mouth, where his head must have fallen against the papers before turning in his sleep. I touched a finger to it – it was already dry. His skin there was soft, and I thought about what it would be like to put my mouth to that spot. Whether it would mark, as obvious as the ink.
I should have jerked myself away. I should have fled.
Instead I lingered, sick with horror at myself, and brushed the hair back from his brow.
Just a few days later I was apologising to Mary, holding up Holmes' note as I rose from the dinner table. 'It does seem to be a matter of some urgency.'
'No trouble at all,' she smiled. 'I know well the importance of Mr Holmes' work. Pass on my regards, would you? And invite him to dinner, John? Goodness only knows how often he finishes a meal himself.'
It would have been better had she protested, I thought, as I kissed her cheek and left the table. It would have been easier, perhaps, if she had held me tighter, refused to let me go; if she'd demanded my attention and my presence the same way Holmes did. If she could command my heart.
The night air was not nearly cold enough to douse such thoughts as I set off toward Baker Street. Of course I could not blame Mary for my wandering gaze, this I knew. Of course I couldn't lament her understanding, nor her willingness to maintain a household without conflict.
And I did love her, didn't I? Didn't I feel relief to come home to her at night? Didn't I feel desire, and comfort, and protectiveness toward her?
I did, I thought, but these were damning, dishonourable thoughts, and it wasn't quite enough to absolve me of my blame.
Thus I resolved very early on to spend all of Christmas Day at home, entertaining with the Forresters and several others of Mary's good friends. I'd never quite got on well with the group of them – none of their gentlemen had served in the war, as I had, and most leaned instead toward government officers or businessmen. My association with Holmes had done me little good in such company; I could see their offices' secrets in their cuffs and shoes and the states of their hats, yet I had little empathy for them.
But I was resolved, because every instinct in me was that I should escape to Baker Street instead. The Christmases Holmes and I had had were always very quiet and uneventful – he was never one for wassailing, obviously – but they were calm, cosy days that drifted into evenings slowly, aided at the end by Mrs Hudson's skills with a fattened goose. It was the quintessential example of the domesticity we had enjoyed once, and with my own home filled with guests and games and wassail punch, I longed for it more than ever.
That was a dangerous longing, though, and I put Holmes out of my mind and went to head the Christmas table, Mary at my side, smiling with good cheer but surrounded by bores and bureaucrats.
I did not see Holmes until the second morning after Christmas, and it had felt too long, too separated from the celebrations. I told Mary I intended to see to a few patients and slipped out.
He had a case, and my heart swelled to see him, to spend a moment or two watching him as he studied some ill-used hat upon a chair. His brow was furrowed in concentration and a sense of peace settled over me, as though stepping into the room had fitted me back into my proper place.
There had been no real crime, he explained. 'Only one of those whimsical little incidents which will happen when you have four million people all jostling each other within the space of a few square miles. Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to take place, and many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and bizarre without being criminal.'
I wondered if Holmes would find me striking, if he knew what was in my heart, and the next day when he let our jewel thief go, I wondered if he would commute my felony, too. Would he condemn me, if he knew? Or would he simply relegate me to the bizarre?
Chapter Eleven
'Watson!'
Time slowed. I could hear the tick of my watch in my pocket, the scratch of a rat running through the alley. A breeze washed over me, a jolt rushed through me, and from somewhere only a foot or two away and yet miles off, Holmes was shouting my name, reaching for me – but I was already falling.
How odd, I thought, watching his eyes widen, watching his hands spr
ead, how very afraid he looks. It's only a counterfeiter. It's only a little knife. Isn't it?
'Watson!'
Yes, I recognised that look of utter terror. I had seen it many times before in my own mirror as I thought of him, tugging uselessly on the knot under my breastbone, the one that would lead me to him no matter where we each two were. To see it now on his face, to see my own desperation and sorrow and need reflected back at me, was the most wretched thing I could ever have imagined. I'm all right Sherlock, I wanted to say, but I could find neither the breath nor the words to speak.
'Watson! – John!'
And then: I hit the ground, hard. I'd forgotten it was coming. I just had time to look up and think, distantly, that I could see the stars tonight, and then everything went black.
He was there when I woke.
The pain was there too, as well as the tell-tale nausea of morphine. I gasped against it, but a cool hand slipped into mine, steadying me. 'You are at Baker Street,' he said, low and even. 'And your injuries were not severe, thank God, but do not strain them now, when I have worked so hard to keep them clean.'
I laughed; my throat was dry and dusty, and my shoulder flared into searing pain where the blade had met my flesh. Not severe though, he'd said. I trusted him.
'You foolish man,' Holmes went on, and here his voice strained into anger. 'To just – let him stab you like that. You stupid, foolish man. Stop laughing, you'll hurt yourself.'
He lifted a cup of lukewarm tea to my mouth, insistent. It was too sweet – his own cup, then – but I drank greedily of it anyway, watching him. He was disheveled, his hair wild. His hand, where it was caught in mine, was trembling.
The Watches of the Night Page 5
