The Journal

March 1st, 1891

I have gotten through the worst of it. Between cases, my neurosis has been far more pronounced, but work is the best antidote. The past weeks have been a torrent of wild agitation, and ghostly hallucinations. There have been mixed states of darkness and charged enthusiasm.

I am not alone in my madness; Lord Byron offers the most apt observation:

Merely to breathe was enjoyment; and I derived positive pleasure from many of the legitimate sources of pain.

In these frenetic states, I joyfully contemplated suicide, and would certainly have delivered myself into its jaws, had Watson not intervened. He has weakened all of my drugs with saline, taken all of my poisons and has told me I will not get them back until I have recovered. He suggested a trip to the country, but I have doggedly refused and have simply plowed on with my cases. He says this ceaseless work will be the death of me. But life without work is so interminably monotonous that I have more than once contemplated putting my revolver in my mouth and pulling the trigger.

Good Doctor Watson. I know he suffers for my sake. I have behaved most dreadfully towards him, and yet he has always stood fast and taken it in stride with his infinite Hippocratic patience.

Ironically, it was news of the Rose case that finally put paid to my melancholia. After a lengthy investigation and a very long trial, Jacob Hackett and Jack Rose had both been sentenced to hang, after it was discovered they had orchestrated the deaths of the real Malcolm Dover and his wife. I had a letter from Lestrade requesting my presence at the execution. It was a formality, as I had brought about the occasion, and it occurred to me that perhaps it would facilitate some final conclusion to the whole affair. At least, that is the excuse I offer.

I had orchestrated the deaths of these men. However tangentially, I had been an instrument of a vengeance killing. It would be cowardly of me not to see it out to the end.

For the first time in days, I bathed myself, and shaved the stubble from my face. I oiled my hair and put on fresh clothes. I looked at myself in the mirror; I was still a wraith, but at least now I was well groomed and respectable.

I took lunch at Simpson's, a nourishing beef stew and good warm bread. I managed to finish it, and felt a little nauseous, but succeeded in keeping it down. I also managed a cup of strong coffee with my cigar.

As my cab sped towards Newgate, I was suddenly visited with the sensation of physical contact. It was a tingling at the nape of my neck, as if phantom hands were touching me. The tingling spread across my scalp and down my shoulders. It shocked me right back into the land of memory, and I suddenly felt as if the walls of the hansom were closing in around me. Without warning, the memory consumed me.

It was perhaps four o clock in the morning. All of the windows were thrown open, but the air was still and there was a prevailing humidity. I lay next to my companion, both of us as naked as David and Bathsheba, flushed and sweating alcohol. Between trysts, we had consumed a few bottles of the comet vintage.

The hotel had hot and cold running water laid on, so Irene's solution was to soak one of the plush towels in cold water and use it as a sort of impromptu sponge bath. She laid the wet cloth on the back of my neck and I shuddered a little. It was very cold, but quite a pleasant sensation.

"I spent some time in very warm places and this was the best way to cool down, short of jumping in the river," she said as she washed my shoulders. I took the towel from her and applied it to her back. She was slender, but toned, with wiry strength.

I soaked the small red welts and bruises I had made on her shoulder blades, marveling at my own savagery. In my minimal experience, I had never used someone (or indeed, been used) so roughly.

I had first tried to be gentle with her, but when she struck me a vicious slap across the face and then kissed my stinging lips, I realized I was far out of my depth. When I had the temerity to spend too long contemplating this troubling revelation, she slapped me again. I seized her wrists and held them in one hand pinned over her head.

"Better," she had said, smiling devilishly.

After that, I wasn't gentle at all. I was selfish, ravenous. My hands tore into her hair, and I devoured her mouth. When I thought my tortured muscles could take no more, she assumed the superior position. She put her forearm across my throat and pressed down, not enough to suffocate me, but enough to create the sensation of breathlessness. It had an intoxicating effect, and I felt my heart skip a few beats. After a moment, she let up, and I felt all of my tension dissipate into a sudden, violent release.

I did not move for a full minute, my entire body as relaxed as a corpse. Moonlight streamed through the windows and I was able to make out the small carriage clock on the mantelpiece. It was not yet two-thirty.

A wave of revulsion went through me. I fairly leaped to my feet, quite ready to flee, then sank back onto the bed, feeling as though my spine was made of rubber.

"What have you done to me?" I murmured. She palmed my slightly tender face6, making me wince slightly, then got up and went to pour two glasses of wine. I was able to pull myself into a sitting position against the headboard, and accepted the glass from her, taking it back in one swallow. It almost immediately went straight to my head and made me a little dizzy. I allowed her to refill my glass, this time taking small sips. Despite this, I was soon drunk, and we were back to doing things one would hesitate to ask from a professional.

Two hours later, I had flexed in so many positions that I felt like I had noodles in place of bones. I had experienced all the violent and tender facets of passion, and in a fog of exhaustion, knew that something deep in my soul had been strangled out of existence. I didn't care. My mind was washed of everything, and I existed only in that moment.

