Read Whitechapel: The Final Stand of Sherlock Holmes Online
Authors: Bernard J. Schaffer
He bleated and squirmed when I lifted the cane to his face. “If she weren’t here I’d stick this thing inside of you and break the tip off. You get me? Now piss off before I lose my temper, fancy boy.”
“Both of you stop it!” Mary shouted. “Everything is all right, Edmund. Please just go home.”
He looked at her in bewilderment. I handed him his cane back and said, “Sorry, mate. Have a good evening.”
Mary waited for him to go and turned on me with blazing eyes, “I have never been so ashamed in all of my life, John Watson.”
“You have every right to be angry,” I said. “I did not mean to just come barging back into your life like this. I would have written you a letter first if I thought you’d have read it.”
“I wouldn’t have,” she said. “You are a cruel, cruel man to vanish like that without a single word. If I did love you, which I do not, how do you think I felt after not hearing from you for so long?”
I went up the stairs and put my hands on hers. “I do not know how to tell you all of the things that happened to me in Whitechapel. I just needed to say that there was a moment when my life was ending and you were the thing I thought about. My single regret about dying was that I’d never get the chance to see you again. You can send me away if you wish. I just wanted you to know that.”
She waited a moment without speaking. “So is it finished, then?”
“No,” I said. “There is still much left to do, but if you will have me, it is nothing that will ever take me from your side again. I promise.”
“No more racing off into the night after the evil-doers of London?”
“No more.”
“What else is there then? I do not see us making a return to high-society and surviving long around people like Edmund.”
I frowned and said, “Would you want that?”
She smiled slightly and said, “No. My God but he was a bore.”
“I was thinking about starting a practice that affords me the chance to heal those in need. All I need is a home and a woman. A wonderful, wonderful woman who I hold tightly every night, as if it were my last.”
Mary reached out and touched my face, running her finger gently across my lip. “You know, I never did like you with that mustache,” she said.
“I ain’t got the money to pay yeh, Dr. Watson,” the woman said. Her little boy bent forward and coughed forcefully into his hand. I kneeled to him and touched his forehead.
Mary looked down at their chart. “They live next to the lodging house on Dorset that’s been quarantined with the fever.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Watson,” I said. “Stick out your tongue, lad.” The boy did as I asked, and I saw green spots covering the surface of his mouth. “He needs a rather expensive medicine and he needs it quickly, I’m afraid. Are you working?”
She looked down at the ground for a moment and shuffled her foot back and forth. “Here and there, sir. Whatever it takes to make the doss, if yeh catch me meaning.”
I looked at Mary, who nodded and pointed to a stack of boxes in the corner. “Do you read?” The woman nodded. “Good. Do you see those boxes of patient files? We need someone to organize them and put them into alphabetical order while Dr. Watson examines your son. Start with that and then I will have more work for you.”
“Thank yeh. So, so much. Everything they say is true,” she said, hurrying over to the boxes. I led the boy to my examination chair and lifted him up, mussing his hair and smiling before I went to the cabinet and found the proper medicine.
At five o’clock the church bells of Spitalfields rang and I closed the door to my office and locked it. As Mary and I walked arm-in-arm to the train station, I tipped my hat to those who greeted me by name along the way. When I went to purchase our tickets, the conductor shook his head and smiled. “You don’t ever pay on my train, Dr. Watson. It’s an honor to have you on board. Please enjoy your ride.”
~ * * * ~
That night I travelled to Baker Street where Mrs. Hudson answered the front door and smiled at me warmly. “Good evening, sir. How have you been?”
“Excellent, Mrs. Hudson, thank you.” I went up the stairs and when I entered 221 B, I had to walk between stacks of carefully arranged papers on the floor. Every available surface was covered in carefully arranged papers.
Holmes was sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, writing quietly. He did not look up as I greeted him, but continued staring intently at the page when he said, “What the deuce is the name of that fellow from New York who wrote to me? The one with questions about how to reform their police department?”
I squeezed my eyes, trying to remember the name on a letter that had arrived what seems like a lifetime ago. “Was it Roosevelt?”
