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The Cliff Edge Mystery
by
Dr John Watson
I shall in time tell the full story of how I came to be in that terrible place; it is too long and dreadful a tale for now. I had faced death many times before and somehow managed to outwit him but this time there was no possible way out; if Holmes could not free me then no-one could. I sent up prayers to a god I was no longer sure I believed in, clenched my teeth and prepared to die. A few feet away from me I could make out the crouched figure of Holmes. He seemed sunk in thought or despair.
For hours I had been trapped at the foot of the cliff, chained by my ankles to iron pins thrust deep into the rock below me. With the high tide due at ten o’clock, I had by this time not long to live; hour after hour the water had risen inexorably and although I had managed to remain calm my sang froid was beginning to desert me. I had faced death many times but never by drowning; I’d have taken a thousand sword-wielding Afghans sooner than this. I strove to master my emotion but could not help thinking of what it would feel like to be forced to take in that first ghastly, agonising lungful of water. Some people say that sensation is unbearable, others that after the first moment it is quite pleasurable, but since none has returned from death to tell us we cannot know. Oh, that Holmes had found some way to free me! As the tide rose my courage ebbed; the waters were swirling about my knees – my chest – my heart felt faint. Soon the salt waves would wash into my mouth; I kept my mouth tight shut in a futile gesture of self-preservation. I had given myself up for lost when all at once – was it a delirium? – was I already dead? – I experienced a melting sensation about the ankles, as though my very flesh was dissolving. Perhaps this was indeed the delirium of bodily disintegration; I must already be drowning and not know it. My feet seemed to float free, taking the rest of my body with them and, like a piece of jetsam flung from the Ship of Life, I floated on the water. It was utterly peaceful, and I remember thinking that if this was death I was perfectly reconciled to it. I felt myself being grabbed by a pair of strong arms – surely death’s if not St Peter’s? – I glimpsed a black cloak spreading out on the waves as the arms pulled mine, then I heard a voice say my name and I knew no more.
When I came to myself I was sitting up in bed, in surroundings which felt familiar but which I could not place. I was holding something in my cupped hands which I recognised as a drink. I closed my eyes again. I could hear a voice as if from far away, an angry woman’s voice; it, too, was familiar but I couldn’t put a name to it. I opened my eyes and raised the cup to my lips; the liquid was brown and sweet. I swallowed; the word cocoa came into my mind. I drank some more, the voice went on and eventually a name floated up and attached itself to the voice: Hudson. Hudson, it seemed, was very angry with someone. Someone had nearly drowned and Hudson was very angry. It all seemed very unreal and far-away.
The voice stopped, a door banged and a moment later a tall figure loomed over me. ‘Finish your cocoa,’ said the figure. ‘I have added a measure of brandy.’
I knew that voice as well as I know my own, though for a moment the name eluded me. I drank, and immediately fell into a deep sleep.
I did not wake until the next afternoon. I do not know if Holmes had added a measure of sleeping draught or whether the ordeal itself had made me fatigued, but I was now thoroughly rested. I went downstairs and the first thing I did was to demand an explanation; I had been told nothing and the more I thought of yesterday’s events the less sense they made. Holmes sighed in that familiar way of his, meaning that any explanation would go over my head, but I would not be put off. ‘I need to know,’ I said firmly.
He sighed again. ‘If you insist, Watson.’
‘Well? How did you free me?
‘Quantum disentanglement,’ he announced.
‘What?’
‘There is a very new science, known only to a few men, called quantum theory. Have you heard of it?’
The phrase was familiar; I racked my sodden brain for a meaning. ‘Is it something to do with particles – minute, microscopic particles?’
‘Precisely. Well, not precisely but it will do. Quantum entanglement describes a state of connection, a correspondence if you will, between two such particles which are physically distant.’
‘Like writing a letter!’ I exclaimed.
‘You might describe it thus for your readers,’ observed Holmes with some disdain, ‘though it is hardly accurate. I have been working on a theory that if one allows for quantum entanglement it ought to be possible, by the power of the human mind, to achieve quantum disentanglement – in other words, to cause particles distant from you to float away from each other.’
‘It sounds like magic,’ I observed.
