The collected papers of.., p.3
The Collected Papers of Sherlock Holmes, Volume 3, page 3
As a print-on-demand publisher, MX does not have squadrons of editors. The business consists of three part-time people who also have busy lives elsewhere – so the editing effort largely falls on the contributors. Some readers and consumers out there in the world absolutely despise this – apparently forgetting about all those self-produced Holmes stories and volumes from decades ago with awkward self-published formatting and loads of errors that are now prized as collector’s items.
These critics should recall that every one of these new volumes by various authors – even those that have typographic and formatting errors – are the very best efforts that can be produced by very sincere people who don’t have professional full-time editors to help, and who would never ever have had the opportunity to publish otherwise, and because of these authors, there is thankfully more Sherlockian content in the world.
I’m personally mortified when errors slip through – ironically, there will probably be errors in this essay – and I apologize now, but without a regiment of editors looking over my shoulder, this is as good as it gets. Real life is more important than writing and editing, and only so much time can be spent preparing these books before they are released into the wild. I hope that you can look past any errors, small or huge, and simply enjoy these stories, and appreciate the effort involved, and the sincere desire to add to The Great Holmes Tapestry.
And in spite of any errors here, there are more Sherlock Holmes stories than there were before, and that’s a good thing.
David Marcum
Watson’s Descendants
by Nicholas Meyer
It is generally felt that the short story was Sherlock Holmes’s best venue. The novellas, by contrast, are judged to be… lesser. Even the fabled The Hound of the Baskervilles suffers from the detective’s absence for many pages. Though A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, and The Valley of Fear remain deliciously absorbing, it is in the short stories that Holmes and Watson truly flourish.
As Michael Chabon has observed, all fiction is fan fiction. Almost from the beginning, Sherlock Holmes has prompted imitators of his creator’s creation. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote sixty Holmes cases in all – fifty-six short stories and four novellas. When they ended, boys and girls, men and women of all ages mourned Watson’s silence and the series’ cessation. But it wasn’t long before others took up – or attempted to take up – Sir Arthur’s pen.
Writing a full-length Holmes novel has always posed a challenge, even for Doyle himself, to say nothing of generations of later writers and filmmakers. Short stories, on the other hand, pose problems of their own. A good short story must compress action and character. It must – obviously – be short. The gift of writing compelling short fiction remains in a class by itself. Poe, Doyle of course, Twain, Saki, and Hawthorne are among the masters of the form from the Victorian and Edwardian eras, but over the years, the short story has produced many masters.
I alas am not among them. Even as a kid in art class, my paintings were so huge the murals I attempted had to be unfurled in the hall, not the studio. And so it comes as no surprise that writing a short Holmes story does not come easily to me. In fact, it does not come at all.
I retain nothing but admiration for those writers who can create short fiction, and a special respect for those who can bring off simulacra of Doyle’s charming and distinctive Holmes tales. There many practitioners, including some whose efforts, unfortunately, resemble nothing so much as taxidermy. But among the best I must number David Marcum, who, by this point has written more Holmes stories than Doyle himself. Characterized by unflagging imagination and ceaseless ingenuity, along with felicitous prose, these tales continue to provide what we all crave: More Sherlock.
All Sherlock Holmes stories, (except Doyle’s), are of course forgeries. And it’s the rare forger who can resist signing his own work. See if you can spot David Marcum’s fine Italian hand.
Enjoy.
Nicholas Meyer
Los Angeles, 2021
Photos of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson courtesy of Roger Johnson
Sherlock Holmes (1854-1957) was born in Yorkshire, England, on 6 January, 1854. In the mid-1870’s, he moved to 24 Montague Street, London, where he established himself as the world’s first Consulting Detective. After meeting Dr. John H. Watson in early 1881, he and Watson moved to rooms at 221b Baker Street, where his reputation as the world’s greatest detective grew for several decades. He was presumed to have died battling noted criminal Professor James Moriarty on 4 May, 1891, but he returned to London on 5 April, 1894, resuming his consulting practice in Baker Street. Retiring to the Sussex coast near Beachy Head in October 1903, he continued to be associated in various private and government investigations while giving the impression of being a reclusive apiarist. He was very involved in the events encompassing World War I, and to a lesser degree those of World War II. He passed away peacefully upon the cliffs above his Sussex home on his 103rd birthday, 6 January, 1957.
Dr. John Hamish Watson (1852-1929) was born in Stranraer, Scotland on 7 August, 1852. In 1878, he took his Doctor of Medicine Degree from the University of London, and later joined the army as a surgeon. Wounded at the Battle of Maiwand in Afghanistan (27 July, 1880), he returned to London late that same year. On New Year’s Day, 1881, he was introduced to Sherlock Holmes in the chemical laboratory at Barts. Agreeing to share rooms with Holmes in Baker Street, Watson became invaluable to Holmes’s consulting detective practice. Watson was married and widowed three times, and from the late 1880’s onward, in addition to his participation in Holmes’s investigations and his medical practice, he chronicled Holmes’s adventures, with the assistance of his literary agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in a series of popular narratives, most of which were first published in The Strand magazine. Watson’s later years were spent preparing a vast number of his notes of Holmes’s cases for future publication. Following a final important investigation with Holmes, Watson contracted pneumonia and passed away on 24 July, 1929.
