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acdholmesfestTitle: The Bearded Man
Recipient:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tazlet
Author:stardust_made
Beta: A big thank you to the wonderfulcanonisrelative for the great beta work and the Watsonian levels of praise
Rating: PG
Word count: 4,400
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson.
Warnings: Victorian attitudes to disability and homosexuality
Summary: Holmes is called urgently to investigate a murder at a fairground.
Author's Notes: The article mentioned in the story was published in the BMJ five years later. Apologies for any historical inaccuracies—my timing was off and I didn't have the chance to be as thorough as I would have liked. Dear tazlet, I tried to keep close to your requests and I hope you enjoy reading this!
It was a sunny morning in the summer of 1884 when Holmes received an urgent telegram from Lestrade, asking for his presence at the site of a large fairground in Surrey. Holmes and I had just returned from a pleasant stroll, taking advantage of the cooler air in the early morning, so we were prepared to leave the house without any delay.
I hadn’t been to a fair since before I was sent abroad for my military service and at first I was a little overwhelmed by the sight of all the attractions around me and the crowd milling about. Upon arrival we received instructions from a young sergeant and Holmes dashed forward, seemingly oblivious to everything around him. I managed to keep up with him in spite of having something vying for my attention at every step. First we passed by two carousels, one for adults and one for children. Their vibrant colours and the excited chatter and laughter surrounding them inspired a feeling of elation in me, just as sudden and palpable as when I was a boy of fifteen at my first carnival. The air was heavy with smells, most of them those of humans on a hot, humid day, but there was the scent of sugar and spices prevailing, too, from the different places offering food and beverages for the adults and fairy floss and stick candies for the children.
On our way to the scene of the crime we passed several tents that proclaimed to be the stage of some of the world’s most exotic and shocking men and women. I had recently read an article on physical monstrosities in the British Medical Journal, more specifically on an American girl born with four legs. The extra pair of legs had belonged to the girl’s dipygus twin that had failed to fully develop. There was no such creature here, but I caught a glimpse of a bearded lady, who seemed to have a rather feminine figure and a head of magnificent golden curls. Her dark blond beard—the colour of my moustache but far thinner—obscured the lower half of her face and made me think of how it also obscured all hope for happiness for the poor girl.
Then there were the tents of the dog-faced man and the dwarf, followed by the intersex person who seemed to command the biggest interest if the large queue outside was any indicator. Again, I was able to look at the person for just a second and almost stopped in my tracks: one half of the creature was that of a strong man dressed in next to nothing, his muscles shiny and bulging; the other was of a dark haired woman wearing a dress with a lot of lace that was somehow closed around the neck.
Holmes didn’t seem to notice any of the sights that had commanded my attention. He continued to move forward, impatient to get to work and now that I’d fallen behind I kept averting my eyes from the distractions around me to follow his elegant back, clad in one of his cream coloured summer jackets. However, as we reached the crowd that surrounded the scene of the murder we were forced to slow down. It was as if some morbid fascination with the freaks of nature around us at last caught up with me then; it turned to shame instantly and I was filled with disgust for the viewers that waited for their turn to be entertained. They were a true amalgam of people from all layers of society, I’d noticed. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see one of Holmes’s Irregulars in close proximity to some of his wealthiest, most respectable clients.
I forgot my impressions and the sense of disturbance they’d provoked when we finally stepped into a tent, a very large one. Despite its size there were enough people present to make it feel crowded: three young policemen, several pale, wide-eyed strangers, a couple of whom were crying, and a police inspector who approached as soon as he spotted us.
In the next ten minutes we found out that the victim was the owner of the freak show, a Mr. Geoff Thomson. His wife had found him strangled, lying on the floor at the very back of the tent, half hidden behind a makeshift desk. Mrs. Thomson was a stout woman in her forties, who was at least twice the size of her husband—he resembled a youth of sixteen, his strawberry blond hair, combed neatly to one sight, somehow increasing that impression. The wife’s cheeks weren’t amongst those that were tear-stricken—a quick glance at Holmes convinced me that he had taken a mental note of that fact as well.
Three of the other people in attendance turned out to be witnesses and Holmes spent some time questioning them with a familiar intense gleam in his eyes. All three were visitors at the fairground. They described the same thing: seeing a man of medium height and build, dressed in a large black cloak, leaving the tent a couple of minutes before Mrs. Thomson had discovered the body. The second witness was only a ten-year-old boy, the son of the first witness, but the third was someone unrelated to them who had chanced to glance at the tent at the same time but from a different angle. He was a respected member of society, a senior clerk in a very well known solicitor’s company, so his testimony alone would have carried enough weight. With the help of the other two his portrait of the murderer became detailed and clear: in addition to his size and attire, all three witnesses described him as wearing a cap that hid his eyes and as having a short black beard and moustache. “Those of a young fellow,” I overheard the clerk tell Holmes, who proceeded to ask him a question in a low voice.
