"Five Pillows and an Ounce of Shag, or The Lips of the Twisted Man" (ACD Holmes/Watson, Rated PG-13)
Title: Five Pillows and an Ounce of Shag, or The Lips of the Twisted Man
Author: gardnerhill
Rating: PG-13 (Victorian metaphors)
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Mrs. Neville St. Clair, Inspector Bradstreet, Neville St. Clair
Pairing: Holmes/Watson, Established relationship
Warning: Gentlemanly canoodling. Opium. Heterosexual panic. Large lumps of prose taken directly from the original Conan Doyle story. Large liberties taken with said original Conan Doyle story.
Word Count: 5000
Summary: A re-imagining of “The Man With the Twisted Lip.”
Disclaimer: If the Doyle estate doesn’t like the way we play with the dolls they shouldn’t have sold them to us.
Author's Notes: Written for the September 2014 ACD Holmesfest, for recipient alafaye.
In the blistering hot month of July 1889, I returned to London from tending a patient in the country to find my friend Sherlock Holmes had left Baker Street in pursuit of a case. For five days I did not hear from him, and due to the demands of my practise treating heatstroke, dehydration and other illnesses brought on by the weather, I was kept away from our lodgings nearly as often. In all that time I did not hear from him save for the curt note left on the table at the onset of those days (In Lee. - S.)
All that changed one Friday night, at just about the hour when a man yawns for the first time and looks at the clock. I received a knock at the door, and a sleepy, surly Billy the page handed me a note given him at the street entrance by “a dirty little titch with a runny nose” (which could only have been Big George Carter, a tiny boy who ran with the Irregulars and often carried messages from Holmes when he was in his seedier locales).
The note was scrawled on a scrap of paper: AT BAR OF GOLD COME AT ONCE - SH. Holmes named The Bar of Gold in Upper Swandam Lane, one of the most notorious and noxious opium dens to pollute the dockside area.
For one fleeting, dreadful moment I believed my dear friend had taken up opium-smoking in addition to his loathsome cocaine habit (one from which he and I had been steadfastly weaning him for a long time). In the second moment I banished my irrational fear: I had not observed Holmes exhibiting any signs of opium addiction, had not smelt the telltale odour of the smoke in his clothes nor upon his breath (and surely if he had taken up such a vice, I would have discovered it when we kissed - and he had shown no reluctance to indulge in that pastime). Most importantly, the docks where this den resided were a fertile breeding-ground for crime, his truest and greatest addiction.
At once, he’d said. So, pausing only to throw a few items into a small bag and load my revolver, I dashed back out the door of 221b with a quick note of my own to Mrs. Hudson letting her know I would be out for the evening and not to hold supper for me, and hailed a cab. The cabbie gave me a suspicious look when I gave the destination, but said no word as we were away; I mused sadly that, despite my bearing and clear signs of my profession, that the cabman thought me merely another fellow heading to the docks for his dose of addiction.
In a vile alley near the wharves, up a steep flight of stairs, I found the entrance to the establishment; the narrow-eyed man at the door yielded sullenly when I hoisted my doctor’s bag and looked sternly at him; I had already chosen my persona both to look for my friend and not to be taken for a customer. I walked into the smoke-choked room lined with many narrow bunks like an immigrant ship, each of them holding a lost soul. “Whitney? Isa Whitney?” I called in a low tone as I passed among the sufferers, using the name of an old Army acquaintance who had sadly succumbed to drug addiction long before he could leave Afghanistan; indeed, the foul atmosphere and sickly-sweet brown smoke filling the den brought back unpleasant memories of my time in the Subcontinent, and seeing such dens as this in the alleys of Candahar. I was not such a fool as to use my friend’s name, as I readily discerned that in such a foul breeding-place for robbery and murder as this, Sherlock Holmes would not be an unknown name, and were he to be recognised his life would not be worth a wooden farthing.
In such a state of mind, I kept a sharp eye out for the man whose mastery of disguise was useless before the eyes of the one who loved him above all others. Sure enough, I soon laid eyes on a decrepit old man, hunched over on a stool before a charcoal brazier and staring raptly into its glow as if in the grip of opium. But that stoop could not disguise the man’s tall thin figure, nor that hawklike nose and those discerning eyes beneath bushy white brows. I passed him as if still looking for “Whitney” and suppressed my smile when I heard my friend’s voice, low and flat: “Outside. Five minutes.” I grunted acknowledgement and moved on.
I left the den under the suspicious glare of the Lascar at the door, shaking my head sadly as if at my futile search for my imaginary friend, and waited down the alley for the genuine one. Shortly a tall thin figure emerged from the den, stumbling a little, and joined me. Only when we were well shed of the alley and walking along the dock did Sherlock Holmes straighten and give a hearty laugh. I joined him in laughing, for the danger of this excursion sang in my blood as surely as a mystery drew him; we suited each other from top to toe.
“You managed that very neatly, Watson,” Holmes chuckled. “I take it this ‘Whitney’ was a fellow much given to opium in your old regiment.”
“Hashish,” I corrected him, smiling at his piqued look. “But the rest is correct. So I came here looking for a ‘friend.’”
“And I to find an enemy.” He laughed at my expression. “I promise to tell you everything, but you must come with me to hear it. I find that I have need for your presence in this case. Hum! I see by your bags that you have prepared for an outing and your practise will permit your absence for a day. Splendid! My room at The Cedars, in Lee near Kent, is a double-bedded one.”
Ah, we would be sharing a room. “A day?”
“I really cannot see this taking longer. I fear that Neville St. Clair has gone through the trap-door of that establishment and into the river as a corpse, and I must tell his wife.” He gave me a sad smile. “You are better with women at such a delicate time, Watson, than I am.”
Holmes gave a whistle and a man driving a dog-cart appeared. Handing the groom a half-crown, Holmes dismissed the fellow and then helped me into the vehicle, his manner indicating how much he longed to do so every time we shared a conveyance. I gripped his hand, understanding the impulse perfectly as one I shared with him; a gentleman squiring another gentleman into a cab with the deference normally given a beloved wife would have been too much eccentricity for safety’s sake. Holmes took up the reins and we were off.
