Best and Wisest Man Read online

  Title Page

  The Best and Wisest Man:

  Being A Reprint of the Reminiscences of Mrs. Mary Watson, née Morstan

  By Hamish Crawford

  Publisher Information

  First Edition published in 2015 by MX Publishing

  335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive,

  London, N11 3GX

  www.mxpublishing.co.uk

  Digital edition converted and distributed by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  © Original Content Copyright 2015 Hamish Crawford

  The right of Hamish Crawford to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

  All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious or used fictitiously. Except for certain historical personages, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and not of MX Publishing.

  Cover design by www.staunch.com

  Acknowledgements

  I’m at a phase in my life when I seem to be surrounded by couples. In its own way, this made the writing of this book somewhat easier. So (deep breath…), Lena & Matt, Mike & Sarah, Rebekah & James, Tristan & Ty, Steve & Ally, Ashley & Chris, and Fergus & Mariana: at so many times you’ve been unfailingly helpful, offering me everything from advice and encouragement to a place to stay during the sprawling writing process. I must also mention the first couple I ever met, my wonderful parents. Thank you all for allowing me to be the weird Sherlock Holmes intruding on various points in your relationships.

  A grab bag of others: John Wrightson and Jon Graham supplied cigars and sympathy when needed; Kirk Ramdath, the best Poet Laureate Calgary has (so far) never had; Joe Bor, Zac Brewer, Michelle Brooks, Caroline Cooke, Rob Greens, Kevin Krisa, Alanna Remington (who bought more copies of my last book than many family members managed), Todd Sullivan, and filmmaker extraordinaire Darius De Andrade. And a special mention to Dustin Nelson, whose reply when I told him I was writing an epistolary novel gave me many laughs (and I couldn’t repeat here).

  Massive and specific thanks to Kenna Kelly-Turner, for reading over my work and offering invaluable comments. The fact that I am not a demure Victorian ‘New Woman’ did not escape me in the writing process, making her perspective and formidable intelligence doubly appreciated (and those who know her know I’d have had to say that even if she didn’t like it, so the fact that she did makes it easier). No doubt I’ve still snuck mistakes into the final version - call it a gift. Similarly, Steve Emecz has been unfailingly positive and supportive.

  Most of this narrative was compiled with the aid of Leslie Klinger’s Annotated Sherlock Holmes. If you only buy one book this year and you haven’t stolen this one, I recommend you get it. Klinger’s insights into the world of the Great Detective, and his enthusiastic entry into the spirit of its factual basis, were invaluable in the mishmash of Victorian fact and fiction that I’ve tried to create here. To all those scholars who have contributed to the many and varied writings of and about Sherlock Holmes - from Jay Finlay Christ to T.S. Blakeney - I owe a great debt and am privileged to be in your company. And to those who have recently regenerated the Holmes name - Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, sure, but also Guy Ritchie and Robert Doherty - thank you for reminding a wider audience just how enduringly brilliant Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s idea was. It’s bracing to think that Cumberbatch and Miller - and yes, purists, even RDJ - have added shadings just as fascinating as Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett.

  Finally, and perhaps most importantly for this particular book, I must thank Nicole Armstrong, who bought me a beautiful hardcover collection of all 60 Holmes stories for my birthday back in 1995.

  Here’s a relevant example of how fortunate I am in the friend tolerance department. You may recall in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942), when Holmes (Basil Rathbone) reaches for his deerstalker, Watson (Nigel Bruce) remonstrates him and he dons a less conspicuous fedora instead. It may shock you, dear reader, to know that I own a few deerstalkers, and all the people I mentioned above have unfailingly allowed me to wear them in public. I’m always touched that they do.

  Hamish Crawford

  1926

  “But is not all life pathetic and futile? Is not his story a microcosm of the whole? We reach. We grasp. And what is left in our hands? A shadow. Or worse than a shadow - misery.”

  -‘The Retired Colourman’ (1926)

  It was a dreary Sunday afternoon in November and Queen Anne Street was deserted. The engine of the green MG that pulled up outside the smart row of flats broke an otherwise eerie silence. The woman of thirty-five who stepped out of the car wore a dress of vivid yellow that contrasted sharply with the slate-tinted day. She set her eyes on the upstairs window of the office across the road, and saw a rustle of movement. She walked up to the black door, pressed the button a single time and was let inside by a sombrely attired secretary.

  “You are expected, madam,” he said blandly, not accepting the card she held out.

  The rooms upstairs had clearly been unchanged since they were first occupied in 1902. Dustsheets covered most of the overstuffed furniture; another had only recently been removed from the heavy oak desk. The man who had been sitting behind it rose as she walked in, and slipped on a conservatively cut grey lounge jacket. He stood silently for just a second too long.

  “Good afternoon, Father,” the woman greeted him in as bland a voice as she could manage. She noticed his face minutely crease at her lack of emotion, and he diffidently accepted her hand and shook it.

  “Mary my dear … how long has it been?”

  She did not answer.

