In the Company of Sherlock Holmes Read online

  IN THE COMPANY OF

  SHERLOCK

  HOLMES

  STORIES INSPIRED

  by the HOLMES CANON

  EDITED BY LAURIE R. KING

  AND LESLIE S. KLINGER

  PEGASUS CRIME

  NEW YORK LONDON

  To Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Steel true, blade straight

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger

  THE CROOKED MAN

  by Michael Connelly

  THE CURIOUS AFFAIR OF THE ITALIAN ART DEALER

  by Sara Paretsky

  THE MEMOIRS OF SILVER BLAZE

  by Michael Sims

  DR. WATSON’S CASEBOOK

  by Andrew Grant

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE LAUGHING FISHERMAN

  by Jeffery Deaver

  ART IN THE BLOOD

  by Laura Caldwell

  DUNKIRK

  by John Lescroart

  THE PROBLEM OF THE EMPTY SLIPPER

  Script by Leah Moore & John Reppion Illustrations by Chris Doherty and Adam Cadwell

  LOST BOYS

  by Cornelia Funke

  THE THINKING MACHINE

  by Denise Hamilton

  BY ANY OTHER NAME

  by Michael Dirda

  HE WHO GREW UP READING SHERLOCK HOLMES

  by Harlan Ellison

  THE ADVENTURE OF MY IGNOBLE ANCESTRESS

  by Nancy Holder

  THE CLOSING

  by Leslie S. Klinger

  HOW I CAME TO MEET SHERLOCK HOLMES

  by Gahan Wilson

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  SUPPLEMENTAL COPYRIGHT PAGE

  IN THE COMPANY OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

  AN INTRODUCTION

  So who is this Holmes fellow, anyway? The world’s most perfect observing and reasoning machine, yet his method seems to depend heavily on nicotine-fuelled flights of imagination. A bare-knuckle and martial-arts fighter, who also claims to be the laziest thing in shoe leather. A lethargic amateur actor with a drug problem, yet a man capable of extreme physical exertions. A solitary misanthrope—who has two friends (doctor and housekeeper) so devoted they would lay down their lives for him.

  A solver of mysteries, who is a mystery himself.

  Holmes as an archetype—the word means “original model”—is of one of the defining images of the past 150 years, a variation on Jung’s “artist-scientist” figure. The world did not know what it lacked until Conan Doyle showed us—but then, stand back, for when an archetype comes to life, he is, in the terminology of the new millennium, a meme.

  The meme is a contagious artifact—image, idea, phrase, behavior—that spreads like a virus. And like any other virus, be it biological or computer-based, it grows, reproduces, mutates—and above all, affects its host. And as a virus holds a world of genetic information in its DNA, a viral meme can carry a lot of meaning on its narrow shoulders.

  Variations on the theme of Holmes have been played ever since the man first saw print. Some have been whimsical, others deadly serious; some have even taught us something about ourselves. For Sherlock Holmes is both us, and a super-hero, armed not with greater-than-human powers, but with wits, experience, a small community of dependable friends, and the occasional singlestick or riding crop. Like the artist-scientist, Holmes takes a mass of cold, unrelated, and inert fact, shapes it between his narrow, nicotine-stained hands, and then electrifies it—and us—with a bolt of inspiration.

  Come to think of it, perhaps we should envision him, not as an archetype, but as a golem, a mud figure brought to life by human need.

  In any event, Sherlock Holmes shows no sign of flagging in this new era. A century and a quarter after the world was greeted by his gleeful cry at a laboratory discovery, men and women still find Holmes the ideal vessel to carry a variety of stories, aspirations, reflections.

  The current volume finds another group of those restless minds, men and women who look for companionship on the road, and gleefully find themselves . . . in the company of Sherlock Holmes.

  This book took an amazing journey to end up in your hands. It began when Les was asked to assemble a panel on Sherlock Holmes (no surprise there) for Left Coast Crime, a conference held in 2010 in Los Angeles. He agreed, chose Laurie King for the panel, and then asked for Jan Burke, Lee Child, and Michael Connelly. “But those are the guests of honor!” he was told. He knew that, but he also knew that they were all fans of the Sherlock Holmes canon. Our panel was a great hit. Jan, Lee, and Michael all chimed with erudite commentary on topics Sherlockian (usually after a preface of, “Well, I don’t really know much about Sherlock Holmes . . .”)

  From this panel sprang the idea of a book. We put it together in 2011—A Study in Sherlock—and were delighted at how many friends wanted to play “The Game,” creating stories inspired by the canon. Others said they’d love to but had other deadlines, and so the idea of a second volume was conceived before the first was published.

  During the preparation of that first volume, the Conan Doyle Estate—collateral relatives of Sir Arthur, who own the U.S. copyrights to the ten Sherlock Holmes stories published after 1922—asserted that we had to obtain their permission to use the characters of Holmes and Watson in new stories. We disagreed, but the publisher chose to simplify matters by paying for permission.

