The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (2 page)

Read The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures Online

Authors: Mike Ashley

BOOK: The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures

10.71Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

No reader has ever put down the stories believing that Watson had said the last word on the subject. For some there was an irresistible urge to parody the style and to play with the name of Sherlock Holmes (which lends itself well to mutations such as Shylock Bones, Sherluck Gnomes, Picklock Holes, or Sheerlecoq Omes). The parodies made fun of the contrasting characteristics of Holmes and Watson, between the infallible brain which could distinguish 144 types of cigarette ash or recognize clay and earth from the counties of England (something still denied to the most sophisticated computers of the late twentieth century) and the obtuseness of the all-admiring friend.

The greatest scope for other writers lay in the unrecorded, unfathomed and unfinished cases. When Watson made it known that Holmes had survived the struggle at the Reichenbach Falls, there were demands that he should furnish the public with details of the cases which he had already mentioned, and he proceeded to do so with “The Second Stain” (to which he had referred on two occasions). Even then there was an alternative literature provided by others, including major writers such as Bret Harte, and Mark Twain (who introduced Holmes into his late novel,
A Double-Barrelled Detective Story
).

The early apocryphal works did not profess to be part of the original “canon”, for the concept only developed after Ronald Knox had elevated the study of Sherlock Holmes to new and rarefied heights in 1911 with his famous satirical essay, “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes”. This gave impetus to the serious study of the stories and raised the possibility that there was not one but two authors (as had been suggested in the writing of the
Odyssey
) or that Watson had described the early cases as they happened, but had invented the later ones to satisfy public demand. The new scholarship opened the way for others to take up their pens to continue the saga, while remaining faithful to their subject as had the story-tellers of old who created heroic deeds for Alexander the Great of which historians were previously unaware.

The apocryphal Sherlock Holmes story need not be a great detective story, but it has to be a convincing story of the great detective. The character is more important than the case. It is his method which appeals to the reader. It is the special relationship with Dr Watson, who holds up a mirror to nature and occasionally distorts the image to add glamour to the reflection. The additional stories should conform to the formula and yet should add variety. The purist might prefer the seemingly insignificant trifle that turns out to be important, and the humble and eccentric client often makes a better entrance at Baker Street than the representatives of the reigning houses of Europe or the emissaries of the Pope. The introduction of historical figures such as Oscar Wilde or Jack the Ripper is not always advisable as it could be said that they add an element of fiction to the self-contained world of Sherlock Holmes, and characters whose exploits have been documented by others sometimes have difficulty crossing the threshold at Baker Street. Watson could describe a case in which Sherlock Holmes outwitted Raffles, but it would not be the Raffles who is known to us through the writings of his friend, Bunny Manders. There again, there is no reason why Holmes’s grandson should not ape his grandfather and form a working partnership with Dr Watson’s granddaughter, but it is Dr Watson, and his work, who will always be most in demand. Whatever other cases remain in the battered dispatch box, readers are most anxious to have details of the cases which are known to them by name and which were solved by Sherlock Holmes.

This volume is exactly what is required. It contains an impressive array of cases which Watson mentioned and it has a scholarly status as it is arranged in chronological order with a connecting narrative which provides a biographical background. It is entertaining and informative, and is remarkable for the many distinguished writers who are among the contributors. It is a book which can be recommended and is in every sense a
magnum opus
.

Richard Lancelyn Green

Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment is given to Dame Jean Conan Doyle for permission to use the Sherlock Holmes characters created by the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. My thanks also to Roger Johnson, Jon Lellenberg, Christopher Roden and R. Dixon Smith for their help and guidance during the preparation of this book, and to Richard Lancelyn Green for kindly providing the foreword. All of the stories in this volume are in copyright. The following acknowledgments are granted to the authors and their agents for permission to use their work.

“The Adventure of the Amateur Mendicant Society” © 1996 by John Gregory Betancourt. This story has been revised. An earlier version appeared in
Resurrected Holmes,
edited by Marvin Kaye (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1996). Printed by permission of the author.

“The Legacy of Rachel Howells” © 1994 by Michael Doyle. Originally distributed privately in a limited edition for The Stormy Petrels of British Columbia, January 1994, and reprinted in
Canadian Holmes,
Autumn 1995. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Adventure of the Grace Chalice” © 1987 by Roger Johnson. Originally published in
The Sherlock Holmes Journal,
Winter 1987. Revised for publication in this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.

“The Adventure of the Suffering Ruler” © 1983 by H.R.F. Keating. First published in
John Creasey’s Crime Collection 1983
edited by Herbert Harris (London: Victor Gollancz, 1983). Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent Peters, Fraser & Dunlop.

