Chapter Text
It may be remembered that after my marriage, and my subsequent start in private practice, the very intimate relations which had existed between Holmes and myself became to some extent modified. He still came to me from time to time when he desired a companion in his investigation, but these occasions grew more and more seldom, until I find that in the year 1890 there were only three cases of which I retain any record. - The Final Problem
Watson
I was no longer living in Baker Street after my marriage, but I saw a good deal of Holmes when I could. It was not unusual for me to drop in for a meal, to accompany him on a case, or spend hours or even days within our old rooms.
He was a busy man and did not have time to pay social calls to my home. It was convenient for me to stop in at Baker Street. I did not wish for my marriage to come between our friendship. It was no different than evenings spent at my club socializing with other men I knew. I was still collecting his stories to chronicle and needed to keep up with his cases. He found my presence helpful.
At least these were the rationalizations I told myself when I found my thoughts, or my feet, wandering to him.
I had long provided myself with other rationalizations about Holmes. He was the most observant man I had ever met; therefore, despite my attempts at concealment, he had surely observed my feelings for him during the course of our friendship. As he had certainly made this observation, yet had never made any acknowledgment of it, he therefore disregarded my feelings and was not bothered by them in the least. For years, both before my marriage and after, I operated under the assumption that Holmes knew my heart and took no heed. In truth, I was thankful he had not made any acknowledgement for I was sure he would have dismissed my feelings as frivolous, and that was something I was not sure I could bear. Rejection, probably, but not mockery. And so, our friendship continued on as ever.
Holmes had been increasingly distant of late and far more distracted than I could ever recall. He was a man often deep in thought, especially when engaged upon a case, but this was decidedly different in a way I could not place. He turned curious gazes upon me, as if trying to determine if I had finally observed something he had been waiting upon me to notice. Being Holmes, I gave this new oddity little mind. I believed he would divulge the matter in due time or that, possibly, I would muddle out the solution once given enough clues.
One late autumn afternoon, free of patients and finding myself at loose ends while Mary was away, I dropped by to hear the details of his latest case. Holmes was swirling a beaker over a flame and watching the color of the liquid change, apprising me of the facts, when the bell rang below. Without looking up from his experiment, he announced, “That will be a telegram from Lestrade. He found the missing jewels in the maid’s room and wants us to come around.”
It was not often that Sherlock Holmes was wrong.
I opened the door just as Mrs. Hudson’s hand was poised to knock and held out my hand for the message. She smiled at me fondly and placed it in my hand with a little mock curtsy, and I gave her a mock bow which earned a pat on the arm and a fond chuckle.
I have long been accustomed to reading Holmes’ mail out to him. Usually, he is occupied with something or other. Often, he cannot be bothered. Sometimes, I simply think he enjoys hearing my voice.
I ran my eyes over the lines and then slowly read them again. I had paused in the act of closing the door and this must have caught his attention, for he looked up with a knitted brown and asked, “What is it? Were they in the butler’s room?”
Telegram, S. Holmes, 221B Baker Street; 25 November 1890
LOVE IS NOT LOVE WHICH ALTERS STOP IS EVER FIXED MARK STOP
IS STAR TO EVERY WANDRING BARK STOP LOVE ALTERS NOT W BRIEF
HOURS WEEKS BEARS OUT EVEN TO EDGE OF DOOM STOP
I felt my throat go a bit tight as I turned to face him. “Here, you better… I — it is not from Lestrade. I apologize,” I said, embarrassed, laying the message down on the table beside him and hurriedly crossing to sit in my old chair and hide my startled expression behind the newspaper. The telegram bore no information as to the sender. Instead, it bore the words from a well-known Shakespearean sonnet about, of all things, love.
My mind reeled with the possibility that Holmes was distant because he was thinking of someone else during our visits. For a moment I felt a rising tide of emotion which I could not place. But then I stole a glance over the top of the newspaper and saw him sneering down at the message with contempt and my heart relaxed. Rising, he crumpled the slip of paper and tossed it into the fire. The bell sounded below.
“That,” he said over his shoulder, “will be Lestrade’s message. Wire back that I cannot be bothered with his trifles at present and will call upon the Yard in the morning. I’m going out.” And with that, he took up his coat and hat and closed the door behind him.
I wrote out a response that Holmes had been unavoidably detained and would call tomorrow, fishing a coin from my pocket for the lad. It took me some minutes after the boy had been dispatched to consider that Holmes could have handled the response himself as he had surely passed Mrs. Hudson or the boy in his leaving. It took me some additional minutes to remember that I was sitting in the man’s home alone, and I hastened to toss my cigarette into the fire and retrieve my hat. I wondered along the way to my own home just who had sent Holmes the romantic poem fragment and what it meant.
