The Seven-Per-Cent Solution Read online

  The Seven-Per-Cent

  Solution

  Being a reprint from the

  reminiscences of JOHN H. WATSON, M.D.

  as edited by NICHOLAS MEYER

  W. W. Norton & Company

  New York • London

  For Sally

  Contents

  FOREWORD

  INTRODUCTORY

  PART IThe Problem

  Chapter IProfessor Moriarty

  IIBiographical

  IIIA Decision is Reached

  IVInterlude in Pall Mall

  VA Journey Through the Fog

  VI Toby Surpasses Himself

  VII Two Demonstrations

  PART II The Solution

  Chapter VIII A Holiday in Hell

  IX Concerning a Game of Tennis and a Violin

  X A Study in Hysteria

  XI We Visit the Opera

  XII Revelations

  XIII Sherlock Holmes Theorises

  XIV We Join a Funeral

  XV Pursuit!

  XVI What Happened Next

  XVII The Final Problem

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Foreword

  The discovery of an unpublished manuscript by John H. Watson may well engender in the world of letters as much scepticism as surprise. It is easier to conceive of the unearthing of one more Dead Sea Scroll than yet another text from the hand of that indefatigable biographer.

  Certainly there has been a surfeit of forgeries—some of them admittedly well done and others merely preposterous—so that the appearance of one more supposedly authentic chronicle may automatically arouse bored hostility in the breasts of serious students of the Canon. Where did this one come from and why not before now? are the inevitable questions students are forced to pose time and time again, before going on to catalogue the myriad inconsistencies in style and content that brand the piece a hoax.

  For the present manuscript, it does not matter whether or not I believe it to be genuine; for what it is worth, let me say that I do. As to how it came into my possession, that is frankly a matter of nepotism as the letter from my uncle, quoted in full below, will serve to indicate.

  London, March 7th, 1970

  Dear Nick—,

  I know that both of us are busy so I’ll come right to the point. (And you needn’t worry, the enclosed bundle does not represent my attempt to make a stock-broker’s life look glamorous and/or easy!)

  Vinny and I bought a house in Hampshire three months ago from a widower named Swingline (if you can believe it!). The poor man’s wife had just passed on—she was only in her middle fifties as I understand it—and he was quite broken up; couldn’t wait to leave the house. They’d lived in it since the war, and the subject of the attic was simply too painful to bear. All the effects and mementos and papers (how much one accumulates during a lifetime!) that he wanted were in the house proper, and he said if we didn’t mind clearing out the attic ourselves, anything we found up there we could keep!

  Well, it isn’t always you get to rummage around in someone else’s junk and take what you like but, to be truthful, the more I thought of doing it, the less enthusiastic I became. The place was jammed with furniture, bric-a-brac, standing lamps, dusty what-nots and even old travelling steamer trunks(!), but there was something distasteful about going through poor Swingline’s past—even with his permission.

  Vinny, even though she felt the same way, is a homemaker. She wondered if there was anything we could use up there, furniture prices being what they are, and also she had items of our own she wanted to store out of the way. So up she went and down she came, choking with dust and smudged all over like a chimney sweep.

  I won’t bore you with all the details, but we found the enclosed, Xeroxed a copy, and are sending it on to you. Apparently the late Mrs. Swingline was a typist (her maiden name being Dobson), and in that capacity she worked at the Aylesworth House, an old folk’s affair recently taken over by the National Health (hurrah, hurrah). In the course of her work—which included helping the patients write letters—she transcribed onto her typewriter (also in the attic, by the by, and in mint condition) the enclosed, which was dictated to her—he states so himself—by one ‘John H. Watson, M.D.’!

  It took me a while to read the thing and I was three pages or more into what he called his ‘Introductory’ before I realised what the hell it was. Of course it occurred to me the whole thing might be some sort of incredible hoax, a hoax that never came off and got buried in the attic, so I checked into it. In the first place, Swingline knew nothing about it. I asked him casually and he didn’t recall it at all, much less express any interest. Then I went to Aylesworth House and asked them to check the files for me. There was some question about whether they were still accurate that far back—the war messed up everything—but my luck held good. In 1932 a Dr. John H. Watson was admitted (with severe arthritis) and it stated in his health record that he had been attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers! There could no longer be any doubt, at least in my mind, and I would fain have looked at the record in detail (wouldn’t you have liked to know where Watson was really wounded?) but Matron wouldn’t let me. She hadn’t the time to stand around, she said, and the file was confidential. (Ah, bureaucracy, what would the National Health do without you?)

  Anyway, it offers substantial confirmation as to the authenticity of the enclosed, which I am forwarding to you for whatever purpose you think best. You are the Sherlockian in the family and will know what to do with it. If it comes to anything we split the profits! !

  Fondest regards to you,

  HENRY

  P.S. Vinny says we have to cut her in, too—she found it.

  P.P.S. We are retaining the original manuscript. We’ll see if Sotheby’s is interested in auctioning it.

