Holmes and Watson (18 page)

‘Oh, Anstruther would do your work for you. You have been looking a little pale lately. I think the change would do you good,’ she assures him, expressing both her understanding of the relationship between Watson and Holmes and a wifely concern for her husband’s well-being.

In fact, towards the end of this period, there is evidence that the two friends were slowly drifting apart as they grew more and more absorbed in their own separate lives. Watson was aware of it, for he expresses this sense of growing separation in ‘The Adventure of the Dying Detective’.

The ‘very intimate’ relations which had existed between himself and Holmes became, he states, ‘to some extent modified’, and between November 1890, the date of the Dying Detective case, and the early spring of 1891, Watson had seen nothing of Holmes, his only knowledge of his old friend’s activities being gleaned from the newspapers, from which he learnt that Holmes was engaged by the French government on some matter of supreme importance, and from two short letters Holmes sent him from Narbonne and Nimes which suggested Holmes expected to remain in France for some considerable time.

Watson was therefore quite unaware of the fact that Holmes was also engaged on an even more important investigation which, if it succeeded, would be his greatest triumph yet.

Watson’s ignorance of the fact that during these intervening years between 1888, the suggested date of the Valley of Fear case, and April 1891 Holmes had continued his investigation into the criminal career of Professor Moriarty is not altogether surprising. Holmes had deliberately kept Watson in the dark before over much less important cases. And for this inquiry, which must have involved a great deal of undercover work and secret information gathering, it was imperative that no
whisper of his activities became known. It was not that Holmes mistrusted Watson’s discretion. Time and again Watson had proved his trustworthiness.

Holmes’ silence may be partly due to that innate secretiveness which, as we have seen, was an important element of his personality. But it was largely because of the dangerous nature of the enterprise. Moriarty, whose gang had already been responsible for over forty murders, was quite capable of ordering Watson’s death, should he suspect Watson was actively involved in Holmes’ investigations. As for the danger to his own life, this was a risk Holmes was prepared to take. This need to protect Watson may also partly explain why after November 1890, the date of the Dying Detective case, Holmes made no attempt to contact Watson although, as we have seen, Holmes was in France for much of this time, working for the French government.

That mission to France may, in fact, have been connected with the Moriarty inquiries, as Edward F. Clark Jr has suggested in his essay ‘Study of an Untold Tale’, in which he puts forward the theory that Holmes was engaged in recovering a painting stolen from the Louvre by Moriarty’s organisation. However, there is no evidence for this in the canon.

Because of Watson’s ignorance of Holmes’ continuing interest in Moriarty, it is impossible to give a detailed chronology of Holmes’ activities during the early months of 1891, only a broad outline based on the condensed account he later gave to Watson when his investigation
was drawing to its conclusion. From this, one can piece together a fairly coherent record of at least the latter part of these enquiries.

Since Holmes’ first brush with Moriarty during the Valley of Fear case, the Professor’s teaching career had suffered a setback. Although nothing could be proved against him, ‘dark rumours’ had forced him to resign his chair of Mathematics at the provincial university and he had come to London, where he was ostensibly earning a living as an army coach, that is as a private tutor preparing potential officers for their qualifying examinations. It was a professional come-down for Moriarty which also had the effect of bringing him within Holmes’ orbit. Once Moriarty was established in London, it was much easier for Holmes to monitor his activities. It would appear that Moriarty’s arrival in London had taken place only three months before the events of 24th April, suggesting that the Professor had left his university post in December at the end of the Michaelmas term.

Despite this closer proximity, Holmes was finding it no easier to obtain the evidence he needed to prove Moriarty’s guilt in a court of law. As Holmes explains to Watson, Moriarty himself was never involved directly in any of the crimes. These were carried out at his orders by members of his organisation and, if any of them were arrested, the money needed for their defence or bail was supplied by the syndicate. Nevertheless, throughout the early months of 1891 Holmes’ enquiries were progressing to the point at which they were not only causing Moriarty
considerable inconvenience but were severely hampering his plans. In fact, by 24th April Holmes needed only three more days to complete his enquiries, after which Moriarty and his gang could be rounded up by Inspector Patterson, the Scotland Yard detective in charge of the official side of the investigation.

The Moriarty inquiry came at a crucial point in Holmes’ professional career. He had, as he tells Watson, dealt with over a thousand cases during his years in practice and he was growing tired and disenchanted. Although only thirty-seven, he was seriously considering retirement but felt he could not do so until Moriarty was arrested.

