by Anita Janda
To Mary, then: BRACE YOURSELF HOLMES PRESUMED DEAD IN MUTUALLY FATAL MEETING WITH MORIARTY AT REICHENBACH FALL ONLY WITNESS MISSING NOTIFY BROTHER MYCROFT PALL MALL DIOGENES CLUB BEST COME SOONEST WILL WAIT ENGLISCHER HOF MEIRINGEN—JOHN.
I have now done all I can do until tomorrow.
I can’t take it in. My friend Holmes—dead.
At three o’clock this afternoon, Monday, 4 May, 1891, Professor James Moriarty kept his appointment with Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Fall, with apparently fatal results on both sides. The River Aare keeps their bodies.
May God have mercy on their souls.
* * *
Holmes is not known in Switzerland, or this would be receiving far more attention than it is. The authorities appear to have dismissed it from their minds and it falls to me to see that some small portion of the physical evidence is preserved against the arrival of Holmes’s brother Mycroft. I am not doing very well.
I was up early this morning, thinking about the crowds of curiosity seekers that would be drawn to the Reichenbach Fall once the dramatic story of the Holmes-Moriarty debate gained currency in the village. At my insistence, we had been very careful yesterday not to spoil the two sets of footmarks leading up to the Fall. The fact that wherever the two sets of footmarks overlapped, it was always the broader imprint that was superimposed, told me that the two men had walked to the Fall in single file, the man with the narrow boots (Holmes, I’m sure—Holmes has, had very lean, scraggy feet) leading the way. Those same footmarks might tell an expert like Mycroft even more, I reasoned. Holmes had the greatest respect for his brother’s deductive abilities and any stray thoughts I might have had to the effect that this was a case of brotherly hyperbole—sibling rivalry gone awry—were laid to rest long ago. I have met Mycroft Holmes and he is everything his brother said he was.
And so I returned to the Reichenbach Fall this afternoon, carrying with me a bucket, a collection of cardboard collars, an outsize wooden spoon, and five kilos of plaster of Paris (and a devil of a time I had, trying to buy plaster of Paris in sleepy little Meiringen, let me tell you). It felt good to have a plan of action. I would fill my bucket at the Fall and I would use my sturdy umbrella, in service en route as a makeshift walking stick, to screen my casts from the Fall’s spray while they set. I congratulated myself: I had thought of everything.
It took me well over two hours to reach the path at the top, encumbered as I was, and when I did, puffing a bit from the exertion (those five kilos weighed a lot less at the bottom in Meiringen, than they did at the top by the Fall), I found that the surface of the path was perfectly smooth and untroubled. There wasn’t a footmark in sight—not one. I was staggered. Had this all been a dream? Was I dreaming now? Even the area directly behind the Fall, the part where their great struggle had taken place, chewing up the ground and the surrounding vegetation, was in pristine condition. It finally hit me—the spray from the Fall. The reason the path had taken such good footmarks in the first place was the spray from the Fall. That gentle mist keeps the path perpetually impressionable.
Hannibal and all his elephants could have visited the Fall last night, and left no more trace upon the surface of the path than this. In my frustration, I stamped a set of footmarks of my own into the earth and sat down to time their disappearance. It was necessary in any case for me to rest my leg before beginning the descent.
* * *
I don’t seem to be able to rub two thoughts together to make a third, no matter how hard I try. Today was nothing but wasted motion, and the worst of it is that the telegraph office is now closed for the day and that means I won’t hear from Mycroft or Mary until tomorrow.
They have put Holmes’s things in storage here at the Englischer Hof and given me a new room—two examples of what I have come to see as innkeeper Peter Steiler’s uncommon kindness and consideration toward his guests. No doubt it helps that he, of all the Swiss hoteliers we’ve met, recognized the name of Sherlock Holmes when we registered. That’s what comes of having served as head waiter at the Grosvenor Hotel in the late eighties. He particularly admires ‘The Red-headed League’, although he immediately added that he hasn’t seen any of my recent work, Meiringen being so far out of the way. So thoughtful of him, because of course the last thing any author wants to hear is that he hit his peak the third time out and hasn’t said anything worth hearing since.