So we two had the cart to ourselves, for a drive through the night to Lee in Kent. I waited until we had passed the last tattletale street-lamp before resting a hand on Holmes’ knee. His head was sunk on his breast, clearly lost in thought. Though he did give a small sound of pleasure at the contact, he gave me a look of apology as he handed me the reins, so that he could divest himself of the old-man disguise which he still wore.
This case clearly occupied Holmes’ thoughts still; I, however, was more easily distracted. After a week apart from each other I yearned for this man who was my spouse in every sense of the word save the legal one, and the removal of his disguise revealed him in all his loveliness. I longed to halt the horse, take Holmes into my arms and kiss him breathless under the cloud-streaked night sky, with possibly a touch of my hand as a promise of more to come (my thoughts turning salaciously to the promised double-bedded room at the end of our ride). But he was engrossed, so I kept my hands on the reins and my eyes front and my mouth closed.
After a mile or so had passed Holmes finally spoke again. “You have a grand gift of silence, Watson, which makes you an invaluable companion. ’Pon my word, I am glad to have you to speak to, for my own thoughts are not pleasant ones. But come, I must tell you everything about Neville St. Clair, and why I believe that poor devil has fallen into evil hands. Five days ago Mrs. St. Clair paid me a visit begging for my help in locating her husband.”
So I listened whilst Holmes told me everything about the case, and soon my interest in the details overcame my baser instincts. To all eyes Neville St. Clair had lived a sober steady life, a job in the city, a fine house in Lee, a respectable wife and lovely children. Then came his wife’s discovery of him Monday by chance while she collected a parcel at the docks; the man’s coat retrieved from the river weighted down with pennies and half-pennies, the absence of her husband at the window where she’d seen him, the blood on the window-sill overlooking the river, the man’s clothes and the box of building bricks purchased for his young child still in the room, the filthy and deformed beggar who was the only witness to the disappearance and who now resided in a police cell in Kent loudly protesting his innocence.
I said little in all that time, but only took note of everything. I believed as Holmes did - that the outwardly-respectable Neville St. Clair had been leading a double-life in the city, hiding a drug addiction until the nearly-inevitable ending at deadly hands that happens so often to those fallen to such evils.
“The Lascar?” was the only thing I said.
Sherlock Holmes made a feral noise in his throat. “The most obvious suspect - a man who’d cut a throat for a shilling, and has very likely done so in the past, saved from the rope only by the low estate of his victims. The precise reason I spent four days in the Bar of Gold was to observe the Lascar and ascertain if he was the culprit. This time, however, he is guilty only of providing opium to his clients. A sly fox like that fellow would know better than to lay hands on so clearly well-connected a man as Neville St. Clair.”
“That beggar, Hugh Boone.”
“The police think him the suspect, and the evidence does rather pointedly turn in his direction. But I have seen him in the city several times. By all accounts he is a harmless if eccentric beggar. But if Neville St. Clair is not dead, why does he not return home? I have nothing new to tell his wife - not even the identity of the man who most likely murdered her husband.”
I patted Holmes’ knee, turning a would-be caress into a gesture of comfort instead. So it was with my dear one at times. For though my stories ring with praise for Sherlock Holmes’ nearly infallible gifts, I knew better than anyone what it was to see him stumble, fall, or fail - to be left with an unsolved mystery, to triumphantly solve the mystery only to lose the client (as in the tragic case involving the Five Orange Pips), or in this case to discover not merely why a solid family man had disappeared in a stinking opium den so far from home, but who had done the deed so that we might be his avengers since all evidenced showed that we would not be his rescuers.
Not long afterward we pulled up to The Cedars, a large villa and grounds. A stable-boy took the horse and we alit the dog-cart with our bags. As we walked up the winding gravel path to the front door it flew open and a little blonde woman stood silhouetted against the light, wearing a light silk muslin night-dress with a touch of pink chiffon at her throat, head forward and eyes eager. Her face was all light and hope as she laid eyes on my friend; then as she saw me her mien changed and she gave a groan.
Oh. Oh, now I saw why Holmes had so urgently requested my accompanying him on such a small errand, and I pressed my lips hard not to smile or laugh - this was hardly the time for mirth.
“Any word, Mr. Holmes?” Mrs. St. Clair cried.
“No news, good or bad,” replied my friend. “This is my friend and colleague Dr. Watson, who has proven an invaluable ally on my most successful cases.”
Her greeting and hand were the soul of politeness, but I had seen the truth in the first look she had given me. Gooseberry, it had said plainly to a man as worldly in the ways of women as I. The matter was clinched by the fact that the woman had laid on a cold supper for two - and she had not been expecting me, nor her missing husband for that matter.
Once again I heard the tale of the strange appearance at the window of the Bar of Gold on Monday, the man gone but his clothes intact and found in the room frequented by Boone the beggar, the overcoat stuffed with coins found at low tide under that window - the full tangled skein of the case. Mrs. St. Clair’s tone was level and calm; she was distressed, but was true to her word, as she exhibited no hysteria nor penchant for fainting.
I am no Sherlock Holmes, but I know a good deal about my own strengths such as medicine and the ways of women. In Mrs. St. Clair I sensed an affection between herself and her husband (“keen sympathy” between the two of them notwithstanding) that was not the full passion of a romantic pairing. I knew why she focused so very intently upon Holmes, for I did the self-same thing for the self-same reasons. Her level-headedness under stressful circumstances might possibly explain her more-than-casual interest in my friend for more than his deductive abilities; in Sherlock Holmes she might well recognise a like-minded person.
