The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries

SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE TITANIC SWINDLE by Len Deighton

It was handwritten in a bold, attractive and well-formed writing style, on a cream-coloured heavy paper. There was a small crease on the corner but there was no sign of fading and the colour was the same on both front and back. Held to the light, this single sheet revealed a watermark of a floral design that I did not recognize. The upper edge of the sheet was slightly rough as if it might have been torn from a writing pad, but it may have been because the paper was handmade. Most significantly, the writing varied in ink density. The sentences started in a strong dark greyish-blue and then faded slightly as happens when writing with an old-fashioned pen frequently dipped into a bottle of ink.

Sherlock Holmes and the Titanic Swindle

It was a raw and foggy night in early December when Holmes and I sat either side of a blazing fire in our sitting room in Baker Street. Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard was there. He was likely to call in on us of an evening, and Sherlock Holmes always welcomed him, as he liked to hear the latest news from police headquarters. On this particular evening Lestrade puffed at his cigar and was uncustomarily quiet. “It’s this terrible disaster,” said Lestrade, shaking his head sadly.

“ Some fine old families will be mourning still,” I said.

“There are fears abroad that this failure of an unsinkable vessel could deliver a crippling blow to our whole shipbuilding industry,” said Holmes. “I can reveal that I have already been in contact with the captain, the helmsman and several others who were on watch at the time. I am presenting my spiritual research to the directors of the White Star Line. There remain many unanswered questions.”

“Surely not?” said Lestrade. “ The Titanic struck an iceberg, was ripped open and sank. How can there be a mystery concerning it?”

“The Titanic, was it?” said Holmes. He waited a long time before continuing. “There is not one article; not one piece of flotsam or jetsam bearing the name Titanic.” He watched our faces and then answered the tacit question. “ ‘White Star Line’ yes, but not one item with the word Titanic.”

He held up his hand to still our questions. “ To other matters,” he said.

“And where’s the rest of it?” I asked.

“In his father’s bank or in a private Swiss vault or in a tower of his auntie’s Bavarian castle,” said Percy.

“Is that what’s he’s like?”

“Strong London accent; almost like an Aussie, carefully trimmed black beard; brown corduroy suit; pompous, assertive; aggressive almost.”

“Could be any one of our authors,” I said.

“My authors are respectful,” said Percy.

“Because you send the aggressive ones to me.”

“And they are the ones that make the money,” said Percy. “Ever since that piece in The Bookseller, they all want you to be their editor, you know that. Fiction writers do anyway.”

I read the sheet of paper again and said nothing.

“So what do you think?” said Percy after looking around the room. “Bloody untidy; your office.” He had removed a pile of books in order to sit in the soft leather chair I put authors into when I have bad news for them. One leg was resting across the other to display a red cashmere sock and handmade Oxford shoe. Percy always looked like a page from a fashion magazine even on days like today, when the rain was thrashing against the windows, and the sky was so dark that all the office lights were turned on.

“Is it a parody or what?” I said. “It has the same plodding style that I remember from all Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes yarns.”

“Is that a recommendation? Do you mean it’s genuine?”

“We have quite a big list, and it will be too late for the new catalogue, no matter how fast we move. I think we should stay out of this. Send him one of your sad rejection letters.”

“Send him where? To HarperCollins? To Random House?”

“Why did he pick us?” I asked.

“He wanted to bring it to the last independent publisher in London, he said.”

“You didn’t tell me he was a philanthropist.”

“Now, now, Carl. Don’t let your nasty Teutonic streak show.”

“It’s been a long day,” I said. Percy’s Teutonic joke, a reference to my Christian name, had worn thin.

“And you’ve had your regular kick-boxing lesson from Princess Diana all afternoon.”

“Her agent told her our contract will have to be renegotiated.”

“More money. She can go to Hell and take Footsteps to Heaven with her.”

“We did rather well with her last Sharon du Parr,” I reminded him. “And she has a new agent now: Freckles. Her other agent was not commercial enough for her. New agents, Percy, always want to flex their muscles.”

“Her last agent was a man,” said Percy who was high enough in the command structure to be in on the deals. “Sensible enough to keep her feet on the ground.”

“Was he? I never met him.”

“Blonde lady bomber pilots and female secret agents toting machine guns. The artwork on her last dust-jacket haunts me. I don’t know why we publish that crap.”

“You don’t?” I enjoyed winding him up. “She loved the dust-jacket. She wanted us to make it into a poster.”

“That wretched Freckles? Has she really started her own agency? Good grief.”

“I think we might be dealing with her for more of our lady writers before long. She wrote an amusing article in The Author. She said men authors always got paid twice as much as women authors and she was going to fight for them. And you’d better not call her Freckles to her face, Percy.”

“Let’s get back to this Sherlock Holmes story,” said Percy. He put a finger on to his starched shirt cuff to sneak a look at his gold Rolex. “You want me to tell him to get stuffed? He’s demanding some ‘token’ money down before we see the rest of it.”

“That’s just to keep us on the hook,” I told him.

“So I’ll tell him we’re not interested?”

“Not in as many words, Percy. You don’t want to make headlines as the publisher who turned down a Sherlock Holmes story that has been locked away undiscovered for a hundred years.”

He wetted his lips and then sighed. “Make up your mind, Carl.”

“Everyone loves Sherlock Holmes,” I said. “If it’s the real thing this will make news. Not trade news; big international headline news and TV.”

“The paper looks old,” he picked it up and looked at it and smelled it. “But is it Conan Doyle’s writing?”

