My Dearest Holmes Page 8

  The reader will readily imagine with what emotion I heard her words. I remember staring hard at a small occasional table that stood slightly to the right of my chair, on which lay three neatly addressed letters ready for the post, and knowing that the sight would be branded forever onto my memory of this conversation. Curiously, I remained dry-eyed, but I must have paled considerably, for Miss D'Arcy handed me a third glass of brandy and softly urged me to drink it. I sipped at it absently, and sighed.

  'Miss D'Arcy,' I said at last, 'I thank you for being so frank with me. I think you may be right. I am sure you are right. But I must take a little time; it seems so vast a step--so irrevocable...'

  'Not irrevocable,' she interrupted quietly. 'Not at all irrevocable. But prudent.'

  I sighed again.

  'Well,' I said, 'I will think it over. At least, I will think over setting up on my own, I suppose. But as for marriage--how can I possibly contemplate such a step? I could never dismiss him from my mind enough to act the part of the married man. And who on earth would want to marry me?'

  'Oh, as to that, Dr Watson, an attractive man like yourself will have no trouble. Only take care, and choose a sympathetic wife. Let your natural discrimination be your guide. And one further piece of advice--when you are married, take care that you advertise the fact. Write your romance into one of Mr Holmes' cases, if necessary; make sure that it is entirely plausible to your public. That way you will safeguard both your reputation and his.'

  Once again, I absorbed the advice, and thanked her.

  'You have been very good to me, Miss D'Arcy. I do not know quite how to express my gratitude to you.'

  'All I ask in the way of thanks, Dr Watson, is that you do not withdraw your trust from me; that you continue to believe that for you, I have only the greatest affection and respect, and that I will never betray your confidence.'

  'Miss D'Arcy, how could I ever think anything else?'

  She turned away with a slight shrug, and the next moment the door to the room was opened, and John, the footman, came in bearing a telegram.

  'For you, sir,' he said.

  I rose unsteadily, and opened it with a sense of foreboding not unmixed with guilt.

  'RETURN AT ONCE. S.H.,' I read.

  'Ah,' I said, showing the message to Miss D'Arcy, 'I expect this means progress. Undoubtedly he must be hot on the trail.'

  Miss D'Arcy gave a wry smile as she read the summons. 'Did you tell Mr Holmes that you were coming here?' she asked.

  'No,' I answered nervously, 'I did not. But he always finds me.'

  I laughed unconvincingly. The telegram had communicated his annoyance to both of us. I asked John to call me a cab, and prepared to take my leave. Miss D'Arcy seemed subdued, and I tried to convey to her a sense of optimism, in return for her kindness.

  'I am sure,' I said, 'that we will soon have some good news for you. In the meantime, I will take my leave--and thank you for your concern and for your advice, Miss D'Arcy. I really am most grateful.'

  'Goodbye, Dr Watson,' was all she said.

  I travelled back to Baker Street in a state of most painful agitation. Undoubtedly, I could expect a cold welcome from Holmes. How had he known where to contact me? And how was I going to face him with equanimity, with Miss D'Arcy's words still fresh in my mind? The brandy was making me feel light-headed, and I realised that I was hungry and that it was past lunch-time, and that lunch would almost certainly be the last thing that Holmes would suggest.

  I tried to think over Miss D'Arcy's advice, but all that came into my mind was a vision of the occasional table with the three envelopes upon it. I could see them quite clearly, even down to the slant of the bold capitals in which they were addressed. Suddenly I became preoccupied with the realisation that I had seen that writing somewhere before; I recognised it as I had recognised Maurice Kirkpatrick's writing the previous day. But this was, presumably, Miss D'Arcy's hand; I must have seen it by chance, earlier, it was as simple as that.

  It is a strange fact that small worries can push great ones aside in the midst of the worst crises; try as I would, I could not get the writing out of my mind. Finally, annoyed at myself for being bothered so unaccountably by something so trivial, I adopted the simple visual method of imagining myself looking at the envelope, and then raising my eyes from it to see in what surroundings I found myself.

  I found myself, as the reader will have surmised, in Lord Carstairs' sitting room.

