Jean's Thoughts at Arthur's Bedside
As Imagined by Tom Campbell (with the help of AI tools for research)
|
Arthur Conan Doyle died on July 7, 1930, at the age of 71, from a heart attack at his home called Windlesham Manor in Crowborough, Sussex, England.
This is an imagined account of Jean Leckie Conan Doyle's thoughts just before Arthur died. |
I cannot bring myself to say the words aloud. Not yet. But as I sit here watching the shallow rise and fall of Arthur's chest, my thoughts race with everything I wish I could tell him.
Fifteen years of marriage after waiting so long in the shadows. It was never enough time.
The doctors speak in hushed tones outside our bedroom door. They think I don't understand the medical terms they use, forgetting perhaps that I've been married to a physician all these years. Arthur's heart is failing—dilated, weakened, unable to sustain the enormous life force that has driven him across continents, through controversies, into battles both literal and figurative.
His hand feels different in mine today. Those fingers that wrote millions of words, that gesticulated passionately during lectures on spiritualism, that once took my arm so strongly on our walks through the gardens—they seem smaller somehow. As if he's already beginning to leave this physical form behind.
Oh Arthur, where will you go when you leave me?
For over thirty years, he has insisted that death is merely a doorway. "The physical body is just a shell," he would tell skeptical audiences, his voice booming with conviction. "Consciousness—the soul—continues on." How many times have I watched him defend this belief against mockery, against science, against the very medical training he himself had received?
Now, as his breathing grows more irregular, I find myself desperately clinging to every word he ever spoke about the afterlife. I want to believe—need to believe—that this is not truly goodbye. That somehow, someway, we will communicate again.
The irony doesn't escape me. Arthur abandoned his early medical career to pursue writing, created the most rational detective in literature, then spent the latter half of his life championing beliefs many consider fantastical. My brilliant, complicated husband—always following his convictions, regardless of the cost.
His eyelids flutter. Is he dreaming? Is he already glimpsing what comes next? The spiritualist in me hopes so. The wife in me selfishly wishes he would stay.
I remember the day we finally married in 1907, after waiting those long, painful years while he honored his first wife's illness. I was thirty-three, no longer young by society's standards. Yet Arthur looked at me that day as if I were the greatest mystery he'd ever encountered—far more fascinating than any case he'd given Sherlock Holmes.
And now, at fifty-four, I face the prospect of widowhood. Of carrying forward his spiritual work without his powerful presence beside me. Of raising our children—Denis, Adrian, and Lena—to honor their father's memory while finding their own paths.
His breathing changes again—shallower now. The late afternoon sun casts long shadows across our bedroom. I should call for the children to come, for the doctor to return, but I cannot bear to break this intimate moment between us. Just a few more minutes alone with my Arthur.
What will I do without his laughter? Without his sudden inspirations that would have him leaping from bed at dawn to write?
Without his passionate defenses of those he believed wrongfully accused—the George Edalji case, Oscar Slater, and so many others? Arthur never could abide injustice.
I adjust the pillow beneath his head, and his eyes open briefly. There's a moment of perfect clarity when he looks directly at me, and I feel he can see every thought I'm having.
"Jean," he whispers, "remember what we've learned."
"I will," I promise, though my heart is fracturing. "I will remember everything."
What I don't say: How will I know it's really you, when you try to reach me from beyond? How will I distinguish between genuine communication and my own desperate longing to hear your voice again?
These are questions I cannot burden him with now.
The storm outside matches my internal tumult—thunder rolling across the Sussex countryside, lightning illuminating our bedroom in harsh flashes. Arthur always loved dramatic weather. "Nature's own spectacle," he would call it, standing at the windows of Windlesham with childlike wonder.
His fingers tighten around mine briefly—one last surge of strength—and then relax. His breathing changes again.
This is it, then. After years of investigating séances, automatic writing, ectoplasm, spirit photography—all those phenomena he championed despite ridicule from his peers—Arthur faces the ultimate verification of his beliefs.
Show me you were right, my love. Find a way to reach me. Let me know you continue.
His final words come as barely a whisper, but with a note of wonder: "Ah, so that's how it is."
Then stillness.
The clock on the mantel continues its steady ticking. Outside, the storm gradually moves away. Inside, I sit motionless, still holding his hand as it grows cool. Unwilling to call the doctor yet. Unwilling to speak the words that will make this real.
Instead, I close my eyes and listen with every fiber of my being, searching for some sign, some whisper, some indication that Arthur Conan Doyle—the love of my life, the champion of spiritual truth, the creator of immortal stories—has simply moved rooms in the great house of existence.
I will look for you everywhere, Arthur. In séance rooms and spirit writings. In the laughter of our children. In the legacy of words you've left behind.
And I will tell your story. How you lived with courage and conviction. How you never feared the journey ahead. How you believed, until your final breath, that death is not the end but merely the beginning of the greatest mystery of all.
The room feels emptier already, yet somehow full of possibility. Is this grief or anticipation? Perhaps, as Arthur always insisted, it's both.
