The Final Page of Baker Street (18 page)

As I have written elsewhere, the welcoming puffs of smoke that emanate from the small red chimney atop Holmes' little house near the sea promise comfortable respite to the weary visitor. Equally promising is the knowledge that Holmes keeps his beehives well away from his domicile. But most comforting of all is the reassuring crunch one's boots make while walking along the gravel path to Holmes' entrance; the crunch signals the end of the journey - it announces that the traveller has actually arrived.

Although Mrs. Hudson enveloped us both in hugs as soon as she opened the door, she was especially pleased to see Billy. After all, it was she who, having first taken in the lad as a novice, had transformed him into so disciplined a pageboy. With great scrutiny she eyed him up and down. “Aren't you cutting quite the caper, then?” she teased. At the same time, she brushed some dirt from the dogcart off his sleeve.

Billy offered a non-committing shrug, but Mrs. Hudson hugged him again.

“So serious, Billy,” she said. “But then you always were one to ponder matters deeply.”

In response, he took off the straw hat, straightened some dark strands of his hair that had gone astray, and broke into a broad grin.

“Oh, those eyes,” she said, “those Irish eyes.”

It was easy to see that Mrs. Hudson, even at her age, was still completely charmed by Billy's handsome face and inviting smile.

I have previously offered details of Holmes' cottage - the numerous books in his library that sagged the shelves with their weight, the desultory volumes of science and law strewn on various chairs or tables, the cuttings from recent newspapers and magazines waiting to be filed, the scientific detritus like the Petri dishes and test tubes scattered hither and yon. In short, his digs in Sussex had much the same appearance as our old rooms in Baker Street.

After luncheon, a magnificent rack of lamb prepared with mint jelly by Mrs. Hudson, we adjourned to Holmes' sitting room for port and smokes. Although Holmes contented himself with his familiar briar, he offered Billy and me a choice of rich cigars that he kept in the same coalscuttle he'd used to similar purpose at Baker Street.

We puffed away silently for a few minutes. Finally, through a haze of blue smoke, Holmes said, “So, Billy, tell me your thoughts. I've heard the explanation from Watson, but in your own words, why this escape from England?”

Billy coughed once or twice; he really was more comfortable with a lighter tobacco. As he put it, gin and cigarettes were his chosen
métier
.

He coughed again and, before addressing Holmes' question, cleared the air with a wave of his hand. “I've been blackballed, Mr. Holmes,” he said. “That swine Steynwood has had it in for me ever since he learned I wanted to publish the true account of what happened to his daughter - not to mention what happened to the other poor souls who met their deaths in connection with the original murder.”

“And you're certain,” Holmes said, “that all this resistance you're encountering is not simply because - you'll forgive me - your written work doesn't meet the standards the literary market demands?”

“Ridiculous,” he scoffed, his voice growing stronger as the smoke dissipated. “I'll admit I got off to a miserable start with
The Express
, but
The Alleynian
has always welcomed my contributions as have
The Gazette
and
The Academy
. In fact,
The Gazette
published my poem, ‘Time Shall Not Die,' just last week. And this coming June, they're still planning to run a couple of my articles - an essay and some book reviews, that we had earlier agreed upon. But they've told me not to submit anything more, especially not anything having to do with Sylvia Leonard's murder. I don't care, of course. It is upon that very subject I vow to focus my literary career. If not here in England, then in the States.”

“And do you think,” Holmes asked, “that you'll have any better luck in America? Lord Steynwood controls quite a few presses there too.”

Billy savoured the port. It seemed to agree with him better than did the cigar. “In truth, Mr. Holmes, I'm ready for something new. I don't believe I will ever give up writing, but the recent essays I've been working on lack the flash that I'm searching for. Writing some of those articles, the ones about literary fops and genteel artists in particular, the ones in which I flay pretentious writers like Raphael Sterne, made me feel better. But you and Dr. Watson have exposed me to crime and murder. You've helped me witness a decadent part of human nature that I'd only read about, but never experienced first-hand.”

Holmes bowed his head, as if accepting some kind of honour; I could think only of the beating Billy had suffered from one of Moran's hired thugs:
“First-hand,” indeed.

