2. Clemency
Universe: Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle
Characters: John Watson, Sherlock Holmes, John Openshaw (The Five Orange Pips)
Warning: Minor Character Death, vague references to Christianity
Word Count: 1485
Summary: "You must not think you are the only one running away from confronting what orange pips have come to signify," he says, "I am every bit the coward you are."
Holmes and Watson deal with the aftermath of John Openshaw's death. Takes place after The Adventure of the Five Orange Pips.
Opening it hurriedly, out there jumped five little dried orange pips, which pattered down upon his plate. [Openshaw] began to laugh at this, but the laugh was struck from [his] lips at the sight of his face. […]
"What is it, uncle?" [he] cried.
"Death," said [his uncle], and rising from the table he retired to his room, leaving [him] palpitating with horror.
"Holmes," I cried, "you are too late."
"Ah!" said he, laying down his cup, "I feared as much. How was it done?" He spoke calmly, but I could see that he was deeply moved.
[...]
We sat in silence for some minutes, Holmes more depressed and shaken than I had ever seen him.
"That hurts my pride, Watson," he said at last. "It is a petty feeling, no doubt, but it hurts my pride. It becomes a personal matter with me now, and, if God sends me health, I shall set my hand upon this gang. That he should come to me for help, and that I should send him away to his death–!"
- The Five Orange Pips
As I have enclosed above, such is the adventure of the five orange pips that puzzled Holmes (and by extension, myself), during one of the late autumn days. The death of Openshaw hung over our heads, and for a long time, we kept a watch on the newspaper, awaiting any news of the Lone Star.
Often, I found myself thinking, forlornly, that even if news came that the Lone Star had indeed been captured, nothing could be done to reverse the obdurate death of poor Openshaw… At times, seeing Holmes' fervour as he flipped through the newspaper, I felt the instinct to remind my friend that there was nothing more to be done for our unfortunate client, and that he should rest his thoughts of avengement. Yet, it was reason that informed me that Holmes must have been painfully aware of the same truth that I had come to realise. It would be an unkindness, now, to interrupt his grief with such obtuse pronouncements.
Although I find myself a hardy man, having survived a war, I can hardly say that the incident left no mark on me. Weeks, no, months, after, I found myself shivering whenever I came across the pips and seeds of citruses, but especially oranges. I imagined poor Openshaw opening the envelope, to find the dried seeds tumbling out, and the loneliness and fear that he must have experienced in the last moments of his life. The chill of the dark water into which he tumbled for the last time. I found that I could no longer look at the innocuous orange without seeing it as a portend of death.
I hardly expected Holmes to be suffering the same aversion– after all, he was a much more seasoned man than me, a veteran in dealing with the particular unpleasantness of crime.
Yet, I had underestimated the depths of my companion's sense of his own culpability. I had not considered the guilt and regret that had come to hang on his conscience. It was only later– years after the case, when Holmes confessed to me sombrely over a nightcap that he still rewound over and over, occasionally, the details of that singular case in his mind as though reviewing a game of chess. If he had not commanded Openshaw's return to Horsham, would his life have been spared? If he had accompanied the man to the station, commanded him to go by a different route than Waterloo, advised him to stay away from bridges (though how was he to know?)–
I myself, having been a player of chess in my youth, knew at once the deep frustration that had been plaguing Holmes when he confessed of his constant replaying in his head of the problem. In the past, often had I gone over games in my head obsessively, wondering what would have happened had I moved the rook and not the knight on the tenth move, or if I had opened more effectively or even if I had attempted the Arabian checkmate instead of Anastasia's… It is only more difficult to imagine how potent the regret, how infinitely more compelling the alternate scenarios must be, when the pieces are not chessmen but human lives…
In any case, it was Holmes who made a move to confront the guilt that had come to hang over us since the end of the case. The ghost of poor Openshaw himself may as well have become the third resident of 221B, for he occupied our thoughts often, although neither Holmes nor I confessed to this.
One day in chilly November, Holmes was pacing in front of the fire composing an addendum to his monograph on the ashes of various cigarettes and tobaccos while I was re-reading The Old Man and the Sea, when he stopped suddenly.
"We must do something about it," he cried. "We must put an end to this."
"An end to what?" I wish I could say I sprung up from my chair, but at my age, it is more of a feeble fumbling.
"Why, Watson, have you not noticed that we haven't eaten a clementine, a mandarin, a navel orange, a satsuma, or any sort of citrus in well over two months?"
I was embarrassed that he had noticed. I had thought that I was being subtle when I firmly informed Mrs Hudson that 221B would no longer consume any orange of any variety in the foreseeable future, and asked for her to switch our fruit supply to the banana (which had no such pips to speak of– even watermelons and apples were not exempt, for their seeds were similar enough to that of the orange to cause a deep-seated fear in me).
"I am sick of eating the banana! It is making me jaundiced, Watson. Jaundiced." Holmes declared, spreading his long arms and gesturing wildly.
"There is nothing wrong with the banana!" I said passionately, although I too had gotten sick of the fruit.
"There isn't," Holmes agreed, "but there is something wrong with not eating pitted fruits because of– because of!"
I held up my hand, and Holmes stops– he doesn't have to finish the sentence; it was abundantly clear what he was alluding to. There was a pregnant pause, and I felt slightly sick, now that we had gotten the issue into the open. Holmes looks uncomfortable, but extremely determined, and we stare at each other. I am the one to look away first.
"I am terrified," I said, frankly and without pretence.
"Oh, Watson," Holmes sighs, and falls into his chair. "To be honest, so am I. It is a daunting failure, a most incommensurable tragedy, and– I too, must confess: I have been every bit as responsible as you have been in avoiding pitted fruits–"
"But it was I who told Mrs Hudson to switch our fruit supply!" I inhaled sharply, hardly daring to believe what I was hearing.
"Yes," Holmes winces, running his hand through his thin hair, "but who do you think has been bribing the fruit vendor to sell the banana fruit, a tropical harvest, during the midst of harshest winter that England has experienced in years?"
I am stunned into silence, and Holmes smiles wanly and waggles his long finger at me.
"You must not think you are the only one running away from confronting what orange pips have come to signify," he says, "I am every bit the coward you are."
"But Holmes–" I found myself protesting such a point, for Holmes was undoubtedly the better man of us both, and I could not imagine him succumbing to the fear and guilt that had gripped me.
He shushes me, waving an impatient hand. "No, you overrate me grossly, Watson– I am. That is why, I have taken it to myself to purchase an orange."
He walks over to his coat hanging on the coat rack, and from the unfathomable depths of his pocket, produces a single clementine. The impact is more dramatic than any description of mine can ever hope to achieve– the orange, clutched within his pale fingers, was like an orient pearl– it was the first time in over two months or so that an orange had made its way into 221B. I could not take my eyes away from it.
"Are we going to eat it?" I whispered, not entirely sure why I was speaking in such a reverent tone.
"No," Holmes smiled, "though I suppose that may also be a solution. No, Watson, we are going to plant it."
"New life, from an omen of death?" I was impressed by Holmes' delicacy and poetry.
"Yes," Holmes says, clapping his hands together as if in prayer, "For our deceased friend too, may he Rest in Peace. Clemency, Lord, upon his soul– and upon us too, us poor, helpless worms."
-END-