Sherlock Holmes and the Lady in Black Read online

  Unlike myself, Holmes is not in the least uxorious. I can never imagine him settling down to married life: to the small day-to-day pleasures and mishaps, and what I call ‘home-centred interests’. So the likelihood of his marrying Irene Adler, if such an opportunity should arise, was out of the question. All I can say is that she was the only woman he might have married.

  Apart from being exceptionally beautiful, a woman whom men would die for, as Holmes himself stated, she was talented and, most important of all, intelligent. In fact, Holmes admitted that in his career, he had been beaten four times, but only once by a woman and that woman I am convinced was Irene Adler. I am prepared to stake my life on that.

  The King of Bohemia was less complimentary about her, accusing her of having a ‘soul of steel’. She may indeed have been spirited and with a mind of her own, traits that Holmes would have approved of, but one feels the King of Bohemia’s comments were made out of bitterness and perhaps also sour grapes, for Irene Adler subsequently rejected him for another man: Godfrey Norton, a handsome young lawyer from the Inner Temple with whom she arranged a hasty marriage at St Monica’s Church in Edgware Road. It was on this occasion that Holmes had caught that soul-shattering glimpse of her as she hurried out of her house on the way to her wedding, which he inadvertently attended as a witness.

  As payment for his services, Irene Adler, now Mrs Godfrey Norton, gave him a sovereign that Holmes there and then decided to wear on his watch chain as a memento, the very same coin that was lying in the leather box Holmes had set down in front of me on the table.

  Readers who might be curious about the outcome of the scandal in Bohemia case and the subsequent fate of the King’s reputation can rest assured. Although Irene Adler had removed the compromising photograph and letters, she had left a letter praising Holmes’ investigative skills and making it clear that she would no longer threaten the King. Instead she left in place of the compromising photograph of them together a photograph of herself alone that Holmes claimed as a memento.

  It was a successful outcome for Holmes at the time but, from my point of view, in the present situation was hardly satisfactory. It did nothing to explain the link between Irene Adler and the Lady in Black although I thought I could guess the answer.

  ‘They looked alike!’ I cried, suddenly struck by a coup de foudre of my own.

  Holmes regarded me quizzically.

  ‘If you are referring to the two ladies in question then you are only partly correct,’ he replied. ‘The likeness was not physical. It was subtler than that. But you are very near the mark, my dear fellow, and I admire your perspicacity. Yes, there was a similarity. In both cases I caught only a glimpse of them but it was enough to rouse my attention. It was something about the tilt of the head or the way they moved their hands – oh, Watson. I really cannot explain it because I myself do not know the answer. But from the moment I saw her sitting on that rock, I had to discover her secret, for I knew she had one, and it was essential I uncovered the truth.’

  ‘I see,’ I replied but I confess I only half understood what he was saying. ‘That’s why you invited me here.’

  ‘Yes, but that is only part of it. I needed your presence, your down-to-earth common sense, the strength of your loyalty.’ Here he broke off with an embarrassed laugh. ‘Oh, Watson, it’s really quite simple. I wanted you here as my friend.’

  I was deeply moved and, I must admit, close to tears, but knowing that would never do, I cleared my throat and said, ‘I’m happy to be of help.’

  It was time to change the subject before both of us found it too uncomfortable but there was one point I had to clarify.

  ‘If you don’t mind me asking, Holmes, what happened to her?’

  ‘To Irene Adler? I don’t know. She and her husband left England soon after the wedding. I wasn’t told where they went. I believe she died later although I don’t know where or when or of what. Like the Lady in Black, she remains an enigma.’

  And that was the end of the subject. Neither Holmes nor I ever referred to Irene Adler again. But I could not quite get her out of my mind; or rather, how the circumstances of his reaction to her reflected an aspect of Holmes personality that had troubled me for some time: his attitude to women, for that affected not only his relationship with me but also that with my wife.

