The Final Page of Baker Street (3 page)

“Dr. Watson,” Holmes said formally, “may I present to you Mrs. Hudson's newest page. For the small sum she pays him, he comes up from Dulwich by train on his free afternoons and spends much of the weekend with us here at Baker Street.”

My mouth dropped open. It was Peeping Tom himself, now obviously an attendant to our long-suffering landlady. Holmes had suggested that the boy's mother should secure him a trade or a job, yet it was obvious that Holmes himself was the one responsible for getting the young rogue this position.

“Student number 5724,” Holmes said. “Master R.T. Chandler.”

I was about to nod in his direction when the boy had the cheek to announce: “As I've already told you, Mr. Holmes, I prefer the American way of saying names - just ‘Raymond.'” He spoke in an accent more flat than British.

“And as I have already told
you
,” Holmes countered, “your preference doesn't matter. Here at 221 we call
all
the pages ‘Billy.'”

“Ah, yes,” the boy said, “just like back in America, calling all the Negro train-porters ‘George.' After George Pullman, the inventor of the sleeping car.”

“You don't say,” I replied.

“I
do
say,” he shot back. “My father worked on the railroad. He never told me much, but he did tell me that - before the swine walked out on my mum and me.”

Despite the boy's gruffness, I was impressed by his interest in the nickname's origin. As a self-proclaimed wordsmith, I thought I sensed a kindred spirit. After all, one's sensitivity to language says worlds about a person's good character. Maybe the young man
could
be saved. If Holmes saw value in the lad, so should I.

“Stay interested in words,” I advised the boy, “and your appreciation will stand you in good stead.”

“Thank you,” the boy now known as Billy replied. He seemed to be contemplating his options. From Holmes' account I knew of his recalcitrance, but obviously the youth could modulate his disposition. Suddenly, with a bright smile he added, “Coming from a distinguished author like yourself, Dr. Watson, such a compliment means the world to me.”

“Much obliged, my lad,” I said. The boy knew how to charm; there was no doubt about that. One could see how a timely grin had brightened his face. Yet even now, as his lips maintained a serviceable smile, I could detect in the shadows surrounding his eyes the gloom of which his mother had spoken. She had called him shy; but with his misshapen nose and expressive mouth, “troubled” might be a more accurate term. Certainly, within this young man were waters that ran deep.

Seeing him standing so close to Holmes, I could only imagine what melancholy effects the two of them might have on each other. Due to my recent marriage, Holmes had been deprived of his usual long-time companion. Thanks to Holmes' detective work, Billy had been deprived of his nocturnal adventures.
Might two negatives equal a positive?
I wondered. One could only guess.

Thinking of my marriage reminded me once again that it was time to return home to my wife. I exchanged farewells with Holmes and took my derby from young Billy. I smiled again at the lad and made my way downstairs and through the front door. Once outside in the cold air, I was greeted by a cacophony of honks, shouts, cries, and whinnies - all of which welcomed me back to the hurly-burly of Baker Street in which I felt so comfortable. For Holmes' sake, I hoped the newcomer would feel the same.

II

A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.

- Raymond Chandler, Letter to Mrs. Robert Horgan

I visited Holmes only sparingly in the spring of 1903, but Billy's arrival assuaged my guilt. Marital bliss and a successful surgery preoccupied me although I must confess that on the few occasions I did manage to see my friend, I sensed a longing in both of us for the close companionship we had enjoyed for so many years in our adventures together. But I had my home life and medical patients to attend to; Holmes, no matter how intriguing some case here or there might be, still had only his solitary digs to return to. And I well knew that, with nothing challenging to entertain his active brain, Sherlock Holmes could easily fall back on self-destructive means to divert his attention.

For just that reason, when Holmes was on his own in those days following my marriage, I was always happy to encounter Billy the page. Despite the repugnant manner in which Billy had first made Holmes' acquaintance, the boy created a most positive impression once he began his duties. Whenever he had free moments at school, he would travel to Baker Street to help Mrs. Hudson with the travails of managing her rooms. He carried messages, cleaned living areas, prepared hearths, set tables, brushed clothing.

Conversing with a consulting detective served as a magnet for Billy as well. By the end of the first few weeks, in fact, he had developed a rapport with the very man who had found him out but a short time before. On any number of subjects from the criminal mind to Sarasate's violin concertos, they always seemed to find something to talk about. Nor should Holmes' interest in the lad be considered unusual.

Although my old friend had precious few encounters with children, his relationship with the Baker Street Irregulars, the street urchins who canvassed London at his beck and call, is legendary. The Irregulars could ingratiate themselves in all manner of ways an adult investigator could not. As effective as the boys were in blending into the background, so were they equally difficult to be remembered as individuals, the characteristic that helped make them so invisible and, therefore, successful. But Holmes worried about them constantly. So concerned was he over the welfare of his young
protégés
that one need not be surprised when later, as certain events came to threaten Billy, Holmes asked me, “How far am I justified in allowing him to be in danger?”

