by Robin Paige
“Thank you,” Doyle said simply. “Given your distinguished service in the Sudan, I dare say your opinion might hold considerable weight in certain quarters.” Charles gave him an inquiring look, and he added, “I was told about it by Rudyard Kipling, when I was visiting him in Vermont. You know how storytellers love to share heroic tales.”
Charles colored. He rarely spoke of his career as an officer and in fact would have preferred that his military exploits not be known, for he was still deeply troubled by the fact that he had survived and been awarded a knighthood for bravery when all his men had died. But the Empire was a small world, paradoxically, and it was not possible to entirely ignore one’s past, especially when others were acquainted with it.3
Doyle went on in his blustery tone, “By the way, I’ve extended an invitation to you and your ladyship, and to Miss Marsden as well, to attend a séance tonight, not far distant across the moor, in the direction of Chagford. Lady Sheridan has agreed, but please don’t feel obliged to do so, if it doesn’t suit you.”
“A séance?” Charles asked, somewhat surprised. He had known Doyle for some years, and this was something new. “I wasn’t aware that you had an interest in spiritualism.”
“Since my days in Southsea nearly fifteen years ago,” Doyle said in a careless tone, “when I made rather a scientific study of it.” They were nearing the hotel, and the shapes of several Dartmoor ponies, wandering down the street, came at them out of the fog. The ponies, which ran wild on the moor, were a common sight in the town and a favorite of people on holiday. “I have been for some time a member of the Society for Psychical Research. My interest is entirely scientific, of course. Most mediums are out-and-out frauds, but I am told that Nigel Westcott, the man conductingtonight’s séance, is quite extraordinary in his ability to contact the spirits.”
“The evening might be... interesting,” Charles said cautiously. The previous June, he had watched, spellbound, as Harry Houdini escaped from the handcuffs that locked him to a pillar in front of New Scotland Yard—good, solid cuffs fastened on him by the incorruptible Superintendent Melville. Charles was intrigued with the way Houdini had managed it, and his interest in mediums was of the same order. As far as he was concerned, both magicians and mediums manipulated their audience’s perceptions in quite skillful ways, playing on their desire to see what did not exist. On the whole, he would have preferred to remain by the fire with a book, but if Kate were going...
“Must I accept on the spot, or may I consider it?” he asked.
“Oh, by all means, take your time in considering it,” Doyle said. He coughed and added, somewhat diffidently, “I am here to do some writing. A new Sherlock Holmes adventure, set here on the moor, and with quite a Gothic flavor.”
Charles raised his eyebrows. “A new adventure? But I thought Holmes was dead.” In fact, it was his distinct impression that Doyle had sent his detective over Reichenbach Falls some years before because he had come to see Holmes almost as a monster, a Frankenstein—as Oscar Wilde had once observed—of whom he could not rid himself and who got into the way of his more serious writing.
“Holmes remains dead,” Doyle said firmly, “no doubt about it. This is to be a previously untold tale, taken out of Watson’s dispatch box.”
“Indeed,” Charles said politely. “Does the tale have a name?”
“It does,” Doyle replied. “I am calling it The Hound of the Baskervilles.”
“I see,” said Charles. “Well, if Dartmoor Prison figures in your story, I should be glad to arrange an introduction to the governor and a visit to the prison itself.”
“Thank you, but I think that’s not necessary,” Doyle said, with a look of distaste. “I doubt that the prison itself will play any substantial role in the plot. There may be something about an escaped convict, but I haven’t yet worked it all out. Actually, atmosphere is the main thing in this story.” He waved a hand toward North Hessory Tor, its dark bulk looming out of the mist behind them. “The moors, you see. Their vastness, their savage wildness, the danger of being hopelessly lost or swallowed up by the immense bogs.”