I was inspecting the body at Holmes’s request while Inspector Milliner fretted about the impossible task he had in front of him. He had introduced himself to us with a peculiar mixture of arrogance and nervousness. The former was not unusual—despite his considerable contribution to Scotland Yard’s rate of resolved crime, Holmes was still accepted as useful rather begrudgingly by those who accepted him at all. It was a source of anger for me that his genius was treated by many as an outlandish quality that almost put him in the same vein as the freaks around us. Holmes had shown with words and actions that he wasn’t particularly hurt by the injustice, but I knew him well enough to suspect that while his pride might have remained intact by the judgement of relative strangers he considered of lesser intellect, his vanity was another matter.
Inspector Milliner knew Lestrade and had requested his unofficial help—Lestrade wisely contacting Holmes in turn—when faced by the possibility of the murderer sneaking out of the fair, using the crowd to his advantage.
“Even if he is still here,” the inspector was telling Holmes in his slightly high, nasal voice, while I examined the victim’s hands, “it will be impossible to find him. He is not by far the only bearded man out there and he could have easily got rid of the cloak and the cap so he would be practically unrecognizable.”
“The question is: why did he need them in the first place?” Holmes spoke, moving around the tent and inspecting various objects in it. Everyone else had been escorted out, leaving the three of us alone with the body.
“To avoid being recognized, of course,” Milliner replied to Holmes’s question.
“But as you said it is next to impossible to find him in this large crowd. Wearing plain clothes would have made him just as well hidden. The cap, I am prepared to accept, may be hiding some peculiarity that could make him easier to identify. But why burden himself with a cloak in this weather?” Holmes’s feet stopped next to me just as I was sniffing the victim’s mouth. “Anything, Watson?”
I stood up quickly, elated by my discovery. “A very light but unmistakable scent of laudanum.”
Holmes’s eyes flashed. “So the victim had been drugged first, then strangled.”
The inspector wiped his balding head as he addressed me. “Are you sure you are not mistaken?” His gaze moved to the body. “He is too small to have put up a big fight. Why would he need to be drugged?”
“Why indeed?” Holmes murmured, finger pressed to his lips. He remained like that for a few seconds, then suddenly threw himself on the floor, giving Milliner a start. For an instant I thought Holmes had doubted my assessment and wanted to check for himself—his senses became uncannily sharp during investigation. (Sadly, outside of his work his sense of smell seemed to dull down incredibly, much to mine and our good landlady’s chagrin. We were the two who put up with his vile chemical experiments most frequently, although occasionally even people on the street crossed to the other side at the emissions coming out our windows.)
Holmes did sniff the victim’s lips, his eyes lifting to meet mine in confirmation. Then he seemed to be absorbed by the poor man’s throat. He turned the head this way and that, examined the skin under the ears, until he finally produced his magnifier and focused on the skin around the place where the hands of the murderer had squeezed the life out of the victim. Another five seconds later and Holmes sprang back to his feet, his gaze burning with the blue fire of illumination and satisfaction.
Holmes’s acrobatics hadn’t impressed Inspector Milliner who had been regarding him with obvious wariness.
“The case is solved,” Holmes informed him.
The inspector wiped his face again, his look turning into one of scepticism. “You mean to tell me you can recognize that man in the crowd?”
“You are asking the wrong question,” Holmes retorted, something imperious slipping into his tone.
“What?” Milliner threw his arms in the air. “Has he left then? We are never going to find him!”
“We already have. And it’s not him. It’s her.”
The inspector gaped. “Mr. Holmes, have you lost your mind? Three people told us that—”
“Three people told you what you were supposed to be told,” Holmes interrupted.
I spoke, a vague idea of the big picture beginning to form. “A woman who needed to cover her figure and her long hair. Is that why she wore the cap and the cloak.”
“Yes.”
“But Holmes, what about the beard? I suppose it could have been a fake one, but aren’t all of them grotesquely big and thick?”
“Well done, Watson.” As always Holmes’s praise brought warmth to my heart that threatened to climb up to my cheeks.
“What is the explanation then?” I asked.
“Rather ironic, I find,” he replied mysteriously, before turning on his feet abruptly and heading out of the tent. I rushed after him, Milliner behind me, huffing in annoyance.
I expected Holmes’s long legs to have already covered some considerable distance, but I found him standing outside one tent not far, mingling with the crowd. He waited for us to arrive and silently directed our attention to the sign telling us that inside was Miss Susan McCormack—“The Woman with the Finest Beard in the World!”
It was my turn to gape. Holmes nodded sharply to himself, his aloof eyes finding mine. “The irony: a fake beard is grotesquely thick. A beard on a woman is just grotesque. That word interests me, Watson; remind me to speak to you about it one day.”
Miss Susan McCormack did turn out to have killed Mr. Thomson. Upon entry she barely looked at us and waved away all spectators. She confessed to using black shoe polish to change her beard’s colour and add blackness to her skin. “I used a special lotion to remove it, designed to remove the drawings Madam Sophia puts on her arms,” she said, her voice sweet and mellow, in contrast to the striking hazel eyes that had calm resignation in them. She went on talking, readily explaining that Madam Sophia was the gypsy fortune teller who was in fact the illegitimate daughter of a doctor from Bath and who used shoe paint to draw tattoos on her fair skin and give herself a more exotic appearance. It seemed the satisfaction of committing the crime had been enough for Miss McCormack and she was open and talkative, giving the impression that she no longer cared whether she’d live or die.