  By the time the cab arrived at Baker Street, I had had ample opportunity fully to appreciate my situation. It was some moments before I could bring myself to alight, and several more before I could summon the physical and moral strength to climb the stairs to our rooms.

  --X--

  I PAUSED AGAIN at the door, to prepare myself; but even that brief respite was denied me, for it was flung open and there, wreathed in smoke, his pipe in his mouth and an expression on his face that I can only describe as that of a particularly wrathful and sadistic headmaster, stood Sherlock Holmes.

  With a jerk of his head he motioned me inside. Unsteadily I crossed the room and collapsed into a chair by the fireplace. Holmes, having closed the door, came and stood directly in front of me. I noted that he had changed back into his own clothes already, and from the thickness of the smoke in the room, I gathered that he had been back for some time.

  I gazed up at him with what I hoped was a look of hopeless appeal.

  'You can cut that out, Watson,' he said icily, 'and concentrate your energies upon giving me an explanation, if you possess one, of exactly what you think you were doing at Camberwell Grove.'

  'How did you deduce that I was there?' I stalled.

  Holmes gave me a look of most cutting disdain. 'My dear Watson, I did not have to deduce it. I saw you arrive there with my own eyes.'

  My jaw dropped. 'But--when?...How?' I stammered.

  He blew a vicious cloud of smoke at me.

  'I saw you alight from your hansom and walk up to the front door. I was at the tradesman's entrance at the time, and unable to intercept you. Furthermore, my morning's work would have been ruined had I betrayed so much as a hint of recognition. You, needless to say, did not observe me.'

  'No...well...good heavens, Holmes, how was I to know that you had gone to Miss D'Arcy's? What were you doing there?'

  'I seem to remember asking you the same question, and you have not yet done me the honour to reply. However, I have no objection to explaining my activities. If you possessed an ounce of deductive ability you would be able to work it out for yourself, especially bearing in mind that I gave you a specific caution about Miss D'Arcy only last night.

  'I am a young man of the name of Douglas, looking for respectable employment. I have heard that a vacancy will soon exist in Miss D'Arcy's household, due to the impending departure of her footman, Mr John Chapman, to the vicinity of his ailing mother, as you may recall.

  'I decide to call on him, to sound him out about the household, and to ask whether he can put in a good word for me. I find him most friendly and amenable; we spend a good half-hour or so chatting at the tradesman's entrance. It is a quiet day, he says, and the housemaid will see to any callers.

  'It's a rather queer household in some ways, he says, but the two ladies are generous employers and the duties are reasonable. I ask him what the duties consist of. He trots out the usual list, during which time I have ample opportunity to notice your arrival--not to worry, he says, the housemaid will see to you. Are there any extra or unusual duties, I ask? Well, the ladies sometimes keep unsocial hours, he says, and he and the other man have often to sit up late. Anything else? Only the mail; Miss D'Arcy sometimes has letters left for her at Dulwich Post Office and he has to collect them. Yes, it is a bit of a way out, and goodness knows she can be very secretive when she has a mind to be. He doesn't believe even Miss Kirkpatrick knows of it. Still, it's not his place, etc., and he'd advise me to take the same attitude.

  'Now it's about time he got back to his duties.
He'll put in a good word for me if I like, but it's not really the right time at the moment, one of the ladies has been called away from home unexpectedly, some family trouble he thinks, and it would be best to wait until things are back to normal. In any case, the ladies will probably require a written reference. That's all right, I say, I will present myself in writing, references enclosed. Will it be all right for me to mention that I have talked to him, etc.? Oh yes, of course.

  'And so I come back to Baker Street, since I do not want to take the risk of hanging about the house untiljyow emerge, and I despatch a telegram. Now, I trust I have made the situation sufficiently clear? Perhaps you would now care to favour me with an account of your morning.'

  This whole narrative was delivered in clipped, sarcastic tones, and with the last sentence he almost spat at me. Crushed as I was, however, a small glow-worm of inspiration had begun to creep into the back of my mind. Was the situation clear? Yes, it had been clear to me before I entered the room. Holmes' narrative had not quite carried the shock value he had anticipated for me. How had I spent my morning? Why, when all was said and done, it had surely been no less successful than his.

