The Sherlockian (3 page)

“Killed Holmes,” he wrote.

Arthur felt light. His shoulder muscles loosened. He closed his eyes and inhaled the dark air. He was so happy.

He was careful to lock his precious diary back in the desk before stepping out into the hallway in search of brandy.

C
HAPTER 4

The Lost Diary

“Watson here will tell you that I can

never resist a touch of the dramatic.”

—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,

“The Naval Treaty”

January 5, 2010, cont.

“To murder!” repeated Jeffrey Engels for emphasis, back in the Algonquin Hotel.

Harold paused. Something was very wrong here.

“The affair has taken a grave turn? To murder?” Jeffrey said again, with a touch of hesitation.

Harold laughed. “The quote is from ‘The Adventure of the Six Napoleons,’” he said. “You owe me a drink.”

“Well done!” Jeffrey beamed. “So I do.”

“But I think you owe me two drinks. The quote isn’t quite right. It should be ‘the affair has taken a
very much graver
turn,’ not ‘a
grave
turn.’ ”

Jeffrey thought for a moment.

“My, you’ve been invested in the Irregulars all of two minutes and look at you! Picking nits at an old man already. Well, very well. I’ll keep you in scotch until dawn at this rate.”

Harold had initially encountered this Sherlockian quotation game at the very first meeting he’d attended. Four years ago, before he had written anything for the
Baker Street Journal
or met any of the Irregulars, he found himself at the meeting of the local Los Angeles “scion” society, the Curious Collectors of Baker Street. They were a small group, considerably less prestigious than the Irregulars. Meetings were open to the public. In an oak-lined bar, over glasses of peat-smelling scotch— all Sherlockians seemed to think that ice cubes were made from poison and were therefore to be distrusted, as far as Harold could tell—they called out quotes from Sherlock Holmes stories. One member would holler a quote—“ ‘ I never guess. It is a shocking habit, destructive to the logical faculty,’” for instance. Then the man or woman to his right would have to provide the name of the story from which it came—in this case
The Sign of the Four.
If he answered correctly, it would then be his turn to yell out a quote, and then the turn of the Sherlockian to his right to supply the answer. Whoever erred first would find the next round on his or her tab. Given most Sherlockians’ fondness for highquality scotch, and for voluminous quantities of same, new and inexperienced members would find their American Express cards pressed to their limits.

“It’s my first night as an Irregular,” said Harold. “And my guess is, you’re more than a little responsible for that. I think I’m the one who owes you a drink.”

Jeffrey’s grin returned. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, kid. Now let’s make use of the bar.”

A few minutes later, Harold sat on the stool beside Jeffrey, sipping bourbon. A group of revelers had staged a nonviolent coup over the bar’s piano and were sing-chanting an old Sherlockian ditty. The bartender regarded them with equal parts disapproval and bemusement.

“To all our friends canonical / On both sides of the crime / We’ll take the cup and lift it up / To Holmes and Watson’s time,” sang the drunken group, to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne.” It was both off-key and arrhythmic, though Harold had to admit that he wasn’t sure he’d
ever
heard a Sherlockian song sung with much regard for proper pitch.

Harold and Jeffrey were soon talking about the diary, which Harold suspected was all anyone was talking about that night. The singing and drinking were a distraction, but there was really only one thought haunting the minds of the hundreds of Sherlockians in the Algonquin Hotel: the lost diary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The lost diary that had finally been found.

After Conan Doyle died, one volume of his diaries had gone missing. The author had kept a detailed daily diary of his activities for his entire life, and yet when his wife and children surveyed his papers after his death, one book was strangely not present. No worn, ink-drenched leather journal for the period from October 11 through December 23, 1900 , could be found. And in the century that had passed since that day, not one of the hundreds of scholars and family members who had tried to find it had been able to do so. The lost diary was the holy grail of Sherlockian studies. It would be worth a fortune—perhaps as much as $10 million, if it ever went up for sale at Sotheby’s. But more importantly, it would provide a window into the mind of the world’s greatest mystery writer, at the height of his powers. For a hundred years, scholars had theorized about what was in the diary. A manuscript for a lost story? Some secret confession from Conan Doyle? And how on earth had it vanished so completely?

