The House of Silk: The New Sherlock Holmes Novel

by Anthony Horowitz

  ‘Nearly finished, Dr Watson? I’m sure there are still a few loose ends that need tying up. Dot the i’s and cross the t’s, and then you must let us all read it. I’ve been talking to the other girls and they can hardly wait!’

  There is a little more to add.

  Charles Fitzsimmons – I forbear to use the word Reverend – was quite correct in what he said to us on that final night in the House of Silk. He never did come to trial. But on the other hand, he was not released as he had so fondly expected. Apparently there was an accident at the prison where he was being held. He fell down a flight of stairs and was found with a fractured skull. Was he pushed? It would seem very likely for, as he had boasted, he knew some unpleasant secrets about a number of important people and, unless I misunderstood him, even went so far as to suggest that he might have connections with the royal family. Absurd, I know, and yet I remember Mycroft Holmes and his extraordinary visit to our lodgings. From what he said to us, and from the way he behaved, it was evident that he had come under considerable pressure and … But no, I will not even consider the possibility. Fitzsimmons was lying. He was attempting to inflate his own importance before he was arrested and carried away. There’s an end to it.

  Let us just say that there were people in government who knew what he was doing but who were afraid to expose him for fear of the scandal, backed, of course, by photographic evidence – and it is true that in the weeks that followed, there was a series of resignations at the highest level that both astonished and alarmed the country. I very much hope, though, that Fitzsimmons was not assassinated. He was without any doubt a monster but no country can afford to throw aside the rule of law simply for the sake of expediency. This seems even more clear to me now, while we are at war. Perhaps his death was just an accident, though a lucky one for all concerned.

  Mrs Fitzsimmons disappeared. Lestrade told me that she went mad after the death of her husband and was transferred to a lunatic asylum in the far north. Again, this was a fortunate outcome, as there she could say what she liked and nobody would believe her. For all I know, she is still there to this day.

  Edmund Carstairs was not prosecuted. He left the country with his sister who, though she recovered, remained an invalid for the rest of her life. The firm of Carstairs and Finch ceased to trade. Catherine Carstairs was tried under her maiden name, found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. She was fortunate to escape the noose. Lord Ravenshaw went into his study with a revolver and blew his brains out. There may have been one or two other suicides, too, but Lord Horace Blackwater and Dr Thomas Ackland both escaped justice. I suppose one has to be pragmatic about these things, but it still annoys me, particularly after what they tried to do to Sherlock Holmes

  And then, of course, there is the strange gentleman who accosted me that night and gave me such an unusual supper. I never did tell Holmes about him and, indeed, have never mentioned him again until now. Some might find this odd, but I had given my word and even though he was a self-acclaimed criminal, as a gentleman I felt I had no choice but to keep it. I am quite certain, of course, that my host was none other than Professor James Moriarty, who was to play such a momentous role in our lives a short while later, and it was the devil’s own work to pretend that I had never met him. Holmes talked about him in detail shortly before we left for the Reichenbach Falls, and even then I was fairly sure it was the same man. I have often reflected on this unusual aspect of Moriarty’s character. Holmes spoke with horror of his malevolence and the vast number of crimes in which he had been involved. But he also admired his intelligence and, indeed, his sense of fair play. To this day I believe that Moriarty genuinely wanted to help Holmes and wanted to see the House of Silk shut down. As a criminal himself, he had learned of its existence but felt it inappropriate, against the grain, for him to take action personally. But it offended his sensibilities and so he sent Holmes the white ribbon and provided me with the key to his cell in the hope that his enemy would do his work for him. And that, of course, is what happened, although to the best of my knowledge Moriarty never sent a note of thanks.

  I did not see Holmes over Christmas for I was home with my wife, Mary, whose health had by now become a serious concern to me. However, in January she left London to stay a few days with friends and, at her suggestion, I returned to my old lodgings once again to see how Holmes was bearing up after our adventure. It was during this time that one last incident took place which I must now record.

  Holmes had been completely exonerated, and any record of the accusations made against him annulled. He was not, however, in an easy state of mind. He was restless, irritable and, from his frequent glances at the mantelpiece (I did not need his powers of deduction) I could tell that he was tempted by the liquid cocaine that was his most lamentable habit. It would have helped if he was on a case, but he was not and, as I have often noted, it was when he was idle, when his energies were not being directed towards some insoluble mystery, that he became distracted and prone to long moods of depression. But this time, I realised, it was something more. He had not mentioned the House of Silk or any of the details associated with it, but reading the newspaper one morning, he drew my attention to a brief article concerning Chorley Grange School for Boys which had just been closed down.

  ‘It’s not enough,’ he muttered. He crumpled the paper in both hands and set it aside, then added: ‘Poor Ross!’

  From this, and from other indications in his behaviour – he mentioned, for example, that he might never call upon the services of the Baker Street Irregulars again – I gathered that he still blamed himself, in part, for the boy’s death, and that the scenes we had witnessed that night on Hamworth Hill had left an indelible mark on his consciousness. Nobody knew evil like Holmes, but there are some evils that it is better not to know, and he could not enjoy even the rewards of his success without being reminded of the dark places to which it had taken him. I could understand this. I had bad dreams myself. But I had Mary to consider, and a medical practice to run. Holmes found himself trapped in his own particular world, forced to dwell on things he would rather forget.