  In my account, ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, I refer to Holmes’ opinion of ‘the softer passions’ which he never referred to without – and I quote my own words – ‘a jibe and a sneer’, a slight exaggeration on my part for, when he wished, he could be courteous and charming to women. But, basically, he disliked and distrusted them. Indeed, he himself admitted he had never loved or felt any emotion that was ‘akin to love’.

  Generally speaking he found them trivial, untrustworthy, illogical and vain, and I often wondered how or what had caused this resentment. I am now convinced that it was due to his childhood and upbringing.

  He never referred to his parents, not even his mother, and it occurred to me that it was his mother’s treatment of him as a child that had nurtured his attitude to the opposite sex. Perhaps she had been selfish, vain, and untrustworthy, neglectful of her son’s needs and not showing him the love and attention that children crave, so he had grown up with this huge gap in his emotional life, making him lack the ability to love.

  The only family member I ever met is his older brother, Mycroft, and he also showed the same aloofness and unsociability. He, too, never married and, in his case, had no friends at all, although he showed an almost paternal attachment to Holmes, addressing him as ‘my dear boy’. Otherwise he lived a solitary existence in lodgings in Pall Mall or his office in Whitehall, his only diversion being the evenings he spent at the Diogenes Club opposite his flat, and of which he was a co-founder. But even there, his hours were strictly limited from a quarter to five to twenty to eight. In addition, conversation was only allowed in the Stranger’s Room, so it was not exactly a companionable venue. He hardly ever visited Holmes in Baker Street although Holmes called on him from time to time at the Diogenes.

  However, Mycroft showed a brotherly interest in Holmes’ career, assisting him with his more difficult cases on several occasions. Like Holmes, he was highly intelligent with a unique ability for remembering and correlating facts; a gift that Mycroft used to distinction in his role of confidential adviser to the government, so that Holmes claimed, with a show of fraternal pride, at times, Mycroft was the government.

  This similarity in the personalities of the two brothers confirmed my suspicion that this was due to their joint upbringing rather than an individual quirk in Holmes’ character and that I was correct in thinking that a lack of motherly love was to blame.

  When I joined him in Fulworth, I was much relieved to discover that there had been fundamental changes in Holmes’ personality. He had become, as they say, a new man and this transformation, I felt, could be put down to the loss of stress he had been subjected to in his former career as a consulting detective. I had noticed in the weeks prior to his retirement he had become more and more erratic in his behaviour, on one occasion clenching his fists and punching into the air in a fit of uncontrollable excitement, on others being depressed and low-spirited.

  Now that stress had been lifted, he had become much improved although some characteristics of the old Holmes remained, for example, his impatience with Mrs B although that was understandable. She could at times be an exasperating woman. He still preserved his secretiveness as well, an example of which was demonstrated in his deception over the two packages containing our disguises for the ruse he had planned to gain access to Fulworth Hall. But much of it was simply to tease me and to amuse himself and I was used enough to his sense of humour either to tolerate or ignore it.

  Since his retirement he had made new friends, and took better care of his health, swimming in the lagoons in the beach when the tide went out and taking long walks over the Downs, a change in lifestyle that, as a doctor, I thoroughly approved of. He had also given
up his habit of injecting himself with cocaine – at least there was no sign of syringes lying about – and he no longer suffered from those periods of exhaustion when he would lie on the sofa for days on end, staring up at the ceiling, a symptom of the narcotic effects of the drug.

  But best of all, at least in my opinion, was the change in his attitude to women, or to one woman in particular.

  She is, of course, Maud Bellamy whom, Holmes stated in his own words, he would always remember, as ‘a most complete and remarkable woman’ referring also to her physical appearance, her ‘perfect clear cut face’ and ‘delicate colouring’. Unlike his reaction to Irene Adler, his feelings for Maud Bellamy are those of a father or an uncle, tender and affectionate, showing none of the passionate infatuation he had shown for ‘the woman’.

  This change of heart on Holmes’ part gave me great hope that he would be willing to accept my wife, not as the cause of a betrayal but as a friend, and that the final gap that still existed between us would be closed for good.

  I was later to discover that this hope had been fulfilled.

