Sherlock Holmes: The Army of Doctor Moreau

CHAPTER NINE

“Quite why we need to go to all this fuss is beyond me,” I admitted as Holmes set to combing the long, grey wig he had prepared for me.

“I have said I’ll offer no explanations,” he replied, “though the fact that you’d not last five minutes wandering about the backstreets of Rotherhithe as John Watson MD should be obvious. If you want to thoroughly explore an environment you must immerse yourself in it, you must belong!”

That and the fact that Holmes always did like dressing up.

By the time he’d finished I was an itching, irritable mess of false hair and make-up. Looking in the mirror that hung above the fireplace, I found myself face to face with a creature so grimy and hirsute I found it hard to accept him as me, no matter how much my logical mind knew better.

Holmes certainly had an eye for disguise. As I believe I may have mentioned before, his skill when he applied it to himself was not so much to hide his features beneath layer and layer of artificial subterfuge, but rather to adapt himself so as to appear to be someone else entirely. He achieved this trick by posture, intonation and natural expression, just as much as he did make-up. It appeared he had little faith that I might share his ability, as there was so little of John Watson to be seen! I must confess he was probably right to err on the side of caution. I had enjoyed theatricals at school—my Laertes brought a tear to the eye of the old nurse as she stood on hand to offer assistance should the fencing get out of hand—but I can’t say it was a skill that came readily. Perhaps it was my time in the army, for certainly the comradeship of soldiers teaches a man to be nothing more or less than himself, but the idea of pretending to be the natural occupier of this beard and hair made me distinctly nervous. I decided to experiment with a limp.

“My dear Watson,” came Holmes’ voice from the other room, “affecting problems with one’s gait is the province of music-hall comics and lousy Richard the Thirds. Kindly walk normally or you’ll stand out a mile.”

I gritted my blackened teeth in irritation and prepared to ask how he had known I was doing any such thing. Then I held my tongue, damned if I was going to give him the satisfaction.

I looked at myself in the mirror again and experimented with my stance. Clearly I was affecting a personality much older than myself so I should stoop a little and maybe even allow my head to hang a little crookedly. A sharp pain in my neck soon knocked that idea out of me.

“Do nothing to draw attention,” Holmes continued, still absent from the room. “People will have no interest in you unless you give them cause to do so. Most people are extremely unobservant, as you know, so rely on that fact. Simply believe that wherever you are, you belong; you are in your element; you are natural and at home. Do that—” he appeared in the doorway, bald, tattooed and dressed in the most terribly stained overcoat “—and you’ll never be seen.”

“Aye, aye, Cap’n,” I replied, in the closest I could manage to a thick Irish brogue, much to his apparent disgust.