  He resumed his seat, and she sat opposite him. He ordered his secretary to prepare some tea, and Mary leaned back and contemplated how little time had changed her father, Dr. John H. Watson.

  Mary dutifully asked how his family was. She did hope Watson’s current wife and two children were looked after, appreciated. She tried not to be bitter as she compared the circumstances to her own upbringing. However, the sedentary and sedate family man sitting across from her was clearly a more attentive parent, a better parent, than the restless adventurer she knew as a child. As they spoke, and drank Simmons’s too-strong tea, the charm and warmth Mary remembered in him resurfaced. She considered why she had come here, and for that reason was glad he had warmed up so.

  “What brings you to London, Father? You’re not seeing patients, are you?”

  With some enthusiasm Watson gestured to a pile of papers on the desk. “No, no. I’ve persuaded Arthur to go ahead with these - one last set of cases to be published. I am so glad he agreed, there are many fascinating cases in here. ‘The Illustrious Client’, ‘The Problem of Thor Bridge’ … the Strand really want me to publish ‘The Giant Rat of Sumatra’ at last, but the world still isn’t ready. Still, if I don’t, I may have to run with that appalling Mazarin Stone. Some cases can turn out decidedly inferior on the page, I’ve found.” He paused, and shrugged in apology. “My dear, forgive me. I know these stories cannot be of much interest to a young person like you.”

  “On the contrary, I’ve always loved reading them.”

  “Yes, so many people do. I can’t quite fat
hom how they continue to hold such a grip … the world has changed so very much, and sometimes I wonder if they seem irrelevant.”

  “Of course not. I imagine people will keep reading them … forever, probably.”

  “Now you’re starting to sound like your mother.” The crack in his voice told Mary everything she needed to know. Embarrassed, Watson cleared his throat and shrugged. Mary knew that the matter would be harder to discuss than she predicted.

  “So this … casebook of Sherlock Holmes will still have ‘By Arthur Conan Doyle’ written underneath it?” she continued. “It doesn’t seem very fair to you.”

  “I lived these cases, Mary. That is all the credit I need.” Mary shivered as he added, “My dear Mary … that is, your mother … always preferred my name left out anyway. You remember, she was always concerned with my reputation.”

  Mary tensed. This was the right time to mention it, to come to the point. But despite herself, she enjoyed seeing her father and did not know how he would react to the real purpose of her visit.

  “I’m glad you’ve occupied him - Arthur Conan Doyle, that is - on something more worthwhile than fairies and spirits.”

  Watson tutted. “Spiritualism was always Arthur’s pet subject. I remember when he first got interested in the subject - ‘psychic studies’, he called them, as though that made them any more respectable. That was back in ’86.”

  “Someone with his reputation carrying on like a crank, though.”

  “Now, Mary. I know he looks foolish. It’s not the beliefs themselves - well, not entirely. I think it’s the tenacity with which he preaches about them … I can’t begrudge my friend that though. After losing his son in the War … I can well imagine what that does to someone.”

  He turned away from Mary for a moment, and she could see his features were clouded with emotion. How often, she wondered, did he think about her death? Was he thinking of it now?

  Before she got to business, she had to add something. “Well, I do know that there can’t be a person in the world who isn’t thrilled at the prospect of more Sherlock Holmes stories. The last thing I saw before I set sail for America five years ago was an Eille Norwood film of ‘The Red-Headed League’ in Leicester Square; and when I got off the Queen Mary, there was John Barrymore starring as Holmes in Radio City.”

  Watson chuckled. “And Gillette’s still on the stage you know. He’s as old as I am, and he runs about with pistol in hand and that ridiculous deerstalker on his head. Unbelievable.”

  “In America everyone’s obsessed with The Jazz Singer. A talking picture, they call it. Imagine how successful Holmes will be if everyone could hear him saying … ‘Elementary, my dear Watson’, for instance.”

  “Damn it all, Mary, Gillette wrote that line!” Watson’s whitening moustache arched into a hearty chuckle when he realized Mary was teasing him. “Does seem to be a catchy, er, phrase, as it were. Maybe it will outlive anything I ever wrote.”

  “Sometimes, when I see all of that, he doesn’t seem like a real person. I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s rather like knowing your father was best friends with … I don’t know, Tarzan.”

  They both laughed, and Watson added, “Sometimes he didn’t seem like a real person when I was sitting across from him in Baker Street. When I think of how angry Holmes would get, he would accuse me of demeaning his profession. I really can’t imagine how he responds to seeing himself turn into a cowboy.”

  “Well, they’re just fun films, Father.”

  “I can’t fault that. But you know, I did start my writing with the intent of seriously celebrating Holmes’s talents and instructing the reader in the business of crime-solving. But on the screen, there’s hardly any detection or his science of deduction, they’re just adventure stories with all the stunts and fighting. I’d like to ask him …” Watson broke off, gripped with an unexpected strain of emotion.

  Mary knew why, and she knew better than to ask him if they had met recently. Holmes had only gotten odder and even less sociable since he retired, and she was only too aware how Watson’s new family regarded him: an anomaly, a relic from his old life. She thought back to that time she tried to see him, suddenly knowing that he would not want the pity of his old friend’s grown daughter.

