by Graham Moore
A Study in Scarlet
September 3,1893
Arthur killed Sherlock Holmes by the light of a single lamp.
Encased behind the heavy wooden doors of his study, Arthur wrote quickly. The oil lamp atop his writing desk glowed pale yellow over the book-lined walls. Shakespeare, Catullus, even, as Arthur would admit freely, Poe. His favorites were all there, but Arthur rarely consulted them. He wrote confidently. He was not the sort of writer who spread his sources across his desk like bedsheets, clinging to them tightly, consulting, soiling, pinching. Hamlet lay on its shelf—third from the bottom, a quarter of the way around the room clockwise from the door—and if, when Arthur quoted it for another pithy aphorism from Holmes, he quoted inaccurately . . . well, such was fiction.
Murder tasted sweet on Arthur’s lips. He salivated. His pen, heavy between his stubby fingers, did not scratch the paper. It stroked the pages, filling each one top to bottom with black ink. The plot, the confounding little puzzle of tricks and then treats, had been worked out well in advance.
At this, the middle point of his career, Arthur was unquestionably England’s great composer of the mystery story. Indeed, as the States had failed to produce a mystery author of any caliber since Poe had invented the form, Arthur thought it not unreasonable to say that he was the most accomplished in the world. There was a trick to mystery stories, of course, and Arthur wasn’t embarrassed to admit that he knew it. It was the same trick practiced by a thousand amateur parlor magicians and face-painted circus jugglers: misdirection.
Arthur laid the facts of the crime before his readers clearly, calmly, and efficiently. No important detail was left out, and—yes, here was the mark of the true craftsman—not too many unimportant details were left in. It’s an easy feat to confuse the reader with a mountain of unnecessary characters and events; the challenge, for Arthur, was in presenting a clean and simple tale, with only a few notable characters to keep straight, and yet still to obscure the solution from the reader. The key was in the prose, in the way the information was laid out. Arthur kept the reader’s mind on the exciting, exceptional, and yet fundamentally unimportant facts of the case, while the salient details were left for Holmes to work upon, as if by magic.
It was a game for Arthur, putting together these plots. It was he against his audience, the writer locked in endless combat with his readers, and only one would emerge victorious. Either the reader would guess the ending early or Arthur would confound him to the final page. It was a test of wits, and a war that Arthur did not often lose.
Why, of course, if the reader were smart enough, he could figure the whole thing through after just the first few pages! But in his heart Arthur knew that his readers didn’t really want to win. They wanted to test their wits against the author at full pitch, and they wanted to lose. To be dazzled. And so Arthur’s struggle was long, and moreover it was bloody exhausting. He had come to realize that putting together a decent mystery was an infernally tedious affair. And, his having labored at this mill for some years now, the tedium had engendered in him such a hatred for Holmes as he could no longer contain. Now his hatred extended beyond just the rat-faced detective: It carried over to the readers who adored him so. And now thankfully, at last, in his final Holmes story, Arthur would be done with them all for good.
Late as the hour was, Arthur heard the rambunctious banging of children upstairs. He could hear, faintly, the maid Kathleen telling them to hush up before they woke their mother. Touie would be sound asleep by now, as she had been most of the day. Her consumption was not much worsening, but the clean Swiss föhn had done little to improve her health. She rarely left the house. Journeys into the city were simply out of the question. Against her frailty, though, Arthur had become determined. He would take care of poor, dear Touie, his bride since she was nineteen. And if they should have to keep separate bedrooms, for her health, and if nannies would be required to look after the children, and if she had now wilted into the winter of her own private quarters . . . well, so be it. Arthur would write. He had liked to keep regular, daytime hours for his work, but tonight was different. Some writing one had to do in the dark.
Arthur’s pen did not hasten as he moved on to the final page. He made the same broad strokes he always had. The words came to him, first in his head—the orderly noun, the clarifying verb, the occasional but welcome adjective—one by one, and he dutifully recorded them onto the darkening sheet. He did not go back over his sentences once they were on the page. He did not scratch out words, like his good friends Mr. Barrie and Mr. Oliver, endlessly replacing them with their freshest mot juste. Such was the mark, Arthur felt, of an indecisive hand. He did not consult his previous paragraphs for where to go next. He simply knew.
