Night Music (46 page)

Conan Doyle had also largely forgotten the shock caused some years earlier by the apparent somnambulistic use of his left hand to write a scrap of Holmesian manuscript. For many months after, he had approached the cricket field with a sense of trepidation, fearing that, at some inopportune moment, his left hand, as though possessed, might attempt to take control of his bat, like some horror out of a story by Hauff or Marshe. Thankfully, he had been spared any such embarrassment, but he still occasionally cast his left hand a suspicious glance when his batting went awry.

He changed, made his farewells, and prepared to return to his hotel, for he had work to do. Initially he had returned with a hint of resignation and a mild sense of annoyance to writing about Sherlock Holmes, but “The Adventure of the Empty House” had turned out better than anticipated: in fact, he had already begun to regard it as one of the best of the Holmes stories, and the joy and acclaim that greeted its appearance in the
Strand
, combined with the honor of a knighthood the previous year, had reinvigorated Conan Doyle. Only the continued ill health of his beloved Toulie still troubled him. She remained at Undershaw, their Surrey residence, to which he would travel the following day in order to spend the weekend with her and the children. He had found another specialist to consult about her condition, but secretly he held out little hope. The tuberculosis was killing her, and he could do nothing to save her.

Conan Doyle had just turned onto Wellington Place when a small, thin man approached him. He had the look of a clerk, but was well dressed, and his shoes shone in the sunlight. Conan Doyle liked to see a man taking care of his shoes.

“Sir Arthur?” inquired the man.

Conan Doyle nodded, but didn't break his stride. He had never quite grown used to the fame brought upon him by Holmes, and had learned at an early stage of his literary career never to stop walking. Once you stopped, you were done for.

“Yes?”

“My name is Headley,” said the man. “I'm a librarian.”

“A noble profession,” said Conan Doyle heartily, quickening his pace. Good God, a librarian. If this chap had his way, they might be here all day.

“I have some, er, colleagues who are most anxious to make your acquaintance,” said Mr. Headley.

“Can't dawdle, I'm afraid,” said Conan Doyle. “Very busy. If you drop a line to the
Strand
, I'm sure they'll see what they can do.”

He made a sharp turn to the left, wrong-footing Mr. Headley, and quickly crossed the road to Cochrane Street, trying to give the impression of a man with life-and-death business to contract. He was almost at the corner when two figures stepped into his path, one of them wearing a deerstalker hat, the other a bowler.

“Oh Lord,” said Conan Doyle. It was worse than he thought. The librarian had brought along a pair of idiots who fancied themselves Holmes and Watson. Such men were the bane of his life. Most, though, had the common decency not to accost him on the street.

“Ha ha,” he said, without mirth. “Very good, gentlemen, very good.”

He tried to sidestep them, but the one dressed as Holmes was too quick for him and blocked his way.

“What the devil do you think you're doing?” said Conan Doyle. “I'll call a policeman.”

“We really do need to talk, Sir Arthur,” said Holmes—or “Holmes,” as Conan Doyle instinctively branded him in his mind. One had to nip these things in the bud. It was why inverted commas had been invented.

“We really do not,” said Conan Doyle. “Out of my way.”

He brandished his walking stick at his tormentor in a vaguely threatening manner.

“My name is Sherlock Holmes—” said “Holmes.”

“No, it isn't,” said Conan Doyle.

“And this is Doctor Watson.”

“No, it's not. Look, I'm warning you, you'll feel my stick.”

“How is your left hand, Sir Arthur?”

Conan Doyle froze.

“What did you say?”

“I asked after your left hand. I see no traces of ink upon it. You have not found yourself writing with it again, then?”

“How could you know of that?” asked Conan Doyle, for he had told no one about that unfortunate experience of April 1893.

“Because I was at Benekey's. You put me there, along with Moriarty.” “Holmes”—or now, perhaps, Holmes—stretched out a hand.