  In our conversation about Irene Adler, I had temporarily forgotten Holmes’ earlier remarks about a person missing from Langdale Pike’s report on his research into the Lady in Black investigation. Holmes, too, seemed to have set it to one side for he did not refer to it again until two days later when Holmes received a telephone call, apparently expected by him, which referred to that person’s name. I was delighted to discover that I had guessed correctly for it was the same individual whom I, too, had chosen.

  And with that choice, as later events were to prove, the last piece of the puzzle finally dropped into place and the mystery of the Lady in Black was solved.

  1. In fact, Watson has mistaken the date. He records its happening on 20th March 1888 but he had not married at that time. Most editors have corrected the year to 1889. On occasion he was careless over facts and figures. Alternatively, it could be the typewriter who misread Dr Watson’s manuscript, taking the final figure for ‘9’ for an ‘8’. Some doctors are notorious for the poor legibility of their handwriting.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  There was, however, one aspect of Holmes’ character that I had not taken into consideration: his tendency towards secretiveness, sometimes over the most trivial matters, such as hiding away the two parcels that contained the disguises for his stratagem to gain access to Fulworth Hall, when he could simply have told me of their contents at the time he had acquired them.

  Part of this tendency arose from his innate and sometimes bizarre sense of humour, such as the time, when, having recovered the Mazarin stone known as the Crown diamond and placed it in Lord Cantlemere’s safe keeping, he slipped the gem into the man’s pocket, an act which his Lordship, much bewildered, regarded as ‘perverse’ although Holmes tried to pass it off as an ‘impish’ example of his love of practical jokes.

  I experienced another example of his secretiveness the next day although at the time I thought little of it.

  In the mornings, it had become a routine that I would start the preparations for breakfast, such as laying the table and making the toast while Holmes was busy with tasks concerning the care of his bees that usually took about ten minutes, or so.

  That particular morning, I had everything ready, the breakfast china laid out, the toast and butter on the table along with the customary pot of honey but Holmes did not return and, a little surprised by his non-appearance, I opened the front door to find out what had kept him.

  He was nowhere to be seen, so I retreated back to the kitchen where I had put a pan of milk on the stove to heat up, anxious that it might boil over if I left it there for too long. It was while I was in the kitchen that I heard Holmes letting himself into the sitting room.

  ‘Oh, you’re back,’ I remarked, as I joined him at the table.

  ‘Back?’ he repeated. ‘I was never gone, my dear fellow.’

  I left the matter there. It seemed too petty to follow it up any further although it did strike me as a little odd that he had not given me even a simple explanation for his absence for those few minutes.

  The following day another strange little event occurred, this time over a letter that was delivered by the morning post. As I was in the hall at the time, I picked it up from the floor and took it through to the sitting room to give it to him.

  He glanced at it in a perfunctory manner and then stuffed it into his pocket without saying a word.

  I found this reaction also a little unusual: most people when handed a letter would make some remark about it if only to complain, ‘Oh, it’s only another bill.’ But Holmes said nothing and, like the business of his disappearing briefly at the previous breakfast-time, I said nothing either.

  He also made no reference to his avoidance of the cove when we left the cottage for our morning outing in order to evade Mrs B’s arrival. But this I could understand. Our recent conversation concerning Irene Adler had, I imagined, roused old memories that, at least for the time being, he preferred not to recall. Instead we went walking on the Downs, calling in at the Fisherman’s Arms for our usual hearty midday meal of home-baked bread and cheese washed down with a glass of ale.

  It was not until the third morning that this little mystery began to unravel.

  We had finished breakfast when suddenly, out of the blue, he said, ‘Would you be kind enough, Watson, to drive us to Barton today?’

  ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘Is it for any particular reason?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, it is. Do you remember me saying a little time ago that there was another person connected with our Lady in Black inquiry that we had not yet considered?’

  ‘Yes, indeed I do, Holmes. You asked me if I would guess who it was.’

