1938 – from the memoirs of John H. Watson
The years between 1889 and 1891 will always stick out in my mind as the most unusual in regard to my good friend's behavior. The vigorous attentions he bestowed on the mysterious Jack the Ripper slayings took a toll on him throughout that year leading up to the autumn of 1888. His devotion to that mystery made it even more baffling when he abruptly dropped the case after the discovery of Mary Kelly's body in that horrid doss house at Miller's Court. He told me later that he had given the police a name, but seemed frustrated with their unwillingness to listen to him. I was surprised he had not pressed the issue more.
I was not with him at the time, seeing as I was newly married. I learned of his involvement after. The entire affair had seemed to haunt him, and the one time he spoke of Mary Kelly's death, he had looked so destroyed that I dared not broach it ever again, afraid that my friend had come to the ego-destroying conclusion that he could not solve the murders as he was so convinced he could. Or, even, that he had been simply too affected on a visceral level by the state of that horrible room.
Knowing now what I know, I shudder to think how he survived at all. I had seen pictures of the Ripper's last killing, and its horror was beyond my ability to describe.
Mary Kelly was buried at St. Patrick's public cemetery. She lies in plot 10, grave number 66, row 66. Holmes always criticized me for being a dramatist, though he didn't have much wriggling room himself in that regard, and that romantic side of me will now always wonder if he visited her often. It would seem fitting, despite that undemonstrative nature of his, and the idea of him traversing the cemetery hillocks is intense in my mind as if I had witnessed it. I don't really know if he ever stepped foot into the graveyard. Holmes was not a typical man, and I shamefully admit that I do not know if it would have comforted him. I suppose I will never know. Nobody knows but him.
Closely following her death and burial, Holmes began to fixedly stalk the iniquitous Professor Moriarty, a fact that I was indeed aware of before he came to my house that fateful night, fearful of air guns (I apologize to my readers for the deception, but it was necessary). He confided in me his belief that the brilliant professor was at the center of every evil deed in London and even went so far as to propose that Jack the Ripper was a subordinate of the Professor whose maniacal deeds were being covered over by Moriarty's sway. His self-destructive actions in his quest to bring him down were cryptic to me then, though not so much anymore. When he disappeared for three years under a transparent excuse and then resurfaced a changed man, I didn't question it. His explanation was slapdash, undeserving of such a great mind. But he was different. He lacked the energy he once possessed and that cynicism towards life turned to melancholy. I was apprehensive to confront him. Mrs. Hudson commented on it as well, though she was much too fond of him to mention it to him. With her feminine instincts, I think she was more aware than me of his emotions.
I do not understand why he did not confide in me. Perhaps my own marital bliss made it harder for him. The death of my Mary in childbirth during his absence may have deterred him as well, his loss no longer seeming as great and not worth troubling me over. I still admit that it is hard to learn these things from a few impersonal pieces of paper, written by a woman I didn't know. I would have liked to spend the rest of my days believing that I knew most of what there was to know about the great man that I was honored to share rooms with for many years. I guess dear Mary has set me straight on that matter. It hurts a great deal to know he did not consider me close enough to confide in.
As Holmes would say: it's a petty thing, but it hurts my pride - and my feelings. Though I suppose my wounded pride is nothing to the wounds that forever scarred him. Nothing could compare to the grief my good friend must have borne for a good amount of his mature life as he suffered, knowing what he must have seen. I tried to put myself in his shoes, imagine seeing my own Mary like that, but my mind shunned the very idea. I could not bring myself to ponder it.
I am a romantic by nature, and as I look outside my modest cottage window into the frosty and bleak landscape of Worthing, I know for a certainty that it is snowing as well in St. Patrick's cemetery; the soft snow collecting on the harsh arcs of the headstones and wooden crosses engraved with the names of the dead; the poorer of which are scraped carelessly on with chalk. I made arrangements to visit Miss Kelly's grave a few days after coming into ownership of these memoirs but loitered about and put it off.
Perhaps I am frightened of the ordinariness that it will possess. Imagination is always much darker and more moving than reality. The most it could be is a cold slab of concrete with a name on it, if even that. There would be no allusion to the real woman who lie beneath it; the only woman to touch the soul of the finest man I ever knew - that London ever knew.
