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Having taken up the unofficial responsibility of recording the exploits of the
world's only consulting detective I have at all times endeavoured to provide an
accurate testimony of my friend's life.
There are a few necessary
exceptions of course.
Holmes has on occasion accused me romanticising
the details of his less than savoury cases, but as I have reminded him, there
are some things the reading public does not wish, or need to know.
Amongst my most dedicated reader's petty thieves and adulterers fall
into a certain accepted class, whereas cold-blooded murderers and those who prey
upon the weak and innocent to satisfy their own depraved ends are another matter
entirely.
In many regards I have also applied the same manner of
classifying Holmes's personal habits as I have his dealings with London's
criminal types when I set pen to paper. My friend will sometimes scoff at the
distinctions I make, but that is all.
Sherlock Holmes maybe many things,
but foolhardy about his reputation, he is not. In the absence of a wife or other
suitable substitute the duty of protecting his good name has been passed to me.
It is an arrangement that I have found both rewarding and frustrating in the
extreme, but for reasons too private to specify, cannot escape. Nor should I
say, would I ever want to.
The world knows Holmes as a master of
deduction, a man of singular intellect, a brain without a heart. Not the
individual who would stay abed for days on end without attending the many
requests for his help or even his own toilet until threats to withhold
conversation and in extreme cases, intimacy, are finally taken to heart.
No, the public are not privy to his true nature for that same reason
they are not exposed to the horrors that in many cases are lurking right outside
their very doors.
To some ignorance is bliss, or at least more conducive
to a peaceful and undisturbed existence than knowing that the man who has become
a hero to many is not always the refined English gentleman he is portrayed to
be. Indeed I am aware that the truth would serve only the criminals Holmes has
worked tirelessly to apprehend and harm those he has sworn to protect.
For myself, sharing all of what I know would be equivalent to betrayal
and the breaking of my vow to love and honour the man known to the world as
Sherlock Holmes.
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