Three months before the dinner at the Algonquin, each member of the Irregulars had received a tantalizingly brief e-mail from Alex Cale, a fellow Irregular. “The great mystery is solved,” it had read. “I have found the diary. Please make all necessary arrangements that I might present it, and the secrets contained within, at this year’s conference.”

It was a delicious mystery, even for Alex, who had a particular fondness for this sort of drama. Quickly, a flurry of e-mails skittered across the globe: “Is he serious?” . . . “He can’t mean THE diary, can he?” . . . “He’s been looking for that damned thing for twenty-five years; he only just found it NOW?” The Baker Street Irregulars reacted with incredulity only to buffer themselves from their forthcoming shock; the next three months would see them through stages of exhilaration, anxiety, twitchy anticipation, and, from some darker corners, jealousy.

Alex Cale was already the most accomplished of the Sherlockians. It was difficult to argue that he was not the world’s greatest expert on Sherlock Holmes, though the Irregulars boasted more than a few experts who might be inclined to disagree. But of course, his rivals had said, of course it would be
Alex Cale
who found the missing diary of Arthur Conan Doyle. With his money. With his free time. With dear dead Daddy’s seemingly never-ending trust fund behind him.

And yet the question currently foremost in the minds of Harold, Jeffrey, and the hundreds of other Sherlockians drinking, laughing, sleeping, or, less commonly, making love in the Algonquin Hotel was this: Where
had
Alex found the diary? And how had he found it?

After his initial message, Alex stopped responding to his e-mails. He returned no phone calls. He answered no letters, even though the craft of old-fashioned letter writing had always been one in which he’d taken some pride. Finally, after a number of attempts at communication from Jeffrey Engels, Alex wrote back a message. If one could even call it that.

“Am being followed,” Alex wrote to Jeffrey. “Will update soon.” It had the clipped syntax of a telegram, and as a result Jeffrey couldn’t tell whether Alex was joking or whether he was losing his mind. He forwarded Alex’s message around, and the consensus was that Alex was having a little too much fun with all of this, taking the fantastical mystery a bit too far. Certainly the diary would be valuable, but who— what shadowy figure—would trail Alex around his London home? Cale must be teasing, they thought. Though Harold, prone to fantasy as he was, harbored fears. Was it possible that someone really
was
trying to hurt Alex Cale?

“My best guess?” said Jeffrey. “It’s a story. A lost manuscript. Conan Doyle must have decided it was garbage and hidden it away. He wouldn’t have wanted anyone to find and publish his subpar work.”

“Maybe,” said Harold. “But Conan Doyle published a lot of material in his life. And look, not to be blasphemous or anything, but they’re not all gems. ‘The Lion’s Mane’? ‘The Mazarin Stone’? I mean, really.”

Jeffrey laughed.

“I always took the view that Conan Doyle didn’t even write those awful late stories himself. They don’t quite sound like him. But the diary is from the fall of 1900. He was preparing to write
The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Probably his best work, if you ask me.”

“Yeah,” said Harold. “I’m not sure . . . I just don’t think it’s a story, for some reason. I think it’s . . .” Harold drifted off. He felt silly saying this out loud.

“It’s . . . ?” prompted Jeffrey.

“I mean, that it’s . . . That the diary has a secret in it. Something he didn’t want anyone to know. Something he wrote down for himself. And only himself. He was a writer. He was a devout diarist. He liked to put things on paper. It’s therapeutic. But then he didn’t want the world knowing whatever is in that thing.”

Jeffrey’s phone went off. The sound was somewhere between a squeak and a beep. He looked at the screen and, motioning an apology to Harold, answered his phone.

“Yes?” was all Jeffrey said, and then, after a moment, “Thank you.” Harold looked at him quizzically.

“So you think there’s a secret in that diary?” said Jeffrey. “Well then, kid, why don’t we find out?”

Harold was still just as confused.

“That was the concierge,” continued Jeffrey. “I told him to contact me as soon as Alex Cale checked in.” He smiled again, pleased with himself. “Cale is in the lobby. Want to go solve a mystery?”

Harold narrowly avoided knocking his drink over as he jumped up from his stool.

He bounded out of the wide double doors like Holmes on the trail of Professor Moriarty. Jeffrey, still smiling, followed into the radiant lobby.

