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The Doctor's Case by Stephen King
Stephen King's most recent book is the short fiction collection, Just After Sunset, which came out last fall. Other new short stories include a collaboration with his son, Joe Hill, called "Throttle," for the Richard Matheson tribute anthology He Is Legend, and " UR," a novella written exclusively for the Amazon Kindle. King's next novel, due in November, is Under the Dome, a thousand-plus-page epic he has been working on for more than twenty-five years. His other work includes dozens of classics, such as The Stand, The Dark Tower, The Shining, ' Salem 's Lot, and many others.
Elementary, my dear Watson-or should that be, my poor Watson? Poor Watson, ever drawing wrong inferences, ever uninformed about some vital trivia, ever in awe of Sherlock Holmes. No matter how many cases they work on together, no matter how many times Holmes explains his methods, Watson is perpetually dumbfounded. We've all probably been acquainted with someone who seemed to effortlessly achieve brilliance while we labored in that person's shadow, putting forth every effort we could muster and achieving only mediocrity. In a very real sense Watson is us, the reader. He is both the narrator, our window into the world of Sherlock Holmes, and also the character who echoes our own unremarkable observations and ruminations. So in this story, when Watson actually beats Holmes to the punch, it's not just a victory for Watson, but for all of us, the ordinary, who must muddle through with what we were given. It's a necessary reminder that the race is not always to the swift, that even demigods may stumble, and that even the most humble among us can be struck by inspiration.
I believe there was only one occasion upon which I actually solved a crime before my slightly fabulous friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. I say believe because my memory began to grow hazy about the edges as I entered my ninth decade; now, as I approach my cente
I doubt that I shall ever forget this particular case no matter how murky my thoughts and memories may become, and I thought I might as well set it down before God caps my pen forever. It ca
It was a wet, dreary afternoon and the clock had just rung half past one. Holmes sat by the window, holding his violin but not playing it, looking silently out into the rain. There were times, especially once his cocaine days were behind him, when Holmes would grow moody to the point of surliness when the skies remained stubbornly gray for a week or more, and he had been doubly disappointed on this day, for the glass had been rising since late the night before and he had confidently predicted clearing skies by ten this morning at the latest. Instead, the mist which had been hanging in the air when I arose had thickened into a steady rain, and if there was anything which rendered Holmes moodier than long periods of rain, it was being wrong.
Suddenly he straightened up, tweaking a violin string with a fingernail, and smiled sardonically. "Watson! Here's a sight! The wettest bloodhound you ever saw!"
It was Lestrade, of course, seated in the back of an open wagon with water ru
I heard Mrs. Hudson remonstrating with him about his decidedly damp condition and the effect it might have on the rugs both downstairs and up, and then Holmes, who could make Lestrade look like a tortoise when the urge struck him, leaped across to the door and called down, "Let him up, Mrs. H.-I'll put a newspaper under his boots if he stays long, but I somehow think, yes, I really do think that… "
Then Lestrade was bounding up the stairs, leaving Mrs. Hudson to expostulate below. His colour was high, his eyes burned, and his teeth-decidedly yellowed by tobacco-were bared in a wolfish grin.
"Inspector Lestrade!" Holmes cried jovially. "What brings you out on such a-"
No further did he get. Still panting from his climb, Lestrade said, "I've heard gypsies say the devil grants wishes. Now I believe it. Come at once if you'd have a try, Holmes; the corpse is still fresh and the suspects all in a row."
"You frighten me with your ardour, Lestrade!" Holmes cried, but with a sardonic little waggle of his eyebrows.
"Don't play the shrinking violet with me, man-I've come at the run to offer you the very thing for which you in your pride have wished a hundred times or more in my own hearing: the perfect locked-room mystery!"
Holmes had started into the corner, perhaps to get the awful gold-tipped cane which he was for some reason affecting that season. Now he whirled upon our damp visitor, his eyes wide. "Lestrade! Are you serious?"
"Would I have risked wet-lung croup riding here in an open wagon if I were not?" Lestrade countered.
Then, for the only time in my hearing (despite the countless times the phrase has been attributed to him), Holmes turned to me and cried: "Quick, Watson! The game's afoot!"
On our way, Lestrade commented sourly that Holmes also had the luck of the devil; although Lestrade had commanded the wagon-driver to wait, we had no more than emerged from our lodgings when that exquisite rarity clip-clopped down the street: an empty hackney in what had become a driving rain. We climbed in and were off in a trice. As always, Holmes sat on the left-hand side, his eyes darting restlessly about, cataloguing everything, although there was precious little to see on that day… or so it seemed, at least, to the likes of me. I've no doubt every empty street corner and rain-washed shop window spoke volumes to Holmes.
Lestrade directed the driver to an address in Savile Row, and then asked Holmes if he knew Lord Hull.
"I know of him," Holmes said, "but have never had the good fortune of meeting him. Now I suppose I never shall. Shipping, wasn't it?"
"Shipping," Lestrade agreed, "but the good fortune was yours. Lord Hull was, by all accounts (including those of his nearest and-ahem!-dearest), a thoroughly nasty fellow, and as dotty as a puzzle-picture in a child's novelty book. He's finished practicing both nastiness and dottiness for good, however; around eleven o'clock this morning, just"-he pulled out his turnip of a pocket-watch and looked at it-"two hours and forty minutes ago, someone put a knife in his back as he sat in his study with his will on the blotter before him."
"So," Holmes said thoughtfully, lighting his pipe, "you believe the study of this unpleasant Lord Hull is the perfect locked room of my dreams, do you?" His eyes gleamed sceptically through a rising rafter of blue smoke.
"I believe," Lestrade said quietly, "that it is."
"Watson and I have dug such holes before and never struck water," Holmes remarked, and he glanced at me before returning to his ceaseless catalogue of the streets through which we passed. "Do you recall the 'Speckled Band,' Watson?"