‘Anything one does not yet understand appears to the common mind like magic,’ he responded loftily.
‘But those were solid iron pegs -‘
‘Quite so.’
‘- embedded in granite!’
‘They were.’
‘And the chains!’
‘Indeed.’
‘And you freed me!’
‘Evidently.’
‘So that means…’ I paused, trying to work out the implications of what Holmes had just said.
‘… that means you can dismantle anything!’
‘Not quite anything, Watson.’
‘How so?’
‘The object in question has to want to be dismantled.’
‘Holmes, you are making fun of me.’
‘Not at all, I assure you. Anything on earth can be changed and made to assume a different configuration – but only if it consents to that change.’
Perhaps my faculties were still addled from yesterday’s ordeal.
‘A bank vault,’ he continued, ‘would be particularly difficult because the doors would be vigilant in performing their duty – like a conscientious doorman who refuses to let one into a club where one is not a member.’
I shook my head like a dog trying to clear water from its ears. I needed some fresh air; in the hope that this would make more sense in the morning I decided to would go out for my walk. At the door I stopped and turned. My friend was gazing out of the window.
‘Holmes!’
He turned.
‘However you did it, thank you.’
He smiled faintly. ‘I could not allow you of all people to be murdered, Watson,’ he said.
A week or so later I was fully recovered and ready to commit the story to paper, but before I could settle my mind to writing I needed to understand what had happened. Was quantum disentanglement a genuine phenomenon? I could find no trace of it in the British Library, nor could any of my colleagues enlighten me: I’d even tried Mycroft but as usual he was occupied. I decided to tackle Holmes again on the subject and chose an evening after supper as he was lighting his pipe; much the most propitious moment for a question.
‘I am proposing to write the story of our most recent adventure,’ I announced. ‘I shall call it The Cliff Edge Mystery.’
‘Melodramatic as always, Watson.’ He took a few puffs, making sure the pipe was properly lit. ‘And hardly accurate. You were not at the cliff edge but at the foot; and it is not a mystery. We know the perpetrator; he is even now in custody, we know what he did and why he did it.’
‘The mystery is how,‘ I returned a little hotly. ‘I still don’t understand.’
‘Understand what?’
Blast the man! ‘The – quantum disentanglement.’
With an ironic smile, Holmes put down his pipe and leaned forward. ‘There is a connection between minds. I’m sure you must have observed this, that a person to whom one is close may communicate something of their thoughts to you and vice versa. You may have experienced it with Mary.’
I had not, nor could I conceive of a connection between two such remote entities as a man’s and a woman’s mind, but I followed his drift.
‘I have made a study of evil and it is my contention that the evil person acts against his own fundamental interests and therefore there is a part of his mind which can be – which wants to be – persuaded.’
‘Persuaded? Of what?’
‘Persuaded to desist. Persuaded not to perform the evil act.’
‘Good lord!’
‘You must gain access to that part of their mind without the benefit of speech and persuade them by means of thought alone.’
This all sounded very far-fetched – yet here I was, very much alive and not having drowned at the foot of a cliff. ‘So you – communicated with Moriarty remotely? That is how you were able to free me?’
‘I have long made a study of thought transference. I needed to plant the seed in his mind much as one plants a bomb and then, as it were, set it off remotely. One must observe the weak point, so to speak, the part where conscience or humanity or whatever you choose to call it, still lives – and aim at that. Once the seed has been planted it will start to grow.’
It sounded a little like theology, I thought, and said so.
‘Not theology, Watson. Science.’
Nevertheless, I thought, the philosophy was the same: persuade the sinner to repent. ‘But what about the iron rods? I can understand you changing his mind – difficult though that must have been – but how did that undo the fetters?’
He looked grim. ‘I do not know, Watson. My hope was to persuade Moriarty to come in person – or to send someone else – and free you. Yet he was able to dissolve them remotely, and by some means I cannot yet fathom.’ His expression was grim: I knew how much he hated not knowing. ‘But I propose to find out.’
And that was that. For days Holmes remained sunk in thought and would not be roused. That evening I committed what he had said to paper and tried to begin writing but the story would not come; I had the title at the top but the rest of the page remained stubbornly blank. Two weeks passed; and then one day Mrs Hudson took it into her head todo something so strange that I immediately ran upstairs to apprise Holmes of it.
