Echoes of Sherlock Holmes

by Laurie R. King

  “What an extraordinary fellow,” I said. Holmes was never one for the storyteller’s flourish, but he had an eidetic memory for dialog, and I knew he was giving it word for word—beat for beat and tone for tone. It was as if I was in the room with the tormented soul. The hair on my neck sprang up.

  “‘Leave it with me,’ I told him, and showed him out. When I returned to my study, I found that I was curiously reluctant to do what I knew I must do. I found myself delaying. Smoking a pipe. Tidying my notebooks. Cleaning up my cross-references. Finally, I could delay no further and I went down to the station taxi stand and had a black cab take me to Mycroft.”

  “Mycroft!”

  “Of course. When it comes to signals intelligence, my dear brother sits at the center of a global web, a point of contact between MI5, MI6, GCHQ, and the highest ministers and civil servants in Whitehall. Nothing happens but that he knows about it. Including, it seemed, my visitor.”

  “Sherlock,” he said to me, once I had been ushered into his presence, “as unfortunate as this is, there’s really nothing to be done.”

  The boom years since the 9/11 attacks have not been kind to my brother, I’m afraid. As his methodology has come into vogue and his power in the security services has grown, he has found himself at more unavoidable state dinners, more booze-ups at a military contractor’s expense, more high-level interagency junkets in exotic locales. Hawai’i seems a favorite with his set, and I’ve heard him complain more than once about the inevitable pig-roast and luau.

  Always heavy, but now he has grown corpulent. Always grim, but now he has grown stern and impatient. Watson, my brother and I were never close, but I have always said that he was my superior in his ability to reason. The most disturbing change to come over my brother in the past fifteen years is in that keen reasoner’s faculty. By dint of circumstance and pressure, he has developed the kind of arrogant blindness he once loathed in others—a capacity for self-deception, or rather, self-justification, when it comes to excusing the sort of surveillance he oversees and the consequences of it.

  “There is something obvious that can be done,” I told him. “Simply tell the Americans to let those boys go. Apologize. Investigate the circumstances that led to this regrettable error and see to it that it doesn’t happen again. If you care about excellence, about making the country secure, you should be just as concerned with learning from your failures as you are with building on your successes.”

  “What makes you say that this is a failure?”

  “Oh, that’s simple. These boys are a false positive. They lack both the wit and the savagery to be a threat to the nation. At most, they are a threat to themselves.”

  “And what of it? Are these six fools worth jeopardizing the entire war on terror, the special relationship, the very practices at the heart of our signals intelligence operation?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  My brother colored, and I watched as that great mind of his went to work mastering his passions. “I’m afraid you don’t know what you’re talking about. It comes of being too close to the trees, too far from the forest. Human intelligence is fine as it goes, but when you conduct your investigations retail, you miss the patterns that we find in the wholesale end of things.”

  “When one conducts one’s affairs at the retail level,” I told him, “one must attend to the individual, human stories and costs that vanish when considered from the remove of algorithmic analysis of great mountains of data.”

  He sighed and made a show of being put upon by his brother. I expect that there are Whitehall mandarins who quake in their boots at such a sigh from such a personage. I, of course, stood my ground and ignored his theatrics.

  “Come now,” I said. “There’s nothing to discuss, really. One way or another, the truth will out. That young man will not sit on his hands, whether or not I offer him a safer route to his disclosure. It’s not in his nature.”

  “And it is not in mine to have my hand forced by some junior intelligence officer with a case of the collywobbles.” Mycroft’s voice was cold. “Sherlock, your client is hardly an innocent lamb. There are many things about his life that he would rather not have come out, and I assure you they would come out.” He made a show of checking his watch. “He’s already been told as much, and I’m certain that you’ll be hearing from him shortly to let you know that your services are no longer required.”

  Now I confess it was my turn to wrestle with my passions. But I mastered them, and I fancy I did a better job of it than Mycroft had.

  “And me?”

  He laughed. “You will not betray a client’s confidence. Once he cries off, your work is done. Done it is. Sherlock, I have another appointment in a few moments. Is there anything further we need to discuss?”

