Dr. Mortimer
My one patient was suddenly four, although I was glad to see that none of these three were hurt as badly as Sir Henry. I had Barrymore put Lestrade into a chair by the fire with a basin, for he'd been sick once and was green enough to be so again. Holmes put Watson on the table, as he'd been bidden by Sir Henry and set about getting Watson's coat off while I steered Sir Henry into the nearest chair. I'd have rather put him to bed, but he insisted on staying and only made allowances for Barrymore and Perkins to begin to clean him up for his nightshirt.
Holmes I tried to banish to a bath as well, knowing that the worst of nearly drowning in mud is the cold that seeps into the bones. But he wouldn't go. Just stood and held the candelabra, so as to give me better light as I tended to Watson. The bullet that had hit him must have come from a small calibre pistol, but it had done damage enough. The arm had started to swell, and there was mud as well as blood to be dealt with, but Watson assured me it wasn't half so bad as what he'd had before. Seeing the scar on his shoulder and getting a clear look at the misshapen lump of the bone beneath it, I had reason to believe that he was telling the truth. But the first shock was wearing thin and I could see him looking for something to distract his mind while I was cleaning out the wound with carbolic and extracting the bullet from where it had lodged beside the bone. His eye fell on Sir Henry.
"I'm sorry," he said. "She's dead."
"Miss Stapleton?" Sir Henry gasped. "Beryl?"
"He killed her," Watson confirmed grimly, and I could not be sure that his tears were due to the pain.
"She was not his sister, she was his wife," Holmes intervened, but neither Watson nor Sir Henry seemed to hear him. I nearly dropped my suture needle.
"What about him?" Sir Henry asked.
"Dead too." Watson's eyes drifted closed for a moment. "I shot him."