I must send him a copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes when I return home.
* * *
I can no longer hide it from myself: the Swiss messenger is the key to the mystery. He must have been one of Moriarty’s minor mercenaries, or why hasn’t he come forward to tell what he knows? He delivered the forged message which drew me off at the critical moment. He remained with Holmes while I hurried off to Meiringen. He must have witnessed Holmes’s meeting with Moriarty. He was the reason I was willing to leave Holmes alone and unprotected in the first place! I blame myself. Oh, how I blame myself! I could pass him in the village tomorrow and not even recognize his face.
I should have suspected him. I can forgive myself for having accepted the note as genuine—Holmes doubted the note at once, but I am not good with physical evidence and this the whole world knows—but why did I not suspect the messenger? I am usually good with people.
I looked at the boy, saw a likely lad of about my height whose voice was probably still cracking this time last year, and accepted him as my substitute without a moment’s hesitation. Holmes said a few words in German, of which I recognized one, “Rosenlaui,” they haggled a bit (I know numbers when I hear them), and the matter was settled to Holmes’s satisfaction: the young Swiss had agreed to serve as his guide to Rosenlaui, I agreed to meet him there when I could, and there I was, rushing back to the Englischer Hof at Moriarty’s behest. The irony of it! To be drawn off to comfort a dying woman who did not exist, when it was my friend Holmes who was in danger of death. My friend Holmes, dwindling into the distance behind me, waiting for Professor Moriarty.
I didn’t give the boy another thought until they asked me for his description. “Young, well-grown, Swiss, about my height, German-speaking, loden cloak” is about as useless a description in rural Switzerland as one can well imagine.
I wonder—I will always wonder—what Holmes was thinking of, to let me go like that. He suspected the note right away, he said. He must have suspected the messenger. Why would he choose to face Moriarty and his young confederate alone in a mountain gorge, armed only with an Alpine-stock? Did he want to die? No, that I can’t believe. I won’t believe it! He had courage, that’s all. He had courage and he was so sure that he would die in the course of this encounter that he took no thought of the legal position. Duels have seconds and wars have correspondents, for a reason. It is so that the concept of a fair contest can be defended, as appropriate.
How could Holmes have decided to dispense with my company under circumstances like these?
* * *
I have nothing to show Mycroft Holmes when he comes. The footmarks have dissolved in the mist, I can’t describe Moriarty’s messenger, and now Inspector Grillot tells me that Holmes’s farewell letter and Moriarty’s tissue of lies were sent to Geneva on Monday, for analysis. What does he mean, analysis? I just wanted to make a copy for Mycroft. I can’t think why they kept Holmes’s letter, anyway—it was addressed to me.
I wish my French were better. I should have brought Peter Steiler with me, to translate. Another opportunity lost.
* * *
Today’s Journal de Genève had the story—a couple of paragraphs at the bottom of page six, describing the accidental death of two British tourists at the Reichenbach Fall and deploring the absence of a guardrail along the path. I begin to understand what Inspector Grillot meant when he assured me that they do not have murderous attacks on innocent people in Switzerland. My translation follows.
“The eminent Professor James Moriarty and his compatriot, Monsieur S. Hoelms [misspelled—and the reporter obviously balked a
t ‘Sherlock’], plunged to their deaths at the Reichenbach Fall late Monday afternoon, the disturbed state of the meagre vegetation suggesting that first one and then the other lost his feeble hold on life. [How can they write such stuff?] This reporter can only wonder—again—why there is no guardrail at the overlook. How many lives must be claimed by the Reichenbach Fall before the honest citizens of Meiringen will admit the necessity of ‘spoiling the view’? The ‘natural traction of the path’ was insufficient protection for these visitors to the Reichenbach Fall, as it was insufficient protection for the good Anne-Marie Fleisch earlier this year.
“Search teams composed of local volunteers have been combing the lower banks of the Aare River since yesterday morning, sadly without result. Suicide is not suspected.”
I should not have thought that Switzerland was Catholic enough for suicide to be the issue, but perhaps it retains its fascination in a country where murder is unknown.