  I took my leave, and you have found me now in a fury and a conundrum, confronting my own future, and that of my brother, and of the way that I failed my client, who trusted me. For as you’ve seen, I kept my erstwhile client’s bit of paper, and the names of the boys he feared so much for, and have made inquiries with a lady of the press of whom I have a long and fruitful acquaintance. The press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it. I have been most careful, but as I have said on more than one occasion, my brother Mycroft has the finer mind of the two of us.”

  He filled his pipe and struck a match. There was a sound at the door.

  “I fancy that’s him now,” he said and puffed at his pipe. Someone who did not know him as well as I did may have missed the tremor in his hand as he shook the match out.

  The door opened. Mycroft Holmes’s face was almost green in the bright light that lit it like the moon.

  “You brought Watson into it,” he said, sighing.

  “I’m afraid I did,” Holmes said. “He’s always been so diligent when it came to telling my story.”

  “He is a veteran, and has sworn an oath,” Mycroft said, stepping inside, speaking with the air of a merchant weighing an unknown quantity in his scales.

  “He is a friend,” Holmes said. “Sorry, James.”

  “Quite all right,” I said, and looked at Mycroft. “What’s it to be, then?” I was—and am—proud of how steady my voice was, though my heart trembled.

  “That is to be seen,” he said, and then the police came in behind him.

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  TASHA ALEXANDER first discovered Sherlock Holmes when she was ten years old and stumbled upon the stories when making her way systematically through the stacks in the South Bend Public Library. She immediately read them all twice and was entirely convinced Holmes was an actual person. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the Lady Emily Series and, when walking in Baker Street, still feels a twinge of regret that Holmes was fictional (or so she understands). www.tashaalexander.com

  DANA CAMERON’s relationship with Sherlock Holmes has always been tempestuous. She went from being terrified out of her wits by “The Speckled Band,” to consuming the canon as a teenager living in London, to currently being obsessed with Mycroft Holmes (she is a founding member of the Diogenes Club of Washington, D.C., a scion of the Baker Street Irregulars). Dana writes fiction inspired by her career as an archaeologist; in addition to six Emma Fielding mystery novels and three “Fangborn” urban fantasy adventures, she has written more than twenty short stories (including the Sherlockian pastiche, “The Curious Case of Miss Amelia Vernet”). Several of those stories feature colonial tavern-owner Anna Hoyt, who has a small role in “Where There Is Honey.” Dana’s work has won multiple Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity Awards, and has been short-listed for the prestigious Edgar® Award; in 2016, she became a member of The Baker Street Irregulars, with the investiture “The Giant Rat of Sumatra.” Learn more about her at www.danacameron.com.

  JOHN CONNOLLY’s first exposure to Sherlock Holmes came in the form of Saturday afternoon TV screenings by the BBC of the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce adaptations, and these have inevitably colored his view of Holmes and Wa
tson ever since. He finds committed Sherlockians mildly perturbing, which may explain the nature of his contribution. He is the author of more than twenty novels and collections of short stories, including the Charlie Parker series and The Book of Lost Things, and finds the possibility of the Caxton Private Lending Library’s existence strangely consoling. www.johnconnollybooks.com

  New York Times bestselling author DEBORAH CROMBIE is a Texan who writes crime novels set in Britain. Her Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James series has received numerous awards and is published to international acclaim. Crombie lives in North Texas with her husband, German shepherds, and cats, and divides her time between Texas and Britain. Her seventeenth Kincaid/James novel, Garden of Lamentations, will be published by William Morrow in 2016. She blames her lifetime affliction with Anglophilia on an early introduction to the world of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. www.deborahcrombie.com

  CORY DOCTOROW (www.craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, journalist, and blogger—the co-editor of Boing Boing (www.boingboing.net) and the author of the YA graphic novel In Real Life, the nonfiction business book Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free, and young adult novels like Homeland, Pirate Cinema, and Little Brother and novels for adults like Rapture of the Nerds and Makers. He works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.

