Sherlock Holmes

by David Marcum

  “The Scotsman who just died? The writer?”

  “The very same. In memory of his passing, I wanted to review an unpublished chapter from an early volume of his. Do you know, Watson, though I don’t trumpet it about, I was instrumental in helping him write one of his most famous novels.”

  “Surely not that scandalous thriller, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? You know, of course, that there are more than a few naïfs who believe that the monstrous Mr. Hyde was real and that you, in fact, played some role in ending his reign of terror.”

  Holmes dismissed the notion with a wave of his hand. “No,” said he, shaking his head, “my contribution was to a more swashbuckling kind of tale.”

  Clearly, I was about to hear a new bit of Holmesian history. In preparation, I poured us both a glass of sherry and settled into an armchair. “Do tell,” I encouraged him.

  Holmes sampled his drink and then began the following account: “As you are aware, Watson, a month or so after I’d come up from Cambridge, I joined an acting company. Not long thereafter, in the summer of ‘79, I found myself performing on the stage in New York.”

  I knew of Holmes’s brief acting career as well as his appearance on the New York stage. Indeed, I have always believed that the theatre lost a great actor when my friend turned his mind to criminal detection.

  “As it turned out,” Holmes continued, “Stevenson arrived in New York in the middle of August. He was on his way to San Francisco to join the American divorcée with whom he had fallen in love during a trip to France. In point of fact, he planned to begin his railway journey west the day following his arrival.”

  “After just one night in New York City, Holmes?”

  “He had Cupid to propel him, old fellow. I should have thought that a romantic like yourself would admire his haste.”

  “But a single night, Holmes, in so vibrant a metropolis!”

  “True,” Sherlock Holmes nodded, “but let us not forget that the singular night in question was the occasion of our meeting. In fact, I remember the evening quite well. We were staging a pantomime of Robinson Crusoe. It had been raining heavily, and the members of the cast were wondering how many people would be willing to brave the elements for an evening’s entertainment. A small hole in the red-velvet curtain allowed us to scrutinize the audience as they arrived.

  “‘Not too bad a house,’ I remember Nellie Ross observing as she backed away from the velvet to give me a look.”

  “Nelly Ross?”

  “The ingénue playing Robinson Crusoe.”

  “Ah.”

  “I peered through the aperture at the sparse group and was immediately attracted to a slight young man entering the rear of the hall. He wore his dark hair long, almost to his shoulders, and a distinctive if scraggly moustache adorned his pale, oval-shaped face. Although his hollow eyes, set widely apart, gave him a cadaverous look, it was actually his burgundy-coloured velveteen jacket that first caught my eye. I spotted it hanging on his frail form once he had removed his wet Mackintosh. Before taking his seat, he covered his mouth with a free hand, and I could tell from the shaking of his body that he was fighting a paroxysm of coughing. Only when it subsided did he settle into his chair next to the man with whom he had entered the auditorium.

  “The longer I stared, the greater my realisation that there was something familiar to me about the young man’s Bohemian aspect. It was only after he had donned a gilt-embroidered Indian skullcap, however, that I finally identified him. For, you see, I had witnessed him thus distinctively apparelled at Hatchards a few months before I’d left England. He had coughed then as well. It was all quite remarkable. Before me in a New York theatre sat the little-known British writer, Robert Louis Stevenson.

  “It was the man’s insightful depictions of murder that had originally attracted me to his reading. I was at the beginning of my detecting career, and criminal pursuits had always fascinated me. His selected passages to be read at Hatchards that day were to be taken from a tale of death he had written two years before – one of his first, actually – called A Lodging for the Night. It dealt with the reactions of the infamous French poet, François Villon, to a vicious murder.”

  “Triggered by Stevenson’s surprising appearance at the theatre that evening, memories of Hatchards flooded my brain. But at the same time, I knew we had a show to put on, and with the curtain about to rise, I needed to assume my role. I was portraying a villainous pirate – a one-legged sea cook, no less – and I had to take my spot before the curtain rose.