‘Holmes!’
‘What has occurred?’
‘Something of a most unusual nature.’
‘Well?’
‘It concerns Mrs Hudson.’
‘I surmised as much.’
‘Mrs Hudson has begun writing a novel!’
‘Excellent.’
‘It is most out of character,’ I said.
‘That is why it is excellent,’ observed Holmes. ‘And I think you’ll find, moreover, that it is very much in her character, just not her character as we have known it.’ And with that cryptic statement he sat back in his chair and lit his pipe. ‘Watson,’ he announced when the tobacco was alight, ‘we shall have to dine out for the next few weeks. I anticipate that the novel will last no longer than that – though I may be wrong. It is not impossible that Mrs Hudson will throw us out and start a literary salon.’
By means of these hints I deduced that he had planted a seed in Mrs Hudson’s mind to test his quantum disentanglement theory: brilliant though he was, Holmes never could foresee the human consequences of his experiments. Sighing, I fetched my coat and hat and prepared to dine at my club, as I would no doubt have to do for quite a while.
Some weeks later Holmes entered the room in a state of great excitement. ‘Watson!’ he announced, ‘I believe I have it!’
‘Have what?’
‘The reason for your escape!’
I was all ears; infuriatingly he chose at this point to stop and light his pipe again, leaving me on the edge of my seat. From downstairs I could hear the tapping of Mrs Hudson’s typewriter; she was apparently making good progress and would soon be in a position to send some chapters to a publisher. Despite my views on lady authors, the project interested me. Eventually Holmes said, ‘You were never in danger.’
‘Excuse me, Holmes!’ I said rather hotly. ‘The water was up to -‘
‘Yes, yes,’ he said impatiently, ‘but Moriarty never intended you to drown. He had in his grasp the means to dissolve the rods fixing you to the rock.’
‘Dissolve? By some chemical?’
‘No Watson – indeed, how could he have done that without being there? And under all that water? No. I was alerted to this when I went back.’
‘You went back?’
‘The next day while you were sleeping, at low tide I went back and examined the location of your – as we thought – near demise. There was no sign of the rods – in fact there was no sign they had ever been there. They seemed to have melted clean away.’
‘You are sure you looked in the right place?’
Holmes flashed me a fiery glance and I felt immediately ashamed; of course he would have looked in the right place. I begged his pardon. ‘Then what do you think happened?’
‘I believe Watson, that Moriarty is further advanced in quantum disentanglement than we ever believed possible. I believe he has the means to dissolve the bond linking atoms to each other and that, as you so astutely observed, this would allow him entry into anywhere at all. No building, no bank or government office, would be safe – he would be able simply to melt the barriers into nothing.’
‘You said that the atoms had to want to change,’ I reminded him.
‘I believe they did want to change in this case – but it is not inconceivable that he may find a way round that – and soon. He must be stopped!’
I began to object that Moriarty was at this very moment in police custody but if Holmes was right, walls and locks would no longer make any difference. Even now he could be wandering the streets; even now he could be knocking at the door…
At that precise moment there was a loud banging from without: I turned, alarmed but it proved merely to be Mrs Hudson with a telegram. Holmes snatched it from her, scanned it in a second and to her enquiry as to whether we wanted tea, replied ‘Tea? Alas Mrs Hudson, I do not know when we shall require tea again!’ and with those doom-laden words he caught up his hat and rushed out.
It was as we had feared; on our arrival at the police station all was in uproar. ‘You received my message?’ asked Lestrade.
‘He is gone, I presume?’ said Holmes, not bothering to reply: for answer Lestrade took us through and showed us the space where the locked and bolted cell door had stood.
‘Six inches thick, solid iron and bolted!’ he said. ‘How in heaven’s name did he do that? Do you know?’
‘I’m afraid we do,’ I said – ‘at least, I think we do. Holmes is working on a theory -‘
Holmes turned swiftly and gave me a significant look. He turned back to Lestrade. ‘I believe I will have the answer within a few days. In the meantime I suggest that you draft in extra officers and keep continuous watch on every single person in the cells. There’s no telling where this may end.’