  One evening, after we had taken dinner together, he suddenly announced that he was going out. The snow had not returned, but January was as glacial as December had been, and though I had no desire at all for this late expedition, I nonetheless asked him if he would like me to accompany him.

  ‘No, no, Watson. It’s kind of you. But I think I would be better alone.’

  ‘But where are you going at this late hour, Holmes? Let’s go back to the fire and enjoy a whisky peg together. Any business you may have can surely wait until the day.’

  ‘Watson, you are the very best of friends and I am aware that I have been poor company. What I need is a little time alone. But we will have breakfast tomorrow and I am sure you will find me in better spirits.’

  We did and he was. We spent a pleasant and companionable day visiting the British Museum and lunching at Simpson’s, and it was only as we were returning home that I saw in the newspapers a report of the great fire on Hamworth Hill. A building that had once been occupied by a charitable school had been razed to the ground, and apparently the flames had leapt so high into the night sky that they had been visible as far afield as Wembley. I said nothing about it to Holmes and asked no questions. Nor had I remarked that morning that his coat, which had been hanging in its usual place, had carried about it the strong smell of cinders. That evening, Holmes played his Stradivarius for the first time in a while. I listened with pleasure to the soaring tune as we sat together on either side of the hearth.

  I hear it still. As I lay down my pen and take to my bed, I am aware of the bow being drawn across the bridge and the music rises into the night sky. It is far away and barely audible but – there it is! A pizzicato. Then a tremolo. The style is unmistakable. It is Sherlock Holmes who is playing. It must be. I hope with all my heart that he is playing for me …

  Anthony Horowitz on Writing The House of Silk: Conception, Ins
piration and The Ten Rules.

  I’m still quite surprised that I was approached to write The House of Silk (I’m assuming, by the way, that you have read it before you reach this point. Spoilers follow!). Although the bulk of my television work is adult, when it comes to fiction I’m better known for children’s books – in particular the Alex Rider series – and I’m fairly sure that the Doyle estate wasn’t interested in a fast-paced action thriller full of explosions and improbable chases. They’d already had plenty of that with Robert Downey Jnr. At the time, they weren’t even aware that I have long been an admirer of the Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories. I was actually given a set by my father for my seventeenth birthday (I think) and they immediately wove themselves into the fabric of my life. I cannot now read The Dying Detective or The Devil’s Foot (two of my favourites) without somehow regressing into my teens. For me, Jeremy Brett was the finest TV Holmes and watching occasional re-runs on ITV3, I find myself being taken back to my late twenties and can see the house where I lived, even the clothes I was wearing. There are very few characters in fiction who have the power to do this – but Holmes is certainly one of them.

  It may well be that Sherlock Holmes is the reason why I have spent so much of my life writing crime fiction of my own and if there is one small boast that I occasionally make, it’s that I have probably written more fictional murders than any other writer. Ever. The crime figures can be quickly totted up.

  I helped to create Midsomer Murders from the novels of Caroline Grahame (‘Agatha Christie on acid’) and they certainly have the highest body count on British Television. I wrote the first seven episodes which saw no fewer than nineteen fatalities including Elizabeth Spriggs (poisoned), Anna Massey (pushed out of a window) and Orlando Bloom (stabbed with a pitchfork). In the early days of MM, writers were encouraged to develop a bad habit in that whenever an advertising break approached, someone would be killed simply to make the story more interesting and to encourage the audience to keep watching. It could be argued that in the end this would turn the series into a parody of itself. For my part, I had to give up writing the show when I realised that there was hardly anybody left in Midsomer to murder.

  Before MM, I adapted fourteen hours of Agatha Christie’s Poirot, which averaged at least one murder in the short stories, often two or three in the novels. A less successful original series of mine, Crime Traveller, had a detective travelling back in time to prevent murders and invariably feeling (it was a time paradox … if there hadn’t been a murder he would never have travelled back in time so the very fact that he had done so proved that it had to have happened). Eight hours, eight more deaths. Given that they were supposed to be a slice of UK life in the 21st Century, there were a surprising number of murders in the two five-part shows that I developed for ITV: Collision and Injustice.

  And then there’s Foyle’s War, which has now run for ten years on ITV with Michael Kitchen superb as a reluctant detective investigating crimes during the Second World War. Perhaps this was the programme that brought me to the attention of the Doyle estate. More serious and low-key than Midsomer Murders, it was set in the past, very carefully researched and perhaps more in keeping with the book they had in mind. I wrote twenty-one two hour episodes and although we did our best to keep the body count down (my favourite episode, The French Drop, has no murder at all) the deaths still added up.

  And that’s not counting my children’s books. The Alex Rider world is necessarily a violent one. I have produced over thirty horror stories. And then there are the less well known but surprisingly blood-splattered detective stories featuring the Diamond brothers. I Know What You Did Last Wednesday, contains seven violent deaths in just seventy-eight pages.

