"I'm afraid I won't be able to tell you much more than you know already," said Dr. Christison.
"Anything you can tell us will be of immense use to us, no matter how small," said Holmes.
I would have been angry with Holmes for inserting himself into what was, after all, a professional consultation, but I felt I owed it to him to indulge him. I had at length allowed him to overtake me on the street outside the Armitages' little house; but I had not responded to his attempts to draw me out, and we had trudged to the railway station in silence. During our entire journey we had hardly exchanged a word. Now we were back in London, in the consulting rooms of Dr. Christison, the specialist whose address had been on the card Percy Armitage gave me. In front of this dapper little Scotsman with his neat red beard and round spectacles we had returned to some semblance of our usual manner; but I knew that I was hurting him by my silence, and I was beginning to be afraid that it was because I wanted to.
"The scars you observed are from the blisters, of course," Christison went on, "produced by the inflammation. I am sure you observed the same pattern of blistering and scarring in the early stages of your wife's illness."
Holmes nodded, as if he knew something about it. I said, "Early stages?"
"Yes," said Dr. Christison, slightly startled by my surprise. "The blisters first occurred shortly before she consulted me; when I first examined her they had already burst. She soon suffered a second outbreak, however, and I was able to extract some of the fluid; but I'm afraid my analysis yielded very little in the way of a diagnosis." He pulled over a leatherbound clinical notebook and began leafing through it. "I didn't see her again until after her father's death, and by then the scarring had taken place. I had hoped that perhaps the blisters were a hysterical symptom brought on by the morbid life that she surely led in that house with that ogre of a stepfather, and would be cured by his disappearance; but as you see, the illness persists even though the blisters do not."
He looked up from his notes and caught my expression. Being a doctor himself, I suppose, he knew what it meant.
"Your wife's case progressed differently, Doctor Watson?" he asked.
It was a moment before I could answer.
"My wife's illness lasted a little over a month. The blisters appeared on the first day. As soon as the scars had healed they would burst out again in different spots. That continued unchanged until she finally succumbed."
I strove to make my tone as clinical and detached as possible. I thought I might have deceived Christison, but I was quite sure I was not deceiving Holmes.
"Very interesting," said Christison. "I had assumed that the blisters were simply the first stage in the progression of the illness. Perhaps Mrs. Armitage's case is anomalous in that respect."
"What was your hypothesis about the cause of this illness, Doctor?" put in Holmes.
"Another thing I'm afraid I cannot help you with," said Christison. "It is an absolutely baffling disease, as I am sure Dr. Watson will attest. In many ways it behaves much like a tropical fever, but it does not appear to be contagious; Mr. Armitage has never had the slightest hint of a symptom, nor have any of their domestic staff."
Holmes looked not a whit less puzzled than when he had first entered the room. "Why do you say it behaves like a tropical fever?" he asked.
"Along with the blistering, the patient demonstrates fever, chills, and palpitations," Christison said. "However, those symptoms subside with the blisters, giving way to something more like the ague--generalized soreness, mild nausea, fatigue. I had hoped that removing Mrs. Armitage from Stoke Moran might help; but of course I should have known better. But I am an old man, after all, and habits die hard."
I laughed. Holmes looked from me to Christison, vexed at not being able to share the joke.
"You were hoping it was miasmatic in origin, then?" I said.
"Foolish of me, of course," Christison murmured. "The poor miasma has gone the way of bloodletting and leeches, I am afraid, and now we must do battle with sepsis and sewage and bacilli. Still, miasma or contagion, it has got the better of me, and I will take my hat off to any man who comes up with a theory, no matter how outlandish, that will allow me to get my poor patient some relief."
I finally took pity on Holmes, and began to explain. "We were taught in medical school that diseases like malaria were caused by unhealthy vapors exhaled from the earth by rotting vegetation," I said, while Christison nodded. "That is what we mean by 'miasma.' Of course now we know better. But it is puzzling, is it not, that the thing is not contagious? And it must not be, for I never suffered any symptoms myself."