My musings were broken by the woman answering Holmes’ query about Neville St. Clair exhibiting the signs of opium addiction, and once again I was back in the case. I blinked heavy eyelids; the time was well past midnight. Holmes, bless him, finally begged leave for the pair of us to dine and retire. We were shown to the double-bedded room with which I had been coaxed here, and I swallowed down a rueful laugh; all I wanted to do in that bed now was sleep.
Only when the door closed and we two were alone did I say, “Now I know why you asked me to accompany you here.”
Sherlock Holmes threw up his hands. “The woman is all over me, Watson!” he exclaimed. He had rather resembled a horse trapped in a burning stable at times during his conversation with Mrs. St. Clair. “If I did not know for a certainty that Inspector Bradstreet confirms her story, I would think that she had done away with her husband for the sole purpose of coming in contact with me!”
Now I did laugh, very quietly. I walked around to stand behind him and wrapped my arms around his neck from behind, breathing in his scent. “Poor Holmes,” I whispered, and felt his body shake with silent laughter to join mine. Holmes squeezed my wrists and turned his head to meet my lips with his own - our first proper kiss in a week.
Holmes looked more at ease but there was still that uneasy look in his eyes. “I don’t suppose you might speak to the lady and divert her attention, Watson?”
Now it was I who shook with laughter. I did not relinquish my hold on his neck. “She wouldn’t give me a second look, my dear. I know this type of woman, and you are her type. Neville St. Clair - whatever excellent qualities he may have as a man of business, husband and father - must be a singularly dull fellow. The women who are attracted to you nearly always are wed to unimaginative dolts.” I squeezed him. “However, I am nearly tempted to ‘divert’ her, as you are so magnificently proprietary when you rage with jealousy.”
My man shivered in my arms, and I kissed his neck. I recalled a time one brisk March when I had been overly friendly to a very pretty young woman in a burgled house - and after a day of white-lipped silent fury Holmes had spent a good portion of that night teaching me all over again to whom I belonged, flesh and spirit. He had been the picture of blithe cheeriness for the rest of the case, even as I had vocally castigated the season for aggravating my war wound to explain away my hobbling gait.
Holmes shook his head, a droll look on his face. “Watson, it is mid-summer - you won’t be able to blame the weather for your limp.”
“Pity,” I said, and muffled my laugh against his shoulder.
He turned and disengaged me with another kiss, delivered with an apologetic smile. “It is very late, my dear. You are very tired, and require sleep. I have a tangled skein before me which I need to card straight.”
I nodded and gathered up my bag.
By the time I had washed up and returned to our room clad in my nightshirt, yearning now for a soft bed and a close blanket, Holmes had made his own preparations for the rest of the night. Instead of getting between the covers, Holmes had constructed a divan for himself upon his bed, formed of all the cushions and pillows in the room save for the two on the bed I had been given. Upon this he sat, enrobed in his blue dressing-gown, fingers steepled before him, with my bed in his line of sight. I recognised the look of him fully prepared to continue his cogitations. This, too, was why he had sent for me; my presence in the room, even when I was silent or asleep, improved his ability to concentrate and focus his keen intellect upon the problem before him. Neither of us had yet determined why this was so, but since it was true Holmes factored that into his work.
However, his normal trancelike appearance when he was wholly occupied in brainwork was spoilt by a look of displeasure on his face.
“Holmes?” I inquired softly, as the rest of the house was long since abed and we were deep in the small hours of the night.
“I cannot think,” he said peevishly. “I need to comb out the particulars of this case, but I cannot keep hold of the data!” He waved one long thin hand as gracefully as if he conducted an orchestra. “Between the particulars of Neville St. Clair’s disappearance, the attentions by Mrs. St. Clair, the days of chasing red herrings - “
“And spending days in a smoke-filled opium den,” I reminded him. “Even if you did not take to the pipe yourself, it is highly likely that you are experiencing a secondary effect of the smoke you could not help but breathe in during your stay in the Bar of Gold.”
He was still. Annoyance chased relief across his hawklike face. “You are right, Watson. I should have known that. Why didn’t I know that?” He dropped his head in his hands. “Watson, my brain is not what it should be now. How can I work with this?”
In a futile gesture, I rested a hand on his bare foot - for he wore nothing save his dressing-gown. “Sleep. Sleep in my arms. All will be clearer when you awake.”
He shook his head still in his hands. “Not until I have solved this. My mind won’t let me. You know that, John.”
I did know that, had half-known he would reject that solution. My own weariness and longing had spoken up.
Looking around at Holmes’ nest of pillows and cushions, I saw lying upon one his pouch holding an ounce of shag and a box of matches next to his old briar pipe. “No tobacco,” I said sternly. “Not on top of the opium you have inhaled already today, and the past three days.” I swept up the lot and removed it to my night-stand.
“Watson, I need to think!” Holmes hissed, jutting his head out to stare me in the eyes, very much like an irate hawk at that moment. “I can’t sleep, and if I mustn’t smoke, what - “
“I will clear your head for you.” The words escaped my mouth as I turned back to face him. At that moment I knew what to do for my friend, even as my weary body feebly protested. I approached him again and this time rested both my hands on his knees, holding his eyes with my own. “All the blood in your brain needs to travel to another organ.”
I saw the pupils of his eyes expand as he perceived what I meant. “My dear one,” he said softly. “Mrs. St. Clair is a married woman, and she will know to what use we have put the room on such a warm night.”
I smiled; he had not rejected that solution at first opportunity, which meant he knew it was a viable one. “I shall leave no evidence behind - not even enough for Sherlock Holmes to discover.”
An identical smile curled onto his face. He did so love a challenge.
“You may repay this favour once I’ve had a proper sleep.” My hands went to the trailing ends of his blue dressing-gown and parted them, baring him shamelessly to the air. “Why, hello, my good sir, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”
Holmes shook with silent mirth once again. “Five days, dear Watson, a mere five days! You are insatiable.”
I shook my head, smiling. “Not tonight, Holmes. My old man is sound asleep. But my mouth is not.” Curling one finger under his chin, I proved it against his own mouth before lowering my head to his groin.
