The Secret Diary of Dr Watson

by Anita Janda

  “Our wedding was to have been June 30th, that is six months ago now.”

  “Good, good.”

  “Good?” I could not imagine what was good about it.

  Mary smiled pityingly “The first six months of any marriage are the hardest, John.”

  I could not argue with it, we have been married for seven months ourselves, but I felt obscurely insulted and resolved to watch the remainder of the proceedings from a safe distance—and I do not regret it. The onlooker sees most of the game and the man who doesn’t know that is not a writer. Besides, the game of women’s conversation has definite points of interest. When a pair of swifts sets out to build a nest in a new location, they do it as if no swift had ever built a nest before. One of them starts the job in a mood of almost comic desperation, using twigs, gobbets of mud, sodden pasteboard, bits of moss, dead leaves, whatever likely materials are at hand, while the other one twitters encouragement and scrutinizes the result, removing what does not seem to belong and adding other promising bits and pieces, which the first one twitters over, scrutinizes, embraces or repudiates, and augments in her turn. To the impartial observer, the guiding principle seems to be one of unflagging, ruthless, inspired despair. “I’ll know it when I see it,” they seem to assure each other and oddly enough, they do. Quite suddenly, they will both stop to survey their composition, let whatever they have in their beaks fall unregarded, and move in without exchanging a glance. Now that’s a nest. The same principle appears to guide the progress of women’s conversation.

  “You don’t look like Mary Sutherland,” was my wife’s next contribution.

  “I don’t?” she asked.

  “No, not at all. I am not denying that you are Mary Sutherland, you understand. I am merely observing that you do not resemble her.” Mary approached Miss Morrison and made a careful study of her subject’s physiognomy: left profile, full face and right profile, and repeated her declaration. “No, not at all. I had the impression from reading the case—forgive me, John—of a much larger and altogether more forbidding young lady. A creature with three chins and two timepieces, upholstered in horsehair and trimmed with merino. I beg your pardon! I don’t know why I am asking John’s forgiveness when the description is so much less flattering to yourself. All I meant to say was that no one reading John’s story would be reminded of you. Did he do any better with your fiancé? Excuse me, your stepfather?”

  “It is difficult for me to say. Perhaps if I were to tell you about Angelo…”

  “Ah, he was Italian, then?” asked Mary helpfully.

  “Yes, no, he certainly seemed to be but of course he wasn’t. He was just Mama’s husband, pretending to be Italian and romantic and operatic.”

  “Operatic? With a voice damaged by the quinsy? Oh, I see, the quinsy was John’s idea. How very clever,” she said flatly. “And your stepfather, does he resemble the Mr Windibank John described—slight and pale and rather rabbity, as I recall?”

  I perked up at this. I remembered Mr Strong perfectly. A windy little banker, I thought him, with an incongruous family name. Would Miss Morrison see the justice in my description?

  “No, not at all. He is considerably above middle height and barrel-chested with it, so that I cannot think why I did not recognize him in the event, although—”

  “Just so, no one would anticipate such a cruel masquerade. It could have happened to anyone,” Mary assured her.

  “Hardly anyone, Mrs Watson,” she said sadly.

  “No, for hardly anyone is so unfortunate in her relations, Miss Morrison. More tea? Now, we must be practical. And we will be. You came here straightaway?”

  “I went first to Baker Street, but Mr Holmes was out and the hour of his return not fixed. I could not bear to wait and so conceived the notion of applying to Dr Watson directly.”

  “You did not confront your mother or your stepfather?” asked Mary.

  “I never thought of it.”

  “Well done, Miss Morrison! Oh, you shall have your revenge, never fear. Another piece of bread and butter, John?”

