The Sherlockian (22 page)

Harold realized for the first time that he wasn’t doing this for Alex. He was doing this for himself. He was doing this for the
solution.
The almighty answer that lay just beyond his vision, past the murky clouds and into the heavens. This was not about justice. This was about mystery.

He looked up from his screen to find that Sarah was not beside him. Through the front windows of the café, he could see her on the street outside, talking animatedly into her phone. She had taken a number of these mysterious calls in the last few days, always leaving to talk so Harold couldn’t hear. He was trying not to be paranoid, but someone had recently just pointed a gun at him. That had been a singular experience in Harold’s life, and he dearly hoped he would not have another like it.

“Who was that on the phone?” he asked Sarah when she returned.

“My editor, back in New York,” she replied. “He’s very excited about the piece.”

“Yeah? What did you tell him?”

“Not much. That we’re making progress. That you’re a fascinating character to hang the piece on. He’d love to meet you, when we head back to New York.”

Harold wasn’t sure which he was more flattered by—Sarah’s calling him fascinating or the idea that they were headed back to New York. Together.

It did seem odd that she’d have to leave the room to speak to her editor, though. Harold tried to quiet his suspicions.

“I’d love to meet your editor,” he said simply. “After all of this is over.”

“Speaking of which,” she said, “what have you found?”

“There’s something weird here.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“There’s nothing new in here from the section of Arthur’s life that the missing diary should cover—October through December of 1900. There’s only a few pages on that period of his life, and everything in it comes from the public record. There aren’t any secrets.” Harold flipped through the pages on the screen. “We learn that Conan Doyle ran for public office back home in Edinburgh, lost miserably, played a lot of cricket, did some consulting for Scotland Yard, and then finally resurrected Sherlock Holmes. Those details have been in a dozen other Conan Doyle bios before. We all knew that already.”

“Hold up there,” said Sarah. “I didn’t know that already. Arthur Conan Doyle consulted for Scotland Yard?”

“Yeah. There are plenty of newspaper accounts of his work at the time. He started to become more . . . let’s say more ‘eccentric’ as the years went on. Somebody made a half-assed attempt to kill him by planting a letter bomb in his mail slot. It didn’t work, needless to say. But Arthur started talking to Scotland Yard, and he got quite invested in a few of their cases. At one point there was some serial killer he thought he was chasing, actually, but it never amounted to much.”

“He never caught who he was after?”

“No. In fact, I don’t even think the Yard regarded it as a serial-killer case. Jack the Ripper had shocked all of London a few years earlier, and I imagine they thought Arthur was letting his literary sensibilities get the best of him. But they were happy for the publicity, happy with the public’s knowing that Arthur Conan Doyle was on their side. As the years went on, actually, there would every now and then be this huge public outcry for Scotland Yard to deputize him again on some major case. When Agatha Christie disappeared, in 1926, all the newspapers had editorials asking Conan Doyle to get involved. And you know what’s funny? He did. And he
found her.
She had gone off for a drive in the country one day and never returned. Her car was crashed against a tree, but there was no blood or sign of a body.”

“Jesus. How’d he find her?”

“He correctly figured that there was only one train station she could have walked to—or been walked to—in the area, and only one train she could have gotten on without being noticed. Somehow, and I honestly forget how, he figured out which stop she would have had to get off at. Sure enough, her husband found her in that town, three days later, living under an assumed name. She’d had a nervous breakdown after catching him in an affair with another woman. It was kind of sad, really.”

“Wow. This doesn’t have anything to do with the missing diary, does it?”

“No.”

“Okay, so . . . Conan Doyle worked for Scotland Yard, and then— shortly after—resurrected Sherlock Holmes?”

“Yeah. The Great Hiatus came to an end with the publication of
The Hound of the Baskervilles
in March 1901. Sherlock Holmes had been dead for eight years, and suddenly, for no apparent reason, Arthur decided to bring him back. To write more stories about the fictional detective he
loathed,
by all accounts. He told people it was for the money, but that never quite made sense. He had all the money in the world already, plus he’d had blank-check offers from every publisher and magazine in the world for years at that point. Why then? And why bring Holmes back so . . . so different.”

