Just after sunset, a few hours behind schedule, they came to the final lamppost, right before the corner of Igor Street and the park. The shorter of the two held the ladder from below, because it was his turn to do so, and the taller man ascended the eight vertical steps to the bulb. It took him only a few minutes to rewire the fixture, and by the time he came back down the ladder, every lamp along Baker Street had been wired for electricity.

After returning the ladder and tools to the back of their wide-bedded carriage, they walked to the Marylebone Station to complete the connection. Once they had connected the Baker Street line to the system, from the transformer room deep underneath the station, they made their way back to examine their work.

They turned the corner as ten thousand volts surged from the Deptford Power Station, nine miles away, through the Ferranti cables underneath the city and onto the shining expanse of Baker Street. It was a brilliant sight, and though they had worked for the London Electric Supply Company for a few years now, the first glance at a street illuminated solely by the searing electric bulbs still caused a brief shock. Every building, every alleyway, every dark and fetid cobblestone had been washed clean in the radiant light.

“Oi,” said the taller workman. “That’s it, then.”

“I’d say so,” replied the other.

“Lord, but it’s sure bright, isn’t it? I can’t hardly see the fog anymore.”

His partner simply nodded in agreement. It was as if a layer of gloom and dread had been stripped from the streets, leaving the city white and clear. But the vision of this white and sparkling street was odd, too, and neither man possessed the words to explain why. So much that had been hidden was revealed in the electric light, so much had been gained. But perhaps something had been lost as well. Perhaps, both men thought but did not say, a part of them would miss the romantic flickering of the gaslight.

The first workman fished around in the pocket of his coat.

“You have any coin on you?” he said.

His friend patted his own pockets and heard a comforting jingle of metal.

“A few pence, I’d say. Why?”

The first man gestured toward the park.

“There’s a boy ’round the corner selling the papers. I’ve got a couple bits on me as well. You feel like a story?”

The second man thought about it, and smiled.

“Yes, I dare say I do. Something you have in mind?”

“There’s that new Strand out this morning. ‘The Hound of the Something-or-Another.’ A new Holmes one.”

“Oh! Yes, I think I could go for a good one of those.”

As they walked, both men removed all the coins they could find from their pockets. They presented the meager change to each other sheepishly. It wasn’t much, they knew. But based on a quick count, they found they had exactly enough for two pints of bitter ale and one paperback mystery.

Author’s Note

So, then, what really happened?

Not to disappoint you, but the only honest answer I can give is this one: It’s a bit of a mystery.

While The Sherlockian is a work of historical fiction, the emphasis needs to be placed on the word “fiction.” Many of the events described here did not happen, and many of the characters rendered did not exist. But since a number of them did exist, and since the work in front of you is a collage of the verifiably real, the probably real, the possibly real, and the demonstrably false, I thought a few words of explanation might be in order.

So here goes. The following is all true:

After Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930, a collection of his papers went missing from among his effects. This collection-some letters, some half-finished stories, and a volume of Conan Doyle’s diary- remained mysteriously vanished for over seventy years and was the holy grail of Sherlockian studies for most of the twentieth century. Generations of scholars attempted to locate it, but none met with any success.

Finally, in 2004, Richard Lancelyn Green, the world’s foremost scholar of Sherlock Holmes, announced that he’d found Conan Doyle’s lost papers. However, Green claimed that a distant relative of Conan Doyle’s had stolen these papers from Conan Doyle’s daughter and was planning to sell them at auction rather than donate the documents to charity as Green-and Conan Doyle’s immediate heirs-had wished. A dispute emerged between Green and this relative, and their argument over the rightful ownership of the papers grew increasingly bitter, and increasingly public. By March of 2004, Green had begun to tell his friends that he was worried for his own safety. He claimed that he received threatening messages and that he was being followed by a shadowy American. He told one close friend that his home was bugged, and he demanded that some visitors speak with him only in his garden. Green’s friends in the Sherlockian community became concerned.

On March 27, Richard Lancelyn Green was found dead in his South Kensington flat. He had been strangled-garroted-with one of his own shoelaces. His sister, Priscilla, discovered the body. The coroner returned an open verdict, and as of this writing the case is still considered unsolved by the London police.

Immediately thereafter Sherlockians around the globe began to search for Green’s killer. Grand theories quickly emerged, as some Sherlockians believed that the feud within the Conan Doyle family over the author’s estate had grown violent and taken Green’s life, while others thought it more likely that Green had committed suicide in order to cast suspicion on another party. The character of Harold, in this novel, is a composite of a number of real-life Sherlockians-all of whom, I can assure you, outshine Harold in both brilliance and social grace.

For more information about the death of Richard Lancelyn Green, I highly recommend the article “Mysterious Circumstances” by David Grann (New Yorker, December 13, 2004). Or, for a shorter introduction, try “The Curious Incident of the Boxes” by Sarah Lyall (New York Times, May 19, 2004).

All the information in the novel about modern Sherlockian societies- the Baker Street Irregulars and their many scion groups-is accurate, to the best of my knowledge, as are the descriptions of their meetings and rituals. That said, meetings of the Irregulars are not open to the public, and so I have relied upon public reports and interviews for a glimpse into their secret world. A very special thanks to Leslie Klinger- world-class Sherlockian and editor of The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes-for his help on these points and many others. And thanks also to Chris Redmond-creator of Sherlockian.net, which is an invaluable Sherlockian resource entirely unaffiliated with this book-for teaching me the long and not particularly sordid history of the Irregulars. As both of these men have forgotten more about Sherlockian studies than I will ever know, please note that all errors in this work are entirely my own.

As for the turn-of-the-century story line, all of the biographical information about Arthur Conan Doyle contained here is true. Many wonderful biographies of Conan Doyle exist, though I recommend Daniel Stashower’s Teller of Tales in particular. Stashower also edited Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters, a masterfully compiled collection of Conan Doyle’s personal correspondence. Additionally, Julian Barnes’s novel Arthur & George presents a beautifully rendered-and accurate!-portrait of Conan Doyle working on one of the real-life crimes he investigated. Over the years Conan Doyle assisted Scotland Yard on a number of cases; The Real World of Sherlock Holmes, by Peter Costello, contains a terrific list of all of the crimes with which Conan Doyle became involved. The particular case he investigates in The Sherlockian is fictional, though it is a composite of a number of nonfictional ones, especially the infamous “Brides in the Bath” murders of the period, a mystery that Conan Doyle himself did help to unravel.