Sussex Downs, July 29th, 1926
Friend Watson,
This epistle has been perhaps the most difficult for me to write. Please bear witness to the fact that I have held this secret close for nearly forty years. This, the crisis of my narrative, has nearly driven me to the needle again for the first time in twenty years.
To think of Irene as a lover is quite a different thing to viewing her as an enemy. I learned quickly that hatred is not the antithesis to love. It tears just as deep a fissure in soul, and cripples one's resolve. Would that I were indifferent, Watson. It tears me still.
I awoke suddenly very aware of my nakedness. A hot breeze was washing over me, and a little sweat was collecting on my skin. I sat up and felt around for my trousers and shirt. Irene (for I could not now consider her by any other name) was seated in front of a vanity, dressed in a light shift. She was lacing the back of her corset, examining her bruised collarbone in the mirror's reflection. I moved behind her and took the laces from her. I quickly did up them up while she watched me silently in the mirror.
I stepped away from her, feeling somewhat nauseated. I had consumed a great deal more wine than my tolerance. Normally my constitution for alcohol is quite strong, but like Cleopatra to her Marc Antony, she drank me under the table. And that Parisian rosewater perfume served to make me somewhat dizzy. So I let myself lay back down on the bed. She snapped up the front of a yellow and white pinstriped walking-out dress and stood before me. I am not normally given to attach value to such things, Watson, but the dress had a marvelous effect on her figure.
"I have a small errand I must attend to," she said in a clipped tone. "I will return shortly."
I wondered for a moment at her brusque behaviour. She turned for the door, but I caught up with her, and pressed my lips to her cheek. She palmed my face.
"There's tea on the breakfast table."
Then she was away, through the door, her steps dying away. I resumed my search for my garments. I had got away from 221 B with only a shirt, a pair of trousers and the overcoat, so I was clad in a matter of moments. After a moment's contemplation, I went over to the breakfast table and poured myself a cup of tea. I lifted it to my nose and inhaled. The scent was familiar.
Time seemed to stop, and then speed up again very quickly. The cup slid from my hand, shattering on the table. I jumped the divan and tore the door open, skidding a few feet before shoving my way through the foreign quality and down the stairs.
I accosted a cab man and promised him a fiver if he could catch the Continental Express before it left Victoria. We arrived with five minutes to spare, which was ample time for me to steal aboard. I flicked away my cigarette and immediately slipped into the first class cars. It was a short search; in the window of the third compartment, I espied a familiar hand in white lace, a loaded silver cigarette holder held loosely between index and middle finger. I slid open the door and turned into the compartment, and was face to face with the muzzle of a snub-nosed, pearl handled revolver.
"Come in, and close the door behind you," Irene said in a slow, deliberate manner. I acquiesced, stepping across the threshold and letting the door slide shut behind me. She pressed the barrel into my chest. With the cigarette holder, she gestured to the opposite seat. I slid down into it, an icy hand closing around my heart.
She smiled, head tilted back, and lifted the holder to her lips. She had the attitude of a contented tiger. Utter confidence, and total control. The charming exterior had faded away to reveal the predator. You might have said it were as if I were staring into a mirror, Watson.
"You really think you are clever," I growled, a fury rising in my breast. "But you couldn't stop yourself from giving up the game. Why?"
She cocked her head, regarding me with a laconic expression. "I thought that would be obvious, especially to such a celebrated reasoner as yourself."
"Just to sweeten the poison, then?"
I could feel every lesion and bruise from last night's exertions throb and burn. There was something positively indecent about the way she licked her lips. I had never before felt a violent inclination towards a woman, but at that moment I wanted to leap across the compartment and strangle her until she was blue in the face.
"I wanted you to feel this keenly," she said in a confiding voice, patting my knee. "You wear your professional pride like a suit of armour, and I needed an unorthodox strategy to breach your defenses."
She spoke with such command, such authority. She had mastered the art of deception. I could see in her the force of spirit necessary to command a host of criminal elements.
"It was never really about Jack, you see. He and his servant Hackett were ideally placed to assist in bringing you to heel, Mr. Holmes. Naturally, I could have disposed of Jack Rose myself, but there you were. Immediately after I read the article, I departed for England."
"How did you manage to secure confederates in so short a time?" I interjected.
She smiled. "Like you, I have my irregulars. Oh, don't think you will catch any of them. They are as clever as they are skillful."
"After they fulfilled their purpose, I decided it was time to step into the game. I went to the opera with the sole purpose of attracting your attention."
"You do not need to tell me the facts, madam," said I, my ire rising.
"But it is necessary, Mr. Holmes, that you understand the gravity of your mistakes," she said sternly, stabbing the cigarette holder at me.
"I do not-"
"One must always have the complete facts, Mr. Holmes. It is no good to base one's inference on mere speculation."
How often had I heard such admonitions from my own lips? It was intolerable, Watson.
"You visited Baker Street just so you could leave your card on my sideboard."
She exhaled a plume of smoke and then French-inhaled it, drawing it back into her nostrils. I looked between her face and the pistol, waiting to catch her off guard. However, she was vigilant.
She slid over to my side of the compartment, digging the muzzle into my ribs. In a perverse gesture of friendship, she offered me a cigarette. I accepted it, allowed her to light it, and took one deep inhalation. The action steadied me, easing my agitation.
"Yes. I wanted to see if you would come. And you did. I met your dear Dr. Watson while I was tailing you, and fetched your carriage for you. Then I simply went home, took a lovely bath and waited for you."
"And you bedded me for spite? To keep me there until morning, so you could dose me with my own medicine?"
"I could say it was a matter of course," she said, smiling mysteriously. "But that would be a lie. I am not that petty. To embarrass you in your own field, that was enough. But I recalled those words that your friend had written about me. How he protests against your feeling anything so human as the emotion of love! I admit, it did arouse my curiosity."
