Some years ago, when I started playing “World of Warcraft” online, I created a night elf hunter character called “Shirelock” in an attempt to build a virtual creature as close to Sherlock Holmes as I could. His constant companion was a dark-furred tiger named “Watson,” Dr. Watson having had some history with tigers. Well, years passed, upgrades happened, and Shirelock’s good old Watson deserted him for a wife . . . .

Well, “deserted him for a wife” sounds better than the game-geek speak version: “got assigned slow-moving stealth abilities by the Lich King patch and couldn’t hold aggro any more.” Suffice it to say that Watson had to be replaced. Shirelock’s new constant companion is a big ape named “Presbury.”

Which turned my thoughts back to the original Sherlock Holmes. When Watson is not at Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes seems to do things like falling prostrate from over-work. Holmes himself praised the benefits of Watson’s participation in his cases time after time, and it does seem like Holmes did benefit from a companion in his investigations. So what did he do when Watson was absent, for months or years on end?

A lot of people have a best friend, but when that person isn’t around, its not like they don’t find someone else to do things with. While Holmes could afford not to have another room-mate by the time Watson moved out, it wasn’t like he couldn’t find someone else to take on a case with him. The men of Scotland Yard were either present at the crime scenes he worked, or brought along for the eventual capture.  Even when taking on something a little more illegal, like burglary, Holmes took Watson once and Kitty Winter on another occasion. But Kitty and the Yard men had definite functions within the investigation of a case.

Did Holmes ever just drag any civilians besides Watson out into the country with him to have a look at a murder scene? Did he ever have someone else sitting around the sitting room and assure a client that they were okay to speak in front of?

Considering possible Watson replacements, educated fellows like doctors and lawyers come to mind, as does Holmes brother Mycroft (that is, if Mycroft were a little more mobile than he tends to be). Interestingly, the name “Langdale Pike” comes to mind as well, since Watson wrote of Pike as “his human book of reference” – the same sort of phrase Holmes used to describe Watson on occasion. Yet Pike seems to have all the active lifestyle of Mycroft Holmes, so one has to wonder if that would have worked.

Of course, if Watson wasn’t around when Holmes had this other replacing the good doctor, perhaps he never knew enough of that other companion to even mention him in his write-ups. He or she must remain a mystery, even in whether or not this other existed at all.

Still, one has to wonder.

Your humble correspondent,
Brad Keefauver