BBC Sherlock: The Case of the Colonel Carruthers Connection
Chapter 7: Changes
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"…anything for me…compensating for our loss…." John sat in the solicitor's wood-paneled office, recounting Captain Mackenzie Mason's words to Carruthers' legal team. To alleviate the stress of the painful memory, he drummed his fingers on the arm of the leather chair.
It was still a week before the first hearing and they were working on the mental health aspects of the case. Along with the psychological profile the army provided upon the Colonel's discharge from service, John's testimony was crucial. He met with Carruthers' solicitors to share substantive insights that would make a case in the Colonel's defense and to elucidate the Colonel's mental state as only he was in a position to do. John was seeking leniency for a man who, through an exacerbation of an underlying personality disorder, had become unrecognizable to those who had known him before the tragic events in Afghanistan.
"Mac had been right about the structured life of the military," John continued as coffee was handed round. "I've read the studies and followed the research about how an ordered life-style mitigates the underlying anxiety and intolerance of uncertainty that OCDs experience."
Solicitor Clive Hopper, a stout man with thick glasses and thinning gray hair, half sat on the front of his massive desk and folded his arms. Whilst his assistant counsel, Thomas Owens, quietly took notes nearby, he directed his attention at John. "Do you feel, Dr. Watson, this explains his offensive against you."
"Unquestionably. I'm a surgeon, not a psychologist, but I had the requisite rotation during training and I'm sure his psychological tests will back me up. I believe that the Colonel was so devoted to his daughter—his only remaining family—that her loss threw him into uncertainty and anxiety and triggered a massive shift in his personality and behavior. His staff confirmed this, as you've read in their sworn statements. Worse—it put his military career in jeopardy."
"We already know his failure to exhibit good citizenship," Hopper interjected, "resulted in serious action from the service."
"Yeah. That was the problem." John pushed back in his chair and shook his head. "Carruthers disobeyed his superiors about harassing me and drew the consequences. I'm sure you checked his record…the counseling, the written documentation…before they ordered his separation. They tried their best to have him retire with honors. His obsession for justice had fixated on me. There was no denying that after he was forced to retire because of me, it gave him another reason for his enmity."
"Yet you waited all this time to raise a formal complaint," Hopper pressed, seeking to understand John's motives. "It's odd that you delayed filing charges until now. Why have you changed your mind?"
"Not changed my mind, exactly. I had no reason to make a complaint. After his superiors had forced his discharge, he stopped. Since then, I've had no contact from him. Only in the last few months, though, I started receiving his letters. I wanted to ignore them. Stalking me is one thing." John shrugged. As a doctor, he took seriously his responsibility to care for others—including Mrs. Hudson and Sherlock—from actual bombs. "But ….well, now, with a bomb threat, the Colonel's broken a more serious law. I'm afraid he's becoming a danger to himself and others. He needs help."
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The night before the hearing, John set up the ironing board in the sitting room. He was deep in thought, pressing his best dress shirt; his suit trousers, also in need of pressing, were draped over the back of the cigar chair.
Sherlock observed John from the kitchen whilst conducting a small experiment. Although he had been aware of John's involvement in the legal process—as an advocate for mercy and forgiveness—he had refrained from questioning why. For the most part, Sherlock had stayed out of John's business. However, researching cold cases and keeping tabs on the criminal element prowling the city had failed to divert his persistent curiosity. The consequence of having a flat-mate for so many months, always underfoot…causing distractions…, Sherlock rationalized. He had no other reason for his failure to maintain a cool disinterest in John's concerns.
John's ironing continued to disturb Sherlock's concentration. Sliding his safety goggles to his forehead, Sherlock called across the threshold. "First official hearing tomorrow, then?"
John looked up from his task. "Yeah. Catching the 8.07 …Won't be home for supper."
Sherlock slid his goggles back down, dispensed several droplets from the pipette filled with vinegar into the vial and inspected the reaction. He bent over his notebook to record his findings. "Would you like company?" He asked without looking up.
John grunted in surprise and tilted his head, "Seriously?"