Charles, who had visited Dartmoor many times in the past two decades, wanted to reply that the moors weren’t all that vast or savage, and that the danger of the bogs was greatly exaggerated. The story about the man who sank into a mire so deep that only his hat remained visible was just that: a very silly story told to entertain holiday visitors and keep them from tramping all over the place. He said none of this, of course, for he guessed that Doyle was more interested in the fantastic tales that were told about the moor than in the reality of the place, while to Charles himself, it was the reality that was entirely fascinating. When the project at the prison was well under way, he intended to walk to Grimspound to see the dig Baring-Gould had conducted a few years before, and then to Hound Tor, where there was a ruin which had not yet been excavated.
By this time, they had reached the Duchy’s small stone porch. “Well, then,” Charles said, extending his hand, “I’m off to tea with Kate. Perhaps we shall see one another this evening.”
“I should look forward to it,” Doyle said warmly, as they shook hands.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Doyle spoke (to Kate) as if he were speaking to a child. “My dear young lady, you clearly do not understand the labor of authorship. The difficulty is that each short story needs as clear-cut and original a plot as a longish book would do.” He frowned. “At any rate, Holmes is dead. Even if I wanted to bring the fellow back to life, I could not. He lies at the bottom of a vast precipice.”
“But Sherlock Holmes can hardly remain dead,” Kate objected pertly. “Your readers will not allow it. And I think it would not be difficult to call him from the vasty deep.”
(Oscar) Wilde’s full lips curved slightly upward. “Ah, but will he come when you do call for him? That, my dear Doyle, is the question.”
Death at Bishop’s Keep (set in 1894)
Robin Paige
Kate had spent a pleasant afternoon curled up in her red dressing gown in a large, comfortable chair before the fire, a copy of Conan Doyle’s The White Company on her lap and a cup of tea at her elbow. The Duchy Hotel—“homely and most comfortable,” according to the advertisement—might not be as splendidly furnished as hotels in London, but the second-floor suite was clean and spacious, boasting a private bath and coal fires in both the sitting room and bedroom, and heavy draperies that closed out the cold drafts. It also boasted a few rather nice touches: beaded lampshades, paintings of moor vistas by local artists, even a few books and magazines.
But The White Company was her own, a favorite which she had by coincidence brought with her. It was a stirring novel of fourteenth-century England, a truly Gothic tale, and she was hoping to gain some inspiration by rereading it. The work had first appeared in serial form in 1891 and then as a three-volume novel the following year. Kate had always suspected that the popularity of the book—it had sold in vast numbers—had encouraged Doyle to push Sherlock Holmes into Reichenbach Falls so that he would have more time and energy to devote to the writing of historical novels, apparently closer to his literary heart than detective fiction. But while he had produced quite a bit—a major project in almost every year—the critics seemed to believe that he had lost focus, and his readers didn’t know what to make of the bewildering variety of his work. There was more historical fiction, a number of plays, some Kiplingesque poetry, a romantic novel that the critics failed to appreciate, and a journalistic war chronicle. She could understand why he did not want to be pinned down to the Holmes stories, but nothing else quite seemed to take his fancy, either. If he chose not to write any more Sherlocks, she wondered, what would he write?
Kate closed her book and gazed into the fire, remembering with amusement her first encounter with Conan Doyle, before she had married Charles and become Lady Sheridan. At the time, Beryl Bardwell’s writing was not yet known to an English audience, and Dr. Doyle had replied to her questions as if she had
been an impertinent girl, as she no doubt had seemed. In fact, she’d had the amazing temerity to suggest a method for bringing Holmes back from his fatal plunge in “The Final Problem,” to which Doyle had retorted, his beetle brows stubbornly pulled together: “Fellow’s dead and dead he stays. I shan’t have him bullying me for the rest of my days.”4 She had even heard him say that he was sorry to owe his fame to work that was such a poor reflection of his abilities as a writer.
She looked up from the fire as Charles came in, shrugging out of his coat and hanging it on the carved oaken umbrella rack near the door. Smelling of fresh air and the windswept moor, he bent over and dropped a kiss on her hair.
She lifted an affectionate hand to touch the silver drops beaded in his beard. “It must be raining,” she said. She got up and went to the tea tray, where the pot was wrapped in a knitted cozy to keep it warm. “Is it chilly?”