  HALLIE EPHRON is the daughter of Hollywood screenwriters, so her first encounters with the Sherlock Holmes Canon were through movies. It was only natural that she set “Understudy in Scarlet” on a movie set. Hallie is a New York Times bestselling author of suspense novels. Her latest, Night Night, Sleep Tight, received a starred PW review: “Old Hollywood glamour, scandals, and lies infuse this captivating thriller.” Her books have been finalists for Edgar®, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark awards, and her Never Tell a Lie was made into a Lifetime Movie Network movie. She is an award-winning book reviewer for the Boston Globe. http://hallieephron.com

  MEG GARDINER grew up watching Basil Rathbone play Sherlock Holmes. But she only came to appreciate the great detective after moving from California to London and reading The Hound of the Baskervilles when her children were assigned it in elementary school. The kids had to grab the book from her hands. She’s been a Holmes fan ever since. Meg is the author of twelve thrillers that have been bestsellers in the U.S. and internationally and have been translated into more than twenty languages. China Lake won the 2009 Edgar® Award for Best Paperback Original. The Dirty Secrets Club was chosen one of the Top Ten Thrillers of 2008 by Amazon. The Nightmare Thief won the 2012 Audie Award for Thriller/Suspense Audiobook of the Year. Her current novel, Phantom Instinct, was chosen one of O, The Oprah Magazine’s “Best Books of Summer.” She lives in Austin, Texas. www.meggardiner.com

  LAURIE R. KING is the New York Times bestselling author of the Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes stories, beginning with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (one of the IMBA’s 100 Best Crime Novels of the Century). She has won or been nominated for an alphabet of prizes from Agatha to Wolfe, been Guest of Honor at several crime conventions, and is probably the only writer to have received both an Edgar® Award and an honorary doctorate in theology. She was inducted into the Baker Street Irregulars in 2010, as “The Red Circle.” www.LaurieRKing.com

  LESLIE S. KLINGER is the New York Times bestselling editor of the Edgar®-winning The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes and the multi-award-winning ten-volume Sherlock Holmes Reference Library. He also co-edited, with Laurie R. King, the anthologies A Study in Sherlock and the Anthony-winning In the Company of Sherlock Holmes. He became hooked on the Sherlock Holmes Canon while he was attending law school, desperate for some non-law reading. He freely admits that even more than the stories, the footnotes of The Annotated Sherlock Holmes by William S. Baring-Gould were his primary interest. He also writes about other geeky subjects, such as Dracula, H. P. Lovecraft, and Frankenstein and has edited two anthologies of horror stories. Klinger was inducted into the Baker Street Irregulars in 1999 as “The Abbey Grange.” www.lesliesklinger.com

  Probably like many of his generation, WILLIAM KENT KRUEGER came to Sherlock Holmes via Hollywood. Those atmospheric black and white gems cranked out in the thirties and forties guided him to the classic original texts and he was, of course, hooked on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Nevertheless, for him, Basil Rathbone will always be the image of that greatest of detectives and the bumbling, mumbling Nigel Bruce will always be Watson. Krueger writes the New York Times bestselling Cork O’Connor mystery series, which is set in Minnesota’s great Northwoods. His novel Ordinary Grace received the Edgar® Award for Best Novel in 2014.

  As a child, TONY LEE was a reluctant reader and therefore never read any of the Sherlock Holmes novels, only ever reading of Holmes’s exploits in a special issue of DC comics Batman. That was until he saw Jeremy Brett’s portrayal of Sherlock Holmes on TV in 1984. Following this, he devoured every one of Holmes’s adventures, in the process discovering a joy for reading that he has never lost. Now a #1 New York Times bestselling writer of comics, books, TV, and film, Tony has written for the world of Sherlock Holmes in both audio (The Confessions of Dorian Gray: Ghosts of Christmas Past) and comic form (his series of Baker Street Irregulars Graphic Novels were so popular, they were even made into a US stage play), but hopes more than anything to write something one day that redeems the poor, misunderstood and maligned Professor Moriarty. He can be found at www/tonylee.co.uk.