Her story was as old as the hills. She had found herself with a child. Mr. Thomson, the father, had threatened to send her away if she didn’t “take care of this nasty business.” She had made a scene and threatened to tell his wife. He promised her to look after her if she did what he’d asked her to do; then he even promised to marry her one day and have a child with her. She believed him and got rid of the foetus, only to discover this very morning that Mr. Thomson was planning on running away with the seventeen-year-old daughter of one of the strongmen, taking everyone’s earnings with him.
Miss McCormack was taken away, the crowd outside getting its free show. Something in me protested against that, although I knew she had done something truly monstrous indeed.
“Ah, it’s all so clear,” Inspector Milliner remarked, his eyes trailing after the small party that took her out. He’d said it with what he probably supposed was a sage air, while in fact his face betrayed nothing but his revulsion. “Naturally the deviant was one of those freaks. I could have saved myself the trouble to worry that we should have to comb through the crowd.”
“You could have saved yourself the trouble,” Holmes told him with a hint of amusement. “But not for the reason you think.” He didn’t allow the inspector to respond, continuing. “It would be a grave mistake if you insist on using a person’s outward appearance as the only source of information about them. Especially if you are not doing it in the way you should: by observing even the most trifling details and making deductions based on your observations.”
The inspector’s face showed clearly his distrust and confusion. Holmes spoke again in a matter-of-fact tone, only the thin line between his eyebrows hinting that he was exercising some restraint.
“If you wish to advance in your career, inspector,” he said, “I suggest you learn that it is always the details of the appearance that should interest you, and not your own unreliable impressions based on even more unreliable collective perceptions. Train your mind to focus on the expensive glove that is missing a button, not on whether the hand wearing it deserves to wear it according to your opinion. Come along, Watson.” Holmes turned to me briskly, his expression suggesting he’d already forgotten the inspector whose own expression was that of a man attempting to follow three different objects with his eyes.
It was four o’clock in the afternoon when we arrived back at the station. We were lucky to find the train to London almost empty, which allowed us to enjoy each other’s company and not share our carriage with strangers. I had hardly contained myself on the way to the station and began questioning Holmes about the case as soon as we settled. He was happy to answer all my enquiries and I found out that three things had helped him unravel the mystery. The first was the necessity of the laudanum that spoke of a murderer whose physical strength was rather limited. The second, the cloak and the cap, hiding something that commonplace clothes couldn’t have hidden. The third was Holmes’s discovery of marks on the victim’s skin that suggested the strangler had nails longer than any man’s. That last discovery had put the second and the first into new light and Holmes had concluded the murderer was a woman.
“Then it was easy to identify who she was,” Holmes told me. “It had to be someone in Mr. Thomson’s close acquaintance for there to be a motive. The description of the beard as short and that of a young man pointed to the exact person. You said it yourself, Watson. If it were a fake beard, it would have been an abominably big, bushy thing.”
“Remarkable,” I said.
Holmes’s face remained impassive, but his lips stretched into one of his smiles that felt like a lightning flash in the distance. He repositioned himself with his head leaning on the headrest to his left, face turned to the window, and closed his eyes. I started on the newspaper with the intention to pass the rest of our journey absorbed in it.
Yet I couldn’t concentrate. I kept looking at my companion, feeling oddly unsettled and curious. This time, however, my curiosity was of the more profound kind, the kind that always remained there after I stripped down everything else, and as ever it concerned the man across from me. The one whom I described in public as the most remarkable man in my acquaintance, whom I was honoured to call my friend with all the weight and gratitude the word contained. The one whom I also called the love of my life, although never in public nor even in private; not once had the words left my lips, yet they were truer and weightier than any others.
“Watson, is there anything you still don’t understand?” Holmes asked without opening his eyes. “Your newspaper hasn’t been making any sounds to indicate you’ve been using it for its purpose. Your breathing, while rhythmic, wasn’t preceded by the light hitches it does when you are beginning to fall asleep. This part of our journey doesn’t offer much in a matter of scenery so I doubt you are looking out of the window. Therefore you must be watching me. What is it that you wish to know?”
I was at a loss for words, embarrassed, as if being caught gazing at him was the worst in which I could have been caught where it came to him. Then small irritation and some mischief made me speak. “There could be other reasons I am looking at you.”
At that a pair of sunlit grey eyes met mine, the position of Holmes’s head unchanged. “Indeed,” he murmured after a lengthy pause, his unwavering gaze and the silence making my skin break into gooseflesh, no matter how warm I was. I couldn’t look away from him.
“But you weren’t watching me for those reasons,” Holmes continued softly, “as evidenced by the change in your face now that you are.” He straightened up at last, crossing his legs and folding his hands over his knee. “What is it you wish to know?” he insisted.
I hesitated, struggling to return to the topic at hand and unsure how to word my curiosity. “This was an unusual case, Holmes,” I told him.
“I didn’t find it anything of the kind.”
“But the circumstances…The culprit—”
“Watson,” Holmes interrupted me, without any ire. “Susan McCormack was in no way an unusual culprit. Her motives were extremely common. Her choice of action had little to do with her disfiguration. When we arrive home I shall go through my archives—”
“Good God, don’t.”
