Holmes and Watson (22 page)

Holmes was to report the results of his interview with the Khalifa to the Foreign Office, foreshadowing his later work as a Government agent. Like Persia, the Sudan had great political interest for the British.
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Although nominally an Egyptian dependency, a British force, led by Watson’s old hero, General Gordon, had been ordered into the territory in 1884 to quell the Sudanese rebels, an attack which led to Gordon’s death at Khartoum the following year. In 1896, another force was to be sent to recapture the city and conquer the area, thus establishing British supremacy in the Sudan.

After his adventures in Tibet, the Middle East and Africa, Holmes moved nearer to home, settling for several months in the south of France, where he carried out research into coal-tar derivatives at a laboratory in Montpellier, which Watson spells as ‘Montpelier’.

Some eminent Sherlockian scholars, among them Gavin Brend, have cast considerable doubt on Holmes’ account of his activities between 1891 and 1894, the Great Hiatus, claiming that the whole story is fictitious and that Holmes
‘was, in fact, in London during this period, secretly engaged in tracking down those members of Moriarty’s organisation who had escaped arrest. Gavin Brend in
My Dear Holmes
has gone so far as to suggest that Holmes actually joined the gang in disguise in order to bring about its final destruction. If he did so, he was singularly unsuccessful, as Colonel Moran, together with at least one other gang member, was still at liberty in the spring of 1894. According to another theory, Holmes was in America during the Great Hiatus, helping the police investigate the Borden case at Fall River, Massachusetts, in August 1892, in which Lizzie Borden was accused of murdering her father and stepmother.

Other more bizarre theories have suggested that Moriarty never in fact existed and that Holmes invented him in order to explain away some of his investigative failures, or that Holmes and Moriarty were one and the same person, while Monsignor Ronald Knox believed that Holmes indeed died at the Reichenbach Falls and that Watson made up the rest of the adventures, a theory shared by other Sherlockian scholars. Still yet another theory relating to this period suggests Holmes married Irene Adler while he was in Florence.
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If he did so, it was a remarkably short marriage, the bride dying not long after
the ceremony, for in ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, published in September 1891, Watson refers to the ‘late’ Irene Adler.

All that can be said in rebuttal of this and any of the other theories is to repeat the statement that, ingenious though they are, there is no evidence in the canon to support them and, in the face of this irrefutable fact, one can only accept Holmes’ statement as the truth: that Moriarty died at the Reichenbach Falls and that after his death Holmes did indeed travel to Tibet, Persia and the Sudan, arriving in late 1893 or early 1894 at Montpellier.

My only quarrel with Holmes’ account, an objection with which many other commentators agree, is over the reason he later gave to Watson for his failure to inform him that he had survived his encounter with Professor Moriarty. It was the same excuse he had made in the Dying Detective case for not taking Watson into his confidence on that occasion: Watson was too honest and, had he known the truth, he might unwittingly have betrayed it. As Holmes expresses it, ‘Several times during the last three years I have taken up my pen to write to you, but always I feared lest your affectionate regard for me should tempt you to some indiscretion which would betray my secret.’ Like his explanation for feigning his own death, this sounds suspiciously like an attempt to excuse the inexcusable.

Although Holmes was prepared to admit he could be mistaken in some of his investigative deductions, he was not given to deep or critical self-examination and his first instinct when faced with the need to explain his own
unacceptable behaviour was to look for something or someone else to blame, in this case, Watson’s inability to dissemble. By doing this he could justify his conduct not only to Watson but also to himself. Holmes was probably unaware of this tendency of his. Certainly Watson, not given himself to subtle psychological enquiry and prone anyway to believe Holmes was usually right, accepted Holmes’ explanation without question.

It was an aspect of their relationship on which Holmes relied when in the spring of 1894 he decided to return from the dead.