  Authentic or not, the manuscript required editing, and preparing a definitive edition of Plutarch could not be more difficult than the problems posed by a newly unearthed text of Watson’s. I corresponded extensively with Sherlockians too numerous to mention here; all of them proved invaluable, tireless in offering advice, comments and insights regarding the newly discovered material. The only proper acknowledgment of the debt this book owes them is the book itself. I have, with their help, preserved as much of Dr. Watson’s narrative as makes for a consistent story.

  For reasons which are not definitely known, Watson never (to our knowledge) got to edit the manuscript. His own death, possibly, or the vagaries of the war prevented him. Therefore, readying the work for publication, I have tried to function as I believe he would have. I have struck out redundancies. Old people have a tendency to repeat themselves, and although Watson’s memory of events apparently remained intact, he was prone to reiterate significant details. I have also eliminated digressions which he made from time to time when his mind appears to have strayed from the story and wandered unchecked into the intervening years. (These memories are themselves not without interest and in subsequent editions I shall no doubt include them in the form of appendices). Knowing that footnotes are especially irksome in the course of a narrative, I have deliberately kept them to a minimum and made the necessary ones as informal as possible.

  For the rest, I have left well enough alone. The doctor is an experienced hand at telling a tale and needs no help from me. Aside from succumbing to the irresistible temptation to telescope or streamline an awkward phrase here and there (which the good doctor no doubt would himself have corrected in his revisions), all is as the faithful Watson set it down.

  NICHOLAS MEYER

  Los Angeles

  October 30th, 1973

  Introductory

  FOR MANY YEARS IT was my good fortune to witness, chronicle, and in some instances to assis
t my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, in a number of the cases which were submitted to him in his unique capacity as a consulting detective. Indeed, in 1881,* when I committed to paper the substance of our first case together, Mr. Holmes was, as he said, the world’s only consulting detective. The ensuing years have seen that situation remedied to the satisfactory degree that today, in 1939, consulting detectives (if not actually known by that name) flourish both within and without the police contingent of nearly every country in the so-called civilised world. Many of them, I am gratified to see, employ the methods and techniques first developed by my singular friend so long ago—though not all of them are gracious enough to give his genius the wealth of credit it deserves.

  Holmes was, as I have always endeavoured to describe him, an intensely private individual, reclusive in certain areas to the point of eccentricity. He was fond of appearing impassive, austere and somewhat aloof, a thinking machine not in direct contact or communication with what he considered the sordid realities of physical existence. In truth, this reputation for coldness was deliberately and completely of his own manufacture. It was not, moreover, his friends—he admittedly had few—nor yet his biographer whom he sought to convince regarding this aspect of his character. It was himself.

  The ten years since his death have provided me with ample time for reflection upon the question of Holmes’s personality, and I have come to realise what I always really knew—but did not know that I knew—that Holmes was a deeply passionate human being. His susceptibility to emotion was an element in his nature which he tried almost physically to suppress. Holmes certainly regarded his emotions as a distraction, a liability, in fact. He was convinced the play of feelings would interfere with the precision demanded by his work and this was on no account to be tolerated. Sentience he eschewed; those moments during his career when circumstances forced open floodgates of his reserve were rare indeed, and always startling. The observer felt he had witnessed a brilliant flash of lightning on a darkling plain.

  Rather than indulge in such explosions—whose unpredictability threw him off balance as much as it did any witnesses—Holmes possessed a veritable arsenal of resources whose specific purpose (whether he acknowledged it or no) was to relieve emotional stress when such relief became imperative. His iron will having cauterised the more conventional outlets of expression, he would resort to abstruse and frequently malodorous chemical experiments; he would improvise by the hour upon the violin (I have stated elsewhere my admiration for his musical talents); he would adorn the walls of our residence in Baker Street with bullet pocks usually spelling out the initials of our gracious sovereign—the Old Queen—or of some other notable whose existence was then calling itself to the attention of his restless mind.

  Also, he took cocaine.

  It may seem strange to some that I am beginning yet another chronicle of my friend’s brilliant achievements in this round-about fashion. Indeed, the fact that I am proposing to relate another history of his at this late date may seem strange in itself. I can only hope, after commencing my narrative, to explain its origins and to account for my delay in setting it before the public.

  The origins of this manuscript differ sharply from those of past cases recorded by me. In those accounts I made frequent mention of the notes I kept at the time. No such notes were kept during the period occupied by the present narrative. The reasons for this apparent dereliction of duty on my part are twofold. Firstly, the case commenced in so peculiar a manner that it was well under way before it was borne in upon me that it was actually a case at all. Secondly, once I realised what was happening I became convinced it was an adventure which, for many reasons, should never see the literary light of day.

  That I was mistaken in this assumption, the present manuscript happily bears witness. Fortunately, though I was morally certain that the occasion would never arise when I would find myself recording this history, the case is one which I have good reason to recall in almost every particular. I may say, in fact, that the fixtures of it are engraved in my memory and will be until my death and possibly after, though such metaphysics are beyond my competent speculations.

