“So you have no scar on your left hand . . . But you do have one on your chin, whereas I don’t . . .” The coachman smiled, as though talking to himself.
“When I was fifteen I fell down some stairs,” Wells replied, raising his hand to touch the scar with a mixture of puzzlement and irritation.
“I see. Whereas I didn’t. I was always very careful with stairs.”
Wells looked at the coachman in silence and considered asking him why, if indeed there was a reason, he insisted on having these absurd exchanges with him, but he couldn’t find the right way of putting it.
“I’m very happy for you,” he said at last with a sigh, and made his way toward the house.
Murray and the two women were having an animated conversation while waiting for him in the doorway. Seeing him approach, they all smiled at him knowingly.
“What?” said Wells, trying unsuccessfully to hide his unease.
“Is it those shoes again, George?” Murray chortled. “Goodness, they’ve been pinching your feet for two years now. Isn’t it about time you got rid of them?”
“Stop making fun of him, dear,” Emma scolded, “and tell him the good news.”
“Er, yes, dear . . . Listen, George: Emma’s father has made a full recovery, and so we’ve finally decided on a date for the wedding. We are to be married on the first Sunday in March. Her parents will soon set sail for London and will arrive a few days before the ceremony. And, well . . .” An excited grin appeared on Murray’s face as he clutched Wells’s shoulder with his huge paw. “I’d be delighted if you would be my best man.”
“It will be a true honor,” replied Wells as Jane looked on, smiling.
“After all,” Murray resumed, “it is thanks to you that we are together. If in your letter you hadn’t advised me to—”
“Damn it, man, I never replied to any letter!”
They all laughed quietly, nodding as if this were a private joke between them.
“But, George, aren’t you tired of playing this game?”
“How many times do I have to tell you that isn’t my handwriting? Anyway, let’s drop the subject, shall we?” Wells said, terminating the discussion with a sigh. “Today I have a surprise for you.”
“A surprise?”
“That’s right. This afternoon we have a very special visitor: your pet author,” Wells announced with a mischievous grin.
Before Murray had a chance to react, Wells ushered him and the women into the sitting room, where a man was standing with his back to them, warming himself by the fire. Murray observed the fellow, increasingly intrigued: he was broad shouldered, robust, almost as tall as Murray himself, and seemed to be planted on the ground with the incontestable weightiness of a menhir. His posture, hands clasped behind his back, stooping slightly, gave the impression of a ship’s captain issuing the order to steer his vessel clear of the rocks. Hearing them come in, the man swiveled round and walked over to them with an exaggerated briskness. He had a stern, soldierly face, as though chiseled in stone, and dark, twinkling eyes that betrayed his fiery nature. His hair was starting to thin at the temples, but this was compensated for by a splendid handlebar mustache that flowed over his lips and narrowed into sharp points.
Murray gasped. “Well, I never . . .”
“Clearly no introductions are necessary,” Wells said with a grin, “Even so, allow me to stick to the usual protocol. Montgomery, this is Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of your beloved detective, Sherlock Holmes. Arthur, these are my friends, Montgomery Gilmore and his charming fiancée Emma Harlow.”
With the vigor characteristic of all his gestures, Doyle bowed politely and kissed Emma’s hand, then extended his arm in greeting to Murray, who first stared at him, dumbfounded. After all, it wasn’t every day one ran into Britain’s best-known author, and creator of one of the icons of literature, in your best friend’s living room. In the days when Murray’s ambition was to become a writer, he had greedily devoured all the Sherlock Holmes adventures, a captive to his charm, but he had also studied Doyle’s life for clues as to his success, in a bid to understand how a young medical practitioner struggling to make a living in Portsmouth could have produced the mythical detective out of nowhere.