I keep telling myself that Mycroft will know what to do. One small mercy is that when Reuter’s picks up this story—and they will—there is every chance that the London newspapers which decide to feature it will fail to connect an obviously elderly and unremarkable S. Hoelms [sic] doddering on the brink of the Reichenbach Fall in the wake of the similarly doddering and superannuated but still “eminent” Professor Moriarty, with the vigorous, sure-footed, and very remarkable detective, Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street.
* * *
No word from Mycroft (or Mary), but Inspector Grillot stopped by to tell me that I am free to leave Meirengen whenever I like, a permission all the more confusing in that I cannot recall having been asked to stay. I thought this was my idea.
I wish Mycroft were here. I want to take him up to the Reichenbach Fall, lay the existing evidence before him, and listen to his reconstruction of the tragedy. Until then, I am going to feel all frozen inside, wondering what exactly happened up there, how I killed my friend, where I went wrong.
I need to rub elbows with some of the other people whose lives he touched, to remind myself that I am not the only one Holmes held at a distance. I don’t think anyone really knew Sherlock Holmes.
Not even Mycroft.
Chapter 30
If Mycroft won’t leave London, he won’t, and there’s nothing Mary or I can do about it. It’s hard, though—hard that he didn’t think my friendship was worth a single word of guidance or sympathy from him. If it hadn’t been for me, Holmes would have died alone and unmourned in a foreign country, with no one to protect his memory.
Mary arrived in Meiringen about an hour before sunset on Thursday, in half-mourning, bless her feeling heart, with a black arm-band for me. I should have thought of this mark of respect myself, I know, and if it had been anyone else but Holmes, I would have. But with Holmes dead in mysterious circumstances in Switzerland and Mycroft out of reach in England, someone had to take on the role of the dispassionate investigator. I couldn’t be both the grief-stricken friend and the impassive observer, I had to choose. I told myself that I would be the grief-stricken friend—later. I was so sure Mycroft would come.
Mary tells me that there was no question of her breaking the news to him—Mycroft Holmes knew all about it. He was in contact with both Scotland Yard and the Swiss embassy, and he was treating the incident as an exercise in diplomatic relations. I feel sorry for Mycroft. Mary says she doesn’t think there will be a memorial service. Every time she tried to raise the topic with him, he brushed it aside saying that there would be time enough to discuss that when they had recovered the body from the river. He understands everything else, he must know that there is very little chance of that, with the river swollen to a torrent with the spring run-off. What is surrendered to the River Aare in the spring, the river keeps.
I don’t know what to think, how to feel. Mary says Mycroft mostly seemed to feel embarrassed by his brother’s death. I don’t feel embarrassed, I feel angry. I am angry with Holmes for accepting the necessity of a meeting with Moriarty. Is war inevitable then? Must we accept war and destruction as long as there is one enemy who is willing to fight? Is that all it takes for war—one side willing to attack, the other willing to defend? Must we lie down and be trampled for peace?
I seem to have handled this whole thing very badly. If I couldn’t prevent their meeting—and I accept that, they were grown men, responsible for their own actions—still, I might have handled its aftermath better than I did. I was so sure Mycroft would come and yet I had practically nothing to show him. I wish I hadn’t climbed the Gemmi Pass with Holmes last week! I might have known how it would be. Every time I push myself beyond what I can comfortably do, I pay for it with a week’s lameness. If I hadn’t been having so much pain, I might have seen through Moriarty’s ruse, at least to the extent of insisting Holmes accompany me back to Meiringen so I could tend to my patient. As it was, I was so grateful to be spared the long, hard tramp to Rosenlaui that I accepted the letter as genuine without a moment’s hesitation. You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. There was the pain in my leg. There was my summons on behalf of the dying. There was the Swiss messenger to keep Holmes company. No doctor can ignore a cry for help. I don’t think I exchanged ten words with Holmes before I was hurrying down the slope to Meiringen.