I had spoken the truth to Holmes; the desire I had felt earlier this evening had been swallowed by exhaustion, and I was in no danger of joining him in this sport. Fortunately, long custom had made me adept at this backgammon practise and given me the skill to employ it purely out of love in the absence of passion.
Perhaps those readers of this clandestine tale may recall a visit to the zoological gardens, where they watched a giraffe wrap its long tongue around a leafy branch to strip it. While my own tongue, like my neck, does not share that beast’s exaggerated proportions, I have made up for lack of length by gaining in skill. The particular branch I stripped again and again soon warmed and thickened under my ministrations; as bearer of that branch Holmes went from quiet appreciation to soft sounds of pleasure to long low moans. His hands gripped my shoulders, with an occasional quick caress of my hair. Pleasure swam through my blood; this was not the fire of lust, but the bone-deep joy I felt every time I proved that this man who prided himself on being composed of pure intellect was still very much a man.
From stripping the branch I proceeded to engulfing it, and was rewarded with a soft oath that would shock those who knew him only as the consummate gentleman. I rather enjoyed the opportunity to play my love like his precious violin, without my own desire interfering with the experience, and silently vowed to make him come apart beneath my hands and mouth. He concentrated on not awakening the household.
We both succeeded - though it was a narrow thing for Holmes, who was obliged to muffle his face with a pillow to dampen his shriek when my solo performance commanded his ovation.
He melted into my arms. How I longed to lie beside him and doze off. To firmly drive away the temptation I arose and re-entered the bathroom to set myself to rights. The water in the ewer was deliciously cool, and I soaked the large bath-sponge in it to bring back. (True to my word, I had left Mrs. St. Clair’s guest room physically unmarred by illegalities - any stains of sweat on the bedclothes would easily be attributed to sleeping on such a warm night.)
He lay as I had left him, sprawled bonelessly across his cushions and taking deep shuddering breaths, not sleeping but gazing out at nothing, his mind completely at rest in the silence only I could bring to him. Tenderly I applied the damp sponge to his sweat-beaded front, cooling him down and tidying the crime scene at the same time - heh, that was an old joke between us -
Holmes bolted upright with a second ejaculation - this one an outcry. I dropped the sponge with a startled cry of my own.
He blinked. He stared at the sponge as if he’d never seen one before. Then he turned back to face me, seized my head between his hands and kissed me soundly on the mouth. “What an idiot I have been, Watson!” he cried. “What time is it?”
I cast my eyes to my pocket-watch on the night-stand of my unslept-in bed. “Twenty-five minutes past four.” My God, we’d been up all night. My entire body felt composed of lead, right down to my eyelids.
In utter contrast to my own condition, Holmes flew off his dais, robe trailing behind him, and snatched up a pair of drawers from his bag, his post-coital lethargy gone as if it had never existed. “Good, the sun will be up soon. Watson, get dressed and rouse up the stable-boy. We need the cart! And we need this!” He swooped down and snatched up the sponge.
The rest of this strange story my readers know. The selfsame bath-sponge played a vital role in uncovering the actual culprit behind Neville St. Clair’s disappearance - Mr. Neville St. Clair himself, disguised as the shockingly-prosperous beggar Hugh Boone. With his double life exposed and his deception ended, St. Clair was ordered to banish Boone forever, and return to his family and long-suffering wife. This he swore to do.
A cup or two of the Bow Street station’s tea had made me able to keep my eyes open and my mind focused upon St Clair’s story in the denouement of this bizarre case, sitting in Inspector Bradstreet’s office with the inspector, Holmes, and the chastened former beggar. But when Bradstreet opined that he longed to know how Holmes reached his conclusions and my friend replied serenely that it had involved sitting upon five pillows and having a bit of shag I nearly lost my composure; I was forced to mimic a coughing fit, and the look I gave my solemn-faced and twinkle-eyed partner promised dire retribution.
“I think, Watson,” said my friend, “that if we drive to Baker Street we shall just be in time for breakfast.”
The sun was well up by then, and the horse was fresher than either of us, as it had actually slept last night. Both of us were very glad not to return to the St Clair household - the situation there would not be pleasant, and that family faced a drastic change in circumstances when Neville St. Clair returned to making an honest living.
“Well, here’s one case you’ll never dast write up, my boy,” Sherlock Holmes laughed.
“To the contrary,” I replied, lighting my pipe to keep awake more than anything. “My faithful, greatly put-upon wife sent me out to the Bar of Gold to retrieve her friend’s opium-addled husband, where I by great chance came upon you, and a simple note to her in the cab sending ‘Isa Whitney’ back freed me to accompany you to Lee. The only shag involved was that in your pipe. She will even graciously overlook your invitation to have me return to Baker Street with you.”
“That imaginary wife of yours is truly angelic to put up with your behavior,” Holmes replied in a droll tone.
“I’ll not have you say a cross word against Mary Watson, Holmes,” I replied sternly. “She is the chief reason I may continue to go in and out of Baker Street without causing scandal or lifting an eyebrow - ah, it’s only old Watson helping his friend Holmes again, that wife of his is a saint!” I nearly cracked my jaw in a ferocious yawn. I dared not lean against him to doze off in full daylight on the road, in the open cart.
“Only a few more miles, my dear.” Instead of snapping the whip, Holmes clucked at the horse in a manner that bespoke his familiarity with the creatures; the beast willingly stepped up its pace. I watched this exchange and fell in love with the man all over again. “Within the hour we will be home, and after we have breakfasted we will be sound asleep under one sheet in your room through the day.”
At Baker Street - in my upper room well out of Mrs. Hudson’s earshot, the windows wide-open to the summer breeze.
“So we shall sleep through the day.” I nudged his shoulder with my own. “Like owls. Which means we will fly all night.” I gripped my pipe-stem with my teeth to hide the grin.
“You have my word on that, Watson,” Holmes’ unwavering attention to the horse and the road belied the tone of voice which could arouse a marble statue.