  Sometimes, Mary makes me quite nervous. It took twenty minutes of cross-questioning on the subject of who in Miss Morrison’s immediate circle customarily reads the Strand and might be depended upon to make the connection before it was borne in upon me that Mary was endeavouring to persuade Miss Morrison that she could safely return to the family nest for the nonce, as long as she did so before her absence was remarked upon and an explanation sought. Mary seemed to think Miss Morrison could obtain considerable amusement from the exercise of watching her mother and stepfather’s continuing performance in support of a charade that no longer claimed her as its victim. There was a unanimity of feeling that the longer this continued and the more doubt that could be cast in retrospect over the moment of her awakening, the more complete her triumph would be. It was a subtle point, one I never would have thought to make. Nor would Holmes. I could imagine the sort of interrogation (one could not call it a conversation) Holmes would have conducted in Mary’s place.

  “What sort of employment have you had before? I see. And your education—you speak French and German, perhaps, know the rudiments of Greek and Latin? (Not a governess, I think Watson!) You cannot type, of course: quite impossible with your poor sight. [He would not miss that.] A dame de compagnie, Watson! The very thing. How many elderly people have you nursed through a lingering illness, Miss Morrison? Not even your late father? Well, well, lack of experience need not be a positive barrier, eh, Watson? Everyone must start somewhere. As a physician, Watson, you will be in the best position to help Miss Morrison to her goal. Really, you could not do better. I rely on Watson absolutely.”

  Certainly, Holmes. Whatever you say, Holmes. Any number of people are looking for a paid companion in Paddington! The people of Paddington nurse their own. Well he knows that the only possibility I could have encountered in my professional capacity was met in his company, in Kensington, as the senior member of an investigative team of etheric manipulators!

  I am rambling. This conversation never happened; Holmes was out when Miss Morrison called; he did not send her to my door; she came of her own accord. No one has said anything about her becoming a dame de compagnie, least of all Holmes, who may not even know the phrase. Anyone reading this would think me addicted to Mrs Radcliffe’s novels.

  Lately, all roads traversed in my capacity as Holmes’s friend or even his Boswell (detestable phrase) seem to lead to a young lady with marriage on her mind. Today’s acquisition is Miss Morrison, who needs to be persuaded out of her independent notions. I look to Mary for that. They have been closeted together in the parlour on the subject of ways and means of employment for upwards of two hours and I do not doubt that reason will prevail. A woman who cannot be depended upon to recognize her own stepfather without the help of a consulting detective, a woman who routinely leaves the house in mismatched boots (she did it again today, I noticed), is a woman who requires more than the usual degree of male protection. It should not be impossible for Mary to convince her that all men are not like Hosmer Angel.

  The path of the biographer is fraught with peril, and insanity may not be the least of its dangers. I no longer think, if I ever did, that it is merely a matter of recording the truth as it happened. Recording the truth is a risky business at best, to be justified only by the most extreme circumstances, as in ‘A Case of Identity’, and even there I should have done better to have exercised some restraint. Fortunately, the issue of too much truth is unlikely to arise relative to ‘The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle’. I seem to be making this one up out of whole cloth as I go on. First Mary doesn’t want to be mentioned, then Holmes wants me to disguise the size of the stone, the site of the goose farm, the source of the billycock, the name of the thief, and the thief’s disposition.

  “There is no point in drawing the attention of the authorities to the passenger lists, Watson.”

  What it comes down to is that I am free to use the deductive chain in its enti
rety—I merely have to make up the people, the crime, and the conversation. I begin to think it is only fair that he has refused his share of the remuneration for this activity.

  I wonder if Peterson would enjoy a morsel of fame? He’s always been good to us. The important thing for me to remember is that for everyone I meet who would resent playing a part in one of my adventures, I must know dozens who would relish the office, dine out on the story, and be forever grateful to me. I have it in my hands to become a very popular fellow and it behooves me to remember it.

  I have almost decided to let Holmes suffer from an excess of Christmas spirit in this one, freeing the repentant thief in order to mark the holiday. Lestrade will know it for a fiction at once but I can cope with that objection. It is an advantage, is it not, to give Lestrade the impression that I deal in fiction? So that’s settled.

  May it bring a little holiday cheer to the hearts of those who need it.

