Mr Holmes—then it’s a lot darker and nowhere near as simple as bloody ‘gang violence’.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
If I hadn’t felt full after my meal, I certainly did after Johnson’s talk. He had a way of speaking that assaulted both the ears and brain. God knows how Holmes, a man who saw the strict delineation of facts as perfection itself, managed to filter what he needed out of it. Nonetheless he always seemed to manage.
“Plenty to be going on with there, I think,” he said. “I may well call on you again. This strikes me as a case where local knowledge —or perhaps just a strong right fist—will be frequently needed.”
“I’m here whenever you need me, Mr Holmes,” Johnson replied. “You know that.”
Holmes paid for our meal and announced that a short walk would do us both good.
“We must decide our next step, Watson,” he said. “And the cold air will energise us to do just that.”
Shinwell Johnson left us the minute we had stepped out of the restaurant, slipping away almost mid-sentence to return to the world he knew so well but which was alien to us. As we walked the streets of Belgravia, Holmes was mostly silent, digesting the facts of the case as well as our meal. Every now and then he would tap out a rhythm on the pavement slabs with his cane, or stop to stare in the window of a shop, the very figure of a relaxed man about town. I knew he was cogitating furiously beneath the surface, however—a swan with urgent, pedalling feet.
“There is nothing to be gained by observing from afar,” he announced after a while, gazing up at the hazy sky above us. “We must make an expedition into enemy territory.”
“A trip to Rotherhithe?”
“Certainly.” He smiled and looked at me. “Will you come?”
“It makes a change for you to ask.” Usually it was all I could do to find out where it was he vanished to in the small hours, leaping— so very unnecessarily—from his bedroom window leaving nothing but the trace of old tobacco and thickly applied spirit gum.
“I know how much you like wandering around the streets with a concealed weapon,” he replied, glancing at my jacket pocket, no doubt checking whether I was carrying it now. I wasn’t.
“In your company I have frequently had occasion to use it.”
“What a good thing it is that the police force owe us a certain latitude.”
“How else would their inspectors keep their reputations?” There could be little doubt that Holmes’ existence accounted for a fair proportion of the law courts’ business.
“It’s hardly that,” he replied, “what with you blowing the whistle on them every week in your stories. Frankly I’m surprised you’ll find a man in uniform to give you the time of day.”
“It’s you that patronises them, not me.”
“A contentious point—your pen …”
“Your words.”
“Sometimes.” Once again, I was being poked at by an editor.
“Always,” I insisted. “Just not necessarily quoted in the right context.”
“Misrepresentation.”
“Dramatic licence,” I sighed. “And my stories have made the entire English-speaking world regard you as a genius. So if you class that as misrepresentation, I’ll be happy to make you seem more idiotic next time.”
He laughed. “Why not? It might at least give our postal service a rest.”
“You couldn’t bear it.”
“Nonsense! The work is its own reward.”
“I believed that of you once,” I replied. “Then I noticed how often you liked to announce a man’s occupation just by looking at his trouser cuffs.”
“Observation.”
“Showing off,” I smiled.
“There is a difference between explaining method to those intellectually incapable of making their own conclusions, and ‘showing off’!” he shouted. And just like that, friendly banter had become earnest—one could never tell with Holmes.
“Indeed there is,” I asserted. “One employs humility.”
My friend was silenced, if only for a moment. “Very well,” he announced finally, his voice as petulant as that of a child, “I shall no longer explain myself and the responsibility falls on you to keep up!”
With that he marched into the road in search of a cab.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was hardly the first time I had been at the receiving end of one of Holmes’ bad moods. His manner was so changeable, swinging from excitement that bordered on mania to the most impenetrable brown studies. It was inevitable therefore that, as his only friend, I should sometimes see the very worst of him. I will say though that I took these moods with considerably more patience than some might have done. In fact, I have often played them down in my case studies as I didn’t want to give them undue importance. For those who spent any time with Holmes (and there were few who did, both by their choice and his reluctance to be in company) the speed with which his manner could change was an integral part of his personality.
During the first years of our marriage, Mary had wondered how I had managed to stand it. “He is a genius,” she would admit, “but I am at a loss as to how you could have lived with him.” It really wasn’t all that difficult and she grew to understand. Some people are just built differently from others. Holmes’ mind was a thing of wonder, never to find its match again. But for every leap of deductive brilliance, every astounding piece of analysis, there was a price to be paid. Quite simply, genius has its faults. He exercised that brain of his so much, abused it terribly, that it is no wonder that it repaid him with shifting moods. A man cannot kick a soccer ball between the goalposts with such frequency without occasionally tearing a ligament and suffering from a limp.
The important thing to remember about Holmes is this: the man was brilliant and also the very best friend I ever had. That he could manage to be both sets him apart as a giant amongst men.
This is not to say he couldn’t often be extremely annoying.
CHAPTER NINE
“Quite why we need to go to all this fuss is beyond me,” I admitted as Holmes set to combing the long, grey wig he had prepared for me.
“I have said I’ll offer no explanations,” he replied, “though the fact that you’d not last five minutes wandering about the backstreets of Rotherhithe as John Watson MD should be obvious. If you want to thoroughly explore an environment you must immerse yourself in it, you must
That and the fact that Holmes always did like dressing up.
By the time he’d finished I was an itching, irritable mess of false hair and make-up. Looking in the mirror that hung above the fireplace, I found myself face to face with a creature so grimy and hirsute I found it hard to accept him as me, no matter how much my logical mind knew better.
Holmes certainly had an eye for disguise. As I believe I may have mentioned before, his skill when he applied it to himself was not so much to hide his features beneath layer and layer of artificial subterfuge, but rather to adapt himself so as to appear to be someone else entirely. He achieved this trick by posture, intonation and natural expression, just as much as he did make-up. It appeared he had little faith that I might share his ability, as there was so little of John Watson to be seen! I must confess he was probably right to err on the side of caution. I had enjoyed theatricals at school—my Laertes brought a tear to the eye of the old nurse as she stood on hand to offer assistance should the fencing get out of hand—but I can’t say it was a skill that came readily. Perhaps it was my time in the army, for certainly the comradeship of soldiers teaches a man to be nothing more or less than himself, but the idea of pretending to be the natural occupier of this beard and hair made me distinctly nervous. I decided to experiment with a limp.
“My dear Watson,” came Holmes’ voice from the other room, “affecting problems with one’s gait is the province of music-hall comics and lousy Richard the Thirds. Kindly walk normally or you’ll stand out a mile.”
