The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures
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Synopsis
The biggest collection of new Sherlock Holmes stories since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle laid down his pen - nearly 200,000 words of superb fiction featuring the Great Detective by masters of historical crime, including Stephen Baxter, H. R. F. Keating, Michael Moorcock and Amy Myers. Almost all the stories here are specially written; the cases presented in the order in which Holmes solved them. The result is a new life of Sherlock Holmes, with a continuous narrative alongside the stories that identifies the 'gaps' in the canon and places the new and hitherto unrecorded cases in sequence. Plus an invaluable complete Holmes chronology.
Release date: May 28, 2009
Publisher: C & R Crime
Print pages: 512
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The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures
Mike Ashley
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Richard Lancelyn Green
One of the most famous opening paragraphs in a Sherlock Holmes story is that found in “Thor Bridge” (which was first published in the 1920s). Dr Watson says: “Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox & Co., at Charing Cross, there is a travel-worn and battered tin dispatch-box with my name, John H. Watson, M.D., Late Indian Army, painted upon the lid. It is crammed with papers, nearly all of which are records of cases to illustrate the curious problems which Mr Sherlock Holmes had at various times to examine.” Readers had already been offered tantalizing details of many unrecorded cases in preceding stories, but this confirmed that he had a “long row of year-books which fill a shelf, and there are the dispatch cases filled with documents”. He rightly called it “a perfect quarry for the student, not only of crime, but of the social and official scandals of the late Victorian era”. It is into these that the authors represented in the present volume have dipped.
The influence of Sherlock Holmes made itself felt within months of the publication of the first short stories in the Strand Magazine. There was plagiarism which achieved its apogee with Sexton Blake who had rooms in Baker Street, and there were rivals who knew they could succeed only by being different. The “Golden Age” of detective fiction was littered with a strange array of private inquiry agents who were fat, blind, Belgian or of the opposite sex. Yet for all their attempts at being different, they never entirely escaped the shadow of Sherlock Holmes. As Scotland Yard had discovered, his longest shots invariably hit their mark, and even when he was outwitted, as he was by Irene Adler, his reputation was enhanced.
It is the art of a great writer to leave the reader anxious for more, and Dr Watson was such a writer. He often erred on the side of discretion, and he intrigued the reader because of his less than perfect grasp of detail. Where his knowledge failed he resorted to imagination and was not unduly concerned when this led to contradictions and inconsistencies within the text. He introduced colour and variety and irrelevance, which added to the myth and gave the reader a picture which was sharp in its essentials, but blurred at the edges.
No reader has ever put down the stories believing that Watson had said the last word on the subject. For some there was an irresistible urge to parody the style and to play with the name of Sherlock Holmes (which lends itself well to mutations such as Shylock Bones, Sherluck Gnomes, Picklock Holes, or Sheerlecoq Omes). The parodies made fun of the contrasting characteristics of Holmes and Watson, between the infallible brain which could distinguish 144 types of cigarette ash or recognize clay and earth from the counties of England (something still denied to the most sophisticated computers of the late twentieth century) and the obtuseness of the all-admiring friend.
The greatest scope for other writers lay in the unrecorded, unfathomed and unfinished cases. When Watson made it known that Holmes had survived the struggle at the Reichenbach Falls, there were demands that he should furnish the public with details of the cases which he had already mentioned, and he proceeded to do so with “The Second Stain” (to which he had referred on two occasions). Even then there was an alternative literature provided by others, including major writers such as Bret Harte, and Mark Twain (who introduced Holmes into his late novel, A Double-Barrelled Detective Story).
The early apocryphal works did not profess to be part of the original “canon”, for the concept only developed after Ronald Knox had elevated the study of Sherlock Holmes to new and rarefied heights in 1911 with his famous satirical essay, “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes”. This gave impetus to the serious study of the stories and raised the possibility that there was not one but two authors (as had been suggested in the writing of the Odyssey) or that Watson had described the early cases as they happened, but had invented the later ones to satisfy public demand. The new scholarship opened the way for others to take up their pens to continue the saga, while remaining faithful to their subject as had the story-tellers of old who created heroic deeds for Alexander the Great of which historians were previously unaware.
The apocryphal Sherlock Holmes story need not be a great detective story, but it has to be a convincing story of the great detective. The character is more important than the case. It is his method which appeals to the reader. It is the special relationship with Dr Watson, who holds up a mirror to nature and occasionally distorts the image to add glamour to the reflection. The additional stories should conform to the formula and yet should add variety. The purist might prefer the seemingly insignificant trifle that turns out to be important, and the humble and eccentric client often makes a better entrance at Baker Street than the representatives of the reigning houses of Europe or the emissaries of the Pope. The introduction of historical figures such as Oscar Wilde or Jack the Ripper is not always advisable as it could be said that they add an element of fiction to the self-contained world of Sherlock Holmes, and characters whose exploits have been documented by others sometimes have difficulty crossing the threshold at Baker Street. Watson could describe a case in which Sherlock Holmes outwitted Raffles, but it would not be the Raffles who is known to us through the writings of his friend, Bunny Manders. There again, there is no reason why Holmes’s grandson should not ape his grandfather and form a working partnership with Dr Watson’s granddaughter, but it is Dr Watson, and his work, who will always be most in demand. Whatever other cases remain in the battered dispatch box, readers are most anxious to have details of the cases which are known to them by name and which were solved by Sherlock Holmes.