  Meanwhile, the world of Sherlock Holmes got bigger. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows broke all box-office records for a film about Sherlock Holmes. (Les, a technical advisor, takes full credit for its success.) Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, set records in England and America for viewing audiences and brought a new generation of readers into the Sherlock Holmes fold. Almost simultaneously, Elementary, with Johnny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu, gave its leads the distinction of having appeared on-screen as Holmes and Watson more than any other actors in history.

  In 2012, as we readied this volume for publication, the Conan Doyle Estate notified the publisher that if we did not obtain a license for the use of the characters of Holmes and Watson, the Estate would block distribution of the book. At that, the long-simmering dispute came to a head.

  “Leslie Klinger v. The Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd” was filed in federal courts, and the Free Sherlock movement was born, seeking definitive judgment that the characters of Holmes and Watson were no longer protected by U.S. copyright law. The argument was: since fifty of the original Doyle stories were in the public domain (that is, free of copyright protection), the remaining ten—although retaining their copyright to original characters and situations—did not redefine the central characters of the stories, and thus, Holmes, Watson, and the others were free to be used in new ways.

  The District Court agreed, as did the Seventh Circuit court of appeals. We made history, and Sherlock Holmes is “free.” (Hardly Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, although the case felt like that at times—we are eternally grateful for the patience of our long-delayed contributors! For details on the case, visit www.free-sherlock.com.) At long last, we were able to proceed with this collection of amazing stories by brilliant authors and artists, all of whom (well, other than the artists in our little Company) reveal here for the first time how they were “inspired by Sherlock Holmes.”

  We hope you agree that it was worth the wait.

  Laurie R. King & Leslie S. Klinger

  THE CROOKED MAN

  by Michael Connelly

  The address was at the top of Doheny beyond a guardhouse and swing gate that protected a community of mansions with price tags of ten million and up. It was where the city’s royalty lived. Movie moguls and captains of industry, sitting on top of the mountain
and looking down on all the rest. But sometimes all the gilding and guarding wasn’t enough to protect one from the inside. Harry Bosch held his badge up to the man in the gray uniform at the guardhouse door and said nothing. He was expected.

  “You know which one it is?” the guard asked.

  “I’ll find it,” Bosch said.

  The guardrail opened and Bosch drove on through.

  “Going to be hard to miss,” said his partner, Jerry Edgar.

  Bosch proceeded past estates that sprawled across the southern ridge of the Santa Monica Mountains. Vast green lawns that had never accepted a weed because they didn’t have to. He had never been in the Doheny Estates but the opulence was even more than he expected. Up here even the guesthouses had guesthouses. They passed one estate with a garage that had a row of eight doors for the owner’s car collection.

  They knew only the basics about the call out. A man—a studio man—was dead and a wife—a much younger wife—was on the premises.

  Soon they came to a house where there were three patrol cars parked outside the driveway entrance. In front of them was a van from the coroner’s office and in front of that was a car that looked like it belonged in the driveway rather than the street. It was a long, sleek Mercedes coupe the color of onyx. Bosch’s battered black Ford looked like a mule next to a stallion.

  Edgar noticed the incongruity as well and came up with an explanation.

  “My guess, Harry? She’s already lawyered up.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “That will be just perfect.”

  Bosch parked in front of the Mercedes and they got out and headed back to the driveway, where a patrol officer stood next to the yellow tape strung between the stone lions on either side of the gray cobblestone drive. The officer wrote their names down on a crime scene attendance log.

  Another officer stood outside the set of twelve-foot-high doors that gave entrance to the house. He opened one side for them.

  “The sergeant’s with the coroner’s team in the library room to your right,” the officer said. And then, as if unable to contain himself, he added, “Can you believe this place?”

  He looked at Edgar as he asked the question. Both men were black and it was as though the officer thought only a fellow black man could appreciate the over the top wealth that was on display.

  “Who actually has a library in their house?” Edgar answered.

  He and Bosch moved into the house, stepping into an entry hall that rivaled the square footage of Bosch’s entire house. Bosch looked to his right and saw the patrol sergeant who was in charge of the scene and who would soon transfer that command to Bosch as the lead on the homicide team.

  Bosch and Edgar moved through a living room so large that it had two separately designed sections of furniture, each with its own piano and fireplace. An ornate serving table separated the two sides. Displayed on it was a collection of bottles containing amber liquids of various gradations and undoubtedly too high end for Bosch to identify.

  “What is this?” Edgar asked. “One side for daytime and the other for night? This place is over the top.”

  Bosch didn’t respond. Sergeant Bob Fitzgerald was waiting by the closed double doors on the other side of the room. The so-called library, Bosch assumed.

  “What do you have, Nox?” he asked.

  Fitzgerald’s nickname was a study in police brevity. Everything was always reduced to acronyms or the shortest terms possible in the department. That went for nicknames as well. Bob Fitzgerald had originally been branded with the sobriquet Bobnoxious after his decidedly forward personality, especially when it came to female rookies. Over time that got trimmed down to simply Nox.

  “We’ve got a James Barclay on the floor in here,” Fitzgerald said. “He’s CEO of Archway Studios. I should say was CEO. He’s not looking so good right now. He’s dead. And we’ve got his wife, a Nancy Devoy, sitting in a study on the other side of the house with her lawyer.”

  “What’s she say happened?”

