because some of the prints from the other set overlapped the first. And it was the second set going out that had the indentations from the walking stick. So someone-some woman-went out after Andrea Maples, and that woman came back. She went out with the walking stick and came back without it.”
“I missed that,” Holmes said.
“It’s easier to tell than to observe,” I told him.
“I had made up my mind about what I was going to find before I went to look,” he said. “The deductive process suffers from preconceptions.”
“It’s a matter of eliminating the impossible,” I told him. “Then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
“I shall remember that,” he said. “I still cannot fathom that Lucy was that jealous of Andrea.”
“She was, but not in the way you imagine,” I told him.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you remember that I suggested that you notice Lucinda’s ears?”
“Yes.” Holmes looked puzzled. “They looked like-ears.”
“Their shape was quite distinctive, and quite different from those of Andrea. The basic shape of the ear seems to be constant within a family. This was a reasonable indication that Andrea and Lucinda were not really sisters.”
“Not really sisters? Then they were-what?”
“They were lovers,” I told him. “There are women who fall in love with other women, just as there are men who fall in love with other men. The ancient Greeks thought it quite normal.”
“Lovers?”
“Andrea preferred women to men, and Lucinda was her, ah, mate.”
“But-Professor Maples is her husband.”
“I assume it was truly a marriage of convenience. If you look at the bedrooms it is clear that Andrea and Lucy usually shared a bedroom-Lucy’s-as they both have quantities of clothing in it. And I would assume that Professor Maples and Mr. Crisboy have a similar arrangement.”
“You think the professor and Crisboy-but they…”
“A German professor named Ulrichs has coined a word for such unions; he calls them homo-sexual. In some societies they are accepted, and in some they are condemned. We live in the latter.”
“Holmes sat down in the straight-back chair. “That is so,” he said. “So you think they derived this method of keeping their relationships concealed?”
“I imagine the marriage, if there was a marriage, and Andrea’s adopting Lucy as her ‘sister’ was established well before the menage moved here. It was the ideal solution, each protecting the other from the scorn of society and the sting of the laws against sodomy and such behavior.”
“But Andrea went to the cottage to have, ah, intimate relations with Faulting.”
“She liked to flirt, you must have observed that. And she obviously wasn’t picky as to which gender she flirted with, or with which gender she, let us say, consummated her flirting. There are women like that, many of them it seems unusually attractive and, ah, compelling. Augustus Caesar’s daughter Julia seems to have been one of them, according to Suetonius. Andrea found Faulting attractive, and was determined to have him. My guess is that she and Lucy had words about it, but Andrea went to meet Faulting anyway, while Lucy remained in her room and worked herself into a jealous rage. She didn’t intend to kill Andrea; that’s shown by the fact that she didn’t open the sword cane, although she must have known about it.”
Holmes was silent for a minute, and I could see some powerful emotion growing within him. “You had this all figured out,” he said, turning to me, his words tight and controlled.
“Much of it,” I admitted. “But don’t berate yourself for missing it. I was familiar with the idea of homo- sexuality through my reading, and several acquaintances of mine have told me of such relationships. I had the knowledge and you didn’t.”
But I had misjudged the direction of Holmes’ thoughts. The fury in him suddenly exploded. “You could have stopped this,” he screamed. “You let it happen!”
I backed away to avoid either of us doing something we would later regret. “I knew nothing of Andrea’s tryst,” I told him, “nor Lucinda’s fury.”
Holmes took a deep breath. “No,” He said, “you couldn’t have stopped the murder, but you could have stopped Lucy’s suicide. Clearly you knew what she intended.”
“You credit me with a prescience I do not possess,” I told him.
“You were fairly clear on what she intended an hour after the event,” he said. “Why couldn’t you have rushed out here before?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “Until you told me what she had said to you, it didn’t strike me-”
“It didn’t strike you!”
“You spoke to her yourself,” I said, “and yet you guessed nothing.”
“I didn’t know what you knew,” he said. “I was a fool. But you-what were you?”
I had no answer for him. Perhaps I should have guessed what Lucy intended. Perhaps I did guess. Perhaps, on some unconscious level I weighed the options of her ending her own life, or of her facing an English jury, and then being taken out one cold morning, and having the hood tied around her head and the heavy hemp rope around her neck, and hearing a pusillanimous parson murmuring homilies at her until they sprang the trap.
A few minutes later the police arrived. The next day Professor Maples was released from custody and returned home. Within a month he and Crisboy had packed up and left the college. Although nothing was ever officially said about their relationship, the rumors followed them to Maples’ next position, and to the one after that, until finally they left Britain entirely. I lost track of them after that. Holmes left the college at the end of the term. I believe that, after taking a year off, he subsequently enroled at Cambridge.
Holmes has never forgiven me for what he believes I did. He has also, it would seem, never forgiven the fair sex for the transgressions of Lucinda Moys. I did not at the time realize the depth of his feelings toward her. Perhaps he didn’t either. His feeling toward me is unfortunate and has led, over the years, to some monstrous accusations on his part. I am no saint. Indeed, as it happens I eventually found myself on the other side of the law as often as not. I am pleased to call myself England’s first consulting criminal, as I indulge in breaking the laws of my country to support my scientific endeavors. But when Holmes calls me “the Napoleon of crime,” is he not perhaps seeing, through the mists of time, the blanket-covered body of that unfortunate girl whose death he blames on me? And could it be that he is reflecting on the fact that the first, perhaps the only, woman he ever loved was incapable of loving him in return?
At any rate, I issue one last stern warning to those of you who repeat Holmes’s foul canards about me in print, or otherwise: there are certain of the laws of our land that I embrace heartily, and the laws of libel and slander ride high on the list. Beware!
REICHENBACH
You remember, I assume, the newspaper accounts of the accidental deaths of the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and the eminent mathematician Professor James Moriarty at Kessel Falls at the River Reichenbach in Switzerland. Or perhaps you’ve read Dr. Watson’s account of the confrontation at, as he called it, “Reichenbach Falls” between Holmes and the “master criminal” Moriarty. It seems that everyone in the English speaking world has read of, or at least heard of the incident. And then, you will recall, some three years later Holmes reappeared to Watson and explained his absence and supposed death in some detail. Well, I am here to tell you that almost every word of these accounts, including Holmes’s recantation, is false, and I should know. I am Professor James Moriarty.
It is not the fault of the newspapers, who published with no more than their usual disregard for the facts, nor of Dr. Watson, who believed everything told to him by his friend and companion Sherlock Holmes. There can be no greater friend than one who believes whatever he is told no matter how strongly it is belied by the evidence to the contrary. Is that not, after all, the basis of most religion?