  ‘And did you?’ he asked, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

  ‘Not a person so much as a place.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Abbot’s Farm,’ I replied, wondering where this brisk little exchange was taking us. ‘I thought at the time that it was worth a little more investigation. After all, it was the family home of the Lockharts and there could well be a connection.’

  ‘Oh, well done, Watson!’ Holmes exclaimed with none of his sardonic overtones, which often accompanied such praise. ‘You have hit the bullseye, as they say, my dear fellow. I was thinking exactly along the same lines myself. I am certain Abbot’s Farm and its inhabitants are well worth a visit.’

  ‘Is that why you want to go to Barton this morning?’

  ‘Another bullseye!’ he cried but this time he was being ironic, ‘I’ll make a private consulting detective of you yet.’

  ‘So what are proposing Holmes? Not another little stratagem like the one we used at Fulworth Hall. Will I be expected to wear a beard this time? I mean, we can hardly just turn up without any warning.’

  ‘That has already been settled,’ he replied with an airy insouciance. ‘I have arranged a meeting with them at the farm this morning. In fact we’ve been invited there for coffee at eleven o’clock.’

  ‘Really?’ I was astonished. ‘When was all this planned?’

  ‘Yesterday, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I said.

  And I did indeed see; probably more than Holmes himself realised. For the little mystery surrounding his absence two days before and even the arrival of the letter and Holmes’ squirrelling it away upstairs was now explained. There was a pillar box a few yards up the lane where a letter could be posted in which these arrangements were suggested and the reply was sent the following day.

  But why on earth Holmes had chosen to behave with all this unnecessary secrecy had still not been satisfactorily settled.

  I said, ‘Why did you not tell me, Holmes?’

  ‘About what?’ he asked.

  ‘The letters,’ I replied.

  ‘Oh, those,’ he said, shrugging off my question.

  ‘Yes, those. There’s no need for you to tell me if you prefer not to.’ I continued. ‘But
I was under the impression that we were working together to solve this Lady in Black inquiry.’

  Holmes’ response was to burst out laughing, not quite the reaction I had been expecting but a relief all the same.

  ‘Oh, Watson, Watson!’ he chided. ‘How refreshingly frank you can be. Embarrassingly so at times. I did correspond with Mr Lockhart who is the present owner of Abbot’s Farm. To be honest, I was not entirely truthful in my letter to him either. In fact, I told a downright lie, which I thought you would disapprove of, knowing your dislike of fibs. And how did I know that, you may ask? By your habit of crossing your fingers behind your back when you yourself have had to – well, shall we say obfuscate the facts? It is a gesture you probably picked up when you were a child as a sign to bring good luck or ward off evil spirits. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes, Holmes,’ I said, much abashed.

  ‘Don’t be embarrassed, my dear fellow. Everyone has some little quirk or mannerism. But to return to the business of the letters. In mine to Mr Lockhart, I asked if I might visit him in the near future as I believed there was a family connection and, as I would be in the area for only a short time, I would be grateful if a meeting could be arranged in the next few days. So, there you are, Watson. Only half-lies; not complete whoppers. Am I forgiven?’

  ‘Of course!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘And also,’ Holmes added with one of his wry smiles, ‘I rather enjoy teasing you at times. Now, is there anything else you would like to know about this visit to the Lockharts?’

  ‘Only to ask why you have decided to call on them? Do you think they have anything of importance to add to our Lady in Black inquiry?’

  ‘Probably not, but there are one or two aspects of the case that I would like to clarify.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘They are small, minor details but worth inquiring into all the same. For example, why did Eleanor Lockhart marry Henry Trevalyan? According to Mrs B, he was a selfish man, “stuck-up”, to use her expression, unpopular in the village, who disinherited his daughter because she married someone in “trade”, demeaning to him because he wanted to play the role of lord of the manor. I wondered why. I also wondered why he left Cornwall, to come to Fulworth. According to that little pamphlet in the church, he came from a well-to-do family, owners of a tin mining company. So what persuaded him to pack up and leave? Was it on his own volition or was he pushed? I feel there’s another mystery buried there.