I could recall no episodes of poetic correspondence in the time we shared rooms together. Shakespeare was rarely mentioned, and even then, it was plays and not poetry which he quoted. I recalled no folios on the bookshelves from my time at Baker Street. In fact, the only books of poetry I remembered, at least that is what I presumed they were, had been in Greek and therefore wholly unintelligible to me.
Had the poetic telegram been a love letter? A coded message? A harmless joke? The odds were against this message being a communication about love, but they were not zero. If it had been a harmless joke, he would have mentioned it or made comment, I thought. It must be a coded message, I reasoned, but as to the sender or meaning, I was at a loss. I made a note of borrowing his monograph on cyphers when I called upon him next.
Holmes said nothing of the poetry incident during the visits which followed. Indeed, I would have let it pass from my own mind if I could not tell that there was something definitively upon his. I did not wish to pry, but I knew my friend well enough to know when he was consumed by a problem. If it were a case, I believed he would share it with me, as he had often remarked that stating the facts helped him to focus upon them.
As he had not mentioned a case, I could only assume it must be personal in nature. Perhaps he had received news of some unpleasant family business which troubled him. Or perhaps he was indeed engaged in a romantic relationship which was upon rocky ground (although I considered it quite unlikely, the thought did nag at me.) Whether the unusual telegram had any connection, I remained unsure, but my mind could not help but to connect his strange moods and the strange missive.
I made a point to go around to see him more regularly. In my devoted years by his side, I have learned to observe. I developed his habit of making certain observations second nature when meeting someone new – to notice scuffs on shoes or calluses on the fingers. However, I confess it required strict attention to apply his method to other areas of life. I found myself now turning what I knew of observation to my friend.
I dropped in some mornings to enjoy Mrs. Hudson’s breakfast, as I often did when Mary was away, since there was always something disagreeable about the state of breakfast at my own home in her absence. Many of our customs remained unchanged, despite our no longer sharing lodgings, and I fell into the old habit of reading the paper aloud to him when he’d not yet had the chance to read it himself.
I observed when I read from the agony column that he began to pace restlessly. Sometimes he would select a book from his shelf, seemingly at random, flipped through it idly, as if bored or pursuing some private line of thought while I read. I observed which passage he dismissed with the wave of his hand and which ones he paused to listen to with attention, his head to one side. I observed his scowls, his smirks, his nervous tapping fingers, and his looks of boredom as I read.
I observed, too, him watching me. He was not obvious about it. He would studiously ignore me upon my arrival to his rooms or should we meet upon a case, but I caught him glancing at me in a curious manner, now and again. He eyed me surreptitiously, as if he were afraid of something. I could not dispel the sense that something sinister troubled him. He was anxious, on edge.
The fact that something distressed him worried me; his nervous state influencing my own. I observed his increasing distance, noting fewer summons to assist him, and his abject indifference of me when I called upon him. One evening he stated sharply that he was “rather busy” even though he appeared to be otherwise unengaged, staring at the ceiling with a brooding look. I tried not to feel slighted at the rebuff, but I was careful to give him the space he seemed to need after that and kept my distance from Baker Street, waiting to be called upon. It was all most unlike him.
I did not hear from Holmes for some weeks and then received a letter from France stating he was upon a case and expected to be away for some time. He shared no details, but I assumed it must be of great importance if it were to take him from London for so long. I tried to convince myself that this case, whatever it was, must surely be the reason behind his strange moods.
With Holmes abroad and Mary away, I sat alone in my study reviewing my case notes one evening, preparing to set down one of his more curious tales, when I came across a note I’d scribbled in the margin of my notebook. At the time, I had recorded that Holmes believed this man to be formidable and sinister, “the controlling brain of the underworld” with one of the “first brains of Europe and all the powers of darkness at his back.” I had noted that Holmes believed the man to be quite on the same intellectual plane as himself and that he held that death was the only form of punishment within the man’s code.
I looked down at my notes and thought of Holmes’ strange, nervous moods and distant behavior. And then I recalled the telegram’s final words, “…even to the edge of doom” and I was gripped by a cold fear as I stared down at the name in my notes: Professor Moriarty.
Narbonne, France
23 December 1890
Dear Watson,
You will no doubt see in the papers that I am abroad assisting the French government upon a matter of some little importance. Having been called away rather unexpectedly, I expect to be detained for the foreseeable future. However, I did not wish to let the holiday season pass without sending you my warmest greetings and felicitations. Do remember, my dear Doctor, to check any Yuletide poultry for inedible or purloined goods. Pray give my greetings to Mrs. Watson. I remain,
Very Sincerely Yours,
Sherlock Holmes