My Dear Watson (18 page)

He said: “If I am to have a doctor whether I will or not, let me at least have someone in whom I have confidence.”

“Then you have none in me?”

“In your friendship, certainly.” But not in his professional qualifications. Watson withstood the blow like a true soldier.

“Such a remark is unworthy of you, Holmes.” It is just the sort of thing
I
have come to expect from Holmes, but that man never truly falls from the pedestal Watson has placed him on.

Holmes told Watson that he would accept another physician, but it must be the man of his choosing, and it must not be until two hours hence. Watson was faithful, but restless. He wandered around the room and nearly opened the lethal trinket that Holmes was sent. To his credit, Holmes did seem to be seriously disturbed by Watson’s proximity to the deathly little box.

“Put it down this instant, Watson!” he yelled, effectively saving Watson’s life. But then he excused the outburst by saying, “You fidget me beyond endurance. Sit down, man, and let me have my rest.”

When at last Holmes allowed Watson to fetch Mr. Smith, he gave him specific instructions intermixed with some babble about oysters to make his illness convincing (to Watson at least; I bet I might have seen through such shamming after a lifetime of hearing school children try to fake ill). Watson fetched the crooked, irritable Culverton Smith and returned to Baker Street before him. Holmes told Watson to hide in the room and hear what Smith had to say. Watson tried to protest these further strange instructions, but when Holmes heard Smith approach the door, he insisted at Watson:

“There is just room behind the head of my bed, Watson. Quick, man, if you love me! Don’t speak! Don’t move! Just listen with all your ears.”

Startled, Watson did what he was told. If it was a matter of love, then what else could he do?

Smith came in and began to gloat over Holmes, chastising him for suspecting Smith in his nephew’s death, of which he was naturally guilty. Watson had to seriously restrain himself from jumping out at Smith and stopping him taunting Holmes. The way he treated the supposedly dying man was rough, shaking Holmes as he revealed the attempt on his life and confessed to murdering his nephew the same way. Holmes, having heard what he most needed, asked Smith to turn up the lamp, a signal to Inspector Morton who waited on the street below. When Smith tried to deny his confession, Holmes at last remembered Watson, and called him out of hiding.

Watson was so happy, so relieved to hear Holmes’s voice return to strength, to hear the amusement in it, that he forgot to be mad at him for a time. He stayed with Holmes as Smith was carted off to the station, for Holmes had indeed given up food, drink, and tobacco to help make himself convincing. Watson doctored him as he dressed.

“You won’t be offended, Watson?” Holmes asked him casually at last. He was feeling all better after exacting his own little revenge, and really he was not so unlike Culverton Smith in pettiness here. “You will realize that among your many talents dissimulation finds no place.”

Holmes was fixing himself in the glass, nearly humming, satisfied with all that he had accomplished that night. Watson gazed at Holmes through the mirror, his face wide open and honest, injured by the violent joy he had just felt as much as the remnants of fear and sorrow. Holmes smiled gently at him. He was finally feeling forgiving.

“But your appearance, Holmes?” Watson asked with trembling emotion. “Your ghastly face?”

Holmes revealed his methods at malingering, the starvation, the lack of water and tobacco, the makeup around the eyes. But Watson still had questions.

“But why would you not let me near you, since there was in truth no infection?”

“Can you ask, my dear Watson? Do you imagine that I have no respect for your medical talents? Could I fancy that your astute judgment would pass a dying man who, however weak, had no rise of pulse or temperature?”

Watson tried to smile at the confidence Holmes had in him, but he didn’t really feel it. He picked up Holmes’s coat to help his friend into it, but while he stood behind Holmes, hands on his shoulders, his grip betrayed how he truly felt. Holmes was right about one thing; Watson is a horrible liar.

Holmes turned around and took both of Watson’s hands in his own.

“You’re upset, friend Watson.”

“I thought you were dying, Holmes,” he pleaded, as if for understanding. “How would you feel if you honestly believed I was dying, and then found out it was all an elaborate trick?”

