by David Marcum
I must say that in light of all the challenging events of the day, it was quite an enjoyable dinner – even if the wine and chicken did not pass for authentic coq au vin. To be honest, I was most appreciative of the coffee. The wretched brew on the ship tasted of snuff. Indeed, you really could not tell it apart from the tea.
Following dinner, we shared cigarettes – I rolled my favourite Three Castles – and after a few puffs I began to cough.
Both Escott and Jones showed signs of concern as my hacking went on. But I waved them off with a few flicks of my hand.
“Not to worry,” I told my companions and immediately changed the subject. “You know of my scribbling,” I said to Escott. “I’m hoping to produce a narrative of this trip worthy of publication.”
My new friends both raised their glasses.
“To your next work,” said Escott.
I smiled, having decided to share a thought I had been mulling over most of the evening, a thought that I had actually been contemplating well before witnessing the night’s performance. The affair with the wallet had temporarily put it out of mind. You must believe that months before the curtain went up on Robinson Crusoe I had begun nurturing a plot for a full-length work of fiction that would take place at sea.
“Whatever happens during my journey west, I have a new plan for an adventurous novel, and, Escott, I owe it to you.”
The actor cocked an eyebrow.
“No, really, Escott. You see, for some time now I’ve been considering a sea story. Your panto started me thinking about it again – in particular, your portrayal of the one-legged sea cook and that empty hidey-hole you discovered. They’ve helped me move the plot along. So have some of the colourful names I heard tonight.”
Escott shrugged. “Glad to be of service,” said he, clinking his glass with mine.
A chuckle escaped my lips. “I expect that people will say my one-legged pirate was modelled after my one-legged friend, the poet William Henley. And I must admit that writing a story about someone so afflicted has indeed crossed my mind before. But your performance – not to mention that wobbly parrot – seems to have been just the inspiration I needed to touch off the action. And for that I am truly grateful.”
Escott sat silently for a few moments, as if contemplating his next words. Finally, he gave a brief nod of his head, as if to indicate that he had decided in the affirmative. “Speaking of role-playing, “ said he, “you should know that Escott is my acting pseudonym. In reality, I am called Sherlock Holmes.”
In the Bohemian world of theatre, such news caused no great excitement. “Well then,” said I, “here’s to Sherlock Holmes,” and I raised my glass. “Call me ‘Louis’,” I added with a smile.
“I’m still Jones,” said our other companion with a laugh.
We finished our smokes, and Escott walked Jones and me back through the rain to Reunion House. The showers were not as heavy as earlier in the day, but they were still coming down in a watery curtain. The next evening I would begin my long railway excursion to the west. I had no reason to think that I would ever again hear the name Sherlock Holmes. But at least I could complete this leg of my journey in the belief that, however inadvertently, I might have played some small role in helping forge the career of the world’s first consulting detective.
III
The day after I had read Stevenson’s narrative, I made my way to the London Library in St. James’s Square, where the sub-librarian Lomax procured for me a copy of the novel triggered by Stevenson’s visit to the panto at Booth’s Theatre. Book in hand, I proceeded to the Northumberland Arms near Trafalgar Square. My literary agent, Arthur Conan Doyle, and I had scheduled a holiday meeting at one of his favourite public houses to discuss my idea for a story about Holmes’s recent return to life. It had been just a few months since he had shocked me with his dramatic re-appearance following his encounter with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. After all, Holmes had been thought dead for close to three years. As we exchanged literary strategies, we also enjoyed a tankard or two. Conan Doyle paused, however, when he noted the book at my side.
“Stevenson, I see,” he observed grimly. “What a loss. Another Scotsman with genius – a wonderful teller of tales. If I do say so myself, Louis was one of the great storytellers of the race. He glorified the ‘masculine type’, if you take my meaning. Do you know that there are those who call that book next to you the finest narrative in the English language? It was originally titled The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys. Stevenson employed the pseudonym of ‘Captain George North’ when he first published it. The story appeared in serialized sections in the children’s magazine called Young Folks. He wrote it in the two years following his meeting with Holmes.”
Conan Doyle paused to sample the ale. Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “Do you know, John, that Stevenson wrote to me just how much he enjoyed Sherlock Holmes? To tell the truth, I didn’t know if he meant the man himself or the hero of your accounts – though he did say that reading one of your stories had given him momentary relief from a bout of pleurisy.”
My agent broke into a round of hearty laughter. “As a doctor myself,” he said, “I regard that as quite a compliment. Don’t you agree?”
I nodded sadly, thinking of Stevenson’s early death.
Later that evening, following a meal of lamb and potatoes, I settled into my armchair in the sitting room with the book in my hands. The tin box and the Stevenson manuscript were no longer in sight. A fire crackled in the hearth, and I prepared myself for a relaxing read. With Christmas but a week away, 221b seemed the most ideal spot in the world. With a satisfied smile, I opened the book called Treasure Island and read: “. . . I remember him as if it were yesterday as he came plodding to the inn door . . . .”