Even before he learnt of the Adair murder, Holmes was thinking of returning to England. His researches into coal-tar derivatives at the laboratory in Montpellier were completed and there was nothing to keep him in France. There may have been other considerations in his mind as well, among them shortage of money. His three years of extensive travel must have been expensive and presumably he had no opportunity to earn any fees while he was abroad. Nostalgia, too, may have played a part
and while Holmes would never have admitted to such a sentiment, he may have felt homesick for London and the Baker Street lodgings. Certainly after his return, he speaks with pleasure of sitting once more in his old armchair in his familiar room.

During his time in Montpellier, Holmes had been reading the English newspapers with close attention, looking for any reports which might suggest Colonel Moran was back in England and had resumed his criminal career. For while Moran remained at large, Holmes’ own life was in danger. There was nothing he could do to avert this risk. As there was no incriminating evidence against him, Holmes could hardly appeal to a magistrate for legal protection without proof of the man’s guilt. Nor could he shoot Moran on sight without running the risk of being charged himself with murder.

The murder of the young aristocrat, the Honourable Ronald Adair, gave Holmes the opportunity he was looking for. As soon as he read the newspaper reports of the inquest on Adair and learnt that a certain Colonel Moran had been playing cards with the victim only a few hours before his death, Holmes was convinced that Moran had committed the murder. And if he needed further proof, the fact that Adair had been shot through the head with an expanding bullet, the same ammunition used in Moran’s celebrated airgun, would have provided it.

The Adair murder would have interested Holmes even if Moran’s name had not been associated with it. It was a classic, locked-room mystery with no apparent
motive. Adair, who appeared to have no enemies, was found murdered at 11.20 p.m. on the evening of Friday 30th March 1894 in his room on the second floor (American third floor) of his mother’s house in Park Lane, after returning home at 10 p.m. from the Bagatelle Card Club, where he had been playing whist. His partner had been Colonel Moran, with whom Adair had played cards on other occasions, including one game a few weeks earlier in which they had won the considerable sum of £420.

As coins and banknotes totalling £37 10s were found on the table, together with a paper listing sums of money against the names of fellow club members, it was assumed that, at the time he was shot, Adair had been working out his gains and losses at cards. The door of the room in which his body was discovered was locked, no gun was found and no sound of a shot had been heard. There was no sign either of an intruder, although the window of the room was open. But it was more than twenty feet to the ground, with no means of ready access nearby such as a drain-pipe. Moreover, a bed of crocuses underneath the window was undisturbed.

As soon as he read the reports of Adair’s murder, Holmes set off at once for London, a plan already in his mind for Moran’s capture, because on the journey he stopped off at Grenoble, where he commissioned the French artist, Monsieur Oscar Meunier, to model a wax bust of himself. This, at least, is the implication. Holmes would hardly have gone to the trouble and expense of having the
model made until he knew Moran’s whereabouts and his association with the Adair murder case.

The exact date of Holmes’ arrival in London is not known, Watson having for some inexplicable reason failed to record it, apart from a vague reference to an ‘April evening’. One would have thought that, even if he were not keeping a journal at the time, the day of his reunion with Holmes would have been etched in figures of fire in his memory. But it must have been early April. Adair was murdered on 30th March and Holmes arrived not long after the inquest, which presumably took place shortly after the crime was committed. The date accepted by many Sherlockian scholars is 5th April, the weather on that evening being, according to Watson’s description, ‘bleak and boisterous’, which agrees with the meteorological records for that date.

On first consideration, this would hardly have given time for the inquest to be held and reports of its findings to be published in the English newspapers, which would then have had to be sent to Montpellier by sea and rail. In addition, Holmes had to commission the bust from Monsieur Meunier, which took ‘some days’, possibly two, and to spend at least another two days travelling from Montpellier to Grenoble and then to Paris and from there to Calais to catch the cross-Channel packet to Dover. All of this could not have been accomplished in six days unless Holmes had prior knowledge of the facts. It is highly likely, therefore, that Mycroft informed Holmes by telegraph of Adair’s murder and Moran’s association
with it on Saturday, 31st March, having learnt of it through gossip among the members of his London club. Apparently, he failed to tell his brother that he had kept on his Baker Street rooms, for Holmes only learnt of this fact on his arrival at his old lodgings.