  Happily, in spite of the incessant rain and only partially-filled house, we put on a rousing performance that night, and to show his appreciation, Stevenson requested permission to come back-stage to congratulate the entire company. He greeted us all equally, certainly having no cause to single me out in any way. No, Watson, as you can well imagine, it required a singular crime to bring the two of us together.”

  I’m afraid I knit my brows at this last proclamation. “I can understand not hearing of such an occurrence from you, Holmes,” said I, “But as I recall, Stevenson himself was a prolific chronicler of his journeys. At least two works, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes and An Inland Voyage, report his adventures on the Continent. And yet, I have never seen in print an account of the alleged crime to which you are referring.”

  “Quite so,” said Holmes with a quick smile. He then finished his sherry and, putting put down the glass, picked up the papers he had withdrawn from the tin box.

  “News of our meeting,” said he, ‘”never appeared in the published accounts of Stevenson’s travels in America. In the letter he wrote me that accompanied these pages, he explained that he had sent the account home for publication. His friends and publishers, however, in order to maintain a positive image of the writer, chose to omit any stories they found objectionable or controversial. Apparently, Stevenson’s depiction of himself as a target of criminals in New York City stood no chance of being published.”

  At this point, Holmes handed me the unbound pages.

  “Enough of my blather,” said he. “Why not let Louis himself tell you what happened?”

  Scrawled across the top sheet in Holmes’s penmanship were the words, “Excised from the chapter ‘New York’ in The Amateur Emigrant by Robert Louis Stevenson (Translations from the Latin rendered by S. Holmes)”. My friend filled his pipe in preparation for an uninterrupted smoke, I leaned back in my armchair and began to read.

  II

  Castle Garden, New York City. I have already mentioned my debarkation from the Devonia, a steam-ship of considerable tonnage. Maintaining my admittedly weak alias of Robert Stephenson, I clambered down the gangway in the company of Mr. Jones, the Welsh blacksmith and fellow traveller I had befriended during the course of the voyage. You would be hard-pressed to find a more uncomfortable crossing than we had experienced – the unsavoury food, the constant vomiting, the constipation, the incessant scratching, not to mention the haughty looks that the so-called “lords of the saloon” cast down upon those of us in the second cabins and steerage.

  And yet our misery continued when, upon arriving in New York that 17th of August, we were greeted by a deluge that must have rivalled the downpour witnessed by Noah himself. Indeed, my entire stay, however brief, in the city nicknamed “Gotham” was accompanied by the steady drumbeat of falling water. You understand that I was in a hurry to go west, but the economical “emigrant trains” did not run on Sundays, and thus I had to spend the night in the city.

  It had been raining when we docked at the edge of the Hudson River, and the rain showed no sign of abating as we sought transportation to our digs. Though we passengers had been warned about the New York City hucksters seeking to separate us from our money, we none the less paid dearly for spots on the soggy straw bottom of an open baggage wagon for the short ride from the docks to our lodgings.

  At just past six o’clock Sunday evening, our conveyance deposited us at Reunion House, the small establishment at No. 10 West Street advertis
ed as presenting “private rooms for families”. It was also just a few minutes’ walk to the steamboat landing. Upon the following evening, I would be sailing the short distance to Jersey City, where I was to find the train heading west. But most attractive about Reunion House were its charges.

  You should understand that problems with money plagued both Jones and me. Jones had been married and prosperous earlier his life, but his wife had died, and his money had run out. As for me, my father – either disappointed in my failure to pursue a career in the law or disapproving of my current quest for love – had cut off my finances. Thus afflicted, Jones and I agreed to share a single room at twenty-five cents a night. With individual meals costing the same “two bits” (as the Americans call the quarter of a dollar), we exchanged nods and signed the register.

  What a bargain we had struck! The bed was small enough to send me to the floor for sleeping. The remaining amenities – a solitary wooden chair and well-worn wood clothes-pegs for our wet coats – were not much better. In short, except for the not insignificant roof above our heads, we found no relief within our tiny cell from the dampness and gloom we were already attaching to the city. My skin itched, my lungs rattled, my teeth ached, my stomach growled, and now the walls appeared to be closing in.

