The Dreadful Business of the Abernetty Family

Prologue, part two

As I trooped into the underground shelter under St John's Wood chapel with the others, I barely noticed them.  Some nights it was so crowded all but the most elderly and the infants would have to stand all night in the underground crypt, but thankfully there was more room that evening.  I found a spot in a corner surrounded by protective old ladies, to fend off the men who wanted to offer their comfort, and settled down to read.

It was still early evening and the air raid sirens had not sounded, so there was still light -- for an hour or so -- and I wanted to devour as much of the notes as I could.  Like most of father's work, it was not very orderly and consisted mostly of hand-scribbled notes on whatever foolscap he could find at hand.  I'd found an entire story's worth of notes written on the back of envelopes.  At this stage in his life, his handwriting was still quite legible, an artifact of his schooling and military career.  Later, it became extremely difficult to read even notes he had leisure to write out, let alone the scribbles aboard a train or horse-drawn carriage over cobblestones.

Usually father would write with a pen, the ink now faded brownish with age, but his pencil markings were often so rubbed and light it was even more difficult to read them.  Yellowish, brittle newspaper clippings from 1890 accompanied the notes, some with notes written on them -- most condemning the atrocious misinformation and rumormongering he so despised.  We finally stopped getting a newspaper in the Watson household, although mummy used to sneak one in when he wasn't looking.

As I read, I realized this was one of Sherlock's greatest triumphs in deductive reasoning and intellectual power, and I wondered why it had been locked away instead of written for posterity?  In my cursory reading, I could find no dark secrets, no scandals or government espionage, nothing embarrassing toward a great family contained in the tale.  But what a tale, one that had to be told.  My father had such style and skill telling his stories, embellishing where more drama was needed, shifting events subtly to create a better arc, and making each tale an exciting story that created the popularity of the great detective.

I knew I was not the writer father had been.  He had named me Beryl because he called me his jewel, but while I might have had shining facets, one of them was not to be his equal as an author.  I suspected that he'd been more influenced by one of his favorite tales of Sherlock's brilliance, the Beryl Coronet.

When the lights were turned off and we tried to find some sleep on the hard floor of what was, after all, a tomb, for once my mind was not on the falling bombs and fears for our future.  The events of the story went through my head, wondering how father would have told it.  When he would write a story, Dr John Watson would rely heavily on his remarkable memory to fill in conversations and details which I could not from his notes.  I would have to guess at the specifics in some areas, although some of the notes for the Abernetty case were very complete.

Again, father's language and dialog were quite dated, sometimes almost comical in the uses of some words and phrases such as "singular."  And the Victorian attitudes toward morality and behavior were so specific to the time, I would have to  strive to cling to the era rather than my more modern, 1940's mindset.  Yet perhaps another writer, a more gifted one, would be best.  I could think of no author that would do the tale justice, although perhaps an editor might.

But it could be done, I thought, as I drifted to sleep.

When I awoke, I was even more determined to write this story.  Not only was it a great, missing piece of the canon of Sherlock Holmes, but I had another opportunity.  It has been infuriating to me to see how father is often depicted, particularly in those awful American films with Basil Rathbone.  I admired Rathbone's portrayal of Holmes, who I got to know somewhat as a child.  He had no interest or time for an inquisitive little girl, and for my age seemed quite ancient, but still had that keen spark of intelligence in his eyes.  But father, he was nothing like the incompetent, bumbling, mumbling idiot that Nigel Bruce has inflicted on the world.

Father would always downplay himself in his stories.  He would play the fool to Sherlock's genius, to play up what an immense intellect Holmes truly had.  All those exclamations of "incredible!  Amazing!"  Father was not the kind to speak like that.  In fact, after some years of working together, he would at times keep up with Sherlock's deductive chain, usually to the annoyance of Holmes.  For all his greatness, Sherlock Holmes could be petty and selfish, and father knew it better than most.  In his tales, father would try to avoid antagonizing Holmes, and wanted to play the dark background which Sherlock's shining genius could be best portrayed against.

"If I irritated him by a certain methodical slowness in my mentality, that irritation served only to make his own flame-like intuitions and impressions flash up the more vividly and swiftly. Such was my humble role in our alliance." So father wrote in  "The Adventure of the Creeping Man," to try to explain his role and behavior in the stories.   Yet he was not slow at all in his mentality.

I believe father's innate humility and Victorian gentleman's ethos kept him from playing himself up.  It would have been unseemly to trumpet his own greatness, although you can see glimpses in his writing.  Father went from a small practice in Paddington and within four years had turned this into a very lucrative and successful practice in Queen Ann, where he became quite wealthy and enjoyed a very substantive list of clients, some of whom I still must remain quiet about but would astound the public with their lofty status -- and lowly afflictions.

Part of this success obviously was due to his fame and connection with Sherlock Holmes, yet if he'd been foolish or incompetent, it would not have lasted after Holmes' retirement and later disappearance.  Dr Watson was consulted by university professors and royalty for his learning and perspicacity, and if anything had learned so much of logical thought from his long association with the detective it had honed his own intellect to a razor edge even to the day of his death.

I had a chance, then, to not be modest as father was for himself, and to not play up his part as the intellectual comparison to Holmes.  I could show father for who he was, and tell a great tale in the process.  And it was this final factor that drove me to write for myself.  No one else would or could understand Dr John Watson as well as his daughter, no one else could do him justice.

I would begin immediately.