“—and I shall find three cases of similar nature where you will be able to see with your own eyes that the women who committed the crimes had if not beautiful, at least very unremarkable features. I have mentioned to you the woman who was hanged for poisoning three children. She was widely accepted as one of the most charming and alluring creatures of her sex. If I recall, her portrait had been painted more than once.” Holmes’s left eyebrow rose, informing me that my own face was still not to his satisfaction. “There is something else that is bothering you,” he said.
I hesitated again. The truth was that I wasn’t sure what it was. I only knew I felt unsettled. There was also a strange feeling of newfound respect for Holmes, when I thought it wasn’t possible for me to respect him or admire him more, yet I couldn’t place the source of that, either.
“I suppose it’s to do with the oddness of the circumstances,” I began slowly, trying to make sense of my own thoughts as I spoke. “I should think a woman like Miss Susan McCormack would accept…I don’t know, Holmes.”
He was listening to me with keen interest. I sighed, finally folding the paper and putting it on the seat next to me. “Perhaps I am simply surprised that she was capable of…”
“Love? Sentiment?”
That I knew wasn’t what I meant. “No, that I can readily believe.” I thought for a few more moments, my hand stroking my moustache repeatedly. “I suppose I didn’t expect that she would expect anything. Yes, I can see her falling prey to Mr. Thomson. But that she believed she could be loved in return, that he would leave his wife for her…”
“Her feeling of betrayal at discovering that he would leave his wife, only for an attractive young woman, led Miss McCormack to murder, Watson. It tells you how real her belief he would have done it for her was.”
“This is what I don’t understand. How? She knew what she was.”
“I know what I am. It hasn’t stopped me from wanting what I want, nor has it stopped me from believing I am wanted in return. You have made a rather convincing case of it, John.”
I stared at him in silence, my heart hammering in my chest to rival the loud, fast rhythm of the train. Holmes called me by my Christian name extremely rarely and he never spoke about the secret part of our relationship. Not before it became real, not since. We’d been sharing a home for three years; a silent admission of attraction and its physical, occasionally not-so-silent manifestation for two; and a bedroom for most nights for eighteen months. This was the first time he’d ever referred to it and part of me exulted as if I had been told he loved me in no uncertain terms, while another panicked at the exposure. I sensed some irrational fear as well at the fanciful notion that to speak of it aloud would break the happy spell.
Seconds ticked by and nothing changed. His tall, lean form was still sitting across from me. His black hair and his high cheekbones were still the familiar sight I enjoyed contemplating at home, now perhaps more striking under the abundant light that fell on them from the window. His high forehead and his big, brilliant eyes still spoke of sophistication of the mind and the spirit that were unrivalled. I still loved him—the only man I had ever felt drawn to and loved in the way I had only before desired and loved women. I had never sought an explanation as to why I loved him against my nature. I knew this was why he’d said what he did: I was the normal one; he was an invert, a freak of nature.
“Freaks exist,” he told me with a shrug as if he was naturally picking up from where my train of thought had arrived. “I am one, and so are those like me. Abnormality is found everywhere in nature—therefore while it is not the norm, it is not something unnatural. By definition it is something that deviates from the norm in one or more aspects. Do you see what that means?”
I pondered his words. “That it makes me abnormal, too,” I said at length.
Holmes threw his head back and laughed for a few long seconds, the sound loud and startlingly musical. When he looked at me again, his eyes were like those torches I’d seen some fire breathers swing around earlier at the fair.
“Oh, Watson,” he said, still smiling.
“I am,” I insisted with passion.
“I agree. It was evident as soon as you announced you were staying at Baker Street after the first month. But that was not what I had in mind. Think about the case. The lady may have deviated from the norm in one aspect but that didn’t bean she was entirely different. Isn’t it logical that those who are abnormal in some way would still share the rest of the traits of their kind?”
I lit up a cigarette and nodded as I exhaled the smoke. “You are right.”
Holmes nodded back. He unfolded himself and sat up straighter, his demeanour making me place a silent bet on his intention to speak on his favourite subject.
“The solving of crimes,” he began and I congratulated myself inwardly, “requires a lack of bias. Every client, every victim and every criminal should be judged as objectively as possible, their personal qualities and their appearance secondary. People’s abnormalities are only a part of them, Watson.”
“It’s not who they are,” I added quietly. Holmes looked at me, frowning a little, before his eyebrows did an inscrutable dance. “Quite,” he said.
I studied him openly for a minute and he let me, his eyes trailing my cigarette to my lips then lingering there.
“Would you change it if you could?” I asked him at last, knowing he’d understand the question.
His gaze jumped to mine and if I hadn’t been anxious that I had opened a dark room it was not my place to peer into, I would have preened with pride that for once I had managed to catch him by surprise.
Holmes tilted his head to one side, giving my question consideration. His eyes roamed my features, dwelling on a spot where my fringe flopped over my forehead—a spot where a strand grew in one direction and where my hair always parted naturally.
“No,” he said at last, then huffed with some dry humour. “I am abnormally intelligent, too. I am who I am.”
