You Buy Bones (11 page)

Watson's exhausted mind churned through several possible responses, but he knew from experience that whilst Holmes
appeared
to be generous with his insights, the least discouragement could keep him from talking for well a week. Watson liked the idea of rooming with a statue as much as the next man. “Holmes, I promise you if I was not so utterly exhausted, I would be accusing you of following me about London in the guise of Wiggins! Or was it truly Wiggins I gave the sausage to at noon?” He rubbed bloodshot eyes until the burning sensation faded; and Holmes began laughing around his pipe. Billows of smoke erupted from the corners of his mouth like the seams off a locomotive.

“Ah, you give me credit for my disguises that falls within the fantastic. Not that I've never wished for the ability to change my height! If there was some way to surmount that particular problem, I
assure
you I would be taking advantage of it on a daily basis.” Holmes paused to add another injection of smoke into the room. Watson couldn't help but notice the haze around the table lamp. “Not a difficult deduction at all... You have brought back a sack of Grozet for your consumption... Inspector Lestrade's addiction to gooseberry ale is almost a legend among Scotland Yard. The only Grozet that is not guaranteed to send a customer blind, deaf, or dumb - if not temporarily witless - is to be had off Montague Street. Before I found our rooms here, Lestrade would top off his consultations with me by detouring to the
Malmsey Keg
and washing his annoyances down with at least two pints.” Holmes detached his lips off the pipe long enough to exhale the ghosts of harsh shag. “But I am not privy to all your thoughts, my dear fellow. I for one have no idea what would inspire your collaboration with Lestrade.”

Watson's mind latched on the nearest available truth. “Lestrade intimated that the Yard is always in need of a police surgeon.” He admitted, and a small part of his psyche was gratified to see Holmes' eyebrows pop up whilst a frown tightened his chin down - the impression lengthened his entire face. “I am flattered, and I have promised I would look into it... but at this point in life, I confess I don't feel very capable of fulfilling such a post.” He nodded downward to his truly-aching shoulder, and honesty coloured his voice.

“My shoulder is still weak; my leg still hurts. A reliable income is always appreciated, but I'd be a liability no matter how they paint it.”

“My dear fellow, your talents would be put to waste at Scotland Yard.” Holmes waved off the whole mess with a flick of his pale wrist, bending his head to his pipe again. Despite the languid - dreamy, even - demeanor, Watson had the distinct impression that Holmes was annoyed straight down to bedrock. “I've met the usual lot who stands in for Police Surgeon. If you think
Lestrade and Gregson
are limited in their intelligence, I submit to you, all thoughts of logical conjecture are starved out in the autopsy rooms.

“And the coroner's trials? If there is one thing on which I
must
agree with Gregson and Lestrade, it is the observation that the judges who oversee these trials are pulled out of a most remarkable pool of mediocrity and pedantic intellect. One would have to go to the House of Lords to encounter such deliberate examples of oxygen-starved brain cells.”

Holmes stopped long enough to blow a geometrically graceful smoke ring whilst Watson mourned the fact that Holmes at his verbal best was completely unprintable, unless they both wanted to move to some wretched outpost of the Empire. “Watson, you are better off with a private practice;
you know this
.”

“Sometimes, I do
not
know.” Watson wondered that he could deflect Holmes' attention on to himself by scraping his every last nerve raw on the exposure of his insecurities. But, in a way, Holmes was an excellent conduit for the voice in his head he did not want to listen to. “May I remind you, London is still an unfathomable wilderness to me?”

“As it should be to anyone with common sense.” Holmes dismissed that with
another
flick of his wrist. “It is fatally dangerous at worst, and at best... chaotic and illogical. One may only cope by creating an oasis of reason and logic within the city... a depot of commonsense connected by other depots, by which sane people travel.”

“Holmes, how on earth do you do that?”

“Do what, my dear fellow?”

“Manage to... vivisect human nature in such a way. Are you positively certain you never tried your hand at fictional writing?”