I puffed my morning pipe and enjoyed the rest of the ride. Sherlock Holmes was a man of his word.
Author: gardnerhill
Rating: PG-13 (Victorian metaphors)
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Mrs. Neville St. Clair, Inspector Bradstreet, Neville St. Clair
Pairing: Holmes/Watson, Established relationship
Warning: Gentlemanly canoodling. Opium. Heterosexual panic. Large lumps of prose taken directly from the original Conan Doyle story. Large liberties taken with said original Conan Doyle story.
Word Count: 5000
Summary: A re-imagining of “The Man With the Twisted Lip.”
Disclaimer: If the Doyle estate doesn’t like the way we play with the dolls they shouldn’t have sold them to us.
Author's Notes: Written for the September 2014 ACD Holmesfest, for recipient alafaye.
In the blistering hot month of July 1889, I returned to London from tending a patient in the country to find my friend Sherlock Holmes had left Baker Street in pursuit of a case. For five days I did not hear from him, and due to the demands of my practise treating heatstroke, dehydration and other illnesses brought on by the weather, I was kept away from our lodgings nearly as often. In all that time I did not hear from him save for the curt note left on the table at the onset of those days (In Lee. - S.)
All that changed one Friday night, at just about the hour when a man yawns for the first time and looks at the clock. I received a knock at the door, and a sleepy, surly Billy the page handed me a note given him at the street entrance by “a dirty little titch with a runny nose” (which could only have been Big George Carter, a tiny boy who ran with the Irregulars and often carried messages from Holmes when he was in his seedier locales).
The note was scrawled on a scrap of paper: AT BAR OF GOLD COME AT ONCE - SH. Holmes named The Bar of Gold in Upper Swandam Lane, one of the most notorious and noxious opium dens to pollute the dockside area.
For one fleeting, dreadful moment I believed my dear friend had taken up opium-smoking in addition to his loathsome cocaine habit (one from which he and I had been steadfastly weaning him for a long time). In the second moment I banished my irrational fear: I had not observed Holmes exhibiting any signs of opium addiction, had not smelt the telltale odour of the smoke in his clothes nor upon his breath (and surely if he had taken up such a vice, I would have discovered it when we kissed - and he had shown no reluctance to indulge in that pastime). Most importantly, the docks where this den resided were a fertile breeding-ground for crime, his truest and greatest addiction.
At once, he’d said. So, pausing only to throw a few items into a small bag and load my revolver, I dashed back out the door of 221b with a quick note of my own to Mrs. Hudson letting her know I would be out for the evening and not to hold supper for me, and hailed a cab. The cabbie gave me a suspicious look when I gave the destination, but said no word as we were away; I mused sadly that, despite my bearing and clear signs of my profession, that the cabman thought me merely another fellow heading to the docks for his dose of addiction.
In a vile alley near the wharves, up a steep flight of stairs, I found the entrance to the establishment; the narrow-eyed man at the door yielded sullenly when I hoisted my doctor’s bag and looked sternly at him; I had already chosen my persona both to look for my friend and not to be taken for a customer. I walked into the smoke-choked room lined with many narrow bunks like an immigrant ship, each of them holding a lost soul. “Whitney? Isa Whitney?” I called in a low tone as I passed among the sufferers, using the name of an old Army acquaintance who had sadly succumbed to drug addiction long before he could leave Afghanistan; indeed, the foul atmosphere and sickly-sweet brown smoke filling the den brought back unpleasant memories of my time in the Subcontinent, and seeing such dens as this in the alleys of Candahar. I was not such a fool as to use my friend’s name, as I readily discerned that in such a foul breeding-place for robbery and murder as this, Sherlock Holmes would not be an unknown name, and were he to be recognised his life would not be worth a wooden farthing.
In such a state of mind, I kept a sharp eye out for the man whose mastery of disguise was useless before the eyes of the one who loved him above all others. Sure enough, I soon laid eyes on a decrepit old man, hunched over on a stool before a charcoal brazier and staring raptly into its glow as if in the grip of opium. But that stoop could not disguise the man’s tall thin figure, nor that hawklike nose and those discerning eyes beneath bushy white brows. I passed him as if still looking for “Whitney” and suppressed my smile when I heard my friend’s voice, low and flat: “Outside. Five minutes.” I grunted acknowledgement and moved on.
I left the den under the suspicious glare of the Lascar at the door, shaking my head sadly as if at my futile search for my imaginary friend, and waited down the alley for the genuine one. Shortly a tall thin figure emerged from the den, stumbling a little, and joined me. Only when we were well shed of the alley and walking along the dock did Sherlock Holmes straighten and give a hearty laugh. I joined him in laughing, for the danger of this excursion sang in my blood as surely as a mystery drew him; we suited each other from top to toe.
“You managed that very neatly, Watson,” Holmes chuckled. “I take it this ‘Whitney’ was a fellow much given to opium in your old regiment.”
“Hashish,” I corrected him, smiling at his piqued look. “But the rest is correct. So I came here looking for a ‘friend.’”
“And I to find an enemy.” He laughed at my expression. “I promise to tell you everything, but you must come with me to hear it. I find that I have need for your presence in this case. Hum! I see by your bags that you have prepared for an outing and your practise will permit your absence for a day. Splendid! My room at The Cedars, in Lee near Kent, is a double-bedded one.”
Ah, we would be sharing a room. “A day?”
“I really cannot see this taking longer. I fear that Neville St. Clair has gone through the trap-door of that establishment and into the river as a corpse, and I must tell his wife.” He gave me a sad smile. “You are better with women at such a delicate time, Watson, than I am.”
Holmes gave a whistle and a man driving a dog-cart appeared. Handing the groom a half-crown, Holmes dismissed the fellow and then helped me into the vehicle, his manner indicating how much he longed to do so every time we shared a conveyance. I gripped his hand, understanding the impulse perfectly as one I shared with him; a gentleman squiring another gentleman into a cab with the deference normally given a beloved wife would have been too much eccentricity for safety’s sake. Holmes took up the reins and we were off.