  1889

  Chapter 15

  ‘The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle’ is done and if I may be excused for saying so here in my private narrative journal, it is exceedingly well done, too. The plot advances at a sprightly pace, the characters are interesting without being obtrusive, and the point of view is steady as she goes. Not only do I manage to be on the scene to witness first-hand everything I need to be able to tell the interested reader (Mary is right, it does help to imagine that the reader is interested), but for once all of my characters resist the temptation to seize the floor and entertain my audience without me. Holmes himself speaks briefly and to the point, instead of in those brutal periods he favoured in ‘A Study in Scarlet’ and ‘The Sign of Four’. I ask questions, he answers them, and the illusion of conversation is maintained. I must remember this technique: the result is masterly.

  The pacing is good, too. For the space of 5,000 words, the deductions of my friend Holmes open new fields of inquiry and then, just as the anxiety of Mr Fitsch the word-counter may be supposed to reach fever pitch, the long arm of coincidence intervenes to save us a tedious journey and the mystery unravels in a 2,000 word coda that precisely complements the statement of the puzzle. Facts, 5, Logic and Coincidence, 2: a very palatable mixture.

  I only hope Holmes will like it half as much as I do. Watch him ask me why I keep interrupting him in this adventure!

  * * *

  Well, I’m not sure what I have accomplished here beyond the destruction of my casebook, but my intentions were good. It came to me in the middle of the night, driving me out of a sound sleep and my warm bed: why are my notes about Holmes in chronological order? It doesn’t matter to me when his cases happened. What matters to me is how experienced a writer I have to be in order to turn a particular case into an adventure suitable for publication in the Strand.

  I put on my dressing gown and crept down to my surgery. I didn’t need a fire. I lit the lamp, took out the casebook I began in Baker Street, and ripped it apart at the spine. I would need four piles, I decided: Tell Now, Tell Later, External Events, and Maybe Never. Fortunately, I had always begun a new case on a right-hand page and was not quite halfway through the book—there were no leaves with multiple cases on them.

  ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band,’ written but not publishable until Helen Stoner’s death: External Events. ‘The Brook Street Mystery’: Tell Later. (I don’t know why, but I have totally lost interest in this case.) ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain’: Maybe Never. ‘The Naval Treaty’: Maybe Never. ‘The Reigate Squires’: Tell Later.

  ‘Retreat to the Island of Uffa’: Tell Later. ‘The Five Orange Pips’, written but not publishable until four adventures have preceded it: External Events. ‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery’, written but not publishable etc.: External Events. ‘The Noble Bachelor’, written but not etc.: External Events. ‘The Plight of the King of Bohemia’: Tell Later. ‘The Rufus Jamison Case’: Tell Later. ‘The Adventure of the Etheric Manipulators’: Maybe Never.

  A pattern was definitely beginning to emerge, I thought, as I considered my four categories and contemplated my three piles of paper. Where were the cases I could Tell Now? The remaining cases added materially to the existing piles without making a start on the missing stack. I still had nothing to Tell Now.

  The urge to shuffle all the papers together and try again was very nearly overwhelming. At length, I decided that it would be better to take the time to describe the outcome of my experiment than to confound the data by running the experiment again. External Events and Maybe Never I have bundled together and put away; in six months’ time or thereabouts, I shall look at them again. Tell Later, which was much the smallest of my three piles, I have placed squarely on my desk, to the left of my journal, for easy access at odd moments during the day. It is just barely possible that with the right twist or turn, one of these might be converted into a Tell Now. Change a name, adjust a character, move someone from the beginning to the end of the story, orchestrate a shift of sympathies. It needn’t be a big thing, I tell myself—if I keep looking for the key, I’m bound to find it.

  Knowing Holmes, I would of course prefer to be on the last page of my next adventure before subjecting myself to the ordeal of hearing his opinion of this one, as good as it is, but even if that is not possible (and I don’t see how it could be, writing takes time), I still have two days to make a start on it. Two days to secure Holmes’s grudging approval, to make any minor nominative adjustments that may be necessary, and to convey the final, authoritative version of ‘The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle’ to the estimable Nathaniel Fitsch, who will be delighted and say so with the promised princely advance against my four remaining adventures.