This volume is exactly what is required. It contains an impressive array of cases which Watson mentioned and it has a scholarly status as it is arranged in chronological order with a connecting narrative which provides a biographical background. It is entertaining and informative, and is remarkable for the many distinguished writers who are among the contributors. It is a book which can be recommended and is in every sense a magnum opus.
Richard Lancelyn Green
Grateful acknowledgment is given to Dame Jean Conan Doyle for permission to use the Sherlock Holmes characters created by the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. My thanks also to Roger Johnson, Jon Lellenberg, Christopher Roden and R. Dixon Smith for their help and guidance during the preparation of this book, and to Richard Lancelyn Green for kindly providing the foreword. All of the stories in this volume are in copyright. The following acknowledgments are granted to the authors and their agents for permission to use their work.
“The Adventure of the Inertial Adjustor” © 1997 by Stephen Baxter. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Amateur Mendicant Society” © 1996 by John Gregory Betancourt. This story has been revised. An earlier version appeared in Resurrected Holmes, edited by Marvin Kaye (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1996). Printed by permission of the author.
“The Vanishing of the Atkinsons” © 1997 by Eric Brown. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Fallen Star” © 1997 by Simon Clark. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author and the author’s agent International Scripts Ltd.
“The Adventure of the Persecuted Painter” © 1997 by Basil Copper. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Touch of God” © 1997 by Peter Crowther. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Darlington Substitution Scandal” © 1997 by David Stuart Davies. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Legacy of Rachel Howells” © 1994 by Michael Doyle. Originally distributed privately in a limited edition for The Stormy Petrels of British Columbia, January 1994, and reprinted in Canadian Holmes, Autumn 1995. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Case of the Suicidal Lawyer” © 1997 by Martin Edwards. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Bulgarian Diplomat” © 1997 by Zakaria Erzinçlioglu. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Foreword” © 1997 by Richard Lancelyn Green. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Case of the Last Battle” © 1997 by L.B. Greenwood. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Case of the Incumbent Invalid” © 1997 by Claire Griffen. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of Vittoria the Circus Belle” © 1997 by Edward D. Hoch. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Grace Chalice” © 1987 by Roger Johnson. Originally published in The Sherlock Holmes Journal, Winter 1987. Revised for publication in this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Suffering Ruler” © 1983 by H.R.F. Keating. First published in John Creasey’s Crime Collection 1983 edited by Herbert Harris (London: Victor Gollancz, 1983). Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent Peters, Fraser & Dunlop.
“The Repulsive Story of the Red Leech” © 1997 by David Langford. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Enigma of the Warwickshire Vortex” © 1997 by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Dorset Street Lodger” © 1997 by Michael Moorcock. First commercial publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author and the author’s agent Curtis Brown Ltd.
“The Adventure of the Faithful Retainer” © 1997 by Amy Myers. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Dorian Literary Agency.
“The Mystery of the Addleton Curse” © 1997 by Barrie Roberts. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author and the author’s agent Laurence Pollinger Ltd.
“The Adventure of the Suspect Servant” © 1997 by Barbara Roden. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Silver Buckle” © 1997 by Denis O. Smith. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Case of the Sporting Squire” © 1997 by Guy N. Smith. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Affray at the Kildare Street Club” © 1997 by Peter Tremayne. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author and the author’s agent A.M. Heath & Co.
“The Adventure of the Parisian Gentleman” © 1997 by Robert Weinberg and Lois H. Gresh. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the authors.
“The Bothersome Business of the Dutch Nativity” © 1997 by Derek Wilson. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
The Life and Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
For more years than I care to remember I have been researching the life of the first and best known of all private consulting detectives, Mr Sherlock Holmes. It has not been easy. Devotees of the Sherlock Holmes cases will know that his friend and colleague Dr John Watson kept an assiduous record of many of the cases after they first met in January 1881, but he was not involved in them all.
When Holmes was reflecting over his cases in the hours before his cataclysmic struggle with Professor Moriarty in “The Final Problem”, he remarked to Watson that he had investigated over a thousand cases. That was in April 1891. In “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist” Watson comments that between 1894 and 1901 Holmes had been involved in every public case of any difficulty plus many hundreds of private cases. Watson goes on to say that “I have preserved very full notes of all these cases.” Yet when you look at the standard omnibus volume of Sherlock Holmes you will find only fifty-six short stories and four novels, sixty cases in all. In writing up these cases Watson makes tantalizing passing references to others, such as the repulsive story of the red leech, or the singular adventures of the Grice Patersons on the island of Uffa, but though he kept notes of these stories he did not complete all of them as finished cases. Even then he refers to just short of a hundred cases, so that in total we know of only about 160 cases, which is likely to be less than a tenth of all of the cases Holmes investigated. How wonderful it would be to know about the others. That has been my life’s work.