Sherlock jotted a few more notes before replying, "If there's no objection."
"You sure?"
Sherlock straightened up to see his friend holding the iron up in the air and staring at him. "Of course," he said with conviction.
"Right, then." John nodded and resumed his ironing, not before Sherlock caught a glimpse of his half smile and heard his pleased, "Sure!"
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When he and Sherlock entered the Magistrate's Court, John was shocked by the physical changes in Colonel Walter Carruthers. There was little resemblance to Carruthers' formal military portrait—a robust officer, cropped hair, greyed at the temples, keen eyes, a stern mouth, and a proud expression. Rather, the Colonel appeared a withered old man who, during the hearings, proved to be his own worst enemy. The defendant showed no contrition for his offense and openly railed against Captain Watson—failing to recognize that the man against whom he was inveighing was sitting in the court. Carruthers displayed himself a man unhinged before the magistrate. Solicitor Hopper could not kerb his client's outspoken and unveiled threats and the Courts could not ignore them.
"—consorted with terrorists!"
"—should've died instead of my daughter!"
With jaw set and eyes staring past the ranting man, John steeled himself for the onslaught. Disturbing as Carruthers' behavior was in the court, he had experienced the Colonel's malice at his bedside in hospital. The man's tirade, played out for the Court, was more disquieting for the memories it resurrected.
"—killed all his colleagues! He should be executed. Shot! Hung! Quartered… Bring back the death penalty for treason! If there is justice still in the realm, he MUST die!"
Sherlock sat beside John in the courtroom quietly observing the entire proceedings. The Colonel's indignities drew the Court's attention, but more remarkable to Sherlock was the dignity John Watson displayed in drawing upon his inner resources to maintain control and calm in the face of Carruthers' deranged rambling.
At last, the Magistrate gaveled for silence and directed the Colonel's legal team to restrain their client or he would be held in contempt. Solicitor Barrister called for a continuance, requesting the hearing resume the following day.
When John and Sherlock returned the next day, the Colonel appeared more subdued in the courtroom, obviously sedated for his own good. In the calmer courtroom, legal counsel prevailed in persuading the Court what was best for the Colonel. They considered Carruthers' exceptional service record before the onset of his mental illness and rendered a decision John could live with. Carruthers was sentenced to a high-security psychiatric hospital for long-term care. It was a humane placement and John found solace that Mac's father would be in good hands.
Once, after Carruthers' placement, John had made a special trip to the high-security institution to visit the Colonel. For Mac's sake he wanted to ensure the Colonial was receiving an appropriate level of care. He had hoped the course of treatment, which included psychiatric medication, psychotherapy, and occupational therapy, would restore Carruthers' soundness of mind. He regretted the lost opportunity to open a dialog with him. There was so much he had wanted to share about Mac's bravery and medical acumen, the perfection of her stitches, her kindness and generosity towards the patients and hospital personnel. He had wanted to give Carruthers a lifeline back to sanity with something to cherish, fond memories about his remarkable daughter.
After gaining clearance from security, his request for a face-time visit with Carruthers was denied. "Sorry, Dr. Watson, the patient has requested no visitors…." The institution's administrator wore a sad expression, implying, especially not John Watson.
"Quite." John conceded with a shrug and left to catch an immediate train back to London. Settling in for the two-hour journey, he scratched the rough, late-afternoon bristle on his chin and gazed out the window at the landscape sliding past. Sherlock predicted it would be a waste of time. As usual, he's right. I'm being stubborn and unrealistic!
Several weeks after the Colonel entered the psychiatric hospital, he suffered a debilitating stroke. That door to dialog had decidedly closed, but in the wake of the Carruthers' case, John began to notice that another was opening wider than before—his connection to Sherlock. Still an "annoying dick" half the time on an ordinary day, his flat-mate had demonstrated a reserved sensitivity with the Carruthers case. In fact, Sherlock's non-judgmental presence—beside him in the courtroom and on the train back to London after the sentencing—had lifted John's spirits, a cleansing and binding of a wound that until Sherlock's involvement, John had despaired might never heal.