‘Where do you think Moriarty will have gone?’ I asked as we hailed a cab outside.
‘Newgate.’ Holmes spoke more to the cab driver than to me.
‘You think he is attempting to break out prisoners? En masse?’
‘Unless we are in time to prevent it,’ said Holmes. ‘But even if we catch Moriarty, how are we to stop him escaping from every cell in which he is confined?’
I had no answer to that, except to say that he would have to be watched continuously, and I couldn’t see how any police force could keep that up for long. In any case, what was to prevent him from practising quantum disentanglement on the minds of his gaolers? Who among them might not have some shred of sympathy for Moriarty that he could turn to account? It was a ghastly prospect.
The journey to Newgate seemed interminable and all the way I had visions of the prison cells empty and the streets of London full of desperate criminals seeking out whom they might devour. But when we arrived all was peaceful; there were no reports of any incidents. Pausing only to advise the Prison Governor to keep constant watch, Holmes leapt back into the cab and sat deep in thought.
‘Where to, Guv?’ asked the cabby. Holmes did not reply.
‘Baker St,’ I said. I knew this mood of old; there was no point in trying to make him speak.
I dined again at my club that evening, leaving Holmes in his chair; when I returned several hours later he had not moved; his pipe was out and but for a slight rise and fall of his chest he might have been dead. I left him and went to bed, but was awoken in the middle of the night by noises from below. Burglars! I was sure of it. Grasping my trusty poker which I keep under the bed, I crept downstairs to our living-room.
All was in uproar. The furniture was turned upside down, the crockery smashed and the walls pock-marked as if some madman had taken a hammer to the plaster. I stood in the doorway aghast. In the middle of all this chaos stood Holmes, pipe in hand, raving about the dissolution of the universe and the end of life.
‘Holmes!’ I called his name again and again but he did not respond. Gingerly I approached him. ‘Holmes! What has happened? Thieves? Burglars? Intruders?’ Suddenly a thought struck me and my hand went to my mouth in horror. ‘Was it Moriarty? Was he here?’ He did not reply. I walked round examining the flat thoroughly but there were no signs of a forced entry; the door had not been melted into atoms, nor had anything been taken. Holmes still stood as rigid as a statue; I reached out a hand to take his arm but I had barely touched him when he crumpled like a severed marionette and collapsed on the floor.
I had to rouse Mrs Hudson to assist me in getting him onto a chair; whether her horror was greater at seeing the state of the rooms or the state of Holmes, I could not have said. I assured her we would make good all the damage as we covered my friend with a blanket; had he not recovered by morning I would have to summon more substantial aid. He had not slept for days, it appeared; no wonder he was in such a febrile state.
In the morning Holmes had a raging fever and at once I summoned a colleague for assistance. Hammond arrived and without commenting on the domestic chaos agreed with my diagnosis of shock and lack of sleep, and prescribed bed-rest. He helped me to carry Holmes upstairs and then looked at me, again without asking the obvious question: I merely said that Holmes was working on a case which was causing him a great deal of trouble.
Over the next few days my friend slept the sleep of the dead; so long was he unconscious that I wondered whether to call Hammond back again. I was pacing the apartment unable to make up my mind when there came a knock at the door; I opened it and there stood my wife.
‘Mary!’ My conscience smote me; it was days since I had been home and no doubt she was upset – as she had reason to be. I was about to explain, but she pushed past me into the room.
‘Quantum disentanglement,’ she said. ‘I know how it works.’
I gaped at her, momentarily bereft of speech as she brandished a sheaf of papers in my face. Eventually I found my voice: ‘My dear Mary, where did you get that phrase from? Have I been talking in my sleep?’
‘You imagine that because I am a woman I know nothing,’ she said. ‘But while you have been away I have been taking a correspondence course in scientific theory.’
This was the consequence of neglecting one’s wife! I made a mental note to be at home more often. ‘But – my dear!’ I protested, ‘I have sought an explanation far and wide, I have been to the British Library, I have -‘
‘It is very new,’ she interrupted excitedly. ‘Discoveries are so recent that it has not made its way even into the universities, but this man -‘ she paused to consult a paper hidden in her bag ‘- this man Marcus Thoroughgood, is the co-author of the correspondence course which I am taking, and it is he who has done the research and discovered it all!’