“Thank God for that,” I said and smiled at him.
Recipient:
tazletAuthor:
stardust_madeBeta: A big thank you to the wonderful
canonisrelative for the great beta work and the Watsonian levels of praiseRating: PG
Word count: 4,400
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson.
Warnings: Victorian attitudes to disability and homosexuality
Summary: Holmes is called urgently to investigate a murder at a fairground.
Author's Notes: The article mentioned in the story was published in the BMJ five years later. Apologies for any historical inaccuracies—my timing was off and I didn't have the chance to be as thorough as I would have liked. Dear tazlet, I tried to keep close to your requests and I hope you enjoy reading this!
It was a sunny morning in the summer of 1884 when Holmes received an urgent telegram from Lestrade, asking for his presence at the site of a large fairground in Surrey. Holmes and I had just returned from a pleasant stroll, taking advantage of the cooler air in the early morning, so we were prepared to leave the house without any delay.
I hadn’t been to a fair since before I was sent abroad for my military service and at first I was a little overwhelmed by the sight of all the attractions around me and the crowd milling about. Upon arrival we received instructions from a young sergeant and Holmes dashed forward, seemingly oblivious to everything around him. I managed to keep up with him in spite of having something vying for my attention at every step. First we passed by two carousels, one for adults and one for children. Their vibrant colours and the excited chatter and laughter surrounding them inspired a feeling of elation in me, just as sudden and palpable as when I was a boy of fifteen at my first carnival. The air was heavy with smells, most of them those of humans on a hot, humid day, but there was the scent of sugar and spices prevailing, too, from the different places offering food and beverages for the adults and fairy floss and stick candies for the children.
On our way to the scene of the crime we passed several tents that proclaimed to be the stage of some of the world’s most exotic and shocking men and women. I had recently read an article on physical monstrosities in the British Medical Journal, more specifically on an American girl born with four legs. The extra pair of legs had belonged to the girl’s dipygus twin that had failed to fully develop. There was no such creature here, but I caught a glimpse of a bearded lady, who seemed to have a rather feminine figure and a head of magnificent golden curls. Her dark blond beard—the colour of my moustache but far thinner—obscured the lower half of her face and made me think of how it also obscured all hope for happiness for the poor girl.
Then there were the tents of the dog-faced man and the dwarf, followed by the intersex person who seemed to command the biggest interest if the large queue outside was any indicator. Again, I was able to look at the person for just a second and almost stopped in my tracks: one half of the creature was that of a strong man dressed in next to nothing, his muscles shiny and bulging; the other was of a dark haired woman wearing a dress with a lot of lace that was somehow closed around the neck.
Holmes didn’t seem to notice any of the sights that had commanded my attention. He continued to move forward, impatient to get to work and now that I’d fallen behind I kept averting my eyes from the distractions around me to follow his elegant back, clad in one of his cream coloured summer jackets. However, as we reached the crowd that surrounded the scene of the murder we were forced to slow down. It was as if some morbid fascination with the freaks of nature around us at last caught up with me then; it turned to shame instantly and I was filled with disgust for the viewers that waited for their turn to be entertained. They were a true amalgam of people from all layers of society, I’d noticed. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see one of Holmes’s Irregulars in close proximity to some of his wealthiest, most respectable clients.
I forgot my impressions and the sense of disturbance they’d provoked when we finally stepped into a tent, a very large one. Despite its size there were enough people present to make it feel crowded: three young policemen, several pale, wide-eyed strangers, a couple of whom were crying, and a police inspector who approached as soon as he spotted us.
In the next ten minutes we found out that the victim was the owner of the freak show, a Mr. Geoff Thomson. His wife had found him strangled, lying on the floor at the very back of the tent, half hidden behind a makeshift desk. Mrs. Thomson was a stout woman in her forties, who was at least twice the size of her husband—he resembled a youth of sixteen, his strawberry blond hair, combed neatly to one sight, somehow increasing that impression. The wife’s cheeks weren’t amongst those that were tear-stricken—a quick glance at Holmes convinced me that he had taken a mental note of that fact as well.
Three of the other people in attendance turned out to be witnesses and Holmes spent some time questioning them with a familiar intense gleam in his eyes. All three were visitors at the fairground. They described the same thing: seeing a man of medium height and build, dressed in a large black cloak, leaving the tent a couple of minutes before Mrs. Thomson had discovered the body. The second witness was only a ten-year-old boy, the son of the first witness, but the third was someone unrelated to them who had chanced to glance at the tent at the same time but from a different angle. He was a respected member of society, a senior clerk in a very well known solicitor’s company, so his testimony alone would have carried enough weight. With the help of the other two his portrait of the murderer became detailed and clear: in addition to his size and attire, all three witnesses described him as wearing a cap that hid his eyes and as having a short black beard and moustache. “Those of a young fellow,” I overheard the clerk tell Holmes, who proceeded to ask him a question in a low voice.