  I rose from my chair, and Holmes stood back to let me pass. I strolled casually across to the window.

  'My morning? Why, I believe that my morning was almost as interesting as yours, my dear Holmes. As you so rightly observed, I also visited Camberwell Grove, but unlike yourself, I was not incognito. However, I did have the opportunity to make one or two observations, and I must say that I think you underestimate my deductive ability. Miss D'Arcy had inadvertently left some correspondence upon a side-table, and I was able to observe that her printing matches exactly that in the threatening letters to Lord Carstairs. I had only just time to make the observation when your telegram arrived. Extraordinary, is it not, that we should both have come to the same conclusion, and neither confided in the other?'

  There was a long and ominous silence behind me. I continued to stare fixedly out of the window, not daring to turn round. A delivery of wine was being unloaded at Dolomore's across the road, and I made a desperate mental note to order myself a bottle of Chateau Montrose '65, if I emerged unscathed from this predicament.

  Then I heard Holmes walk up softly behind me and stand so close to me that I tingled in every nerve.

  'My--dear--Watson,' he hissed into my right ear, 'are you trying to tell me that you went to visit Miss D'Arcy with the sole intention of identifying her as the blackmailer of Lord Carstairs? Because if you are, let me tell you here and now that I do not believe you. Your manner when you entered the room just now was somewhat at odds with the role of successful investigator; in fact, it was more suggestive of the guilty schoolboy who has just been caught in the act.'

  'Caught in the act of what?' I asked in a strained voice, as my little glow-worm of inspiration dimmed and flickered out altogether, and my bottle of claret drained upon the sands of my imagination.

  I felt Holmes' cold fingers close about my wrist.

  'Dear me, Watson,' he said, 'how your pulse is racing. As a medical man, you must know that deception puts a considerable strain upon the nervous system. I should definitely not advise it. Now, suppose you tell me the truth.'

  There was nothing else for it but to tell the whole story, or something like it.

  'I wanted to talk to her, Holmes, on a personal matter. I have a perfect right to consult her, as a friend, if I want to, and you have no right to interfere.'

  'I see,' he said. He let go of my arm and I walked unsteadily back to my chair. He waited for me to seat myself, and then came and stood glaring down at me, arms akimbo.

  'Very well,' he said softly. 'I have no right, as you say, to pry into your personal affairs'--he gave a most unpleasant emphasis to the word--'but I have every right to prevent you from interfering in my cases. I will not ask just what you were discussing with this notorious blackmailer, except that it had better have nothing to do with me.'

  His eyes searched my face menacingly. Completely crushed, I could do nothing but stare back hopelessly until his features blurred before my eyes, and I tried to blink back the tears. I heard him sigh deeply. When I looked up again, he was seated opposite me, his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, watching me anxiously.

  'Watson,' he said gently, when my eyes met his, 'what have you done?'

  'Nothing that will cause any harm to you,' I muttered.

  'Why did you visit Miss D'Arcy?'

  'To talk to her. We have things in common. Not blackmail.'

  Holmes closed his eyes briefly and sighed again. 'Watson, Watson--do you think me completely unobservant? But did you have to give yourself away completely, and to her?'

  'I haven't given anything away,' I lied desperately. 'I spoke to her as a friend. I trust her,' I added more convincingly, as I remembered her parting words. 'She promised to respect my confidence.'

  'You trust a woman who is known to be a ruthless blackmailer?'

  'She won't blackmail me.'

  'You sound very sure of that.'

  'Well,' I said, 'I am. You said yourself that the Queen Bee only stings the wealthy and the hypocritical. And besides, she has no papers of mine, or anything. And she said she has the greatest respect and affection for me.'

  'And you have, in any case, done nothing for which you could be blackmailed.'

  It sounded like a statement, but he raised his eyebrows questioningly. I blushed hotly and refrained from answering.