The obvious starting point was Watson’s papers. He told us in “The Problem of Thor Bridge” that they were filed away in a despatch box stored in the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co., at Charing Cross. Imagine my horror when, many years ago, in attempting to gain access to these records I discovered two things. Firstly that Watson was clever and had stored only some of his records in that bank vault, and that others were hidden elsewhere. But more frustrating was that I had been pipped at the post. The Cox Bank papers had already been collected by someone else and though he provided a name and identity for the purposes of the bank, I have never been able to trace him, and suspect that the identity he gave was false. Watson was fearful that his papers might be stolen. When he published the case of “The Veiled Lodger” in January 1927 he alerted the public to the fact that attempts had already been made to gain access to his papers and he gave a warning to one individual, whom he doesn’t name, that facts would be revealed about him if he didn’t desist. Occasionally stories purporting to be from these files have surfaced in books and magazines. Some may well be genuine, or at least give that appearance, but most are almost certainly false, written by those seeking to gain some reflected glory from the fame of Sherlock Holmes.
Over the years I have tracked down some of the original cases from papers at Scotland Yard, old newspaper files, and documents held in private archives. On rare moments I have stumbled across papers which almost certainly came from Watson’s despatch box, but I fear that most of those records are hidden in one or more private collections, possibly not even in England, purchased, I dare say, for a phenomenal price.
The trail is complicated by many false avenues and windings. Not even Watson was helpful. Frequently in his published cases he disguised the names of individuals, for obvious reasons, and falsified dates and locations, so that when he recorded that Holmes was investigating such-and-such a case it was as likely that Holmes was somewhere else at that time involved in a very private affair. Watson did his job well in masking the trail, and it will probably never be fully uncovered.
However, the time has come for me to share the product of some of my research. It is far from complete, but for fear that something may happen to me or to my own papers, I thought it was right to place some of it in print. Perhaps the existence of this book may bring me into contact with others who have access to further papers. Who knows?
In this volume I have pieced together something of the investigations of Sherlock Holmes and have presented twenty-six new cases completed by fellow researchers who have helped me in my quest. I have endeavoured to show where these cases fit into Holmes’s career and how they relate to the known cases. In an appendix at the end of this book I also provide a complete chronology of Holmes’s life and known cases, including some of the other write-ups of his investigations where I believe there has been a genuine effort to get at the truth.
Let us begin our quest, therefore, and return to the early days of Sherlock Holmes.
Mike Ashley
There is precious little record of Holmes’s early life. It is unusual that someone so famous could keep the details of his life so secret that it becomes necessary to think that it was deliberate. Holmes had little interest in the trivia of personal biography, so it is unlikely that he would have bothered to have disguised the trail. But others may certainly have done so in order to protect him, and thoughts turn immediately to his elder brother Mycroft Holmes who had considerable influence in government circles and could have easily pressed the right buttons in order to close whatever shutters were necessary.
We must therefore rely on what Watson himself tells us. In “His Last Bow”, which takes place in August 1914, Watson refers to Holmes as “a tall, gaunt man of sixty”. It is the only occasion where he mentions his age. We must be careful as he was describing Holmes in disguise as the Irish-American spy Altamont. Had Holmes aged himself or made himself look younger? We don’t know. And did Watson mean precisely sixty, or was he in his sixtieth year – in other words fifty-nine? If we accept it at face value, and since no other clue is given as to Holmes’s birthday, then we must conclude that Holmes was born in either 1853 or 1854, or at the latest in 1855. I prefer the earlier date because in “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” Holmes refers to himself as middle-aged which suggests forty-something. That story took place in 1889 or 1890 which would make Holmes’s year of birth earlier than 1850, but middle-aged is an indeterminate phrase and we can assume that a birth year somewhere in the early 1850s is as close as we’ll get. We may take some clue from the year in which Holmes retired, which was at the end of 1903. Did he do this on his fiftieth birthday? It would be an appropriate landmark.
Holmes came from a line of country squires but somewhere in his veins was the blood of the French artist Claude Vernet, from whose family Holmes also claimed descent. We do not know where Holmes was born, but his general dislike of the countryside suggests that he was raised somewhere remote, and as we shall see he certainly spent some of his youth in Ireland. This coupled with his reticence to discuss his childhood suggests that it might not have been happy, and we can imagine an almost reclusive child already intent upon his studies in logical deduction. Holmes was almost certainly educated at a private school before progressing to university.
It is at university that his abilities as a solver of puzzles came to the fore. Two of the recorded cases throw some light on Holmes’s University days. “The Gloria Scott”, Holmes tells us, was the first case in which he was engaged. He refers to the case again in “The Musgrave Ritual” saying that the Gloria Scott case “first turned my attention in the direction of the profession which has become my life’s work.” It is thus of some importance to date this investigation, but it is here that we first encounter Watson’s masking of facts. We could put a rough dating on it on the assumption that Holmes went to university when he was about eighteen or nineteen, which would place it in the period 1868 to 1872, and he talks about it occurring after two years at university, or between 1870 and 1874. In “The Veiled Lodger” Watson tells us Holmes was in active practice for twenty-three years. Since he retired in 1903, counting back would bring us to 1880, but we must also deduct the years of the Great Hiatus between “The Final Problem” in April 1891 and Holmes’s return in “The Empty House” in early 1894, a gap of three years. So he established himself as a consulting detective in 1877. We know from “The Musgrave Ritual” that Holmes set up his practice soon after university, so we can imagine he finished his university years around 1876. A span of university education from 1872 to 1876 therefore sounds realistic in the chronology and would place the Gloria Scott case in about 1874.