I was inspecting the body at Holmes’s request while Inspector Milliner fretted about the impossible task he had in front of him. He had introduced himself to us with a peculiar mixture of arrogance and nervousness. The former was not unusual—despite his considerable contribution to Scotland Yard’s rate of resolved crime, Holmes was still accepted as useful rather begrudgingly by those who accepted him at all. It was a source of anger for me that his genius was treated by many as an outlandish quality that almost put him in the same vein as the freaks around us. Holmes had shown with words and actions that he wasn’t particularly hurt by the injustice, but I knew him well enough to suspect that while his pride might have remained intact by the judgement of relative strangers he considered of lesser intellect, his vanity was another matter.
Inspector Milliner knew Lestrade and had requested his unofficial help—Lestrade wisely contacting Holmes in turn—when faced by the possibility of the murderer sneaking out of the fair, using the crowd to his advantage.
“Even if he is still here,” the inspector was telling Holmes in his slightly high, nasal voice, while I examined the victim’s hands, “it will be impossible to find him. He is not by far the only bearded man out there and he could have easily got rid of the cloak and the cap so he would be practically unrecognizable.”
“The question is: why did he need them in the first place?” Holmes spoke, moving around the tent and inspecting various objects in it. Everyone else had been escorted out, leaving the three of us alone with the body.
“To avoid being recognized, of course,” Milliner replied to Holmes’s question.
“But as you said it is next to impossible to find him in this large crowd. Wearing plain clothes would have made him just as well hidden. The cap, I am prepared to accept, may be hiding some peculiarity that could make him easier to identify. But why burden himself with a cloak in this weather?” Holmes’s feet stopped next to me just as I was sniffing the victim’s mouth. “Anything, Watson?”
I stood up quickly, elated by my discovery. “A very light but unmistakable scent of laudanum.”
Holmes’s eyes flashed. “So the victim had been drugged first, then strangled.”
The inspector wiped his balding head as he addressed me. “Are you sure you are not mistaken?” His gaze moved to the body. “He is too small to have put up a big fight. Why would he need to be drugged?”
“Why indeed?” Holmes murmured, finger pressed to his lips. He remained like that for a few seconds, then suddenly threw himself on the floor, giving Milliner a start. For an instant I thought Holmes had doubted my assessment and wanted to check for himself—his senses became uncannily sharp during investigation. (Sadly, outside of his work his sense of smell seemed to dull down incredibly, much to mine and our good landlady’s chagrin. We were the two who put up with his vile chemical experiments most frequently, although occasionally even people on the street crossed to the other side at the emissions coming out our windows.)
Holmes did sniff the victim’s lips, his eyes lifting to meet mine in confirmation. Then he seemed to be absorbed by the poor man’s throat. He turned the head this way and that, examined the skin under the ears, until he finally produced his magnifier and focused on the skin around the place where the hands of the murderer had squeezed the life out of the victim. Another five seconds later and Holmes sprang back to his feet, his gaze burning with the blue fire of illumination and satisfaction.
Holmes’s acrobatics hadn’t impressed Inspector Milliner who had been regarding him with obvious wariness.
“The case is solved,” Holmes informed him.
The inspector wiped his face again, his look turning into one of scepticism. “You mean to tell me you can recognize that man in the crowd?”
“You are asking the wrong question,” Holmes retorted, something imperious slipping into his tone.
“What?” Milliner threw his arms in the air. “Has he left then? We are never going to find him!”
“We already have. And it’s not him. It’s her.”
The inspector gaped. “Mr. Holmes, have you lost your mind? Three people told us that—”
“Three people told you what you were supposed to be told,” Holmes interrupted.
I spoke, a vague idea of the big picture beginning to form. “A woman who needed to cover her figure and her long hair. Is that why she wore the cap and the cloak.”
“Yes.”
“But Holmes, what about the beard? I suppose it could have been a fake one, but aren’t all of them grotesquely big and thick?”
“Well done, Watson.” As always Holmes’s praise brought warmth to my heart that threatened to climb up to my cheeks.
“What is the explanation then?” I asked.
“Rather ironic, I find,” he replied mysteriously, before turning on his feet abruptly and heading out of the tent. I rushed after him, Milliner behind me, huffing in annoyance.
I expected Holmes’s long legs to have already covered some considerable distance, but I found him standing outside one tent not far, mingling with the crowd. He waited for us to arrive and silently directed our attention to the sign telling us that inside was Miss Susan McCormack—“The Woman with the Finest Beard in the World!”
It was my turn to gape. Holmes nodded sharply to himself, his aloof eyes finding mine. “The irony: a fake beard is grotesquely thick. A beard on a woman is just grotesque. That word interests me, Watson; remind me to speak to you about it one day.”
Miss Susan McCormack did turn out to have killed Mr. Thomson. Upon entry she barely looked at us and waved away all spectators. She confessed to using black shoe polish to change her beard’s colour and add blackness to her skin. “I used a special lotion to remove it, designed to remove the drawings Madam Sophia puts on her arms,” she said, her voice sweet and mellow, in contrast to the striking hazel eyes that had calm resignation in them. She went on talking, readily explaining that Madam Sophia was the gypsy fortune teller who was in fact the illegitimate daughter of a doctor from Bath and who used shoe paint to draw tattoos on her fair skin and give herself a more exotic appearance. It seemed the satisfaction of committing the crime had been enough for Miss McCormack and she was open and talkative, giving the impression that she no longer cared whether she’d live or die.