“Well, I don’t imagine he would bring us an autograph edition; he may have copied it out.”

“You’d think he’d put it on a computer or something.”

“Not very secure, computers, Percy. Put something like that on the hard drive and it’s only a couple of keystrokes away from going on to the Internet. And into the Public Domain, as you lawyers say. Your – what did you say his name was? – seems to be a careful chap.”

“He says he wants a definite answer, and cash on the table, by the fifteenth of the month.”

“The fifteenth? Next week?”

“He’s out of the country till then; a business trip he said.”

“Writers all say that; they have a guilt complex about holidays.”

I was very busy over the next few days. One of our best line-editors had gone sick with what they suspected was chickenpox. Her daughter phoned us to say her mother might need hospital treatment. She was having blood tests. I knew that would mean a week or more out of action. The worst of it was that she lived in deepest, darkest Cornwall and there was a tall pile of typescripts sitting on her shelf. I couldn’t find time to go down there, and Percy was frightened he might catch chickenpox. Finally we decided to wait and see what the medical tests showed. And Percy found an urgent need to visit one of our writers in Ireland. As usual, this meant a diligent exploration of the local pubs and Percy running at half speed for several following days.

Once back in action, Percy took his single sheet of handwritten Sherlock Holmes all around the building, swearing them all to secrecy, as he had before showing it to me. By Thursday he must have run out of people to consult for he came back to talk to me again.

“That young fellow who does the computer stuff in accounts had a good suggestion.”

“About Sherlock Holmes?”

“He said we must insist on having a sheet from the original, and then have the paper examined and tested in a laboratory to see how old it was.”

“No great problem getting your hands on sheets of old paper, Percy. We could probably find some in the store room, or the slush pile, if we rooted around long enough.”

“And I thought of that too, Carl. I’m not a complete fool. It might be better to get one of these computer people to compare the syntax against other stories.” I suppose I did not light up in the expected fashion. “Verbs, adjectives, the length of the sentences and so on. That ‘customarily’, for instance. Was that a word Doyle ever used?”

“It wouldn’t be conclusive. We shouldn’t assume that this fellow, What’s-his-name, is an untutored oaf. If he’s a forger he will have looked at the stories: verbs, adjectives and the length of sentences.”

“You don’t have to be so bloody sarcastic, Carl. I’m trying to see some way out of this situation.”

“Way out?”

“Yes, I didn’t tell you but I’ve had the newspapers sniffing around, asking if we’d found some long-lost manuscript.”

“Sherlock Holmes?”

“One of them said H. G. Wells – he’d heard it was a sequel to Things to Come and the other didn’t have a clue about who wrote anything.”

“That must have been a senior literary editor. Let me guess which paper.”

“No, that’s just the point. These queries are coming from the news desks. The H. G. Wells loony had heard that it was going to be a major film.”

“Why doesn’t your punter just put it up for auction? One of the big boys might be willing to put it into their New York auctions.”

“Perhaps he’s frightened of it being turned down as a fake,” said Percy. “That could be a crippling setback for anyone selling it.”

“Will an auction house care too much whether it’s a fake? They’ll get their money; then it’s cave canem for the bidders. I sometimes think half the junk put up for auction is bogus in one way or another.”

“Caveat emptor,” Percy solemnly corrected me.

“Same goes for the film,” I said. “If some sharp film man grabs it, he could ride along on the publicity generated by a controversy about whether it’s genuine. And if it turns out fake that will hardly dent the takings at the box office.”

“So you think we should publish it?”

“I didn’t say that, Percy.”

“It’s all right for you. You can just move on if the firm hits a rock. I’m stuck here.” Percy was determined not to be deprived of his crisis.

“I don’t see why.”

“Because my uncle is the chairman, Carl. Be your age. You’ve made enough jokes at my expense.”

“Have I, Percy? I hope I have never been offensive.”

“I don’t mind your jokes. You can be very humorous sometimes. It’s the crap I get when people have to be sacked.”

“People say things they don’t mean.”

“They mean it all right,” said Percy and I almost felt sorry for him. It was, after all, Percy who had got me the job. The ad agency let me go after they lost the breakfast food account I was working on. Percy got to his feet. “Well, I must leave you now. I have an important lunch appointment.”

When I saw Percy later that afternoon he was roseate and ebullient. And it wasn’t all due to the unspecified number of bottles of Chevalier-Montrachet he and his luncheon guest had consumed. “There it is,” he said. He put a brown packet on my desk. His aim erred to the extent that it sideswiped my keyboard and put about three hundred z’s across a letter I was concocting for the “Princess” about the bewildering way her characters were apt to change names and/or appearance and then sometimes change back again. “That’s it.” He pointed. “That’s the Sherlock Holmes story. That’s your Christmas bonus and my seat on the board.”

“He gave it to you?”

“It wasn’t easy but lunch at the Ritz can have a magical effect upon authors. I’ve noticed that before.”

“And this is the only copy? No photocopies in your desk?”

He hesitated. “He made me promise on my honour. I signed a piece of paper for him. It wouldn’t have much effect in a court of law but he knows I wouldn’t want him brandishing it if there was evidence that I’d cheated on him. So look after it. Don’t leave it on the train or something. You remember how you went past your station and had to get a minicab home that night after the Christmas party?”

“Yes,” I said. I wished I’d never mentioned that journey home to him. At the time I was hoping he’d offer to reimburse the cab fare but instead of that he kept using it to beat me over the head with implications that I got everything wrong. “So how much did you have to pay him?”

