The West End Horror Read online

  The West End Horror

  A POSTHUMOUS MEMOIR OF

  John H. Watson, M.D.

  AS EDITED BY

  Nicholas Meyer

  W • W • NORTON & COMPANY

  New York • London

  For Elly and Leonore

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Introductory

  1. Sherlock Holmes in Residence

  2. An Invitation to Investigate

  3. The Business at South Crescent

  4. Concerning Bunthorne

  5. The Lord of life

  6. The Second Murder

  7. Assaulted

  8. Mama, the Crab, and Others

  9. Sullivan

  10. The Man with Brown Eyes

  11. Theories and Charges

  12. The Parsee and Porkpie Lane

  13. The Missing Policeman

  14. The West End Horror

  15. Jack Point

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  FOREWORD

  One of the interesting consequences of publishing The Seven-Per-Cent Solution has been the great number of letters I have received—in my capacity as editor—from all over the world. As I predicted at the time of publication, the manuscript has become the centre of a heated controversy, and people have written to me on all sorts of paper, with varying grammar, spelling, and punctuation, to tell me what they think about the book’s authenticity. (I even number among my correspondents an eleventh grader in Juneau, Alaska, who called me on the phone quite early one morning—apparently supposing Los Angeles time to be an hour later instead of otherwise—to tell me that he thought I was a fraud.)

  A more bizarre result of the book’s appearance has been the surfacing of a number of other “missing” Watsonian manuscripts, to wit: no less than five, all submitted for my consideration as editor. They arrived from sources as diverse as their astonishing contents, from an airline pilot in Texarkana, Texas; a diplomat in the Argentine; a widow in Racine, Wisconsin; a rabbi in Switzerland (this one written in Italian!); and a retired gentleman of undefined occupation in San Clemente, California.

  The manuscripts were all interesting, and all contained pedigrees, explaining their belated appearance and the circumstances under which they were composed. At least two of them—while perfectly charming—were obvious forgeries (one a pornographic put-on), a third a thinly disguised political tract, another the ravings of a disordered mind, the fourth attempt to prove Holmes’s Jewish ancestry (this was not from the Swiss rabbi), and one . . .

  The case you are about to read is taken from a manuscript that belongs to Mrs. C. K. Verner of Racine, Wisconsin. Before it was given to me, I received the following letter from Mrs. Verner, mailed to me, care of my publishers in New York:

  December 14, 1974

  Dear Mr. Meyer:

  I was really interested to read the manuscript you edited, called The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. My late husband, Carl, was descended from the Vernet* family, which as you probably know, Sherlock Holmes was descended from, too.

  I wonder if you would be interested in looking at another long lost manuscript” of Dr. Watson’s, only this one was never exactly lost. Carl, my husband, got it from his father, who was willed it (he used to tell us) from Mr. Holmes personally.

  It is hand-written and a bit difficult to read in spots, mainly because of some water damage suffered to it by Carl’s father back in the 30s when he couldn’t afford to fix the roof of his attic.

  Carl’s father (Grandpa Verner—he died in ’46) never let any publisher see the manuscript because it’s quite clear from the beginning of it that Mr. Holmes didn’t want people to read it But there’s a lot of water under the bridge since then, and those people are all dead, anyway.

  I read in the paper last week all about what they just found about Gladstone’s personal life, and I guess this can’t be any more hurtful than that.

  Carl is gone since last February, and as you know, the economy is not doing too well. I’m probably going to have to sell the farm and could surely use some cash. If you want to see the papers and you are interested in them, we could come to some understanding about money. (I think I'll take your uncle Henry’s advice, though, and try to sell the original copy! I think I read in Time magazine where he got a bundle on it from some jasper in New Mexico who collects stuff like that)

  Very truly yours,

  Marjorie Verner (Mrs.)

  This letter was the first of a great many which passed between Mrs. Verner and myself. On my advice, she consulted her family lawyer, and that individual proved (to my cost) to know his business. Eventually, however, matters were satisfactorily settled and I flew to Racine to pick up the manuscript after several Xeroxes had been made.

  It was extremely difficult to read in places and presented very different problems from its predecessor’s.

  The water damage was severe. In places words and even phrases were obliterated and impossible to decipher. I was obliged to consult specialists in this sort of thing (and I give special thanks here to Jim Forrest and the laboratories at U.C.L.A.), who worked technical wonders at bringing up missing pieces.

  There were many occasions, however, when the results were unsuccessful. Here I have been forced to put in the word or phrase that seemed to fit the rest of the paragraph or page. I have done my best, but I am not Watson, and thus the reader may find a jarring note here and there. For this he must blame not the good doctor but my humble self. I thought of indicating these passages in the book but then decided such bracketing would be too intrusive. I’m sure the worst offenses will be quite obvious, anyway, and my clumsy hand will be instantly perceived.