His fingers were steady as he came to the last bit of his story. A letter from beyond the grave, to be opened after its sender had passed on. “The best and the wisest man whom I have ever known,” Arthur wrote. A fitting tribute; a fine farewell. He placed a light period after “known” and turned the sheet onto its predecessors. He carefully pressed the stack into a tidy, perfect rectangle and flipped the pages over. “The Final Problem,” read the title at the top of page one. Indeed, thought Arthur. And then, queerly, he smiled. He even allowed himself a chortle, as he was alone. Without his wife, or his children, or even his mother knowing, Arthur was, for the first time in years, finally free.
He stood. He stumbled happily to the door. And then— Oh! He’d almost forgotten.
Arthur practically skipped back to his desk. What had come over him? You’d be excused for thinking he was a love-struck teenager, on his way to call on his amore.
Arthur unlocked the bottom-left drawer beneath his desk and removed one dark, leather-bound book from a stack of many. He opened the book and flipped through to the bottom of a page already quite filled with his ink. He plucked up his pen and recorded the date. And then, though most evenings Arthur would spend an hour recording all the day’s events and all of his most private thoughts, tonight he committed only two words to his diary.
“Killed Holmes,” he wrote.
Arthur felt light. His shoulder muscles loosened. He closed his eyes and inhaled the dark air. He was so happy.
He was careful to lock his precious diary back in the desk before stepping out into the hallway in search of brandy.
CHAPTER 4
The Lost Diary
“Watson here will tell you that I can
never resist a touch of the dramatic.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
“The Naval Treaty”
January 5, 2010, cont.
“To murder!” repeated Jeffrey Engels for emphasis, back in the Algonquin Hotel.
Harold paused. Something was very wrong here.
“The affair has taken a grave turn? To murder?” Jeffrey said again, with a touch of hesitation.
Harold laughed. “The quote is from ‘The Adventure of the Six Napoleons,’” he said. “You owe me a drink.”
“Well done!” Jeffrey beamed. “So I do.”
“But I think you owe me two drinks. The quote isn’t quite right. It should be ‘the affair has taken a very much graver turn,’ not ‘a grave turn.’ ”
Jeffrey thought for a moment.
“My, you’ve been invested in the Irregulars all of two minutes and look at you! Picking nits at an old man already. Well, very well. I’ll keep you in scotch until dawn at this rate.”
Harold had initially encountered this Sherlockian quotation game at the very first meeting he’d attended. Four years ago, before he had written anything for the Baker Street Journal or met any of the Irregulars, he found himself at the meeting of the local Los Angeles “scion” society, the Curious Collectors of Baker Street. They were a small group, considerably less prestigious than the Irregulars. Meetings were open to the public. In an oak-lined bar, over glasses of peat-smelling scotch— all Sherlockians seemed to think that ice cubes were made from poison and were therefore to be distrusted, as far
as Harold could tell—they called out quotes from Sherlock Holmes stories. One member would holler a quote—“ ‘ I never guess. It is a shocking habit, destructive to the logical faculty,’” for instance. Then the man or woman to his right would have to provide the name of the story from which it came—in this case The Sign of the Four. If he answered correctly, it would then be his turn to yell out a quote, and then the turn of the Sherlockian to his right to supply the answer. Whoever erred first would find the next round on his or her tab. Given most Sherlockians’ fondness for highquality scotch, and for voluminous quantities of same, new and inexperienced members would find their American Express cards pressed to their limits.
“It’s my first night as an Irregular,” said Harold. “And my guess is, you’re more than a little responsible for that. I think I’m the one who owes you a drink.”
Jeffrey’s grin returned. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, kid. Now let’s make use of the bar.”
A few minutes later, Harold sat on the stool beside Jeffrey, sipping bourbon. A group of revelers had staged a nonviolent coup over the bar’s piano and were sing-chanting an old Sherlockian ditty. The bartender regarded them with equal parts disapproval and bemusement.