“I'm very pleased to meet you at last, Sir Arthur. Without you, I wouldn't exist.”

•  •  •

The four men sat at a quiet table in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese off Fleet Street, to which they had traveled together in a hansom cab. Mr. Headley had done his best to explain the situation to Conan Doyle along the way, but the great man was clearly still trying to fathom the reality of the Caxton and its characters. Mr. Headley could hardly blame him. He himself had needed a long lie-down after old Torrans had first revealed the nature of the Caxton to him, and he could only imagine how much more traumatic it might be for Conan Doyle with the added complication of witnessing his two most famous creations lunching before him on pea soup. Conan Doyle had settled for a single malt Scotch, but it looked like another might be required before long.

At Conan Doyle's request, Holmes had dispensed with the deerstalker hat, which now hung on a hook alongside his long coat. Without it, he might simply have been a regular client of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, albeit one with a certain intensity to his regard.

“I must admit, gentlemen, that I'm struggling with these revelations,” said Conan Doyle. He looked from Holmes to Watson and back again. Almost involuntarily, his right hand moved, the index finger extending, as though he wished to poke them to confirm their corporeality, the sound of Watson slurping his soup notwithstanding.

“It's hardly surprising,” said Mr. Headley. “In a way, they're a testament to the power of your imagination and the depth of your creations. Never before in the Caxton's history has a writer lived to see his own characters come to life.”

Conan Doyle took another sip of his whisky.

“If more writers did,” he replied, “it might well be the death of them.”

Holmes set aside his soup.

“Sir Arthur,” he said, “Mr. Headley has explained the situation to you as best he can. It's most difficult and worrying, and we can see only one solution to the problem. I appreciate that it might place you in an awkward position, but you must stop writing about Sherlock Holmes.”

Conan Doyle shook his head.

“I can't,” he said. “I've reached an agreement with
Collier's Weekly
. Not only that, but the public will see me hanged if I've raised their hopes of more adventures only to shatter them within a month. And then, gentleman, there is the small matter of my finances. I have a sick wife, two young children, and houses to maintain. Would that my other literary endeavors had brought me greater success, but no one mentions Rodney Stone in the same breath as Holmes and Watson, and I cannot think of the reviews for
A Duet
without wanting to hide in my cellar.”

“But the more Holmes stories you write, the more likely it is that you'll bring a second Holmes—oh, and Watson—”

“Thank you, Holmes.”

“—into being,” said Holmes. “Would you want a second Sir Arthur wandering the streets, or worse, moving into your home? Think of William Wilson. You might end up stabbing yourself with a sword!”

Mr. Headley leaned forward.

“Sir Arthur, you now know that the fabric of reality is far more delicate than you imagined,” he said. “It may be that the consequences of two versions of Holmes and Watson having a physical presence might not be so terrible, whatever the personal or professional difficulties for the characters involved, but there is also the possibility that the entire existence of the Caxton might be undermined. The more the reading public starts to believe in this new incarnation of Holmes, the greater the chance of trouble for all of us.”

Conan Doyle nodded. He suddenly looked tired and older than his years.

“Then it seems that I have no choice,” he said. “Holmes must fall again, and this time he cannot return.”

Dr. Watson coughed meaningfully. The others looked at him. The good doctor had finished his soup, for it was a pea-based delicacy of the highest order, but all the while he had been listening to what was being said. Dr. Watson was much wiser than was often credited. His lesser light simply did not shine as brightly next to the fierce glow of Holmes.

“It seems to me,” he said, “that the issue is one of belief. You said it yourself, Mr. Headley: it is readers as much as writers who bring characters to life. So the solution . . .”

He let the ending hang.

“Is to make the new Holmes less believable than the old,” Holmes concluded. He patted Watson hard on the back, almost causing his friend to regurgitate some soup. “Watson, you're a marvel.”

“Much obliged, Holmes,” said Watson. “Now, how about pudding?”

