The Three Locks by Bonnie MacBird (learn to read books txt) 📕

I stared at the box.

What had my mother meant by this?

I opened it fully, not sure what to expect. A jewel? A keepsake? Another puzzle? But inside the box was nothing but two folded pieces of faded pink paper. I unfolded them and recognized my mother’s precise and beautiful hand. I read:

August 11, 1863, on the occasion of your eleventh birthday, my dear, darling John—

With luck you are reading this on August 11, 1873, and you are now twenty-one years old and ten years past my death.

I pray that you will forgive me for all that I am about to tell you and will understand my delay in doing so.

You no doubt suspected, and I will confirm, that my death was at my own hand. Please be assured there was nothing you or anyone could have done to dissuade me. It was not despair. As I write this, I face a terrible and incurable cancer, which over the next six months will consume me and put not only myself, but all our family through needless torture. I decided to spare us all.

I have chosen to shed my earthly bonds, but I trust, dearest son, that I will rest in the hands of a forgiving God and am now looking down at you with love. At eleven you were not ready, but I believe that as a man of twenty-one you will understand.

The second fact you must know is this. You were not responsible for the death of your twin. I know that you and Rosie argued that day at our picnic on the river, and that you left her and walked home, thinking your brother had stayed to look after her.

But when you discovered Harry at home in the bath, you thought you had made a terrible error leaving Rosie alone at the river. You ran back, but the poor child was already dead, drowned in the rapids, and you blamed yourself.

I must set the record straight. Your brother admitted the following to me yesterday. Harry was in fact with Rose when you left, as you thought. But what you didn’t know was that he saw her slip in the river and hit her head on a rock. He leaped in to save her, but the currents took her out of reach. Harry then saw her dashed against the rocks downstream and knew she was dead.

It happened so fast, he panicked and ran home taking a shorter route, and beat you to the house, where he jumped into the bath so that no one would see him wet from the river. That is where you found him.

Of course, his story later was that you had left Rose alone and that is why she drowned.

While her death was not your fault, neither was it his, but he allowed you, John, to take the blame. Harry is fourteen now, at the time of this writing, and yet I already see his future. There is a flaw in his character, dearest son, like a vein of poison that runs in my family, but which has not touched you. Even at fourteen, Harry is troubled with drink. He thinks me blind to this.

I made a difficult decision. Knowing that you could shoulder the guilt better than your weaker brother, I delayed imparting this story to you until now, when you could, as an adult, make a choice – to confront your errant but fragile sibling or, knowing the truth, to spare him the confrontation and to move on.

And so I decided on this box, and this secrecy. I pray that Elspeth remembers to give it to you, and the hint about ‘your mother’s clock’. In this way, I knew no one but you could ever open it.

And the final thing, John, is my wish for you. You have nerve and courage, dearest son, and are destined for great things.

I glanced over at my sleeping friend. He had not read this and yet he intuited this assessment by a woman he had never met. I turned back to the letter.

I know you will grow to be a man of honour and accomplishment. I pray that you find a quest worthy of your gifts, my son, and that you take comfort and pride in lending your courage to that cause, that ideal, or that person. Then, looking down, I shall be happy for you.

You have it in you to be a force for good, John. The world needs you.

Your loving mother,

Mairead.

I held the pages in my hands as my vision blurred for a moment. Her words sadly presaged my brother Harry’s alcoholism and early demise. And I thought it more likely that she had overstated her hopes for me, as parents do. Did the world really need John Watson?

I folded up my mother’s letter and my heart swelled. Had she really seen such promise in my young character? Perhaps any good deed I had done was in compensation for my regrets over Rose’s death. Suffering needlessly, as it turned out. I looked over at my friend, pale with exhaustion and asleep on the settee. Was this not like Holmes, suffering over his inability to save Odelia Wyndham?

Only in the abstract. I did not fool myself. My friend was a tireless warrior for the wronged, possessing gifts in the realm of genius, and making contributions to justice far beyond anything I could imagine. His work was life changing, his intellect beyond compare.

The world was indeed a better place for the existence of Sherlock Holmes.

I smiled as I placed the letter in my breast pocket. A sense of peace, of purpose, washed over me. I knew exactly what I needed to do. I covered Holmes with the afghan and rang down for lunch. And then I picked up my pen to write.

My mother, I was sure, would be pleased.

For interesting facts and photos of people, places and things mentioned in this novel, see the online annotations here: https://macbird.com/the-three-locks/notes

Acknowledgements

Thank you to my wonderful editor David