I wished to keep the visions in my mind. For in my mind, that name is imbued with the very essence of my friend, his sorrow, and his isolation. It goes hand in hand with Holmes, not the detective, but the man.
Perhaps this is also the reason I have seldom visited Holmes's seaside grave in Sussex. The grave could not do him justice; a simple tombstone is not worthy of the man.
Or perhaps I am just a coward.
I always prided myself on my sensitivity. I often chided Holmes for his callousness; often told him to be more attentive to the feelings of others. I cannot quite put into words the guilt I feel now. I shared the same flat with a man who considered me his closest companion, a man who, in retrospect, was very in tune to my feelings and moods. I even spent nights in the same room with him while on cases, his cot lying a few feet away from my own and I never noticed anything; not an inkling that my friend was - it seems odd to say even now - lovesick.
And to think that I condemned him of being unfeeling when, perhaps, he felt even more than I did. I was able to carry on with life after loss, as evident by the fact that my dear second wife is now sleeping soundly beside me as I write this. But he had not carried on, was not capable of letting go. And for that, he was more human than I could ever be.
A few months after his return from, what he dryly termed, his "holiday", I was sitting at the breakfast table, reading the paper. My friend was curled in his basket chair, staring lazily out of our window. He'd grown older in the few years he'd been gone, though he was still youthful and alert. There seemed to be a bone-deep fatigue in him since his return that I took for the ever-constant ennui he rallied so often against.
Without turning to look at me, he began to speak. His voice held none of the soft melancholy that was so usual for him when these black and languid moods came over him. He spoke brusquely, scientifically.
"Do you think, Watson, that when one loves another, the very idea that their loved one is somewhere, their feet treading on land, their lungs breathing air, renders the entirety of the world beautiful, simply because it contains them?"
His question was so absurdly poetic, and so unlike him that I had to take a moment to collect myself before I could answer.
"Yes, I suppose - if one were to think deeply about such things. But, I'm afraid, even those who love do not often think in such terms about the object of their devotion. Perhaps we would have much happier marriages if people did."
"True."
I shook out my paper, dedicating myself once again to a slightly boring article about the reopening of the Choir of Norwich Cathedral.
"But do you think," he continued, this time a bit softer. I recognized the tone, though men less familiar with him would merely think he was in the midst of one of his countless scientific inquiries. "Do you think that if suddenly the world no longer contained that person, that somehow it - the whole world - would seem ugly? Or worse, merely, unimportant?"
I thought of Mary. I thought of what was to be my child, who, at this time, would have been a small toddler, padding around my Kensington flat and getting into all manner of trouble. The paper in front of my eyes began to blur.
I coughed. "Yes, that is how it feels," I managed to choke out.
He turned his head to look at me. I kept my gaze on the print in front of me. I could feel his eyes, for some time, staring at me intently.
Finally, he spoke again. "Does it still feel that way?"
I didn't respond. Perhaps for the first time in all our time together, I seriously considered ignoring one of his questions. But he continued to stare, his face uncharacteristically expectant. He reminded me of a young boy anxiously awaiting the answer to a question that meant everything to him. It was for this reason that I responded.
"When I allow myself to think about it - yes."
He stood, coming to sit at the table, reaching for a teacup and a piece of plain toast.
"Our memories must sustain us," he told me softly, his fingers touching my shoulder awkwardly for the merest second.
"But there are so few memories," I'd responded. I wanted to hide behind my paper, ashamed of being so affected. I had never let him see the depths of my loss for fear of seeming overly sentimental or emotional to him.
"You have more than most, Watson. Never forget that," he said firmly, turning to gaze into the grate, sipping his tea, lost in silence. I can't recall any other part of the discussion. I'd taken it for lip service; for a vain attempt to console me over a matter he would never understand.
How foolish I was.
How narrow minded I was in regard to my dear friend and his depth and his ability to feel.
How unobservant I was.
I needed to make up for it; I needed to atone for my error. I went to his grave, for the first time in three years, and placed the wedding ring on the modest and solitary headstone that marked the site where The Great Detective was laid to rest. It seemed fitting, though Holmes would have rolled his eyes at the meaningless gesture had he witnessed it. But the dead are conscious of nothing, or so says Ecclesiastes, and it's a small comfort to know that my dear friend's pain is over. As well as poor, beautiful Mary's.