The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
An anomaly which often struck me in the character of my friend Sherlock Holmes was that, although in his methods of thought he was the neatest and most methodical of mankind, and although also he affected a certain quiet primness of dress, he was none the less in his personal habits one of the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction. Not that I am in the least conventional in that respect myself. The rough-and-tumble work in Afghanistan, coming on the top of a natural Bohemianism of disposition, has made me rather more lax than befits a medical man. But with me there is a limit, and when I find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece, then I begin to give myself virtuous airs. I have always held, too, that pistol practice should be distinctly an open-air pastime, and when Holmes, in one of his queer humors, would sit in an arm-chair with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges, and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V. R. Done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved by it.
Our chambers were always full of chemicals and of criminal relics which had a way of wandering into unlikely positions, and of turning up in the butter-dish or in even less desirable places. But his papers were my great crux. He had a horror of destroying documents, especially those which were connected with his past cases, and yet it was only once in every year or two that he would muster energy to docket and arrange them, for, as I have mentioned somewhere in these incoherent memoirs, the outbursts of passionate energy when he performed the remarkable feats with which his name is associated were followed by reactions of lethargy during which he would lie about with his violin and his books, hardly moving save from the sofa to the table. Thus month after month his papers accumulated, until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned, and which could not be put away save by their owner.
One winter’s night, as we sat together by the fire, I ventured to suggest to him that, as he had finished pasting extracts into his c
ommon-place book, he might employ the next two hours in making our room a little more habitable. He could not deny the justice of my request, so with a rather rueful face went off to his bedroom, from which he returned presently pulling a large tin box behind him. This he placed in the middle of the floor and, squatting down upon a stool in front of it, he threw back the lid. I could see that it was already a third full of bundles of paper tied up with red tape into separate packages.
“There are cases enough here, Watson,” said he, looking at me with mischievous eyes. “I think that if you knew all that I had in this box you would ask me to pull some out instead of putting others in.”
“These are the records of your early work, then?” I asked. “I have often wished that I had notes of those cases.”
“Yes, my boy, these were all done prematurely before my biographer had come to glorify me.” He lifted bundle after bundle in a tender, caressing sort of way. “They are not all successes, Watson,” said he. “But there are some pretty little problems among them. Here’s the record of the Tarleton murders, and the case of Vamberry, the wine merchant, and the adventure of the old Russian woman, and the singular affair of the aluminium crutch, as well as a full account of Ricoletti of the club-foot, and his abominable wife. And here – ah, now, this really is something a little recherche.”
He dived his arm down to the bottom of the chest, and brought up a small wooden box with a sliding lid, such as children’s toys are kept in. From within he produced a crumpled piece of paper, and old-fashioned brass key, a peg of wood with a ball of string attached to it, and three rusty old disks of metal.
“Well, my boy, what do you make of this lot?” he asked, smiling at my expression.
“It is a curious collection.”
“A Curious Collection”
“Very curious, and the story that hangs round it will strike you as being more curious still.”
“These relics have a history then?”
“So much so that they are history.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Sherlock Holmes picked them up one by one, and laid them along the edge of the table. Then he reseated himself in his chair and looked them over with a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes.
“These,” said he, “are all that I have left to remind me of the adventure of the Musgrave Ritual.”
I had heard him mention the case more than once, though I had never been able to gather the details. “I should be so glad,” said I, “if you would give me an account of it.”
“And leave the litter as it is?” he cried, mischievously. “Your tidiness won’t bear much strain after all, Watson. But I should be glad that you should add this case to your annals, for there are points in it which make it quite unique in the criminal records of this or, I believe, of any other country. A collection of my trifling achievements would certainly be incomplete which contained no account of this very singular business.
“You may remember how the affair of the Gloria Scott, and my conversation with the unhappy man whose fate I told you of, first turned my attention in the direction of the profession which has become my life’s work. You see me now when my name has become known far and wide, and when I am generally recognized both by the public and by the official force as being a final court of appeal in doubtful cases. Even when you knew me first, at the time of the affair which you have commemorated in A Study in Scarlet, I had already established a considerable, though not a very lucrative, connection. You can hardly realize, then, how difficult I found it at first, and how long I had to wait before I succeeded in making any headway.
“When I first came up to London I had rooms in Montague Street, just round the corner from the British Museum, and there I waited, filling in my too abundant leisure time by studying all those branches of science which might make me more efficient. Now and again cases came in my way, principally through the introduction of old fellow-students, for during my last years at the University there was a good deal of talk there about myself and my methods. The third of these cases was that of the Musgrave Ritual, and it is to the interest which was aroused by that singular chain of events, and the large issues which proved to be at stake, that I trace my first stride towards to position which I now hold.