However, in the course of “The Gloria Scott” Holmes refers to events aboard the ship having taken place thirty years earlier in 1855, which would place the story in 1885. This has to be wrong, because Holmes and Watson met in 1881 by which time Holmes had been in practice for four years. Clearly there is some deliberate shifting of dates in this story, perhaps through Holmes’s faulty record keeping (always possible, as he was not a great record-keeper of things he regarded as unimportant), or Watson’s erroneous transcription of the case or, we should not forget, through Watson trying to hide the time of Holmes’s university years.
In fact my own research has revealed two episodes that happened to Holmes while at university that have previously gone unrecorded. They reveal that Holmes’s years at university were not without incident and it is not surprising that it has been difficult to tie him down, since he spent time at two universities. I am grateful to Peter Tremayne and Derek Wilson for their help in bringing the record of the episodes into their final form from scraps of evidence left by Watson. I have deliberately set the stories in reverse order of internal events because of the relative discovery of the episodes by Watson. The first happened during the period of Holmes’s apparent death, whilst Watson learned of the second after Holmes’s return. Here then, for the first time ever, are the earliest records of Sherlock Holmes.
Derek Wilson
The death of my dear friend, Sherlock Holmes, affected me more than a little and had I not had the demands of a growing medical practice and the care of a loving wife the loss which I, and indeed the nation, had suffered must have seriously undermined my constitution. For a long time I could scarcely bear it when my affairs took me to places where some of Holmes’s greatest triumphs had been enacted or where together we had faced dangerous villains or petty scoundrels. As for Baker Street, I avoided it completely; always ordering cab drivers to proceed by some roundabout route when conveying me through that part of London.
Yet time, as has often been observed, is a healer. I shared that experience common to all bereaved people: the transformation of memories from dreams almost too painful to be endured into visitations of consolation. Increasingly I found myself turning over the leaves of my journals and the printed accounts of Sherlock Holmes’s cases which I had been privileged to record. Much of the material I had garnered about my friend consisted of tantalizing scraps – hints about his earlier life and oblique references to cases of which I knew nothing. As the months passed more and more of my leisure time was spent in trying to arrange my memorabilia in some logical order so that I might obtain a grasp of the sweep of Holmes’s life. I lost no opportunity of asking others who had known my friend for any details that might have eluded me and it was in this way that what I call the Bothersome Business of the Dutch Nativity came to my attention.
In the spring of 1893, my wife and I were invited to Oxford to spend a few days with the Hungerfords. Adrian Hungerford was a fellow of Grenville college and he and Augusta were distant relatives of Mary’s. Despite Mary’s insistence that I should enjoy meeting her cousins it was with no very great enthusiasm that I accompanied her from Paddington station on the short journey to England’s most ancient centre of learning. As usual my beloved helpmeet was right. The Hungerfords were an intelligent and relaxed couple of middle years who gave us a welcome as warm as it was genuine.
It was on the second evening of our stay that Adrian Hungerford invited me to dine with him at his college. I enjoyed an excellent meal on the high table in Grenville’s ancient hall over which I was able, with some effort, to hold up my end of an erudite conversation with the master and the dean. After dinner I retired with the dozen or so fellows to the senior combination room where, over the ritual of claret, port and cigars, discussion, somewhat to my relief, ran into less scholarly channels.
“Am I not right in thinking, Dr Watson, that you were at some time associated with that detective fellow … what was his name … Hutchings?” The speaker was a shrivelled little man enveloped in a rather gangrenous master’s gown who had been earlier introduced to me as Blessingham.
“Holmes, Sherlock Holmes,” Hungerford corrected before I had a chance to reply. “Watson helped him with several of his cases, isn’t that so, John?” He turned to me with an apologetic smile. “You must forgive our isolationism, old man. We spend most of our time here behind a raised drawbridge protected from the more sensational doings of the outside world.”
“Helped with several cases, did you say?” Blessingham, who was obviously hard of hearing, cupped a hand to his ear and leaned closer. “Well, you weren’t here for his first case, were you?” He reached for the claret decanter, drained it into his glass and brandished it in the direction of a steward who hurried forward with a replacement.
“You refer, Sir, to the Gloria Scott, I assume,” I said.
“Gloria who? Never heard of the woman.” The old man gulped his wine. “No I mean the nonsense about that painting.”
I was suddenly aware that other conversations had stopped and that all eyes had turned towards Blessingham. Several of them registered alarm.
Rather hastily the dean said, “Our guest doesn’t want to hear about that lamentable incident.”
By this time my curiosity was, of course, thoroughly aroused. “On the countrary,” I said. “I am always eager to hear anything about my late friend.”
The master made a flapping gesture with his hand. “It was nothing and best forgotten. Holmes was only with us for a short time.”
“Holmes was here?” I asked with genuine surprise. “At Grenville? I had no idea …”
“Yes, 1872, I think … or was it ‘73? I know it was around the same time that Sternforth was up. He’s making quite a name for himself in Parliament now. Have you heard from him recently, Grenson?” Skilfully, the master turned the talk to other matters.
It can be imagined that this unlocking and hasty refastening of a hitherto unknown part of Holmes’s early life stirred considerable excitement within me. It was with difficulty that I contained all the questions I was longing to ask about it. Not until the following afternoon did I have the opportunity to interrogate Hungerford on the matter. Mary and I were taking a stroll through Christchurch Meadows with our host and hostess and I contrived to urge Hungerford to a slightly faster pace so that we might walk on ahead.