  The reasons for the delay involved in setting this narrative before the public are complex. I have said that Holmes was a private person, and this is a case that cannot be set down without some exploration of his character, an exploration that would certainly have been distasteful to him while he was alive. Let it not be thought, however, that his being alive was the only obstacle. If that were true, there was nothing that should have prevented my writing this history ten years ago when he breathed his last amongst his precious Sussex Downs. Nor should I have felt qualms about writing the case ‘over his dead body’, as I believe the phrase runs, for Holmes was notoriously sceptical about his reputation in the hereafter and entirely careless of the repercussions to his character on earth, once he himself had journeyed to that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns.

  No, the reason for delay is that there was another party in the case, and it was esteem for this personage and a sense of delicacy on Holmes’s part where this personage’s reputation was concerned that caused him to enjoin me—under the strictest of oaths—to disclose nothing of the matter until such time as this second party had also ceased to breathe. If that event did not occur before my own demise, then so be it.

  Fate, however, has resolved the matter in favour of posterity. The person in question has died within the last twenty-four hours, and while the world resounds with eulogies of praise (and from some quarters, with utterances of damnation), while biographies and retrospectives are hastily printed and published, I—while I have still the strength of hand and clarity of mind (for I am eighty-seven and that is old)—likewise hasten to set down what I know no one else knows.

  Such a revelation is bound to stir up controversy in several quarters, the more so as it involves my declaration that two of the cases I penned concerning Holmes were total fabrications. Attentive students of my writings have pointed out my apparent inconsistencies, my patent falsification of a name or a date, and have proved to the satisfaction of all that the man who wrote these cases down was a blundering fool, or, at least, an absentminded dotard. Some more astute—or more charitable—scholars have suggested that my seeming errors were in fact deliberate signs of commission and omission, designed to protect or disguise the facts for reasons that were either obvious or known only to myself. It is not my intention here to enter into the lengthy process of correction and restitution of data. Let an apology suffice, and the timid explanation be advanced that when the cases were often set down in extreme haste, it chanced that I frequently chose what seemed to me to be the simplest way out of a difficulty imposed by the need for tact or discretion. In retrospect, this practice has proved more cumbersome than the truth would have been, had I been so bold, or in some cases so unscrupulous, as to write it.

  Yet these same astute scholars mentioned earlier have never with a certainty branded as spurious the two cases which I spun almost entirely of whole cloth and separated them from the others. I speak not here of forgeries by other hands than mine, which include such drivel as ‘The Lion’s Mane’, ‘The Mazarin Stone’, ‘The Creeping Man’, and ‘The Three Gables’.

  I refer to ‘The Final Problem’, with its account of the death duel between Holmes and his arch-enemy, the fiendish Professor Moriarty, and to ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’, the companion case, which relates the dramatic reappearance of Holmes and details briefly his three years of wandering through Central Europe, Africa, and India, in flight from the minions of his deceased opponent. I have just re-read the cases and marvel, I must confess, at my lack of subtlety. How could attentive readers have missed my overbearing emphasis on ‘the truth’ that I claimed to be telling? And what of all the theatrical flourishes in the prose, so much more to Holmes’s taste than my own? (For though he protested his love of cold logic, he was at heart an unreconstructed dramatist of the most romantic and melodramatic turn.
)

  As Sherlock Holmes remarked on more than one occasion, evidence which seems to point unerringly in one direction, may, in fact, if viewed from a slightly altered perspective, admit of precisely the opposite interpretation. So, I venture to suggest, it is in writing as well. My repeated emphasis in ‘The Final Problem’ on the undiluted truth which it contained should perhaps have aroused the suspicions of my readers and served to put them on their guard.

  It is just as well, however, that nothing of the sort occurred, for secrecy, as it will shortly be seen, was essential at the time. Now the real story may be told, the conditions stipulated by Holmes so long ago having at last been met.

  I have remarked parenthetically that I am eighty-seven, and though I comprehend intellectually that I am in the general vicinity of death’s door, yet emotionally I am as ill-equipped to grapple with oblivion as a man half or even a quarter of my age. Nevertheless, if the narrative which follows occasionally fails to bear the impress of my usual style, age must partly share the blame, along with the fact that years have elapsed since last I wrote. Similarly, a narrative which is not based on my usually copious notes is bound to differ significantly from previous works, however perfect my memory.

  Another cause for variation is the fact that I am no longer actually writing—arthritis having made the attempt impossible—but rather dictating this memoir to a charming typist (a Miss Dobson), who is taking it down in some sort of coded abbreviation which she will subsequently transcribe to English—or so she promises.

  Lastly, my style may appear dissimilar to that of my earlier writing because this adventure of Sherlock Holmes is totally unlike any that I have ever recorded. I shall not now repeat my earlier mistake and attempt to overbear the reader’s scepticism by stating that what follows is the truth.

  JOHN H. WATSON, M.D.

  AYLESWORTH HOME

  HAMPSHIRE, 1939