The Circus Murders

In the Twilight Years

As I reach the end of this peculiar tale, I realize that I may have acted childishly in my denouement of Sherlock Holmes. It is simply that is easy to grow frustrated when you are constantly just coming to grips with his methods, only to find out everything you've reasoned is wrong. I believe, if I may speak freely with all my heart, that I desired for the cry of shoot me instead to be entirely genuine.

Only now, in the twilight of my years, I do believe it was genuine. Sherlock Holmes would have died for me, just as I would have died for him a hundred times over during the years of our association.

Now that Holmes has gone to his grave, and I am but a shadow of my self, penning these last tales while I still remember them, I feel all right about writing things that Sherlock Holmes would thoroughly disapprove of. He would never let me publish the story of the circus murders while he was alive, saying 1) it was too sensational and 2) He did not like the hysterical way I went about describing the scene enacted to trap that awful snake, Phelps.

And that's how it ended. I did not visit Holmes until a fortnight after the arrest, so I did not learn of the details of why Phelps had hypnotized Ms. Paltrow to commit murder by proxy or what had happened to the woman.

Since I did not read of her impending trial in the papers, I assumed this was another one that Holmes swept under the rug.

Finally, when I could bear to stay away no longer, when I chanced to see my friend's slender, lonely form backlit by the light in the upper rooms of Baker Street, I knocked on the door and was invited into the sitting room.

"Watson!" He cried, as if there had been no bad blood between us. "Have a seat on the sofa."

It took him no more than ten minutes to wrap up the tale. Yes, he had not allowed Ms. Paltrow to be taken in by Scotland Yard. He had enough evidence to pin on Mr. Phelps to convict him of no less than half a dozen other murders committed by the masterful and horrifying act of his hypnotism. As for why he had commissioned Ms. Paltrow to commit murder by proxy, it all boiled down to the dwarf having had knowledge of the snake's insinuating nature of which he had shared with his dearest friend, the bearded lady. No doubt the chain would continue should someone not put an end to it.

And who better to do so than the charming, malleable, Ms. Paltrow, who took to the suggestion and application of hypnotism more quickly than any of the others before her. She had come to, after the awful commitment of the murders, blinking and confused, surrounding by her friend's blood, with the false memory implanted in her mind that she had just stumbled upon them dead and crouched beside their bodies.

She sought my friend's help right away. It was a great kindness Holmes showed her to keep her secret safe.

That is the end of the whole affair except for one thing.