My Dear Watson

forever

Chapter One

As I go over the manuscripts in which my old friend and colleague, Dr. John Watson, chronicled the accounts of my more notable criminal investigations, I feel compelled at last to take up a pen myself, in explanation as much as in gratitude. Not being an experienced writer of anything more substantial than mountains of hastily scribbled research notes, I beg the reader’s indulgence if the story I am about to recount lacks the witty observations and personal commentary my good-natured friend contributed to his.

Allow me first to introduce myself. I am known to the world as Sherlock Holmes. My occupation, as well as preoccupation, is the deciphering of mysteries. You may well have heard of me through Watson’s tales of my exploits, which have enjoyed considerable success on the market, as I understand. It is true I have gained a measure of respectability through the publication of these journals. Those members of the local constabulary as well as Scotland Yard who disdained the accuracy of my deductive reasoning at the start of my career later frequently sought my assistance on cases of particular curiosity or difficulty. In fact, it has been some time since I accepted a new case. Generally, my days are spent in research and beekeeping. My heart, as Watson would say, is no longer in my work. And so, finding myself increasingly chained to the ennui of commonplace existence, I take advantage of this time now to commit to paper a history of one of the last investigations on which Watson and I collaborated, and which he, ultimately, was unable to record in full.

The case reveals two shocking circumstances, one of which until now the world was entirely ignorant; the other a matter of significance perhaps only to me. The latter has so severely disrupted the routine of my life, however, that I am resolved to throw years of disciplined discretion to the wind and reveal on these pages the secret which will forever change society’s estimation of me. I fully understand and accept the consequences of this admission, with the conviction that the truth should at last be told and in the hope that Watson, my dear companion, should forgive me my greatest deception.

Before I put forth any narrative on the disturbing events of the case in point, I must first preface it with another, ostensibly unrelated, story. The story of a little girl.

On January 6, 1854, a child named Lucy was born in North Yorkshire, England, to a well-to-do couple. Her father, although properly educated at Eton and Cambridge, interested himself more in the pursuit of horses and women than in the affairs of business. Her mother, a well-bred woman of great moral and religious conviction, was nonetheless of a frail and emotional constitution. They were parents already of a precocious seven-year-old boy who was, even by that time, four levels beyond the rest of his age group in public school.

As Lucy grew older, it was clear that she, too, was endowed with a special quality of intellectual curiosity and determination that had so evidently escaped her parents. The young girl annoyed them and her governess with her incessant questions about matters they thought trivial and which they could not answer. Her brother, as well, could not be bothered by the tedious inquisitions of his little sister. And so Lucy resolved to discover the solutions to the world’s great mysteries on her own.

She took to her brother’s discarded books with relish. Although it was not the custom, and still is not for the most part, for young girls to be schooled in much more than domestic knowledge (though it was rarely put to use), she begged her parents to have her schooled in the traditionally male disciplines. This suggestion was summarily dismissed. A tutor was hired to instruct her in the art of needlepoint and the science of cooking. She was also taught some history, French, and a little painting. She was disorganised and absent-minded, however, accidentally leaving sewing needles under chair cushions and burning loaves of bread into leaden bricks.

She could not keep her active mind within the confines of the kitchen. After lessons, deep into the night, she would read by candlelight the texts and journals her brother had left on his visits home from college. On weekends, if she could coerce her governess to take her, she would spend hours in libraries, devouring everything from Greek classics to histories of Irish lace making. Her mind was a vast storehouse of information but she kept notes, nonetheless. Her notes collected quickly and she kept them filed, secretly, under her mattress. She knew her parents would not approve, or even understand.

Lucy did not have any playmates. She was not sociable and did not make friends easily. Bored by the silly and trivial interests of the giggling girls her age, and not allowed to join in the activities of the boys, she kept to herself, feeling a stranger in both camps.

One evening when she was 14 years old, Lucy came in from the garden where she had been reading Madame Bovary. It had started to rain. The large house was dark when she came inside and the floorboards creaked as her boots made their way to the staircase.