“Reginald Musgrave had been in the same college as myself, and I had some slight acquaintance with him. He was not generally popular among the undergraduates, though it always seemed to me that what was set down as pride was really an attempt to cover extreme natural diffidence. In appearance he was a man of exceedingly aristocratic type, thin, high-nosed, and large-eyed, with languid and yet courtly manners. He was indeed a scion of one of the very oldest families in the kingdom, though his branch was a cadet one which had separated from the northern Musgraves some time in the sixteenth century, and had established itself in western Sussex, where the Manor House of Hurlstone is perhaps the oldest inhabited building in the county. Something of his birth place seemed to cling to the man, and I never looked at his pale, keen face or the poise of his head without associating him with gray archways and mullioned windows and all the venerable wreckage of a feudal keep. Once or twice we drifted into talk, and I can remember that more than once he expressed a keen interest in my methods of observation and inference.
Reginald Musgrave
“For four years I had seen nothing of him until one morning he walked into my room in Montague Street. He had changed little, was dressed like a young man of fashion – he was always a bit of a dandy – and preserved the same quiet, suave manner which had formerly distinguished him.
“‘How has all gone with you Musgrave?’ I asked, after we had cordially shaken hands.
“‘You probably heard of my poor father’s death,’ said he. ‘He was carried off about two years ago. Since then I have of course had the Hurlstone estates to manage, and as I am member for my district as well, my life has been a busy one. But I understand, Holmes, that you are turning to practical ends those powers with which you used to amaze us?’
“‘Yes,’ said I, ‘I have taken to living by my wits.’
“‘I am delighted to hear it, for your advice at present would be exceedingly valuable to me. We have had some very strange doings at Hurlstone, and the police have been able to throw no light upon the matter. It is really the most extraordinary and inexplicable business.’
“You can imagine with what eagerness I listened to him, Watson, for the very chance for which I had been panting during all those months of inaction seemed to have come within my reach. In my inmost heart I believed that I could succeed where others failed, and now I had the opportunity to test myself.
“‘Pray, let me have the details,’ I cried.
“Reginald Musgrave sat down opposite to me, and lit the cigarette which I had pushed towards him.
“‘You must know,’ said he, ‘that though I am a bachelor, I have to keep up a considerable staff of servants at Hurlstone, for it is a rambling old place, and takes a good deal of looking after. I preserve, too, and in the pheasant months I usually have a house-party, so that it would not do to be short-handed. Altogether there are eight maids, the cook, the butler, two footmen, and a boy. The garden and the stables of course have a separate staff.
“‘Of these servants the one who had been longest in our service was Brunton the butler. He was a young school-master out of place when he was first taken up by my father, but he was a man of great energy and character, and he soon became quite invaluable in the household. He was a well-grown, handsome man, with a splendid forehead, and though he has been with us for twenty years he cannot be more than forty now. With his personal advantages and his extraordinary gifts – for he can speak several languages and play nearly every musical instrument – it is wonderful that he should have been satisfied so long in such a position, but I suppose that he was comfortable, and lacked energy to make any change. The butler of Hurlstone is always a thing that is remembered by all who visit us.
“‘But this paragon has one
fault. He is a bit of a Don Juan, and you can imagine that for a man like him it is not a very difficult part to play in a quiet country district.
“‘When he was married it was all right, but since he has been a widower we have had no end of trouble with him. A few months ago we were in hopes that he was about to settle down again for he became engaged to Rachel Howells, our second house-maid, but he has thrown her over since then and taken up with Janet Tregellis, the daughter of the head game-keeper. Rachel – who is a very good girl, but of an excitable Welsh temperament – had a sharp touch of brain-fever, and goes about the house now – or did until yesterday – like a black-eyed shadow of her former self. That was our first drama at Hurlstone, but a second one came to drive it from our minds, and it was prefaced by the disgrace and dismissal of butler Brunton.
“‘This was how it came about. I have said that the man was intelligent, and this very intelligence has caused his ruin, for it seems to have led to an insatiable curiosity about things which did not in the least concern him. I had no idea of the lengths to which this would carry him, until the merest accident opened my eyes to it.
“‘I have said that the house is a rambling one. One day last week – on Thursday night, to be more exact – I found that I could not sleep, having foolishly taken a cup of strong cafe noir after my dinner. After struggling against it until two in the morning, I felt that it was quite hopeless, so I rose and lit the candle with the intention of continuing a novel which I was reading. The book, however, had been left in the billiard-room, so I pulled on my dressing-gown and started off to get it.
“‘In order to reach the billiard-room I had to descend a flight of stairs and then to cross the head of a passage which led to the library and the gun-room. You can imagine my surprise when, as I looked down this corridor, I saw a glimmer of light coming from the open door of the library. I had myself extinguished the lamp and closed the door before coming to bed. Naturally my first thought was of burglars. The corridors at Hurlstone have their walls largely decorated with trophies of old weapons. From one of these I picked a battle-axe, and then, leaving my candle behind me, I crept on tiptoe down the passage and peeped in at the open door.