In spite of myself I was interested. ‘Show me that paper!’ I demanded.
She stared.
‘Please. Mary.’
She unfolded the paper and showed me; it was full of diagrams and calculations whose meaning I could not begin to fathom. If I, a doctor, could not understand them, what chance had my wife? Yet as she proceeded to explain I could not help perceiving that she seemed to have a thorough grasp of the facts.
At length she saw that I was lost. ‘Where is Holmes? I need to show him this.’
I was about to say that Holmes was confined to bed when there was a step on the stair and the man himself came into the room. ‘Ah, Mary!’
Without preamble she crossed the room and showed him the paper. Holmes needed no explanation: his eyes whizzed across the page and suddenly he was himself again; alert, energised, keen. ‘Mary, I am indebted to you. Greatly indebted!’ he said, and motioning me to follow, left the room.
‘I will be home tonight,’ I assured my wife as I kissed her.
‘But I may not be,’ she replied; and when I made to remonstrate, pushed me towards the door. ‘Go!’
Since that day at the foot of the cliff the whole world had turned upside-down.
Holmes motioned to me to sit though he continued pacing. He was clearly in a highly agitated state but at length he too sat and lit his pipe. I was agog to hear his explanation but forced myself to be patient; finally, he spoke. ‘I am very much afraid -‘ he began, and stopped.
‘Afraid, my dear chap?’
‘Yes.’
This was not like Holmes at all. ‘Afraid of what?’ I enquired.
‘Myself,’ he uttered hollowly. This was not making sense, but I waited with considerable patience to hear the tale.
‘Watson.’ He lifted his eyes to mine. ‘I am very much afraid that after tonight you may not wish to continue our association – nay, our friendship, which I have come to value -‘ he broke off once more in a state of emotion.
‘My dear chap,’ I repeated, ‘do tell me what is the matter.’
‘Very well. It has become apparent to me during my researches into quantum disentanglement that – well, allow me to put it this way – you recall that I was able to influence Moriarty so strongly that he repented and allowed himself to be arrested and imprisoned?’
I was hardly likely to forget it, but I merely grunted in assent.
‘Did it not occur to you to wonder how?’
‘How? You explained the theory -‘
‘Yes, but how was I able to do that?’
‘Well, because you are Sherlock Holmes. I never doubted you.’
‘You should have, Watson. You recall the principle of quantum entanglement, that phenomena which share the same qualities can be influenced from a distance?’
‘Yes.’
‘I should have seen it,’ he said, talking more to himself than to me – then, raising his eyes to mine: ‘it appears that I share with Moriarty – a core of evil. I have a shard of villainy in my heart, just as he has a shard of goodness in his, and that was why I was able to make that connection with him. Indeed, perhaps no other soul on earth could have done so.’
He looked into the fire, then with a hollow voice that hardly seemed to be his he said, ‘I have taken the evil into myself.’
I was about to protest that it could not be true but the words died on my lips. Holmes spoke the truth, I knew it in my heart; had known it for a while, in fact. I wanted to say so many things; that I knew my friend for a good man, that none of us is without sin, that no-one on earth is wholly good – but alas! he took my silence for disapproval. Oh, that I had spoken! But I could not find the words, and in the midst of my silence he caught up his hat and cloak and ran out into the street.
Just a few hours later I heard a ring on the bell. Hoping it was not a client, I waited for Mrs Hudson to show them up but just one set of footsteps ascended the stair and into the room burst none other than Mycroft Holmes, looking more agitated than I’d ever seen him. ‘Where is he? Tell me where he is gone!’ he demanded. I could not get him to sit down; he paced the room like a man demented.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Do please sit down. Have a glass of brandy.’
He flung himself into his brother’s chair and took the proffered glass, tossing it down his throat like life-saving medicine. This, to my immense relief, seemed to calm him somewhat. A distraught Sherlock I could deal with, but a manic Mycroft was something beyond my ken.
‘He was very distressed last evening,’ I observed. ‘As distressed as I had ever seen him. He seemed to think Moriarty – he talked of evil, having an evil heart. He said that was why -‘
Holmes senior interrupted me. ‘Indeed, Sherlock has taken into himself the evil in order to destroy it. But – how can I put this?’ he went on. ‘You are familiar with the name Sigmund Freud?’