“Yes!” Holmes said, writing the name “
Theodore Roosevelt
” on his paper. “He is making a bid to be Commissioner of Police there, and I think he may find some of the things I am working on quite useful.” As Holmes looked over what he wrote, I noticed him absent-mindedly stroking the long vertical scar on his chest through the opening in his robe. After two years, it was still a deep purple line of raised flesh. Holmes nodded in satisfaction as he finished reading and lowered his pen. “There we are. So, how goes the crusade?”
“It goes, I suppose. Some weeks we can actually afford to leave the lights on and heat the place.”
“I am certain you could improve your situation if you ever chose to move your office to a location that had citizens who could actually afford your services,” he said. “But then what would the people of Whitechapel do without their dear Saint John?”
I laughed. “Perhaps someday, my friend. Just not today.” I looked at the stacks of papers and said, “So what is all this, then?”
“This is the bare beginnings of the Apiary Society, Watson. The most ambitious thing I have ever attempted. Now, if only I can somehow manage to extract every thought pent up inside my brain fast enough to set it down on paper before I perish, I will succeed.”
“Is Irene helping you?” I asked. As I walked further into the apartment, I noticed it had been redecorated since my last visit. No, that was not quite accurate. It had been un-decorated. The fancy curtains, lace doilies, flower vases, and everything else that Irene Adler had brought to 221 B were gone. And then I realized that so was she. “Good God, man. Are you all right?”
He ignored me. “So how is Mrs. Watson? Still helping you at the clinic?”
“Only for a short while longer, I’m afraid.”
He put down the paper with a look of concern. “Is she ill?”
“No,” I said. “She’s pregnant.”
~ * * * ~
Perhaps you have heard of Sherlock Holmes, before all this.
I certainly did my share to inform the world about the existence of a man I considered the keenest investigative mind of our era. Any era, really. Over the years, I published fifty-six short stories and four novels featuring the adventures he and I shared. Some of them were even true.
During the course of my publishing career, I encountered numerous legal difficulties in accurately depicting our investigations, and protecting myself from lawsuits brought about by the parties involved in them. It became so tricky, in terms of last minute changes forced by attorneys, that when I look back over my writings as they appeared in print, I am horrified by some of the mistakes.
One incident stands out in my mind, when the printer referred to my wife by her middle name and my loyal readership assumed my first wife had died and I’d remarried. I subsequently began receiving condolence cards from people who wished to apologize for not attending the funeral.
Not all of the problems were caused by editors or lawyers.
There was simply not enough money to keep the clinic open and continue to afford a roof over our heads. I spread the ledger across the kitchen table, recalculating the numbers grimly. I already knew the answer would be the same as the other times I’d done it. I lifted the book and shook it, looking to see if I’d misplaced anything that might be of use. There was nothing.
“John!” Mary cried from the living room.
I leapt from my seat, racing to her side. Her stomach looked ready to burst, and she sat on the couch, taking short, sharp breaths. “Is it time? Are you contracting?”
“No,” she said, grimacing. “The baby is walloping my ribs though. Someone is at the door. Would you mind?”
“At this time of night?” I said. There was the enormous shape of a man filling the door’s window. I told Mary that I would only be a few moments.
“Good evening, Watson,” Mycroft Holmes said. “We need to talk.”
Mary stroked her belly worryingly, looking at me from the couch. I nodded to her and went out onto the porch and closed the door behind me. Mycroft waved for me to follow him away from the steps. As we walked I said, “I’d invite you in for tea, Mycroft, but Mary does not feel well.”
“I did not come for tea, Watson. Your publisher’s office caught fire this evening. He managed to barely escape with his life.”
“That’s horrible!”
“Mmm,” he said. “Seems that someone put the idea into his head that your latest manuscript is to blame. He’s opted not to publish it after all.”
“What? My manuscript? But that’s preposterous. He cannot do that,” I said. “We have a contract and I was relying on that money. I’ll need to find another publisher straight away.”