That had been in 1886, when the twenty-seven-year-old Doyle had already spent three years in a medical practice, had killed time between visits from his meager list of patients by writing stories and novels. He had published a few short pieces in local periodicals, but his first attempt at a novel had aroused no interest among publishers. Very well, he told himself, he would return to the drawing board. But what if, instead of writing ambitious novels no one seemed interested in, he tried to come up with something original and surprising? What would he like to discover in a bookshop? What would arouse his own interest? Recalling his early life, as though consulting the child he once was in order to discover the true preferences of the adult he had become, he dredged up a name: Auguste Dupin, Edgar Allan Poe’s masterful detective. No detail was too trivial for Dupin, and the fictional sleuth was on the right track, for it was enough to read the newspapers in the real world to understand that the smallest detail contained in a piece of evidence might send a defendant to the gallows or save his life. Poe had only written three Auguste Dupin stories, but the character of the detective had continued to make discreet appearances in the novels of successive authors. For several decades Dupin seemed to have been trying tentatively to come back into the world. What if he, Doyle, gave birth to him by making him the protagonist of a novel? He only had to invent a detective whom readers would find sufficiently fascinating.
He remembered Joseph Bell, a surgeon and lecturer at the University of Edinburgh medical school for whom Doyle had worked as a clerk while he was studying there. It was his job to shepherd patients into the remarkable doctor’s lecture theater, where something would take place that was more like a conjuring trick than anything Doyle had seen before: Bell would receive them, with his aquiline nose and penetrating grey eyes, seated amid his cohort of assistants, and sometimes, before proceeding to examine them using traditional methods, would play at guessing a patient’s profession and character through silent, intense scrutiny. Thus he would pronounce, for example, that a fellow had served in the army, had recently been discharged, and even had been stationed in Barbados. And despite Bell’s explaining to his rapt audience that he had deduced all this because the man hadn’t removed his hat, suggesting that he hadn’t yet adapted to the customs of civil society, and that he suffered from elephantiasis, a disease prevalent in the Antilles, for the first few minutes the effect was tremendous. Doyle told himself that if he could invent a forensic sleuth who applied Bell’s methods to solve crimes using his own skills and not because of a villain’s mistakes or follies, he could reduce the muddled problem of criminal investigation to something approaching an exact science.
Doyle thought his detective could be an amateur sleuth who collaborated with Scotland Yard, even though he despised their methods, the same way Dupin was scornful of those of the Sûreté. He picked up his notebook and jotted down a few possible names: Sheridan Hope, Sherringford Holmes, Sherlock Holmes. The last name, which belonged to his uncle Henry’s mother-in-law’s father, who was head curator at the National Gallery in Dublin, had the best ring to it. Sherlock Holmes, Doyle whispered to himself in his deserted consulting room, unaware that for the first time he was uttering that nonexistent name that would soon be on everybody’s lips and would be talked about even after he was dead. Doyle was pleased he had resolved the matter of his character’s name so swiftly, but then it occurred to him that readers might find his Sherlock objectionable if he tried to enthrall them by gloating over his own exploits. He therefore needed someone to boast for him, perhaps a fellow sleuth, a man who lived in a state of perpetual wonderment at the detective’s deductive skills, who lavished praise on him, placed him on a pedestal, so that readers, infected by his admiration, would do so as well. And Holmes’s sidekick, to whom Doyle would g
ive the bland name Watson, must be a man of action who could join in Holmes’s exploits but who was sufficiently literary to recount them afterward: perhaps an ex–army doctor, a straightforward man of integrity.
Doyle proceeded to write his first Sherlock Holmes adventure, The Scarlet Skein, and eagerly sent it to a few publishers. But, rejected by all of them, the manuscript kept coming back like a boomerang. Disillusioned, Doyle sent it to a publishing house specializing in popular fiction, and they offered him twenty-five guineas for it. The first Sherlock Holmes novel, renamed A Study in Scarlet, appeared a year later, but contrary to Doyle’s expectations it did not make any splash in the literary pond. Nor did his next, THE SIGN OF FOUR.