‘I tell you, Watson, in all seriousness, that if I could beat that man, if I could free society of him, I should feel my own career had reached its summit, and I should be prepared to turn to some more placid line in life,’ he confided to his old friend, and in his last letter to Watson he also writes of his career reaching a ‘crisis’ and of a desire to bring it to a conclusion.

He could afford to retire. The fees he had received from the Scandinavian royal family in 1888 and more recently from the French government had been generous enough to make this possible. Once Moriarty and his gang were arrested, he intended to live quietly and devote his time and energy to chemical research. There is, however, no suggestion at this point that he intended to retire to the country or to go abroad.

It is important to examine his psychological state at this period of his life, for it was to have a significant
effect, I believe, on his subsequent actions. There are signs within the canon that, over these three years, Holmes may have been going through a period of manic depression, triggered perhaps by the loss of Watson’s companionship, combined with a heavy case-load, and exacerbated by a more frequent use of cocaine. As we have seen, in ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, Watson writes of Holmes ‘alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition’, the drug intensifying those ‘high’ and ‘low’ states of mind from which he naturally suffered. In his accounts of this period Watson also refers several times to extreme forms of behaviour on the part of his old friend. On one occasion, in a state of ‘uncontrollable excitement’, Holmes raised his clenched fists and ‘raved in the air’. On another, he suffered a fit of ‘uncontrollable agitation’, following a mood in which he was ‘more depressed and shaken’ than Watson had ever seen him. The repetition of the word ‘uncontrollable’ is, I believe, significant.

Although Holmes was still too young to be experiencing a midlife crisis, he may well have reached a point when he began to question the validity of his whole life and career. What was the point of it all? Where was it leading him? In such a frame of mind, even life itself had lost its zest. ‘My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplace of existence,’ he confesses to Watson in ‘The Red-Headed League’.

He was also turning to other forms of mental and spiritual consolation, as if logic and reason no longer satisfied him. In ‘The Adventure of the Naval Treaty’,
Watson describes him examining a rose, and this the action of a man whose knowledge of botany Watson had once marked as Nil.
*
‘It was a new phase in his character to me,’ Watson remarks, ‘for I had never before seen him show any interest in natural objects.’ In his last letter to Watson, Holmes was to express this urge in even more specific terms. ‘Of late,’ he writes, ‘I have been tempted to look into the problems furnished by Nature rather than those more superficial ones for which our artificial state of society is responsible.’ This last remark is surely a reference to crime and its detection.

Such a shift in mood is also seen in his changing attitude to the concepts of law and justice and to his own role in upholding them. In two investigations of this period, the Blue Carbuncle inquiry and the Boscombe Valley mystery, the first a case of theft, the second the much more serious charge of murder, Holmes was prepared to let the criminal escape prosecution, justice being better served, he felt, by leniency than by a strict enforcement of the law.

This change in emphasis reaches its apotheosis in his attitude to Moriarty. The man is not simply a criminal; he is the embodiment of evil. Society must be cleansed of his presence and, in undertaking the task, Holmes is assuming an obligation which has all the qualities of a moral, not to say religious, crusade.

By 24th April that crusade was almost completed.
Through a ‘little slip’ on Moriarty’s part, of what nature Holmes does not specify, the net was rapidly closing round the Professor and his organisation. The ‘final steps’ were taken and their arrest was timed for the following Monday, in three days’ time. Again, Holmes does not state what these final steps involved but they may have been connected with the papers Holmes was keeping in his desk in a blue envelope labelled Moriarty, which he had filed in the ‘M’ pigeon-hole and which he was later to ask Watson to pass on to Inspector Patterson. These documents were vital for the conviction of Moriarty’s gang when they were brought to trial.

As they contained such crucial evidence, it was surprisingly irresponsible of Holmes to leave them in his desk at his lodgings. He knew Moriarty’s associates were quite capable of breaking into premises and stealing documents at the Professor’s orders. In fact, an attempt was made that very night to burn down 221B Baker Street, although fortunately only minor damage was done. There seems to be no excuse for Holmes’ negligence unless he had good reason to believe the documents were safer in his possession than Inspector Patterson’s. Although Holmes makes no outright accusation, there are hints in the canon that Moriarty had inside knowledge of Holmes’ tactics in collecting evidence against him.

‘He saw every step I took to draw my toils round him,’ Holmes was later to tell Watson, while Moriarty himself informed Holmes that he knew ‘every move’ of his game, an admission which might hint he had an informer inside Scotland Yard.