The Collected Papers of Sherlock Holmes
Volume III – Accounts(22 Holmes Adventures)
The Adventure of the Pawnbroker’s Daughter
“I appreciate the gesture,” said my friend, Sherlock Holmes, that spring morning, “but I do not foresee a happy conclusion. Still,” he continued, reaching for his pipe on the mantel, “if you persist in going forward with this plan, perhaps you would allow me to suggest a title?”
I turned from my desk, where I had been pursuing my labors in solitude for quite some time. As was often the case when some pressing matter did not result in his rising early, Holmes had slept late, and had just entered the sitting room from his adjacent bedroom. Without a glance toward the coffee pot on the table, he made his way toward the fireplace, where he proceeded to pack his pipe with all of the plugs and dottles accumulated and dried from the previous day. A disgusting habit, to be sure, but by this time, after having shared rooms with Holmes for a little over a year, an unsurprising one.
“A title?” I asked. “How on earth do you know that my work here needs a title? Perhaps I am simply constructing a list of items to purchase when I go out for a walk.”
“Clearly you are not working on such a list,” he said, teeth clenched around the stem of his pipe, working to get the tobacco scraps burning. “The journal you have open before you would not be used for that sort of thing. Rather, you are certainly constructing something of greater importance than the list that you have suggested. Obviously, you have been referring to some of the documents that are also arrayed on your desk. I will not insult you by referring to the other indications that point in the same direction. Therefore, the probabilities are that you will need a title.
“Perhaps,” he continued, dropping into his chair, “you already have one in mind, but I truly fear as to what it might be. Might I suggest, instead, something along the lines of ‘Some Notes Upon the Tracing of Homicidal American Cab Drivers Residing Within the Capital, as Related to Particularly Vicious Revenge Crimes and Long-Standing Mormon-Associated Feuds, with Associated Documentation Concerning the Use of Chance When Selecting Obscure Water-Soluble Poisons.’ ”
He was nearly out of breath by the time he finished this recital, but there was a twinkle in his eye and a trace of a smile upon his lips, and I realized that, even though he obviously knew about the subject of my morning’s work, he was not seriously advising that I denominate it as he had suggested.
“In what way did you ever – ?” I started to ask how he had guessed, before I remembered that Holmes never did that.
Seeing that I was aware of my near-error, he replied, “Last night, before you went up to your room, you appeared to be giving thought to some matter or other, with regular glances toward your desk, and your journals kept therein. Finally, upon standing up, you walked to the mantelpiece, where you took a moment to finger the wedding ring, still lying there over a year after the fact, that was found with the body in that house in the Brixton Road. Clearly you were considering adding to the work that you threatened a year ago to write and publish, recounting our first investigation together. When I entered this morning and found you writing, the confirmation was complete.”
I nodded. I had been trying to progress toward a published version of that occasion when I had first been privileged to observe Holmes’s methods, involving the capture of Jefferson Hope. I have long kept journals, and my lack of the need for a surfeit of sleep, especially after the events of the Afghan campaign, had often let me write deep into the night. I regularly made extensive notes of Holmes’s cases. But this matter, referred to by Holmes as involving “the scarlet thread of murder” and “the finest study I ever came across: a study in scarlet,” was different, in that I wanted it to be polished for presentation to the public. It had been something over a year since the events had occurred, and I had felt the stirrings once again to have the thing published. And yet, I was still having difficulties in determining how to write the larger portion of Jefferson Hope’s own tale, which explained those events of so long ago that had served as the motivation for the crimes. Perhaps something would suggest itself at some time in the future. Looking down at what I had already accomplished that morning, I decided that my labors were sufficient unto the day, and stood, whereupon I moved to my chair to the left of the fireplace, across from Holmes in his.
In those days, Holmes still tried to maintain the idea that he was capable of, for the most part, conducting his practice from his armchair. He had described for me, on the day when he first explained his profession, that he was consulted by a great number of people, and that he was generally able, simply from hearing their description of the facts, to set them on the right scent. Sometimes, however, he was forced to rise and go forth to examine things first hand. “Now and again,” he had said, “a case turns up which is a little more complex. Then I have to bustle about and see things with my own eyes.”
I did not realize it then, in the spring of 1882, that when Holmes was attempting, as often as possible, to reach his solutions from his armchair, he was no doubt trying to emulate his older brother, Mycroft, who functioned in much the same way for the government from his regular haunts within Whitehall and Pall Mall. In those early days, I did not yet know of Mycroft’s existence, and simply thought that Holmes was trying to perfect his methods in order to show that, with the correct information, and also by drawing educated and experienced conclusions, an armchair reasoner could do better than any Scotland Yarder who was physically on the scene of a crime. Little did I realize that I would soon see a demonstration.