“What was that talk last night about Sherlock Holmes and a painting?” I enquired. “It seemed to embarrass some of your colleagues.”
“A number
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Richard Lancelyn Green
One of the most famous opening paragraphs in a Sherlock Holmes story is that found in “Thor Bridge” (which was first published in the 1920s). Dr Watson says: “Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox & Co., at Charing Cross, there is a travel-worn and battered tin dispatch-box with my name, John H. Watson, M.D., Late Indian Army, painted upon the lid. It is crammed with papers, nearly all of which are records of cases to illustrate the curious problems which Mr Sherlock Holmes had at various times to examine.” Readers had already been offered tantalizing details of many unrecorded cases in preceding stories, but this confirmed that he had a “long row of year-books which fill a shelf, and there are the dispatch cases filled with documents”. He rightly called it “a perfect quarry for the student, not only of crime, but of the social and official scandals of the late Victorian era”. It is into these that the authors represented in the present volume have dipped.
The influence of Sherlock Holmes made itself felt within months of the publication of the first short stories in the Strand Magazine. There was plagiarism which achieved its apogee with Sexton Blake who had rooms in Baker Street, and there were rivals who knew they could succeed only by being different. The “Golden Age” of detective fiction was littered with a strange array of private inquiry agents who were fat, blind, Belgian or of the opposite sex. Yet for all their attempts at being different, they never entirely escaped the shadow of Sherlock Holmes. As Scotland Yard had discovered, his longest shots invariably hit their mark, and even when he was outwitted, as he was by Irene Adler, his reputation was enhanced.
It is the art of a great writer to leave the reader anxious for more, and Dr Watson was such a writer. He often erred on the side of discretion, and he intrigued the reader because of his less than perfect grasp of detail. Where his knowledge failed he resorted to imagination and was not unduly concerned when this led to contradictions and inconsistencies within the text. He introduced colour and variety and irrelevance, which added to the myth and gave the reader a picture which was sharp in its essentials, but blurred at the edges.
No reader has ever put down the stories believing that Watson had said the last word on the subject. For some there was an irresistible urge to parody the style and to play with the name of Sherlock Holmes (which lends itself well to mutations such as Shylock Bones, Sherluck Gnomes, Picklock Holes, or Sheerlecoq Omes). The parodies made fun of the contrasting characteristics of Holmes and Watson, between the infallible brain which could distinguish 144 types of cigarette ash or recognize clay and earth from the counties of England (something still denied to the most sophisticated computers of the late twentieth century) and the obtuseness of the all-admiring friend.
The greatest scope for other writers lay in the unrecorded, unfathomed and unfinished cases. When Watson made it known that Holmes had survived the struggle at the Reichenbach Falls, there were demands that he should furnish the public with details of the cases which he had already mentioned, and he proceeded to do so with “The Second Stain” (to which he had referred on two occasions). Even then there was an alternative literature provided by others, including major writers such as Bret Harte, and Mark Twain (who introduced Holmes into his late novel, A Double-Barrelled Detective Story).
The early apocryphal works did not profess to be part of the original “canon”, for the concept only developed after Ronald Knox had elevated the study of Sherlock Holmes to new and rarefied heights in 1911 with his famous satirical essay, “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes”. This gave impetus to the serious study of the stories and raised the possibility that there was not one but two authors (as had been suggested in the writing of the Odyssey) or that Watson had described the early cases as they happened, but had invented the later ones to satisfy public demand. The new scholarship opened the way for others to take up their pens to continue the saga, while remaining faithful to their subject as had the story-tellers of old who created heroic deeds for Alexander the Great of which historians were previously unaware.
The apocryphal Sherlock Holmes story need not be a great detective story, but it has to be a convincing story of the great detective. The character is more important than the case. It is his method which appeals to the reader. It is the special relationship with Dr Watson, who holds up a mirror to nature and occasionally distorts the image to add glamour to the reflection. The additional stories should conform to the formula and yet should add variety. The purist might prefer the seemingly insignificant trifle that turns out to be important, and the humble and eccentric client often makes a better entrance at Baker Street than the representatives of the reigning houses of Europe or the emissaries of the Pope. The introduction of historical figures such as Oscar Wilde or Jack the Ripper is not always advisable as it could be said that they add an element of fiction to the self-contained world of Sherlock Holmes, and characters whose exploits have been documented by others sometimes have difficulty crossing the threshold at Baker Street. Watson could describe a case in which Sherlock Holmes outwitted Raffles, but it would not be the Raffles who is known to us through the writings of his friend, Bunny Manders. There again, there is no reason why Holmes’s grandson should not ape his grandfather and form a working partnership with Dr Watson’s granddaughter, but it is Dr Watson, and his work, who will always be most in demand. Whatever other cases remain in the battered dispatch box, readers are most anxious to have details of the cases which are known to them by name and which were solved by Sherlock Holmes.
This volume is exactly what is required. It contains an impressive array of cases which Watson mentioned and it has a scholarly status as it is arranged in chronological order with a connecting narrative which provides a biographical background. It is entertaining and informative, and is remarkable for the many distinguished writers who are among the contributors. It is a book which can be recommended and is in every sense a magnum opus.