  “She’s not saying shit, Harry. Her lawyer ain’t letting her talk. So we don’t know what the hell happened yet. That’s why they pay you the big bucks, right?”

  “Right,” Bosch said. “When did the lawyer get here?”

  “Was already here when my guys responded to the nine-one-one. The lawyer’s the one who made the call. He called it an accident, by the way. It doesn’t look much like an accident, you ask me.”

  Bosch ignored Fitzgerald’s detective work. No one was asking.

  “What’s her lawyer’s name?”

  “Klinger—perfect lawyer name, you ask me. I didn’t get the first.”

  Bosch could not remember a lawyer named Klinger that he had any previous interaction with. It was likely that he was a family lawyer. People up this high on the hill didn’t usually have criminal defense experts on the payroll.

  “Okay, Nox.”

  He turned to his partner.

  “Jerry, you go over there and start with her,” he said. “See if the lawyer’s willing to let her talk to an investigator. I’ll check out the scene first and meet you over there.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Edgar said.

  He turned and headed back across the double living rooms. Bosch looked back at Fitzgerald.

  “You going to let me go in or do we stand here all day?”

  Fitzgerald shrugged, then knocked once on the door and then opened it.

  “And they call me Nox,” he said as Bosch passed by.

  Bosch entered the library to find a coroner’s team along with a forensic criminalist and a photographer working around the body of a man sprawled on the floor near a brick fireplace. The dead man was fully clothed in blue jeans, a golf shirt, shoes and socks. Bosch recognized the deputy coroner and was immediately pleased. Art Doyle was one of the more thorough cutters in an office beleaguered by staff cutbacks and low morale. But more important than what he did in the autopsy suite was his work in the field. The guy was a crime scene artist, so good at interpreting the physical nuances of murder that for years he had been known by one name of distinction and respect. It was a sobriquet that could not be abbreviated or reduced in any way.

  Equal to Doyle’s interpretive skills was his willingness to share his findings and discuss possibilities with detectives on the scene. This was indeed rare. There were many deputy coroners, fearful of being wrong or of talking out of turn or of facing the wrath of a defense attorney in court, who wouldn’t dare comment on a possible cause of death at the crime scene—even when looking at a body at the bottom of a swimming pool.

  Doyle was manipulating the dead man’s head, turning it right and left, using both of his gloved hands to hold it securely. He then moved his hands lower and palpated the neck. Bosch heard him comment to his investigator that rigor mortis had retreated. The investigator wrote a note on his clipboard.

  Before moving in toward the body, Bosch decided to survey the surroundings. All four walls of the library were lined with bookcases floor to ceiling. The dark wood cases were ten feet high and a brass railing ran along the upper shelves with a ladder on wheels that could be slid into position to access books on the upper reaches. The cases were built around two windows on one wall and a set of French doors on an adjoining wall. One of the doors was open and there was glass from the window pane next to the door handle scattered across the dark oak floor. Outside the furthest trajectory of glass was a white stone the size of a potato. It was the instrument used to break through the glass.

  Careful not to step on the broken shards, Bosch stepped out through the door without touching it and moved out into another vast yard that was perfectly manicured and featured a shimmering blue pool. He realized how quiet it was up here so far above the city. It was so silent it was eerie.

  After a moment’s reverie Bosch turned to go back inside and noticed the white stones used to create a border between the lawn and the strip of plantings that ran along the side of the house. He saw the gap where one of the stones had be
en taken to be used to break the glass on the door. Whoever had broken in hadn’t had a plan. Grabbing the stone was improvisational.

  Bosch stepped back through the open door and looked to see if Doyle had noticed him yet. He hadn’t. But Bosch knew from experience with the deputy coroner that he should ask permission to approach the body. He pulled a pair of latex gloves out of the left pocket of his suit coat and put them on, snapping the rubber loudly in an effort to draw Doyle’s attention.

  It didn’t work. Bosch cleared his throat and spoke up.

  “Sherlock?”

  Doyle finished his examination of the neck and looked up at Bosch.

  “Ah, Harry. Come in to our little circle here. The game is afoot.”

  He smiled at his own conceit. Permission granted, Bosch walked over and squatted next to the body in a baseball catcher’s stance. He placed one hand down on the floor to stop himself from losing balance and lurching forward. Only then did he see the deep gash on the left side of the dead man’s forehand. And what he had thought from a distance was possibly a bad toupee was actually the victim’s hair stained black with dried blood from the wound.

  “You came in early today,” Doyle said.

  Bosch nodded.

  “Always do,” he said. “I like the squad room when it’s empty. Before everybody starts coming in.”

  Doyle nodded.

  “Must be hard to keep that routine these days,” he said. “I mean, now that you leave a woman behind in your bed.”

  Bosch looked up from the dead man to Doyle. He controlled the urge to ask him how the hell he knew about Hannah. He looked back down at the body.

  “Okay, so what have we got here, Doc?”

  “We are looking at the obvious, Detective. The decedent exhibits only the laceration on the forehead. The wound is deep and examination reveals the weapon penetrated the frontal bone, exposing the brain. Untreated immediately, this would be a fatal event.”