Yet he insisted this knowledge was only the result of careful observation – the accent in the pronunciation of my consonants, grown lazy with comfort as the night wore on – the significances of the curiosities I had picked up in the subcontinent – a certain text on my shelf – a certain stain on my fingers.
It was not, as one might have supposed, anything like being picked apart: it was like being identified. Not picked apart, but picked out: noticed, for the first time since I had disappeared with my ruined health and devastated career into the drain of London.
It was a test, I realised, of my limitations, a scouting of my boundaries; I found, to his obvious delight, that I had very few.
'You have a keen eye,' I exclaimed. 'Quite incredible.'
'A blessing and a curse both,' he answered modestly, but I could tell he was pleased as he settled back into his chair, having apparently exhausted himself: he could not hide his blush.
The dreams began something like this: the air was heavy and cloying, thick with the smell of bodies and gunpowder. Overhead, the dark Afghani night was a velvet blue, pricked with the diamond white of stars and shrouded in smoke.
The sky was the only thing fantastic or exotic about Afghanistan. There was no magic in that land; there was only the rank and rot of death and fear, the deceptive sweetness of starvation, the sour stench of infection.
Then the dreams shifted, and a voice cried out – not in pain, this time. 'Watson! Come and have a drink with us.'
I looked over: the boys by the fire looked back, exhausted and dirty but whole, complete men, eyes and limbs still in their places, wounds smoothed over by their tired smiles. A bottle passed between them, but I knew it wasn't really whisky they were offering. I sighed and smiled back and heaved myself up to rejoin them.
When I woke, I lay in bed for hours, wondering whether it had been a dream or a nightmare, a blessing or a curse: sitting under that sky with men who never made it home, sharing a drink and a memory that never happened, laughing as though there was still breath in their lungs.
As though I had never left them behind.
Though I had not been on a battlefield in months, I was still not used to silent nights; my thoughts were too free to dwell on things better forgotten. My future, confined by my injuries, suddenly unfolded prophetically before me: a ceaseless parade of quiet and calm, leaving me forever trapped in the memory of war, waiting for a call to arms that was never going to come.
Finally I attempted an escape to the sitting room, but it wasn't empty. Holmes looked up from his chair by the fire, surprised; I drew back, apologetic. 'I didn't mean to disturb you.'
'Not at all,' Holmes said, recovering himself. 'Please, come and sit. I don't mind the company, and you look like you would be better for it.'
I hesitated, but he beckoned me forward and even lit my pipe for me before falling back into his thoughtful silence.
There was an intensely private air about Holmes sometimes, I thought, but there was something else, too, something that seemed to reach out. Perhaps it was not such a coincidence after all, to have found him alone and expectant by the fire. He did not say another word to me that night, nor I to him, but we were there together all the same, and suddenly the silence was much easier to bear.
Chapter Two
In the first weeks of sharing rooms with Holmes, I frequently thought that if only I were privy to the conversations he held with his perplexing array of clients, I might better understand his business, and thus more of Holmes himself. Even his title – a consulting detective – failed to satisfy my curiosity, so when at last he invited me to join him for a case, I was thrilled that I might finally uncover his mysteries.
How wrong I was!
Oh, I did better understand his work; indeed, once he laid out his reasoning, it seemed astonishing that I had been so blind. But the enigma of Holmes himself only deepened – how had he learned such skills? How had he the abilities to walk with police as comfortably as ruffian children? How did he so easily lay traps for murderers and wrestle them into submission?
Holmes listened intently as Jefferson Hope recounted his tale, but I could scarcely pay attention to it; I confess I was, instead, entranced by Holmes himself, wondering what conclusions he was drawing from each word, wondering whether he had some secret to know if they were the truth. If he could look into the darkness and tease out the light.
My nerves, I suddenly realised, were calm; when Holmes looked back at me, his eyes were bright.
The most irritating thing about Sherlock Holmes' vanity, I thought afterward, when the papers began publishing their accounts of the Jefferson Hope murders, was how very deserved it was. Watching Holmes in action on the case, I had been surprised and impressed; now, having understood his meticulous analysis of the facts, I knew he deserved more credit than he had got. 'Credit doesn't concern me,' he told me one night, flinging another paper that had made no mention of him down into a stack. 'It's only the work that matters.'
It might have been convincing, but for the scorn in his voice.
He also said, when I threatened to put down an accurate account of the case, that I ought to do as I liked. I hadn't taken it seriously at first, but watching him now, it struck me that perhaps I ought to take him at his word. My notes on the matter were not entirely complete, but I was sure if I thought carefully, I could remember enough about the case to write an account out well enough to be published, and I might even make an admirable job of it.
And concerned with credit or not, I knew from experience that Holmes could be flattered; surely, I thought, a little acclaim would ease away some of that bitterness.
'How do you decide which volume they go into?' I asked a few evenings later, picking up one of the scraps Holmes was pasting into his complicated filing system. My curiosity in his methods was piqued, and I wanted to know more. 'Vampirism in Hungary – under V? or H?'
'It depends upon which part one is more likely to require,' Holmes instructed easily, his pride in his index evident. 'As a singular topic, Hungary is too broad to be of any real use. Vampirism, on the other hand – ' He looked up, questioning. 'Isn't that only a myth, a superstition?'
'Yet men are superstitious. I suppose I would file it under V.'
Holmes was visibly delighted. 'Precisely! That's precisely it. And so it goes, always with an eye toward the detecting business. Then you'll always be able to find what you're looking for.'
'And if what you're looking for isn't here?'
'Then you look elsewhere, Watson. Everything is discoverable. One must only not give up too early.'
'I shall try not to,' I promised.
Holmes studied me a moment. Quietly, almost shyly, he added, 'Then I shall be very glad to trust you.'
I thought of my fledgling attempt to write an account of his work, hidden away in my room, and hoped he meant with more than just his books.
'Watson?'
Holmes' voice was soft in the dark, tinged with concern. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping he would think me asleep and go away, but instead he crept closer toward my bed. 'Watson, are you all right?'
I sighed, caught out; the summer had grown long and hot, and I was not faring well in it. 'Just a headache. Some nausea. It will pass.'
'The enteric fever,' Holmes deduced. 'It still flares up sometimes.'
'It's not unusual.'
'No,' he agreed. 'Is there anything I can do for you?'
I looked up; in the moonlight, Holmes' eyes were pale with worry. 'No,' I managed, though he seemed in earnest. 'I can only wait for it to pass.'
He shifted on his feet. 'I could bring