  'I knew it,' he said calmly. 'My poor Watson. Why, do you imagine, do I keep myself free from entanglements of every sort? Not only because affairs of the heart are a hindrance to the logical processes of the mind, but also because I cannot afford to lay myself open in any way to the possibility that my reputation could be tarnished. I have to be above blackmail on the moral front, however unconventional I may be in the rest of my behaviour. And when it comes to morals of this particular stamp--good heavens, Watson, have you not heard of the Criminal Law Amnendment Act?'

  'Yes,' I said wearily, 'Miss D'Arcy told me of it this morning.'

  Even in my sorry state, I could see that once again I had surprised him.

  'Miss D'Arcy? So you discussed the subject in such detail? Oh, Watson...'

  For a few moments as he sat in silence nervously fingering the dead pipe in his hands, his grey eyes fixed unseeing at a point a few inches above my left shoulder, I caught an expression on his face that I had never thought to see; an expression of indecision, of wistfulness, but above all, of hopelessness. My heart lurched at the softening of his features, but sank almost immediately at the finality of the expression that settled there. As soon as his vacant eyes focussed and met mine, he dropped his gaze. He made as if to speak, and then hesitated for several long moments. At length he said, very quietly:

  'My dear fellow, there is nothing I can say or do that will not--there is nothing,' he repeated, 'to be done. This hideous new law is the blackmailer's charter--it has already been called so, I believe. It will cause untold suffering, both mental and physical, and will bring about the downfall of some of the most gifted and sensitive figures of our generation. I do not intend that either you or I should be among them.

  'My poor Watson,' he repeated, seeing my face, 'I see that you understand what I am trying to say. I had hoped that it went without saying. In any case, let us hope that your trust in Miss D'Arcy is justified.'

  'I am sure that it is,' I said forlornly. 'She went to so much trouble to--'I could not bring myself to say what she had advised me to do, so I said,'--to impress on me the need for discretion. After all, she is on--our side.'

  Holmes gave me a sharp look. 'Miss D'Arcy is protected by her sex,' he said, with a trace of bitterness in his voice. 'She is immune from the penalties of the law. She can use blackmail to protect herself from blackmail, if necessary. I suppose,' he continued, his voice softening somewhat, 'that she is in the unique position to wreak revenge upon such pillars of society as are responsible for Sec
tion 11.'

  He thought about this for a while, and gave a rueful chuckle. 'However,' he continued seriously, 'blackmail will always remain for me a most despicable and cowardly practice, no matter what the motives; and in this present instance, Miss D'Arcy has been hoist with her own petard, wouldn't you say? I think it is high time to bring this sordid affair to a close. A short interview with the lady in question should suffice, I think, followed by a brief visit to Lord Carstairs to return his letters. The rest of the explanations will be no concern of ours, thank heaven.

  'Now, Watson, this time I go to Camberwell quite alone. I absolutely forbid you to stir from the house until I come back to collect you for dinner this evening. We might dine out, I thought? No better way to celebrate the successful conclusion of a case. I shall be back by six-thirty at the latest.'

  I followed him with my eyes as he disappeared into his room and emerged a minute later impeccably dressed in frock coat and top hat. I could hardly believe he was no longer angry with me. I realised that he was trying to soften the blow of his knowledge of all that went without saying; a knowledge that left me somewhat numb and dazed. I found myself repeating Miss D'Arcy's words in my mind: '...He will never give you more than he gives you at present.' And it was true, and he had almost explained it. Except that he had never admitted to feeling anything for me in the first place. His self-control, as always, was absolute.

  'Don't be too harsh with her, Holmes,' I said. I felt that he judged Miss D'Arcy less kindly than she deserved. 'She obviously had no idea whom she was blackmailing. She must be feeling bad enough.'

  Holmes raised his eyebrows. 'Harsh, with my client? Of course not. This whole investigation was carried out on her behalf. The fact that she also happens to be the villain of the piece is hardly my fault. However, I will not indulge in any gratuitous admonitions, if that is what you are afraid of. I will simply pocket my fee, assure her of my discretion--perhaps it will not be inappropriate to give her your regards on that point--and retire gracefully.'