  Yet in spite of all this misery, I sensed that conditions had to improve. I took the time to remember that I had indeed reached the “promised land”. I was in America, after all. My luck would have to turn. “O brave new world!” I reassured myself, “post nubila Phoebus” [After dark clouds, the sun.] Tomorrow would be a better day.

  In the meantime, however, our melancholia persisted, a condition that did not go unrecognized by Michael Mitchell, the proprietor and publican of the Reunion. How often must he have encountered travellers like Jones and me, pilgrims who had suffered a ten-day’s tumultuous voyage at sea and now faced the vagaries of life in New York City sodden with rain.

  “Boys,” said he, wiping clean some glasses at the bar, “I have just the remedy for your downcast spirits.”

  Expecting an offer of gin or rum or some other variety of alcohol on his shelf, I was duly surprised by his suggestion.

  “What do you say to a night at the theatre? A British pantomime’s going on this evening at Booth’s. Robinson Crusoe. It’s just the thing for wandering Brits. The theatre’s at 23rd and 6th Avenue. It’s a couple of miles from here, but if you hurry, you should arrive just before the curtain goes up, even with all the rain.”

  “Booth’s?” I queried. It was the only word I had retained.

  “Edwin Booth,” Mitchell said with a nod, “the actor who built the theatre, not his traitor of a brother you’re probably thinking of – John Wilkes Booth, who murdered Lincoln. Edwin’s one of our greatest players.”

  The sensational has always interested me, and I confess to having cultivated a ghoulish curiosity in the Booth family since I had first learned of the President’s assassination some fourteen years previous. Jones too expressed interest in seeing the place, yet our interests were dampened when Mitchell informed us that the theatre no longer belonged to brother Edwin.

  “Five years ago,” Mitchell explained, “he lost the place to bankruptcy. He just hadn’t been able to make it work. The new owners wanted larger audiences. Oh, they continued to put on classical shows the way Booth did – you know, Shakespeare and the like – but to attract new people, they staged more crowd-friendly shows like these British pantomimes.”

  I was impressed with Mitchell. For an American, he displayed a keen sense of British Theatre. I knew that most of his countrymen believed that the word “pantomime” suggested silent affairs. The British “panto”, of course, was anything but. In our native land, such shows were often inspired by popular children’s stories – Robin Hood or Aladdin, for example – but the pantos usually maintained their own good-natured variety of peculiar plots, along with singing, dancing, joking, and – dare I say – participation from the audience. In short, any similarity to their sources would be purely coincidental. However genteel the original story, the British panto would take it down a few pegs. You would think that democratic Americans would like the deflating nature of such stage-productions, and yet the British pantomime is a rara avis (rare bird) in the States – the very reason, according to Mitchell, that crowds fill the theatres to witness the uncommon phenomenon.

  Another motivation also beckoned. I should confess that thanks in part to the current interest in the theme, I myself had been contemplating a book about the sea. What’s more, the charm of Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe’s fictional account of the castaway sailor called Alexander Selkirk, has made that work a favourite model of mine. As a consequence, no matter the cost of a ticket, attending the panto became my major objective for the evening.

  All this I explained to Jones. With the promise that we would have dinner after the performance, I had every expectation that he would join me. After all, did each of us not consider himself the other’s right-hand man? Such was the camaraderie we had cultivated aboard the Devonia. He moaned a bit about the cost of tickets, but when I suggested we could save money by walking to Booth’s Theatre, he acquiesced. We stored our belongings in the room we had agreed to share – I, my knapsack, small valise, and railway-rug, Jones, his travelling bag – pulled on our mackintoshes, patted down on our flat caps, and gritted our teeth. Only then, armed with Mitchell’s directions, did Jones and I emerge from Reunion House prepared to confront the elements.