“We've never really discussed it before,” Billy continued, “but after you rescued me from my career as Peeping Tom all those years ago, Mr. Holmes, I was forced to confront a side of my nature that I didn't want to think about: my guilt. Our headmaster, Mr. Gilkes, would never admit that any of his boys could harbour such sordid thoughts as I had while staring at that naked model. And every time I saw Elaine - Mrs. Sterne - it was like looking through that window all over again. I like women, gentlemen. All women. All ages. Those peeks at that nude wench in Dulwich opened up to me a much larger perspective on the rest of the world; the difference between my view through the window of that photography studio and my view through the window on the world is much smaller than I could ever have imagined.”

Billy laughed as he reflected on his observations; then he picked up his cigar and resumed smoking. He seemed at peace with his new insights.

The longer I watched him sitting there so complacently, the more I was beginning to understand his psychological development. He was, I realized, sounding more like the emotionally open American he was about to become than like the two traditional Englishmen who were sitting before him and whose tight-lipped judgements he seemed so keen on avoiding.

“I need to let my thoughts evolve,” Billy said. “Maybe they'll take me in a new direction. I've got to put all this rotten reality behind. Terrence Leonard and Elaine Sterne tore me up inside. Maybe writing fiction is the answer. I remember reading Mark Twain's
The Prince and the Pauper
when I was at Dulwich. Those mixed identities spoke to me even then. I am both English and American at the same time: two personalities in the same human being. Mark Twain himself embodied this duality; after all, he was both Sam Clemens and Mark Twain. I have no doubt that he could have written my story as well.
He
understood. I'm willing to wager that the freer society in America will suit me better than the rigid code it has taken so many centuries to petrify in England. Even language is affected. Modern English is decaying here; it's become too formal, too rigid. What's more, with all our linguistic pretensions, very few of us - present company excepted, of course - even talk ‘good grammar'.”

Billy chuckled at his own solecism.

“It's as if all that British formalism in language can do is to produce a criticism of form and manner. In America, I expect more unrestricted opportunities.”

Holmes pulled on his pipe. “I am pleased to see how certain you are in your decision,” he said. “That should make your leave-taking easier.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Not even the beastly news of the
Titanic
can thwart me. I have already vowed to pay my uncle every pound I've borrowed from him. Plus interest. And, as I'm sure Dr. Watson has told you, I'll be sending for my mother once I find a home in the States. She deserves nothing less for all she's done in raising me.”

Still close to his mother
, I remember thinking. But all that I said was, “There is indeed much to praise in the wisdom of older women.” Who could forget all those years ago when Billy's mother would not be put off by Holmes' initial refusal to help find her lost boy?

Billy held up his glass of port.“To older women,” he said.

Holmes and I joined him in the salute: “To older women.” And we all drank heartily.

“Where do you plan to settle then?” Holmes asked.

Billy shrugged. “Who knows? New York? I'll be arriving there. Chicago? Nebraska? I spent my early years in the Midwest. My mother told me I was conceived in Wyoming. Maybe that's why I remember liking those wide-open spaces. To be sure, there was always the chance you'd step in a puddle of tobacco that had been spat on one of the wooden walkways, or be haunted by a dead body that had come floating down a muddy river.” He smiled. “You see, I was just a child, but I haven't forgotten.”

Billy paused as if to reformulate his future. “Then again,” he said, “maybe I'll travel farther west. To San Francisco. I'm open to anything. Maybe even Los Angeles.”

“Los Angeles?” I scoffed. “After London?”
“Sure,” he said. “One city's no worse than any other. Cities are all full of themselves - and empty at the same time.”

“To cities,” Holmes said, holding up his glass, “full of mean streets and crimes waiting to be solved.”

“Mean streets,” Billy echoed, “I like that.”

And the three of us clinked glasses.

“Just one last thing,” Billy said. “You've got to believe me: whatever I end up doing - whatever kind of work I get myself into - one way or another, sooner or later - I'm going to make public what happened to Sylvia Leonard. You can bloody well count on it. I still have my notes. I'm not going to forget. Even if I have to cloak the facts in fiction, I will tell the true story to the world.”

“To Truth,” Holmes said.

“To Truth,” we echoed and clinked glasses again, each of us aware that this was the last drink the three of us would ever have together.

It took but a few minutes for Billy and me to offer our farewells to Holmes and Mrs. Hudson. Then we traced our journey back to Eastbourne and finally to London.

We agreed to separate at Waterloo - I, heading to my home in Queen Anne Street; Billy, to his mother's in Forest Hill. Yet once we returned to London, despite the cool wind blowing at our backs and the shrieks of train whistles punctuating our unspoken thoughts, we stood together for many minutes in the darkness of the deserted railway platform.