Holmes' snort of feigned outrage was so pure it only made Watson's amusement grow; by perfect timing Mrs. Hudson emerged with a very heavy tray of hot food against the growing freeze. “Ah, Mrs. Hudson's famous Red Flannel.” Holmes announced. “Most excellent.”

Watson paused to wonder if Holmes was being so pleasant about his meal because he was trying to jolly his roommate out of his mood.
That
was a slightly uncomfortable thought, but not one that was easily dismissed. Normally the roles were reversed. And Holmes could say what he would about Scotland Yard; the doctor was aware that the detectives were astonished that it was the nightmare-plagued war veteran with chronic wounds that carried the
nurturing
role in 221B, and not the man who was still whole-cloth.

As much as he's smoked today, I'm surprised he even has an appetite;
Watson passed the butter to Holmes and searched for the pepper.
Perhaps that
is a factor to his ignorance of regular meals... I should look into that possibility. If
everything I ate tasted of tar and nicotine, I'd hardly want to eat myself...

Holmes was not finished with his new favourite topic. “I would be horrified if you went to work for Scotland Yard.” He informed the other man whilst he poured the hot lemon-water. “Not that the Yard could help but improve by your presence, but the cost would be your mental demotion.”
[25]

Watson drew on the reserves of patience he cultivated
specifically
for Sherlock Holmes - reserves that seemed to grow the more he stretched them. “I promised I would consider the matter.” He pointed out. “For my own peace of mind, I must think of alternatives.”
It isn't as though I'll get rich
with writing my small articles!

Holmes grunted and poured an unhealthy amount of honey into the lemon-water. “That is a bad lot.” He repeated.

“My impression is the men are decent enough.” Watson was beginning to feel his patience stretch to the tearing point.

“Oh, they are decent enough - within their training which is inconsistent in quality and ranges from the abhorrent to the exemplary! Outside of the usual incompetent, one has to be mindful of the unflattering example that is supplementing his meagre income with the usual street-bribes or worse, a palm-greasing for passing information to the higher class of criminal who has the desire and ability to cause genuine harm in London.” Holmes had forgotten his drink in favour of the beef. “Corruption is no more than it is anywhere else, and I assure you, no Inspector who has something to hide comes to
me
for consultation! I made that very clear when I first started.

“But the lot is bad,
Watson. They are bound up in the chains and strait-waistcoats of the system they are sworn to serve, and the rate of losses against justice is simply too high - no, it is not acceptable. For Scotland Yard to stop being a bad lot, it must improve itself from within.”

“Holmes, have you contemplated the possibility you are simply ahead of your time?” Watson wanted nothing more than to savour a stupendous meal, but Holmes had, as usual, grabbed their conversation by the horns and was now driving it bawling down a road with a stick and Watson was along for the show. “Prophecy is often little more than drawing sensible conclusions and solutions to a problem - but just because the solution can be seen does not mean it can be met.”

Holmes grunted. “My dear fellow, logic should be the
simplest
of all disciplines to master. That no one takes the time to do so in childhood means the human race must inevitably suffer.”

This from a man who didn't see a reason to try to understand the world around him with a logical, systemic approach in proven sciences like calculus, astronomy, and basic language.

He doesn't want to know who Thomas Carlyle is... and understanding the man gives
one insight to the criminal motive... If I told him one of my own classmates was
murdered over a literary scholarship, would he even know what I was talking about?
Watson kept his opinion to himself only by a large force of will and a larger forkful of beef. Food made an effective gag. It was easier to keep quiet when he ate.
He doesn't know or care that the earth revolves around the sun... I wish he'd patrol ‘Bart's with me during the nights of the waxing moon... he'd see for himself the number of births and deaths increase - as well as the shows of mental illness. He might find it a small influencing factor in some of his murder cases... I know I would. There's a reason why
lunacy
and
mania
and
moon
-
struck
and
moon-calf
are all words in the medical dictionary...

