South Norwood was nonetheless an improvement. One didn’t have to choke through the city smoke every day-“London saves a man a fortune on tobacco,” he would joke to Barrie, who would laugh kindly-and it was only a few minutes into Charing Cross by train. He bought a tandem tricycle for himself and Touie, who managed the exercise very well. They could cycle fifteen miles before dinner, if they got started right after tea. The house even had room for Arthur’s sister Connie, after Arthur and the Mam put an end to her gallivanting in Portugal. She made an excellent governess for Roger and Kingsley, Arthur’s children, the latter of whom was still, at one year of age, no bigger than a throw pillow.
Arthur left the mall in the center of the street, heading south, away from the Charing Cross Hotel. He passed a one-legged news vendor, who shook the day’s papers at him. They did not make eye contact.
A line of cabs creaked and rattled along the Strand. The horses made grumbling noises in the cold, like old men, tired and cantankerous.Boys flitted about delivering notes in all directions at once. The smooth lines of the three- and four-story buildings that bordered the avenue were abutted by bright red “TO LET” signs, offering rooms above the telegraph office, above the shops, above the solicitors’ long row. Arthur turned his back to Trafalgar Square and strolled.
The suburbs were a treat, of course, but Arthur missed the city. He loved coming into town for his errands, which he would perform leisurely. He would soak up the city’s energy, its squealing and squawking, and then return with a full belly to Norwood. To Touie. To his tricycle.
He was content in this moment. He even swung his stick as he made his way a few paces along the Strand. He would have been in the mood for whistling had he been the sort of man who whistled. It was a fine morning.
“YOU BRUTE!” an old lady shouted as she struck Arthur’s head full force with her handbag, bruising his nose and knocking off his hat. Arthur stumbled, unhurt but considerably shocked. She could not have been under sixty years old if she was a day. Her body was hunched, shoulders right above the tips of her toes. She looked more frail than anything else. It wasn’t quite clear from where she summoned up the strength to hit Arthur. She wore a thin black armband over her dark coat as if she were in mourning. He stammered.
“I… madam, I… I’m sorry, have I… I’ve offended you in some way?”
“YOU MONSTER!” she barked before taking aim again with her bag. Heavy, it made a long, slow arc against the sky, the blue of the bag standing out against the thick cloud cover. Aware at least of her presence this time, Arthur stepped back, avoiding the blow. He raised his stick for a moment, assuming a defensive position, and then felt mortified enough to set it back on the pavement. He was an athletic man. He couldn’t very well raise his walking stick against a confused, elderly woman.
“Ma’am, I don’t know who you think I am, but I assure you I’ve never met you before in my life.”
A page boy stopped his hurried running to take in the scene. He was joined by a tall gentlewoman in a fashionable hat, who carried her sun umbrella outstretched despite the cloudy, wintry day. One turned head led to another. A crowd began to grow.
“I know full well who you are, Dr. Doyle, and don’t think I don’t know what you’ve done.” Arthur was less confused by her double negative than by her use of his family name. Arthur was not used to being recognized, even though there had been photographs of him in the papers last year. David Thomson had taken a very nice one of Arthur writing at his desk for the Daily Chronicle.
Arthur could hear a mumbling emerge from the gathering crowd. “Doyle… Doyle… Doyle…”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re on about,” he pleaded. He looked toward the crowd for support, for confirmation of his own sanity against the madness of the crone. Below their twittering jaws, Arthur saw that many in the crowd wore identical black armbands. A whole city in mourning. He could swear on the Holy Book that he’d seen today’s papers… Was there some sad news that he’d missed? The passing of some great statesman? Cecil was old, to be sure, but not so old that… Well, the Queen Mother? No, no. Surely he would have heard!
“You killed him, you killed him just as I’m standing here,” hissed the old woman.
“Why’d you do it?” barked someone-it could have been anyone- from the crowd.
“I killed…?” sputtered Arthur as the horrible, unthinkable thought appeared behind his eyes. “You don’t mean to say that you’re angry because I-”
“You killed Sherlock Holmes.”
At first Arthur was purely dumbfounded. He didn’t speak, didn’t move as the old woman whapped him again across the midsection. A few members of the crowd, to their credit, suggested that she stand down, though others were more concerned with Arthur. They wanted an answer. There was none to give.
Arthur’s cheeks swelled with rage.
Two months earlier, in October, his father had died in a mental hospital in Crichton, about eighty miles south of Arthur’s childhood home in Edinburgh. Charles Doyle’s lunacy, combined with his drink, had kept him from ever being close to his elder son. For years Charles had sent Arthur mail from the asylum. Arthur would tense up when he saw the scribbled envelopes on his doorstep, with their telling postmark: Dumphries. His father never sent proper letters, only drawings. Macabre portraits of himself, of Arthur, of animals. Fairies mingling with enormous insects. Grotesquely large centipedes riding cruel, dark blue jays. News of his father’s passing initially brought a certain relief. But as Arthur rarely went to visit, he didn’t learn until after Charles’s death of the detailed log his father had kept of Arthur’s achievements. Charles had clipped reviews of each and every one of Arthur’s novels and kept them in a scrapbook on which he’d sketched scenes of his family around the table, in the kitchen of their old Edinburgh two-story. The Mam, who despite the alcoholic fits and mad ravings had remained loyal to her husband, found the book among Charles’s things and sent it to Arthur without comment. It was only then that Arthur realized what he’d lost. Did Papa even know, before he died, that Arthur was married? That Arthur had two children? That the second child was born premature and spent two months swaddled in the hospital before Arthur took him home?
A week after Charles’s death, dear Touie spent a long afternoon with the family doctor. At the end of their meeting, the doctor slowly descended the steps from Touie’s second-floor bedroom to tell Arthur that the cough in her lungs was incurable. Tuberculosis. She would be gone within months, most likely. The man was courteous and effortlessly professional, which only compounded Arthur’s shame. A medical man himself by training, and yet his own wife had lain stricken with tuberculosis for years and Arthur had thought it nothing but a natural weakness after the birth of their son. His shame threatened, on some days, to overpower his grief. There would be more rides into the country on their tricycle. Arthur would pedal harder. Every trip mattered.
Charles Doyle was real. Touie was real. Their deaths were tragedies. Sherlock Holmes was a bit of imagination. His death was a petty amusement. The old chattering woman and the growing crowd behind her did not know about Arthur’s father-they didn’t even know his name. The death of Charles Doyle did not merit a single sentence in the Times, the Daily Telegraph, or even the Manchester Guardian. Touie’s illness would remain a secret for years. No, these people-these wretched, detestable people-knew nothing of Arthur. They knew only Holmes.