I confessed that it was unknown to me.
‘His theories are very new.’ Mary’s words came back to me and again I felt wrong-footed and behind the times. ‘In fact,’ continued Mycroft a little smugly, ‘they have yet to be published.’
‘Then how do you know of them?’
‘It is my business to know.’
Typical Mycroft. ‘Well,’ I said impatiently, ‘what are these theories?’
‘It is Freud’s contention that the mind is composed of two parts, the conscious and the unconscious, and that the unconscious may be engaged in work of which the conscious mind knows nothing. It is the unconscious which takes over when we dream, though our waking mind may not be able to interpret those dreams. A similar state is induced by -‘
‘Opium!’ I interrupted.
‘Exactly. It’s my belief that Sherlock is trying to solve the problem by this means. Alas, I have searched all of his familiar dens without success. Do you have any idea -?’
It was touching to see the depth of Mycroft’s concern for his brother but though I racked my brains I could not think where we might find him. Just then there was another knock at the door causing me to experience the exact same thoughts and emotions as I had just a quarter of an hour before, and into the room burst my wife.
‘Mary!’ I stood up in surprise, about to explain why once again I had not been home – but she ignored me and addressed Mycroft. ‘Have you considered Moriarty’s haunts?’ Mycroft’s face was a picture; torn between gratitude at having a lead and disdain for having it given to him by a woman. In the end, politeness won: thanking her, he snatched up his hat and ran downstairs to hail a cab. ‘Go home, my dear,’ I said to my wife, blowing her a kiss as I followed hard on Mycroft’s heels. No wonder, I thought as I jumped into the cab, that Holmes been in such a febrile state. I knew my friend would go to extraordinary lengths to solve a case, but this was further than even I had anticipated. I could not imagine what he must have suffered. I wished I’d been able to understand the equations my wife seemed so effortlessly to comprehend, and for a moment I longed to have her here with us. I’d been neglecting her in more ways than I knew…
My thoughts were abruptly dislocated by a sudden shout from Holmes Senior. ‘Stop!’ He flew out of the cab leaving me behind, so that by the time I’d paid the driver he had vanished. There was a large warehouse building by a wharf; we must be somewhere in the East End, but I had no idea where. Then I saw a Chinese inscription on the side of the building and I knew we must be in Limehouse.
I caught a glimpse of a familiar cloak at a first-floor window and rushed off in pursuit. The warehouse was empty and my footsteps echoed on the crumbling floors. What was happening? What were we walking into? I decided I must be more cautious and began carefully to climb the stairs, making no noise. As I neared the top I heard a voice. It was not my friend’s.
‘I knew you’d come,’ it said – simple, everyday words; but something in the way the speaker said them made my skin crawl. Holmes had often lectured me on the qualities of the human voice and its relation to character, but I had never before appreciated the significance of his findings. This was the voice of someone who knew no limits; a man who had not a shred of human decency in him. But the man who was speaking was not Moriarty. It was Sherlock.
I stood for a few moments on the top stair, frozen with horror. Mycroft was in the shadows just a few feet from where I stood; on seeing me, he put a hand to his lips. For a few moments we both stood immobile as pillars while Holmes and Moriarty conversed in low voices. Then out of the shadows I heard another voice and my blood seemed to stop in my veins.
‘Hello James.’ She greeted Moriarty like an old friend.
‘Ah Mary,’ drawled the Professor. ‘Care to join us?’
I was flabbergasted. It was all I could do not to cry out: but Mycroft flapped a hand urgently in my direction, so with a great effort I managed to stay silent.
‘There’s one way you can get me to change my mind.’ Moriarty looked directly at me and laughed. ‘Come out, Doctor Watson! Come and play!’
At a nod from Mycroft I emerged from the shadows. ‘Well,’ I said, trying to sound braver than I felt, ‘what is this way?’
‘Simple,’ drawled Moriarty. His voice made my skin crawl more than ever. ‘You three leave’ – he waved a lazy hand towards myself and the brothers – ‘and I get to keep this lovely lady.’
Mycroft and I both shouted ‘No!’
