Her Trusted Companion

I  had occasion to wander through  "The Man with  the Twisted Lip" a few nights back. On this particular visit, I lingered a bit long in the opening passages,  choosing to divide my time between the Watson home and the Bar of Gold, that lovely den of opiate iniquity. What I saw was more than a little bit thought-provoking.

First off, I saw the Watsons in action. Mary is doing needlework and John seems  to  just be  sitting with  her, relaxing after a long, hard day, probably telling her the highlights in the proven Watson storytelling fashion.  The bell rings, and a client ... oops, make that friend ... shows up to seek Mary's help.

She's dressed in dark-colored clothes and wears a black veil, her identity so well hidden that Mary has to pull the veil aside to recognize her as Kate Whitney, an old friend and school companion.

"I didn't know what to do, so I came straight to you," Kate tells Mrs. Watson.

"That was always the way," her husband explains to us. "Folk who were in grief came to my wife like birds to a light-house." Apparently this was no solitary occurrence.

But unlike those who came to Sherlock Holmes for help, Mary's friends often seemed to need help with more intimate matters. Mary offers to send John up to bed, unlike Holmes, who always seemed to insist on keeping the doctor present no matter what the client thought.

Make  no  mistake,  however,  she  and  her  husband  are partners in her work, as much as Holmes and Watson ever were. Kate Whitney has  spoken to the pair of them about  her troubles before. And in helping her, Mary and John work as the perfect team. Mary comforts Kate, keeping her company during her time of anguish, doing what she can with the woman herself. John goes out in search of Kate's missing husband.

At this point in the narrative, we follow Watson off to the Bar of Gold and his subsequent adventures. But this time let's split off from the narrative. While Watson narrates his way through the opium den and out to Lee, let's stay behind and see what goes on in the Watson home.

Mary gives Kate some wine and water, as she was intending to do from the start. Kate then goes on about her husband's addiction, her worry, her anger, her frustration. Mary gives her  what  advice  she  can,  but  mainly  soothes  her  with sympathies. The question that eventually will come up though is that of Kate's husband's safety. Is he all right? Can Watson bring him home in one piece? Mary reassures her, if anyone can, John Watson can. He is not without experience in handling the occasional rogue.

Caring for Kate keeps Mary's mind off her own worries. What if something were to happen to John in the East End? Danger is still danger, even to a man with experience of it.

Eventually a cab pulls up in front of her door.  The cabman rings the bell, and Mary answers it herself. Kate's husband is dozing in the cab, and Mary's has sent a note, saying he ran into Sherlock Holmes and has stayed to talk with him. Kate joins her husband in the cab and takes him home. Mary Watson is left alone, with her note.

No longer does she have Kate's troubles to distract her. All she knows is that her husband is in the worst part of London with a man whose dealings with the criminal element are all too well known to her.

At this point there is no partnership.  There is only Mary, alone, hoping and trusting in God's grace. She did not know the man when the Ghazi bullets came for his life years before. She does not want to know him when the bullets of his fellow countrymen come for him now. But she stays.

We know Mary Watson didn't leave her husband's side until Holmes had left it as well. When Holmes died at Reichenbach, she was the only partner Watson had left. And her time was soon to come, in early 1894. In "The Adventure of the Empty House," John writes of Mary's death merely as "my own sad bereavement,"  not wishing  to  dim the  bright  miracle  of Sherlock Holmes's return.

Like his wife, Watson put his partner first. Perhaps too often.