  Aside from the water damage, the most nettlesome problem was dating the manuscript. Internal evidence makes it quite clear that The West End Horror begins March 1, 1895. Ascertaining the date of its composition, however, is another matter. It was evident (to me, anyhow) that it was composed a lot later than 1895. Not only does Watson refer to intervals of years between efforts on his part to get Holmes’s permission for the project, he also points out that among considerations pro permission were the deaths of many of the principals concerned with the case. Inasmuch as these names are not changed (impossible to disguise really, as Holmes points out), the dates are fairly easily determined. They hint at a relatively late date of composition, certainly after 1905. The fact, however, that the manuscript is in Watson’s own hand, indicates with equal clarity that he was not yet crippled by arthritis. Beyond that, it is difficult to say. My own hunch—and it is only a hunch—is that The West End Horror was set down sometime after the First World War and before Holmes’s death, in 1929. One of the things that makes me pick so late a period is that Watson—as in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (but not so much)—continues to describe things that obviously aren’t there any more. That Watson never sought to recover the manuscript after Holmes’s death suggests to me that his own ailments had begun to overtake him (possibly the onslaught of crippling arthritis, which plagued his last decade)—another argument for the latish dating.

  It may be noted that Watson’s use of “Americanisms” persists, and this, I feel, deserves comment. Readers skeptical of the authenticity of The Seven-Per-Cent Solution base part of their argument for forgery on the fact that the book contains these Americanisms, which they deem “telltale.” But they disregard two very crucial points. In the first place, Americanisms crop up all through Watson’s case histories; in the second, there is a very simple reason for this. Between 1883 and 1886, Watson was working as a physician in San Francisco, California, to pay off some of his brother’s debts. He married his first wife, Constance Adams, there, as any student of W. S. Baring-Gould’s excellent biography of Holmes and Watso
n† knows. As Holmes (after living in America for two years) remarked to Watson, in His Last Bow, “My well of English seems to be permanently defiled.” So much for Americanisms.

  As for footnotes, I have again attempted to keep them to a minimum, though there are so many facts which check out (an argument in favor of the manuscript’s authenticity) that I felt obliged to include many of them.

  Finally, a brief comment regarding the authenticity question. We have no way of proving such things. Indeed, healthy skepticism demands that we doubt To have discovered one missing Watsonian account might seem like a miracle; to have unearthed another smacks suspiciously of coincidence. In self-defense I point out that I cannot claim to have actually discovered either of these documents, and in the case of the second, as Mrs. Verner points out, it wasn’t exactly missing.

  As regards authenticity, the reader must decide for himself, and I am aware of the controversy (am I ever!) that will surround this narrative. I conclude by referring you all to that charming poem of Vincent Starrett, which includes the wonderful words, “Only those things the heart believes are true.”

  Nicholas Meyer

  Los Angeles

  August 1975

  * Entile Jean Horace Vernet (1789–1863), called Horace Vernet, famous French painter and portraitist, was the great-uncle of Sherlock Holmes.

  † Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street: A Life of the World’s First Consulting Detective, by William S. Baring-Gould, published by Bramhall House, 1962.

  THE WEST END HORROR

  INTRODUCTORY

  “No, Watson, I’m afraid my answer must remain the same,” said Sherlock Holmes. “You’re setting down ‘the West End Horror,’ ” he went on, chuckling at my expression. “Don’t look so astonished, my dear fellow. Your thought process was simplicity itself. I saw you at your writing table, arranging your notes. Then you came upon something you had forgotten about; it stopped you cold; you held it, read it, shaking your head with an air of familiar disbelief. Then you turned your gaze to our collection of theatrical programmes and then to my little monograph on ancient English charters. Finally, you stole a surreptitious glance in my direction as I sat absorbed in tuning my fiddle.Voild.” He sighed and drew his bow across the strings in a tentative fashion, resting the end of the instrument on his knee. “I’m afraid it must still be ‘No.”

  “But why?” I retorted with energy, not pausing to acknowledge his mental legerdemain. “Do you think I would fail to do justice to the case—or to yourself?” This last protest was tinged with irony, for his early criticisms of my efforts to keep some record of his professional activities had been harsh, indeed. They had mellowed to something less than full approval when, with the passage of time, he saw that my accounts brought him more than a modicum of agreeable notoriety. His vanity, which was not inconsiderable, was usually flattered at the prospect.

  “On the contrary. What I fear is that you would do justice to it.”

  “I shall change the names,” I offered, beginning to see where the problem lay.

  “That is precisely what you cannot do.”

  “I have done so before.”

  “But cannot possibly do so now. Think, Watson, think! Never have our clients been so well known! The public may argue about the true identity of the King of Bohemia*; they may guess at the real title of the Duke of Holderness. But here there could be no room for doubt—there are no fictitious characters you could substitute for those of the principals in this affair and hope to deceive your readers. To disguise them sufficiently, you would find yourself in phantasy up to the neck.”

  I confessed this difficulty had not occurred to me.

  “Besides,” Holmes went on, “you would be obliged to recount our part in the business, as well. While scarcely unethical, it could hardly be termed legal. Destruction of a corpse without notifying the authorities is a clear violation of law and could be construed in this case as suppression of evidence.”