  Suddenly, it seemed it was time.

  “Father, I must be honest with you. This wasn’t purely a social call.” She looked away before his frown distracted her, and pulled a crumbling notebook from her bag. The object lit his face in recognition, although it was still commingled with the frown.

  “It can’t be …”

  “It was in the care of Mrs. Forrester. Her nephew recently discovered it in an unopened box of her possessions and thought I would like to have it.”

  Watson stood up abruptly and paced towards the window. The limp, from that ancient war wound in Afghanistan, struck him with exaggerated stiffness as he turned from his daughter. “I am sure you would. Please, do not feel you need to share its contents with me, after so long they cannot be of much interest-”

  His sudden distance angered Mary, and she rose from her seat. “Father, I would like to share them with you. I cannot believe that, even though you have remarried, the thoughts of your first wife - of my mother -would be of so little interest to you.” She stood next to him; he was clearly uncomfortable at the closeness. “Have you ever read this?”

  “No,” he said softly, keeping his gaze fixed out the window.

  1888

  “Well, and there is an end to our little drama,” I remarked, after we had sat some time smoking in silence. “I fear that it may be the last investigation in which I shall have the chance of studying your methods. Miss Morstan has done me the honour to accept me as a husband in prospective.”

  He gave the most dismal groan.

  “I feared as much,” said he. “I really cannot congratulate you.”

  I was a little hurt.

  “Have you any reason to be dissatisfied with my choice?” I asked.

  “Not at all. I think she is one of the most charming young ladies I have ever met and might have been most useful in such work as we have been doing. She had a decided genius that way; witness the way in which she preserved that Agra plan from all the other papers of her father. But love is an emotional thing, and whatever emotional is opposed to that true, cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgement.”

  -The Sign of Four (1890)

  15 July -What odd fancies grip a young lady about to be married! I have never in my life desired to write down my thoughts, and yet now I am so filled with happiness I feel compelled to note my every whim. I am sure James - always recording his observations and his clues, and the brilliant things Mr. Holmes says - would say his habits are growing on his fiancée. Perhaps they have!

  It may also be a result of the general upheaval the narrative of my life has lately seen. The passage of a month has seemed to make my former status quo a different lifetime entirely. It had frequently been observed, both from my dear employer Mrs. Forrester, and my good friend Kate Whitney, that my life had been heavy with losses. There was my mother’s death when I was a child, my father Captain Arthur Morstan’s sad disappearance, and the fact that I had reached the age of twenty-and-six still a spinster. Yet it would be wrong to dwell on such sadness when I had a great deal to be thankful for as well. I derived considerable satisfaction from my work as a governess; and Mrs. Forrester was so gentle and considerate an employer, and so hospitable a host from the moment I first lodged with her. Since I had lived in London, I could say with absolute candour that I did not consider myself an orphan with her love in my life.

  More prosaically, since 1882 I had received a large and majestic pearl every 4 th of May from an anonymous benefactor.

  I will not dwell too much upon these events, and the connection with my father that they held, as they have been written up by James in the hope that they may be published [1]. One such case was published last yea
r in Beeton’s Christmas Annual under the title A Study in Scarlet. But I feel it will better organize my thoughts to give a very brief sketch of the chain of events from my own perspective. This chain began with an innocuous conversation about the pearls one afternoon. Mrs. Forrester often teased me about my concern over my annual gift.

  “Think of the brooches you could make with them. Or even a necklace - although given their size, you would need a far plumper neck! They’d look well on my neck, I dare say!” I laughed weakly, and she gave me a push with her stout arm. “Mary my dear, you must cheer up! Think what a blessing such beautiful jewels are! Titled ladies would consider themselves lucky to have a bauble half the size of one. And here you have six.”

  “I suppose it must be my nature,” I sighed. “I think only of the potential calamity behind any boon that comes my way. It is ungrateful of me to entertain such gloomy thoughts, but it seems my lot in life.”

  “I had no idea you considered yourself so ill-fortuned,” she replied.

  “I only meant in this instance. I would consider myself more fortunate if I had my position as governess, your company, and no pearls to disconcert me.”

  “Life is full of hardships, as my late husband used to say.”

  Though I knew Mrs. Forrester was being sardonic, I had to qualify my anxieties.

  “Take my father’s disappearance, the very day after coming to London from those God-forsaken Andaman Islands. I sometimes think some curse from that savage land took him away.”

  Seeing my anguish at these thoughts, Mrs. Forrester became serious. “Do you think these pearls have anything to do with that?”

  I chuckled at this suggestion. “Perhaps that is somewhat far-fetched.”

  A thought struck Mrs. Forrester. “You know, Mary, about a year before we met, there was a domestic problem in this house. It was a baffling and tragic affair for all of us. My husband stood accused of … of poisoning one of the servants.”

  “Oh, my dear Mrs. Forrester!” I was quite shocked. Mrs. Forrester seemed far too unassuming of nature to have something so sensational happen to her.