“Nothing. Not a penny.”

“He just handed it over?”

“I said the directors would have a meeting on Monday and have an offer and a contract ready for Tuesday morning. I thought that would give you a chance to read it.”

“What about you reading it?”

“I have read it,” said Percy. “I read it as soon as I got back from lunch.”

I noticed that the packet had been torn open and then sealed up again, so perhaps he had.

“And?” Percy was not an avid reader.

“It’s damned clever; almost too clever for a Sherlock Holmes yarn. Corpus delicti, it all turns on that. You know what I mean?”

“You don’t plough your way through a thousand whodunits without discovering what corpus delicti means,” I told him.

Percy was not to be denied a chance to display his legal qualifications. “Body; but not necessarily a human body. It’s the facts, money, physical substance, evidence of any kind that a crime has been committed.”

“How does the story read?”

“You’ll have to read it for yourself but at the conclusion of the story, Holmes finds there is no written evidence, no substance, no witnesses, not even this gigantic ship, to prove that any crime was ever committed. Holmes ends up baffled… but anyway you must read it.”

“Doyle was ingenious,” I admitted

“It’s good,” said Percy. “A page-turner. But you are the senior editor, senior fiction editor, anyway.”

“Ummm,” I said. I could see into Percy’s mind. If it turned out well, the firm would make umpteen thousands, Percy would get his seat on the board – there was going to be a vacancy in January anyway – and I would get a small Christmas bonus. If it became the sort of fiasco that Percy feared, it would all be my fault.

“Take it home. Read it over the weekend and let me know on Monday.”

“Monday is a difficult day for me, Percy.”

“Your day at home, I know.”

“It’s the only way I can get through the backlog. Here in the office there is always something cropping up.”

“Like me.”

“It’s not only that, Percy. I have to see Sergeant McGregor in the morning and so I asked him to come to my flat for a sandwich and a beer. I want to switch a couple of his chapters and I’ve drafted out a new beginning. It’s not as much work as it sounds but getting an author to understand the need for revisions is always a delicate job.”

“Who the devil is Sergeant McGregor?”

“Peter Cardiff. He writes the ‘Copper’s Diary’ series. We’ve done six of them now. They have all been trade paperbacks but marketing think he’s ready to go mass-market.”

“Why do these fellows have to have nom de plumes? Isn’t Cardiff a good enough name? Better, in my humble opinion.”

“Not for a police series about Glasgow criminals. And when he first started he was still on the Glasgow force. He had to have an assumed name.”

“Move him to Tuesday, Carl. This Sherlock Holmes decision is important.”

“He’s coming all the way down from the other side of Aberdeen. And he is a widower; with a school-age child. He has to arrange for someone to collect her and look after her. I really wouldn’t like to throw a spanner into his arrangements. And he’s one of our best authors, Percy.”

“What is best about him?”

“He can spell; he puts a capital letter at the beginning of each sentence and a full-stop at the end. He knows an adjective from a verb and doesn’t use flashbacks or dream sequences or try to write sexy scenes that he can’t handle.”

“He’s old fashioned, is that what you mean?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“And now I’ve annoyed you.”

“A few more old-fashioned writers like Cardiff and I would have a weekend to myself now and again.”

“A palpable hit, Carl.”

“Yes, well, he’s not old-fashioned, Percy. He’s a fine writer who stays within his capabilities, and understands instinctively the taste and intelligence of the reading public in a way that not many people in this building do.”

“I say, Carl. A streak of passion! You are always able to surprise me. Very well then; 10 a. m. Tuesday morning. And don’t leave it on the train tonight.” He rummaged around in the cupboard where unpublished books grow dusty before going into the bin and found a green plastic bag with a Harrods motif. He put the manuscript into it, and hung it on the bentwood stand with my raincoat.

“Red sealing wax and string.” I observed.

“I wanted it to be secure. On this floor, any wrapped parcel of A4 size gets thrown into the slush pile without being opened.”

“Is that your signet ring you used on the wax?”

“It looks good doesn’t it? I’m going to start using it on letters too. What about on the contracts?” I gave him a wintry smile. “We worked hard at college didn’t we Carl? Not many parties; not very often drunk; work, work, work.” I nodded. “Well I was going through the numbers with Uncle John last week, and I noticed that only one of our top earners even got into college, and she didn’t graduate.”

“‘There are only three things needed for writing a bestseller; but no one knows what they are.’ Somerset Maugham.”

“Yes it’s all very well for an old buzzard like that to be sardonic but he was sitting on a barrel of cash in his villa in the south of France and lunching with the likes of Winston Churchill.”

“Maugham was a doctor at St Thomas’s Hospital. Doesn’t that rather undermine your theory about illiterate best-selling authors?”

“And Conan Doyle was a doctor, too. So were a lot of bestselling authors but that was all long ago. Now we all know what is needed for a best-seller. Not three things, only one damned thing: TV. It doesn’t matter what illiterate rubbish you write, if it becomes a TV series you’ll be feted and feasted and rich, and people will say you are a famous writer.”

“Not always, Percy.”

“Yes, always. Good grief, Carl, who would have guessed, in Maugham’s day, that any silly little cookery book could be made into a best-seller? Or a book about exercising, wriggling your derrière, like that one we did with that frightful athlete woman who insisted on having her photo on every page?”

“We did well with it, as I remember.”

“That was because the photographer did such wonders. Or his retoucher or someone at the printer. He made her look like Jane Fonda, that’s why it sold.”

