My Dearest Holmes (23 page)

'I won't go,' he said. 'I will stay here until you are asleep. I promise.'

I slept fitfully, and woke perhaps an hour or so later, to find him lying beside me, exhausted. He had not gone back to his room, then; he had fallen asleep, sitting up with me.

'Holmes,' I murmured blearily, 'you'll get cold. Come under the covers.' I pulled the quilt over him.

'Thank you,' he said, though his eyes remained closed, and he moved closer to me. As unobtrusively as I could, I put my arms round him.

'Thank you,' he murmured again, and settled his head upon my shoulder.

I measured my breathing to his, and lay quietly, stroking the dark head on my shoulder, until I too fell asleep.

--
XI
--

I
AWOKE TO the smell of coffee. Holmes stood by the window, looking fresh and relaxed in his shirtsleeves, cup and saucer in hand, absorbed in the activity of the boulevard below.

As I stirred, he turned, and gave me a quick smile.

'Awake, Watson? Have some coffee. I took the liberty of ordering breakfast for you. It should be here in a minute.'

I sat up slowly, realising that I was still in my day clothes, and that my head felt sore and fragile.

'You'll feel better when you've breakfasted,' said Holmes, coming to pour some coffee from the pot which stood on the bedside table.

I accepted the cup and saucer from him and sipped at the hot beverage. My eyes searched his face anxiously. He seemed perfectly sanguine, as if nothing had happened. Nothing
had
happened, I reminded myself hastily, as the coffee cleared my thoughts. He was washed, shaved and dressed already. He must have slipped out of bed some time ago, leaving me to sleep on.

There was a knock at the door, and a waiter entered, bearing a tray with a salver upon it, which he placed before me on the bed. Holmes nodded politely at him, and he left. I lifted the salver, and an appetising smell of hot scrambled eggs filled the room. I realised that I was hungry.

'Aren't you having any?' I asked.

Holmes smiled. 'I breakfasted on fresh croissants,' he said, 'about an hour ago.'

'What time is it then?' I saw that the morning must be well advanced.

'Almost ten-thirty, my dear Doctor. You have slept well. And when you have breakfasted and made yourself look decent, I intend to introduce you to Paris by daylight. A stroll will do you the world of good.'

He was right. As we walked arm in arm along the banks of the Seine, lingering at the stalls of the
bouquinistes
, breathing in the autumn breeze which stirred the sunlight among the dark, thinning leaves of the trees, I felt an upsurge of strength and well-being such as I had not experienced for years. The wine from last night which still sang in my veins served only to lend a transparent, keen quality to our surroundings. I will never forget that morning, that walk. I could scarcely believe that twenty-four hours could have wrought such a change.

Occasionally Holmes would halt abruptly and peer after some figure in the crowd or after a passing carriage.

'Have you heard any news of Ralph Spencer?' I asked, as we sat in the shady doorway of a cafe, sipping at a beverage
of chocolat froid
, a delight that was new to me and which promised to become addictive.

'Not yet,' he answered. 'But I do have contacts here, and they will let me know immediately there is any news one way or the other.' He sighed. 'We can only hope that the rumours are true. If Spencer dies, only Moran will be left, and he cannot evade justice forever. It is only a matter of time.'

He turned to me with a hesitant, anxious look on his face.

'What arrangements did you make, Watson, before you left England? Can you stay here indefinitely?'

'I hardly had time to make any,' I said. 'I said that I might be away for a fortnight. Anstruther is minding my practice.'

He looked at me almost shyly, and passed a hand over his sleek black hair.

'Will you stay here with me indefinitely?' he asked. 'I cannot return yet; I have to wait until the coast is clear for me. It may be a few months, and I think--if you were with me, it would not seem so long.'

I was so moved by his faltering manner that I could only whisper my reply.

'I will stay.'

'Thank you,' he said.

That afternoon I sent a wire to Anstruther. It was all most irregular, I knew. Probably I would have no practice to go back to. Luckily, I had acquired a capable housekeeper after Mary's death; at least I need not worry that the household would sink into chaos. I was careful to make arrangements about the servants' wages.

'I suppose your brother will hear of all this,' I said to Holmes. 'What will he do?'

'There is nothing he can do.' Holmes' mouth had set into a thin, hard line. I felt a fierce stab of joy.

He turned back to the mirror to complete his preparations. We were going to dine out again, at his insistence. I sat on the bed and looked around at his room, at the accumulation of paraphernalia he had picked up on his travels.

A soapstone Buddha sat smooth and complacent upon the mantelpiece, glowing softly in the light from the gas bracket. A carved ivory shoe-horn lay beside it, its handle writhing with fantastic beasts and small, intricate flowers. A small but gorgeous Persian rug was draped over the back of the armchair. But
the pike de resistance
sat on a high-backed chair by the window.

It was a wax bust of Holmes, a perfect, even an alarming likeness. He said that it had been modelled in Grenoble; he appeared to be inordinately proud of it. The expression was one of fierce repose, the profile was aquiline, noble. A smile of amusement came to my face as my eyes rested upon it, and I bit my lip.

'You are so vain, Holmes.'

He was knotting his dress tie, looking down his nose at his own reflection. He followed my gaze in the mirror.

'It's a very good likeness, Watson,' he said peevishly. 'True art is the mirror of nature.'

'Not according to the latest theories,' I said, 'which state quite convincingly that nature is but a poor imitation of art.' I favoured him with a swift, unpleasant smile as he turned to me from the mirror.