"Absolutely it is puzzling," agreed Christison. "I have been treating Mrs. Armitage for years now and I have yet to send her a bill. She was referred to me by someone who guaranteed that I would do her some good; and since I have not, I feel it would be wrong to charge."
Christison said this last with a cheerful wink at me. I liked the little man immensely, despite his inability to answer any of the questions that were pressing on me even harder and heavier than they were on Holmes. It seemed unfair to me that he was toiling in such relative obscurity, when from speaking with him it seemed that he was at least as intelligent and effective as many more highly-acclaimed specialists.
"Whoever referred her to you did her a great service," I said, standing. "Thank you for your time, Dr. Christison."
"It's been a pleasure," said Christison. "I am a great follower of yours, Mr. Holmes; and of course yours too, Dr. Watson."
Holmes stood and bowed with me. Then, as I was about to turn and walk out, Holmes suddenly asked, "By the way--who did refer Mrs. Armitage to you?"
"A friend of mine named Goulding," said Christison, mildly surprised at his interest. "Mrs. Armitage told me her sister had seen him when she was suddenly taken ill on a journey to London, and he had impressed her so much that she sought him out when she fell ill. Poor Miss Julia," he went on. "I never met the lady, of course; but what a horrible death! I am so glad you were able to put Dr. Roylott out of his daughters' misery. As a doctor I suppose I should not condone it; but I don't need to have met the man to know he made them both wretched, and I can't help thinking that if you had not sent that snake back through the ventilator at him, Providence would have found a way to rid the world of him sooner or later."
Holmes pursed his lips as if he were trying to swallow something bitter. "Thank you," he forced out.
I had already descended the steps to the consulting room before I noticed that Holmes was still standing at the top, lost in thought.
"Are you coming?" I said.
"That depends," he answered, returning to earth, and to something of an ill temper.
"On what?"
"On you."
He started down the steps. I did not want to look at him, but I could not help it.
"Watson," he said. "I know that I was beastly to you when you first married, and I am sorry for it. I never had anything but the highest respect and admiration for Mary. I know how much it must have hurt you to lose her--"
"--but all the same," I shouted, "you are glad she's out of the way!"
Holmes stared back at me, as stunned and hurt as if I had struck him. And indeed, I felt as if I had.
"That is a terrible thing to say to anyone, Watson," he finally answered. "And a terrible thing to believe about me. And if you really think that I am callous and selfish enough to have wished that on you, then I do not understand how you can bring yourself to touch me."
He turned on his heel and walked away up the street.
"Where are you going?" I called out, knowing from the speed of his walk how much I had upset him.
"To see this Doctor Goulding," Holmes shouted back, over his shoulder. "And if you really want to find out what happened to poor Mary, I think you had better come with me!"
I was a little afraid of the emotion in his voice, and more than a little ashamed of the way I was behaving toward him. But I had to know what he meant. I hurried forward, although it was hard work to match his stride.
"What has Doctor Goulding to do with anything?" I panted.
"You will perhaps not have noticed," said Holmes, acidly, "that from Christison's description, it appears that Miss Helen's symptoms first appeared shortly before she consulted me." He kicked a piece of brick viciously out of his way. "That was what brought her to us, Watson. She observed these symptoms, and she knew that she had been infected with the same illness that had killed her sister. She knew that the doctors might not be any use. So she came to me."
"But..." I went on, trying to return to our normal mode of conversation. "But Miss Julia died of that snakebite--"
Holmes stopped, swung around, and began a tirade so forceful that I could only stop and listen agog.
"Miss Julia obviously did not die of a snakebite," Holmes seethed. "I constructed that hypothesis based purely on details about Miss Julia's death relayed to me by Miss Helen, who, sympathetic as she is, clearly cannot be trusted, since as we now know she lied to us about her sister's engagement in order to fabricate a motive that would point to her stepfather. Miss Julia, obviously, died of the same illness that continues to afflict Miss Helen."
I had been going to ask how he knew, but he did not give me a chance.