What had he done wrong? Doyle didn’t know, but since it seemed he would never make a living from literature, he moved to London and opened an ophthalmologist’s consulting room in Devonshire Place, round the corner from 221B Baker Street, where in the parallel world of fiction his amateur detective Sherlock Holmes resided. And there, too, he sat waiting from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon, until once again he took up his pen. But what should he write this time? Not another serialized historical novel, he reflected, eyeing the heap of weekly magazines he had brought to his consulting room to occupy patients while they waited. They already published too many of them in England, and their disadvantages outweighed their advantages: a reader who missed one issue, for example, would lose the thread of the story and, consequently, all interest in the tale. Why did no one write short fiction? Doyle sat bolt upright in his chair. Why didn’t he? What if, instead of proposing yet another serialized novel, he offered those magazines stories featuring the same character? He searched through his repertory for a character who would lend himself easily to a series of short stories, and—as if he could hear through the cracks between dimensions the strains of a violin playing in 221B Baker Street—Doyle resurrected Sherlock Holmes.
Doyle’s first detective story, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” was published in The Strand Magazine, and within months Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle had become household names. Even Doyle’s mother wrote to her son to tell him how much she admired his amateur detective. At last the miracle seemed to be happening, and Doyle decided to shut down his failed ophthalmology practice, betting all his money on his fictional character. And while Doyle was pleased that Sherlock Holmes seemed to grow more popular with each issue, even catching on in America, he soon realized the idea he had initially thought would change his life was fast becoming a bane. He had fallen into a trap of his own making, because the challenge of Sherlock Holmes was that each short story required a plot as well outlined and original as that of any longer work. And one thing Doyle refused to do was contrive plots he as a reader would find dissatisfying.
After finishing the twelve stories he had been commissioned to write for The Strand, Doyle was exhausted. The magazine, whose circulation had risen considerably thanks to him, asked for a second series, but Doyle suspected that his winning streak with the detective was reaching an end. But, more important, he was afraid that if he continued writing Sherlock Holmes adventures, his readers would identify him with what he considered not his best writing. He thought that demanding a thousand pounds for a half-dozen stories would be a polite way of ending the matter, but the magazine accepted without demur, and Doyle was obliged to write six more stories, which made him the most highly paid author in England. However, he soon realized that no amount of money was enough to compensate the prodigious exertions Holmes demanded of him. “I think of slaying Holmes in the sixth and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things,” he wrote to his mother, who promised to dig up fresh intrigues for him to solve to prevent him from ending the life of that guardian angel from London, the only man capable of fighting the crime and injustice menacing the city. She would scour the newspapers, consult her neighbors, and send him any cases she thought could inspire him. Doyle accepted grudgingly, and Holmes was given a stay of execution. When The Strand commissioned another series, Doyle again demanded an exorbitant sum, and again, to his astonishment, the magazine agreed. He realized then that the only way to rid himself of Holmes was to kill him off. And, regardless of his mother’s protestations, he would do exactly that at the end of the new series. During a brief holiday in Switzerland, at the formidable Reichenbach Falls, the author found a perfect resting place for poor Holmes. He would pitch him into the unfathomable depths of that daunting abyss where the waters plummeted with a terrifying, thunderous roar. “It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Sherlock Homes was distinguished,” Watson began, while Doyle smiled sardonically on the other side of the page as though in a two-way mirror. And in “The Final Problem,” the last adventure in the series, published in 1893, that character who had attained unimaginable heights, that inveterate collector of clippings from the crime sections of newspapers who made no secret of his admiration for a well-conceived, ingeniously executed crime, who was well versed in anatomy and chemistry yet unaware that the Earth turned around the sun, who could distinguish between 140 different types of cigarette ash and guess a man’s profession from the calluses on his hands or from the condition of his fingernails, fell into the Reichenbach Falls clutching Professor Moriarty, Holmes’s archenemy and intellectual equal. And at the bottom of that churning cauldron of water and seething foam was where the detective had been languishing for the past seven years, without Doyle’s having the slightest intention of bringing him back to life, despite constant offers from publishers and the endless exhortations of his many readers. Doyle was happy to have the time to write other things, or simply to accept the invitations of his friends, like the get-together Wells had arranged so that he could meet the millionaire Montgomery Gilmore, who by now had regained his composure.
