All Roads Lead to Whitechapel by Michelle Birkby

Author:Michelle Birkby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Felony & Mayhem Press
Published: 2019-10-06T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

12

The Impossibility of Miss Adler

Many people have asked me what exactly the relationship was between Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler, to which I always replied that it was none of my business. (And none of yours, either, I was tempted to add!)

In truth, I had no idea what their relationship was. It seemed to be a fluid, amorphous thing, never pinned down, never defined, never really understood by either of them. I know they respected each other deeply. I know that, to a certain extent, they relied on each other to behave a certain way. He was the hero, she was the dubious lady, but both had honour—at least, that was what they expected from each other. But beyond that, I do not know. Sometimes I believed they hated each other. When he railed against women in general and her in particular, when she stormed out of 221b shouting ‘blasted man!’, I thought they would never talk again. Perhaps they saw each other as adversaries, occasionally as colleagues. Perhaps there was an odd sort of friendship there. Every once in a while, I thought I could discern a trace of love, but I always was a romantic.

Oh yes, their relationship did not begin and end with A Scandal in Bohemia. There was so much more that John never revealed, perhaps because he understood it as little as I, perhaps out of a sense of respect for both of them.

Did I see love there? Mr Holmes and Irene?

She could love, I know that. She loved so deeply and so completely, but then Godfrey Norton was, by all accounts, an easy man to love. Perhaps she could love in a different way, a less comfortable, more stirring way. Could she love someone as remote and controlled and cold as Mr Sherlock Holmes?

And he. That man. He always denied his ability to love, and yet he did, against his will, against his nature, against his very knowledge. John told me once that he caught an occasional glimpse of a great heart behind the great brain. Perhaps some of that was given to Irene—but if so, he never told me. Perhaps he never told himself.

So no, I cannot tell you what their relationship was. What I can tell you is that though it changed from day to day, hour to hour, with each new discovery of a hidden part of the other and themselves, it was, as the old sonnet says, ‘an ever fix’d mark’. All through their lives, Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler danced round each other, coming close, drifting away, never losing sight of the other.

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