“I’d be very impressed with your new acting abilities,” Holmes tried to kid. “Come, we’ll sup at Simpson’s after giving our reports.” He stepped towards the door, but Watson sank onto what—mere moments before—he had considered a death bed. Holmes returned quietly and sat beside him.

“You’ll forgive me, Watson?”

Watson put his head in his hands and wondered if he would. He thought establishing his own life with a wife and a practice would stop Holmes from taking advantage of him, but it was not so. It crossed Watson’s mind that perhaps Holmes enjoyed this power, the ability to summon Watson at a moment’s notice, to manipulate him, to punish him almost… It felt like Holmes was retaliating against him, and it occurred to him that they each resented the hold the other man had over them. Watson sighed in exhaustion, feeling defeated and drained…but there was still so much left to do before he could be done.

Watson leapt up and led the way down to the police station. He didn’t talk to Holmes the whole way, and ignored his invitations to dinner. They were separated to provide individual statements, and Watson tried to hurry out ahead of Holmes, but he wasn’t wily enough. In the street a few blocks from the station, Holmes caught up with him, and they finally had it out.

Watson stopped in his relentless trudge home and finally addressed his friend: “It’s horrible to care about you, Holmes. It’s the very worst thing that ever happened to me.”

Holmes stood in the darkest area between two lamps and had the decency to lower his face. Watson waited for his reaction, defiant in the face of Holmes’s shame, rare as it was to encounter.

“I cannot help that, Watson. We’re in the same boat.”

“You don’t seem to be all that affected!” Watson shouted.

Holmes strode up to him and grasped his arm, somewhat to keep him quiet, but mostly to convey his authenticity.

“Are you serious, man? I’m in agony.”

Watson could see it was true, but it took an act of powerful deliberation from Holmes to show it, and even then it was only visible in his eyes, in the tension around them, almost like someone had a knife in his back, but he was trying to take it manfully.

“Good,” Watson told him gently. “That at least is fair.”

Holmes sighed tempestuously and linked his arm with Watson’s to continue the walk home. They were much like family in their ability to snarl at each other one moment and forgive each other the next. I watched my brothers interact with the same sort of dynamic for years while they were alive.

“I promise to never die on you again, Watson,” Holmes said as they neared Baker Street, their feet echoing off the cobbles, their merged shadows cast faintly in the moonlight.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Holmes. No one lives forever.”

Watson could feel Holmes smile in the dark. “You don’t know that, Doctor. There might be a discovery any moment of some life-extending property. Even now some alchemist might be developing the elixir of eternal life from a substance hitherto underappreciated. I suspect the secret may be hidden in beeswax,” Holmes said while inclining his head. “I have a few ideas for experimentation should I ever give up detecting. And of course there is no ruling out some unexpected magic, skeptical though I remain of such wondrous things. You know, I read a story in
Lippencott’s
just the other day about a young man who manages to put off aging entirely by wishing it onto his portrait.”

“I know the one you mean, Holmes! I’m surprised that you could stand to read anything so fantastical. You’ve always preferred fact over fiction, crime over wordcraft.”

“Ah, well, this work was an exception since it was a bit of both.”

“How do you mean?” Watson was engaged enough in the conversation that he forgot to turn towards his own house where his wife was waiting up to hear the bad news of Holmes’s sudden recovery. She was always waiting around for her husband at the leisure of Sherlock Holmes.

“Did you read the story very closely, Watson?” Watson shook his head, mystified. What truth could there be in such a fairy tale as what Oscar Wilde had written? “It was a confession, my dear, from a man whose affections are very much like our own. Someone ought to warn him not to tell the truth so often; the public won’t allow it if they ever notice.”

“You mean to claim the man is guilty based solely on his work?”

“No more guilty than dozens of good men, Watson, and his work is plain enough. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was brought against him in court someday.”

“What about my stories, Holmes? Have I given us away as well?”

Holmes smiled and let himself back into his house where Mrs. Hudson had laid out food for him, most likely in anger, though she would not be getting such an apology as Watson had. Holmes treated Mrs. Hudson relatively well considering how he “disliked and distrusted the sex,” and Mrs. Hudson was fond of him in a way as well, but everyone has a limit, and leave it to Sherlock Holmes to discover that limit in each and every one of us.