So we two had the cart to ourselves, for a drive through the night to Lee in Kent. I waited until we had passed the last tattletale street-lamp before resting a hand on Holmes’ knee. His head was sunk on his breast, clearly lost in thought. Though he did give a small sound of pleasure at the contact, he gave me a look of apology as he handed me the reins, so that he could divest himself of the old-man disguise which he still wore.
This case clearly occupied Holmes’ thoughts still; I, however, was more easily distracted. After a week apart from each other I yearned for this man who was my spouse in every sense of the word save the legal one, and the removal of his disguise revealed him in all his loveliness. I longed to halt the horse, take Holmes into my arms and kiss him breathless under the cloud-streaked night sky, with possibly a touch of my hand as a promise of more to come (my thoughts turning salaciously to the promised double-bedded room at the end of our ride). But he was engrossed, so I kept my hands on the reins and my eyes front and my mouth closed.
After a mile or so had passed Holmes finally spoke again. “You have a grand gift of silence, Watson, which makes you an invaluable companion. ’Pon my word, I am glad to have you to speak to, for my own thoughts are not pleasant ones. But come, I must tell you everything about Neville St. Clair, and why I believe that poor devil has fallen into evil hands. Five days ago Mrs. St. Clair paid me a visit begging for my help in locating her husband.”
So I listened whilst Holmes told me everything about the case, and soon my interest in the details overcame my baser instincts. To all eyes Neville St. Clair had lived a sober steady life, a job in the city, a fine house in Lee, a respectable wife and lovely children. Then came his wife’s discovery of him Monday by chance while she collected a parcel at the docks; the man’s coat retrieved from the river weighted down with pennies and half-pennies, the absence of her husband at the window where she’d seen him, the blood on the window-sill overlooking the river, the man’s clothes and the box of building bricks purchased for his young child still in the room, the filthy and deformed beggar who was the only witness to the disappearance and who now resided in a police cell in Kent loudly protesting his innocence.
I said little in all that time, but only took note of everything. I believed as Holmes did - that the outwardly-respectable Neville St. Clair had been leading a double-life in the city, hiding a drug addiction until the nearly-inevitable ending at deadly hands that happens so often to those fallen to such evils.
“The Lascar?” was the only thing I said.
Sherlock Holmes made a feral noise in his throat. “The most obvious suspect - a man who’d cut a throat for a shilling, and has very likely done so in the past, saved from the rope only by the low estate of his victims. The precise reason I spent four days in the Bar of Gold was to observe the Lascar and ascertain if he was the culprit. This time, however, he is guilty only of providing opium to his clients. A sly fox like that fellow would know better than to lay hands on so clearly well-connected a man as Neville St. Clair.”
“That beggar, Hugh Boone.”
“The police think him the suspect, and the evidence does rather pointedly turn in his direction. But I have seen him in the city several times. By all accounts he is a harmless if eccentric beggar. But if Neville St. Clair is not dead, why does he not return home? I have nothing new to tell his wife - not even the identity of the man who most likely murdered her husband.”
I patted Holmes’ knee, turning a would-be caress into a gesture of comfort instead. So it was with my dear one at times. For though my stories ring with praise for Sherlock Holmes’ nearly infallible gifts, I knew better than anyone what it was to see him stumble, fall, or fail - to be left with an unsolved mystery, to triumphantly solve the mystery only to lose the client (as in the tragic case involving the Five Orange Pips), or in this case to discover not merely why a solid family man had disappeared in a stinking opium den so far from home, but who had done the deed so that we might be his avengers since all evidenced showed that we would not be his rescuers.
Not long afterward we pulled up to The Cedars, a large villa and grounds. A stable-boy took the horse and we alit the dog-cart with our bags. As we walked up the winding gravel path to the front door it flew open and a little blonde woman stood silhouetted against the light, wearing a light silk muslin night-dress with a touch of pink chiffon at her throat, head forward and eyes eager. Her face was all light and hope as she laid eyes on my friend; then as she saw me her mien changed and she gave a groan.
Oh. Oh, now I saw why Holmes had so urgently requested my accompanying him on such a small errand, and I pressed my lips hard not to smile or laugh - this was hardly the time for mirth.
“Any word, Mr. Holmes?” Mrs. St. Clair cried.
“No news, good or bad,” replied my friend. “This is my friend and colleague Dr. Watson, who has proven an invaluable ally on my most successful cases.”
Her greeting and hand were the soul of politeness, but I had seen the truth in the first look she had given me. Gooseberry, it had said plainly to a man as worldly in the ways of women as I. The matter was clinched by the fact that the woman had laid on a cold supper for two - and she had not been expecting me, nor her missing husband for that matter.
Once again I heard the tale of the strange appearance at the window of the Bar of Gold on Monday, the man gone but his clothes intact and found in the room frequented by Boone the beggar, the overcoat stuffed with coins found at low tide under that window - the full tangled skein of the case. Mrs. St. Clair’s tone was level and calm; she was distressed, but was true to her word, as she exhibited no hysteria nor penchant for fainting.
I am no Sherlock Holmes, but I know a good deal about my own strengths such as medicine and the ways of women. In Mrs. St. Clair I sensed an affection between herself and her husband (“keen sympathy” between the two of them notwithstanding) that was not the full passion of a romantic pairing. I knew why she focused so very intently upon Holmes, for I did the self-same thing for the self-same reasons. Her level-headedness under stressful circumstances might possibly explain her more-than-casual interest in my friend for more than his deductive abilities; in Sherlock Holmes she might well recognise a like-minded person.
My musings were broken by the woman answering Holmes’ query about Neville St. Clair exhibiting the signs of opium addiction, and once again I was back in the case. I blinked heavy eyelids; the time was well past midnight. Holmes, bless him, finally begged leave for the pair of us to dine and retire. We were shown to the double-bedded room with which I had been coaxed here, and I swallowed down a rueful laugh; all I wanted to do in that bed now was sleep.
