Echoes of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon(8)

“Have you ever heard of a Norwegian explorer named Sigerson?” asked Mr. Headley.

“I can’t say that I have,” said Holmes. He was now regarding Mr. Headley with a degree of suspicion. “Why do you ask?”

Mr. Headley decided to sit down after all. He wasn’t sure if it was good or bad news that the Caxton’s Holmes had not begun producing new memories due to the return of his literary self. Whichever it was, he could not hide the existence of the new story from Holmes. Sooner or later, he was bound to find out.

Mr. Headley reached beneath his jacket and removed the latest edition of the Strand.

“I think you should read it,” he told Holmes.

He then turned to Dr. Watson.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” said Mr. Headley, “but your wife has died.”

Watson considered the news for a moment.

“What wife?”



The three men sat in Mr. Headley’s office, the copy of the Strand lying on the table before them. The occasion called for something stronger than coffee, so Mr. Headley had broken out his bottle of brandy and poured each of them a snifter.

“If he’s me,” said Holmes, not for the first time, “and I’m him, then I should have his memories.”

“Agreed,” said Mr. Headley.

“But I don’t, so I can’t be this Holmes.”

“No.”

“Which means that there are now two Holmeses.”

“It would appear so.”

“So what happens when Conan Doyle eventually dies? Will this second Holmes also show up here?”

“And the second Doctor Watson,” added Watson, who was still perturbed to have discovered that he was once married, an arrangement about which he struggled to dredge up any but the vaguest of memories after all this time, as though he had dreamed the whole affair. “I mean, we can’t have two of us—er, four of us—trotting about. It will just be disconcerting.”

“And which of us would be the real Holmes and Watson?” added Holmes. “Obviously, we’re the originals, so it should be us, but it could be a messy business explaining that to the rival incumbents for the positions, so to speak. Worse, what if this new Holmes and Watson usurp us in the public imagination? Will we just cease to exist?”

They all looked rightly shocked at this possibility. Mr. Headley was very fond of this Holmes and Watson. He didn’t want to see them gradually fade away, to be replaced at some future date by alternative versions of themselves. But he was also concerned about what the arrival of a new Holmes and Watson might mean for the Caxton. It could potentially open the way to all kinds of calamitous conjunctions. Suppose noncanonical versions of characters began to appear on the doorstep, making claims for their own reality and sowing unrest? The result would be chaos.

And what about the library itself? Mr. Headley understood that an institution as complex and mysterious as the Caxton must also, on some level, be extraordinarily delicate. For centuries, reality and unreality had remained perfectly balanced within its walls. That equilibrium might now be threatened by Conan Doyle’s decision to resurrect Holmes.

“There’s nothing else for it,” said Holmes. “We shall have to go to Conan Doyle and tell him to stop writing these stories.”

Mr. Headley blanched.

“Oh no,” he said. “You can’t do that.”

“Why ever not?”

“Because the Caxton is a secret institution, and has to remain that way,” said Mr. Headley. “No writers can ever know of its existence, otherwise they’d start clamoring for immortality for their characters and themselves. That has to be earned, and can only come after the author’s death. Writers are terrible judges of these things, and if they knew that there was a kind of pantheon for characters here in Glossom, then we’d never hear the end of it.

“Worse, imagine what might happen if the Caxton’s existence became public knowledge? It would be like London Zoo. We’d have people knocking on the doors day and night, asking for a peek at Heathcliff—and you know what he’s like—or, God forbid, a conversation with David Copperfield.”

There was a collective sigh. It was widely known in the Caxton that to ask David Copperfield even the simplest of questions required one to set aside a good portion of one’s day to listen to the answer.

“Nevertheless,” said Holmes, “I can see no other option for us. This is our existence that is at stake—and, perhaps, that of the Caxton too.”

Mr. Headley drained his glass, and paused for only a moment before pouring himself another generous measure.

Oh dear, he thought. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.



Preparations for the journey were quickly made. Mr. Headley locked up the library, having first informed a few of the more balanced residents of the reason for the trip, even though he knew that his absence would barely be noticed by most of others. They could spend weeks and months—even years—napping, only waking when a publisher reissued their parent book in a new edition, or when a critical study caused a renewal of interest in their existence.

“Please try not to attract too much attention,” pleaded Mr. Headley, as he paid for three first class tickets to London, although even as the words left his mouth he realized how pointless they were. After all, he was boarding a train with two men, one of whom was wearing a caped coat, a deerstalker hat, and shiny new shoes with white spats, and could not have looked more like Sherlock Holmes if he had started declaring loudly that—