I didn’t look twice at Moriarty’s messenger because I was thinking about my patient—and my hip. I was still thinking about my patient (and my hip) when I spotted a middle-aged Englishman striding over the uneven ground toward the Fall. He’s in fine fettle for an academic type, I thought approvingly, and promptly forgot all about him.
There was no dying patient at the Englischer Hof. The letter wasn’t from Peter Steiler. It must have been written by that tall Englishman who was there earlier… It was too late then to wish for another look at Professor Moriarty and his messenger. I had had my chance to be of service to my friend and I had missed it. I have to find a way to live with the memory of that failure, as with so many other failures, imputed and conceded.
All the way back up the Fall, I was haunted by the possibility that Holmes had been set upon by Moriarty and his messenger and who knows how many others, everywhere at once in that undefended place. I kept asking Peter Steiler about the messenger—he must know him, the lad was Swiss. I couldn’t seem to take in the fact that I was the only one who had seen the boy. It was as if my brain were frozen. I kept urging myself to hurry, without being able to increase my pace in the slightest. I kept questioning Peter Steiler, without being able to take in his answers. I could feel myself verbally going round and round in circles. And still we weren’t at the top. It was like one of those dreams where everything is forever out of reach, across a divide. It was like the dream I had last night, where I was on my hands and knees on the soft loamy path right by the Fall.
I don’t know how I got there. It’s very dark, so dark I can’t see anything at all. I can feel the sun’s warmth on the back of my neck, on my shoulders through my coat. It’s a strong sun, so I know it’s not really dark. But I still can’t see anything. This isn’t a dream about being blindfolded or struck blind—there are no bandages on my eyes and I am not concerned about my lack of vision. I accept the conditions of my dream. I can’t hear anything, either. I know the Fall is there—I can feel the spray on my face, I even know where it’s coming from (the direction, I mean)—but I can’t hear it roaring. The Reichenbach Fall is silent and I accept that, too.
I can feel the soft loam of the path taking the impression of my hands and knees. The Fall is on my left, the cliff is on my right. Ah, I am facing the end of the path, at the top. Yes, my hands are ever so slightly higher than my knees. I must be climbing the rise to the Fall. I take a tentative half-step forward, feeling my way. Another. A hand grabs my wrist and I react instantly, collapsing onto my stomach, arms outstretched. Holmes takes my other wrist now, too. He is hanging over the edge. I clutch his wrists convulsively, bearing his weight, digging the toes of my boots into the softness of the soil. I can feel his boots thudding i
nto the side, scrambling for purchase, finding it, losing it. The pull on my arms fluctuates wildly, but I am not drawn forward. I can do this, I think exultantly. I have him! And then—I don’t. A soundless scream fills my head to bursting and I don’t know which of us is screaming. I don’t know which of us opened his hands. I only know that I am alone. And awake. And alone.
I thought nightmares were the province of children. Perhaps we are all children when we are faced with the death of someone we love. A death like this—sudden, violent, and with no body to bury—is so difficult to bear. I want the ritual of a funeral and if Mary is right, there won’t even be a memorial service. I want to tell Holmes I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t the friend he wanted me to be. I’m sorry I failed him.
I don’t know how I failed him and I don’t know when I failed him, but I must have failed him at the last or why should he have let me go like that, without a word? Why would he have preferred to face Moriarty and all his minions alone at the Reichenbach Fall, the Swiss messenger and God knows how many others with him, when he could have secured my presence with a word? A casual “Have you ever seen Peter Steiler’s handwriting, Watson?” would have stopped me in my tracks, I promise you. We could have faced Moriarty together, on the stony road to Meiringen, away from the Fall, two against two, and avoided the romance of single combat. What would have happened then, I wonder? I will always wonder what would have happened then. And why it was not acceptable to Holmes.
This whole thing is tearing me up inside. I should have grieved when I could, decently, in private, instead of taking on the role of the detective and waiting for Mycroft to arrive. Mycroft isn’t coming. And this isn’t fair to Mary. It must feel as if I don’t care about her all. I am so far away—it’s hard for her to get my attention. I can sit here and write in this stupid diary for hours on end rather than talk to her. It must be terribly painful. Why can’t I feel her pain?
