Dr. Watson Is Missing

By Brad Keefauver

“The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone” is a very strange story. From its odd third-person narration of Watson’s traditional Baker Street arrival, to the overly hammy device of Holmes acting like a mannequin, “Mazarin Stone” just doesn’t fit the patterns we’ve come to expect by the time we reach it in the last volume of the Sherlockian Canon. It is a singular tale, and as a very wise man once said: “Singularity is almost invariably a clue.”

What could “Mazarin Stone” be a clue of?

Start to consider that question, and chances are, you will inevitably begin to see the most fearsome iceberg that ever lurked beneath the surface of the Sherlockian Canon. But I get ahead of myself. Let me explain it to you one piece at a time, so you can fully appreciate the seriousness of the secret hinted at by this peculiar tale.

It’s a well known fact that “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone” is based on a stage play written by Watson’s literary agent called “The Crown Diamond.” “The Crown Diamond,” in turn, borrowed its villain from “The Adventure of the Empty House.” It was only natural that Arthur Conan Doyle, the agent, use Colonel Sebastian Moran in his attempt to have Holmes portrayed on stage. The airgun-wielding Moran is one of the Canon’s great villains. When Doyle decided to turn “The Crown Diamond” into a written work, however, he knew that Moran could not be the villain of his contrived tale any more, since Watson’s readers had already seen Moran’s fate in “Empty House.” So Moran became “Negretto Sylvius,” and Doyle went on to slip “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone” into a collection of stories that, for the most part, Watson obviously did write.

But why would Watson’s literary agent be selling a Holmes story that Watson hadn’t written?

If an agent has a perfectly good writer on hand to produce material for him, he doesn’t need to resort to such shenanigans. But if his writer is missing . . . .

Dark clouds loom for the reader who starts to consider where Watson was at the time “Mazarin Stone” was published. In 1917, when His Last Bow was published, Watson was healthy and happy and writing the preface to that latest collection of his works. But by 1927, when The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes hits the bookshops, Watson’s literary agent is suddenly writing the preface. In fact, considering Casebook as a whole, there is little sign that Watson was even involved in its collection.

Of the twelve stories that make up The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, three are plainly written by people other than Watson. Sherlock Holmes has never shown up as his own chronicler before this point, and why should he have? He always had Watson to do the job until now. Of the nine stories that remain, almost all of them involve subjects and people that Watson obviously had second thoughts about bringing to the public view when he originally wrote them. “Sussex Vampire” exposes a scandal in a family of one of Watson’s old friends. “Illustrious Client” deals with a sexual predator, fallen women, and an act of horrific violence. Adultery, lust, and scandal are common in the Casebook tales in a way that’s unlike any other volume of Watson’s work. It takes very little scrutiny to realize that these were stories Watson withheld from his reading public, the tales his personal moral code could not allow to be published.

Yet they were published, and from that we must infer that Dr. Watson was not present at that time to object.

In August 1914, in a case chronicled as “His Last Bow,” Holmes says to Watson, “Stand with me here upon the terrace, for it may be the last quiet talk that we shall ever have.” He refers, of course, to the fact that war is imminent, and further conversations will be few during the bustle and urgencies of war-time England. And if Sherlock Holmes expects either of the two men to turn up missing or dead as a result, it will be him. But as many a Sherlockian has pointed out over the years, no obituaries have ever appeared for Sherlock Holmes or John H. Watson, whose fame would undoubtedly grant either of them a first-class write-up, so we know that death has not claimed them. But after that last appearance in 1914, and the writing of a preface in 1917, John Watson is nowhere to be found. Some time between 1917 and 1927, John Watson vanished from the face of the earth.

While it’s true that we hear no more of Sherlock Holmes after the same point as Watson, we have no reason to hear any more of him in retirement. His career is done. Yet Watson’s career as a writer continues on — or at least the publication of his stories does. In November 1921, six months after the literary agent’s theatrical pastiche “The Crown Diamond” is staged, its prose version “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone” appears on the magazine racks. A few months later, “The Problem of Thor Bridge” follows with its wonderful introduction: “Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co., at Charing Cross, there is a travel-worn and battered tin dispatch-box with my name, John H. Watson, M.D., Late Indian Army, painted upon the lid.” That line begins Watson’s best explanation and description of the collection of unpublished cases that are stored in that tin dispatch-box. With the exception of that introductory first line, it reads just like the sort of cover sheet the box would have laying atop the rest of its pages.

Put yourself in the place of Watson’s literary agent for a moment. Watson suddenly disappears for reason or reasons unknown. The public and the publishing world still clamor for his work. You have this stage play that Watson gave you permission to write . . . why not turn it into a story? The story sells. You consider writing more of your own, but wait! You still have access to that dispatch-box Watson always spoke of, in that bank in Charing Cross! Why not let the public have the genuine article! You’ll be doing them and poor Watson’s memory a service!

Did Watson eventually return to reclaim his treasure trove before a second Casebook could be published? Or was it hidden away by the literary agent, in some place whose location he took with him to the grave? But whatever the final disposition of his papers, the final disposition of the doctor himself remains a mystery. No extended retirement in Sussex. No tumble from a waterfall, locked in a deadly embrace with his greatest foe. No quiet death from old age amidst home and family. Just a mystery that even his biggest fans don’t spend much time considering. Elvis Presley’s demise and funeral have been chronicled to the smallest detail, yet his fans are still trying to figure out what happened to him. Watson has not been so lucky.

The “last bow” referred to in story and book title might just as well have been Watson’s. The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes shows every sign of a non-present John H. Watson. The last solid evidence we have of his existence was in 1917.

So what happened to him?