Thanks in great part to the notoriety of my accounts of Holmes' exploits that appeared regularly in magazines like
The Strand
, whenever I did get to Baker Street that spring, Billy would talk to me about writing. Studying the classics at school, he frequently interrogated me concerning literature. In particular, he asked about my own literary techniques, especially those that dealt with plotting. Of course, in the case of recounting factual occurrences like Holmes' and my numerous adventures, plotting in the traditional sense is less challenging - one generally lays out the events chronologically - that is, as they actually occur. To the novice, it might appear that all the reporter has to do is take them down. Yet one's muse constantly beckons, and I have always trusted that my faithful readers could forgive me the dramatic flair or overzealous embellishment I might have inadvertently inserted in some of Holmes' investigations.

To his credit, Billy recognized - dare I say, “appreciated” - my literary efforts and admitted that, if the opportunity ever presented itself, he too would like to try his hand at written composition.
Why not give the lad a chance to sharpen his nib on an actual case?
I wondered.
What problems can that cause?
Little did I imagine that, when providence provided the opportunity in the tale that I titled “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone”, I myself would be the recipient of those slings and arrows that in all fairness should have been directed at the novice.

The events of the case in question were brief, simple, and straightforward. In the summer of 1903, just months after Billy's arrival at Baker Street, the Mazarin stone, a diamond worth at least a hundred thousand pounds, was stolen from Lord Cantlemere, and he called upon Holmes to find it. Thanks to the obtuseness of the thief, who in Holmes' very sitting room, confessed to his partner of having it upon his person, Holmes was able to snatch the jewel, return it to its rightful owner, and hand the culprits over to Inspector Youghal of Scotland Yard. If there were any clever trick involved in Holmes' approach, it was the playing of a violin recording in another room to fool the thieves into thinking that Holmes himself was actually bowing and therefore too preoccupied and far away to overhear their personal conversation. In fact, Holmes was holding a glass to the closed door and listening to everything the miscreants had to say. It was a simple tale whose actions were confined to our sitting room. In short, the story seemed perfect for Billy to dramatize because it offered him little chance of going astray. Or so I thought.

To see what sort of narrative Billy might construct, I handed over to him the brief notes I had made from Holmes' report not long after the case's conclusion. Ironically, because the account the lad had composed has so often been mistakenly published as one of my own, the story's authorship has wrongly been attributed to me. My word! When a Holmes case begins with third-person references to me, John H. Watson, the customary first-person chronicler of my friend's exploits, only the most thick-headed of readers could possibly conclude that I was the story's true author. Moreover, with a string of flattering adjectives like “wise,” “tactful,” and “imperturbable” to describe the pageboy, one need not be Sherlock Holmes to identify the page himself as the rightful, if vainglorious, composer of the piece.

But I anticipate myself once more. Let me state that on my next visit to Baker Street following Billy's receipt of my notes, the boy eagerly handed me the account he had concocted. Although I was more concerned with Holmes' tired appearance than Billy's literary accomplishments, upon my return to Queen Anne Street I bade my wife goodnight, poured myself a glass of port, and settled into a wing chair to read the heralded manuscript.

Granted his youth, the lad wrote well, and his overly embellished version of Holmes' simple tale began accurately enough with Holmes' own report of the stolen diamond. But then poor Billy turned to flights of fancy. For example, to emphasize the importance of the valuable stone, Billy recorded an imaginary visit to Baker Street by the Prime Minister. To heighten the drama, he appropriated from my own account of “The Empty House” a wax figure representing Holmes, which in that earlier story my friend had placed in the bow window as a target for would-be assassins. True enough, the suspected thieves - Count Negretto Sylvius and his dim partner in crime, the boxer Sam Merton - did arrive at Baker Street with the intent to intimidate Holmes. So confident did they feel that, once the miscreants believed Holmes to be off in his room playing the violin, Sylvius removed the valuable stone from his pocket to show it off to Merton. At this point in reality, Holmes simply reappeared through the doorway and grabbed the diamond. But Billy's Holmes pounces on the thieves and retakes the stone only after switching places with Billy's newly re-invented wax effigy, an effigy which had been placed in the sitting room by means of a side-door that, like the wax figure itself, exists solely in the boy's imagination. At the end, as in reality, Inspector Youghal is summoned, and Holmes returns the diamond to Lord Cantlemere - but not before a preposterous
dénouement
in which a sardonic Holmes, trying to convince Lord Cantlemere that the jewel has been in Cantlemere's possession all along, surreptitiously slips the diamond into His Lordship's coat pocket.

* * *

Following my morning surgery the next week, I brought Billy's rolled-up manuscript to Baker Street. To keep it dry in the rain that was soaking the city that day, I transported it under the folds of my ulster. With one hand thus preoccupied, I needed the lad to help me remove my coat, but no sooner had he opened the door to let me into the entry hall than he began questioning me.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” he said politely enough, “but might I ask what you thought of my story?”