Mycroft fixed his tiny black eyes on me, “His was the example the others will go by, Watson. No one will publish
WHITECHAPEL
from here to across the pond. Do you understand?”
“It was you, wasn’t it?” I said, balling my fists. “Damn you, Mycroft! Why? I left you out of the other stories. You do little more than sit in your damned Diogenes Club in any of them. Why are you so threatened by this story?”
“It wasn’t me,” Mycroft said sadly. “And there is nothing I can do to stop them. This time it was your publisher’s office.” His eyes glanced back at the doorway to my home where Mary stood in the window watching us. “Who knows what it might be next time?”
I lowered my head. “At times I feel like there is something deeply wrong in the world, Mycroft.”
“That is because there is, my friend.” He put a massive hand across my shoulder and said, “It may come as only a small comfort, but I do have some good news. Her Majesty allowed me to add an item into my budget for an intelligence office in the East End. I’ll need a good front for the operation. I was thinking a medical clinic that caters to the poor and unfortunate would be perfect. What do you say, Watson? All the medicine and equipment you could ever need, courtesy of Queen Victoria?” He reached into his pocket and produced a cheque from the Bank of London. It was issued by a company called, “Universal Export.”
I looked at the cheque and the enormous amount written on it for a long time. “Is this the price of keeping secrets, Mycroft? Is this how much it costs to keep people from ever knowing the truth about Jack the Ripper?”
“One gets used to keeping secrets, Watson,” he said. “If there is anything I’ve learned after all these years, it is that you have to choose your battles. Some things are much more important than the truth.”
Mycroft raised his hand and waved to Mary before turning to walk up the street.
On the day John Watson II was born, I sat kneeling on the floor beside the delivery bed and watched him suckle Mary’s breast. I put my finger inside his hand, and as he held it, I knew for the first time what it truly meant to be afraid. In all of the times I had faced danger, or even death, the fear had been momentary and was quickly replaced by a laughing satisfaction at having overcome it once again.
This small, fragile creature clutching to his mother’s breast was more vulnerable and more valuable than anything in existence, and at any moment the cruel hand of fate could reach out and try to snatch him away. As I stroked his head, feeling the soft spot at the center of his skull and the fine, silken hair there, I made private promises to God, Mary, the baby and myself. The midwife knocked on our door and asked if we were taking visitors. “Who could that be?” Mary said, covering herself.
The door opened and I turned to see our visitor. His tall, slender form was now slightly stooped and he did not come any closer than the doorway or take off his hat or coat. “I only wanted to offer you any assistance if you required it,” Sherlock Holmes said. “Everyone is all right, I trust?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” I said. I got to my feet and waved him in. “Come inside, Holmes, do not be afraid. Have a look, man. We had a boy! This is my son!”
Holmes hesitated but did finally come in. He got close enough to the bed to look down at John and say, “I see he looks much more like his mother. Which is quite lucky for him, I should think.” He flashed me a mischievous smile and I laughed.
“Do you want to hold him?” Mary said.
“Me? No, no, of course I couldn’t. I just wanted to—”
“Nonsense,” she said, sitting up. “You are to be the boy’s godfather after all.”
“I am?” Holmes said, looking at me.
“I hadn’t had time to ask you officially, but there is no one else we would think of asking.”
He did not move as I lifted the baby and instructed him how to hold out his arms. I laid John on them and let go as Holmes nervously adjusted his hands to better hold him. “So innocent. So soft,” Holmes said quietly.
“Do not look so nervous, man,” I said. “Has it been that long since you held a baby?”
“I’ve never done so,” he said. “I’ve never cared to until now.”
~ * * * ~
In all my years with Sherlock Holmes, I’d never known him to laugh unless it was at something he found foolish. Imagine my amusement at watching him cackle like a schoolboy every time John stuck his slobbery fingers into his mouth. Holmes would shake his head in mock disgust and John would shriek with delight and do it again. Holmes kissed the boy on the forehead and hugged him in a tight embrace. “You are very, very fortunate, Watson. I wish I’d found the time to start a family.”