“Different?” said Sarah, intrigued.

“Yeah,” said Harold. “After the Great Hiatus, when Holmes returned in those later stories, he was just different. Meaner. Colder. He starts manipulating witnesses for information. Lying to people. Committing crimes himself if he thinks it’ll serve his cause. One time he even seduces and proposes marriage to a housemaid in order to get her to let him into her house. Then he never calls on her again. He becomes a real bastard. He also seemed to have lost his faith in the English justice system. All of a sudden, he was acting as judge and jury, even meting out punishments for the criminals he caught. Early on, Holmes worked in conjunction with Scotland Yard, but in the later years he was completely independent. And he’d developed real contempt and animosity toward the police. Sure, the cop characters were always dumb in the Holmes stories, the better to show off how smart he was, but after the Hiatus the cops become obsolete. Holmes wants nothing to do with them at all.

“The question of the Great Hiatus—the question that Alex’s biography doesn’t seem like it’s capable of answering—is, what happened to Holmes while he was gone?”

“It sounds to me,” said Sarah, thinking it over, “that the question is, what happened to Arthur Conan Doyle?”

C
HAPTER 23

The Suffragists

“Woman’s heart and mind are insoluble puzzles to the male.”

—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,

“The Adventure of the Illustrious Client”

November 11,1900

Arthur fastened the top button of his S-bend corset. He sucked in his belly while he affixed the bottom straps to his garters. The trumpet skirt was loose and wrapped easily around his waist. But as he stood up and the folds of his skirt fell delicately over his white stockings, Arthur felt a sharp pain in his chest and back. The corset hurt already, digging into his rib cage and shoulder blades.

“Ow, Bram, is all this really necessary?” he complained. “My God, it is tremendously uncomfortable.” Bram looked up from the more modern, “liberty” bodice around his own belly. Arthur was quite a sight. Clumps of pectoral fat were pressed up by his corset, giving the appearance of a pair of succulent breasts. His skirt, loose in the current style, fit him rather well. The incongruity of Arthur’s bushy mustache made Bram laugh out loud, though once he had shaved it, put a wig on, and applied a little makeup . . . well, Bram didn’t think Arthur would look half bad.

“You’ll look the image of a proper lady, Arthur, don’t you worry.” Bram couldn’t help smiling as he said it. “Holmes was always putting on some fresh skirts to go undercover in his adventures, wasn’t he? Seems a good time for you to give it a try. I’ve borrowed some stage makeup from Henry’s dressing room, and some wigs from the ladies’. They will not mind, and Henry will not notice.” Bram pointed to a stained porcelain sink in the corner of the room. The two men dressed before great mirrors, which reflected gaslight from a dozen surrounding lamps. They had taken hold of an abandoned dressing room, deep in the belly of the Lyceum Theatre. None of the actors wanted to use it any longer, because it remained the only dressing room still lit by gas. Bram had been forced to pay for the installation of electric lights in Henry’s dressing room shortly after he’d paid for the installation of electric lights onstage. Henry felt that it was inconceivable that he dress by gaslight, if he were to perform by electric light. Shortly thereafter all of the other actors had lodged similar protests, and Bram had the new lights installed throughout the theater, save for this single, faraway dressing room.

“I don’t see why I can’t continue my investigations in a good pair of trousers,” said Arthur. The corset was making him irritable. Even the fastening loops which hung from the back scraped against his skin awkwardly. He would not have a moment’s peace in this awful contraption.

“What else would you have us do?” said Bram. “Attend tonight’s meeting of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies in top hats and tails? I believe they’d notice you in particular, the famed author and celebrated antisuffragist Arthur Conan Doyle. They’d eject us before we’d even made it to our seats. And if we dressed as other, less famous men, we’d still attract rather more attention than we need as a pair of gentlemen at a suffragist rally. If we’re to go, and to go unmolested, then we’re to go as women.”

Arthur knew that Bram was right. But he was still displeased.

“If you like,” Bram continued, “I can go to the meeting alone. No one knows who I am. I wouldn’t need any disguise at all to spend an evening with the ladies of the NUWSS.”

