“My name is Sherlock. And this is not a costume.”
“Your aunt has told me that your birth certificate reads Oliver Wendell Holmes. You were named after the great Supreme Court justice.”
“I prefer Sherlock.”
“All right. For now. Tell me about your attire. That hat is pretty striking, and your cape as well. Tweed, yes? How did you manage to come by them?”
“I made them myself.”
I looked to his aunt.
She nodded. “He taught himself to use my sewing machine. And he does a fine stitch by hand, too.”
In our initial phone conversation, she’d told me her nephew had been tested in school and had demonstrated an IQ of 170. I’m generally leery of quantifications of this kind, but it was clear the boy was gifted.
“When did you become Sherlock Holmes?”
“I’ve always been Sherlock Holmes. I just didn’t realize it until I received the volume of Conan Doyle at Christmas.”
“Always?”
“Just as you’ve always been Watson.”
“But I’m not. You know that. My name is simply Watt.”
“Are you not the son of Watt, therefore Watt’s son?”
“Clever,” I admitted with a smile.
“I’m not crazy, Watson,” he said quite calmly. “Not delusional. I’m well aware that Sherlock Holmes is a literary fiction. I’m simply the mental and emotional incarnation of that fictional construct, the confirmation that the literary may sometimes, indeed, reflect a concrete reality. The name Sherlock feels suited to me. But all this is something my aunt has difficulty accepting. I understand.”
“You get made fun of,” his aunt said to him, a situation that clearly caused her distress. “The other kids at school pick on you. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“I’m the object of ridicule because they’re not comfortable with who they are. They work hard at creating just the right image, and I threaten that. It’s the same with adults. If you weren’t so insecure in your own circumstances, Aunt Louise, you would see me for who I am instead of who you want me to be.”
“That’s a rather harsh judgment, Oliver,” I said.
“Sherlock,” he reminded me. “And I would say the same about you, Watson.”
“Oh?”
“Your office is on the third floor of a building that houses enterprises of a less than robust nature. Your shelves are full of books on psychology that haven’t been read in a good long while. You spend a lot of time sitting at your desk and staring at the river, wishing that instead of becoming a child psychologist you’d gone to sea. You’ve recently separated from your wife. Or perhaps divorced. And you’d like desperately to find a woman who understands you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The building speaks for itself,” he explained. “The dust on your shelves is evidence that you seldom reference your reference materials. You’ve arranged your office so that the best view—the river—is in front of you, and only a very dedicated individual wouldn’t be constantly seduced by that wistful scene. Your walls are filled with photographs and paintings of great ships at sea. Your left ring finger still bears a strip of skin much paler than the area around it, indicating that, until very recently, you wore a wedding band. And in your wastebasket is the latest issue of City Pages folded to the personal ads section.”
Though I was shaken by the accuracy of his observations, I did my best not to show it. From that point on, I conducted a fairly standard intake interview. The boy’s parents were deceased, killed two years earlier when their car slid off an icy road while they were returning from a New Year’s Eve party. His parents had both been successful attorneys.
At the end, I spoke with his aunt alone. I told her I thought I could help the boy, but that it might take some time. She agreed to bring him back for sessions twice a week.
I walked her out of my office to where the boy sat waiting in the hallway. I explained what his aunt and I had decided. He didn’t seem upset in the least. I bid them goodbye, and the woman started away. But the boy held back and, before catching up with his aunt, whispered something to me in a grave voice.
I returned to my office and stood at the window, looking down at the street, watching them get into the woman’s old sedan and drive away. The whole time, the final words the boy had spoken to me ran through my head: One thing you should know, Watson. Moriarty is here.
I’m a bit of a dreamer. That’s why my wife left me. Well, one of the reasons. And so, truthfully, I was inclined to be sympathetic toward Oliver Holmes, who, like me, and despite his protestations to the contrary, was someone wanting to be someone else. I found myself looking forward to our next visit three days later. When Oliver showed up, his aunt simply dropped him off, saying she would be back in an hour. She had errands to run.
We sat in my office, and I asked how his days had gone since I last saw him.
He cut to the chase. “I’ve been worried about Moriarty.”
“Tell me about him.”