The Sherlockian

CHAPTER 40 The Old Centuries

January 16, 2010

As Harold’s cab passed from under the great pines, he gazed up at Undershaw for the first time. Most of the windows were shattered. Empty husks of jagged glass hung from the peeling panes, like the teeth of a dying animal. The windows that weren’t empty were boarded up with cheap, rotting wood. The grass out front was tall and unkempt, sprouting mangy vines that scratched at the bricks.

Harold had never laid eyes on Undershaw before, though he’d seen it in photographs. He could only imagine what it must have looked like in its prime. To think that behind those faded walls the entire second half of the Canon had been written. Holmes had been resurrected from the Great Hiatus not a hundred feet from the spot along the driveway where Harold’s cab pulled to a dusty stop. For once he might actually be days-or even moments-away from knowing why. Who knew how many scholars had made this trip before him and come away empty handed? Harold would not be among them. He felt awed, he felt humbled, and yet a part of him was glad that he was going to first enter this house now, and not earlier in his life. Because now, Harold felt, he was worthy of its secrets.

An elderly woman sat on the stone steps leading to the front door. Only there was no front door, just a series of broken wood planks that had been nailed together. The woman was hunched over, hair pulled back in a bun, her bent frame wrapped in the sort of heavy, dark coat that would have been equally at place in any decade of the last six. She kept her head buried in a thick volume of photographs on her lap.

The woman-broad-boned, heavy-cheeked, rosacea pink-was named Penelope Higgins, and Harold had spoken with her late the previous day. Her mother had been Conan Doyle’s maid, and Penelope had lived in Hindhead her entire life. The Conan Doyle family had sold the house a generation ago, and for most of the century it had been a small country hotel. Now it was abandoned, and developers were fighting with various preservationist societies over the property’s future. As the battles dragged on, Undershaw languished in disrepair. Penelope lived close by and was one of the most vocal preservationists in the cause. She kept an extensive collection of photographs, plans, and other records of Undershaw’s history. It was these documents-open across her lap, growing brittle in the January air-that Harold had come to see.

When he’d called the day before, he had explained his Sherlockian credentials and his relationship with Alex Cale, whom she knew well. He had even called Jeffrey Engels to have him put in a quick word. Jeffrey had been surprised to hear Harold’s voice on the other end of the line, but registered Harold’s urgency and dutifully made the call to Penelope Higgins as requested. Harold realized that at some point he’d have to tell Jeffrey, and everyone else, where the hell he’d been for the past two weeks, but he figured he could work his story out when the time came. He was back on the trail now, and that was all that mattered. Without Harold’s needing to say so, Jeffrey had seemed to understand as much. He’d sent Harold on his way with barely a question.

Penelope gave Harold a once-over as he ascended the crumbling stone steps to the foyer.

They discussed their mutual Sherlockian acquaintances, and how Harold had always meant to visit Undershaw but had never gotten the chance. It was a banal and perfunctory conversation, but somehow both seemed to feel that a little chitchat was necessary. Ms. Higgins was clearly suspicious, but she had the good grace not to ask Harold about it directly. He’d been vouched for by the biggest names in Sherlockian studies, so she couldn’t very well deny him a look at her collection. But she must be aware of the strange circumstances of Alex Cale’s death, Harold realized, and so she must know that his visit was somehow connected to the murder. Harold repeated the same story he’d given her the night before: He was finishing Cale’s work, because they were friends, and he just needed to see Undershaw for himself, because Cale had been there. It was a weak story, and both of them knew it. But she nodded when he repeated it, offered a polite and accepting “I see,” and then stood. This woman did not trust him at all.

“Like to take a look at the house?” she said.

“Can we? It’s all boarded up.”

“No one in there now but rats and pigeons,” said Penelope drily. “If the likes of them are allowed in, I don’t see why we shouldn’t be.”

They entered through an empty window. Harold felt like a burglar, and yet there was nothing to steal. Everything of any value had been stripped from the house years ago. Nothing remained here save history and insects.

The house was smaller than he’d imagined. The hallways were narrow, and though the windows let in a lot of light, they seemed miniaturized. Dainty. Silence nestled into the dirty wooden floors, and into the paint-peeled walls. As they walked, Harold’s and Penelope’s footsteps echoed like typewriter clicks down the long, still halls.

“Anything in particular you’d like to see?” offered Ms. Higgins.

“Yes,” replied Harold. “The study.”

When she showed him in, past the heavy wooden door creaking on its single functioning hinge, Harold’s breath caught in his throat. He was a grown-up, thank you, and so he wasn’t afraid of ghosts or monsters or any sort of ghoul that Stoker might have written about. And yet to walk into this house… into this room… who wouldn’t be spooked by the rotting, abandoned mansion of the greatest mystery novelist of all time? Harold felt as if something were present here-something old, something worn, something dead.

“I was told that you have photographs of this room?” he said. “From when Conan Doyle was living here?”

“Yes. I have many of them. Conan Doyle was fascinated with photography, as you know. He had this whole house documented, from the first stone to his last days here.”

