“Not sure what you mean, sir,” said the boy. He paused. He looked as if he were waiting for Arthur to say something.

“If you’ve a mind to take care of these girls,” said Arthur, “I might have a pair of hands that could help you.”

“What’d you say your ‘shop’ was, again?”

“Just a simple butcher’s, like I said.”

The boy returned Arthur’s pat on the shoulder. But this one was harder, sharper. There was a lot of strength in the boy’s arm.

“Oh, come off it,” said Bobby Stegler. “I know who you are! What did you say, Andrew Something-or-Other from the East End? Really now. Don’t think that the great Arthur Conan Doyle could walk into my printing house and I wouldn’t put the name to the man’s face!”

Arthur blanched. He had not expected to be so well known among the murderers of London.

“You’ve made a mistake, boy,” he said lamely.

Bobby Stegler was having none of it.

“It’s all right, Dr. Doyle. You can come level with me. You don’t know what an inspiration you’ve been. Your speeches against the suffrage. Tops. And your stories. They’ll show a man what his place in the world is, won’t they? Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t have listened to any of that feminine mewing.”

For the first time in a great while, Arthur felt truly ashamed. Is that really what people took from his stories? Is that what they said?

“Please, take a seat, sir,” said Bobby. “We have a lot to discuss. You see, you and I are on the same side. And I think we could help each other out quite a bit.”

CHAPTER 40 The Old Centuries

January 16, 2010

As Harold’s cab passed from under the great pines, he gazed up at Undershaw for the first time. Most of the windows were shattered. Empty husks of jagged glass hung from the peeling panes, like the teeth of a dying animal. The windows that weren’t empty were boarded up with cheap, rotting wood. The grass out front was tall and unkempt, sprouting mangy vines that scratched at the bricks.

Harold had never laid eyes on Undershaw before, though he’d seen it in photographs. He could only imagine what it must have looked like in its prime. To think that behind those faded walls the entire second half of the Canon had been written. Holmes had been resurrected from the Great Hiatus not a hundred feet from the spot along the driveway where Harold’s cab pulled to a dusty stop. For once he might actually be days-or even moments-away from knowing why. Who knew how many scholars had made this trip before him and come away empty handed? Harold would not be among them. He felt awed, he felt humbled, and yet a part of him was glad that he was going to first enter this house now, and not earlier in his life. Because now, Harold felt, he was worthy of its secrets.

An elderly woman sat on the stone steps leading to the front door. Only there was no front door, just a series of broken wood planks that had been nailed together. The woman was hunched over, hair pulled back in a bun, her bent frame wrapped in the sort of heavy, dark coat that would have been equally at place in any decade of the last six. She kept her head buried in a thick volume of photographs on her lap.

The woman-broad-boned, heavy-cheeked, rosacea pink-was named Penelope Higgins, and Harold had spoken with her late the previous day. Her mother had been Conan Doyle’s maid, and Penelope had lived in Hindhead her entire life. The Conan Doyle family had sold the house a generation ago, and for most of the century it had been a small country hotel. Now it was abandoned, and developers were fighting with various preservationist societies over the property’s future. As the battles dragged on, Undershaw languished in disrepair. Penelope lived close by and was one of the most vocal preservationists in the cause. She kept an extensive collection of photographs, plans, and other records of Undershaw’s history. It was these documents-open across her lap, growing brittle in the January air-that Harold had come to see.

When he’d called the day before, he had explained his Sherlockian credentials and his relationship with Alex Cale, whom she knew well. He had even called Jeffrey Engels to have him put in a quick word. Jeffrey had been surprised to hear Harold’s voice on the other end of the line, but registered Harold’s urgency and dutifully made the call to Penelope Higgins as requested. Harold realized that at some point he’d have to tell Jeffrey, and everyone else, where the hell he’d been for the past two weeks, but he figured he could work his story out when the time came. He was back on the trail now, and that was all that mattered. Without Harold’s needing to say so, Jeffrey had seemed to understand as much. He’d sent Harold on his way with barely a question.

Penelope gave Harold a once-over as he ascended the crumbling stone steps to the foyer.

They discussed their mutual Sherlockian acquaintances, and how Harold had always meant to visit Undershaw but had never gotten the chance. It was a banal and perfunctory conversation, but somehow both seemed to feel that a little chitchat was necessary. Ms. Higgins was clearly suspicious, but she had the good grace not to ask Harold about it directly. He’d been vouched for by the biggest names in Sherlockian studies, so she couldn’t very well deny him a look at her collection. But she must be aware of the strange circumstances of Alex Cale’s death, Harold realized, and so she must know that his visit was somehow connected to the murder. Harold repeated the same story he’d given her the night before: He was finishing Cale’s work, because they were friends, and he just needed to see Undershaw for himself, because Cale had been there. It was a weak story, and both of them knew it. But she nodded when he repeated it, offered a polite and accepting “I see,” and then stood. This woman did not trust him at all.

“Like to take a look at the house?” she said.

“Can we? It’s all boarded up.”

“No one in there now but rats and pigeons,” said Penelope drily. “If the likes of them are allowed in, I don’t see why we shouldn’t be.”

They entered through an empty window. Harold felt like a burglar, and yet there was nothing to steal. Everything of any value had been stripped from the house years ago. Nothing remained here save history and insects.

The house was smaller than he’d imagined. The hallways were narrow, and though the windows let in a lot of light, they seemed miniaturized. Dainty. Silence nestled into the dirty wooden floors, and into the paint-peeled walls. As they walked, Harold’s and Penelope’s footsteps echoed like typewriter clicks down the long, still halls.

“Anything in particular you’d like to see?” offered Ms. Higgins.

“Yes,” replied Harold. “The study.”

When she showed him in, past the heavy wooden door creaking on its single functioning hinge, Harold’s breath caught in his throat. He was a grown-up, thank you, and so he wasn’t afraid of ghosts or monsters or any sort of ghoul that Stoker might have written about. And yet to walk into this house… into this room… who wouldn’t be spooked by the rotting, abandoned mansion of the greatest mystery novelist of all time? Harold felt as if something were present here-something old, something worn, something dead.

“I was told that you have photographs of this room?” he said. “From when Conan Doyle was living here?”

“Yes. I have many of them. Conan Doyle was fascinated with photography, as you know. He had this whole house documented, from the first stone to his last days here.”

She dutifully flipped through her books and produced the photographs. Harold stared down at the black-and-white shots and then up at the same space, ravaged by the century since. The bookshelves along the walls no longer held their dusty volumes. The oak desk, which once sat heavy against the far wall, was long gone. The armchairs had been taken away, the lamps, the case in which Conan Doyle had kept his revolver. Gone, gone, gone.