30. THE CASE OF TRUE LOVE

Previously unsuspected relatives of Sherlock Holmes have passed away

Holmes looked at me from his place at our table, newspaper spread out before him, and smiled nervously and without humour.

“You know me, Watson,” he said thoughtfully, “that I’m a man of logic, that I have no place in my reckoning for that which flies in the face of calculation and common sense?”

“That about sums you up, Holmes,” I replied.

“Well, there is a small fissure in my philosophy, for I have never been under the sway of that devil that plagues humanity, which is emotion,” he said, “yet there is one tale that I see has sadly come to an end after many joyous chapters, and one that I would like you to get involved in if you would, dear friend.”

He called me dear friend! This must portend something more serious than the average serious stuff!

“I had an aunt and an uncle,” he said slowly and thoughtfully, “Maisie and Arthur. I haven’t seen them in, oh, years. We’ve never been a keeping-in-touch sort of family as you probably know.”

“Quite so, Holmes,” I murmured, “you only see Mycroft when you have to,” I added.

“Ah, my dear brother! Yes, I expect to hear from him any moment now! But before he arrives let me tell you a love story.”

“A love story from you, Holmes? This I must listen to!” I exclaimed.

“Maisie and Arthur were children of the twenties who grew up together,” he began, “and Maisie’s claim to fame was she shared the same birthday as our beloved queen Victoria, being born on the 24^th May in the year 1819. But that isn’t the connection that I’m thinking of: there must have been many people born on that date in that year! No, my tale is of true friends, for she and Arthur met as children in the delightful village of Posey on the Wold and if you were to listen, as I have, to their accounts of their childhood you might be tempted to believe that their young life was the perfect one. They remembered with pleasure and joy many hot summers, fruitful autumns, frosty winters and bright green springs! And the friendship they forged then was destined to last them a lifetime.”

“Sounds delightful,” I commented, not quite sure where he was going.

“They married each other in their late teens. It was always going to happen and so they wasted no time becoming man and wife, with parental blessing. Theirs was a special relationship, Watson, even in later years when I knew them, for it seemed that when explaining this or that event one would start the speech and the other conclude it! And it was said of them in Posey that never a cross word was heard between them, never an argument or disagreement, that their harmony was almost supernatural, using that word in its strictest sense! That it was above the natural, that it was beyond the compatibility normally perceived in nature.”

“Then they were most fortunate,” I told him.

“You are perceptive, Watson: they were!” he murmured, “and I thought their lives would always continue together like that. That peace would reign, that nothing would come along to disturb their long lives together or cast a shadow upon it. Until I read this piece in the Times this morning. Apparently they were both discovered in bed, having both been dead for several days, and they were together in a clinch as though they intended to take their harmony into the Hereafter. But there is a fly in the ointment of peace and love. The local police officer has decided that two people can never die simultaneously like they appeared to have died, that someone must have spiked their diet, or, more likely, one of them murdered the other before taking his or her own life, or maybe they jointly committed suicide having reached what they saw as a conclusion. And look, Watson, it is in The Times! That would break their hearts if they were to read it!”

“What evidence does that police officer have?” I asked.

“There is none,” came a voice from the doorway. While he had been speaking Mycroft had silently opened the door and entered the room unnoticed by either Holmes or myself.

“Ah, brother Mycroft, I was expecting you,” said Holmes, “what make you of the story in the Times?”

“That there is an over-zealous police officer who had no idea who our aunt and uncle, Maisie and Arthur, were and who has looked at an ordinary event and come to a ridiculous conclusion.”

“Ridiculous, yes, but also logical,” suggested Sherlock. “You and I, Mycroft, know just how unlikely it is for two people living shared lives to pass into the Hereafter without one departing first and thus being able to care for the internment of the other.”

“That is why I am here,” nodded Mycroft, “and for once it is to consult with your colleague Doctor Watson rather than yourself, Sherlock. I have ordered that there is a post mortem examination to be held this very afternoon, and that I would desire the most experienced medical man to perform it, and that, in my opinion, is you, John.”

He called me John! Mycroft called me John!

“I have certain experiences,” I replied slowly, “though I am no medical pathologist! Yet in Afghanistan I had to deal with many of the more terrible afflictions of modern bloody warfare and decide which injury of many was responsible for the deaths of brave men.”

“There are eulogies in praise of you amongst the official records,” Mycroft told me. “And it is my opinion that you, of all people and being so close an acquaintance of the family due to a working relationship with Sherlock, are best equipped to deal with all aspects of the enquiry.”

“I’ll give it my best if that’s what you want,” I told him.

“It is,” he said.

The two bodies had been taken to a local mortuary, which made my work all the simpler for there was little travel for me to do. They had already been dead for several days and they were therefore at risk of decomposition.

“I will assist you in any way I can, Watson,” said Holmes (the Sherlock variety) “and you can depend on my own analytical approach to matters. We will perform an honest autopsy and reach a proper forensic conclusion.”

“That is all I can do,” I told him, and quietly I added that I would not think of staining my own reputation by failing to consider all possibilities. Maybe the old couple had been murdered. Maybe they had committed mutual suicide " it was not unknown, and the law of the land prohibits it in the strongest terms, though it is rarely possible to punish the felons over such a crime.

“I would expect nothing else of you, Watson,” he replied curtly.

The bodies were still fresh in that there was no obvious decomposition. They had obviously been in a close physical state when they had been discovered, and clad in nightgowns appropriate to their gender and age. All that I noted even though they had been separated for my examination.

Determining the cause of death is not always a straightforward matter. Many things have to be taken into consideration, one of the foremost being the possibility that some poison or toxin had been administered, but I could find no evidence of anything, and Holmes was of great help here because amongst his encyclopædic knowledge were details of all the more common poisons as well as many that are virtually unknown. After about an hour of general testing we both concluded that if any poison was present it was so unknown as to be impossible bearing in mind Holmes’ breadth of knowledge. We even discounted the gas supply in their cottage, for there were no tell-tale signs of gassing present, and anyway the smell would have lingered in their clothes and their bedding.

The rest of the post mortem examination was down to me, and Holmes took a back seat. I sliced and cut as little as possible, and when I had finished I did as neat a job as I could at rejoining my surgical cuts. I could find nothing more than that gradual decay caused by the passing of time, or ageing as we so bluntly call it. In short, I had to conclude that they had both died of old age. There could be no other explanation.

“If there had been just the one body I would have had no doubt, so how can I doubt when there’s a second displaying exactly the same symptoms " or lack of them? It’s how I would have wished to go when my Mary died,” I told both Sherlock and Mycroft. “If either of them preceded the other on the grim path to Eternity I can’t say which it was and rather suspect that what you told me of their lives together provides the most likely solution.

“They died, in each other’s arms, and in love, at precisely the same moment and if any man can find a fault with that as a diagnosis or an explanation I’d like to have it out with him!”

“Good man,” murmured Holmes, and after a good wash we returned to Baker Street.

Holmes was quiet for the rest of the day and until the following day, and he eventually perked up considerably when he read a correction in The Times that insisted that after an expert post mortem examination it was discovered that no crime had been committed at the time of their death.

That they had died as they had lived, in the best possible harmony, and in love.

© Peter Rogerson 20.08.17