She dutifully flipped through her books and produced the photographs. Harold stared down at the black-and-white shots and then up at the same space, ravaged by the century since. The bookshelves along the walls no longer held their dusty volumes. The oak desk, which once sat heavy against the far wall, was long gone. The armchairs had been taken away, the lamps, the case in which Conan Doyle had kept his revolver. Gone, gone, gone.

Harold stood in the spot where Conan Doyle’s desk had been. Where his chair had been set back. Where the stories had been composed, where they had been written down in longhand. Where Sherlock Holmes was resurrected.

The old centuries had, and have, powers of their own, which mere modernity cannot kill. Stoker had been right. So had Alex Cale. There was something alive in this house. Not even modernity, not even the horrible rinse of history, could kill what had been born here.

Harold formed his hand around an imaginary pen. He placed it on his imaginary paper, on top of his imaginary desk. He wrote, imaginarily, with a wide flourish.

Penelope Higgins coughed. She seemed used to this sort of behavior from visiting Sherlockians.

“What are you looking for, Mr. White?” Her tone was firm. She wanted a real answer.

“The diary,” said Harold, absentmindedly. “I’m looking for the diary.”

Ms. Higgins smiled. “Best of luck to you, then,” she responded. “You’ve an illustrious set you’re following. Since 1930 we’ve had chaps like yourself in and out of this room looking for that diary. How many times do you think they’ve paced around here? How many times do you think they’ve pulled at the floorboards? Tapped at the walls for hollow spaces? Unscrewed the light fixtures? They must have gone over this room…what, now? A hundred times? A thousand? That’s more than eighty years of Sherlockians that’ve been in here. I don’t think there’s much left for you to search.”

Now it was Harold’s turn to smile. And he smiled bigger and wider than Penelope Higgins ever would. Here he was in Conan Doyle’s own study, in his own house, and here before him was a mystery worthy of his efforts.

“Elementary,” Harold said, because he simply could not resist.

Penelope Higgins shook her head.

“I’ll leave you to it, then. Here are the photos. Just don’t poke yourself on a rusty nail, give yourself tetanus.”

Penelope Higgins left, though she did not close the door. It seemed she would wearily give Harold the benefit of the doubt.

He settled in. He sat on the broken floor. He closed his eyes. He pressed his stubby fingers together in his lap, and he devoted his mind to the task at hand.

The diary would not be found by searching. It would be found by thinking. All problems have solutions, even if they’ve evaded a generation of inquisitors.

The diary was here. It had been hidden here a hundred years before. But how? But where? He had no doubt that scores of Sherlockians, of scholars both professional and amateur, had combed over every inch of this room. What would they have missed? What hiding place was obvious enough that Bram Stoker was able to quickly stash a leatherbound book in it, without plan or preparation, and yet was ingenious enough that both Conan Doyle and a thousand literary detectives had missed it? What spot had remained untouched over a century of icy winters, summer storms, and ravaging descendants?

Harold thought of “The Purloined Letter.” No. In this case, the diary had not been hidden in plain sight. That would be too easy.

What was the twist? If Conan Doyle had hidden the diary himself, where would he have hidden it? Or, better yet, if Conan Doyle had hidden the diary for Holmes to find and Holmes were strolling through this study right now, where would he look? If Harold was sure that the diary was hidden here, and he was… well then, he was only more sure of one thing: that there would be a twist. Because there always was.

He thought of all the great twists he’d read at the ends of all the great mystery novels. Some were small shifts of focus, others were radical shifts of plot, such that everything you thought you knew turned out to be false. Harold wasn’t certain what sort of twist he hoped for. But all the best twists he’d read shared one key feature.

The well-written twist always preyed upon the reader’s assumptions. Something the reader had simply assumed to be true-because how could it not be?-turned out to be false. Something unquestioned was questioned. Something that had never felt worth examining was examined, and an answer was found in the most unlikely place.

What did Harold assume? That Bram Stoker had hidden the diary so that he could come back later and destroy it. That Bram Stoker had hidden the diary within this room. That no one had ever found it. That the room had been emptied, destroyed, turned over a thousand times and that the diary wasn’t here.

That the diary had been here. That the diary wasn’t here.

Harold stopped breathing.

The diary had been here. The diary wasn’t here.

And it was all so stunningly, embarrassingly obvious.

He flipped through the pages of photographs quickly, looking hard at the gray-on-gray images.

“Have we found the diary yet?” came the voice of Penelope Higgins.

He looked up to find her stocky frame in the doorway.

“Yes,” said Harold, in no mood for games.

Ms. Higgins laughed at him through her nose. “Right then! Well, where is it?”

Harold earnestly turned back to the photos, plowing through her sarcasm. “The diary was hidden here in 1900. But it’s not here anymore, and it wasn’t here after Conan Doyle died. So at some point between 1900 and 1930, someone took it out of this room.”

“So somebody stole it?”

