alecto cubed

I’m back for part two. Spoiler alert: Sherlock Holmes solves the case. Some of the following may reveal even more details about how he accomplished this than I revealed in part one.

So at this point in the story Holmes, incidental to committing a felony in order to take down a blackmailer he believes to be “the worst man in London,” has led Watson by the hand through a flower-strewn love tunnel into a repressed Victorian gay fantasy, where he vanquished a gigantic green metaphorical penis and thereby won Watson’s virtue.

Some pertinent quotes from the rest of the story:

“I don’t like it,” [Holmes] whispered, putting his lips to my very ear.

I felt Holmes’s hand steal into mine and give me a reassuring shake, as if to say that the situation was within his powers, and that he was easy in his mind.

The next morning, having literally stood by and watched a woman do their dirty work for them, Holmes and Watson are back at Baker Street in time for breakfast. Lestrade shows up to report that there has been a “most dramatic and remarkable murder:”

“No article of value was taken, as it is probable that the criminals were men of good position, whose sole object was to prevent social exposure.”
“Criminals?” said Holmes. “Plural?”
“Yes, there were two of them. They were nearly as possible captured red-handed. We have their footmarks, we have their description, it’s ten to one that we trace them. The first fellow was a bit too active, but the second was caught by the under-gardener, and only got away after a struggle. He was a middle-sized, strongly built man – square jaw, thick neck, moustache, a mask over his eyes.”
“That’s rather vague,” said Sherlock Holmes. “Why, it might be a description of Watson!”
“It’s true,” said the inspector, with amusement. “It might be a description of Watson.”

One could argue that Holmes has become the blackmailer in the end by dangling the dirt he has on Watson right in Lestrade’s face. Holmes always had to have Watson in his orbit, and maybe he wasn’t above a super manipulative, wink-wink nudge-nudge threat to keep him there. Idk.

The story ends with Holmes leading Watson to a framing shop in whose window sits a photo of the woman who saved their bacon, and Watson ends the story thus: “My eyes met those of Holmes, and he put his finger to his lips as we turned away from the window.” (1)

By the time I finished this story I was a “Johnlock” convert. I finally got it. Here is my personal theory about the “real” relationship between Sherlock Holmes and his Boswell, Dr. John Watson: I think that Holmes was asexual, much like Nikolai Tesla, except that rather than being in romantic love with a pigeon, Holmes was romantically in love with Watson. And I mean hard core romantically in love with him. I think that Watson was basically straight, but he would have been Holmes’s lover had Holmes ever made a move because he was so enamored with the detective. (And, for a time, financially invested in him, too.)

Maybe I’ll get around to making a post about all the other evidence to support my theory, because it’s a fun one to play with.

Notes:
(1) I can’t help but picture Jeremy Brett making this gesture, because he would have made it perfectly gay.