Alex—Jeffrey was right, that was actually Alex Cale signing his name for the desk clerk—wore a thick trench coat, buttoned to the top, and held a heavy-looking briefcase in his right hand. He transferred the case to his left hand while he finished with the hotel forms. Effete but friendly, Alex was the kind of man who hosted as many parties as he attended and who had a knack for making sure that everyone was satisfied with a drink at even the parties for which he wasn’t responsible. Harold had met Alex at previous Sherlockian events, and of course he’d known Alex’s name almost as long as he’d known the name Sherlock Holmes, but he did not know him well.

“Alex, my old friend, you’re here!” bellowed Jeffrey. Alex turned but didn’t seem entirely happy to see the two men heading toward him.

“Gentlemen,” said Alex quietly. His accent—English—was rare among the Irregulars, most of whom were American. Alex neither set down the case nor moved to embrace his two colleagues in any way. He stood there like a wet paper towel, damp and used. A storm must have kicked up outside. Harold hadn’t noticed. Alex’s pupils were wide, as if from lack of sleep. He seemed to gaze right past them.

“Where have you been all week, you old dog? We’ve missed you. Yesterday we had the most marvelous talk from Laurie King about the Woman—her role in the Great Hiatus, all that. Fascinating.”

“Sorry I missed it,” said Alex with obvious insincerity. He must know, thought Harold, that they did not want to talk to him about any of this. They wanted to talk to Alex about what everyone wanted to talk to Alex about: The diary. Tomorrow’s lecture. The solution to a hundred-year puzzle.

“Who are you?” asked Alex. He didn’t even bother to look Harold in the eye as he said it.

“Harold. I’m Harold White. I was just invested in the Irregulars tonight.” Harold reached out for a shake, but Alex made no move to take his hand. “We actually met once before. In California. You were at UCLA, giving a talk?”

“Right, yes,” said Alex. “I remember. Pleasure to see you again.” Alex clearly did not remember, nor did he seem particularly pleased.

“They get younger every year, don’t they?” said Jeffrey warmly.

Harold tried not to take offense.

“I’m not really that young,” countered Harold. “I’ve already—”

“Do not turn around,” said Alex abruptly.

Harold was confused. “I’m sorry?”

“ Do not turn around,” repeated Alex. Both Harold and Jeffrey were facing away from the hotel’s front doors, though both instinctively started to cheat their heads to the side. “There’s someone outside. Through the window.
Do not turn,
what’s-your-name—Harry?—what did I just say to you? Now, I’m going to shift slightly to my right. Yes. Now you two do the same. Yes. Again. Can you see anyone? There at the window?”

Harold tried to move his eyes without moving his head, which gave him a slight headache. He saw thick waves of rain batter the tall windows. He saw dull streaks of white light on the glass from the streetlights across Forty-fourth Street. He did not see anything like a face in the window, peering sinisterly into the lobby.

Harold was confused, and he was becoming concerned as well— though for Alex’s sanity rather than for his safety. Jeffrey did not appear to see anything untoward outside the hotel either, and he seemed equally uncertain about how to respond.

“C’mon now,” said Jeffrey. “Quit putting us on. Come and let’s have a drink. You can tell us about your adventures.”

Alex either ignored or didn’t hear him, searching the rest of the lobby in quick, sharp glances.

“Tell us what’s in the diary,” Jeffrey continued. “Please. Give us a sneak peek, before tomorrow.”

Alex stared at Jeffrey for a silent moment. He appeared genuinely confused.

“You really want to know what’s in this diary?” said Alex.

The question was so simple, and the answer so obvious, that it took them a few moments to respond.

“Yes,” said the two men, in approximate unison. For the first time, Alex made eye contact with Harold. The effect was unnerving.

”I wonder if you do,” said Alex. “When you’re presented with a problem, it’s only natural to want to know the answer. But if you think you can manage to sleep tonight, then sleep on this: Is the mystery sometimes more pleasurable than the solution? Are you sure that finding out what’s in this diary will be as satisfying as forever wondering about what’s in this diary?” He stepped back, away from them, switching his briefcase from one hand to the other. He pulled it to his chest, tapping it lightly with his free hand. “I suppose you’ll see tomorrow, then.”

As Alex walked quickly away across the hardwood floor, Harold noticed the line of wet footprints he left in his path. The shoe-shaped puddles quickly streaked and pooled, their original shape lost into a thin watery sheen.