Holmes had subsided for the moment inside his vegetables - not that Watson was fooled by this temporary retreat-by-omission. Holmes reminded him of Colonel Hayter in moments like this... he softened one up with the main argument, allowed the enemy to defend themselves, riposted, and promptly withdrew his forces to regroup for the oncoming attack.

I wonder what would happen if I arranged for those two to meet?
The thought was undeniably alarming, but also attractive.

2: The Disclosure of a Skeleton

“Never be surprised at the crumbling of an idol or the disclosure of a skeleton”

-John Emerich E. Dalberg

Watson was too worn down from his day to devote attention to both meal and
company. Holmes wasn't in possession of a high level of pride at himself for pressing such an awkward issue when his fellow lodger (or victim) was so low in spirits, but as usual his impulses were at war with his slower-acting caution.

Holmes had seen that look before, when the doctor was tightly gripping to focus on the world around him. When his plate was scoured clean, he rose and went upstairs to change - quite a departure from his normal routine. It was easy to deduce Watson had been at the end of his strength and needed to rest in the sitting room before he went upstairs to actually sleep.

Holmes finished his own dinner with a continuing sense of discomfort and poured out the brandy by the chemistry table. By the time Watson returned, he would have reason to sit by the fire and thaw the freeze that still slowed his movements.

Holmes knew full well what broken bones felt like - and Watson's bones had been shattered during the war, and it was a poor way to acquire a barometre.

Soon enough, Watson returned looking a bit more human. He blinked in initial surprise as Holmes held the glass out, and then took it with a grateful murmur.

“Not at all.” Holmes waved that off, feeling his ever-present impatience bubble up. Did Watson think he was so self-withdrawn that he would not notice his fellow lodger was dead on his feet and worn to the bone?

Not that
, he reminded himself. Watson's long-term presence was slowly reminding Holmes of the many differences between the way
he
saw the world, and the way the world
thought it worked
. In a way it was distraction, but it was instructive. It pulled him outside of the simple intellectual boundaries of his mind and into a much murkier realm of emotion.

He sank back down in his favourite chair, for now not returning to his pipe. Watson had taken the couch, the better to adjust his aching shoulder and a clearly complaining blow to his leg and was half-asleep before the flames.

There was no great intellectual algorithm to that knee; Watson's balance was not the best with the roads being what they were. It would have been polite to say something, but in the matter of Watson's recovery, Holmes was resolutely out of his depth. He had never thought of the body as something to use, but the doctor had was a natural athlete; the kind of man who enjoyed pushing his physical limits. Holmes somewhat understood that drive, though for him it was the thrill of seeing how far his mind could control his body. Afghanistan had tragically left Watson with a frame he barely recognised, and he was still making mistakes in depth and perception.

Holmes had little use for any deep emotions, and these had him troubled on a level on which he did not often see; the Biblical admonition,
‘if thy eye
offendeth thee, pluck it out'
reminded him of how Watson sometimes stared down at his stiff arm, or rested his hand on his knee, as if the genuine articles had been stolen whilst he slept and he wondered where the originals were hiding.

Watson had not lied about his nerves, but the greatest enemies are those inside
one's own brain. Holmes had often witnessed the moments of self-castigation in his friend, and the emotion was not far from devout loathing. Whatever had happened in Afghanistan had been the propelling force in his deliberate uprooting of his personal identity. No one simply chose to place themselves in
London
for the mere sake of it; no, Watson had quit the world he had owned before the military.

Holmes had caught on long ago that Watson's body was broken, but that was the smaller portion of the problem. Inside that broken body huddled a spirit with something large and precious missing. The clues were as subtle as they were unmistakable; the way the doctor hesitated sometimes, as if something had triggered a memory against his will; there were moments when a thought would occur to him and sever his existing mood. The worst times were when Holmes was a reluctant witness; Holmes would spy Watson in unguarded expressions when the doctor had no suspicion he was being watched.