Richard Lancelyn Green
Grateful acknowledgment is given to Dame Jean Conan Doyle for permission to use the Sherlock Holmes characters created by the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. My thanks also to Roger Johnson, Jon Lellenberg, Christopher Roden and R. Dixon Smith for their help and guidance during the preparation of this book, and to Richard Lancelyn Green for kindly providing the foreword. All of the stories in this volume are in copyright. The following acknowledgments are granted to the authors and their agents for permission to use their work.
“The Adventure of the Inertial Adjustor” © 1997 by Stephen Baxter. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Amateur Mendicant Society” © 1996 by John Gregory Betancourt. This story has been revised. An earlier version appeared in Resurrected Holmes, edited by Marvin Kaye (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1996). Printed by permission of the author.
“The Vanishing of the Atkinsons” © 1997 by Eric Brown. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Fallen Star” © 1997 by Simon Clark. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author and the author’s agent International Scripts Ltd.
“The Adventure of the Persecuted Painter” © 1997 by Basil Copper. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Touch of God” © 1997 by Peter Crowther. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Darlington Substitution Scandal” © 1997 by David Stuart Davies. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Legacy of Rachel Howells” © 1994 by Michael Doyle. Originally distributed privately in a limited edition for The Stormy Petrels of British Columbia, January 1994, and reprinted in Canadian Holmes, Autumn 1995. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Case of the Suicidal Lawyer” © 1997 by Martin Edwards. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Bulgarian Diplomat” © 1997 by Zakaria Erzinçlioglu. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“Foreword” © 1997 by Richard Lancelyn Green. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Case of the Last Battle” © 1997 by L.B. Greenwood. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Case of the Incumbent Invalid” © 1997 by Claire Griffen. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of Vittoria the Circus Belle” © 1997 by Edward D. Hoch. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Grace Chalice” © 1987 by Roger Johnson. Originally published in The Sherlock Holmes Journal, Winter 1987. Revised for publication in this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Suffering Ruler” © 1983 by H.R.F. Keating. First published in John Creasey’s Crime Collection 1983 edited by Herbert Harris (London: Victor Gollancz, 1983). Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent Peters, Fraser & Dunlop.
“The Repulsive Story of the Red Leech” © 1997 by David Langford. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Enigma of the Warwickshire Vortex” © 1997 by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Dorset Street Lodger” © 1997 by Michael Moorcock. First commercial publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author and the author’s agent Curtis Brown Ltd.
“The Adventure of the Faithful Retainer” © 1997 by Amy Myers. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Dorian Literary Agency.
“The Mystery of the Addleton Curse” © 1997 by Barrie Roberts. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author and the author’s agent Laurence Pollinger Ltd.
“The Adventure of the Suspect Servant” © 1997 by Barbara Roden. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Silver Buckle” © 1997 by Denis O. Smith. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Case of the Sporting Squire” © 1997 by Guy N. Smith. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Affray at the Kildare Street Club” © 1997 by Peter Tremayne. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author and the author’s agent A.M. Heath & Co.
“The Adventure of the Parisian Gentleman” © 1997 by Robert Weinberg and Lois H. Gresh. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the authors.
“The Bothersome Business of the Dutch Nativity” © 1997 by Derek Wilson. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
The Life and Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
For more years than I care to remember I have been researching the life of the first and best known of all private consulting detectives, Mr Sherlock Holmes. It has not been easy. Devotees of the Sherlock Holmes cases will know that his friend and colleague Dr John Watson kept an assiduous record of many of the cases after they first met in January 1881, but he was not involved in them all.
When Holmes was reflecting over his cases in the hours before his cataclysmic struggle with Professor Moriarty in “The Final Problem”, he remarked to Watson that he had investigated over a thousand cases. That was in April 1891. In “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist” Watson comments that between 1894 and 1901 Holmes had been involved in every public case of any difficulty plus many hundreds of private cases. Watson goes on to say that “I have preserved very full notes of all these cases.” Yet when you look at the standard omnibus volume of Sherlock Holmes you will find only fifty-six short stories and four novels, sixty cases in all. In writing up these cases Watson makes tantalizing passing references to others, such as the repulsive story of the red leech, or the singular adventures of the Grice Patersons on the island of Uffa, but though he kept notes of these stories he did not complete all of them as finished cases. Even then he refers to just short of a hundred cases, so that in total we know of only about 160 cases, which is likely to be less than a tenth of all of the cases Holmes investigated. How wonderful it would be to know about the others. That has been my life’s work.
The obvious starting point was Watson’s papers. He told us in “The Problem of Thor Bridge” that they were filed away in a despatch box stored in the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co., at Charing Cross. Imagine my horror when, many years ago, in attempting to gain access to these records I discovered two things. Firstly that Watson was clever and had stored only some of his records in that bank vault, and that others were hidden elsewhere. But more frustrating was that I had been pipped at the post. The Cox Bank papers had already been collected by someone else and though he provided a name and identity for the purposes of the bank, I have never been able to trace him, and suspect that the identity he gave was false. Watson was fearful that his papers might be stolen. When he published the case of “The Veiled Lodger” in January 1927 he alerted the public to the fact that attempts had already been made to gain access to his papers and he gave a warning to one individual, whom he doesn’t name, that facts would be revealed about him if he didn’t desist. Occasionally stories purporting to be from these files have surfaced in books and magazines. Some may well be genuine, or at least give that appearance, but most are almost certainly false, written by those seeking to gain some reflected glory from the fame of Sherlock Holmes.