“A bit, although the local people would probably consider the temperature quite mild.” Charles rubbed his hands and went to stand in front of the fire. “I happened to meet Conan Doyle as I was coming back from having a look at the church. We stood and talked for a time.” With a grateful smile, he took the cup she handed him. “He said he spoke with you earlier.”
“Yes, Patsy and I met him in the dining room.” Kate poured another cup for herself and returned to her chair, feeling pleasantly warm and lazy. “He has invited us to go out tonight for a séance. Did he happen to mention it to you?”
“Yes. I thought I might go and see if this medium is as good a deceiver as Harry Houdini, the Handcuff King,” Charles said with a laugh, taking the other chair. He pulled off one boot, then the other, and stretched out his stockinged feet with a sigh of pleasure. “Although I must confess that I was surprised to learn that the creator of the eminently logical Sherlock appears to have a genuine interest in spiritualism.” He leaned back in his chair, smiled at Kate, and picked up his teacup. “Your interest, of course, I can easily understand. Yours and Beryl Bardwell’s, that is. It is the detached, ironic interest of a pair of writers with a Gothic novel up their sleeves.”
“Indeed,” Kate replied. “Dr. Doyle promised me a castle tonight, as well as a séance, and I’m quite determined to have both, even if we should have to go out into a blizzard.”
She took a deep pleasure in the teasing glance that crinkled the corners of Charles’s sherry-brown eyes and the smile half hidden in his brown beard. There was a new lightness in him these days, a relaxed easiness, and she knew why. He was relieved that his mother was at peace at last, free of her illness and constant pain, and of her hatred, too.
In the best of times, the Dowager Lady Sommersworth had not been a happy woman, and she had been so angered by her younger son’s decision to marry Kate—who had committed the unpardonable sins of being both American and Irish—that she had determined to make them all quite miserable. Kate and Charles married, against her wishes, in 1896. The years since had often been difficult, especially after Charles’s older brother Robert died, bequeathing to him the responsibilities of the Sommersworth estate, the family seat in the House of Lords, and the care and maintenance of their mother. But Charles and Kate had agreed that when they were not in London for the sitting of Parliament, the two of them would live at Bishop’s Keep, the Essex estate she had inherited from her Ardleigh aunts. Now that both his brother and his mother were dead and Charles no longer had to keep a kind of peace in the family, he was free to do what he liked with Sommersworth, free, even, to resign the peerage, if he chose, and return to the life of a country gentleman, amateur photographer, and student of the forensic sciences. Kate knew that this was a tempting prospect, and, accounted, in part, for his present pleasant state of mind.
“How did your work at the prison go today?” she asked.
“Oh, very well,” Charles said. “The prison is unspeakably appalling, but it was good to see Oliver Cranford again, and there are one or two young guards who are quite interested in the fingerprinting project. Tomorrow I shall introduce them to the rudiments of analysis and classification. With a little study, I’m sure that they shall become expert enough to do the job without supervision.”
“I’ m so glad,” Kate said. There was nothing the fifth baron of Sommersworth liked quite so much as teaching a student who showed both interest and aptitude. If Charles had been permitted to choose the course of his life, he might have become a schoolmaster or a university lecturer in one of the sciences. But there was still time for that, if he chose—and whatever he chose, she would support him.
“Doyle happened to mention that he was at work on another of his Holmes mysteries,” Charles remarked, stirring his tea. “It’s to be called The Hound of—’ ” He frowned. “Dash it all, I’ve forgot the title. The Hound of Something-or-Other. It’s set here on the moor.”
“It must take place before Holmes’s disappearance in ‘The Final Problem,’ ” Kate said thoughtfully. “Or does he plan to resurrect the man?”
“He insists that Sherlock is still quite dead,” Charles said. “This story takes place before the Falls.” He frowned. “You know, I reread ‘The Final Problem’ not long ago and found certain incidents quite problematic. In fact, the whole thing required, shall we say, a definite suspension of disbelief.”
“An interesting phrase,” Kate murmured, thinking about her own problems with the story. “Can you give me an instance?”