Only when the door closed and we two were alone did I say, “Now I know why you asked me to accompany you here.”
Sherlock Holmes threw up his hands. “The woman is all over me, Watson!” he exclaimed. He had rather resembled a horse trapped in a burning stable at times during his conversation with Mrs. St. Clair. “If I did not know for a certainty that Inspector Bradstreet confirms her story, I would think that she had done away with her husband for the sole purpose of coming in contact with me!”
Now I did laugh, very quietly. I walked around to stand behind him and wrapped my arms around his neck from behind, breathing in his scent. “Poor Holmes,” I whispered, and felt his body shake with silent laughter to join mine. Holmes squeezed my wrists and turned his head to meet my lips with his own - our first proper kiss in a week.
Holmes looked more at ease but there was still that uneasy look in his eyes. “I don’t suppose you might speak to the lady and divert her attention, Watson?”
Now it was I who shook with laughter. I did not relinquish my hold on his neck. “She wouldn’t give me a second look, my dear. I know this type of woman, and you are her type. Neville St. Clair - whatever excellent qualities he may have as a man of business, husband and father - must be a singularly dull fellow. The women who are attracted to you nearly always are wed to unimaginative dolts.” I squeezed him. “However, I am nearly tempted to ‘divert’ her, as you are so magnificently proprietary when you rage with jealousy.”
My man shivered in my arms, and I kissed his neck. I recalled a time one brisk March when I had been overly friendly to a very pretty young woman in a burgled house - and after a day of white-lipped silent fury Holmes had spent a good portion of that night teaching me all over again to whom I belonged, flesh and spirit. He had been the picture of blithe cheeriness for the rest of the case, even as I had vocally castigated the season for aggravating my war wound to explain away my hobbling gait.
Holmes shook his head, a droll look on his face. “Watson, it is mid-summer - you won’t be able to blame the weather for your limp.”
“Pity,” I said, and muffled my laugh against his shoulder.
He turned and disengaged me with another kiss, delivered with an apologetic smile. “It is very late, my dear. You are very tired, and require sleep. I have a tangled skein before me which I need to card straight.”
I nodded and gathered up my bag.
By the time I had washed up and returned to our room clad in my nightshirt, yearning now for a soft bed and a close blanket, Holmes had made his own preparations for the rest of the night. Instead of getting between the covers, Holmes had constructed a divan for himself upon his bed, formed of all the cushions and pillows in the room save for the two on the bed I had been given. Upon this he sat, enrobed in his blue dressing-gown, fingers steepled before him, with my bed in his line of sight. I recognised the look of him fully prepared to continue his cogitations. This, too, was why he had sent for me; my presence in the room, even when I was silent or asleep, improved his ability to concentrate and focus his keen intellect upon the problem before him. Neither of us had yet determined why this was so, but since it was true Holmes factored that into his work.
However, his normal trancelike appearance when he was wholly occupied in brainwork was spoilt by a look of displeasure on his face.
“Holmes?” I inquired softly, as the rest of the house was long since abed and we were deep in the small hours of the night.
“I cannot think,” he said peevishly. “I need to comb out the particulars of this case, but I cannot keep hold of the data!” He waved one long thin hand as gracefully as if he conducted an orchestra. “Between the particulars of Neville St. Clair’s disappearance, the attentions by Mrs. St. Clair, the days of chasing red herrings - “
“And spending days in a smoke-filled opium den,” I reminded him. “Even if you did not take to the pipe yourself, it is highly likely that you are experiencing a secondary effect of the smoke you could not help but breathe in during your stay in the Bar of Gold.”
He was still. Annoyance chased relief across his hawklike face. “You are right, Watson. I should have known that. Why didn’t I know that?” He dropped his head in his hands. “Watson, my brain is not what it should be now. How can I work with this?”
In a futile gesture, I rested a hand on his bare foot - for he wore nothing save his dressing-gown. “Sleep. Sleep in my arms. All will be clearer when you awake.”
He shook his head still in his hands. “Not until I have solved this. My mind won’t let me. You know that, John.”
I did know that, had half-known he would reject that solution. My own weariness and longing had spoken up.
Looking around at Holmes’ nest of pillows and cushions, I saw lying upon one his pouch holding an ounce of shag and a box of matches next to his old briar pipe. “No tobacco,” I said sternly. “Not on top of the opium you have inhaled already today, and the past three days.” I swept up the lot and removed it to my night-stand.
“Watson, I need to think!” Holmes hissed, jutting his head out to stare me in the eyes, very much like an irate hawk at that moment. “I can’t sleep, and if I mustn’t smoke, what - “
“I will clear your head for you.” The words escaped my mouth as I turned back to face him. At that moment I knew what to do for my friend, even as my weary body feebly protested. I approached him again and this time rested both my hands on his knees, holding his eyes with my own. “All the blood in your brain needs to travel to another organ.”
I saw the pupils of his eyes expand as he perceived what I meant. “My dear one,” he said softly. “Mrs. St. Clair is a married woman, and she will know to what use we have put the room on such a warm night.”
I smiled; he had not rejected that solution at first opportunity, which meant he knew it was a viable one. “I shall leave no evidence behind - not even enough for Sherlock Holmes to discover.”
An identical smile curled onto his face. He did so love a challenge.
“You may repay this favour once I’ve had a proper sleep.” My hands went to the trailing ends of his blue dressing-gown and parted them, baring him shamelessly to the air. “Why, hello, my good sir, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”
Holmes shook with silent mirth once again. “Five days, dear Watson, a mere five days! You are insatiable.”
I shook my head, smiling. “Not tonight, Holmes. My old man is sound asleep. But my mouth is not.” Curling one finger under his chin, I proved it against his own mouth before lowering my head to his groin.
