Mr. Holmes (2015)

Laura Linney: Mrs. Munro

Photos 

Quotes 

• Roger : You ever been bitten by a bee?

  Sherlock Holmes : Stung! Bees don't have teeth! Yes, I have.

  Roger : But not often, though.

  Sherlock Holmes : 7,816 times. I keep a record.

  [Mrs. Munro appears while Roger is smoking the hive] 

  Sherlock Holmes : Well, not entirely dreadful.

  Mrs. Munro : You ever been bit?

  Sherlock Holmes : No. I have never been bit.

• Roger : I shouldn't have said what I said.

  Mrs. Munro : Lesson there, then. Don't say everything you think.

• Mrs. Munro : Your dad hated what he did for a living. Mechanic in a garage, like his dad before him. When he got called up, he said to me, "My love, I'll not spend this war "underneath the oil pan of some toff's jeep. "I'm gonna put in for the RAF." So he did. He trained. Scored high marks, got assigned to a Bristol Blenheim, Mark IV. Blown out of the sky. First time up. All his mates who worked the motor pool came home without a scratch.

• [solving his last "case"] 

  Sherlock Holmes : The bees... didn't do it. The bees were not to blame. It was the wasps! Roger was trying to find out what was killing the bees. And he did. He found the wasps' nest. He had to stop them wiping out the bees. And so he did the worst possible thing. He tried to drown them with water from his can.

  Mrs. Munro : How do you know it was them?

  Sherlock Holmes : Bees leave their stings. Wasps don't. There were no stings left in Roger's face. And when they attacked, he dropped the watering can and ran up to protect the bees. There are his footprints from the apiary to the nest and back.

  Mrs. Munro : He was trying to save the bees.

  Sherlock Holmes : Yes.

  [Together, they pour kerosene on the wasps' nest, and set it ablaze] 

• Roger : She wants me to be a bootblack!

  Mrs. Munro : Roger!

  Roger : She wants me to do what she does!

  Mrs. Munro : There's no shame in what I do!

  Roger : You complain enough about it! Always going on about how hard things are.

  [to Holmes] 

  Roger : She can barely read!

  [Mrs. Munro storms out of the room] 

  Sherlock Holmes : Go after her. Apologize for saying things that were meant to hurt. You were cruel! If you don't apologize, you will regret it.

  Roger : People always say that.

  Sherlock Holmes : Because it's true.

  Roger : Do *you* regret anything?

  Sherlock Holmes : [with feeling]  So much.

• [Holmes sees Mrs. Munro pouring kerosene on his apiary, and rushes outside] 

  Sherlock Holmes : You mustn't do that!

  Mrs. Munro : My son won't wake. He may never wake. They sent me away till morning. You didn't even have the decency to tell me what'd happened to him!

  Sherlock Holmes : I didn't think it would make a difference.

  Mrs. Munro : [screaming]  I'm his mother! I'm his mother, and you stole him from me! He's all I had! And I've lost him now. Why wasn't it you they did it to? - It should've been you!

  Sherlock Holmes : The bees were not to blame.

  Mrs. Munro : They're all you care about!

  Sherlock Holmes : No! I care about Roger. I care about him very much...!

  [He breaks down sobbing] 

• [last lines] 

  Roger : [explaining to his mother the same way Mr. Holmes explained to him]  The queen runs the colony. Drones service the queen. The workers do the work.

  Mrs. Munro : Isn't it true...

• Mrs. Munro : [Coming into a side room in their cottage and seeing Roger staring at himself intently in a mirror, raising his eyebrows, turning slightly as he assesses himself from various angles]  What are you doing?

  Roger : Trying to see if I can tell where I've been.

  Mrs. Munro : Don't you know?

  Roger : Mr. Holmes can tell things like that just from looking at a person.