Dr Watson's flight into marriage

In May 1891, Sherlock Holmes wrestled Moriarty on edge of the Reichenbach Falls and fell to his 'death'. Rohase Piercy's My Dearest Holmes gives us privileged access to what was passing in the Great Detective's mind and heart in the weeks leading up to his death - and above all, how it affected his faithful friend Watson.

Here's poor Dr Watson at breakfast with his wife - there's a hint of trouble to come.

We sat at the breakfast table, my wife and I, on the morning of the 23rd of April 1891, discussing the morning’s post. Mary had received a letter from her former employer, Mrs Cecil Forrester, which had engrossed her for a full quarter of an hour - much to my relief, for I had some private correspondence of my own to peruse.

‘Well, James,’ she said, when she had set down her letter with a smile, ‘can I help you to more coffee?’

I looked at her in some alarm. ‘James?’ I repeated.

She gestured with the coffee pot towards the envelope. ‘Dr James Watson. I am apt at reading upside down, you know.’

‘Oh, that.’ I gave a nervous laugh.

‘Yes, that. I wish you would tell me when you’ve been using a pseudonym. It could be very awkward - supposing the gentleman were to call, and I in my innocence were to disillusion him?’

I felt myself blushing, and sighed to cover my embarrassment. ‘I do not think that is very likely.’

‘Ah, but you should guard against all eventualities. I wonder what the maid thought when she read the envelope?’

I grimaced, and sipped at my coffee. ‘He asked my name. I hardly knew him. I did not give any surname at all. I don’t know how he discovered it.’

‘He probably read ‘Dr J Watson’ on your hat-band, or something. Did you give him our address?’

‘Of course not!’

‘Then how …?’ she gestured towards the letter.

‘He must have found it out …’ I trailed off nervously, wondering how.

Mary leaned back in her chair and surveyed me anxiously. ‘Is he asking you for money?’

‘No, he is trying to arrange another meeting.’

‘A gentleman?’ She raised an eyebrow.

‘A soldier.’

‘Ah, I see. Do be careful, John.’

‘Don’t worry, I will decline the invitation. And he’ll have too much to lose himself to try and pester me.’

I spoke confidently, trying to disguise the unsettling effect the brief note from my companion of the evening before last was having upon me and wondering when I had grown so careless. What Holmes would say, if he knew! But Mary was obviously reassured, for she picked up her own letter and smiled at me.

We had an easy, affectionate relationship, free from the expectations and hence from many of the pitfalls usually incumbent upon husband and wife. We liked one another, had much in common, and could guarantee each other discreet cover for the pursuance of our own tastes in companionship. My published account of our wooing in The Sign Of Four was accurate in one respect: it was, as has often been remarked, a rather rapid business. But why should we wait? We had nothing to lose, and much to gain, from a public alliance, and Mary had the blessing of Mrs Forrester, whose young son was fast approaching school age and no longer in need of a governess. I had hoped for a similar blessing from Sherlock Holmes, of course; but this I had absolutely failed to procure.

‘I have an invitation also,’ said Mary, carefully folding her correspondence and replacing it in the envelope. ‘And if it’s all the same to you, I would like to accept. Isobel has invited me to spend a fortnight at Hastings, now that the school term has started and Valentine is out of the way.’

‘That is a terrible way to speak of such a sweet little boy.’

Mary narrowed her eyes at me, and poured herself a third cup of coffee. ‘I should like to leave tomorrow,’ was all she said.

Isobel, of course, was none other than Mrs Cecil Forrester, who some eighteen months ago had made her deceased brother’s house in Hastings her permanent residence. Mary was in the habit of visiting her there regularly, and naturally I never made any demur. I lit a cigarette and smiled graciously. ‘You have my permission, Mrs Watson.’

Her reply was fortunately delayed by the arrival of the maid to clear away the breakfast things, and in the interval it was, I believe, somewhat modified. ‘I expect you will have a visit.’

I tried to look nonplussed. ‘I hope not, if I refuse this invitation.’

‘You know perfectly well who I mean,’ she said severely, pursing her lips. ‘And I will tell you in advance that I thank him for his kind enquiries, and send my regards.’

‘How civilised, to be sure. But I do not expect to see him, Mary. I believe he is still in France.’

‘If he knows I am away he will turn up, as sure as day follows night. John, do try to make him understand that I would never stand on my position - that I would never try to come between you. Heaven knows I owe him enough! And he knows he has no reason to resent me.’

I sighed. ‘Ah, my dear,’ I said, ‘there is nothing I would like better than to see you both good friends. But he will not change his attitude, because he will never admit to harbouring resentment in the first place. I’ve come to suspect that the circumstances make no difference to him - I have left him, and he is determined to punish me for it, even though he admitted with his own lips that he could give me no reason to stay. I had hoped it would be different but - well, there’s nothing to be done.’

Mary sighed also, and rose from the table. As she passed me she reached for my hand and clasped it sympathetically. ‘I’m so sorry, John,’ she said. ‘It seems you have not done so well out of this arrangement as I have.’

‘Oh, I do pretty well on the whole,’ I said with calculated nonchalance, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. ‘After all, I’m a rising star in the medical profession, with my own establishment, an unusually harmonious marriage, and some extremely talented friends. I rub shoulders with the rich and famous now, did you know?’

‘Yes, so you keep telling me. But you have not yet produced one invitation to a first night.’

‘Be patient, Mrs Watson, be patient.’

She shook her head indulgently as she left the room.