“For whatever reason. She asked for twice as much for her second book.”

“She didn’t get it from us,” said Percy with some force. “She didn’t get another TV series. I could see that it was going to be the end of her. Her end, perhaps I should say.” He didn’t need to remind me that she’d made a loud and angry scene in Percy’s office before taking her book to another publisher. And they had advertised it in the Sunday papers and lost a great deal of money on it. He laughed. It was good to see him happy and there is nothing that makes a publisher happier than to have a rival company steal authors, and then lose money with them.

Peter Cardiff arrived at my flat on the dot. A result of twenty-five years on the force, I suppose. His books had the series title “A Copper’s Diary” and everyone in the trade, including me, admired them as fast-moving, well-written stories. Judging by his mail, the police service liked them too. But the joke was that Cardiff had actually kept a diary right from the first day he joined up as a constable recruit. He retired with dozens of notebooks and was unhurriedly making them into a literary career.

He hadn’t been to my flat before. After I took his coat, he moved around the room. There wasn’t much furniture. He went to the built-in shelves and started looking at all my books in a systematic way. “Reference mostly,” I said. “Specialist dictionaries and encyclopaedias, maps and so on. I do most of my editing work here, away from the telephones and interruptions.”

“I thought my stuff went off to someone in the country for corrections of that sort.”

“For line editing; yes it does, but if I can pick something up in the early readings I can call the author with a query. It’s quicker like that.” I opened two cans of beer and poured them out. Then I opened the packets of smoked salmon sandwiches and arranged them on the plates. He bent to look at one of the photos on the fireplace. “My wife,” I said. “She’s a wonderful woman.”

“I thought you were getting divorced,” he said. “I’m sorry, it’s the policeman in me.”

I had no doubt referred to my wife in one of my letters or emails; it was sharp of him to remember so well. “We’ve had our ups and downs,” I explained. “She went to see her family in Brisbane. My teenage son is with her. She wants me to join her there. It’s not something I want to rush into. On the other hand, if I decide to go, her fare back here and return would be money wasted.”

“Looks like you were there when you were getting married,” he said, pointing to our wedding photo in a silver frame on the hi-fi. “The eucalyptus trees, the coastline and the man in the bush shirt – just a guess, of course.”

“Ten years back. It can get very hot in summer and I’m very fond of hot weather.”

He smiled and we both listened to the wind howling in the chimney. Despite the heat turned fully on, it was cold in the flat and it had been raining on and off for almost a week. “And my son wants to go to college there.”

“What will he study?”

“He’ll try for a Ph D in surfing and sunning.”

“I’d miss you if you moved,” he said. “You are painstaking and understand what I would like to be able to do. The editor they gave me at first scribbled all over my typing, scribbled in red ballpoint. That was before I got the word processor. It all had to be typed again. It used to make me livid.”

He was still looking around when I said: “I like the new one very much. You are really exploring McGregor’s character now. The indecision and the anger… and that chapter with the kid who can’t speak English. You’ve come a long way from your first book with the motorcycle cops.” It was enough to bring him to the table where I had my notes.

“So you went back and read my first one?” he said. He sipped some beer and bit into a sandwich.

“I try to see how writers develop. And I must keep you to the continuity. We don’t want you slipping up about past references; things like the new inspector going to the staff college.”

“No, that was stupid. So you picked that one up? I wondered who had spotted it. I should have sent a proper thank you letter. I’m not in touch as closely as I should be.”

“You need a London agent,” I told him.

“That doesn’t sound like a publisher speaking.” He was much more relaxed now and I could hear his soft Glasgow accent; the only Scots accent that I could recognize.

“Someone who knows the way around town could get you some radio plays and maybe TV too. It would get you known to a larger public and that’s what publishing is all about nowadays.”

“Yes, I know but I’m a slow worker. You wouldn’t believe how many hours I spend in front of that damned screen. And I’ve always liked to be outdoors.” He tucked into the sandwiches. He probably hadn’t eaten since getting off the train. I should have offered him something more substantial.

“Peter, old pal,” I said. He looked up sharply. I usually kept to more distant forms of address. It made it easier to criticize if I made it a bit formal. ‘I have a safe here. I was broken into over the weekend.”

He looked at me as if I had gone mad. “How much did you lose?”

“There was no money there; just my lease and bank statements and passport and so on. Other than that: six silver spoons that were my mother’s, and a packet.”

“Packet?”

“With a small manuscript inside. Keep it to yourself. I haven’t told anyone at the office about it. I didn’t go to the police either.”

“No, I understand. It’s more or less useless reporting robberies to your local coppers. Can I look at the front door?” He got up. He was a policeman now.

We went and looked at the door and the surround. “The door shows no sign of being forced,” I said. “And all the windows look OK too.”

“What sort of safe?”

“Not very wonderful.” I went and opened the closet in the hall to show him where the safe was hidden behind the coats. “Guaranteed fireproof; that was important to me. Four figure combination lock. No sign of it being forced either.”

He ran his hands round the back of it to see if he could detect damage of any kind. “Only four digits. That’s useless.”

“The salesman said it meant almost ten thousand variations.”

“Who else has the key to this place?”

“No one. At least, there is an extra one I keep in the main safe at the office – in case I locked myself out – and the cleaning lady has one.”

“Look at it like this,” he said as he sat down and swallowed the rest of his beer, “most of these combination safes have locks that are quick to operate. User friendly. That means it’s quick to swing through the numbers. Try and you’ll see.”