“Well, take the final confrontation between Holmes and Moriarty, for example. It occurs at Reichenbach Falls, after the professor has pursued Holmes throughout Europe. Both of them have anticipated their encounter for weeks, and yet neither is armed. You will recall that Sherlock displays his revolver early in the story, when Professor Moriarty confronts him in Baker Street. After that incident, Holmes believes that Moriarty’s sole object in life is his destruction. But what does he do?”
Kate started to reply, but Charles, now speaking rather warmly, answered his own question. “He wanders about Europe unarmed, that’s what he does. You’ll pardon me if I have difficulty believing that anyone would be that careless.”
“But Holmes is armed, if I recall,” Kate objected. “That is, he has his alpenstock, which Watson later finds leaning against a rock.”
“Exactly,” Charles said, with some sarcasm. “Against a rock. And apparently the Napolean of crime does not have a gun, or chooses not to use it, for the two men wrestle—wrestle, of all things!—and both go over the falls. It sounds more like a suicide pact than a duel.” He paused. “And there is the long note Holmes leaves for Watson. Did that not trouble you?”
“I must confess that it had not,” Kate said with a little smile. “But now that you bring it up—”
“Indeed,” Charles said, sounding rather disgusted. “Can you picture the archfiend Moriarty permitting Holmes to take out his notebook and write a three-page letter giving explicit directions to locate the evidence he has assembled against Moriarty’s henchmen?”
“I don’t suppose I read the scene quite that critically,” Kate said. “I only—”
But again Charles interrupted her. “If you want to know what I think, I believe that Moriarty was armed, and that he gulled Holmes into believing that when his note to Watson was finished, they would settle matters in a chivalrous contest. At that point, he simply shot Holmes and pushed his body over the falls, leaving the letter as proof of their mutually fatal altercation and some telltale scuffle marks to satisfy Watson’s so-called ‘experts.’ In so doing, the evil genius sacrificed his henchmen, whom he no doubt considered expendable, in order to reinforce a belief in their dual demise. So Holmes is dead and Moriarty alive, after all,” he concluded triumphantly. With a pitying laugh, he added, “Poor Watson. Without Holmes, he simply couldn’t get it right. ”
“Poor Holmes,” Kate replied dryly. “Dead, by the hand of his own creator—and if you are correct, without having taken Moriarty with him.”
“When you have eliminated the impossible,” Charles said in a lof
ty tone, “whatever is left, no matter how improbable it may appear, must be the truth.”
Kate pulled her dressing gown around her. “My dear, I’m afraid you really shouldn’t read fiction—or if you do, you must learn to suspend all your disbelief. Most stories simply don’t lend themselves to rigorous standards of analysis. Sherlock Holmes has many devotees, and none of them raise such questions.”
Charles gave her a stern look. “Well, perhaps they should. Or perhaps fiction writers should be held to a higher standard of realism. Have you ever read a detective story in which the murderer actually goes to trial or to prison? Of course not. The story is designed solely to display the detective’s cerebral prowess, as if murder were nothing more than an intellectual puzzle.” He sighed. “And in real life, detectives make mistakes quite often, and the wrong man can be convicted as easily as not.”
Kate thought about that for a moment. “I agree with all you say,” she replied, rising from her chair, “but I fear that readers would not find a courtroom or a prison to be an appealing setting. Not nearly so appealing or cozy as Number Two twenty-one B Baker Street.” She came around the back of Charles’s chair and put her arms around his neck, burying her face in his hair.
“I suppose,” Charles said. He took her hand and kissed it. “Of course, there is another explanation.”
Kate straightened. “Another explanation for what?”
“For the fact that there are no bodies,” Charles replied darkly. “The theory works if one is willing to focus on the author’s motives and may even explain his lack of attention to details. Perhaps Doyle has merely been biding his time. Perhaps he never intended to kill Sherlock Holmes but only wanted to give himself a rest from those stories. Perhaps he intends to resurrect the fellow after all. Retrieve him from the brink of the abyss, as it were.”
Kate smiled to herself as she went into the bedroom to change. And perhaps Charles was not so easily able to suspend his disbelief, after all.