“No. Somebody took it out of this room. But I don’t think they knew what they were taking. I think somebody removed the diary by accident, not realizing what it was. So what I want to know now is, what was taken out of here in those years? What was big enough, and obvious enough, and hollow enough, that somebody could have quickly shoved a diary in it but that no one would have looked inside? It’s not a vase, it’s not a chest… Maybe the empty base of a lamp?”

“The lamps all went to Conan Doyle’s daughter, I believe. And there weren’t many of them. Fairly little, too, if I remember. Probably kept them in her attic. But I don’t think you’d be the first to search Conan Doyle’s daughter’s attic for the diary, Mr. White.”

Harold turned the page and laid his eyes on a small, dark photograph from 1899. It was of the study, of a liquor table in one corner, festooned with clear decanters and a strange, tall object. He squinted and looked closer. It was bigger than any of the liter-size decanters, wider around the bottom and rising a good two feet into the air. Both the base and the balloon-shaped body were made of opaque glass. A series of what looked like tubes ran around it, and something like a nozzle poked out from the top.

He flipped the pages quickly, finding a later photograph of the same space. It had been taken in 1905. The angle was different, and the liquor cabinet was in a slightly farther spot along the wall… But the object was gone. In its place was something similar but smaller. Much smaller.

He pressed his finger against the first photograph. “What is this?” he asked. “It’s hard to make out.”

Penelope Higgins bent over the photograph book herself, squinting past her thick, round glasses.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “The gasogene!” Harold remembered reading about gasogenes over the years, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen one. They were early carbonators, used privately to put the bubbles in a gentleman’s seltzer. They were expensive and rather unwieldy, and they were found only among the bar sets of the wealthy.

“It’s huge,” said Harold.

“Yes, rather. It was an early gasogene, I think. Conan Doyle received one of those monstrous nineteenth-century ones early on and got rid of it when the newer ones were developed a few years later. This one was a gift, if I recall.”

“From who?”

“Bram Stoker. They were friends, you know.”

Harold froze again.

“He got rid of it? To where?”

“Hell if I know,” said Ms. Higgins. “Conan Doyle would have sent the thing away long before he died. 1901? ’02? ’03? Must have been.”

“Did he toss it away?” Harold asked, worried that she might say yes. If Stoker had been able to stuff the diary in the wide base of the gasogene and then Conan Doyle had carelessly tossed it in the trash a year later…

“I don’t think so,” said Ms. Higgins, doing her best to recall. She sighed. “If I must, I can check my books. We have lists, you see, of all of Conan Doyle’s possessions and where they’ve gotten off to.”

“Please,” said Harold. “Please.”

“I think I’ve one in my car. The thing is dreadfully heavy. Hold on.” With an irritated sigh, she left him alone while she went outside. Harold sat, tapping his fingers, waiting for her to return.

He flipped through the photograph book listlessly. He was so close now. So miserably close… He skimmed through the end of the book, where he saw portraits of the Conan Doyle family. Harold looked over the faces of Conan Doyle and his wife, his second wife, his children. Generations of Conan Doyles had been in this house and had never known the secret that Harold was about to uncover.

He stopped at the very last photo in the book. It was bright and colorful, modern-clearly taken only a few years past. It must be of the great-grandchildren of the Conan Doyle family. It was unlabeled, but Harold recognized a few of the faces. He even saw Sebastian, grinning out at him from the photograph. If only Sebastian knew where Harold was now. Harold grinned back at the photograph. He felt as if he’d beaten them all.

His eye caught on a young woman standing next to Sebastian in the photograph. She was a solid foot shorter than Sebastian, with curly brown hair and a bright yellow scarf wrapped around her neck.

As Harold’s eyes went wide and every muscle in his body tensed in shock, Ms. Higgins came back in holding a folder full of papers.

“Lucerne,” she said. “It looks like Conan Doyle’s first gasogene, miraculously, made its way to the collection in Lucerne.”

Harold didn’t look at her. He couldn’t take his eyes off the photograph. He mumbled something about Switzerland.

“Yes,” said Ms. Higgins, not expecting this level of indifference from Harold. “It’s at the Sherlock Holmes museum in Lucerne, in Switzerland. You know it?”

“Yes,” muttered Harold. “It’s at the base of the Reichenbach Falls, where Holmes died. They have a complete re-creation of Sherlock Holmes’s study. It’s made up with all items from the period, including a number from Conan Doyle himself. I’m sorry, who is this?”

Ms. Higgins stepped toward him. “What?” she asked. “Who?”

“This woman. In the photograph.” Harold pointed, his hand shaking in the air. He felt as if he were pointing straight at a ghost.

Ms. Higgins approached the photograph. She followed his outstretched fingertip to the beautiful face of the young woman.

“Oh,” she said. “That’s Sarah.”

“Yes,” said Harold. “I know that. What the hell is Sarah doing in a Conan Doyle family photograph? Why is she standing next to Sebastian?”

Ms. Higgins laughed. “Well, I think she’s done a bit more than stand next to him,” she said. “That’s Sebastian Conan Doyle’s wife, Sarah.” She paused, regarding Harold curiously. “Sarah Conan Doyle.”

Harold felt the bitter bile well up in his throat, and he did everything in his power not to collapse.