At last, the silence between us began to nag. Looking for something - anything - to say, I noted the starless sky barely visible beyond the concourse roof. “Shakespeare calls it ‘husbandry in heaven',” I said mindlessly.

“The French call it
‘noir'
,” he replied.

Then we could delay no longer, and we clasped hands for the last time. As I looked into his deep and defiant eyes, I couldn't help noting the metamorphosis: I may well have journeyed to Sussex earlier that day with the very British “Billy the Page”, but it was every bit the American Raymond Chandler to whom I was now bidding this final long good-bye.

THE END

Editor's Afterword

For readers seeking more background on the two major figures featured in Dr. Watson's manuscript, I offer the following suggestions: The cases involving Sherlock Holmes that are most relevant to
The Final Page of Baker Street
are “The Adventure of the Three Students” and “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone.” Both are easily found in comprehensive collections of Watson's work. I would also encourage readers to peruse two articles by G.B. Newton: “Concerning the Authorship of ‘The Mazarin Stone'” and “Billy the Page.” As Watson implies, it was Newton's pioneering efforts that suggested the true authorship of “The Mazarin Stone.” Both of Newton's essays appear in
The Sherlock Holmes Journal
, the former in the Spring 1959 edition, the latter in Summer 1955.

As far as Raymond Chandler is concerned, readers will discover many references in Watson's account of Chandler's early years that made their ways in various forms into Chandler's own writings. The town of Marlow (later Marlowe) and the name Steynwood (Sternwood) are but two examples. Less obvious are fundamental events in Chandler's life that for whatever the reason found expression in his fiction. The nude model that so scarred his adolescence reappears in the guise of Carmen Sternwood in
The Big Sleep
. The tantalizing pendant worn by Mrs. Sterne suggests the Brasher Doubloon in
The High Window
. Lord Steynwood's home,
Idyllic Vale
, obviously gave rise to the
Idle Valley
of
The Long Goodbye
. Even the compositional advice provided to the young Chandler by Dr. Watson is echoed in Chandler's own list of literary rules, “Twelve Notes on the Mystery Story.” But the most significant detail is young Chandler's vow to tell the true story of Terrence Leonard even if required to disguise the tale in fiction. It may have taken Chandler more than forty years to fulfill his pledge; but faithful to his word and character, he published
The Long Goodbye
in 1954, and in its complementary plot arcs involving Terry Lennox and Eileen Ward, we recognize the origins of the actual stories involving Terrence Leonard and Elaine Sterne. Thanks to the benefits of hindsight, we can now also better trace the evolution of Chandler's aesthetics, how the righteous themes of his early romantic poetry and cynical criticism could evolve through his exposure to detective work at Baker Street into the hardboiled tone of his much later fiction.

For further reading about Chandler, I recommend the aforementioned
The Long Embrace
by Judith Freeman,
The Life of Raymond Chandler
by Frank MacShane (a former professor of mine at UC Berkeley),
Raymond Chandler: A Biography
by Tom Hiney, and the recently published
Raymond Chandler: A Life
by Tom Williams. Be advised that all four books were published before the appearance of Watson's manuscript and thus make no reference to it. “A College Boy: Raymond Chandler at Dulwich College, 1900 to 1905,” a booklet written by Calista M. Lucy, The Keeper of the Archives at Dulwich, provides brief but fascinating information and photographs of Chandler's early years in England, and
Chandler Before Marlowe
, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, contains all of Chandler's early short pieces cited by Watson. For contemporaneous background on the Boer War, Arthur Conan Doyle's
The Great Boer War
offers significant resonance.

The best introduction to the mature Raymond Chandler, of course, is his written works (see, for example, the two volumes of novels published by The Library of America and his complete short stories, which appear in
Collected Stories
published by Everyman's Library). There is obviously much that can be learned about Chandler's views of the world from reading his fiction. But only by studying such works in connection with Watson's newly found text can we fully appreciate Chandler's maturation. Watson's account of the early life of Billy the Page reveals many of the social and psychological forces that helped form the writer Billy was to become. The boy in London, who had trouble composing an account of a missing diamond, evolved into one of the most accomplished narrators of murder and mayhem in American literary history. Thanks to Dr. Watson, we now know why.

One final point of interest: In 1903 Charlie Chaplin made his first appearance on the legitimate stage. It should be noted that, featured in William Gillette's production of
Sherlock Holmes
, the young Chaplin played the role of “Billy the Pageboy.”