Her story was as old as the hills. She had found herself with a child. Mr. Thomson, the father, had threatened to send her away if she didn’t “take care of this nasty business.” She had made a scene and threatened to tell his wife. He promised her to look after her if she did what he’d asked her to do; then he even promised to marry her one day and have a child with her. She believed him and got rid of the foetus, only to discover this very morning that Mr. Thomson was planning on running away with the seventeen-year-old daughter of one of the strongmen, taking everyone’s earnings with him.
Miss McCormack was taken away, the crowd outside getting its free show. Something in me protested against that, although I knew she had done something truly monstrous indeed.
“Ah, it’s all so clear,” Inspector Milliner remarked, his eyes trailing after the small party that took her out. He’d said it with what he probably supposed was a sage air, while in fact his face betrayed nothing but his revulsion. “Naturally the deviant was one of those freaks. I could have saved myself the trouble to worry that we should have to comb through the crowd.”
“You could have saved yourself the trouble,” Holmes told him with a hint of amusement. “But not for the reason you think.” He didn’t allow the inspector to respond, continuing. “It would be a grave mistake if you insist on using a person’s outward appearance as the only source of information about them. Especially if you are not doing it in the way you should: by observing even the most trifling details and making deductions based on your observations.”
The inspector’s face showed clearly his distrust and confusion. Holmes spoke again in a matter-of-fact tone, only the thin line between his eyebrows hinting that he was exercising some restraint.
“If you wish to advance in your career, inspector,” he said, “I suggest you learn that it is always the details of the appearance that should interest you, and not your own unreliable impressions based on even more unreliable collective perceptions. Train your mind to focus on the expensive glove that is missing a button, not on whether the hand wearing it deserves to wear it according to your opinion. Come along, Watson.” Holmes turned to me briskly, his expression suggesting he’d already forgotten the inspector whose own expression was that of a man attempting to follow three different objects with his eyes.
It was four o’clock in the afternoon when we arrived back at the station. We were lucky to find the train to London almost empty, which allowed us to enjoy each other’s company and not share our carriage with strangers. I had hardly contained myself on the way to the station and began questioning Holmes about the case as soon as we settled. He was happy to answer all my enquiries and I found out that three things had helped him unravel the mystery. The first was the necessity of the laudanum that spoke of a murderer whose physical strength was rather limited. The second, the cloak and the cap, hiding something that commonplace clothes couldn’t have hidden. The third was Holmes’s discovery of marks on the victim’s skin that suggested the strangler had nails longer than any man’s. That last discovery had put the second and the first into new light and Holmes had concluded the murderer was a woman.
“Then it was easy to identify who she was,” Holmes told me. “It had to be someone in Mr. Thomson’s close acquaintance for there to be a motive. The description of the beard as short and that of a young man pointed to the exact person. You said it yourself, Watson. If it were a fake beard, it would have been an abominably big, bushy thing.”
“Remarkable,” I said.
Holmes’s face remained impassive, but his lips stretched into one of his smiles that felt like a lightning flash in the distance. He repositioned himself with his head leaning on the headrest to his left, face turned to the window, and closed his eyes. I started on the newspaper with the intention to pass the rest of our journey absorbed in it.
Yet I couldn’t concentrate. I kept looking at my companion, feeling oddly unsettled and curious. This time, however, my curiosity was of the more profound kind, the kind that always remained there after I stripped down everything else, and as ever it concerned the man across from me. The one whom I described in public as the most remarkable man in my acquaintance, whom I was honoured to call my friend with all the weight and gratitude the word contained. The one whom I also called the love of my life, although never in public nor even in private; not once had the words left my lips, yet they were truer and weightier than any others.
“Watson, is there anything you still don’t understand?” Holmes asked without opening his eyes. “Your newspaper hasn’t been making any sounds to indicate you’ve been using it for its purpose. Your breathing, while rhythmic, wasn’t preceded by the light hitches it does when you are beginning to fall asleep. This part of our journey doesn’t offer much in a matter of scenery so I doubt you are looking out of the window. Therefore you must be watching me. What is it that you wish to know?”
I was at a loss for words, embarrassed, as if being caught gazing at him was the worst in which I could have been caught where it came to him. Then small irritation and some mischief made me speak. “There could be other reasons I am looking at you.”
At that a pair of sunlit grey eyes met mine, the position of Holmes’s head unchanged. “Indeed,” he murmured after a lengthy pause, his unwavering gaze and the silence making my skin break into gooseflesh, no matter how warm I was. I couldn’t look away from him.
“But you weren’t watching me for those reasons,” Holmes continued softly, “as evidenced by the change in your face now that you are.” He straightened up at last, crossing his legs and folding his hands over his knee. “What is it you wish to know?” he insisted.
I hesitated, struggling to return to the topic at hand and unsure how to word my curiosity. “This was an unusual case, Holmes,” I told him.
“I didn’t find it anything of the kind.”
“But the circumstances…The culprit—”
“Watson,” Holmes interrupted me, without any ire. “Susan McCormack was in no way an unusual culprit. Her motives were extremely common. Her choice of action had little to do with her disfiguration. When we arrive home I shall go through my archives—”
“Good God, don’t.”