Suddenly a crash upstairs shattered the silence. A scream followed, then a man’s voice shouting and a woman sobbing.

Lucy stood frozen at the foot of the stair, looking up. Her mother came flying blindly out of her parents’ room, cupping her wet face in her hands. She stumbled toward the railing.

Get out! she cried. Don’t touch me - ever again!

Just then she pulled away from Lucy’s father at the top of the stair and turned. She lost her footing on the carpet and with a shallow gasp tumbled head first down the steps, landing like wet laundry at the girl’s feet.

Lucy found herself shrieking violently. She looked up to see a strange woman with red hair, wearing a red silk kimono, beside her father, peering down at her.

Lucy knelt beside her mother, patting her cheeks and calling to her. She touched her hand to her mother’s chest but felt no heartbeat.

Standing, the young girl’s knees began to buckle like a newborn calf’s but she faced her father with an audacity she had always been taught to restrain in the presence of adults.

She’s dead, said Lucy. You killed her.

Suddenly she was outside, running into the night, breathing hard, uncertain whether her eyes were wet with tears or rain. She licked her lips. They tasted salty.

She made her way to the library before it closed and hid herself among the fiction stacks all night. She made a pillow of Dickens’s Great Expectations and comforted herself with the familiarity of these old, dependable friends. Truth, she concluded, is more harsh than any fiction.

The next day she made her way to Oxford on the last few shillings she possessed and sought out her older brother who was by that time engaged in the study of law at Christ Church.

You must take me in! she pleaded.

What? objected her brother. Not likely. The last thing I need here is a little sister underfoot. Besides, it’s against the rules.

Damn the rules! she cried.

Her brother stared at her in horror.

Where did you learn that kind of language? he gasped. Quickly - ask God to forgive you.

Forgive me? she laughed ironically. He should ask for my forgiveness.

What are you saying? Why aren’t you at home? What is the matter?

Answer me this, my clever brother, she said, looking around at the book-lined dormitory walls. Who is it - please tell me - who forgives God?

Lucy spent the night in her brother’s room but the next day he was dead set against her staying.

If the masters find out, I’ll be sent down, he objected.

They won’t find out.

Of course they will. Girls aren’t allowed in chambers. You’ll stick out for miles.

The girl stood in front of the long mirror by the wardrobe and looked at herself carefully, pulling her long, dark hair back from her angular face.

Have you a pair of scissors? she asked.

Yes, answered her brother curiously.

Well, give them to me then.

He did so, then watched in shock as a large lock of his sister’s coal-dark hair tumbled to the floor and lay lifeless at her feet.

What in heaven’s name are you doing? he cried.

Not in heaven’s name, my dear brother. And not in mine, either. In the name of a new boy who wants more than anything else to study the world and its machinations. To learn the reasons why evil exists and to stamp it out! To be strong and impenetrable where others are weak. And to be faithful in a world of infidels - faithful to myself, and to myself alone.

Are you sure Oxford has the appropriate curriculum? her brother teased.

Lucy did not flinch.

You were always such a serious little thing, he said. Always muddying your frocks, dissecting insects, or some other such rot. Those are boys’ studies. Why couldn’t you just learn to embroider and curtsey correctly like other girls? You could at least have learned the piano. Look at you! You’ll never get a husband!

I play the violin a bit.

I noticed the calloused fingertips of your left hand.

Yes. I took up the one you left at home and practised when mother and father were out.

That’s no instrument for a girl! he said, shaking his head. What good is it?

It helps me think.

Just as I suspected. No good at all.

And so her feminine tresses went the way of the dustbin. She acquired some cast-off clothes that one of the first-year boys had left bagged in the hall for laundering, and made her brother solemnly vow never to tell anyone her secret.