On the matter of dating, the bed of crocuses underneath Adair’s window has caused a few raised eyebrows among some commentators, who assert that these flowers bloom much earlier in the spring, usually in February, never in April. On this basis, D. Martin Dakin has argued that Watson was once again careless over dates and that Adair’s murder took place on 30th January, Holmes returning during early February. Others have suggested that Watson was mistaken and that the crocuses were some other spring flowers. However, according to the gardening books, there are different species of crocus, some flowering later than others, among them the
Crocus areus
which comes into bloom between late February and early April.

Holmes would have arrived from Dover by train at Victoria station, the same terminus from which he and Watson had set out three years earlier for their Continental tour. From there he went straight to Baker Street, arriving at 2 p.m., probably on the afternoon of Thursday, 5th April. He had already deduced that Moran would have 221B under surveillance. Colonel Moran was no fool and, once his name appeared in the newspapers in connection with the Adair murder, he himself would have realised that Holmes would be tempted to return to London.
There was no need, therefore, for him to have had a watch kept on the house for the whole three years of Holmes’ absence, as some commentators have suggested before scornfully dismissing it as so unlikely as to make this part of the account highly dubious, an example of setting up an Aunt Sally with the sole purpose of knocking it down. The surveillance would have lasted only a few days and Holmes’ use of the word ‘continuously’ refers merely to the day and night observation kept on the house once his return was expected.

The man on watch when Holmes arrived was known to him and he immediately recognised him as Parker, a garotter
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by profession and a player on the jew’s harp in his leisure time, who had been a member of the late Professor Moriarty’s criminal organisation. As Holmes correctly guessed, Parker immediately hurried off to inform Moran of Holmes’ return. In his turn, Moran, knowing his own life was in jeopardy now that Holmes was back in London, set about making his own plans to kill him, a stratagem Holmes also deduced, although he was to be proved wrong in one important detail.

Holmes’ movements on that first afternoon after his arrival in Baker Street can be established in some detail.
Even before he set foot inside his old lodgings, he would have noticed that Camden House,
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directly opposite 221B, was vacant, an opportunity which was too good to miss. Once Mrs Hudson had recovered from her violent fit of hysterics at seeing Holmes returned from the dead and he had instructed her in the part she was to play in his plan, Holmes almost certainly set off for the estate agent whose name would have appeared on the ‘Vacant’ sign outside Camden House. No doubt pretending an interest in the property, he was able to obtain a key to the empty house.

That same afternoon he also visited Scotland Yard, where he warned the police that an attempt would be made on his life that night in Baker Street, a warning which Inspector Lestrade took so seriously that he decided to take over the case himself. Although the trap for Moran was now laid, Holmes had one more task to complete: a visit to 247 Park Lane in order to see for himself the site of Adair’s murder.

What Holmes failed to do during that first afternoon in London was to inform Watson of his survival, an omission it is difficult to accept, even allowing for the fact that his chief concern at the time was setting in motion his plan for Moran’s arrest. Watson was certainly in his thoughts. As he sat in his familiar armchair in the Baker Street sitting-room, Holmes wished Watson were occupying the chair opposite his. But that was as far as
he went. If work was the best antidote to sorrow, it also served as a prophylactic against other emotions as well. Watson would have to wait. And yet it would have taken very little time or effort on Holmes’ part to have written to Watson – and to Mrs Hudson, too, for that matter – or to have sent a note by messenger to warn them not only of his survival but of his imminent reappearance. Once again, Holmes’ love of the dramatic overrode all thought of the effects his sudden return would have on them.

For his visit to Park Lane, Holmes disguised himself as an elderly bookseller, presumably as a precaution against Moran or one of his associates recognising him in the street and killing him there and then.