“Ten thousand numbers.”

“Five hundred wouldn’t be too daunting, would it?”

“No, it wouldn’t.”

“Five hundred a day. Try it; click click click. You’d be through it in twenty visits. And your winning combination is unlikely to be at the very end. On average, a thief would find the number halfway through his search. That may not be in line with the science of probability but you see what I mean.”

“Yes, I see what you mean. But I don’t know what I should do.”

“If it’s insured you’d better report it as soon as possible. Insurance companies are always looking for an excuse not to pay out.”

“I’ll speak to the cleaning lady. She’s Estonian. She only comes in twice a week: She’s a nice young woman. She’s been doing the flat for almost a year.” I realised how stupid it all sounded but I suppose Cardiff knew that crime victims are likely to become a little disoriented.

“She probably met some tearaway. It’s a familiar story, I’m afraid. They meet in a pub and he gets the key and makes a copy. She may not be in on it but I doubt if you will see her again. It’s a nasty old world. That’s why I was happy to retire to my little hovel in the highlands.”

We went quickly though some literals and questions that I’d sent him in advance. Then I got to my feet. “Thanks, Peter. Your new book is very good. It will have to be finally decided by the money men and the marketing people but I would be amazed if there was any hitch about your next one going mass market. We will have the same artist. You said you were happy with the previous covers.”

“I leave all that to you London laddies,” he said. “That’s what a publisher does, isn’t it?”

“That’s what a publisher does if he’s lucky enough to have a sensible author,” I said. “Another beer?”

He shook his head but he didn’t leave. He didn’t even put his coat on, he picked it up and held it awkwardly and said. “You’d better tell me about it. I might be able to help. The parcel. Why would anyone crack open a safe to get a manuscript? Is it valuable? Why?”

I didn’t answer.

“Come along, man. I won’t be telling any of your secrets to the sheep.”

“I didn’t open it,” I admitted. “I thought it was a photocopy of a manuscript but perhaps it’s an autograph manuscript. If it’s written by a famous writer from the past, it could be valuable.”

“How valuable?”

“I’ve no idea. Anything up to a hundred thousand pounds.”

“Glasgow’s full of gentry who would slit their mother’s throat for a crate of scotch. London’s worse. You’d better tell your local law, or someone might start thinking it’s an inside job.”

“That I’ve stolen it?”

“There’s no evidence of a break-in, is there?” he reasoned.

I shivered. “I’ll give it another day or so. You’ll keep all this to yourself, won’t you?”

He nodded but he didn’t say yes. Peter Cardiff was a decent chap but once a policeman always a policeman. I had a feeling he was wondering about me. Wondering if I was trying to use him to cover some ingenious theft. All the other times I’d seen him it was in the office; so why ask him to come here today? I could see that question written in his face as he shook hands and said goodbye.

“I don’t have my cleaning lady’s address or phone number,” I said.

He smiled and nodded and I went down to the street and said goodbye. By that time I believe he thought I was the same sort of accident-prone schlemiel that Percy thought I was.

Percy’s office was almost directly below mine, so on the Tuesday morning I arrived early and then went down to tell him I was ready for the meeting. I was still wondering how I was going to tackle him and his uncle. I would have indulged myself in a stiff drink before leaving home but I didn’t want to make things worse by arriving with booze on my breath. “Percy not here yet?” I asked his secretary.

“Has no one told you? He never arrived yesterday.” She was flustered.

“What?”

“Poor Percy. He was waiting for a bus yesterday morning and a little car came out of nowhere.” She seemed to welcome the chance to relate the story again. “The ambulance took ages apparently and you know how dreadful the rain was. They took him to the little cottage hospital near where he lives. It’s not life threatening or anything. But his leg is broken. And he has what they call ‘superficial injuries’ – bruises and grazes. It didn’t stop; the car didn’t stop. What brutes people are. They’re doing tests, of course, in case he has anything internal. But he sounded quite cheerful on the telephone this morning. I’ll give you the number. He has a private line. You can visit him any time they say. It’s only a little hospital. I sent him some nice things to eat. He’s not on any special diet or anything.” Finally she ran out of steam.

“So, no meeting this morning?”

“It could be days,” she said. “Next week perhaps. He’s got his laptop and a dozen books he wanted from the London Library.”

The phone rang. When she answered it I could tell it was an author complaining about a late arriving royalty cheque. I waved goodbye and left.

At first I thought, hooray, reprieved. But then I thought of Percy in the hospital and I put aside the bundle of sentimental scribble that Princess bloody Diana expected me to transform into her next best-seller. Percy lived in a rather verdant neighbourhood on the edge of the green belt. The hospital was just half a mile away, a private one, situated in many acres of countryside. It was almost possible to forget the thunder and filth of the heavy traffic grinding along the nearby North Circular.

“I see our client is a publisher by the cruel look in his eyes. His well-nourished countenance reveals a convivial lifestyle, and the faint remains of a tan suggest either an army man lately returned from service in the orient, or a playboy who takes extended holidays in Provence. As for the casing on the lower leg, this reveals a propensity to cross the road without looking both ways.”

“Hello, Carl,” He was sitting up in bed with a cast on his leg and extensive dressings on one arm. I’d always thought of Percy as somewhat effete. He was continuously getting colds and was likely to be found pausing breathless on the landing when the lift was out of order. He was only slightly younger, but I’d been in the army while he was getting his law degree and somehow that made a difference to our relationship.

