The Devil's Promise by David Stuart Davies

Author:David Stuart Davies
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: detective, mystery, victoriana, Sherlock Holmes
ISBN: 9781783292707
Publisher: Titan Books
Published: 2014-11-15T21:49:13+00:00

Fifteen

From Dr Watson’s Journal

As I sat in the darkness in our Baker Street sitting room I shuddered at the realisation that this memory had been hidden from me until now. The blows to my head had somehow dislodged it from its hiding place. It had been deliberately suppressed, no doubt by the powers of that strange brew that I had been forced to ingest. However, this unpleasant revelation did nothing to help me pierce the veil of mystery that surrounded me. Desperately, I tried to make some sense of it. If this drug I had taken could trick the memory in such a fashion, then no doubt Enoch Blackwood and Dickens could have held Holmes in their power by similar means. Remembering his blank face in that dank cellar, it was clear that he was under some kind of spell, maybe held in some kind of hypnotic trance. That must be the answer. The powerful, independent strength of my friend’s intellect which had proved no match for such mind games in the past had in some way been undermined. By whatever dastardly means at their disposal these villains had managed to coerce him, bend him to their wishes. Certainly in his right mind he would never have allowed them to treat me as they did.

However, what continued to puzzle me was what happened next. After I sank into oblivion, what did they do with Holmes? What did they want from him? And why did they let me live? The next thing I knew, the next thing I actually remembered, was waking up in the hospital bed some weeks later with no memory or knowledge of how I got there. At the time, I vaguely recalled entering the little stable, but did not remember where it was or any of the events that preceded that moment. Gradually, I regained my strength and the ability to eat and converse. I was informed that I was in a private nursing home near Richmond and that I had been there for nearly a month. I was shocked by the news that I had been unconscious for so long, but desperate as I was I could not piece together any of the incidents that had occurred leading up to my blackout. The doctor, a young Scotsman with a deferential air, told me that I had succumbed to a fever that had overcome my central nervous system, which had effectively shut down in order for me to recover naturally, but slowly. ‘No doubt,’ he averred, ‘your condition is the result of some bug or virus you picked up when you were out in Afghanistan and it has been lying dormant all these years.’

His diagnosis seemed strange to me, but then I was still groggy from my prolonged sleep and the drugs that had been administered by the medical staff. My brain was not up to the strain of analytical thinking.

Holmes came to visit me from time to time. I learned that it was through his beneficence that I had been cared for at this private clinic.

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