  This is an odd arrangement, which I shall have to look into when it becomes time for me to renew my contract. Had I failed to produce my second adventure as agreed, I should not have been paid for my first. No doubt that is how Mr Fitsch manages to make ends meet at the magazine, but I fail to see why his financial difficulties should be mine.

  * * *

  Talk about a busy day—I saw the Ogden child twice today. Once for a mysterious rash on his stomach (not so mysterious—impetigo) and once for a bloody nose that wouldn’t stop bleeding because every time his mother turned her back, he had to show his little brother (the one who threw the block at him) how it hadn’t stopped bleeding yet. It made perfect sense to me, but then I had a brother myself once.

  Another day, another governess. Today’s candidate was a Miss Pamela Lampley, a lovely girl with a bone china complexion and delicately arched brows, whose penchant for scholarly quotations would have whipped Holmes into a frenzy inside of an hour. “Wasn’t it Alexander Pope who said…?” Usually, I was pretty sure it wasn’t.

  Ordinarily, I’d probably be feeling irritable after an encounter like this, but Mary has made me one of her father’s famous hot toddies (to celebrate the New Year) and I can see why they’re famous. This thing must be three parts rum to one part cider, warmed over a candle so as not to take the edge off.

  What can Mary possibly be thinking of? I know Holmes is an unusual man, but that does not mean that he is looking for an unusual woman. That, my dear Mary, is a fallacy—a false inference. I don’t know why we must suppose that he is looking for a woman at all, but granting this very remarkable premise—that Sherlock Holmes is in need of a wife—we are yet some considerable distance from understanding precisely (or even generally) what kind of a wife he could possibly be looking for.

  I don’t understand Mary. She wasn’t discouraged by Celia Hughes, she wasn’t discouraged by Jo Tate, she wasn’t discouraged by Flora Blish. She wasn’t even discouraged by Mrs Weekes of the two daughters and a small independence, suitably invested. To my mind, she should have been discouraged by Mrs Weekes. If you cannot imagine a man the proud Papa of a brace of daughters, then you have no business looking out for a wife for him.

  Perhaps Mary thinks it would be different if they were his daughters but what I say is, where is the evidence for that belief? Where is the evi
dence?

  Stimulated by my introduction to Miss Lampley (not to mention the hot toddy), I asked Mary to look at the evidence with me, but I might as well have spent my time whistling the wedding march for all the good it did me. You would have thought I was speaking in tongues. She never sticks to the subject—it’s like trying to wrestle with an eel. She agrees with me every step of the way, except of course for the conclusion. There I was, resolved from the very bottom of my heart that we should not have the well-read Miss Lampley to deal with, and there was Mary, agreeing with me. “I saw the look on your face, John,” she teased. “You have a very mobile countenance.”

  Do you suppose they learn this technique from their mothers? I’ll go bail she never learned this one from her father! Mary will be guided by me in every particular, but as for the scheme itself, all she can say is: “Did you want marriage before you met me, John?”

  Of course not, but we were talking about Holmes.

  Chapter 16

  Today I invented Irene Adler. With a little coaching, Holmes may perhaps be persuaded to remember that to him, she will always be the woman. I hope so. The strain of watching Mary comb her acquaintance for the woman is beginning to tell on me.

  I can’t believe how simple it is. I was beginning to think that nothing could discourage Mary when she unwittingly made me a present of the one infallible means at my disposal. She was stitching at the time—something white, I think. I was reading an article about the manifold uses of iodine during the American Civil War. Apparently, no soldier was allowed to die (except in prison, where conditions were appalling) without being subjected to a course of iodine treatment, generally at near-toxic dosage levels. War is a terrible thing.

  “John?” she asked. “John, how long did you live with Mr Holmes?”

  I looked up. “Six years, dear. Why do you ask?”

  “As long as that? I did find myself a crusty old bachelor, didn’t I?” (Mary will have her little joke.) “Well, John, can you not think back over your time in Baker Street and give me some indication of the type of female beauty Mr Holmes is most sensitive to? He must have admired some young lady over the course of six years.”