Outside our bedroom door, I hear hushed voices. The household knows, somehow, without being told. It's time to open the door, to speak the words that will change everything.
"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has passed away," I will tell them, my voice steady despite the storm inside me.
But in my heart, I'll hold fast to a different truth:
My Arthur has simply turned the page to the next chapter.
Fifteen years of marriage after waiting so long in the shadows. It was never enough time.
The doctors speak in hushed tones outside our bedroom door. They think I don't understand the medical terms they use, forgetting perhaps that I've been married to a physician all these years. Arthur's heart is failing—dilated, weakened, unable to sustain the enormous life force that has driven him across continents, through controversies, into battles both literal and figurative.
His hand feels different in mine today. Those fingers that wrote millions of words, that gesticulated passionately during lectures on spiritualism, that once took my arm so strongly on our walks through the gardens—they seem smaller somehow. As if he's already beginning to leave this physical form behind.
Oh Arthur, where will you go when you leave me?
For over thirty years, he has insisted that death is merely a doorway. "The physical body is just a shell," he would tell skeptical audiences, his voice booming with conviction. "Consciousness—the soul—continues on." How many times have I watched him defend this belief against mockery, against science, against the very medical training he himself had received?
Now, as his breathing grows more irregular, I find myself desperately clinging to every word he ever spoke about the afterlife. I want to believe—need to believe—that this is not truly goodbye. That somehow, someway, we will communicate again.
The irony doesn't escape me. Arthur abandoned his early medical career to pursue writing, created the most rational detective in literature, then spent the latter half of his life championing beliefs many consider fantastical. My brilliant, complicated husband—always following his convictions, regardless of the cost.
His eyelids flutter. Is he dreaming? Is he already glimpsing what comes next? The spiritualist in me hopes so. The wife in me selfishly wishes he would stay.
I remember the day we finally married in 1907, after waiting those long, painful years while he honored his first wife's illness. I was thirty-three, no longer young by society's standards. Yet Arthur looked at me that day as if I were the greatest mystery he'd ever encountered—far more fascinating than any case he'd given Sherlock Holmes.
And now, at fifty-four, I face the prospect of widowhood. Of carrying forward his spiritual work without his powerful presence beside me. Of raising our children—Denis, Adrian, and Lena—to honor their father's memory while finding their own paths.
His breathing changes again—shallower now. The late afternoon sun casts long shadows across our bedroom. I should call for the children to come, for the doctor to return, but I cannot bear to break this intimate moment between us. Just a few more minutes alone with my Arthur.
What will I do without his laughter? Without his sudden inspirations that would have him leaping from bed at dawn to write?
Without his passionate defenses of those he believed wrongfully accused—the George Edalji case, Oscar Slater, and so many others? Arthur never could abide injustice.
I adjust the pillow beneath his head, and his eyes open briefly. There's a moment of perfect clarity when he looks directly at me, and I feel he can see every thought I'm having.
"Jean," he whispers, "remember what we've learned."
"I will," I promise, though my heart is fracturing. "I will remember everything."
What I don't say: How will I know it's really you, when you try to reach me from beyond? How will I distinguish between genuine communication and my own desperate longing to hear your voice again?
These are questions I cannot burden him with now.
The storm outside matches my internal tumult—thunder rolling across the Sussex countryside, lightning illuminating our bedroom in harsh flashes. Arthur always loved dramatic weather. "Nature's own spectacle," he would call it, standing at the windows of Windlesham with childlike wonder.
His fingers tighten around mine briefly—one last surge of strength—and then relax. His breathing changes again.
This is it, then. After years of investigating séances, automatic writing, ectoplasm, spirit photography—all those phenomena he championed despite ridicule from his peers—Arthur faces the ultimate verification of his beliefs.
Show me you were right, my love. Find a way to reach me. Let me know you continue.
His final words come as barely a whisper, but with a note of wonder: "Ah, so that's how it is."
Then stillness.
The clock on the mantel continues its steady ticking. Outside, the storm gradually moves away. Inside, I sit motionless, still holding his hand as it grows cool. Unwilling to call the doctor yet. Unwilling to speak the words that will make this real.
Instead, I close my eyes and listen with every fiber of my being, searching for some sign, some whisper, some indication that Arthur Conan Doyle—the love of my life, the champion of spiritual truth, the creator of immortal stories—has simply moved rooms in the great house of existence.
I will look for you everywhere, Arthur. In séance rooms and spirit writings. In the laughter of our children. In the legacy of words you've left behind.
And I will tell your story. How you lived with courage and conviction. How you never feared the journey ahead. How you believed, until your final breath, that death is not the end but merely the beginning of the greatest mystery of all.
The room feels emptier already, yet somehow full of possibility. Is this grief or anticipation? Perhaps, as Arthur always insisted, it's both.
Outside our bedroom door, I hear hushed voices. The household knows, somehow, without being told. It's time to open the door, to speak the words that will change everything.
"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has passed away," I will tell them, my voice steady despite the storm inside me.
But in my heart, I'll hold fast to a different truth:
My Arthur has simply turned the page to the next chapter.