Mr. HolmesU

PLOT SUMMARY

Sherlock Holmes (Ian) is 93 and has retired to the countryside where his gracious cottage is looked after by housekeeper Mrs. Monroe (Laura). Holmes is tired, wheezy and losing his memory - while desperately trying to remember his last case 30 years ago and why he decided to retire after it. He writes a diary recording what he can remember. Mrs. Monroe's young boy Roger (Milo) is fascinated and wants to know what happened next.

Encouraged by Roger's interest, while fearful of his doctor's diagnosis of a failing memory, Holmes tries desperately to remember - even travelling all the way to Japan to procure a plant called 'Prickly Ash' which is supposed to help the memory. In 1947, Japan has been bombed and Holmes' host Umezaki (Hiroyuki Sanada) takes him around a destroyed countryside where they do find the plant - but where Holmes also discovers Umezaki is not a keen botanist but instead, a man seeking to unravel why Holmes supposedly told his father, a diplomat posted in London, never to return home, as the father wrote to his family in Japan.

Holmes tells Umezaki with brutal honesty that his father never consulted him and used his name falsely to escape life in Japan.

Taking the plant, he returns to his cottage in England where he starts training Roger about keeping bees and making Royal Jelly honey. Mrs. Monroe is unhappy as Roger starts getting closer to Holmes and more distant from his poorly educated mother. She wants to take up a job in a hotel at Portsmouth but Holmes suffers a bad fall when he brews Prickly Ash and the smoke overpowers him. Mrs. Monroe and Roger can't leave till Holmes recovers. Holmes gifts Roger a paperweight Umezaki gave him in Japan. Roger takes charge of the bee-keeping alone while Holmes recovers.

Meanwhile, Holmes is trying desperately to recall his last case 30 years ago when a Mr. Kelmot (Patrick) came to him about his wife Ann (Hattie) who lost two children in the womb, is terribly unhappy and under the spell of a music teacher who, Mr. Kelmot is sure, is charging him for lessons despite being forbidden from going near Ann.

In different phases between the present and past, Holmes recalls following Ann Kelmot and finding out that she herself has been forging her husband's signature for money. She consults a lawyer about his will, buys strong poison and gives money to a rough-looking stranger at a railway station. Holmes confronts her at a garden where she tells him she knows he's Sherlock Holmes following her about as she found his card in her husband's pocket. But he tells her he knows that despite the elaborate drama she's performed for him, she's not about to murder her husband. Instead, she's taken the money for gravestones to be erected for her children - her husband is too mean-fisted to allow this - and wants to end her own life too.

Ann turns to Sherlock and asks him, since he understands her so well, would he consider living his life with her? Although terribly tempted by the attractive and fragile woman, Holmes gently turns her down. She pours away the poison and thanking him for his help, walks away. Later, Holmes hears she committed suicide in front a train. He's wracked with guilt and takes ill. Watson, who's made Holmes a brand commodity he can't even recognise himself in, returns from his married life and nurses Holmes back to health, but once he leaves, Holmes finds his memory fading.

He retires to bee-keeping in the countryside. While Holmes is remembering all this, Roger is very badly stung at the apiary. He is rushed to hospital and Holmes discovers it's not bees but wasps that stung him. Mrs. Monroe is furious but Holmes calms her down and they burn away the wasps' nest. Roger recovers and Holmes wills his house to Mrs. Monroe and him. Holmes makes peace with the loved ones he has lost, including his brother Mycroft and Watson. He also writes a letter to Umazaki in Japan, who wrote to him mentioning his mother's dying instructions. Holmes tells Umazaki lies about how he now remembers that his father in fact became a British secret service spy and therefore, never returned.

In doing so, Holmes shows he's understood compassion is greater than cold hard logic.

Holmes, Roger and Mrs. Monroe return to the cottage to lead a happier life.