“Give me a moment, won't you?” I replied, struggling to shed the wet coat while maintaining my hold on his precious manuscript. He did come to my aid, but I'm sure he was more interested in keeping his work dry than with my comfort. Together we climbed the stairs to Holmes' sitting room where Holmes, ever the sleuth, noticed the manuscript in my hand and deduced it was time for a convenient retreat. Leaving me to handle the novice writer, he rejected the fire in the hearth and retired to his bedroom.

Accompanied by a defiant Beethoven violin-sonata issuing from behind Holmes' closed door, I unrolled the pages of foolscap, squared them up on the cherry-wood table, took a deep breath and began. I pointed first to the start of the tale and then, riffling through the pages, I pointed to the finish. “Notice,” I told the boy, “how a story reportedly about the skill and wisdom of Sherlock Holmes begins and ends with the appearance of Billy the page. While I do appreciate your full-circle intent, your ability to come back to where you started, if you feel that you yourself must play so prominent a role in the story, you might consider a first-person narrator - a fictional detective, for example, if crime writing becomes your
métier
.”

“No offence, Doctor Watson,” he said, “but I don't trust first-person narrators. They're never completely honest.”

Rather than accepting the suggestion, I realized, he preferred the parry. “Better a forthright first-person narrator than a dissembling third,” I countered.

Billy groaned, presumably understanding the lesson I was trying to teach. Criticising someone's writing is never easy, for the writer always hopes for the best. When the first critical strike hits, the result often evokes an inelegant but all-revealing sigh of deflation.

I persevered, nonetheless. “Look here,” I said, pointing to another early paragraph. “Although you never mention them by name, see how you have boldly brought into the action Mr. Balfour - the Prime Minister himself - not to mention the Home Secretary, Mr. Akas-Douglas. Since I assume that Holmes would have informed me of any actual visit to Baker Street by such august personages, I can only infer that you have inserted them into your account as a way of giving it greater importance.”

”Agreed,” Billy said, “But sometimes reality needs help. You must know what I mean. Who could be fooled by that set-up of yours in ‘The Red Headed League,' all those ginger-haired chaps engaged to trick just one?”

“It fooled Jabez Wilson,” I replied, annoyed by his impertinence but inwardly pleased that he was so familiar with my stories. “After all, fooling Jabez Wilson was what happened in reality.”

“Maybe so, but - ”

“Your manuscript reads like a play,” I said, cutting him off before he could digress from his own work even further. “To be sure, the action did occur in only one location - here - but you could have opened up the setting to include so much more. The single scene is too claustrophobic. There's no exit and much-too-much dialogue unaccompanied by narrative description.”

The crackling fire might easily have been heating up his ire as well as the room.

“But it bloody well
did
happen here!” he cried. “There's not much else to describe. It's all too simple; you yourself said to dress up the ruddy action.”

Ignoring his crudities, I arched the fingers of my right hand on the foolscap. “Of course, you must engage your reader, my dear boy. But not at the expense of truth. Truth!” I waved my arms at the four walls around us as I spoke the holy word. “Truth! Where is the waiting room that you described in your story? And how did a door so magically appear beside the window alcove when in reality there is none?”

“I needed a way of getting Holmes and his effigy in and out of the bow,” he proclaimed, holding his head high.

“But in actuality there was no effigy.”

“There was in
your
bloody story, ‘The Empty House.'”

I winced at his language, but he stood his ground. No apologies here, I noted as he ran his fingers through his sleek black hair.

“Yes, Billy,” I said slowly, hoping to appease him. “There is indeed an effigy in that account. And I do appreciate your research - Dulwich is training you well. But there was an actual effigy in the true story. You cannot willy-nilly appropriate the material from one history and place it in another wherever you choose.”

“What about your silly snake in “The Speckled Band”? No real snake can climb a bell rope.”

“But it did, Billy. It really did. You must draw a distinction between what you merely imagine and what is real.”

Suddenly, as if he was found out, Billy's shoulders sagged, and he lost his defiant pose. It was a reaction I'd seen many young writers exhibit at one point or another when confronted with realistic assessments of their so-called “art.”

From somewhere deep inside, however, Billy found the courage to ask, “Is there nothing of merit in my work?”

“Of course, Billy.” Fearing I might have been too harsh in my approach, I began anew. “I like your detail at the start - ‘the scientific charts on the wall, the acid-charred bench of chemicals, the violin case leaning in the corner... the baggy parasol.' You're good at noting the fine points; offer your readers more. And I especially like your use of the vernacular - words like ‘split' and ‘peached.' The more such slang you attribute to the persons who use it, the more convincing your writing shall be. Your dialogue rings true. You have a wonderful ear for accurately reproducing how people speak - the criminal class in particular. Really, lad, you write very well. Just remember to be credible, honest, real and baffling all at the same time.” I was overstating the case a trifle. “Relax,” I cautioned, “and it will come. You have talent, lad. I can tell.”