The sudden exposure of her neck and ears made Lucy feel naked and vulnerable so she took to wearing a cap, which was helpful also in shading her face from too careful scrutiny. She had never had delicate features, however, a source of great embarrassment and shame to her mother, but a blessing for which she was now grateful. Instead of the gently rounded contours that were the feminine ideal at the time, she had become sharper looking, almost gaunt, as she grew older. Her figure was sparse and lean and the new shirts hung from her bony shoulders as if from wire hangers. Although she was slender and lacked her mother’s curves, she developed early and stood taller by several inches than most girls and even a few boys.

She found boys’ clothing to be surprisingly comfortable and soon became accustomed to walking as her brother did with her hands stuffed into her pockets. Her stride changed noticeably as a result. Instead of trying to glide smoothly across the floor as if on wheels, she began to take larger, more directed steps and found she enjoyed the convenience of not having to lift her skirts at every mud puddle. Her waist was glad to be free of the imprisoning corsets, sticking pins, and stays her mother had begun to make her wear. Her mother had also strapped a heavy mahogany backboard on her to straighten her posture, which she was forced to wear for years, even in bed. A leather and steel headpiece was fashioned as a brace in the hope that it would flatten her hawkish nose.

She thought all these efforts to make her attractive merely fruitless ventures anyway, and this opinion was constantly reinforced by her mother’s pitying consolations about the importance of moral character and the transience of beauty.

Presently, the children’s father sent word for them to come home for their mother’s funeral, but Lucy refused to budge.

"It was listed in the Times as an ‘unfortunate household accident,’ she sneered indignantly. But it was his fault. He killed her."

You are being melodramatic, my little sister. Father could not have done such a thing.

He deceived her. She was weak and ignorant, and he deceived her. He, and . . . that woman. That red-headed woman.

Come, come, my naive little sibling. You can’t seriously tell me you have been totally unaware of such arrangements?

What arrangements?

Her brother laughed.

Why, our father’s proclivity for . . . ladies of questionable virtue. Surely you noticed something.

The girl blushed.

It’s a perfectly commonplace occurrence, my girl, he continued. Not only in our house, but in those of most men our father’s age. Even younger. In fact, I happen to know there’s hardly one of our neighbours who isn’t a frequent visitor to . . . a house of indiscretion . . . or who keeps a mistress on the side.

A mistress!

What a child you are, dear sister. Perhaps it is best you remain disguised, if what you truly desire is to study the world. Deception lurks everywhere, and the best way to challenge it may be on its own terms.

Lucy remained at Oxford with her brother for several months, hiding in his room and venturing outside only at night or when absolutely necessary. He stuffed food into his pockets at meals to bring back for her. He supplied her with test tubes, Bunsen burners, even a microscope for the chemistry experiments that so consumed her days of late. In her readings of chemistry, anatomy, toxicology, law, and sensational literature (accounts of murder, rape, mutilation, and physical deformities) she was already well beyond the level of most university scholars. In the study of politics, philosophy, astronomy, and the arts, however, she was alarmingly deficient.

In one instance she raised her furrowed brow from the textbook in which it was buried and frowned at her brother.

Is it true, she asked, that the sun and moon are of differing size and are merely at varying distances from the earth?

Her brother looked aghast at her.

You mean to say you have not, until this very moment, been aware of such an elementary fact of astronomy?

Hmmm, she murmured, scribbling something briefly on her pad. I shall keep this on file. It could be of use to me some day.

One night, after she turned 15, Lucy was found out. The caretaker, noticing one of the young boys returning to his room after curfew, accosted the youth. To the surprise of the elder gentlemen, however, this was no boy. Lucy was allowed to spend the night in the infirmary but was expelled the next morning, after fruitless enquiries as to the identity of her host. She later wrote to her brother, explaining the situation and pledging her undying gratitude for his cooperation and hospitality.

Little did Lucy realize that what at first had been a temporary solution to her hunger for knowledge was a situation that would shape the rest of her life. She was repulsed by the idea of marriage and conceded to herself that, even if she could somehow return to the commonplace banalities that made up women’s lives, she would not be very good at it. Her brother was right: She had not the kind of attributes a