Over the years I have tracked down some of the original cases from papers at Scotland Yard, old newspaper files, and documents held in private archives. On rare moments I have stumbled across papers which almost certainly came from Watson’s despatch box, but I fear that most of those records are hidden in one or more private collections, possibly not even in England, purchased, I dare say, for a phenomenal price.
The trail is complicated by many false avenues and windings. Not even Watson was helpful. Frequently in his published cases he disguised the names of individuals, for obvious reasons, and falsified dates and locations, so that when he recorded that Holmes was investigating such-and-such a case it was as likely that Holmes was somewhere else at that time involved in a very private affair. Watson did his job well in masking the trail, and it will probably never be fully uncovered.
However, the time has come for me to share the product of some of my research. It is far from complete, but for fear that something may happen to me or to my own papers, I thought it was right to place some of it in print. Perhaps the existence of this book may bring me into contact with others who have access to further papers. Who knows?
In this volume I have pieced together something of the investigations of Sherlock Holmes and have presented twenty-six new cases completed by fellow researchers who have helped me in my quest. I have endeavoured to show where these cases fit into Holmes’s career and how they relate to the known cases. In an appendix at the end of this book I also provide a complete chronology of Holmes’s life and known cases, including some of the other write-ups of his investigations where I believe there has been a genuine effort to get at the truth.
Let us begin our quest, therefore, and return to the early days of Sherlock Holmes.
Mike Ashley
There is precious little record of Holmes’s early life. It is unusual that someone so famous could keep the details of his life so secret that it becomes necessary to think that it was deliberate. Holmes had little interest in the trivia of personal biography, so it is unlikely that he would have bothered to have disguised the trail. But others may certainly have done so in order to protect him, and thoughts turn immediately to his elder brother Mycroft Holmes who had considerable influence in government circles and could have easily pressed the right buttons in order to close whatever shutters were necessary.
We must therefore rely on what Watson himself tells us. In “His Last Bow”, which takes place in August 1914, Watson refers to Holmes as “a tall, gaunt man of sixty”. It is the only occasion where he mentions his age. We must be careful as he was describing Holmes in disguise as the Irish-American spy Altamont. Had Holmes aged himself or made himself look younger? We don’t know. And did Watson mean precisely sixty, or was he in his sixtieth year – in other words fifty-nine? If we accept it at face value, and since no other clue is given as to Holmes’s birthday, then we must conclude that Holmes was born in either 1853 or 1854, or at the latest in 1855. I prefer the earlier date because in “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” Holmes refers to himself as middle-aged which suggests forty-something. That story took place in 1889 or 1890 which would make Holmes’s year of birth earlier than 1850, but middle-aged is an indeterminate phrase and we can assume that a birth year somewhere in the early 1850s is as close as we’ll get. We may take some clue from the year in which Holmes retired, which was at the end of 1903. Did he do this on his fiftieth birthday? It would be an appropriate landmark.
Holmes came from a line of country squires but somewhere in his veins was the blood of the French artist Claude Vernet, from whose family Holmes also claimed descent. We do not know where Holmes was born, but his general dislike of the countryside suggests that he was raised somewhere remote, and as we shall see he certainly spent some of his youth in Ireland. This coupled with his reticence to discuss his childhood suggests that it might not have been happy, and we can imagine an almost reclusive child already intent upon his studies in logical deduction. Holmes was almost certainly educated at a private school before progressing to university.
It is at university that his abilities as a solver of puzzles came to the fore. Two of the recorded cases throw some light on Holmes’s University days. “The Gloria Scott”, Holmes tells us, was the first case in which he was engaged. He refers to the case again in “The Musgrave Ritual” saying that the Gloria Scott case “first turned my attention in the direction of the profession which has become my life’s work.” It is thus of some importance to date this investigation, but it is here that we first encounter Watson’s masking of facts. We could put a rough dating on it on the assumption that Holmes went to university when he was about eighteen or nineteen, which would place it in the period 1868 to 1872, and he talks about it occurring after two years at university, or between 1870 and 1874. In “The Veiled Lodger” Watson tells us Holmes was in active practice for twenty-three years. Since he retired in 1903, counting back would bring us to 1880, but we must also deduct the years of the Great Hiatus between “The Final Problem” in April 1891 and Holmes’s return in “The Empty House” in early 1894, a gap of three years. So he established himself as a consulting detective in 1877. We know from “The Musgrave Ritual” that Holmes set up his practice soon after university, so we can imagine he finished his university years around 1876. A span of university education from 1872 to 1876 therefore sounds realistic in the chronology and would place the Gloria Scott case in about 1874.
However, in the course of “The Gloria Scott” Holmes refers to events aboard the ship having taken place thirty years earlier in 1855, which would place the story in 1885. This has to be wrong, because Holmes and Watson met in 1881 by which time Holmes had been in practice for four years. Clearly there is some deliberate shifting of dates in this story, perhaps through Holmes’s faulty record keeping (always possible, as he was not a great record-keeper of things he regarded as unimportant), or Watson’s erroneous transcription of the case or, we should not forget, through Watson trying to hide the time of Holmes’s university years.
