Mrs Holmes

When the great Sherlock Holmes turned to Dr. Watson and said, “I have never loved, Watson, but if I did …” (“The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot,” 1897), Holmes could not foresee that Elisabeth Sunderland would be waiting, desperate for his help, in his Baker Street sitting room fourteen months later. As Holmes saves Elisabeth from a fate worse than death in “The Adventure of the Warwickshire Ripper,” she falls in love with the redoubtable detective. Then the unthinkable occurs-subtle encouragement from Watson leads Holmes to realize that he returns Elisabeth’s love, in his own way, and they are married in secret by the Archbishop of Canterbury, as described in “The Adventure of the Secret Bride.” The further adventures of Elisabeth Sunderland Holmes include a young, deaf woman who unwittingly discovers a criminal gang, a girl trapped by a lie in Cornwall, a government document that has fallen into the wrong hands, and a ghostly hoax. Although her existence is a secret carefully guarded by Holmes and Watson, lest she become a target of the criminal element, Elisabeth is a lively part of life at 221B Baker Street and later in Holmes’s retirement in Sussex. Elisabeth’s intelligence, wit, and artistic talents draw Holmes to her; her wry and sensitive observations of her husband, his colleague, and their life together are spiced by her own charming eccentricities. Her marriage was not an easy one-to Holmes, “women are a mystery in any case.” But Elisabeth’s prediction on the eve of her wedding, that “my years with Sherlock Holmes would be the most interesting of my life,” proved true.