"I never doubted Miss Helen's story, Watson. I accepted it lock stock and barrel and so I never took the simplest of steps to verify it. She told me the coroner's report was inconclusive; well, I did not even trouble to determine whether there in fact had been an inquest. There was no one who could either have confirmed or deny her story about how Miss Julia died, save for that stepfather of hers, who obviously would have told me nothing even if I had asked. She made it up, Watson, she constructed the entire plot in her own head and came down here to feed it to me."
Since he had finally paused for breath, I said, "But why would she do such a thing?"
"Obviously," Holmes went on, still angry and impatient, "so that I should do exactly what I did--which was travel to Stoke Moran, observe the props she had arranged for me in Julia's room, leap to the conclusion to which she expected me to leap, and finally punish--legally or otherwise--her hated stepfather for having murdered her sister!"
I was beginning to fear that my brutality toward him had unhinged him. "But Holmes...you just said that she was not murdered..."
"Julia was not murdered by means of the serpent, Watson," Holmes repeated. "We've known that ever since our conversation with your insufferable American niece. But she was murdered--by whatever dread disease it is that Dr. Roylott somehow brought with him from India, and somehow infected his stepdaughters with, for some motive which we do not understand. Miss Helen suspected this when Julia died; she must have realized it for certain when she began to demonstrate the same symptoms that had been fatal to her sister. She knew that she would never be able to prove him responsible in a court of law. And so she brought me up to Stoke Moran to investigate--taking the precaution of framing him first."
"So your hypothesis now," I said, trying to keep everything in place in my head, "is that she fabricated the story about the snake, the bell-pull and the ventilator in order to frame a guilty man?"
"Precisely, Watson."
The familiar accents of the familiar phrase made it almost seem as if the last ten minutes had never happened, and my heart was twisted in a sudden pang of mingled affection and remorse.
"Holmes," I said. "I...I am terribly sorry for...for what I said to you just now."
"And well you should be," he answered, his anger covering his relief.
"I do not know what possessed me to say it," I said, "unless it is that I have sometimes wondered whether I, myself, had...wished this upon her."
Holmes looked at me with those searching eyes. He brought a hand up toward me, but we were in public, and it dropped before it reached my face.
"You obviously did not, Watson," he said. "Or you would not still be grieving for her."
We looked at each other for a long moment, while the freshening wind promised another shower of rain.
"Come on," Holmes finally said, with a tentative little smile. "Let us go see this Goulding, and see what he has to tell us. Because even if I finally have the solution to my little conundrum, I will not be able to rest until we have made some progress on yours."
"On mine?" I asked.
"Watson," Holmes said, gently. "Dr. Christison tells us this disease is not contagious. It is therefore impossible that you could have somehow transmitted it from Stoke Moran to Mary--"
I uttered a sudden cry of comprehension that caused Holmes to break off in mid-sentence.
"Watson?" he said.
"Never mind," I answered. "I just--never mind. Go on."
That was the explanation. The instant I saw those scars on Mrs. Armitage's wrist, I had been holding myself responsible for Mary's death. And lashing out at Holmes because, in the dark recesses of my heart, I had been holding him responsible too.
"And that means," he finally said, "that Mary must have been infected too."
"Well, of course she was infected," I answered, a little put out that he was being so patronizing.
"I mean infected by someone," he repeated. And, as I still looked blank, he said, "Watson, what I am trying to tell you is that if in fact Julia Stoner was murdered, it is highly likely that Mary was murdered too."
I stood stock still on the pavement, unable for the moment to move.
Holmes slipped his arm into mine. "Come, Watson. Come with me and we will get to the bottom of it. If I am, after all, something more than a hack and a fraud, then we will find out who did wish Mary dead, and how they killed her, and why. And by heaven, Watson, I will promise you this--whoever it is will pay."
From the emotion in his voice I was almost afraid to look at him. But I did. And I realized, looking at him, that if he did mean what I thought he meant by "pay," I would not be sorry. That, indeed, I would only be grateful, and love him all the more for it.
With his arm in mine, and his gentle voice still urging me onward, I began the long walk toward Goulding, and the answer...