The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes (24 page)

His answers bothered me. I couldn't help remarking, ‘Then do we simply reel in our lines and nets, stash our harpoons, and let the killers go, is that it? It isn't like you, Holmes!'

‘I'm afraid we must, Watson. They will die happy, rich, and applauded by their small circle of friends. There is nothing anyone can do about it.'

‘That isn't the way a story should end,' I said. ‘It sends chills through my heart to hear you say it. The two evil geniuses escape! My god.'

‘Not two evil geniuses,' said Holmes. ‘One genius, one dolt. They lurk in Washington, DC, at the centre of a web of crime that covers the whole world. Moriarty and Moran ruined many a life in London. These two have ruined lives throughout the American Empire, which stretches all around the world. That man Pistek, who Lestrade so foolishly imagines has a hand in these killings, is right. The US has more than eight hundred military installations in at least thirty-nine countries of the world. No ruler, no person, is safe from the hand of the two who sit at the centre of the web and control those forces. Those two can, if they choose, reach out and grab almost anyone, and gaol them, torture them, kill them. Their reach is worldwide.'

I felt my heart beating hard. ‘I had not realized your political opinions were so passionate – or, indeed, that you had political opinions at all.'

‘I have grown wiser with age,' said Holmes. ‘Two lifetimes does that to you.'

Holmes and I returned to our cottage in Wales and returned to our books and study. I bought the
Pickwick Papers
first edition that I had so long admired, and I bought many another rare and curious volume. Holmes bought everything, filling his wheelbarrow with a miscellany, a gallimaufry, a mélange of the strange, the commonplace and the erudite, an omnium-gatherum with which he educated himself about the events of the last ninety-four years.

November turned to December. Snow fell on the barren hills and made the world a wonderland of white. I made black boot prints on the street as I returned down Chancery Lane to Cambrai Cottage. Holmes had the fire blazing. As I entered he looked up from his book and said to me, ‘Watson, all is pattern, repetition, variations on a theme. What you have done once in life, you do again – a prisoner of your own personality, and of life's natural cycles.'

‘Come now, Holmes – surely you exaggerate a little.'

‘Not at all. I dare say, if a man lived long enough, everything in his life would repeat itself – in outline if not in fine detail. Have you not noticed, Watson, how often you are in a situation and you have the feeling you have been there before?
Déjà vu
. And my belief is that in most cases you really
have
been there before. And sometimes you can recall the earlier situation, and sometimes not.'

‘It is an interesting theory,' I said. ‘But if we are really just repeating ourselves, what fun is it? What meaning could there be?'

‘Why should there not be fun and meaning in repetition? You read the same book twice sometimes, do you not, Watson, and actually get more out of it the second time through? You sometimes go to the same movie twice.'

‘True,' said I. ‘Very true.'

‘Well, there you are,' said he. ‘Your life is a movie that keeps playing different but similar scenes over and over, and you enjoy it nonetheless.'

‘Yes, I see your point,' I said. Suddenly his observation seemed not only clear but wise.

Yet at that very instant his own enthusiasm seemed to collapse. His face fell and the light went out of his eyes. ‘Even so, one is likely to get bored,' he mused. He launched himself out of his chair and stood by the window looking out at the snow like a disconsolate child with no playmates and nothing to do. He stood with his hands in his trouser pockets, gazing out at the white little street.

He looked lost.

December leaked away and we heard nothing more of Simon Bart, and nothing from Lestrade or Scotland Yard. It was almost Christmas. I had no people to go to for the holidays, and neither did he, so we hung a wreath on Cambrai Cottage, and he gave me a book as a gift, and I gave him a book, and we unwrapped them and made a fuss – as if we didn't already have enough books! – and then we went out to Christmas dinner together. Sergeant Bundle stopped by late in the afternoon with a Christmas cake. He was ruddy with bumptious good cheer, and he thanked Holmes for his work on The Old Vicarage case. He said Holmes's work was excellent work, fine work, but some fish always get away, he said, putting his hand on Holmes's shoulder – and I could see Holmes cringe. Bundle said he doubted now that the man would ever be caught, but not to worry, not to worry. ‘Merry Christmas, gentlemen!' said he, and he was gone, bustling away. And somewhere bells were ringing.

The following afternoon Holmes got a call from a private detective in Leeds, Alfonse Smedley, who informed him that Simon Bart was dead.

‘Holmes,' I said, ‘you are a miracle of efficiency. I didn't realize you had hired a man to watch him. You do cover the ground pretty thoroughly, don't you!'

‘One tries, one tries,' said Holmes, carelessly. ‘I knew pretty well that the aneurysm would do him in. And so it did. He fell dead right on the sidewalk outside his mother's house, dropped dead as he stepped out to bring in groceries from his car. I instantly saw that his problem was still lurking, caused by the bayonet wound in the chest he had received in Afghanistan, then exacerbated by the fall from the stage. The fall must have reopened the split in the artery, and this suddenly brought on the hoarse voice and coughing that we noticed. Those are symptoms my old friend, Dr Watson, long ago told me were characteristic of some aneurysms. And of course the girl, Rebecca, mentioned that he was on beta blockers, a sign that he had probably guessed his own fate.'

‘Well, you were right again, Holmes,' I said. ‘Doubly right. At least the poor tortured soul got to spend Christmas with his mother.'

‘A gift of Luck,' he said modestly.

‘With a little help from you.'

‘Hmm,' said Holmes. ‘And I don't think I'll tell Lestrade the good news for a few days more – let Colonel Davis live a little longer in fear, cooped up in his safe house.'

‘Holmes!' I cried, ‘I'm proud of you. I had always feared you were too much a man of principle.'

‘Ah,' said Holmes. ‘Principle is good, but one can only stand so much of it. As Juvenal remarked, the wise person puts limits even to his honourable actions.
Imponit finem sapiens et rebus honestis
.'

‘There is truth in that,' said I.

‘But I'm bored, Watson. I languish. I need action. I need a dose of the world.'

‘Funny you should say so,' I replied. ‘I was thinking just yesterday that it might be nice to move to London in the spring.'

He leapt from his chair and grabbed an apple from the bowl on the table and tossed it in the air. ‘A capital idea, Watson! Just the thing.'

‘Last night,' I said, ‘I was on the Web and I found some very nice lodgings in Baker Street, your old haunt. A nice area it is, close to Regent's Park—'

‘Yes, Watson. Let us do it!' he cried. ‘In Regent's Park we can stroll and contemplate problems! Pacing through Regent's Park with a problem on my mind was always a thing I loved. Shall we rent a place together?'

‘I think we should,' said I. ‘We'll be there in spring, almost like being reborn.'

‘I wonder –' he mused, looking at me earnestly and full of hope – ‘do you suppose Lestrade might send a few small problems my way when we're back in the city?'

‘I am absolutely certain he will, Holmes,' I said, and I grabbed an apple from the bowl and tossed it, and caught it. ‘How could he not!'

‘Quite right!' said Holmes. ‘It is perfectly logical. How could he not? After all, I have been tracking criminals for a hundred and thirty years.'

Beyond our window, snow had begun to fall. I opened the cottage door and looked out. A distant bell began to toll. As our tiny street filled up with snow I imagined I saw Mr Pickwick's coach and horses bursting round the corner in a muffled clatter. Suddenly the world, so strange and full of wonder, seemed to promise startling days of companionship ahead, and the pleasant jolt of dangerous journeys.