'Monsieur Oscar Meunier, who spent some days in moulding that likeness, said that my features were more interesting than any he had modelled. He said that I presented a challenge to his skill, and that he had, in his own estimation, surpassed himself.'

'Did he now?' I said, in weighted tones.

Holmes flushed with annoyance. He
was
vain.

'Do you mean to say,' I continued, 'that you had to sit with that expression on your face for days on end? Did you offer yourself to this Monsieur Meunier, or was he so overcome by one glimpse of your interesting features that he cast himself at your feet and begged you to do him the honour--'

A cushion came sailing through the air towards me and I fended it off with my elbow.

'We struck up a mutually beneficial acquaintance,' said Holmes loftily. 'Monsieur Meunier is a most interesting and gifted man.'

He turned back to the mirror, in which he watched me, no doubt, as I recovered my dignity and donned a suitably sardonic expression.

∗ ∗ ∗

'What will happen to your practice?' he asked, some days later.

'It will shrivel to nothing,' I murmured lazily. We were sitting on the bank of the river, watching the barges go by. Holmes sucked thoughtfully on his pipe.

'You don't sound very worried. Do you have enough money to live on?'

'Probably not.' I lit a cigarette. If I were not in mourning, I too would wear a straw hat, I thought, toying idly with the band of Holmes' headgear as it lay on the grass between us. I was all too well aware that even in Paris it was considered unconventional for one still in mourning to dine out and attend concerts as I had been doing. The hotel staff viewed my sudden change of mood since my arrival with some suspicion. But Mary--Mary would understand.

Her memory sobered me.

'I signed away all Mary's money and belongings, you know,' I said, 'to Mrs Forrester.'

Holmes' grey eyes widened. 'That was generous of you.'

'It was important,' I said. 'I could not bear to think of her feeling like--'I saw him flinch, and trailed off. 'Anyway,' I said, 'I have a little.'

He gazed into the middle distance for a while, and then appeared to change the subject completely.

'I heard this morning,' he said, 'that Ralph Spencer is dead.'

I stared at him. So that was what this morning's excitement had been about. A telegram had arrived for him at the desk, just after breakfast, and he had gone out immediately on reading it, with no further explanation than that he would be back at the hotel for lunch. I had seen the old, familiar gleam in his eyes, and wisely had decided to refrain from questioning him.

'I went to the house,' he said. 'I took care not to be observed; but there was really no need for caution. There can be no doubt that it is true; relatives and mourners everywhere, and the news is already in the papers.'

'Good heavens, Holmes,' I said, clutching his hat in my excitement, 'this is wonderful! So now there is only Colonel Sebastian Moran.'

'Yes,' he said calmly. 'I will have to find some way of approaching my old contacts in London, so that I can keep myself informed of his movements. And we must watch the English papers, Watson. I will get him.'

His eyes narrowed to bright slits in his face, and he drummed his ringers impatiently on his knee.

'And then,' I said softly, 'we will be able to go back home.'

'Back home. Yes.' Holmes' face relaxed, and again he stared pensively across the brown water.

'Watson,' he said slowly, after a pause, 'what if you sold your practice? Do you think you could get a good price for it?'

'Well--yes, I suppose I could,' I said, surprised. 'But--'

I left the question unasked. He spent a long time relighting his pipe. The eyes were hooded.

'Do you think--when the way is clear,' he said at last, 'and we can return to London, do you think you could move back in with me? To Baker Street?' He turned quickly to meet my gaze. 'I know it's only lodgings, and you are used to your own establishment, but--'

In a moment he would tell me that he earned so much a year, and that his prospects were good. I felt the laughter bubbling up inside me.

'Yes!' I said, as soon as I could, gasping for breath. 'Yes. All right. Yes!'

With a supreme effort, I suppressed my laughter, so as not to make a spectacle of myself to the approaching group of people taking their afternoon walk
en famille:
tall, distinguished-looking father, much younger mother in lace and parasole, boy, girl, nursemaid and baby,
tout comme ilfaut.

'I accept,' I said soberly, when they had passed. Holmes regarded me with mischievous gravity.

'Thank you,'I added.

He nodded, and drew on his pipe.

--POSTSCRIPT
--

I
T WAS, as Holmes had predicted, some months before an opportunity arose for us to move in on Colonel Sebastian Moran. The story of our subsequent investigation, leading to Moran's arrest for murder, is detailed in my 'Adventure of the Empty House'.

I had, of course, to preface it with an explanation of Holmes' 'return from the dead', and here, by combining the essential facts with a small measure of fiction, and by placing our meeting in London rather than in Paris, I flatter myself that I produced a fairly convincing story. At least, it appeared to convince the public at the time, although I am aware that it has come in for some discerning criticism since. My literary agent was of course well aware of my sojourn in Paris, and it was he who convinced me that it would be unwise and unnecessary to emphasise my reunion with Holmes by distinguishing it from his return to Baker Street.

We did return to Baker Street, however, as the reading public knows. I did sell my practice, to a distant relative of Holmes, in fact; though it was some time before I realised that Holmes himself had put up the money.

My friend was welcomed back to life with open arms by everyone outside the criminal fraternity, and I resumed my role as his Boswell. The next few years were, I think, the happiest of my life, in spite of the tragic and dangerous public events which occurred in the literary world a couple of years later, and cast a long shadow across the social and political landscape.

I leave here this account of the true circumstances surrounding Holmes' disappearance and return. Although I am well aware that from one point of view it can be seen as inadvisable and reckless of me to detail these events in writing, I felt that I owed it to myself to set down somewhere the real nature of the final problem, and the painful process of its resolution.