“I have always wanted to meet you, Mr. Gilmore,” Doyle told him. “Your extravagant declarations of love are famous all over England. It is thanks to you that every young lady in the kingdom expects something more from her suitor than a simple ring.”
“Well, I didn’t mean to make things difficult for others. I just wanted to prove to a headstrong young lady that I would go to any lengths to win her heart,” said Murray, smiling significantly at Emma. “In any event, whilst I am flattered that you wished to meet me, I can assure you that my desire to meet you was greater still. My humble exploit will soon be forgotten. But you . . . you are the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Who could ever forget that?”
“I can vouch for Monty’s sincerity,” Emma spoke up. “He is positively bewitched by the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Mr. Doyle. I am convinced no other woman will ever steal his affection, but that detective of yours has already succeeded.”
“Then I rejoice all the more for having pitched him into the Reichenbach Falls. I consider it a crime for any man to ignore such beautiful ladies as yourselves even for a minute,” Doyle replied gallantly, also smiling at Jane.
And while the two women thanked him for the compliment, Wells smiled to himself contentedly at this cheerful bandying among his friends. As he had suspected, two men as alike as Murray and Doyle couldn’t help but get along from the first.
“You are right, it is unforgivable,” Murray agreed. “A beautiful lady should be refused nothing, don’t you agree?”
“Quite so,” Doyle hurriedly concurred.
“Even if she asked you to bring Sherlock Holmes back to life?”
Doyle laughed at Murray’s retort.
“I’m afraid I couldn’t oblige her there,” he lamented. “Holmes is dead and gone. Nobody could survive such a fall without undermining the plausibility of the story.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” replied Murray. “It might be possible.”
“Really? How?” Doyle asked with an amused curiosity. “How would you go about convincing readers that Holmes could survive a fall of over eight hundred feet?”
“Oh, there is no way anyone could survive such a fall,” replied Murray. “In fact, ever since I read ‘The Final Problem’ I have been pondering how Holmes might have avoided his tragic fate, for I didn’t want to believe you had killed him off. An extraordinary man like Holmes couldn’t die. And, believe it or not, during the past seven years I’ve turned my search for a solution into something of a hobby. I’ve even visited the falls to see the scene for myself. And, much to my regret, as I stood flattened against the rocks, arms folded, watching the water tumble into the chasm below, as if I wanted to re-create Watson’s last image of Holmes, I had to admit nobody could survive such a terrifying drop. Until I realized that Holmes hadn’t plunged into the falls.”
Doyle, who up until then had been nodding with quiet amusement at each of Murray’s words, suddenly raised his eyebrows.
“What do you mean? Of course he plunged into the falls!”
Murray wagged his head with a mischievous grin.
“That’s what Watson believes,” he explained. “But what if he didn’t? Remember, there were no witnesses. When Watson goes back to the falls after realizing Moriarty had deceived him, all he found was Holmes’s walking stick, a farewell note, and two sets of footprints leading up to the edge of the abyss, which led him to deduce that both the detective and his archenemy had plunged to their deaths. But suppose that during the struggle Holmes, using his knowledge of jujitsu or Japanese wrestling, had managed to prize himself loose, so that Professor Moriarty alone fell into the chasm? Then, realizing fate had given him the opportunity to stage his own death and hunt down his remaining enemies, Holmes scrambled up the rock face to avoid leaving any tracks that might make Watson suspect that the best and wisest man it had been his honor to know had cheated Death.
Doyle’s face appeared to crumple.
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