  JONATHAN MABERRY is a New York Times bestselling novelist, five-time Bram Stoker Award® winner, and comic book writer. He has been a longtime fan of Sherlock Holmes and wrote a Holmes story, “The Adventure of the Greenbrier Ghost,” which is based on the only case in American legal history where the testimony of a ghost was introduced in court and led to the conviction of a murderer. Jonathan has also performed in regional theater in several one-act dramatizations of Holmes stories, playing Mycroft Holmes, James Moriarty, and Charles Augustus Milverton. He writes the Joe Ledger thrillers, the Rot & Ruin series, the Nightsiders series, the Dead of Night series, as well as standalone novels in multiple genres. His comic book works include, among others, Captain America, Bad Blood, Rot & Ruin, V-Wars, and others. He is the editor of many anthologies, including The X-Files, Scary Out There, Out of Tune, and V-Wars. His books Extinction Machine and V-Wars are in development for TV, and Rot & Ruin is in development as a series of feature films. He is the founder of the Writers Coffeehouse, and the co-founder of The Liars Club. Prior to becoming a full-time novelist, Jonathan spent twenty-five years as a magazine feature writer, martial arts instructor, and playwright. www.jonathanmaberry.com

  Growing up in Edinburgh, CATRIONA MCPHERSON had Holmes, Watson, Conan Doyle, Deacon Brodie, Burke, Hare, Jekyll, and Hyde hopelessly muddled until she read her way to clarity in her teens. When she started writing her own fiction she was drawn back into their world, not so much for the gaslight and cobblestones as for the secrets and the shame. Edinburgh, rigidly respectable on the surface, is a great place for secret shame. She has written ten novels in a historical series set in Scotland, featuring private detective Dandy Gilver, which The Guardian calls “quietly subversive.” They have won Agatha, Macavity and Bruce Alexander awards and been shortlisted for a CWA dagger. Recently, she began a strand of contemporary standalones and has won two Anthony awards for these as well as being an Edgar® finalist for The Day She Died. Her latest is The Child Garden. You can find her at www.catrionamcpherson.com.

  DENISE MINA has long been slightly obsessed by Joseph Bell, Doyle’s inspiration for the character of Sherlock Holmes. She studied and lives in Glasgow, a hop, skip and a jump from Edinburgh Medical School, where Bell taught his systematic reasoned deductions to Doyle himself. When not being a tedious pedant herself, she is the author of seven graphic novels, including the DC Comics adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy.” In her spare time she is the author of thirteen novels. Her first, Garnethill, won the CWA John Creasy Award fo
r Best First Novel and the Spirit of Scotland Award. She is the author of the Paddy Meehan series, the second of which, The Dead Hour, was short listed for the Edgar®. The Paddy Meehan books have been brilliantly adapted for BBC Drama starring Peter Capaldi and David Morrissy. The Alex Morrow Series began with Still Midnight and includes the multi-award-winning End of the Wasp Season as well as her current book, Blood Salt Water. If you can bear to find out any more, her web site is www.denisemina.com. She whitters on Twitter at @DameDeniseMina.

  DAVID MORRELL can’t remember a time when Sherlock Holmes wasn’t part of his imaginative DNA. Writing “The Spiritualist” gave him a wonderful impetus to re-read the Holmes Canon and re-enter the dizzying Great Game. A former literature professor at the University of Iowa, Morrell created the character of Rambo in his debut novel, First Blood. His numerous New York Times bestsellers include the classic spy novel The Brotherhood of the Rose, the basis for the only TV mini-series to be broadcast after a Super Bowl. An Edgar® and Anthony finalist, a Nero and Macavity winner, Morrell is a recipient of three Bram Stoker Awards® and the Thriller Master award from the International Thriller Writers organization. His latest novels are the Victorian mystery/thrillers Murder as a Fine Art and Inspector of the Dead. Visit him at www.davidmorrell.net.

  BEVIS MUSSON claims that he never heard of Sherlock Holmes before drawing Mrs. Hudson Investigates, which probably explains a lot—although he seems to know a lot about Basil The Great Mouse Detective. He hopes that he got all the details and references correct but is sure that no one will think anything out of place. He is the artist on Knight & Dragon from Improper Books and is the writer and artist of The Dead Queen Detectives. His one wish in life would be that people stop getting him to draw stories that have horses in them. Find out more at http://bevismusson.deviantart.com/.