“To all our friends canonical / On both sides of the crime / We’ll take the cup and lift it up / To Holmes and Watson’s time,” sang the drunken group, to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne.” It was both off-key and arrhythmic, though Harold had to admit that he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard a Sherlockian song sung with much regard for proper pitch.
Harold and Jeffrey were soon talking about the diary, which Harold suspected was all anyone was talking about that night. The singing and drinking were a distraction, but there was really only one thought haunting the minds of the hundreds of Sherlockians in the Algonquin Hotel: the lost diary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The lost diary that had finally been found.
After Conan Doyle died, one volume of his diaries had gone missing. The author had kept a detailed daily diary of his activities for his entire life, and yet when his wife and children surveyed his papers after his death, one book was strangely not present. No worn, ink-drenched leather journal for the period from October 11 through December 23, 1900 , could be found. And in the century that had passed since that day, not one of the hundreds of scholars and family members who had tried to find it had been able to do so. The lost diary was the holy grail of Sherlockian studies. It would be worth a fortune—perhaps as much as $10 million, if it ever went up for sale at Sotheby’s. But more importantly, it would provide a window into the mind of the world’s greatest mystery writer, at the height of his powers. For a hundred years, scholars had theorized about what was in the diary. A manuscript for a lost story? Some secret confession from Conan Doyle? And how on earth had it vanished so completely?
Three months before the dinner at the Algonquin, each member of the Irregulars had received a tantalizingly brief e-mail from Alex Cale, a fellow Irregular. “The great mystery is solved,” it had read. “I have found the diary. Please make all necessary arrangements that I might present it, and the secrets contained within, at this year’s conference.”
It was a delicious mystery, even for Alex, who had a particular fondness for this sort of drama. Quickly, a flurry of e-mails skittered across the globe: “Is he serious?” . . . “He can’t mean THE diary, can he?” . . . “He’s been looking for that damned thing for twenty-five years; he only just found it NOW?” The Baker Street Irregulars reacted with incredulity only to buffer themselves from their forthcoming shock; the next three months would see them through stages of exhilaration, anxiety, twitchy anticipation, and, from some darker corners, jealousy.
Alex Cale was already the most accomplished of the Sherlockians. It was difficult to argue that he was not the world’s greatest expert on Sherlock Holmes, though the Irregulars boasted more than a few experts who might be inclined to disagree. But of course, his rivals had said, of course it would be Alex Cale who found the missing diary of Arthur Conan Doyle. With his money. With his free time. With dear dead Daddy’s seemingly never-ending trust fund behind him.
And yet the question currently foremost in the minds of Harold, Jeffrey, and the hundreds of other Sherlockians drinking, laughing, sleeping, or, less commonly, making love in the Algonquin Hotel was this: Where had Alex found the diary? And how had he found it?
After his initial message, Alex stopped responding to his e-mails. He returned no phone calls. He answered no letters, even though the craft of old-fashioned letter writing had always been one in which he’d taken some pride. Finally, after a number of attempts at communication from Jeffrey Engels, Alex wrote back a message. If one could even call it that.
“Am being followed,” Alex wrote to Jeffrey. “Will update soon.” It had the clipped syntax of a telegram, and as a result Jeffrey couldn’t tell whether Alex was joking or whether he was losing his mind. He forwarded Alex’s message around, and the consensus was that Alex was having a little too much fun with all of this, taking the fantastical mystery a bit too far. Certainly the diary would be valuable, but who— what shadowy figure—would trail Alex around his London home? Cale must be teasing, they thought. Though Harold, prone to fantasy as he was, harbored fears. Was it possible that someone really was trying to hurt Alex Cale?
“My best guess?” said Jeffrey. “It’s a story. A lost manuscript. Conan Doyle must have decided it was garbage and hidden it away. He wouldn’t have wanted anyone to find and publish his subpar work.”
“Maybe,” said Harold. “But Conan Doyle published a lot of material in his life. And look, not to be blasphemous or anything, but they’re not all gems. ‘The Lion’s Mane’? ‘The Mazarin Stone’? I mean, really.”
Jeffrey laughed.