•  •  •

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never visited the Caxton Private Lending Library, although an open invitation was extended to him. He felt that it was probably for the best that he keep his distance from it for, as he told Mr. Headley, if he needed to spend time with the great characters of literature, he could simply pick up a book. Neither did he ever again meet Holmes and Watson, for they had their own life in his imagination.

Instead, he carefully set out to undermine the second incarnation of his creations, deliberately interspersing his better later stories with tales that were either so improbable in their plots and solutions as to test the credulity of readers to the breaking point—“The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire” being among the most notable—or simply not terribly good, including “The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter,” “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez,” or “The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier.” He even dropped in hints of more wives for Watson, whom he didn't actually bother to name. The publication of such tales troubled him less than it might once have done, for even as he tired of his inventions he understood that, with each inconsequential tale, he was ensuring the survival of the Caxton and the continued happiness of his original characters.

Yet his strange encounter with the Caxton had also given Conan Doyle a kind of quiet comfort. In the years following his meeting with Holmes and Watson, he lost his first wife, and, in the final weeks of World War I, his son Kingsley. He spent many years seeking proof of life after death, and found none, but his knowledge of the Caxton's existence, and the power of belief to incarnate fictional characters, to imbue them with another reality outside the pages of books, gave him the hope that the same might be possible for those who had been taken from him in this life. The Caxton was a world beyond this one, complete and of itself, and if one such world could exist, then so might others.

Shortly after Conan Doyle's death in July 1930, copies of the first editions of the Holmes tales duly arrived at the library, including
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
with its enlightening manuscript addition. By then Mr. Gedeon was the librarian, and he, Holmes, and Watson endured a slightly nervous couple of days, just in case the plan hatched by Watson and enacted by Conan Doyle had not worked, but no new incarnations of Holmes and Watson appeared on their doorstep, and a strange, warm gust of wind blew through the Caxton, as though the great old institution had just breathed its own sigh of relief.

A small blue plaque now stands on the wall of the Caxton, just above the shelf containing the Conan Doyle collection. It reads: “In Memory of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859–1930: For Services to the Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository.”

T
his is a true story. I've changed one or two small details, but no more than that. It seemed appropriate that, in the discussion of supernatural fiction to follow, I should somehow manage to sneak in something which is not quite fiction at all.

Writers are, in general, solitary beings. Oh, we mix with friends, and family, and one another. Some of us even manage to form relationships that last long enough to produce offspring. There is always a part of us, though, that prefers to be alone. We keep it walled off. It is this hidden aspect that enables us to be writers.

There was a time when publishers were content to permit writers to be themselves—that is, to let them write, and make no demands upon their time other than the occasional interview with a suitably serious literary journal or newspaper, or the signing of some pages for a limited edition to be sold through subscriptions, or a lunch with an editor during which wine would be drunk, complaints aired, and rivals belittled.

Now, though, writers are expected to be salesmen and hucksters. We have to promote our wares. We are enjoined to meet our public. Some writers are very good at this, and are happy to do it. Personally, I don't mind the promotional aspect of the job, just as long as it doesn't take up too many hours, for the more hours I spend away from my desk, the less I write.
¹
Overall, I suspect my readers would prefer to have more of my books to read than the dubious pleasure of my company, but I find that the demands on my time increase commensurately with the number of titles I produce, and I could now spend an entire year promoting my books in various countries, if the mood took me.

For some writers, such touring is a way of bringing in extra income from appearance fees, workshops, and unspent per diems. For others, it's simply a break from routine, a chance to see a new city at a publisher's expense, and perhaps catch up with friends and colleagues in exotic surroundings. Again, all of this presupposes that the writer in question enjoys such affairs and is capable of putting on a bit of a show for the public. This is not always the case. There are writers who should not be allowed out of the house, and should never, under any circumstances, be permitted to meet their public, for it does neither party any favors.