"Lust, Mrs. Norton. Or do you prefer Mrs. Rose?" I asked, matter-of-factly. "You have quite the resume: a murderess, a thief, a bigamist, a con-artist and an adulteress. Few of my adversaries can boast such a pedigree."
"Please," she said, her face somewhat obscured by smoke."A lady is allowed to have lovers if she is trés discret. In any case, I was never married to Rose."
"Your capacity to tell the truth is highly suspect, my dear."
She withdrew gracefully to the other side of the compartment. The pearl handled revolver was trained on me every minute, and I waited in vain for an opportunity to seize it from her. She would shoot me through the heart first.
"You know, Mrs. Norton," said I, tossing the spent cigarette out of the window. "You would be well advised to shoot me now. Otherwise, you will find yourself at my mercy."
"I could never do that, dearheart," she said with a venomous smile. "There's no sport without you."
"I am sure you will find plenty of sport in the dock," I replied calmly. "I will see to it."
"You, and as they say, whose army?" she laughed. "What will you do? Run to Scotland Yard or the Pinkerton Agency and tell them all about our dalliance? It would be a swift, brutal and fatal end to your career. My husband would have you up for slander in a trice, and you would find yourself on the mill, disgraced and ruined."
I could not deny the truth in this, Watson. Were it known that I, Sherlock Holmes, had allowed myself to become entangled with a married woman, my career would have followed Jack Rose through the trapdoor.
"I may choose to exact personal vengeance," I said in an offhand way, watching her carefully for some kind of reaction.
"You have not got it in you, Sherlock," she said, rising slowly. "Oh, you may be capable of shooting a rogue at twenty paces, but you are not a brute, and you are not driven by passion. I do not think you could kill a woman, much less a lover."
"You vastly overestimate my chivalry, madam. We are not enemies, not lovers."
Her smile had become wan and ironic. "You are more the fool, Sherlock, if you think there is anything to choose between the two."
The train was beginning to slow. She gestured with the gun, and I stood.
"Hands behind your back, if you please," she said sweetly and sidled up to me. She slipped the revolver into a fold in her skirt, pressing it into my side through the fabric. She looped her arm in mine and stepped down on the platform of Canterbury station.
The day had become quite fine. It was hot and dry, and my overcoat was beginning to make me perspire. Irene looked refreshed and vibrant in the sun. She steered me into the shadow of the station house.
"Well, my darling," she cooed in my ear, flirtatious as ever. "I am quite sorry to have to leave you like this, but I think we will meet again before long."
I looked down at her, repulsed and attracted at the same time. In another life, she might have been a contemporary. I felt a sting of regret, but it passed in a vision of her wearing the broad arrow. I wanted to see her brought low. I was eager to chase her. I was foolish.
She leaned in and pressed her lips into mine, while I stood stock still, closing my eyes so I would not have to look at her. I felt one gloved hand caress my face. Suddenly, a sickly sweet smell filled my nostrils. Chloroform.
I began to struggle, but heard the cock of the hammer. I froze, just long enough to take a great breath of the chloroform-soaked handkerchief. The world went dark, my knees buckled, and I knew no more.
I was prodded awake by the night watchman. It was raining and I was soaked through. I gave some weak excuse, and was able to scrape just enough change out of my overcoat pocket to pay for a third class train fare back to London.
You found me in that despondent condition two weeks later, Watson. When I returned from my little jaunt, I found myself sorely in need of a whiskey. I found one at Mad King George's. It wasn't much longer before I found myself in the basement, stripped to the waist, engaging in the noble British bloodletting, boxing. I took on at least five opponents that evening, a wild burst of manic energy carrying me through each punch and jab, masking the pain of every impact.
I do not remember how I got back to Baker Street, but obviously I did, for I then went on the drug binge to end all drug binges. All told, by the time you had found me, I had lost perhaps fifteen pounds and had slept only when aided by liberal applications of morphia.
If you have not guessed, it was the scent of the Darjeeling Spring Flush that finally lifted the veil from the mystery. Unable to resist the chance to glory in my humiliation, she prepared it, knowing I would immediately recognize it, and connect her to the London and South Western caper. Irene Adler could never be satisfied with mere victory; she could not resist the temptation to crow over her opponent. She had pulled the wool over my eyes; she wanted me to know it.
She might as well have mixed arsenic into that tea for all the sadistic malice that was in it. To this day, I have not touched Darjeeling of any stripe, for the memories associated with the mere scent can have a more powerful psychological effect than the strongest narcotic. It tastes of defeat, and even now I cannot abide it.
As you have witnessed, it took me a number of years to claw my way back from the abyss. I have enclosed a diary from those torrential years, but I have not set eyes upon it since then, so I cannot speak for its contents except to say they were written in a drug induced frenzy. I hope it does not bring you pain, but I feel that it is necessary that I entrust you with my deepest self, however perverse and twisted it may be.
I believe it was divine intervention that brought you into my life, Watson, for you have saved my life a hundred times over. You have saved my life without knowing it. When I was in my greatest despair, you were there. I would have starved myself if you hadn't found me that night, and when you returned to live at 221 B, it was your good camaraderie that rescued me from perpetually murdering myself. Even as I sought death at the Reichenbach, it was the thought of you that rekindled the fight in my soul. For all the praise you have heaped on me, you are the strong one, my dear friend.
I know I have probably shocked and disturbed you with my story. I imagine you would be even more shocked to know that I saw Irene Adler again, but that is a story for another time. I leave this narrative in your hands to do with what you will, though I agree it will be better told in the far future, when it will not bring dismay to our contemporaries.
Tell me the news of city, and of yourself. I hope to see you quite soon.
Yours, as always,
Sherlock Holmes