“I always took the view that Conan Doyle didn’t even write those awful late stories himself. They don’t quite sound like him. But the diary is from the fall of 1900. He was preparing to write The Hound of the Baskervilles. Probably his best work, if you ask me.”
“Yeah,” said Harold. “I’m not sure . . . I just don’t think it’s a story, for some reason. I think it’s . . .” Harold drifted off. He felt silly saying this out loud.
“It’s . . . ?” prompted Jeffrey.
“I mean, that it’s . . . That the diary has a secret in it. Something he didn’t want anyone to know. Something he wrote down for himself. And only himself. He was a writer. He was a devout diarist. He liked to put things on paper. It’s therapeutic. But then he didn’t want the world knowing whatever is in that thing.”
Jeffrey’s phone went off. The sound was somewhere between a squeak and a beep. He looked at the screen and, motioning an apology to Harold, answered his phone.
“Yes?” was all Jeffrey said, and then, after a moment, “Thank you.” Harold looked at him quizzically.
“So you think there’s a secret in that diary?” said Jeffrey. “Well then, kid, why don’t we find out?”
Harold was still just as confused.
“That was the concierge,” continued Jeffrey. “I told him to contact me as soon as Alex Cale checked in.” He smiled again, pleased with himself. “Cale is in the lobby. Want to go solve a mystery?”
Harold narrowly avoided knocking his drink over as he jumped up from his stool.
He bounded out of the wide double doors like Holmes on the trail of Professor Moriarty. Jeffrey, still smiling, followed into the radiant lobby.
Alex—Jeffrey was right, that was actually Alex Cale signing his name for the desk clerk—wore a thick trench coat, buttoned to the top, and held a heavy-looking briefcase in his right hand. He transferred the case to his left hand while he finished with the hotel forms. Effete but friendly, Alex was the kind of man who hosted as many parties as he attended and who had a knack for making sure that everyone was satisfied with a drink at even the parties for which he wasn’t responsible. Harold had met Alex at previous Sherlockian events, and of course he’d known Alex’s name almost as l
ong as he’d known the name Sherlock Holmes, but he did not know him well.
“Alex, my old friend, you’re here!” bellowed Jeffrey. Alex turned but didn’t seem entirely happy to see the two men heading toward him.
“Gentlemen,” said Alex quietly. His accent—English—was rare among the Irregulars, most of whom were American. Alex neither set down the case nor moved to embrace his two colleagues in any way. He stood there like a wet paper towel, damp and used. A storm must have kicked up outside. Harold hadn’t noticed. Alex’s pupils were wide, as if from lack of sleep. He seemed to gaze right past them.
“Where have you been all week, you old dog? We’ve missed you. Yesterday we had the most marvelous talk from Laurie King about the Woman—her role in the Great Hiatus, all that. Fascinating.”
“Sorry I missed it,” said Alex with obvious insincerity. He must know, thought Harold, that they did not want to talk to him about any of this. They wanted to talk to Alex about what everyone wanted to talk to Alex about: The diary. Tomorrow’s lecture. The solution to a hundred-year puzzle.
“Who are you?” asked Alex. He didn’t even bother to look Harold in the eye as he said it.
“Harold. I’m Harold White. I was just invested in the Irregulars tonight.” Harold reached out for a shake, but Alex made no move to take his hand. “We actually met once before. In California. You were at UCLA, giving a talk?”
“Right, yes,” said Alex. “I remember. Pleasure to see you again.” Alex clearly did not remember, nor did he seem particularly pleased.
“They get younger every year, don’t they?” said Jeffrey warmly.
Harold tried not to take offense.
“I’m not really that young,” countered Harold. “I’ve already—”
“Do not turn around,” said Alex abruptly.
Harold was confused. “I’m sorry?”
“ Do not turn around,” repeated Alex. Both Harold and Jeffrey were facing away from the hotel’s front doors, though both instinctively started to cheat their heads to the side. “There’s someone outside. Through the window. Do not turn, what’s-your-name—Harry?—what did I just say to you? Now, I’m going to shift slightly to my right. Yes. Now you two do the same. Yes. Again. Can you see anyone? There at the window?”