At six o’clock that same evening, Watson also arrived outside the Adair residence. His presence there, though coincidental, was not entirely fortuitous. His interest in crime, formed during his ten-year friendship with Holmes,
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had not waned after Holmes’ apparent death. Fascinated by the Park Lane Mystery, as the Adair murder was called, Watson had spent the day, as he drove round visiting his patients, turning the facts over in his mind and trying to use Holmes’ methods to come to some conclusion about the case. Holmes was therefore still very much in Watson’s thoughts and he regretted that his ‘poor friend’ was not there to take up the investigation.

Watson was, of course, unaware of the significance of Moran’s name in connection with the Adair murder. As we have seen, Moran was recruited into the Moriarty organisation only in early 1891, after the Professor had moved to London, having resigned from his university post. As Holmes had not confided in Watson his continuing interest in Moriarty and his gang, Watson had never heard of either Moran or of his position as the Professor’s Chief of Staff. He was ignorant also of the Colonel’s presence at the Reichenbach Falls and of his attempt there on Holmes’ life. Watson’s interest in the Adair murder arose therefore out of its inherent mystery, not from any known connection with Holmes’ old enemy, Colonel Sebastian Moran.

So, having completed his medical duties for the day, Watson decided to walk from Kensington across Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park to Park Lane, where he joined the group of curious bystanders who had gathered outside the Adair house. Among them was a tall, thin man wearing tinted spectacles who, he deduced, was a private detective and who was expounding his own theories about the murder. As D. Martin Dakin has suggested, he was probably Barker, a private detective from Surrey and Holmes’ rival, whom Watson was later to encounter in the Retired Colourman inquiry. Watson describes him then as ‘a tall, dark, heavily moustached man’ who wore ‘grey-tinted sun-glasses’.

The man’s conclusions were so absurd that Watson turned away in disgust. As he did so, he bumped into
an elderly, bent man who was standing behind him in the crowd, causing him to drop the books he was carrying under his arm. Not recognising the man as Holmes, Watson apologised and made his way back to Kensington.

Watson’s inability to see through Holmes’ disguise on this as on other occasions has caused much amusement among some Sherlockian commentators, who seize on it as another example of Watson’s obtuseness, leading them to believe he was, quite frankly, not over-bright. However, when these incidents are analysed, it is seen that Watson had good reason to be deceived. Out of the seven occasions when he was fooled by Holmes’ disguises, in one, the incident in Park Lane, he caught only a glimpse of his friend. On three others, he saw Holmes only in poor light, as happened in the opium den during the Man with the Twisted Lip inquiry. In the Final Problem, when he again failed to recognise Holmes as the elderly Italian priest, they were in the carriage of the Continental express which was stationary in the murky interior of Victoria station, while in the Dying Detective case, when Holmes made himself up to appear gravely ill, the weather was foggy, the room gloomy and Holmes was careful to keep Watson well away from the bed in which he was lying. When he appeared as an old master mariner in the Sign of Four case, Holmes was careful to cover most of his face with a scarf. The element of surprise played a part in the Lady Frances Carfax case, in which Watson was taken completely off-guard when Holmes came dashing out of a
café in Montpellier dressed as a French workman, for he believed Holmes was in London.

Poor light may also be responsible when, having returned to his Kensington house from his inspection of the scene of Adair’s murder, Watson again failed to recognise the elderly, white-haired bookseller who was shown into his study as Holmes. It was by then evening, the light was fading and, although the lamps may have been lit, the room was probably not brilliantly illuminated. Moreover, as in the Lady Frances Carfax case, the last person Watson expected to see was Holmes, whom he believed had died three years before at the Reichenbach Falls.

The shock of Holmes’ sudden and unexpected reappearance was so great that, for the only time in his life, Watson fainted, a measure of the depth of his emotions at seeing his old friend once more. Even Holmes was taken aback by this reaction.