I had spoken the truth to Holmes; the desire I had felt earlier this evening had been swallowed by exhaustion, and I was in no danger of joining him in this sport. Fortunately, long custom had made me adept at this backgammon practise and given me the skill to employ it purely out of love in the absence of passion.
Perhaps those readers of this clandestine tale may recall a visit to the zoological gardens, where they watched a giraffe wrap its long tongue around a leafy branch to strip it. While my own tongue, like my neck, does not share that beast’s exaggerated proportions, I have made up for lack of length by gaining in skill. The particular branch I stripped again and again soon warmed and thickened under my ministrations; as bearer of that branch Holmes went from quiet appreciation to soft sounds of pleasure to long low moans. His hands gripped my shoulders, with an occasional quick caress of my hair. Pleasure swam through my blood; this was not the fire of lust, but the bone-deep joy I felt every time I proved that this man who prided himself on being composed of pure intellect was still very much a man.
From stripping the branch I proceeded to engulfing it, and was rewarded with a soft oath that would shock those who knew him only as the consummate gentleman. I rather enjoyed the opportunity to play my love like his precious violin, without my own desire interfering with the experience, and silently vowed to make him come apart beneath my hands and mouth. He concentrated on not awakening the household.
We both succeeded - though it was a narrow thing for Holmes, who was obliged to muffle his face with a pillow to dampen his shriek when my solo performance commanded his ovation.
He melted into my arms. How I longed to lie beside him and doze off. To firmly drive away the temptation I arose and re-entered the bathroom to set myself to rights. The water in the ewer was deliciously cool, and I soaked the large bath-sponge in it to bring back. (True to my word, I had left Mrs. St. Clair’s guest room physically unmarred by illegalities - any stains of sweat on the bedclothes would easily be attributed to sleeping on such a warm night.)
He lay as I had left him, sprawled bonelessly across his cushions and taking deep shuddering breaths, not sleeping but gazing out at nothing, his mind completely at rest in the silence only I could bring to him. Tenderly I applied the damp sponge to his sweat-beaded front, cooling him down and tidying the crime scene at the same time - heh, that was an old joke between us -
Holmes bolted upright with a second ejaculation - this one an outcry. I dropped the sponge with a startled cry of my own.
He blinked. He stared at the sponge as if he’d never seen one before. Then he turned back to face me, seized my head between his hands and kissed me soundly on the mouth. “What an idiot I have been, Watson!” he cried. “What time is it?”
I cast my eyes to my pocket-watch on the night-stand of my unslept-in bed. “Twenty-five minutes past four.” My God, we’d been up all night. My entire body felt composed of lead, right down to my eyelids.
In utter contrast to my own condition, Holmes flew off his dais, robe trailing behind him, and snatched up a pair of drawers from his bag, his post-coital lethargy gone as if it had never existed. “Good, the sun will be up soon. Watson, get dressed and rouse up the stable-boy. We need the cart! And we need this!” He swooped down and snatched up the sponge.
The rest of this strange story my readers know. The selfsame bath-sponge played a vital role in uncovering the actual culprit behind Neville St. Clair’s disappearance - Mr. Neville St. Clair himself, disguised as the shockingly-prosperous beggar Hugh Boone. With his double life exposed and his deception ended, St. Clair was ordered to banish Boone forever, and return to his family and long-suffering wife. This he swore to do.
A cup or two of the Bow Street station’s tea had made me able to keep my eyes open and my mind focused upon St Clair’s story in the denouement of this bizarre case, sitting in Inspector Bradstreet’s office with the inspector, Holmes, and the chastened former beggar. But when Bradstreet opined that he longed to know how Holmes reached his conclusions and my friend replied serenely that it had involved sitting upon five pillows and having a bit of shag I nearly lost my composure; I was forced to mimic a coughing fit, and the look I gave my solemn-faced and twinkle-eyed partner promised dire retribution.
“I think, Watson,” said my friend, “that if we drive to Baker Street we shall just be in time for breakfast.”
The sun was well up by then, and the horse was fresher than either of us, as it had actually slept last night. Both of us were very glad not to return to the St Clair household - the situation there would not be pleasant, and that family faced a drastic change in circumstances when Neville St. Clair returned to making an honest living.
“Well, here’s one case you’ll never dast write up, my boy,” Sherlock Holmes laughed.
“To the contrary,” I replied, lighting my pipe to keep awake more than anything. “My faithful, greatly put-upon wife sent me out to the Bar of Gold to retrieve her friend’s opium-addled husband, where I by great chance came upon you, and a simple note to her in the cab sending ‘Isa Whitney’ back freed me to accompany you to Lee. The only shag involved was that in your pipe. She will even graciously overlook your invitation to have me return to Baker Street with you.”
“That imaginary wife of yours is truly angelic to put up with your behavior,” Holmes replied in a droll tone.
“I’ll not have you say a cross word against Mary Watson, Holmes,” I replied sternly. “She is the chief reason I may continue to go in and out of Baker Street without causing scandal or lifting an eyebrow - ah, it’s only old Watson helping his friend Holmes again, that wife of his is a saint!” I nearly cracked my jaw in a ferocious yawn. I dared not lean against him to doze off in full daylight on the road, in the open cart.
“Only a few more miles, my dear.” Instead of snapping the whip, Holmes clucked at the horse in a manner that bespoke his familiarity with the creatures; the beast willingly stepped up its pace. I watched this exchange and fell in love with the man all over again. “Within the hour we will be home, and after we have breakfasted we will be sound asleep under one sheet in your room through the day.”
At Baker Street - in my upper room well out of Mrs. Hudson’s earshot, the windows wide-open to the summer breeze.
“So we shall sleep through the day.” I nudged his shoulder with my own. “Like owls. Which means we will fly all night.” I gripped my pipe-stem with my teeth to hide the grin.
“You have my word on that, Watson,” Holmes’ unwavering attention to the horse and the road belied the tone of voice which could arouse a marble statue.
I puffed my morning pipe and enjoyed the rest of the ride. Sherlock Holmes was a man of his word.