“Not knowingly, my friend. It’s the brazen way this Wilde man has that will rankle the public most. They’d like to hang someone for cheek in this country.”

“You had better hope that isn’t really so, Holmes. You’d break your promise to me.”

Holmes’s smile deepened in the firelight. “Nothing could make me do that, Watson. No power on earth, and no man alive.” But of course, that would prove untrue soon enough as well.

1890: The Blue Carbuncle

Life got away from them for a few weeks, and Watson didn’t come around to see Holmes until a few days after Christmas. They had left each other last on civil terms, but the deeper wounds were still healing. Watson wasn’t purposefully avoiding Holmes, at least not consciously, but it wasn’t an easy thing to simply drop by. However, something about the holidays put Watson in a sentimental mood, and he wanted to put a patch on the last few months of parrying and find a little peace.

Holmes gave him a standoffish reception, not rising from his seat and providing Watson with a very matter-of-fact account of how a rough-looking hat had come to his attention (dropped during a kerfuffle in the street, along with a holiday goose that some good Samaritan was attempting to return to its rightful owner through our detective). He challenged Watson to deduce something from it and chucked his magnifying glass into Watson’s lap. Watson sighed heavily and looked it over, but told Holmes he saw nothing.

“On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however to reason from what you see.”

“Pray tell me what it is that you can infer from this hat?” Watson asked, regretting that he had made the trip already. Perhaps enough time had not yet passed; Holmes was obviously still raw over having been left again, but really, what could he expect if he behaved this way?

Holmes lifted the hat from Watson and concluded, among other things, that its owner was a drunk whose wife had ceased to love him.

“My dear Holmes!” Watson ejaculated in disbelief, but he was ignored. When Holmes had made all of his conclusions, Watson protested again.

“Is it possible that even now,” Holmes condescended, “when I give you these results, you are unable to see how they are attained?”

“I have no doubt that I am very stupid,” Watson said, finally getting agitated by Holmes’s rudeness. “For example, how did you deduce that this man was an intellectual?”

Holmes banged the hat on his head and it fell straight to his nose. He tipped the brim up and looked at Watson as if he were an utter simpleton. Big head, big brain. They went through his conclusions point by point, coming at last to the question of how Holmes knew the man’s wife no longer loved him.

“This hat has not been brushed for weeks. When I see you, my dear Watson, with a week’s accumulation of dust upon your hat, and when your wife allows you to go out in such a state, I shall fear that you also have been unfortunate enough to lose your wife’s affection.”

Watson got the distinct impression that Holmes was hoping for just such a thing to happen, and he decided to sting him back. Laughing, Watson asked Holmes the purpose of knowing all this, since there was no crime connected to the hat, but no sooner than he had spoken when it was revealed that the goose found beside the hat concealed a valuable missing blue gem.

It was turned over to Holmes by the honest man who’d found the bird on the street, and Holmes softened just to look at it. He could be quite fond of trinkets if they were connected with some particularly enjoyable crime, like the small box from Culverton Smith that might have killed him and now rested—gutted of its deadly powder which Holmes had taken it upon himself to chemically neutralize—on his mantle. Holmes told Watson that every good stone is a nucleus of crime, that people will die, murder, and maim over them. He got such a fond look on his face that Watson warmed towards him again. He informed Holmes that he would be stopping by later when the case was a bit further along. It was not a question.

He arrived back just when the owner of the hat came to reclaim his property. He was unaware of the blue carbuncle, and was sent on his merry way. Still on the case, Holmes and Watson struck out in the cold to chase down the source of the bird. Holmes played a neat trick to get a belligerent bird seller to show him his books, and this deception at last put Holmes in a perfectly tolerable mood.

“I daresay that if I had put one hundred pounds down in front of him, that man would not have given me such complete information as was drawn from him by the idea that he was doing me on a wager.” He finally smiled at Watson and thumped him kindly on the shoulder. He had been injured by Watson, but oh…the scars were so mutual. They were in this thing together.