In fact my own research has revealed two episodes that happened to Holmes while at university that have previously gone unrecorded. They reveal that Holmes’s years at university were not without incident and it is not surprising that it has been difficult to tie him down, since he spent time at two universities. I am grateful to Peter Tremayne and Derek Wilson for their help in bringing the record of the episodes into their final form from scraps of evidence left by Watson. I have deliberately set the stories in reverse order of internal events because of the relative discovery of the episodes by Watson. The first happened during the period of Holmes’s apparent death, whilst Watson learned of the second after Holmes’s return. Here then, for the first time ever, are the earliest records of Sherlock Holmes.
Derek Wilson
The death of my dear friend, Sherlock Holmes, affected me more than a little and had I not had the demands of a growing medical practice and the care of a loving wife the loss which I, and indeed the nation, had suffered must have seriously undermined my constitution. For a long time I could scarcely bear it when my affairs took me to places where some of Holmes’s greatest triumphs had been enacted or where together we had faced dangerous villains or petty scoundrels. As for Baker Street, I avoided it completely; always ordering cab drivers to proceed by some roundabout route when conveying me through that part of London.
Yet time, as has often been observed, is a healer. I shared that experience common to all bereaved people: the transformation of memories from dreams almost too painful to be endured into visitations of consolation. Increasingly I found myself turning over the leaves of my journals and the printed accounts of Sherlock Holmes’s cases which I had been privileged to record. Much of the material I had garnered about my friend consisted of tantalizing scraps – hints about his earlier life and oblique references to cases of which I knew nothing. As the months passed more and more of my leisure time was spent in trying to arrange my memorabilia in some logical order so that I might obtain a grasp of the sweep of Holmes’s life. I lost no opportunity of asking others who had known my friend for any details that might have eluded me and it was in this way that what I call the Bothersome Business of the Dutch Nativity came to my attention.
In the spring of 1893, my wife and I were invited to Oxford to spend a few days with the Hungerfords. Adrian Hungerford was a fellow of Grenville college and he and Augusta were distant relatives of Mary’s. Despite Mary’s insistence that I should enjoy meeting her cousins it was with no very great enthusiasm that I accompanied her from Paddington station on the short journey to England’s most ancient centre of learning. As usual my beloved helpmeet was right. The Hungerfords were an intelligent and relaxed couple of middle years who gave us a welcome as warm as it was genuine.
It was on the second evening of our stay that Adrian Hungerford invited me to dine with him at his college. I enjoyed an excellent meal on the high table in Grenville’s ancient hall over which I was able, with some effort, to hold up my end of an erudite conversation with the master and the dean. After dinner I retired with the dozen or so fellows to the senior combination room where, over the ritual of claret, port and cigars, discussion, somewhat to my relief, ran into less scholarly channels.
“Am I not right in thinking, Dr Watson, that you were at some time associated with that detective fellow … what was his name … Hutchings?” The speaker was a shrivelled little man enveloped in a rather gangrenous master’s gown who had been earlier introduced to me as Blessingham.
“Holmes, Sherlock Holmes,” Hungerford corrected before I had a chance to reply. “Watson helped him with several of his cases, isn’t that so, John?” He turned to me with an apologetic smile. “You must forgive our isolationism, old man. We spend most of our time here behind a raised drawbridge protected from the more sensational doings of the outside world.”
“Helped with several cases, did you say?” Blessingham, who was obviously hard of hearing, cupped a hand to his ear and leaned closer. “Well, you weren’t here for his first case, were you?” He reached for the claret decanter, drained it into his glass and brandished it in the direction of a steward who hurried forward with a replacement.
“You refer, Sir, to the Gloria Scott, I assume,” I said.
“Gloria who? Never heard of the woman.” The old man gulped his wine. “No I mean the nonsense about that painting.”
I was suddenly aware that other conversations had stopped and that all eyes had turned towards Blessingham. Several of them registered alarm.
Rather hastily the dean said, “Our guest doesn’t want to hear about that lamentable incident.”
By this time my curiosity was, of course, thoroughly aroused. “On the countrary,” I said. “I am always eager to hear anything about my late friend.”
The master made a flapping gesture with his hand. “It was nothing and best forgotten. Holmes was only with us for a short time.”
“Holmes was here?” I asked with genuine surprise. “At Grenville? I had no idea …”
“Yes, 1872, I think … or was it ‘73? I know it was around the same time that Sternforth was up. He’s making quite a name for himself in Parliament now. Have you heard from him recently, Grenson?” Skilfully, the master turned the talk to other matters.
It can be imagined that this unlocking and hasty refastening of a hitherto unknown part of Holmes’s early life stirred considerable excitement within me. It was with difficulty that I contained all the questions I was longing to ask about it. Not until the following afternoon did I have the opportunity to interrogate Hungerford on the matter. Mary and I were taking a stroll through Christchurch Meadows with our host and hostess and I contrived to urge Hungerford to a slightly faster pace so that we might walk on ahead.
“What was that talk last night about Sherlock Holmes and a painting?” I enquired. “It seemed to embarrass some of your colleagues.”
“A number
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