But today I saw a new side to Percy. Despite having had surgery, he was energetically researching the world of Sherlock Holmes. On the bedside table he had his shiny new Sony laptop open and lit up. Beside it there was a tower of books from which grew a torrent of yellow sticky markers.

I decided that the best line of defence was attack. “Look, Percy, the Titanic sank in April 1912 – I looked it up – and Doyle didn’t become interested in spiritualism until long after that. Long after Sherlock Holmes was dead and buried.”

“If the old man offers you non-fiction editing, old lad, be sure to say no.”

“Then what?”

“First of all, Doyle joined the Psychical Research Society in 1893. That was the same year the Strand magazine ran ‘The Final Problem’ with Holmes tipping over into the waterfall. Doyle didn’t stop writing about Holmes just because his hero had died. He wrote ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’, perhaps his best and most famous, in 1902, and predated the events. He simply said that this story was something that had happened to Holmes before he wrestled with Professor Moriarty above the lethal torrent of the Reichenbach Falls.”

“I see.” I put a bottle of Johnny Walker on the bed and Percy grabbed it and hid it under his pillow. “You’ve been working hard, Percy. What are you going to be like when the anaesthetic wears off?”

He beamed. Percy was enjoying it all. Sherlock Holmes had got to him as it has done to many thousands of readers over the years. And, from my point of view this was splendid. Anything that kept Percy explaining the manuscript to me, instead of the other way around, was a relief. “Tell me what else you found out?”

“This is the interesting stuff, Carl.” He tapped one of the books. “Can you believe it? A new Sherlock Holmes story was published in the August 1948 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. August 1948. Doyle died in 1930, didn’t he?”

“Maybe they got it from a Ouija board.”

“Very good, Carl. A very good joke,” he said solemnly. I think he hated jokes. He once told me that jokes diverted and diluted serious thought and conversation. He was right and that’s what I liked about them. “And I went on the Internet and found some Titanic nutters. It seems that Holmes got that one right too. None of the remains: flotsam, jetsam, anything-elsesam, had the name Titanic on it. Nothing! Nothing so far retrieved can be positively identified as from the Titanic”

“What are they saying then? That some other ship struck the iceberg?”

“Yes. The Olympic. But let’s not get into that just yet, Carl. Corpus delicti, remember what I told you? Our concern is the story we are offered. Let me tell you about another situation that might – at law – be comparable with the one we find ourselves in.” Percy was really enjoying himself. “This one surfaced in 1948. This was a Sherlock Holmes story called ‘The Man Who was Wanted’. It wasn’t written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; it was the work of another Arthur; a hard-up English architect named Arthur Whitaker. He sent it to Doyle. Feeling sorry for him, Doyle sent Whitaker a check for ten pounds and a sarcastic note telling him to invent his own characters rather than using Sherlock Holmes and co. Doyle tossed the story into the waste paper basket and forgot it. But someone – Lady Conan Doyle probably, or perhaps Doyle’s secretary – rescued it and filed it away with Doyle’s other papers.”

A woman in a white starched overall came in, bringing a tray bearing two cups of tea and four chocolate biscuits. She wanted to adjust his pillows but Percy waved her away so he could get on with his story.

“Ten years after both Doyles are dead, someone finds ‘The Man Who was Wanted’ tucked away in the Doyle archives. It’s unpublished and the law says that trustees are obliged to maximize the income of the estate. In good faith, they sell it to Hearst Newspapers. In England the Sunday Dispatch published this ‘new unpublished story’. January 2nd, January 9th and January 16th, 1949. It’s a big circulation booster for all concerned.”

“But your story hasn’t come from the Doyle estate,” I pointed out to him.

“I wish you would stop being such a damned wet blanket.”

“I’m trying to stop you setting yourself ablaze.”

“In fact, Carl, old bean, you are the one who struck the match. What you said about controversy, about a lot of people who will care less about authenticity than about wallowing in the financial benefits that widespread controversy will bring… well, that’s it.”

I held up my finger in tacit protest. “It’s all very well to say that to me, Percy. But you must be very careful in expressing such ideas to other people. You’re a lawyer; I don’t have to tell you the implications. Conspiracy and so on.”

He vigorously waved away my objections with his bandaged arm. “Just tell me one thing, Carl. Did you like the story?”

“It’s all right,” I said cautiously.

“It’s not just all right; it’s marvellous, isn’t it? It would make an exciting film with all the exteriors that film people call production values. It’s not just two old Victorian dinosaurs chatting by the fireplace in a Baker Street sitting room. You have the shipyards, the squalid Liverpool back streets and signing the contract in the fabulous Belgravia home of the White Star chairman. New York, too. It has enough to expand the American end of the story.”

“Well, that would need a lot of extra writing and dialogue. A lot.”

“Film people don’t mind that, Carl. They love extra writing. It gives them a chance to make the sort of film they prefer to make. Is that tea all right?”

“Yes, the tea is fine,” I took a biscuit and bit into it. “The film end is a long shot,” I cautioned him.

“Ah. That’s what you think. One advantage to having this private room is I can talk to New York and Hollywood while they are still awake out there.”

“Hollywood?”

“Yes, Hollywood, you damned Jeremiah. A film production company has been phoning everyone they can think of to ask about the new Sherlock Holmes story.”

“A big company? How did they find out?”

“Big enough to be talking about half a million dollars. And a share of the profits. What do I care about how they found out?”

“But why?”

“They need to schedule it. They need time to get the stars they want. They don’t want to wait around while we stage some prolonged kind of auction. Cash: up front.”