‘Very well,’ said Mary.
‘Agreed.’ Sherlock got to his feet.
‘If you think I’m going to let my wife -’
‘Leave,’ said Sherlock.
‘Go, John,’ said Mary.
I would not have left for the world but as Sherlock brushed past me I heard him whisper trust me! I thought of the times, too numerous to count, when Sherlock had saved me; throwing a last, anguished look at my wife I allowed him to lead me out of the warehouse.
Once we were in a cab I tried to get some answers but Sherlock just said, ‘Mary has the formula.’ Mycroft said nothing at all. ‘If anything happens to her,’ I burst out as we left the river and headed north, ‘I’ll never forgive you.’ Sherlock did not answer – but the truth was I’d never forgive myself.
All afternoon I paced the floor, a cup of cooling tea by my chair, checking the clock every few minutes. At precisely six o’clock a cab drew up outside; I rushed to the window but could see no-one. Immediately there came a ring at the door: I ran across the room and flung the door open to see Mrs Hudson climbing the stairs, Mary close on her heels.
‘My dearest! Are you well? Are you hurt? I’ll never forgive myself if -’
‘Don’t fret. I am well.’ She gave me a kiss and patted my shoulder reassuringly.
‘Is it done?’ Sherlock said from behind me.
‘It is done,’ she replied.
‘You have reversed the formula?’
‘I’m certain.’
‘By the means we discussed?’
‘Yes – although it may not be permanent.’
‘Even so, well done Mary! Well done indeed! It is more than I could have done – and who knows? With repetition the habit of goodness may become permanent in him.’
Mary flung herself into my chair, exhausted. As I looked from one of them to the other, my bafflement must have been written all over my face. ‘You explain,’ she said to Holmes.
Holmes did indeed attempt to explain but after such an ordeal I was unable to take much in; in any case his explanations usually go over my head. But as I struggled to write the story of our adventure I realised there was only one thing for it: I would have to ask my wife. Little though I relished the prospect, my conscience smote me as I realised I had been neglecting her too long. I arrived home to find her immersed in papers and seemingly unaware of my presence. I coughed.
‘Good evening, John,’ she said without looking up.
There could be no beating about the bush. ‘Mary, I demand an explanation. I need to write The Cliff Edge Mystery and you must explain to me the – the – the theory.’ I put my bag down with a thump to emphasise the point and sank into a chair, waiting to be offered a drink.
Mary regarded me with an expression I could not fathom, and it occurred to me that my tone might perhaps have been a little brusque. I tried again. ‘My dear -’
‘I will be happy to explain Quantum Disentanglement to you,’ she interrupted me frostily, ‘when you ask me with due consideration.’
I took a deep breath and tried again. ‘I would be honoured if you would explain to me the theory of – the theory we discussed.’
‘Very well.’ She put her papers down and poured us both a drink; I was shocked to see that she gave herself a tumbler of whisky as large as mine, but I said nothing. She took a large gulp and began. ‘Put simply, Quantum Disentanglement is about a connection between minds. But on another level it is about the power of the mind to influence not only other minds but also remote physical objects! This is why it is so exciting! I have been reading further papers about it which have just come out.’
I wanted to ask how she, a mere woman, could have access to such papers, but I was beginning to suspect that I had been underestimating my wife to a considerable degree.
‘Holmes said that the atoms had to want to change.’
‘That is Sherlock’s way of putting it – but in essence it’s true. You’ve heard of free will?’
I nodded.
‘What is so fascinating about this theory is that the free will not only extends to humans but to inanimate objects!’
I thought I was getting it.
‘If the objects in question, as Sherlock put it, do not want to change, then you cannot change them.’
‘Unless you – persuade them?’ I was thinking of Moriarty. How had he broken out of the police cell?
‘You might express it so for your readers.’ Holmes’ words exactly, though spoken with much less disdain: Mary enjoyed my stories.
‘Thank you Mary,’ I said. Somewhere in my mind a huge inchoate apology was forming but I couldn’t put it into words. Perhaps she saw something of this because she smiled and said, ‘Shall we dine out tonight?’
I had been going to dine at my club but I happily acquiesced. ‘Where would you like to go?’ To my surprise there was pleasure in asking the question.