  There the conversation ended—as it usually did—and I tucked away my notes on the entire incredible story till I should chance upon them again after another year or two and broach the subject once more.

  Getting Holmes to change his mind once he had got hold of an idea was like trying to reverse the direction of the global orbit. Once it had begun spinning on its course, it was virtually impossible to stem the momentum, let alone alter the axis. An idea would fix itself in his brain, take root there, and flourish like a tree. It could not be uprooted, only felled—and this only when struck by a better idea. It was Holmes’s unshakable conviction in the present instance that “the West End Horror” (as he liked to call it) was a story for which the world was not yet prepared and that it could not be revealed save with consequences he wished to avoid.

  Several things finally combined to change his views on the topic. The passage of years and the deaths of many of the principals involved, as well as the changing mores of society, wrought a subtle alteration in his obstinacy. Then I advanced a clever argument myself, which was designed to allay his fears of publication.

  I told him in so many words that my chief concern was setting down the case as a matter of historical record (there he conceded its usefulness) and not as sensational literature for the scandalmongering Press. So far from looking for a publisher, I offered Holmes sole and exclusive proprietorship of the manuscript, to do with as he saw fit, when he saw fit. My only stipulation was that it not be destroyed.

  He procrastinated for several days following my offer, during which he appeared to have forgot entirely our latest discussion (I think perhaps he was trying to) and busied himself with his criminal index, which demanded constant revision if it was to be of any use. I did not press him, knowing that his mind was turning over this new possibility without my having to say anything further.

  “How could you possibly organise it?” he asked me once, while we were at the Turkish baths. “The cast of characters and events is large and diffuse. It will provide you with none of the compact symmetry of my more typical cases, the kind of material with which you work so well.”

  I answered that I should simply set down what happened in the order in which it happened.

  “Oho,” he laughed. “Resorting to the tricks of cheap fiction, are you? No one will believe you, you know.”

  I added that remark to my arsenal of incentives and aimed it back at him. He brooded over it amidst the rising steam and said nothing.

  Another week went by, and then, quite abruptly, he looked up from his chaotic filing arrangements and said in an offhand tone, “Oh, well, you might as well do it. But see that you give it to me, as you promised, when you have done.”

  I did not dare say anything to provoke second thoughts on his part but replied with equal offhandedness that I would. And so I shall, making only one disclaimer before beginning. Since the case which follows involves a great many of the greatest names on the British stage, there is a great temptation to write the story today† with the benefit of that comforting hindsight, which allows us to claim with a certain smugness that we knew all along who was destined for greatness and other like matters. It may also strike the contemporary reader—should Holmes ever let this manuscript out of his hands!— that some of my suspicions at the time were nothing short of preposterous. I will resist the temptation to modify or dilute those suspicions. I did not at the time, nor do I now, believe that positions of power or influence render a subject immune from investigation. My suspicions‡ may seem absurd today, but I will let them stand, for all that, and tell my story as it fell out at the time.

  * Long assumed by scholars to be King Edward VII. However, Michael Harrison has recently demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that the King of Bohemia was in reality His Serene Highness Prince Alexander (“Sandro”) of Battenberg, once king of Bulgaria.

  † Another bit of evidence for the latish dating.

  ‡ Another bit of evidence for the latish dating.

  ONE

  SHERLOCK HOLMES IN RESIDENCE />
  All theatrical London gossiped and speculated about the murder of Jonathan McCarthy when news of it first appeared in the papers. Theories were rife concerning the acerbic writer and the many enemies his pen had made. But curiosity, unsatisfied, eventually these a death of boredom. McCarthy’s assassin was never caught, much less discovered, and as no new facts were forthcoming, the police were finally forced to join the public and own themselves baffled. The case was never closed, but their interest was inevitably arrested by more current events. The mysterious death of the actress at the Savoy had the same tongues wagging for weeks, and Scotland Yard was hard put to explain the peculiar disappearance of its police surgeon—who vanished, taking two corpses along with him from the mortuary, and was never heard of again. In McCarthy’s case the police ignored, as well (or forgot, because they could not understand it), the bizarre clue the dead man had left behind.

  How the populace would have trembled had they deciphered it. Instead of being idly (or in the case of the police, professionally) interested in an affair which, however sensational, held no personal concern for them, they would have found themselves—all of them!—very real participants in a crime so monstrous that it threatened to blot the nineteenth century and alter the course of history.

  The winter of ’94-’95 had been a fearful one. Not in recent memory had London been pelted so with snow; not in recent memory had the wind howled in the streets and icicles formed on drainpipes and in the eaves as they did in January of 1895. The inclement weather continued unabated through February, keeping the street sweepers perpetually occupied and exhausted.

  Holmes and I stayed comfortably indoors at Baker Street No cases appeared out of the snowdrifts, for which we were unashamedly grateful. I spent much of the time organising my own notes after first extracting a promise from Holmes to desist from chemical experiments. I pointed out that in fair weather it was possible to dispel the stench he created with his test tubes and retorts by opening the windows and going out for a walk, but that should he become carried away now by his hobby we would inevitably freeze to death.