The Sherlockian

Author’s Note

So, then, what really happened?

Not to disappoint you, but the only honest answer I can give is this one: It’s a bit of a mystery.

While The Sherlockian is a work of historical fiction, the emphasis needs to be placed on the word “fiction.” Many of the events described here did not happen, and many of the characters rendered did not exist. But since a number of them did exist, and since the work in front of you is a collage of the verifiably real, the probably real, the possibly real, and the demonstrably false, I thought a few words of explanation might be in order.

So here goes. The following is all true:

After Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930, a collection of his papers went missing from among his effects. This collection-some letters, some half-finished stories, and a volume of Conan Doyle’s diary- remained mysteriously vanished for over seventy years and was the holy grail of Sherlockian studies for most of the twentieth century. Generations of scholars attempted to locate it, but none met with any success.

Finally, in 2004, Richard Lancelyn Green, the world’s foremost scholar of Sherlock Holmes, announced that he’d found Conan Doyle’s lost papers. However, Green claimed that a distant relative of Conan Doyle’s had stolen these papers from Conan Doyle’s daughter and was planning to sell them at auction rather than donate the documents to charity as Green-and Conan Doyle’s immediate heirs-had wished. A dispute emerged between Green and this relative, and their argument over the rightful ownership of the papers grew increasingly bitter, and increasingly public. By March of 2004, Green had begun to tell his friends that he was worried for his own safety. He claimed that he received threatening messages and that he was being followed by a shadowy American. He told one close friend that his home was bugged, and he demanded that some visitors speak with him only in his garden. Green’s friends in the Sherlockian community became concerned.

On March 27, Richard Lancelyn Green was found dead in his South Kensington flat. He had been strangled-garroted-with one of his own shoelaces. His sister, Priscilla, discovered the body. The coroner returned an open verdict, and as of this writing the case is still considered unsolved by the London police.

Immediately thereafter Sherlockians around the globe began to search for Green’s killer. Grand theories quickly emerged, as some Sherlockians believed that the feud within the Conan Doyle family over the author’s estate had grown violent and taken Green’s life, while others thought it more likely that Green had committed suicide in order to cast suspicion on another party. The character of Harold, in this novel, is a composite of a number of real-life Sherlockians-all of whom, I can assure you, outshine Harold in both brilliance and social grace.

For more information about the death of Richard Lancelyn Green, I highly recommend the article “Mysterious Circumstances” by David Grann (New Yorker, December 13, 2004). Or, for a shorter introduction, try “The Curious Incident of the Boxes” by Sarah Lyall (New York Times, May 19, 2004).

All the information in the novel about modern Sherlockian societies- the Baker Street Irregulars and their many scion groups-is accurate, to the best of my knowledge, as are the descriptions of their meetings and rituals. That said, meetings of the Irregulars are not open to the public, and so I have relied upon public reports and interviews for a glimpse into their secret world. A very special thanks to Leslie Klinger- world-class Sherlockian and editor of The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes-for his help on these points and many others. And thanks also to Chris Redmond-creator of Sherlockian.net, which is an invaluable Sherlockian resource entirely unaffiliated with this book-for teaching me the long and not particularly sordid history of the Irregulars. As both of these men have forgotten more about Sherlockian studies than I will ever know, please note that all errors in this work are entirely my own.

As for the turn-of-the-century story line, all of the biographical information about Arthur Conan Doyle contained here is true. Many wonderful biographies of Conan Doyle exist, though I recommend Daniel Stashower’s Teller of Tales in particular. Stashower also edited Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters, a masterfully compiled collection of Conan Doyle’s personal correspondence. Additionally, Julian Barnes’s novel Arthur & George presents a beautifully rendered-and accurate!-portrait of Conan Doyle working on one of the real-life crimes he investigated. Over the years Conan Doyle assisted Scotland Yard on a number of cases; The Real World of Sherlock Holmes, by Peter Costello, contains a terrific list of all of the crimes with which Conan Doyle became involved. The particular case he investigates in The Sherlockian is fictional, though it is a composite of a number of nonfictional ones, especially the infamous “Brides in the Bath” murders of the period, a mystery that Conan Doyle himself did help to unravel.

One major fictional leap has been taken in the Arthur Conan Doyle story line, however: A group of angry suffragists did not place a letter bomb in Conan Doyle’s mail in 1900. They did so in 1911. The British Women’s Suffrage Campaign: 1866-1928, by Harold L. Smith, has been a fantastic resource on the subject of the NUWSS and its leader, Millicent Fawcett.

The portrayal of Bram Stoker in this novel is also as accurate as possible and is based chiefly on Bram Stoker and the Man Who Was Dracula, a brilliant biography written by Barbara Belford. Though Oscar Wilde is not quite a character in The Sherlockian, his presence looms large over both Conan Doyle and Stoker. Oscar Wilde, by Richard Ellmann, remains the final word on Wilde biographies, as it has been for over twenty years.

All locations featured in this novel are real. If you can manage it, I highly recommend a trip to Switzerland to see the Sherlock Holmes Museum. Take a stroll between the chairs, lamps, and gasogenes from Arthur Conan Doyle’s old study. Who knows what you’ll find there?

GPM

2010