“—and I shall find three cases of similar nature where you will be able to see with your own eyes that the women who committed the crimes had if not beautiful, at least very unremarkable features. I have mentioned to you the woman who was hanged for poisoning three children. She was widely accepted as one of the most charming and alluring creatures of her sex. If I recall, her portrait had been painted more than once.” Holmes’s left eyebrow rose, informing me that my own face was still not to his satisfaction. “There is something else that is bothering you,” he said.
I hesitated again. The truth was that I wasn’t sure what it was. I only knew I felt unsettled. There was also a strange feeling of newfound respect for Holmes, when I thought it wasn’t possible for me to respect him or admire him more, yet I couldn’t place the source of that, either.
“I suppose it’s to do with the oddness of the circumstances,” I began slowly, trying to make sense of my own thoughts as I spoke. “I should think a woman like Miss Susan McCormack would accept…I don’t know, Holmes.”
He was listening to me with keen interest. I sighed, finally folding the paper and putting it on the seat next to me. “Perhaps I am simply surprised that she was capable of…”
“Love? Sentiment?”
That I knew wasn’t what I meant. “No, that I can readily believe.” I thought for a few more moments, my hand stroking my moustache repeatedly. “I suppose I didn’t expect that she would expect anything. Yes, I can see her falling prey to Mr. Thomson. But that she believed she could be loved in return, that he would leave his wife for her…”
“Her feeling of betrayal at discovering that he would leave his wife, only for an attractive young woman, led Miss McCormack to murder, Watson. It tells you how real her belief he would have done it for her was.”
“This is what I don’t understand. How? She knew what she was.”
“I know what I am. It hasn’t stopped me from wanting what I want, nor has it stopped me from believing I am wanted in return. You have made a rather convincing case of it, John.”
I stared at him in silence, my heart hammering in my chest to rival the loud, fast rhythm of the train. Holmes called me by my Christian name extremely rarely and he never spoke about the secret part of our relationship. Not before it became real, not since. We’d been sharing a home for three years; a silent admission of attraction and its physical, occasionally not-so-silent manifestation for two; and a bedroom for most nights for eighteen months. This was the first time he’d ever referred to it and part of me exulted as if I had been told he loved me in no uncertain terms, while another panicked at the exposure. I sensed some irrational fear as well at the fanciful notion that to speak of it aloud would break the happy spell.
Seconds ticked by and nothing changed. His tall, lean form was still sitting across from me. His black hair and his high cheekbones were still the familiar sight I enjoyed contemplating at home, now perhaps more striking under the abundant light that fell on them from the window. His high forehead and his big, brilliant eyes still spoke of sophistication of the mind and the spirit that were unrivalled. I still loved him—the only man I had ever felt drawn to and loved in the way I had only before desired and loved women. I had never sought an explanation as to why I loved him against my nature. I knew this was why he’d said what he did: I was the normal one; he was an invert, a freak of nature.
“Freaks exist,” he told me with a shrug as if he was naturally picking up from where my train of thought had arrived. “I am one, and so are those like me. Abnormality is found everywhere in nature—therefore while it is not the norm, it is not something unnatural. By definition it is something that deviates from the norm in one or more aspects. Do you see what that means?”
I pondered his words. “That it makes me abnormal, too,” I said at length.
Holmes threw his head back and laughed for a few long seconds, the sound loud and startlingly musical. When he looked at me again, his eyes were like those torches I’d seen some fire breathers swing around earlier at the fair.
“Oh, Watson,” he said, still smiling.
“I am,” I insisted with passion.
“I agree. It was evident as soon as you announced you were staying at Baker Street after the first month. But that was not what I had in mind. Think about the case. The lady may have deviated from the norm in one aspect but that didn’t bean she was entirely different. Isn’t it logical that those who are abnormal in some way would still share the rest of the traits of their kind?”
I lit up a cigarette and nodded as I exhaled the smoke. “You are right.”
Holmes nodded back. He unfolded himself and sat up straighter, his demeanour making me place a silent bet on his intention to speak on his favourite subject.
“The solving of crimes,” he began and I congratulated myself inwardly, “requires a lack of bias. Every client, every victim and every criminal should be judged as objectively as possible, their personal qualities and their appearance secondary. People’s abnormalities are only a part of them, Watson.”
“It’s not who they are,” I added quietly. Holmes looked at me, frowning a little, before his eyebrows did an inscrutable dance. “Quite,” he said.
I studied him openly for a minute and he let me, his eyes trailing my cigarette to my lips then lingering there.
“Would you change it if you could?” I asked him at last, knowing he’d understand the question.
His gaze jumped to mine and if I hadn’t been anxious that I had opened a dark room it was not my place to peer into, I would have preened with pride that for once I had managed to catch him by surprise.
Holmes tilted his head to one side, giving my question consideration. His eyes roamed my features, dwelling on a spot where my fringe flopped over my forehead—a spot where a strand grew in one direction and where my hair always parted naturally.
“No,” he said at last, then huffed with some dry humour. “I am abnormally intelligent, too. I am who I am.”
“Thank God for that,” I said and smiled at him.
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