“The Adventure of the Dorset Street Lodger” © 1997 by Michael Moorcock. First commercial publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author and the author’s agent Curtis Brown Ltd.

Introduction

The Life and Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

For more years than I care to remember I have been researching the life of the first and best known of all private consulting detectives, Mr Sherlock Holmes. It has not been easy. Devotees of the Sherlock Holmes cases will know that his friend and colleague Dr John Watson kept an assiduous record of many of the cases after they first met in January 1881, but he was not involved in them all.

When Holmes was reflecting over his cases in the hours before his cataclysmic struggle with Professor Moriarty in “The Final Problem”, he remarked to Watson that he had investigated over a thousand cases. That was in April 1891. In “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist” Watson comments that between 1894 and 1901 Holmes had been involved in every public case of any difficulty plus many hundreds of private cases. Watson goes on to say that “I have preserved very full notes of all these cases.” Yet when you look at the standard omnibus volume of Sherlock Holmes you will find only fifty-six short stories and four novels, sixty cases in all. In writing up these cases Watson makes tantalizing passing references to others, such as the repulsive story of the red leech, or the singular adventures of the Grice Patersons on the island of Uffa, but though he kept notes of these stories he did not complete all of them as finished cases. Even then he refers to just short of a hundred cases, so that in total we know of only about 160 cases, which is likely to be less than a tenth of all of the cases Holmes investigated. How wonderful it would be to know about the others. That has been my life’s work.

The obvious starting point was Watson’s papers. He told us in “The Problem of Thor Bridge” that they were filed away in a despatch box stored in the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co., at Charing Cross. Imagine my horror when, many years ago, in attempting to gain access to these records I discovered two things. Firstly that Watson was clever and had stored only some of his records in that bank vault, and that others were hidden elsewhere. But more frustrating was that I had been pipped at the post. The Cox Bank papers had already been collected by someone else and though he provided a name and identity for the purposes of the bank, I have never been able to trace him, and suspect that the identity he gave was false. Watson was fearful that his papers might be stolen. When he published the case of “The Veiled Lodger” in January 1927 he alerted the public to the fact that attempts had already been made to gain access to his papers and he gave a warning to one individual, whom he doesn’t name, that facts would be revealed about him if he didn’t desist. Occasionally stories purporting to be from these files have surfaced in books and magazines. Some may well be genuine, or at least give that appearance, but most are almost certainly false, written by those seeking to gain some reflected glory from the fame of Sherlock Holmes.

Over the years I have tracked down some of the original cases from papers at Scotland Yard, old newspaper files, and documents held in private archives. On rare moments I have stumbled across papers which almost certainly came from Watson’s despatch box, but I fear that most of those records are hidden in one or more private collections, possibly not even in England, purchased, I dare say, for a phenomenal price.

The trail is complicated by many false avenues and windings. Not even Watson was helpful. Frequently in his published cases he disguised the names of individuals, for obvious reasons, and falsified dates and locations, so that when he recorded that Holmes was investigating such-and-such a case it was as likely that Holmes was somewhere else at that time involved in a very private affair. Watson did his job well in masking the trail, and it will probably never be fully uncovered.

However, the time has come for me to share the product of some of my research. It is far from complete, but for fear that something may happen to me or to my own papers, I thought it was right to place some of it in print. Perhaps the existence of this book may bring me into contact with others who have access to further papers. Who knows?

In this volume I have pieced together something of the investigations of Sherlock Holmes and have presented twenty-six new cases completed by fellow researchers who have helped me in my quest. I have endeavoured to show where these cases fit into Holmes’s career and how they relate to the known cases. In an appendix at the end of this book I also provide a complete chronology of Holmes’s life and known cases, including some of the other write-ups of his investigations where I believe there has been a genuine effort to get at the truth.

Let us begin our quest, therefore, and return to the early days of Sherlock Holmes.

Other books

Hannah & the Spindle Whorl by Carol Anne Shaw

Justifying Jack (The Wounded Warriors Book 2) by Beaudelaire, Simone, Northup, J.M.

In the House of the Interpreter by Ngugi wa'Thiong'o

A Season in Purgatory by Dominick Dunne

A Dozen Dates by Mitchell, Missy

November Foxtrot (Rhythm of the Heart Book 2) by Jade, Scarlett

Knight Fall (An Erotic BBW Romance) by Maddix, Marina

Beside Still Waters by Viguié, Debbie

Scare the Light Away by Vicki Delany

Dream Team by Jack McCallum