“You talked to them?”

“It’s better than that, Carl. These film company idiots in California have made enough phone calls to stir up our cousins in New York. I now have two publishers – one quite small, I admit – who want to do a deal. The word will soon get out. World volume rights; film and TV rights. There are all these disks and things nowadays. It could add up to a fortune.”

“I’ve never been a party to that sort of thing, Percy. I just edit the books.”

“And if the manuscript is in Doyle’s hand, it could bring an immense price at auction. It’s only in the last few hours, on the Internet, that I have learned how many rich collectors of Sherlock Holmes material are still active. There’s money in every aspect of this deal.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really, you old misery. And don’t tell me that the whole manuscript is a forgery, because I think it’s kosher.”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Let me put it another way. Is there anything at all to suggest it’s a fake?”

I pulled a face, not knowing how to proceed. “I’m not an expert.”

“It’s real, isn’t it? It’s exactly like Doyle’s handwriting even to the sloping words on the title page… I was able to compare the writing with pages and pages of Doyle’s. I went carefully through every line of that facsimile edition of a Doyle manuscript that was published in Santa Barbara in 1985.”

I nodded.

“Yes, you know the one I mean: ‘The Adventure of the Priory School’.” Percy gave a triumphal grin. “You remember, do you? I’ve got it here now. My secretary found it. And do you know where my secretary found it? On the floor in your office.”

“I was sorting through my books to throw some out. I need shelf space.”

“On the floor in your office, Carl. On the top of a pile near the door. That’s where she found it.” He laughed indulgently. “You need shelf space, do you? You probably didn’t even look at it.”

“I was working at home yesterday.”

“With that policeman, Peter Cardiff. Yes, I know. Well, now you can drop everything like that until we get this story contract in the bag. I’ll want you with me when we face the board.”

“You’ll buy it?”

“We don’t want the Americans to share the purchase. If we can get it for half a million sterling, perhaps even more, we can’t lose. It’s better that we have it to ourselves, and then sell it piecemeal according to the best offers. The film people are in contact with New York and desperate to conclude. We have to move fast, Carl. And, let’s face it, you are not renowned as a fast mover.”

“I’ve always been a cautious animal.”

“That’s why you are still an editor. I do believe that if it was up to you, you wouldn’t buy this story.”

“It’s a lot of money, Percy.”

“Uncle agrees with me. It’s a business opportunity. You don’t have to have a degree in English Literature to see that.”

“What about provenance?”

“You are not to be swayed, are you? Personally I think this is a genuine story written, and hand-written too, by the master himself. But let’s suppose it’s not. You don’t imagine that this fellow Whitaker was the only one ever to have sent Doyle a Sherlock Holmes story, do you?”

“I see what you mean.”

“Yes, now at last, you are getting to see what I am driving at. I contend that, at the worst, this is a story that Doyle read and grudgingly approved. A story that perhaps Lady Doyle rescued and that people in his office filed away in his archive.”

“Umm.”

“And that’s at the worst.”

“We’d better keep this conversation to ourselves, Percy.”

“Everyone will make money.”

“And the Doyle Estate?”

“I will provoke them into denying that it’s genuine, or that they have ever seen it, or handled it.”

“I’m glad I’m not a lawyer, Percy.”

“That’s not nice. That’s the sort of joke I resent.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Having a wife in Australia is not very good for the morale.”

“A bonus and a long weekend will restore your morale. That new advertising girl is rather sweet on you, Carl. The one with the long blonde hair who wears those white sweaters. Did you notice that?”

“I hadn’t even noticed there were girls in the advertising department.”

“Exactly,” he said with the triumph of a diagnosis proved correct. “It’s no good sitting at home moping, Carl.”

“I might go to Australia, Percy.”

“That would be a blow, Carl.”

“It’s my marriage, Percy. She has her family there and her parents are getting old. And my son doesn’t want to come back here.”

“What work will you do?”

“There’s an ad agency there. They would probably like the idea that I’d worked for a big London agency.”

“You haven’t been negotiating all this on the sly, have you?”

I shook my head and he smiled. I think he would have thought more of me if I’d said yes, I had.

When I phoned my wife, I did it on a public phone from a railway terminal. It was better done that way. It was evening in London but noon in Los Angeles where she had a temporary secretarial job in a big movie production company. At noon Irene’s boss was always at lunch.

“I sold our lovely Volvo. I didn’t have many offers. It went for a song but I’m using it for another few days and we did rather well on the lease of the flat. The new tenant moves in next week.”

“Are you managing all right, darling?”

“It’s not much fun without a cleaning lady – the dishes pile up – but it was better to let her go well in advance. She’s gone home for a few weeks. I gave her half towards her plane ticket and told her it was time she visited her mother.”

“Well, in that case I shall give notice this afternoon.”

“You should have seen Percy,” I said. “He was like a small child.”

“We are going to ask for six. My brother is sure they’ll pay another hundred grand. They are very keen indeed. You are so clever, darling. A regular Sherlock.”

I was silent for a minute or so.

“Are you there, darling?” she asked.

“It was just a goodbye joke,” I said. “You remember what we agreed.”

“Why are you always such a wimp, darling? This is six hundred thousand pounds. This is a new life of high-living in a new land. We start again.”

“Just a goodbye joke,” I said. “Taking the money would be…” I trailed to a halt.

“Would be wonderful,” she completed her version of the sentence. “Your son could go to Harvard the way you said you would have liked to have done.” She took a deep breath and became charming. “We will live a life of ease. Be sensible.”