Nothing is known about Inspector Patterson. There is no other reference to him in the canon and this suggests that, unlike Lestrade and other Scotland Yard detectives, he was never associated with Holmes on any investigations either before or after the Moriarty inquiry. As a police officer, Patterson was incompetent. He not only allowed Moriarty to escape but also Colonel Moran, the Professor’s Chief of Staff, as well as two other members of the gang. He also sent incorrect information to Holmes.

All of this could suggest that Patterson or one of his colleagues was in Moriarty’s pay and Holmes suspected as much. Corrupt policemen are unfortunately not unknown and such a theory would explain why Moriarty knew Holmes’ every move and how he, along with other gang members, managed to elude arrest. It might also account for Holmes’ otherwise inexplicable behaviour in keeping such important documents in his desk. In instructing Watson to hand over the envelope to Patterson, Holmes had, of course, no choice. Whatever private suspicions he may have had against Patterson or one of his colleagues, the inspector was nevertheless officially in charge of the case and, with no proof against him or any other officer, Holmes was obliged to make any evidence available to Scotland Yard.

Whether or not Moriarty was kept informed by a contact inside the Metropolitan police force, he was sufficiently alarmed by the turn events were taking to drop all pretence of respectability and to approach Holmes in person on the morning of 24th April. His arrival at Baker
Street came without warning and took Holmes completely by surprise, although he had the presence of mind to slip the gun that he kept as a precaution in his desk drawer into his dressing-gown pocket as Moriarty entered the room. In fact, this meeting was probably the first face to face encounter between the two protagonists and shows the desperate measures which the Professor was prepared to take in order to protect himself and his organisation.

His motive in coming was simple. It was to warn Holmes that, unless he dropped his enquiries, he would personally order Holmes’ death. It was no idle threat, as Holmes was soon to discover. He also knew that it was useless to ask for police protection. Moriarty’s agents were too numerous. The fatal blow could fall anywhere and at any time.

As Moriarty must have anticipated, Holmes refused to drop his enquiries. The Professor was a highly intelligent man and, in the same way that Holmes had been compiling a dossier on him, Moriarty must have been gathering information about his adversary.

Holmes’ movements after Moriarty had left can be established in some detail. At midday, he set off for Oxford Street to transact some business, of what nature he does not specify. While in the area, two attempts were made on his life, the first occurring at the comer of Bentinck Street and Welbeck Street when he was nearly run down by a two-horse van driven at speed. A second attempt was made shortly afterwards in Vere Street where a brick came hurtling down from the roof of a house, missing him by
inches. Moriarty had wasted no time in putting his death threat into operation.

On this second occasion, Holmes called the police but could not prove the attack was intentional. Bricks and slates were found piled up on the roof in preparation for repairs to be carried out and one might have been blown off accidentally by the wind.

After this last incident, Holmes visited his brother Mycroft in his Pall Mall lodgings, prudently going there by cab. Although he does not state the purpose of this visit, it was probably to make arrangements with his brother for the disposal of his property in the event of his death, a possibility which, in the light of the day’s happenings, seemed more and more likely.

Having spent the afternoon with Mycroft, Holmes then decided to call on Watson in Kensington. Although Holmes may have already made up his mind to go abroad while the police rounded up Moriarty and his gang, his decision to invite Watson to accompany him was probably only made during that visit to his brother. In fact, Mycroft may have suggested it. He must have been deeply concerned about Sherlock’s safety and the thought of his travelling with a companion, who was, moreover, a doctor and used to acting calmly in a crisis, would have seemed eminently sensible.

Holmes himself was clearly not averse to the idea even though he was aware of the danger to Watson should he agree with the proposal. But both Mycroft and Sherlock must have been convinced that, provided a plan of
action was carefully devised and carried out, the risk was minimised. As well as the arrangements regarding Holmes’ property, this plan must also have been discussed in some detail by the two brothers that afternoon. Their strategy was this: if Watson agreed to accompany Holmes to the Continent for a week, he would send his luggage unaddressed to Victoria station that same evening by a messenger. Early the following morning, the same man would call a hansom, taking care not to choose the first or second one in the rank, in case Moriarty had deliberately placed them there. Watson would then drive to the Strand end of the Lowther Arcade, hurrying through it on foot and arriving at the far end at exactly quarter to nine. Here he would find a brougham waiting for him. Unknown to Watson, its driver would be Mycroft. This is another example of Holmes’ innate secretiveness. There is no reason why Watson should not have known this at the start.