My smile faded when she had gone, and I lit a second cigarette. Against hope, I wondered whether I might indeed expect a visit from Sherlock Holmes. I had received two notes from him over the last three months, dated from Narbonne and from Nîmes, from which I gathered that his stay in France was likely to be a long one; though he did not tell me more than what I had read for myself in the newspapers, namely that he had been engaged by the French government upon a matter of supreme importance. Still, he had not forgotten me. He had written, twice. He wanted me to know where he was, and what he was doing. In the early days of my marriage, I had tried several times to invite him to dinner. Only once had I succeeded, and the occasion had not been a success. He was very civil to Mary, but when left alone with me at the dinner table he fell into a sulk and refused to converse in the old, easy way. I see now that it was insensitive of me to patronise him with these invitations; knowing as I did the insecurity that lay behind his precise, logical façade, it was unfair of me to flaunt my newfound domestic respectability. But then again, knowing as he did the real reason for my flight into marriage it was unfair of him to be so resentful.

The passage of three years made no difference to his attitude. He would visit me, as Mary said, uninvited and at odd hours, either when she was from home or when the hour was so late that he knew she had in all probability retired for the night. He would smoke my tobacco, make comments upon my appearance and amuse himself by deducing how I had spent my day, whether I’d had any other visitors lately, the state of my health etc. He would than ask casually whether ‘Mrs Watson’ were in, and upon receiving the expected reply would invariably request that I abandon my practice for the next few days and accompany him upon whichever investigation was currently in hand. I had, as I have mentioned elsewhere, an ‘accommodating neighbour’ in Dr Anstruther, who could usually be prevailed upon to cover for me on these occasions; but I think I would have followed Holmes at a moment’s notice, even if it had meant losing my practice altogether.

Time and marriage had not altered my feelings for him; and I, grasping at straws, was pleased to read in his minute observations of me, his constant reminders that he ‘knew my habits’, the confidence and alacrity with which he summoned me from my home and work, and even in his unreasonable jealousy of poor Mary, a sign of that affection for me which he had never allowed himself to express.

Sometimes, if he knew Mary to be home, he would summon me by telegram to his side. I always went, however inconvenient the time. Mary understood.

I dropped in at Baker Street a few times, uninvited. He was pleased to see me, I think, but it was painful for both of us to find ourselves alone together on the old shared territory; and he could never resist rubbing salt into the wound by remarking how wedlock suited me, how much weight I had gained, how thriving was my appearance and so on.

As time passed, we saw one another less and less frequently. He engrossed himself in his work; since my published accounts of his cases had made him well known, he was much sought after.

I knew that his cocaine habit had increased its hold, and that there was nothing I could do or say to dissuade him from it. At the conclusion of the Sholto affair, I had made a rather tasteless remark to the effect that I had done better out of the case than he, since I had gained a wife, and he not even the proper recognition for all his work since the credit was likely to go to Athelney Jones. ‘There still remains the cocaine bottle,’ was all Holmes had said.

I understand now what I could not then perceive, that he used the drug to deaden the turmoil within him, and that my marriage increased that turmoil. But my instinct at the time was one of self-preservation, and since my love for him made life at Baker Street a torment to me, I grasped the lucky chance that had come my way and left him to the tender mercies of the drug.

I was startled out of my reverie by the entrance of the maid announcing that the first patient of the day had arrived. I had not even heard the doorbell. Hastily I removed my dressing gown, donned my frock-coat, and made my way to my consulting room. For the next few hours at least, I must put Sherlock Holmes out of my mind.

‘Well, here is the train already,’ said Mary as we approached the platform. ‘I might as well get on and find myself a good seat. You don’t have to wait.’

‘I would like to wave you off,’ I said. I missed her when she was away, and it always surprised me. Sometimes I wondered whether she missed me when I disappeared in answer to a summons from Holmes. If she did, she never showed it. We approached the ladies’ carriage, and she was pleased to find it uncrowded.

‘I shall probably travel back on the Sunday,’ she said. ‘It will be quieter. Unless you hear otherwise, you may expect me back for dinner in just under a fortnight.’

I nodded. ‘Do give my regards to Mrs Forrester. I hope you find her well.’

‘So do I. Do you know, it has been nearly three months … we’ll have much to talk about!’

I laughed. ‘Will there be ... other guests?’

‘Not at first, I hope. But if I should encounter Anne D’Arcy, I will be sure to remember you to her.’ ‘Please do.’ I was aware that a mutual wariness existed between my wife and Miss D’Arcy, and that Mrs Forrester was the cause of it; but I never enquired too deeply into the complications of their circle. To be honest, I preferred not to contemplate the details of Mary’s private life; which was unreasonable in me, as she was perfectly sanguine about mine.

Mary boarded the train, and I assisted her with her portmanteau. She settled herself at the window seat. ‘Anyway John, James or whatever you call yourself, be sure to keep well; and be discreet, there’s a good boy.’

‘I am always discreet,’ I said somewhat huffily.

‘My dear husband, you are not. But far be it from me to lecture you. Just don’t shock the servants, and if you should be any chance be whisked away by you-know-whom, do just pause and send me a wire. If I return to an empty house and find that I could have prolonged my visit I shall be most annoyed.’

‘Prolong your visit anyway, my dear, if you wish; but I do not anticipate being whisked away. I shall certainly be in touch if anything untoward occurs.’

The final slamming of doors and the shrill of the guard’s whistle proclaimed that the train was about to depart. Mary hastily leaned out of the window and kissed me on both cheeks. ‘Have fun,’ she said.

‘And you, Mrs Watson.’

I felt no premonition, no twinge of foreboding; but the ground was to shift under my feet before I saw her again.