sherlock60 | Canon Discussion Post: The Dying Detective (Reply)

It's canon discussion time, everybody! What did you think about The Dying Detective? As always, I've written up a few of my own random thoughts and questions, which are behind the jump. Add your own in the comments!

Note: Granada discussion is available in the Granada discussion post. Thanks!

- I hope you will forgive a bit of a litany here. This story drives me mad. From the first time I read it, it just sat wrong with me. Nothing about it makes any sense. In fact, I was so bothered by it all that I just had to write a story for the recent

acd_holmesfest to present my own theory over how such a nonsensical event could take place.

The problem starts with the two hour wait. Why does this happen at all? Did Watson get called in too early? Because it makes no sense to bring the doctor in just to then try to keep him away for two long hours for no clear reason.

Watson immediately doesn't act like he's going to go along with this idiot plan. "If you think that I am going to stand here and see you die without either helping you myself or bringing anyone else to help you, then you have mistaken your man," he says, defiant to Holmes' face. But then the conversation jumps the rails.

"This is insanity, Holmes."
"Only two hours, Watson. I promise you will go at six. Are you content to wait?"
"I seem to have no choice."

Wait, what? So, in the space of two quick replies, how does Watson get from "these demands are madness" to "okay, I guess I'll follow the madness"? Why does he give in to this? He just argued vociferously that he was NOT going to stand around and watch Holmes die. And yet, that is precisely what he does. He agrees to Holmes' demands, the ones he deemed "insanity", and stands aside for hours doing nothing at all while his friend dies.

How is that possible? I cannot understand it. Perhaps Holmes' "masterful" nature really is some kind of mind control, because how else can this be explained?

No matter what causes the decision, it clearly eats at the doctor as time passes. He paces the room and finds himself surrounded by memories of the life of Sherlock Holmes as the man himself lies dying across the room. "Then, unable to settle down to reading, I walked slowly round the room, examining the pictures of celebrated criminals with which every wall was adorned. Finally, in my aimless perambulation, I came to the mantelpiece. A litter of pipes, tobacco-pouches, syringes, penknives, revolver-cartridges, and other debris was scattered over it." Agonizing.

But one item on the mantel isn't like the others, and Watson very nearly takes the murderous sting intended for Holmes. Holmes is terrified. The consummate actor breaks character completely to force his friend to put the box down before it's too late, screaming loud enough to be "heard down the street", "frantic" to stop a hideous, horrifying mistake. When the danger is passed, he cannot hide his relief. How close to disaster they came!

And then after all of that, Watson still does nothing. He despairs for Holmes' "noble mind", and simply sits quietly, waiting in "silent dejection" for the rest of the demanded time to pass, "watching the clock" all the while. So much for the "a sick man is but a child" business.

"I have so deep a respect for the extraordinary qualities of Holmes that I have always deferred to his wishes, even when I least understood them. But now all my professional instincts were aroused. Let him be my master elsewhere, I at least was his in a sick room." And yet in the end, in the story he presents, Watson stands aside. Can this possibly be an accurate sequence of events? What would make Watson behave this way? One explanation is that he figured out Holmes' ruse, and he is covering for that in the telling. If the narrator is unreliable, then what is really true, and what is manufactured fiction?

Comment away, and join us next week for The Blue Carbuncle!