Arthur thought he detected a trace of bitterness in Bram’s voice. Just because the man’s literary career wasn’t moving along as he’d hoped, there was no cause for him to take his frustrations out on his more successful fellows.

“No, I need to be there myself. To see Millicent Fawcett and her satin gang. Someone is killing those girls off, and if I’m to protect the rest of them, I’ll need to see precisely what they’re up to.”

“Ever the chivalrous knight, aren’t you?” said Bram.

Arthur drew a thin evening shawl over his shoulders and tied it in front of his neck in a double bow. “Chivalry is the very soul of manhood. It is what separates men from beasts.”

“It is also,” said Bram as he tended to his skirt, “what separates men from women.”

“Indeed! As well it should.” Arthur toyed with the bonnet in his hand, spinning it around to find the proper straps. “Were men to become women and women to become men, why, that would spell the death of our civilization! It would be the fall of England.”

“ I take it, then, that you haven’t reconsidered your position on granting women the right of suffrage? Come. Sit. Allow me to shave your mustache.” Bram led Arthur to a chair by the sink. His tools had already been laid out. Scissors, cream, straight razor. “Unless, of course, you’d like to perform the honors yourself?”

“No,” said Arthur. “I don’t believe I could bear it. I’ve had this mustache since I was six and ten years of age, did you know that? I was the first boy in my class to sprout follicles.” He sat in the chair, facing his friend, and closed his eyes. “And yes,” Arthur continued, “I have certainly reconsidered my position on the topic of women’s suffrage. I have considered it again and again, and each and every time I have found the argument of the suffragists to be wanting.”

Bram prepared the shaving cream in a clay mortar, whipping it quickly with a feathered brush. “And what is it about the argument for the rights of women which still leaves you unsatisfied?” he said. He took a pair of short steel scissors from the sink.

Arthur flinched. He gritted his teeth but kept his eyes closed. He didn’t want to witness the extirpation of his own facial hair.

“It has nothing to do with rights, man,” he said quietly, barely moving his lips so that Bram could do his work. “It is about duty. Men have their duties to society, and women have their own. It is thus that the sexes are able to cohabitate happily. Can you imagine what would happen were wives to start voting alongside their husbands? It’s no secret that the Conservative Party finds far greater support among the women of England than the men.”

“Gladstone said as much when he sank the Reform Bill.” Having trimmed Arthur’s mustache down to a taut stump, Bram began applying cream with the aid of his brush.

“Quite so,” said Arthur. “You’ve a good memory for politics. The Liberals kicked the legs out from under the suffragists for their own electoral reasons. My larger point remains. Let us say the bill had passed and the society women of England had begun to vote. A young couple, freshly married, goes off together to the polls. The husband votes for, in this case, Gladstone. The wife votes for Cecil, the most honorable marquess of Salisbury. Why, the fights they would have! What a strain it would place on their marriage were the wife to suddenly commence telling her husband how to vote! Or how to tariff this year’s French grain! It would be as if men started telling their wives how to keep a soufflé from falling. The rate of divorce in this country would explode.”

When Arthur had finished speaking, Bram slid the razor cleanly across his upper lip in a dozen short strokes. Inch by inch, Arthur’s mustache was scraped from his face. Bram handed him a hot towel, which he’d taken great care to prepare.

Arthur opened his eyes. He examined his visage in the mirror. He looked so . . .
nude.

“All right then,” said Bram. “Let’s get some eye shadow on you. A dab or two of powder to your cheeks and we’ll be off.”

“How did you come to know so much about ladies’ makeup?” asked Arthur as he accompanied Bram to the latter’s powder box.

“I work in the theater, Arthur,” Bram replied. “And I’m sure I’ve many talents of which you’re most likely unaware.”

Arthur held up a pouch of white powder. It looked just like flour, or unmelted cocaine.

“The powder will whiten you out, and then this”—here Bram displayed a razor-thin charcoal pencil—“will darken the lines around your eyes. Now sit, and let’s be quick. The lecture begins at eight. Who knows? Perhaps you’ll learn something.”