"What warm places?" I asked, taking the towel and moistening the space between her shoulder blades.

"All over," she said with a sigh, and I could feel a tiny shiver run through her. "South America, Africa...India."

"All these exotic places, and you come to London."

She propped herself up on her elbows and looked at me. "It was just the next place, one I hadn't lived in before. It was comfortable, and convenient for travel. I had considered it my second home for a number of years before you came along."

I traced my finger down her spine. "I am sorry about that. Truly, I am."

She shrugged. "It was probably best. The King was not above using violence to silence me. I think he only reconsidered after I shot and killed one of his hired ruffians."

I looked at her in amazement. On one hand, my opinion of her virtue had evaporated into total contempt, but on the other, I was developing an entirely new respect for her. The woman was clearly a force to be reckoned with.

"Irene, do you love your husband?" I asked quietly.

She rolled onto her back, and didn't look at me, but spoke rather to the ceiling.

"That is a difficult question. He is kindly and good, but like nearly all Englishmen, he is chronically boring."

"Chronically boring is an apt description for almost all men," I said. "With few exceptions, only deviants and madmen have anything novel to say."

She laughed softly, and then let out a long sad sigh. I lifted myself out of bed and helped myself to one of her cigarettes, then went and sat down on the end of the mattress.

"Why me?" I asked, more to myself than to her.

She sat up and sidled up to me, taking the cigarette from me and pulling from it.

"You have something novel to say," she said affectionately, handing it back to me.

"I suppose I deserved that."

"I am quite serious, Sherlock Holmes." she stood and stretched broadly. "There is a certain predilection that we share. We have a horror of the mediocre, and a fascination for the macabre."

"You, a fascination for the macabre?" I said, surprised.

"You have no idea."

"Tell me."

She smiled. "Not yet."

She took the cigarette from me and tossed it out the window, then cupped my face in her hands. I lifted her into my lap and pressed my mouth to hers. She tasted of smoke.

The cab had come to a stop. I grasped my brandy flask and took a quick pull to steady my nerves, then disembarked. A small crowd had gathered outside the prison, but they stepped aside for Lestrade as he came to meet me. He said nothing, but beckoned me to follow him through the passage. I arrived just in time to see Hackett and Rose marching up to the gallows. The familiar figure of hangman James Berry appeared to be chatting with a few members of the press. He was clearly more than a bit drunk, and I worried that he might botch the hanging. Berry's rope had been known to decapitate, despite his reputed mastery of the long drop.

One of the reporters approached me. It was Butterworth from the Telegraph, who unfortunately knew me on sight.

"Mr. Holmes!" said he, so cheerful that I found him quite morbid. "Am I to take it by your presence that you helped organize this little gathering?"

"Mr. Butterworth," I said, in my most caustic voice. "I have never before given my comment to your paper, and I do not intend to start today. This is an execution, not a garden party."

He gave a short, nervous bow, and scurried away back to his colleagues. They were soon in deep whispered conversation, and I knew that speculation would appear in the evening edition.

The Ordinary had finished conferring with the condemned men. Hackett had a glazed look, and I suspected the big man had taken a healthy dose of brandy from the prison doctor, but Rose was watching me with blazing eyes. I felt the man's fury as if it were a wave of heat emanating from his body.

I was not a stranger to executions, but I was troubled by this one. Had I been employed to hunt Jack Rose down, I would have no compunction about watching him die, but having been employed as a tool to condemn my client, I felt a little ill-used.

The last of the benedictions had been read, and the customary farewell spoken. Berry opened the trap, and both men plunged through the trap. The snapping of vertebrae was audible, as was the tearing of flesh. The white hood over Hackett's head was turning scarlet, and it was obvious by the angle of his head that it had separated from his body, held in place only by his bony spine. His feet twitched for a minute or so, then finally became still. Rose struggled for a few moments more, but then he too succumbed. The two lifeless bodies swayed slightly, and started to go rigid. Blood was beginning to soak through Hackett's clothing, and dripped on the dusty ground.

For a moment, I imagined I was in their place. I could almost feel the rope closing about my throat, the last fleeting glimpses of consciousness rushing through my mind until blessed darkness took me. My eyes closed and my breath caught in my throat in reflexive sympathy.

Lestrade cleared his throat. I opened my eyes, and looked at him. He offered his hand as if to congratulate me. I looked down at it, then back at the dead men.

"Thank you, Inspector, but I am afraid that to accept gratitude in this instance would put me in a false pretense."

"You don't look well, Mr. Holmes," said Lestrade, his beady eyes wide with concern, withdrawing his hand.

"Believe me, I am improving," I said in a clipped voice. "Good day, Lestrade."

The prison bell began to toll. I turned my back on the macabre scene, and walked away with hell's own choir roaring in my ears.