  I’m often asked why readers have such a keen interest in murder. The short answer is that actually I think we don’t – but in fiction, whether it’s television or books – murder is a simple, very immediate way of focusing attention on a character. We may have no particular interest in a man who makes pizzas but the moment his wife is found with her head in the pizza oven, we’re forced to ask questions about him, to look behind their relationship, to search for the truth. In detective drama, the viewer and the detective have a very similar role. And what is it about the British that makes us so pre-eminent in this field? Well, I think the fictitious county of Midsomer provides part of the answer. As a race we’re very secretive. By and large we don’t display our emotions in the same way as, say, the Americans. We live behind net curtains. This is an atmosphere very conducive to murder and it reminds me that when I put together a document to explain the ethos of Midsomer Murders – this was before the series had even been commissioned – I put at the head of it a famous quotation from the Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure of the Copper Beeches: ‘the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.’

  How do I set about creating a murder mystery? This is another question that often comes up at literary festivals. For me, all murder stories boil down to a very simple formula: A+B=C. A is one person. B is another person. C is the reason why A wants to murder B. The genius of Agatha Christie was that she managed to find so many variations on this basic formula. The narrator did it. The detective did it. The little boy did it. They all did it. And yet, the strange thing is that when you come to think them up, there are very, very few reasons why anybody actually wants to murder anybody. In fact I can only really think of three: money, fear and passion … which may be sexual passion, revenge or whatever.

  I see a murder story as a series of concentric circles, almost like a dart board. At the very centre is that equation. It is where I start because it is both the beginning and the end; the springboard and the solution to the crime. But then I have to add the next levels. The other suspects. More stories which, though often irrelevant, nonetheless link up with the bull’s eye. In Foyle’s War, I would add whole stories which had nothing whatsoever to do with the crime but which in many ways interested me much more: anti-Semitism in Britain, the birth of plastic surgery, funk holes, spies, etc These would all be layered in. Every book has to have a shape. A murder story is circular.

  If there was a model for Foyle or, for that matter, Midsomer Murders, it was probably closer to Agatha Christie or Dorothy L. Sayers than Doyle. The crime is committed. The detective is introduced and pursues a scattering of clues, meeting people who all add a new perspective to the original crime. A second murder takes place and seems to send the story in a completely new direction. At last the suspects gather in one place. The detective has his moment in the spotlight – and if he’s Poirot he accuses everyone in the room before he finally settles on the guilty party who is, of course, the last person you expected. The guilty party claims innocence. Cue the flashback. Poirot is proved right. Everyone goes home.

  All of which is actually completely irrelevant to Sherlock Holmes because Doyle’s approach was completely different. Take, for example, the twelve stories which make up the collection with the title The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. No fewer than nine of these contain no murder. Even more remarkably, three of the stories – A Case of Identity, The Noble Bachelor and The Twisted Lip – don’t even contain a crime. Throughout the canon, there is a remarkable shortage of red herrings and suspects. One of the two favourite stories that I mentioned, The Dying Detective, is virtually a two-hander. In one story, the killer is a horse. In another, it’s a jellyfish. Even more oddly, if you look at the four novels, three of them – A Study in Scarlet, The Valley of Fear and to a lesser extent The Hound of the Baskervilles even manage to lose sight of the detective, transporting us to Utah, to Vermissa and to Dartmoor.

  If you were to ask what has made Sherlock Holmes the most successful and best loved detective of all time, I would argue that it is not in fact the crimes or the mysteries. It seems to me that the appeal of the books has much more to do with character, the friendship of Holmes and Watson, the extraordinary and very rich world
they inhabit and the genuine and often under-rated excellence of Conan Doyle’s writing, a touch melodramatic at times but still very much in the tradition of gothic romance. When I was asked to write The House of Silk, I realised that this would be the key. I had to become invisible. I had to find that extraordinary, authentic voice.

  And the first two challenges were immediately apparent. The first one was the length. My publishers, Orion Books, had requested a novel of between 90,000 and 100,000 words (the final length was around 94,000) – big enough to seem like value for money on an airport stand. But actually, this goes quite against the spirit of Doyle’s originals which barely run to half that length. The very nature of a Sherlock Holmes story is that the narrative has a slightly silky feel. The chapters are short and to the point. Characters are not described at any great length and even Victorian London is economically sketched in. Nor are there any major action sequences as such. A boat chase down the River Thames, yes. A midnight encounter with a hell hound on the moors. But these are singular occurrences. The greater part of the novels take place in closed rooms … hardly ideal for a modern audience and certainly of no interest to any circling Hollywood producers (well, it’s just a thought).

  The other challenge was the title. Modern novels, particularly the sort of bestseller than Orion had in mind, have to shout loud on a crowded shelf. Doyle, although he had an uncanny eye for what the market wanted, was less troubled by such commercial pressures. The Sign of Four is a perfect title and many of the short stories have the same gentle elegance: The Problem of Thor Bridge or The Golden Pince-nez. Although titles for the Alex Rider books were always a bit of a struggle, I decided on The House of Silk at a very early stage. It just felt right.