“No, Irene. It was just an idea for a story. Then it became a joke to play on Percy.”

“No corpus delicti, darling. It’s foolproof. No manuscript as evidence. No witness to the negotiations. All concerned disappear to the other side of the globe with no forwarding addresses.” There was a sudden note of concern: “Your policeman swallowed the robbery story?”

“Everything went OK,” I said. “But the answer is still no. No, Irene. Do you hear me?”

“Don’t ‘no Irene’ me, Carl. My brother and I have worked damned hard on this one. And spent good money on airline tickets. All you did is scribble a silly story and sit on your ass in London. It’s going ahead no matter what you think about it. So have an aspirin and go to bed. Tell the office you have a virus and by the weekend you will have vanished.”

“Very well, Irene. But I don’t like it.”

“You have your airline ticket. Don’t forget your passport. See you on the beach, darling.”

“Poor Percy,” I said.

And when, six months or so later, the letters started arriving, Percy’s letter was one of the first. No hard feelings, he said. No crowing. I read the letter several times; I had the feeling that he was half inclined to offer me some money towards my legal costs. But he could afford to be generous. He’d got the greater part of the money back, and the world rights on my “silly story” was eventually added to that. And there is to be a movie, too, they say. Nature follows art, I suppose.

There was no point in putting more money into my lawyer’s pocket. When Irene’s brother, Gordon McPhail, confessed, I had no alternative but to fill in the gaps. Most of the people who heard about it got it wrong and the newspapers did too. Even Percy, who should have known everything about it, thought that the Bali bomb in October had destroyed our “lovely restaurant”. Some latecomers to the bad news thought we were victims of the tsunami, which came two years later. In fact we never did buy the restaurant we were negotiating for in Bali. We found a place we liked better, in Surabaja – Irene always said that I went for it only because of the Brecht song lyrics – and we were doing quite good business when the blow fell. “We got it for a song,” she used to say before telling everyone that we had paid almost double the real value.

It was the terrorist bomb in Bali that did for us, of course. The Indonesian cops opened up the bank records to the Australian security service and they noticed the big money transfer. They became really excited. Sydney told London and Washington, and before I knew what was happening I was locked up in a prison in Jakarta with dozens of cops giving me hell on a shift for shift basis. Either they were convinced that I was the moneyman for the terrorists or they put on a wonderful act. They were rough and kept saying they’d hold me for ever and they didn’t care about giving me a lawyer or bringing me to trial. They put Gordon through the wringer too. He was treated worse than me.

But ours had been a good plan. Even when they had Percy identify photos of Gordon and got their tame experts to agree about Gordon’s signatures it still made a flimsy case to bring before a jury.

But my mind was changed by an avuncular old Aussie detective: “I’ll tell you this much, Mohammed, old son, the only way you can avoid serving fifty years in an Indonesian clink as a terrorist is to convince me you are a thief.”

I shook my head.

He gave a mirthless grin and said: “The locals tell me there are 365 islands out there. That’s bullshit, of course, but there are plenty of them, fever ridden and overgrown, some of them no bigger than a football field. Ideal in fact to use as high security prisons. I went to one of them once. The local coppers were showing us how they handled local law-breakers. It was a stinking hole: dense jungle, everyone as skinny as a rake, even the guards. One of the jokers there said that either the prisoners ate the snakes and rats, or the snakes and rats ate them. It was a good joke but it didn’t get much of a laugh from any of our boys. The cons never come back. The guards only do six months at a time. Any questions asked and the pen-pushers at headquarters say the paperwork got eaten by termites.” He sat down and mopped his brow. “You wouldn’t think it was still winter, would you?”

Perhaps it was a contrivance. No doubt the same cop did the same fatherly routine with Gordon, and they were all determined not to let us discover who cracked first. I could see it might all be a bluff at the time but I didn’t feel like betting my life on it.

And all through this, Percy was decent. He told the police he’d known me all his life, and that I couldn’t be a terrorist. But he wouldn’t lift a finger to help Irene’s brother. It was understandable really; Gordon was the one who had duped him. He didn’t have the same animosity towards me. He told the cops I was a weak character who had been drawn into crime by a shrewish domineering wife and criminal brother-in-law.

So I have no resentment concerning Gordon’s confession. It was just bad luck and he managed to get Irene totally exonerated. They treat me quite decently now that I’ve got the transfer back to the UK, but I’ll never eat rice, boiled fish or any of those damned fiery sambals for as long as I live. The governor here is a Sherlock Holmes devotee, so he likes to talk and display his knowledge to me, and I think I’ve persuaded him to try his hand at a pastiche of a Sherlock Homes story. I’ll help. We are going to invent “The Adventure of the Tired Captain”, a case that Doyle mentions in passing at the beginning of “The Naval Treaty” but never used. We won’t be the first to have a go at it but no matter. There is no pressure of time and Percy says if it’s good enough he’ll publish it. And why not? He published my previous Sherlock Holmes story, didn’t he?

Mind you, that’s not going to be the end of the story. Next week I have a lawyer coming in to see me and that kind of visit doesn’t have some big-eared warder sitting in to hear what we say. The court found me guilty of a whole string of offences, and writing that damned Titanic story is only one of them. So what are Percy and his uncle going to do when I claim copyright and my share of all the money they have put away? I’ll get legal aid, so I won’t have to find the money for the lawyers.

It’s only now that I can understand why writers were always complaining to me about the way publishers treat them. Why should we writers be exploited?