Having recently been rewriting the portion of my manuscript dealing with this very aspect of Holmes’s practice, I led with a question regarding some of his more recent clients, most of whom had required a certain amount of investigation in the field. From there, Holmes and I had settled into a discussion of other facts related to the Jefferson Hope case, and I suddenly realized with a mixture of amusement and concern that Holmes did not seem inclined to notify Mrs. Hudson that he was up and about. His pipe would apparently be serving as his breakfast this day, as it had on so many other mornings.
I was considering whether to ring for more hot coffee for my own benefit when we perceived the bell at the front door. In a moment, we heard the sound of movement coming up the steps.
“Lestrade,” said Holmes. “Unmistakable. And he has someone with him. A girl, I think, from the lighter tread. Young enough to take the steps quickly, as compared to the inspector’s more seasoned and steady gait. Do you hear how she takes three steps to his two, and then waits for just a moment as he catches up, the scuff on the stairs from his boots as regular as clockwork? And of course that inward twist of his foot is the same as if he had called out his presence.”
A knock on the door proved that Holmes was correct. It was our friend, the inspector, with a girl of no more than twenty, and possibly younger. She was dainty, a pretty thing, and looking quite small, even next to the short, wiry policeman. Her blonde hair was pulled back rather severely and pinned beneath a small hat, but that fact could not hide either its luster or curls, and only served to accentuate the fresh healthy color of her complexion.
Lestrade showed the girl forward toward the basket chair, before comfortably making himself at home in front of the settee. As we stood, he introduced her as Miss Letitia Porter. “Of Limehouse,” he added.
“How do you do?” said Miss Porter.
Holmes turned his head and gave a speculative glance. “Surely not originally from Limehouse?” he said. “I fancy somewhere more to the east.”
She looked startled for a moment, and then said, “I grew up with my mother in Clacton-on-Sea. I only returned to live here with my father two years ago.”
Holmes nodded. He gestured for her to sit. When she had done so, the rest of us followed.
“How did you know?” she asked. “Where I grew up?”
Holmes crossed his legs and said, “I have made something of a study of various accents. It is a little specialty of mine to identify most of the manners of speech in the different London districts, although I have not yet carried my researches to the point where I can identify specific streets. On a larger scale, I can delineate a number of regional dialects. Yours, from the eastern coast, was mere child’s play.”
As the girl glanced toward Lestrade, who looked as surprised as she, Holmes said, “How may we help you today?”
The girl dropped her eyes, and then twisted slightly to defer to Lestrade, who was leaning forward with his arms resting on his knees, hat grasped in one hand. He cleared his throat, sat back, and placed the hat beside him. “Miss Porter dropped in today at the Yard seeking our assistance. She fears that her father, who owns a pawn shop in Limehouse, is in some sort of danger, although she cannot precisely define its nature. After hearing her story, I thought that this matter might be of interest to you, Mr. Holmes, and we wasted no time in coming around.”
Holmes’s eyes cut toward the Lestrade, and the two shared a knowledgeable look which went over my head. Holmes then turned his attention back to the girl, who had not seemed to notice the quick exchange between the consulting detective and the Inspector. Holmes made a small come-along gesture to her as he wished for her to commence her explanation.
Clearing her throat, she twined her small hands and began to speak. “I was born here in London, an only child. My father owns a small pawnbroker’s shop in Limehouse, at the southwest corner of Commercial Road where it meets Bekesbourne Street. It was where we lived when I was very small, in the rooms upstairs. When I was but two years old, my mother, who had never been comfortable here in the rough life of London, returned to her people by the sea, taking me with her. My parents remained legally married, but had no further contact with one another, except by way of the occasional letter.
“My father continued to reside above his shop, making a living, and seemingly content to get by, year after year. I grew up with my mother’s family, aware of my father, but never communicating with him, in respect of my mother’s wishes. Two years ago, when I was sixteen, my mother passed away from a short illness. My grandparents, with whom we had lived since moving back to Clacton-on-Sea, had died a few years earlier, and I was left living in the house where I grew up, but with it now under the ownership of my uncle and his wife.
“I may say that my aunt-by-marriage and I did not get along very well, and I began to feel that I must seek a life elsewhere. While disposing of my mother’s possessions, I came across many of her old letters from my father, written both when they were courting, and later, after their separation. While they had never seen each other again after we left London, it seemed that that they may have, in truth, had some lasting feelings for one another. Father had expressed a genuine interest in my progress and well-being, and it occurred to me that it might be a good thing if I were to return to London, the idea of which had never seemed unpleasant to me, as it had to my mother.
“To relate the matter in as short a manner as possible, I wrote to my father, expressing my interest in joining him, and he was very amenable to the plan. I left the house by the seaside where I grew up, moved back to the capital, and soon settled into the routine of being a pawnbroker’s daughter.”
“And that was two years ago, you say?” interrupted Holmes.
“Nearly,” the girl replied.
“Go on.”