‘The ——–,’ she said, naming a small friendly restaurant a mile or so East. ‘Perhaps we could use Quantum Disentanglement to influence the chef to cook a little faster?’
It was true; the food was excellent but the chef notoriously slow. I kissed her and went to change for dinner.
A few weeks later I returned to Baker St to find Mrs Hudson standing in the hall holding a letter. She appeared close to tears.
‘My dear Mrs Hudson!’ I exclaimed. ‘Do tell me what is the matter.’
‘I’ll fetch you some tea,’ she sniffed.
‘Bother the tea, Mrs Hudson. Do please come upstairs and tell us what is wrong.’
She consented to follow me upstairs but would not sit down. She passed the letter over; it was crumpled and tear-stained.
‘Dear Millicent Farrar,’ it began; I looked up enquiringly.
‘It is my nom de plume,’ sniffed Mrs Hudson.
‘Ah.’ I read on:
Thank you for sending us your novel, A Summer’s Dream. Unfortunately we are not able to accept it at the present time. It is not the type of novel we publish and besides we would not print any work written by a lady.
‘The blackguards!’ I exclaimed. ‘Not publish work by a lady! They shall hear more of this!’
Mrs Hudson seemed considerably cheered by my show of support and went down to make our tea. After she had left I realised Holmes was looking at me quizzically and it began to dawn on me that my behaviour was perhaps a little odd; might in fact be described as out of character. ‘Holmes, did you perhaps plant a seed in my mind? Something to do with – the position of women?’
‘Indeed no!’ he protested earnestly. ‘You must have produced that thought all by yourself.’ He paused to light his pipe and added, ‘or perhaps Mary did.’
We drank our tea ruminatively. It might not be long until Moriarty struck again – but when he did we would be ready for him. In the meantime I had a story to write: the story of The Cliff Edge Mystery.
APPENDIX
Quantum Entanglement – a Rudimentary Explanation
by
S Holmes, Esq
I have been asked by my colleague Dr Watson to append this brief explanation to this somewhat sensationalised history. It has been objected, with some justification, that instead of fighting Moriarty I left a defenceless woman to his mercy: this requires some explanation. That Moriarty was dangerous I do not deny, but that Mary Watson was defenceless I cannot admit. We were wrong in having overlooked her formidable intelligence; the truth was that Dr Watson’s wife had grasped the fundamentals of quantum entanglement far more ably than I. Even so, Moriarty might have attempted to overpower her by physical force: why then did I not offer myself in her place? As I explained to John, I was initially able to make Moriarty repent because that shard of evil that exists in my mind was entangled – in a quantum way – with the shard of goodness that existed in his mind; and by causing our minds to resonate in harmony I was able to activate that shard of goodness in a way perhaps no other man on earth could have done. Yet Moriarty quickly overcame that particular obstacle. I was flabbergasted – worse, I was deeply depressed, for now it seemed that no man on earth could defeat him. Such were the limitations of my thought.
I blame myself for not seeing it sooner. The female mind is a mysterious thing and for that reason men are apt to dismiss it, but I came to see that Mary had qualities that I – and even Mycroft – totally lacked. She had an intuitive grasp of quantum entanglement and was able to see as I could not, that the shard of goodness in Moriarty need not be exchanged in order to be activated. There is not a finite amount of goodness in the world; or as John explained it for his readers, when the light appears, the darkness vanishes. All that was needful was to resonate with the goodness and it would spread of itself, as the light of a candle spreads over the surrounding area and banishes the darkness. ‘Evil is nothing,’ Mary explained to me. ‘It is merely an absence.’ I must admit I was sceptical but on overlooking her diagrams I was forced to admit that she was right. The world was indeed turned upside down – in more ways than one. ‘You are absolutely sure that no-one need suffer for this?’ I demanded, to which she replied, ‘does the darkness suffer when the light appears?’
That is an interesting question – but one I shall have to return to at a later date. At the time of writing Moriarty is in Newgate awaiting trial. Whether his repentance will prove permanent remains to be seen, but for now this story remains the most disturbing and mysterious of my whole career.
Please post a comment – I welcome feedback.
Hope you enjoyed it.
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 