  How relentless the rain! It pelted us as we plodded along the flooded roadways. Massive buildings towered above, the odd awning or overhanging roof offering the most minimum of shelters. In the gloom, gas lamps flickered above empty sidewalks, the reflections of light dancing in the deserted watery streets. No pushcarts, no vendors, no police interrupted the scene. The occasional hansom or carriage might roll past, but you did not have to be a native New Yorker to know that this evening was a time to remain indoors.

  Lest it sound otherwise, let me reassure you that we did reach our destination in time for the curtain’s rise. Booth’s Theatre itself was modern in its accoutrements and beautifully done up. Whilst the lobby smelled of drenched hats and sodden coats, the shiny marble floor remained continuously mopped. An imposing statue of Junius Brutus Booth, the actor’s father and distinguished Shakespearian performer, lorded over the scene. You can imagine the lobby much more crowded on days less fouled by the weather. As it was, we had no difficulty finding the ticket window and purchasing inexpensive seats. Dashing to their location at the rear of the hall, we just managed to remove our coats and settle into our chairs before the music began. During the sprightly overture, I attempted to get comfortable. My hands had begun to itch and I scratched at them. A cough racked my chest, and I covered my mouth with my arms. Finally, a chill coursed through my body, which had already lost some fourteen pounds during the voyage. My only solution was to place my old skullcap atop my head.

  It was at that moment that the curtain rose, and I caught my first glimpse of William Escott. During the performance itself, you should not believe that I focused all my attention on the man. Yet in all fairness, as he thumped about on that peg leg, he was quite hard to miss. It was in light of how the evening progressed, however, that I have chosen to concentrate my attention upon him now. Jones and I came to learn the man’s history only later that night, but I believe that at the risk of upsetting the evening’s chronology, I should provide the background of the actor before describing his performance. Such a detour should serve to help you understand the troubling events that occurred following the play’s conclusion.

  Escott had begun his acting career in 1879 by joining the Shakespearian Company of Michael Sasanoff. And yet, though boasting of having performed with such theatrical giants as Sir Henry Irving and Sir Max Beerbohm Tree, he confessed to never having truly considered the stage as his calling. In point of fact, at age twenty-five, he had begun to envision his future not as an actor, but rather (in his words) as a “
consulting detective” – “the world’s first,” he hastened to add.

  For Escott, acting served only as necessary preparation. “There is no better way of seeing through a disguise,” he announced, “than being able to assume one.” Without having as his goal a career on the stage, he remained generally content – especially in the beginning – with small parts like the first or second “walking gentleman” – or even “low comedian”. For Escott, impersonation was the thing – learning the tricks of make-up and costume to appear convincingly in the persona of someone other that oneself.

  In the early spring of ‘79, “Old Sasanoff” (as he was called) informed the actors that he had arranged for the company a lengthy tour of America. Beginning in November, they were to spend a short time in New York City, proceed to Chicago, and then travel west. To Escott, such a trip posed more than the simple opportunity to further his acting skills. To him, the trip provided the perfect opportunity for familiarising himself with American life.

  “I’d heard New York City described as ‘The Modern Gomorrah’,” he told me, “and I wanted to know why. I needed more time there than Sasanoff was offering.”

  Although he never explained how he intended to go about it, Escott envisioned the metropolis as the perfect spot to examine the full range of criminal behaviours. As a consequence, having no central roles to perform in London, he asked Sasanoff if he might leave for America well before the others in the troupe and re-join them once they arrived in the fall. Apparently, Sasanoff liked Escott’s work well enough and, save for the muttering about the need to find a replacement, agreed to rehire him upon reaching New York. In August, therefore, William Escott sailed for the United States.

  Despite his inexpensive lodgings near Broadway, it did not take Escott long to consume most of the money he had set aside for his adventure, and he realized the need to find employment if he was to fend off starvation before November when the Sasanoff company was scheduled to arrive. As luck would have it, during a sightseeing venture to Booth’s Theatre, he discovered that not only was a Robinson Crusoe panto about to be mounted by the Watley Players, a visiting group from England under the direction of Malcolm Watley, but also that the company stood in need of additional actors.