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John carried on as Sherlock's flat-mate and took on more cases to blog—the Royal Appointment, Sherlock Holmes Baffled. Thanks to the growing visibility of John's blog, Sherlock was becoming an internet sensation; more clients came knocking on their door. And while compared to Sherlock's genius, John's detecting skills were lacking, he contributed in another important way: his down-to-earth prose provided their widening audience a comprehensible translation of Sherlock's esoteric logic
More months passed, more mysteries continued for the pair. They encountered The Woman, dealt with the Hound and John blogged about it to their fans' delight. Case after case, they followed clues and deciphered solutions. Sometimes they suffered the tedium of evening stakeouts in cold warehouses and back alleys, ate tepid takeaway—at least John had—at three in the morning. Back at the flat, they disagreed about what belonged in the fridge, whose turn it was to pick up milk, and that having cab fare was necessary because cabbies expected to be paid. They argued often and heatedly about human motivations and social decorum, and minutes later would agree that boring people who wanted to ride on their rising wave of fame were intolerable. They played board games, Cluedo, Pick-up Sticks, Mastermind, and they laughed—longest and hardest about the imperious Mycroft—as well as at themselves for their sometimes ridiculous adventures.
Working with Sherlock proved John's best therapy. It helped him quietly surmount his grief. His unvented post-service rage found a release on the "battlefield" he walked with Sherlock Holmes. Months passed and the partnership persevered, trust grew, and a friendship took root and flourished. In Baker Street, each man experienced a sense of home and the assurance that each had the other's back, no matter what came their way.
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The day that began with shocking revelations, New Year's Eve ended in welcome and well-earned peace. John helped himself to a celebratory whiskey and Sherlock picked up his violin. Big Ben chimed.
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne
When Sherlock had played the final bars of Auld Lang Syne, he did not move to put the violin away. Rather, he stood still, his slender silhouette framed by the window, and looked out over his London. For a long spell, he seemed content for silence to fill the space, and then he muttered ever so softly, "After all, it's the season of kindness and charitable gestures, a time of forgiveness for all our missteps in life."
It was an odd and intimate remark for a man who disdained sentiment.
John sipped the whiskey and savored the warm, smooth flavor on his tongue, wondering if he had heard correctly, uncertain if Sherlock's soft-spoken insight was meant for his ears. Who was Sherlock forgiving? The Woman who had faked her death or himself for falling into her trap?
Forgiveness! A virtue? An emotion? Whatever it was, it had eluded John. Feeling unforgiven had been at the crux of his PTSD depression and purposelessness, the cause of his somatic limp, the wound that would not heal. It had been the worm in his ear—not the gun in the bedsit drawer—that had tempted him to relieve the pangs of guilt and blame he endured after being invalided from the army. But all this had begun to change—John had started on the path of self-forgiveness—because of Sherlock.
"Must have been hard, then, living with an obsessive compulsive perfectionist?" he had said long ago to Mac.
"Yes and no. He's critical but with a forgiving side…" she had answered.
He compared his parallel reality with Sherlock Holmes to Mac's OC-challenged father and the similarity was not lost on John. His thoughts rushed back to that late-January day when he met the consulting detective. Since then, he had survived nearly a year without throttling his perfectionist, obsessive flat-mate, a demanding man who had turned his life around whilst turning it topsy-turvy. John had not been bored, there was that. Nor had he been sunk in despair—he'd been too busy. Sherlock had seen to that. John had been at Sherlock's side through it all and slowly had become integral to their investigations.
Reviewing the unforgettable, a rarely-a-dull-moment year now, John was persuaded that had been Sherlock's scheme all along. And what of it? he thought as he finished his drink. He felt a jolt of fierce allegiance to the man who had saved him from doing the honorable thing. Maybe we saved each other, came to John's mind unbidden and that sense of allegiance gave way to an unexpected sense of peace as the strains of the Old Scots tune faded in his head.
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Six months later, John's wounds would reopen deeper than before as the sole survivor of yet another tragedy.
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More to come...